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The first major exam has left Binance on the ropes

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It is no secret that Binance has become one of the names in the crypto world. For many users, talking about buying, selling or storing cryptocurrencies is talking about Binance, a platform that the company itself presents as the largest crypto exchange in the world. Precisely for this reason, the fact that its regulatory future in Europe is now in question is not just another administrative detail: it is proof of how far the European Union wants to go when it says it wants to put order in this market. The signal came in the form of a letter published by Binance on June 16. In it, the company does not announce a departure from Europe nor confirm that it has lost its authorization, but it does recognize that its path towards the license Mica It still doesn’t close. Binance assures that “we will provide a new update before June 30, 2026” and promises more details about “next steps and available options.” That’s where the real issue begins: not in what Binance categorically states, but in what it avoids closing. MiCA, acronym for Markets in Crypto-Assets, is the regulation with which the European Union wants to provide a common framework for a large part of the crypto market. Until now, many companies have operated relying on national registries or transitional regimes, with relevant differences between countries. The new rule changes that logic: crypto service providers need a specific authorization, or a valid route under MiCA if they are already regulated financial entities, to operate under the European umbrella. Simply put, Europe wants to move from a fragmented map to a shared rule for who can provide these services and under what conditions. MiCA, Greece and the underlying consequence The design of MiCA has a fundamental consequence: the license is born in one country, but can be deployed throughout Europe. The provider must have an entity with its registered office in an EU Member State, apply to the regulator of its home Member State and, if approved, activate the passport mechanism to provide services in other countries. This is what changes the scale of the case. We are not just talking about a national supervisor reviewing a specific file, but also that his decision may end up affecting users, competitors and regulators throughout the Union. Greece appears in this story because Binance channeled its request there. In its letter, the company says it submitted a complete application and worked for months with the Hellenic Capital Market Commission, the Greek regulator. He also maintains that, according to his understanding, the HCMC completed its review and considered that the application met the requirements of MiCA. Binance’s tone is not that of a company that wants to file a withdrawal, but neither is that of a company that can already show a closed authorization. In the letter, it maintains that it “remains committed to Europe and its European users,” and adds that it will continue to operate in accordance with applicable law. At the same time, it recognizes that its priority is to “minimize disruption and keep users informed.” This combination explains the ambiguity of the message: Binance tries to convey continuity, but leaves room for changes that it has not yet specified. Reuters put on the table the most delicate reading of the file. According to the agency, which cited two people familiar with the matter, Binance’s application to the HCMC was expected to be rejected, which would leave the platform without MiCA authorization that it needs to continue providing services in the EU under the new framework. Of course, Binance does not formulate it that way in its letter and the Greek regulator has not publicly confirmed that outcome. That is why it is advisable to keep the two layers separate: the official version of the company and the information attributed by Reuters. This is where ESMA, the European Securities and Markets Authority, comes in. It is not the one who directly grants the MiCA license, a task that corresponds to the competent national regulator, but it does have a relevant role in supervisory convergence and in the coherent application of European standards. The concern is not abstract: ESMA has already indicated in 2025 problems in the authorization and early supervision of a crypto provider in Malta, detecting material issues that were not fully resolved and risk areas that had not been adequately assessed. While Binance tries to close its European footprint, some competitors have already begun to turn MiCA into a commercial argument. Kraken posted a communication in which it recalls that on July 1 it narrows the margin for platforms that do not have a MiCA license and encourages users to switch to “one of the oldest licensed exchanges in Europe.” Revolut has also played that card: in a message in X stated that it is authorized under MiCA and asked those investing in crypto to move to a “trusted partner.” Regulatory uncertainty has already become a battle to attract users. Images | Binance In Xataka | They were promised a bitcoin paradise and zero taxes for 120,000 euros. Today there is only one desert island on the verge of disappearing

23 years ago a Boeing 727 left the runway without authorization. What happened next remains an enigma

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A commercial airliner should not disappear like this. We are talking about one of the largest and most monitored machines in the transportation industry, with flight plans, airport controls, maintenance records and normally traceable components. That is why the case of Boeing 727 N844AA It’s so hard to close. According to Aviation Safety Networkthe aircraft took off from the Quatro de Fevereiro international airport, in Luanda, on May 25, 2003, around sunset and without the corresponding authorization. Since then there has been no confirmed landing, no identified remains or a definitive explanation. Before becoming a mystery, N844AA had led a much more conventional life. Washington Post explains that it was a Boeing 727-223 built in 1975, delivered to American Airlines and removed from the airline’s fleet towards the end of the summer of 2001. Then came the strange twist: the plane was converted to transport diesel within Angola, with seats removed and large internal tanks installed in the cabin. The idea was to supply operations linked to diamond mines in areas difficult to serve by road, but the plan soon went awry. The operation began to accumulate problems. The fuel transport project was met with unpaid invoices, problems with stolen passports, security lapses and questions about who really controlled the plane. By May 2002, the crews had already left and the original plan was practically undone, but the 727 was still there, immobilized at the Luanda airport. Almost a year later Ben Charles Padilla appearedsent by Aerospace Sales & Leasing for try to recover an aircraft that it could still have value as an asset, even if it fit increasingly worse into its previous life. A stranded plane, an unauthorized departure and too many open questions Padilla is a central figure because most stories place it inside the plane at the time of departure. There is also an important nuance: he was a certified flight engineer, aeronautical mechanic and private pilot, but not a qualified captain for a Boeing 727. That model required a crew of three people, with two pilots and a flight engineer dedicated to managing systems. John Mikel Mutantu is also mentioned as a possible companion, although the accounts do not entirely agree on his identity and there is no clear evidence that he was trained to pilot that device. The known sequence of May 25, 2003 is brief, but enough to explain why the case caught on so quickly. That afternoon, N844AA began taxiing without proper communication, entered the track without authorization and took off towards the southwest, towards the Atlantic and the Gulf of Guinea. Its lights were off and the transponder, the equipment that allows an aircraft to be identified in air traffic systems, was not transmitting. And there was another important point: the 500-gallon tanks installed in the cabin were part of the diesel transportation project, but they were not used to fuel the plane’s engines. To fly, the 727 relied solely on the aircraft fuel available in its own tanks. If he went low, he would hardly have gone far; If there was more margin, the range of possibilities expanded. Delta Air Lines retired its last 727 from scheduled service in April 2003. The image shows a plane of that model, not the N844AA missing in Angola The search did not close the case either. US organizations such as the FBI, the CIA, the State Department, Homeland Security and CENTCOM participated in it, and the US embassies in Africa received notices to monitor a plane that needed a long runway to land. In the weeks that followed, and also over the years, theories circulated: a fall into the sear, a landing at another airfield, a dismantling to sell components or even its use on irregular routes. A runway of a repainted 727 in Conakry, Guinea, looked promising in July 2003but the US authorities ended up discarding it. A possible terrorist connection was also examined, in the midst of post-9/11 sensitivity. It was a logical fear for Western intelligence services at the time, but The Washington Post and ABC News agree that no evidence emerged to support that hypothesis. That is precisely what keeps the enigma alive 23 years later. There is no confirmed landingidentified remains, pieces publicly linked to N844AA nor a record of maintenance or sales of components that would allow its fate to be reconstructed. If one day an answer appears, it will probably not be the entire plane: it will be a fragment, a document or a part number capable of finally giving it a place on the map. Images | JetPix In Xataka | The European fighter may have died, but there is a plan B to avoid the F-35. One with Spain, Germany and an unexpected guest

AI is generating a labor market at two speeds: those who win and those who are left behind

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We have been hearing for years that AI is going to reconfigure the labor market and we have more and more data on how that change is going. PwC has just made public its new barometer global analysis of AI in the labor market in which, after analyzing more than 1 billion job offers in 27 countries, they reach several very interesting conclusions. Two speeds. One of the findings of the study is that AI is helping to create two categories in the labor market. On the one hand there are the so-called “professionalized roles” which are professions that can use AI as support, but require that the human be the one who does the fine work, such as specialist doctors, architects or recruiters. On the other hand, there are “democratized roles” that are positions that AI has facilitated, that is, that a non-expert can do it or that AI can directly do much of the work. This is the case of customer service, first-level technical support or administrative positions. According to the report, professionalized positions are growing much faster than democratized ones, with twice as many positions offered and 42% more salary growth. In Xataka OpenAI assures that AI has not had that much impact on employment. Anthropic believes just the opposite and therein lies the problem Productivity boom. There is a growing gap between companies that know how to make the most of AI and those that don’t. Between 2018 and 2025, productivity growth among companies in sectors less exposed to AI has increased by 24%, while those most exposed reach 34%. Within this group, they have detected that companies that use AI most intensively have managed to boost their productivity by up to 163%, five times more than the average for the rest. In addition to being more productive, these companies are also increasing their workforce, up to 52% compared to 36% for less pro-AI companies. Knowing about AI pays better. The barometer has detected that the pull of AI also affects salaries. The pay gap between those with specific AI skills and those without has increased to 62%, up from 57% last year. In addition, jobs in specific areas such as machine learning or prompt engineering are growing eight times faster than the general labor market (69% compared to 9%). The number of offers for jobs related to AI is already double what was seen in 2024, especially in sectors such as technology, media, telecommunications and professional services. {“videoId”:”x806n3d”,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”TECHNOLOGY and THE JOBS OF THE FUTURE – Insert Coin with Manuel Hidalgo”, “tag”:”employment”, “duration”:”1806″} Junior who look senior. Another finding of the study is that entry-level or junior positions now have higher requirements. The offers analyzed tend to require typically senior skills such as judgment, leadership and creativity. Specifically, PwC says that the jobs most exposed to AI are seven times more likely to require these skills in entry-level roles, and that vacancies for these junior-senior positions have grown by 35% since 2019, while the rest of the junior roles have decreased by 10%. Image | Xataka with Magnific In Xataka | Spain has just put numbers to the impact of AI on the labor market: 2.3 million jobs will change forever (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news AI is generating a labor market at two speeds: those who win and those who are left behind was originally published in Xataka by Amparo Babiloni .

The most touristic enclave in Italy has two news programs left. It is quite a warning for the half of the Spanish coast

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The advance of climate change is leaving more or less obvious signs that range from the maturation of fruit trees earlier to intense heat waves even before summer arrives like the one we are livingbut the future is bleak: more torrential rains and floods, more droughts, places that will be uninhabitable due to climatic conditions… or directly because they have been swallowed by the sea. Without going any further, the image you see above these lines is a classic in tourist destinations: the famous and colorful Italian Cinque Terre towns. A research team has elaborated the first map of what awaits them in 2150 and the scenario borders on the apocalyptic. Cinque Terre in serious danger of disappearing. This study analyzes two of the most exposed Cinque Terre towns, Monterosso and Vernazza, projecting how their coast will evolve until the year 2150 under different levels of greenhouse gas emissions according to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6). In the worst emissions scenario, the sea level in that area could rise up to 1.17 meters, which means permanently saying goodbye to more than 22,000 square meters of coastline. To make it clear during the World Cup: about three football fields. In the best case scenario, the figure would be “only” 9,931 square meters. The figure may seem low, but in coastal areas with a morphology as narrow and steep as that of the Cinque Terre, they imply the loss of entire beaches, docks and access to transport such as the train that connects them. Thinking more than 100 years ahead may seem far away, but the reality is that the global rate of sea rise has gone from 2.13 mm to almost 5 mm since the 90s, according to the World Meteorological Organization. In short: the process has already started and you have stepped on the accelerator. Why is it important. Because Cinque Terre is the canary in the mine of many other municipalities, touristy or not, that are going to sink in the coming decades in a tragic process that involves demographic, climatic and economic changes. In fact, the decline of beaches and the loss of functionality of ports and infrastructure are already being noticed, which will have a direct impact on the local economy, which depends almost entirely on tourism. But Cinque Terre are more than postcard towns: their cliffs converted into agricultural terraces and their territorial planning have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997. Losing them totally or partially is not like a resort collapsing: it is a tragedy. And it won’t be the only one: this study has calculated that of the 49 World Heritage sites on low-lying Mediterranean coasts, 37 are already at risk of serious flooding today and that this risk could increase by 50% before 2100. Context. In the analysis of climate change on the coasts, the Mediterranean has turned on the turbo: it is rising faster than the global average. Between 2000 and 2018, the Mediterranean Sea rose about seven centimeters, a rate much higher than that of the 20th century as a whole. according to research from the British National Oceanography Center. Liguria, the region where Cinque Terre is located, takes the cake: it combines the rise of the sea with a gradual sinking of the land itself. But the reality is global and even darker: in a generalized way we are losing rocky coast and probably faster than we think: science has records of cliff retreats of just 150 years and projections until 2100. In short: we are underestimating the rise in sea level. In detail. This study stands out for how exhaustive it is and the quality and quantity of sources with which it works: it uses topography obtained with high-resolution drones, high-precision seafloor maps, geodetic data of land subsidence with GPS networks and applied the three main IPCC climate scenarios to calculate the projected flooding in 2030, 2050, 2100 and 2150. The usual thing is to stay at 2100, but the team has expanded that horizon with half a century more to see processes that the shorter models overlook: especially the slow sinking of the own land due to geological causes. In fact, there are already studies that evidence that the IPCC forecasts fall short precisely because they ignore that factor. Yes, but. Although the study is rigorous and solid, as the research team itself clarifies, Cinque Terre will not disappear overnight and this apocalyptic scenario will only happen if adaptation and mitigation measures are not adopted. On the other hand, the most unfavorable scenarios take into account global emissions that current climate agreements seek to avoid. In Xataka | There is a corner of Spain where global warming is wreaking havoc: the Pyrenees are becoming “Mediterraneanized” In Xataka | It turns out that there are invasive land snakes that take to the sea from Ibiza. And they are annihilating a unique lizard Cover | Rahul Chakraborty and The First Relative Sea Level Rise and Storm Surges Scenarios up to 2150 CE for the Coasts of Monterosso and Vernazza, Cinque Terre National Park (Liguria, Italy)

we tend to turn left and we have no idea why

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It’s a matter of a moment. You’re walking down the sidewalk, thinking about your things, maybe you look at your phone, and suddenly there’s something in front of you. It doesn’t matter if it’s a bollard, a person, a kiosk or a baby stroller. You have to avoid it, you have to do it now. Now. And, probably, you are going to the left. And it seems that you decided it, but that decision was already made long before that walk down the street. A few days ago, a research team led by the University of Navarra has shown that, when wandering freely, pedestrians tend to turn counterclockwise and that this tendency is robust, cross-cultural, and of individual origin (not a pattern that emerges from group interaction). Turn left. The team demonstrated that the tendency to turn left occurred in 32 of the 33 experiments they carried out. The only exception was in a study in Japan where the result was 50 to 50. According to the authorsbias appears “almost immediately” in around 80% of people; when tested walking alone, 75% still deviate to the left. Furthermore, it is something individual: it does not matter whether the person walks alone or in the middle of a crowd. The bias appears exactly the same. And this is what’s interesting because, basically, it turns upside down what we think we know about “pedestrian dynamics.” And why is this happening? That’s the big question. Researchers rule out many things. It is not a product of manual laterality (being right or left-handed), foot laterality or ocular dominance. There are also no differences between sexes or between cultures. It doesn’t matter what the venue is like (whether it’s an open-air esplanade or a tiny patio full of walls), it doesn’t matter what avoidance maneuvers pedestrians use and, of course, it doesn’t matter what social norms they learn. Furthermore, if we ask pedestrians where they think they should move, most of them they say the opposite of what they end up doing. What researchers do not do is propose a closed mechanism to explain it. In other words, we don’t know. And what is it for? The most important implications for the design of spaces. As the authors explainairports, stations, museums, shopping centers or squares could be designed in favor of the counterclockwise bias. Obviously, not everyone always turns left. What the authors are saying is that, statistically, the probability of turning to the right is lower. The logic is simple: if we take that into account, the dynamics of public spaces can be more fluid. We already know that in evacuations or highly regulated environments, other mechanisms can override counterclockwise bias. But the idea is not that, it is to use the bias in favor. Image | Timon Studler In Xataka | There’s a reason why working out for an hour a day at the gym doesn’t give you results. And that reason is evolution

the new series from the author who left ‘Stranger Things’ behind with his shocking thrillers

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David Burroughs has been locked up for years for killing his son. And he didn’t. The moment someone shows him a photo that suggests the child could still be alive is the start of ‘I will find you‘, the new series by Harlan Coben, which comes to Netflix on June 18. It is also the first time that, eight years after writer and platform began collaborating, the adaptation is set, shot and produced in the United States. When Netflix signed a multimillion-dollar deal with Coben in August 2018 to adapt 14 of his novels, production in English fell to a British production company based in Manchester. Until this installment, all English-language adaptations had translated the original American settings of the novels into British equivalents. ‘Safe’ took place in the suburbs of Manchester. ‘Don’t talk to strangers’ and ‘Deceptions’, in the north of England. With this new adaptation, Netflix is ​​going to try to continue Coben’s streak of success. ‘Deceptions’ was the most viewed series globally in the first half of 2024 on the platform, with 107.5 million total views, which placed it in seventh place in history among the most viewed English series on Netflix. Already in 2026, ‘On the run’ generated 15.6 million views in its first week and It surpassed ‘Stranger Things’ at number one in the United States. It is clear why they like Coben’s series, in what seems like a template that ‘I will find you’ will also follow with complete certainty: premises that hook you from the first minute, cliffhangers to cholon and continuous shocking revelations. Coben’s novels are perfect for a platform where users devour episodes in one sitting. ‘I’ll Find You’ also has a novelty: the protagonist, played by Sam Worthington, is not only a father who investigates, but also a fugitive pursued by the FBI. A welcome novelty that aims to refresh the Coben style with unexpected twists. In Xataka | If you think that ‘Vikings’ is faithful to Nordic history, sign up for this movie that you can watch for free streaming this week only

has left 45% of collective agreements out of play

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The objective of collective agreements is to regulate the rules of the game of certain sectors or large companies by establishing the salaries they will receive employees in that sector. However, in 2026, almost half of these agreements are encountering a serious problem: they are obsolete. The interprofessional minimum wage (SMI) has been rising non-stop for eight years. It has gone from 735 euros per month in 2018 to 1,221 current euros In 14 payments, a cumulative increase of 66%. Many of these sectoral agreements, negotiated for months, have been stillborn, becoming obsolete due to estimating the lowest salaries below the legal minimum, as is how I collected The Economist. Almost one out of every two agreements, below the SMI. The data is clear. According to a UGT analysisthe SMI exceeds the agreed salary for the lowest categories in 45% of the 2026 sectoral agreements that were registered during the first quarter of 2026, with minimums that are already below of the new SMI. The measure affects, for example, agreements such as the gardenerwhich in January 2026 was approved with a salary of 1,184 euros for laborers and apprentices, that is, adjusted to the 2025 SMI, but does not include the new amount for 2026. In company agreements the proportion of outdated agreements drops slightly, but the problem persists. Of the 25 agreements published in that same period, 9 (36%) also had salary tables below the legal minimum. They are agreements signed after months of negotiation that, in the end, need an extra complement to comply with the law. What the law says. No agreement can set salaries below the SMI in annual calculation. The Supreme Court clarified it in 2025: what counts is the annual total, adding all the concepts. Not just the base salary. If between the base salary and the bonuses it reaches 17,094 euros per year that establishes the SMI of 2026the company would be complying with the legislation. If not, it is obliged to make up the difference through an additional salary supplement. This is the formula that many companies use to comply with the increase in the SMI when, as happened in 2026, this increase is approved with the year already begun, and even when the agreement they apply has come into force that same year. This increase is not always an extra cost for the company (if they already paid more than that SMI with bonuses included). But it is a sign that many of these agreements are governed by remuneration so adjusted to the legal minimum that the minimum correction leaves them outside the regulations. The problem of overlap between categories. Moving in this area of ​​minimum wages leaves a collateral effect that worries unions. When the SMI rises faster than the agreements, the lowest salary categories end up receiving salaries very close to those of the higher ones. A laborer and a first-class officer, with very different tasks and knowledge, can end up with very close salaries at the end of the month due to the compression effect that occurs from below. That is, companies raise the lowest salaries only to comply with the regulations, but not the ranges immediately above in the same proportion. UGT calls it “overlapping” and has been asking for a new agreement to be negotiated for some time. Agreement for Employment and Collective Bargaining (AENC) with the representatives of the employers’ association to organize these scales. Some agreements already have clauses to avoid this. He consulting and technology agreementfor example, sets a margin of 80 euros of minimum difference between each level affected by the SMI and the next. That is, if the lower salary ranges rise to comply with the SMI, that increase is transferred upwards proportionally to the rest of the categories. Who wins and who notices it more. The rise in the SMI has improved purchasing power of workers with lower incomes. Between 2018 and 2026, minimum wages have grown by 66% compared to an accumulated inflation of 25%which has made it possible to cushion the loss of purchasing power of those with the lowest salaries. However, if companies do not compensate for the differences between the lowest salaries and the following categories, there is a risk of discourage promotion of employees, who see that the increase in responsibilities is not compensated with a large difference in salary at the end of the month. In Xataka | Finding a job had always been a good way to escape poverty: in Spain it is no longer true Image | Unsplash (Ivan Henao)

NASA has left women out of Artemis III. The Princess of Asturias has taken the opportunity to reward one of her astronauts

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NASA astronaut Christina Koch has been awarded with the Princess of Asturias Award for Concord 2026, as announced this Wednesday, June 17. The jury wanted to highlight his figure as an inspiring reference for new generations. It’s no wonder, well this crew member of Artemis II He became a mass idol, especially for girls, during the time of his mission to the Moon, but also before and after. The most curious thing is that this news comes just a week after NASA announced the Artemis III crew in which, contrary to expectations, there is no woman. With this, the Princess of Asturias Award jury makes clear what it seems that NASA has failed to see. That including women in their new lunar project transcends far beyond the mission. A woman who breaks records. Christina Koch has reached a great peak of fame by becoming one of the four crew members of Artemis II. However, she had already broken records before becoming the first woman to travel to lunar orbit. She is also the woman who has spent the most time in space, with a stay of 328 consecutive days on the International Space Station. Additionally, along with Jessica Meir, he was part of the first all-female spacewalk. A true reference. As a child, Koch had a poster in her room with the famous Earthrise image, taken by the Apollo 8 astronauts. Every night she looked at it before going to sleep and wished she could travel beyond Earth and see what those astronauts had managed to observe. For this reason, before her trip to the Moon as a member of Artemis II, she declared that it was an honor for her to “take all the girls in the world to the Moon.” With that inspiring phrase He made a great statement of intent. I wanted to show that dreams come true and, above all, become a reference beyond the typical male photos of astronauts walking on the Moon. The case of Cassius. In Spain, Casio holds a competition from time to time for boys and girls, in which they must present drawings of scientists that inspire them. The winners become part of this brand’s special collection of calculators focused on the role of women in science. The schools freely choose the scientists they want to present; but, logically, current events play an important role. For this reason, this year there have been many children who have chosen to Koch to be part of his drawings. NASA doesn’t know. After the absolute masculinization of the astronaut crews of the Apollo program, NASA had decided to compensate with the Artemis program and include more women in its crew. Koch was the first, but the idea was to maintain this inclusivity until the end, so that even the next person to step on the Moon would be a woman. However, on June 9 there was a big turn of events when it was announced to the crew that they will be traveling aboard Artemis III. Neither the four official astronauts nor the reserve astronaut are women. The advertisement led to a wave of criticismwhich forced NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman to intervene and ensure that the people considered most qualified and available for this specific mission have been selected. Even so, there are those who consider that this could be more related to Donald Trump’s order to federal agencies to eliminate Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs and references. We will have to wait for Artemis IV to see who finally steps on the Moon. At least Christina Koch has seen her work recognized with the Princess of Asturias Award and, above all, with the love of all those girls who, as she promised, have accompanied her on her trip to the Moon. Image | NASA/Bill Ingalls In Xataka | How many times have we gone to the Moon and why have only 11 military aviators and one geologist set foot on it in all of history?

One fine day Richard Feynman left a restaurant. 50 years later we already know why better known bad than good unknown

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In the late 1970s, the brilliant physicist Richard Feynman He went with his friend Ralph Leighton to eat at a Thai place named Indra in Glendale, California. Looking at the restaurant’s menu, Leighton couldn’t decide: should he order his usual favorite, ginger chicken, or try something new and perhaps better? Any other person would have responded in one way or another (“if you like it so much, you better insure” or something like “he who does not risk does not gain”). Richard Feynman, brilliant as he is, did something else: He started scribbling equations on a napkin. and he turned that into a mathematical problem that he not only detected, but solved. For some reason, the prodigious physicist never published that analysis, and his notes were left to Leighton. For years that story was forgotten, but 50 years later researchers from the universities of Oxford, New York and Princeton managed to rescue those notes and Feynman’s solution. And what that revealed was surprising. Rescuing Feynman’s restaurant problem The researchers explained in their study, published in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) that although Feynman had focused on what happened to the different dishes in the same restaurant, they They preferred to expand the problem: what happens when we are in city X, for example, on vacation, and we want to choose a restaurant. Richard Feynman’s handwritten notes on a restaurant napkin turned out to be a fascinating problem. Source: PNAS. Feynman’s restaurant problem is actually a variant of what is known as the optimal stopping problemto which also belongs the famous variant of secretary problemwhich gave rise to the 37% rule: When choosing from 100 options, one should try the first 37 to maximize the chances of choosing the best one. Then you can “settle” for that one, because it is difficult for there to be a better one among the rest. But we are digressing. Feynman’s original mathematical formula established an optimal policy based on a uniform distribution of quality. According to the physicist’s formulation, our quality bar is not static nor falls by chance, but decreases exponentially as the days available in our vacation calendar are exhausted. Thus, it usually happens that when we are at the beginning of our vacation, We usually demand absolute perfection in the chosen restaurant because the remaining time allows the risk to be amortized. In the end, however, that threshold of demand collapses and we settle for a decent restaurant. We move from the exploration phase – taking risks with new places (or dishes) – to exploitation – repeating places (or dishes) that we liked. The researchers wanted to test this mathematical model with a sample of 2,520 participants, and in doing so they detected a striking anomaly. During the first nights in a new city, participants explored massively, much more than mathematical logic itself advised. The researchers discovered that this phenomenon responded to the so-called “early exploration bonus” that fell rapidly as the days went by: if we have an opportunity to “get it right,” our brain shows tremendous psychological resistance to tying itself to a restaurant at the first opportunity. We prefer to continue trying other restaurants because we trust that we will find a better one. The four “gastronomic worlds” of the study: the behavior of the participants varied according to each distribution. Source: PNAS. But as the experiment went on, something else was discovered. Humans are not blind robots, but we calibrate the bar according to the city we visit. The experiment placed participants in four different “food worlds” in which the ratio of excellent restaurants to mediocre (or decent) ones varied. The data showed that the human brain is capable of diagnosing the type of “food world” it finds itself in just by trying three or four restaurants. From there, set the bar. Feynman mathematically intuited that the bar would lower exponentially as the return date approached, but the experiment revealed something different. Human beings reduce our level of demand linearly with respect to the proportion of days we have left on vacation. We are becoming less and less demanding and more “nostalgic”. This guarantees something important: that at least on the last nights we enjoy the “better bad known than good not known”, because that “bad known” will not be so bad after all: we have already experienced it. Fascinating. Image | SAP (edited with Magnific) In Xataka | Studying by heart seems like a good idea until you forget it. The Feynman method appeals to your understanding, not your memory.

A Renfe train was left without air conditioning at 40ºC. 1,056 days later, an affected person has just collected her money

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How much would you fight for the refund of 31.90 euros? Macarena LE, a resident of a town in Teruel, is clear: three years, if necessary. And that is how long it has been behind Renfe for it to refund the price of a ticket between Zaragoza and Barcelona. The reason? The car’s air conditioning. Evident, due to the non-existent air conditioning of the car. What has happened? A Renfe user named Macarena LE, a member of Facua, has gotten the money back for a train ticket she took three years ago. The company had promised that it would do so with each and every one of the people who took that train, but the money never appeared in the user’s bank account. a little odyssey. Despite telling them that they would return the money to the passengers, the amount never arrived so after a few weeks, the affected person filed a claim, they explain in Facua. With no news about it after three months, he decided to put himself in the hands of the legal service of the consumer defense association. Once reaching this point, the association filed a new claim. To this complaint, Renfe responded that it gave the order to return the money but it still did not arrive. After another four months, Facua files a new complaint and Renfe assures him that it has tried to refund the money but that the procedure has been rejected on two occasions. At that moment, Renfe instructs Macarena LE to receive the money through a payment platform. This method also being impossible and the months accumulating, Facua sends a third claim to Renfe in which they simply ask it to deposit the money into the bank account of the affected person, attaching the document that proves its ownership. Three years after taking that train, the associate has ended up receiving her 31.90 euros. A trip… complicated. And, once seated, they assure in Facua that the conductor informed the passengers that the air conditioning was broken and that their travel money would be refunded in compensation for the inconvenience caused. But the journey between Zaragoza and Barcelona had an added problem: July 18 with departure at 3:52 p.m. and arrival at 5:20 p.m. That day maximum temperatures of 44 degrees were reported. Obviously, the heat must have been oppressive inside and the affected person claims that they had to drink water constantly to get through the trip in the best possible way. The expected quality. Due to the numerous claims filed by Facua, and beyond the fact that the money was not returned until three years later, Renfe never fought not to return the money. Instead they admitted that they would send the money back for “not having offered the service with the quality levels” expected. However, the fulfillment of the procedure itself does not seem to have had the expected quality either. And Facua pointed out to Renfe that they were failing to comply with article 21.3 of the Royal Legislative Decree 1/2007, of November 16according to which: “Employers must respond to the claims received in the shortest possible time and, in any case, within a maximum period of one month from the presentation of the claim.”. When Facua presented this second claim in which this regulatory text was recalled, Renfe had not given a response or paid the corresponding money for four months. What if it happens to me? That Renfe has returned the money to a passenger sets a precedent but does not automatically lead the company to return the money in the event of an air conditioning breakdown. In its rules, Renfe states that the traveler has the right to receive compensation for the cancellation of the trip, for its interruption, for a lack or deficiency in the service provided on board or for delay, but it makes it clear that such compensation will not be carried out if: The reason is an extraordinary circumstance unrelated to railway operation, such as extreme weather events (a storm that leaves a train without heating in winter, for example) or natural disasters. Nor if the breakdown or problem was caused by the behavior of the traveler. Nor if it is the damage caused by a third party outside the railway company that causes the incident (people on the track, copper theft, sabotage… etc.) That is to say, the mere absence of air conditioning does not automatically imply that the passenger’s money will be returned. What has happened will have to be taken into account to decide whether the company is obliged to act in this way. Photo | Nelson Silva In Xataka | The Madrid Cercanías have become a nest of problems and delays: their solution is new “megatrains”

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