people

There are people modifying their router so that ads stop appearing on their refrigerator

by

A man had to install an ad blocker directly on his router to stop his $1,400 refrigerator from showing ads. They tell it in the Wall Street Journal and, although it sounds absurd, it is just one of the experiences of those affected by the questionable decision that Samsung made a few months ago. What has happened? Samsung Family Hub refrigerators (those with a screen built into the door) began showing ads in September last year. Samsung admitted itconfirming that it was a pilot program for some users in the United States. Six months later, the ads are still appearing, some showing Samsung consumables like water filters, but others are third-party ads and in some cases they are full screen. Samsung says that the latter appear when the browser is opened and that it cannot control them. The problem of the official solution. Samsung allows you to remove ads from its refrigerators, but be careful because there is a catch. The advertising is integrated into a widget that also displays news, weather and calendar. To remove them, you have to delete the entire widget and there are users who do not want to lose it. The unofficial solution. Brian Bosworth is one of those affected by this decision, but he refused to give up the widget because he found it very useful, so he took the long route: he logged into his router, installed ad-blocking software, and made sure his refrigerator was included in the filter. Result: You keep the widget and don’t see ads. Discomfort. There are owners who feel directly deceived by this situation. They paid $1,400 for a premium appliance and now it has been turned into an advertising panel, all without their prior consent. One of them wants to return the refrigerator and has said that he will not buy any Samsung device again, which leads one to wonder if Samsung has correctly calculated the benefit of this decision. Making things worse. Cases like this are one more example of the drift that the internet and digital services are taking. It’s what was coined as ‘enshittification’which translated would be something like shit. It is a deliberate degradation of products and services that responds to an economic objective. Advertising is one of the forms of this degradation and we have seen it flood all types of services such as Netflix, YouTube, Prime Video, Instagram and even apps to control home cameras. We didn’t expect to see it also in refrigerators, but that’s the way things are. Image | Xataka In Xataka | “I take things that are good and make them worse”: Norway has a plan to reverse the decline of the entire Internet

My name is Tama, I am a station chief in Japan and 3,000 people have come to my funeral. Ah, I’m a cat

by

It is only 14.3 kilometers of line but it is key for the residents of Wakayama and Kinokawa, the towns that connect the Kishigawa Line located south of Osaka. Right now, on the train you can find locals going here and there but, above all, there are tourists. They are not just any tourists, for that we have to go a few kilometers higher where we will find them taking photos with the famous Glico Man of Dotonbori. Here we will find tourists interested in two of the most deeply rooted hobbies in Japan: trains and cats. A formula that can be explosive, capable of recovering a train line by itself, attracting local tourism and positioning two small towns on the map of those seeking a different experience in one of the most extravagant countries in the world. Because here, the trains arrive dressed as cats and the station masters are… indeed, cats. My name is Tama and I am the boss of this station The Kishigawa Line was born at the beginning of the 20th century. The objective was to unite three sanctuaries and make it easier for those who made the pilgrimage there to get around. Nichizengu Shrine, Kamayama Shrine and Itakiso Shrine linked by a train line, count in Japanism. The line remained in operation for decades and in the 1960s the Nankai company took over its operation. But time moved on and large cities became a black hole that absorbed and absorbed workers. Cities grew first with Tokyo Olympics in 1964. Then with accelerated development that made Japan the most technologically advanced country in the world. And at the same pace as they conquered the world market with electronic devices at rock-bottom prices, cities grew at the same pace. Workers were needed for all types of tasks. the book Tokyo, Ueno station It explains very well how workers left their hometown and disappeared for years, unable to spare a handful of days to return to their place of origin. That depopulation little by little it was killing the Kishigawa line. The use of it fell so much that in 2006, Nankai decided to close it, unable to make the service profitable. And in the 2000s, the passengers had fallen in half compared to a decade ago. The solution came from the local governments through which the line passed, who took charge of the land and infrastructure, leaving a new company in charge of its operation and maintenance. The only problem is that no one wanted to take charge of a line of just 14.3 kilometers with a debt of more than five million dollars. At that time, local governments came knocking on the door of Okayama Dentetsu, a company that had already achieved some success with other similar public-private collaborations. Hand in hand with this new company, Wakayama Electric Railway was created, the company that was going to take charge of the Kishigawa Line. That day, a cat would forever change the future of the line. After the reopening event, at the Kishi station, a woman asked if a cat that was barely two months old could stay at the station since she couldn’t find a home. Mitsunobu Kojima, president of Okayama Dentetsu and, by extension, of Wakayama Electric Railwaynot only welcomed her at the station, he also gave her a job in a clear show of trust. Tama, which was the cat’s name, was now another worker on the new line. The rise was meteoric because in 2007, just a few months later, Tama was appointed Station Master. And he saved the line. Attracted by the news, tourists multiplied. More and more passengers approached the Kishigawa Line to meet the cat who, in uniform, guarded the station. Attracted by the supposed good luck of the new worker, more and more people came to take photos with her. The success was such that from the less than two million passengers who took the line before 2005, 2.3 million passengers were reached in less than a decade later, they explain in Japanism. Office of Tama, station manager The Tamaden was Japan’s first theme train Aware of the popularity of their new worker, Wakayama Electric Railway wanted to take advantage of Tama’s potential even more and in 2009 they inaugurated the Tamaden, the first cat-themed train, dressed with cat ears and whiskers, as well as numerous caricatures of the cat herself. Inside there is specific decoration with cat motifssuch as the upholstery or the fabric of the seat cushions. It’s not the only thing. Handles, lamps, curtains, footprints on the floor… everything is reminiscent of the cat world. By the way, the upholstery is brown with the characteristic color of the cat Tama. In fact, everything that surrounds this line lives for and to remember the figure of Tama. Kishi Station now has cat ears and eyes clearly visible from its exterior. There Tama had her own office, as she earned stripes in the company. His impact was key to resurrecting the line. Unfortunately, in June 2015, at the age of 16, Tama passed away. The affection of its neighbors was seen in the following days when the governor of the prefecture to which the train line belongs issued a statement. And, above all, when… 3,000 people attended his funeral. Tama was replaced by Nitama. It was logical if we take into account that Nitama was a station manager at another of the stops on the line and replaced Tama during her days off. That is to say, Nitama received painful recognition from Wakayama Electric Railway. One of those promotions you never want. The cat Nitama also worked with dedication. In fact, the president of the company that operates the train line noted at the end of 2025 that “it worked diligently and provided irreplaceable comfort. Nitama, please monitor the Wakayama Electric Railway from the sky,” in words reported by Independent. And Nitama died last November 2025. Until then, this new station chief could be seen every … Read more

Millions invested in AI graphical improvements so people say it looks like an Instagram beauty filter

by

Nvidia presented DLSS 5 at GTC 2026 as the greatest graphical advance that video games have experienced since the ray tracing. The reaction has been almost unanimous: the gaming community and industry professionals themselves have described it as a “slop AI filter.” The rejection has been so frontal and almost unanimous that Nvidia has had to come out to clarify how the technology works and what control developers really have over these visual improvements. What is DLSS 5. DLSS technology was born in 2019 as an intelligent upscaling system: the GPU renders at lower resolution and the AI ​​reconstructs each frame up to 4K with minimal quality penalty. With each iteration (DLSS 3, 3.5, 4, 4.5) the goal remained the same, but DLSS 5 breaks that logic. According to Nvidia’s own announcementwe are looking at a real-time neural rendering model that analyzes the color and motion vectors of each frame and generates lighting and photorealistic-looking materials on them. The system recognizes the semantics of the scene (skin, hair, fabrics, metals) and applies its own interpretation of how those elements should look under real physical lighting. Jensen Huang defined it with a phrase that well summarizes the ambition of this new iteration: “Twenty-five years after Nvidia invented the shader programmable, we are reinventing computer graphics.” Digital Foundrywhich had access to the technology before the announcement (and which has been heavily criticized for its glowing coverage), called it “the most amazing I’ve seen in my time at Digital Foundry” and pointed to genuinely notable improvements in environments from ‘Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ or ‘Oblivion Remastered’. The faces, Juan, the faces. The problem is that the official demo video included sequences from ‘Resident Evil Requiem’, ‘Starfield’, ‘Hogwarts Legacy’ and ‘EA Sports FC’, and in all of them the system visibly altered the characters’ faces. The protagonist of ‘Requiem’, Grace Ashcroft, has been the most widespread example: more pronounced cheekbones, fuller lips and uniform skin tone. According to Kotakuthe effect seems to apply a TikTok beauty filter on characters with an artistic intention other than physical attractiveness, as is the case with Ashcroft. Another example is that of the ‘Starfield’ characters, which are not very detailed in themselves, and which gain facial resolution but lose all aesthetic coherence with the original design. In ‘Hogwarts Legacy‘, an old woman with gently modeled wrinkles begins to show off a deeply cracked face completely alien to what was seen in the game. Therefore, the dreaded term ‘AI slop‘ appeared on social networks in a matter of minutes. He Nvidia GeForce on X announcement post was buried by negative replies, which accumulated favs and RTs in much greater quantity than the original post. Also the comments of the Digital Foundry video They were almost unanimously negative. The answer. Given the volume of criticism, Nvidia published a statement on YouTube clarifying how the system works. According to the companydevelopers have complete artistic control over DLSS 5: they can adjust the intensity of the effect, the color grading and mask specific areas where they do not want the AI ​​to act (the company calls it “controllability”). The company also clarified that the technology is not a filter applied on top of the image, but rather takes the color and motion vectors of the game to generate its output, “anchored to the source 3D content.” Bethesda, one of the most active studios in the initial support (Todd Howard had appeared in the presentation video praising the results in ‘Starfield’) posted hours later a more nuanced response on the studio’s official account. There they stated that “our art teams will adjust the lighting and final effect to look the way we consider best for each game. Everything will be under the control of our artists and will be completely optional for players.” Two ways of looking at it. The disparity in reactions reflects two legitimate ways of evaluating the same technology. What a good part of the community and numerous media outlets have criticized is that the modifications make the characters more realistic but different from how they were designed by the game’s art team. For example, concept artist Jeff Talbot said that: “In each shot the artistic direction was removed to add meaningless ‘details’ (…) This is a garbage AI filter.” Poor optimization. a few weeks ago There began to be talk that the proliferation of tools of upscaling and AI has reduced the pressure on studios to optimize their games: when DLSS or FSR can more than compensate for performance issues, the incentives to polish the native engine disappear. There is already someone he says it bluntly: Some studios design their games from the beginning assuming that the upscaling It will fix what’s broken, rather than using it as a further improvement on an already solid foundation. With DLSS 5 that takes a qualitative leap, and the risk is not only aesthetic: it is work-related and creative. And then there’s an additional detail: the GTC demo required two GeForce RTX 5090s running in parallel (one to render the game, another to run the DLSS 5 neural model). Nvidia claims that the final launch, scheduled for fall 2026, will work with a single card, but the magnitude of the hardware raised questions about the actual requirements. If studios start designing with DLSS 5 as a safety net, what version of the game will the player without that GPU receive? Real video games. There is something that Nvidia seems to have not taken into account: people like video games because they look like video games. Imperfection has a human touch that is part of the product’s identity. Grace Ashcroft works as a character in ‘Requiem’ precisely because her appearance reflects exhaustion and vulnerability. DLSS 5’s AI makes it something that has been described as the result of applying Nvidia’s system to a character whose aesthetic is not designed to be photorealistic. The problem isn’t just that the result is aesthetically questionable: it’s that the entire premise is wrong. Nvidia assumes that “more … Read more

In 2003, NASA suffered a serious accident that killed seven people. The person in charge: a PowerPoint

by

On January 16, 2003, NASA’s STS-107 mission was underway. The space shuttle Columbia was launched with its seven crew members into low orbit to test the effects of microgravity on the human body. Those seven people never returned to Earth. The tragedy could have been avoided, but years later the analysis of everything that happened those days has left a terrible conclusion: a presentation of PowerPoint He killed those seven people. The launch, as said James Thomasseemed to be perfect. The crew began to carry out their task, and were expected to spend 16 days in space performing 80 experiments. Just one day after the mission began, NASA officials realized that something had not gone right. NASA has a protocol for reviewing the launch with external cameras. After 82 seconds, a piece of spray foam insulation (SOFI) fell off one of the ramps that attached the shuttle to its external fuel tank. As the crew rose at 28,968 kilometers per hour, the piece of foam collided with one of the tiles on the outer edge of the ship’s left wing. The insulating foam coming off was nothing new: it had happened on the four previous missions and was the reason the cameras were deployed to analyze the launch. The problem is that the blow had occurred in the layer that protected the ship during its re-entry to Earth. The slides of yore What did NASA do? Study the possibilities and conclude that there were three: First, the astronauts could have done a spacewalk to check the helmet. Second, NASA could have sent another shuttle to pick up the crew. Third, they could risk simply re-entry. Those responsible for the mission analyzed the situation with Boeing engineers and created a report in the form of a PowerPoint presentation with 28 slides. The conclusions revealed something important: it was assumed that the wing tiles could tolerate foam impacts, but that assumption had been made under very particular conditions. The pieces of foam in the tests were 600 times smaller than those that had hit the Columbia. To reflect those details, the engineers created this slide: At NASA they listened to the explanation, and the engineers believed they had conveyed the risks well. However, NASA believed that the engineers, even without being certain, suggested that there was no damage that would put the lives of the crew in danger. The option they chose was the third. Columbia would re-enter on February 1, 2003, at 9:16 AM (EST). At 9 that day, Dallas residents saw how the ferry had disintegrated into pieces. The entire crew died. The investigation into the tragedy revealed that NASA and engineers had had the right information, but had made a bad decision. Edward Tufte, a Yale professor, explained that the problem had been with that damn slide and the way it had been presented. The title already seemed to indicate that the risk was not particularly high, but the slide also had four cascading points with no detailed explanation of what they meant: interpretation was left to the reader’s discretion. It was not clear whether the first point (1) was the main one, or if the rest of the points had the same relevance. The different font sizes, strange hierarchy, and text density didn’t help. There were over 100 vague words and adjectives (“sufficient,” “meaningful”), making the slide too open to audience interpretation. The biggest problem is in the last two points, where it was indicated that what they had tested in the preliminary tests was very different from what had happened. NASA itself indicated in your report after the investigation that they had relied too much on PowerPoint. The expression ‘death by PowerPoint’ has been used for years to indicate how there are presentations that induce boredom or fatigue due to their information overload. A bad design and the overuse of points to order each data are common problems in this and other similar applications. Unfortunately, in this case that expression became tragically true. In Xataka | A new “solar system” has just been discovered. There’s just one problem: it shouldn’t exist. In Xataka | Boeing was trying to put the Starliner fiasco behind it: NASA has just classified the 2024 incident at its highest level

Nintendo knows that most people who go to its parks and watch its movies have never touched a video game. and he loves it

by

The success of the park Super Nintendo World and of the Mario’s first animated film (with a sequel just around the corner that also promises to break the box office) has confirmed what the company has known for years: that its characters are worth as much inside a console as in an outdoor version. The strategy coordinated by Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Mario, points towards an entertainment model where the video game is only the origin, not the objective. Not just video games. Shinya Takahashi, senior CEO of Nintendo, He has been repeating a phrase for years which sounds almost like a wake-up call: “People see us as a video game company. But we have always considered ourselves an entertainment company.” The distinction is important: Nintendo was founded in 1889 in Kyoto as a manufacturer of Hanafuda cards. It went through toys, taxis and hotels before reaching video games in the seventies. Software and consoles have been its core business for decades, but they were never the only thing the company thought it could do with its characters. The problem is that for a long time all of the company’s forays outside of video games had been failures. 1993: disaster. The most famous case is the live-action Super Mario Bros. movie from 1993. Nintendo transferred the rights through a simple licensing agreement and did not participate in the production. The result was an experiment that It raised only 40 million dollars with a budget close to 50 and which is remembered as one of the worst video game adaptations in history (although over time it has acquired, thanks to its outlandish production design, a well-deserved cult status). Miyamoto himself acknowledged the root of the problem with that film in an interview, and why it took them so long to try again: “We were afraid of all the failures of IP adaptations of the past, where there is a license and a distance between the original creators and those of the films.” The consequence of that failure was almost thirty years without giving up film rights to its main franchises. Nintendo stopped licensing its IP to external studios and only allowed occasional appearances of his characters in films like ‘Wreck-It Ralph!’ or ‘Pixels’, none with real creative control. New adaptations. When Nintendo sat down to negotiate with Universal and Illumination for an animated film, the conversation started from a different beginning. Miyamoto served as executive producer and was involved in every significant decision, from casting to animating key characters. The same logic was applied to the construction of their first amusement park, Super Nintendo Worldin collaboration with Universal and announced in May 2015. Construction of the park in Osaka began in 2017. The investment reached 351 million dollarsa scale comparable to what Universal once dedicated to the Harry Potter franchise. A real game. Super Nintendo World is designed so that visitors feel like they are in Mario’s world. They wear an NFC bracelet with which they interact with the question blocks, collect coins, complete challenges and end up facing Bowser Jr. as the final boss. There is no controller, but there are game mechanics, score markers, hidden secrets, and a slight internal narrative. Attention to detail permeates spaces such as bathrooms and restaurants. Nintendo is doing well. The financial results support the bet. According to Comcast data released during an earnings call, CFO Jason Armstrong noted that Universal Studios Hollywood (home to one of the two Super Nintendo Worlds in the United States) recorded its best gross profit in that period of the year in its entire history, thanks to the impact of the Nintendo park, and experienced an increase in visitors of 15%. The Super Mario movie has also been extremely profitable: 1.36 billion dollars worldwidebecoming in just 26 days the first adaptation of a video game to exceed one billion. It was the second highest-grossing film of that year, only behind ‘Barbie’. New philosophy. There is a quote from Takahashi that sums up this new business philosophy: “We knew that Mario was adored by video game fans, but the park helped us understand that Mario also has non-gaming fans.” and Miyamoto adds: “There are many people who know who Mario is but have never played the game.” The park’s target audience, according to Takahashi, is not any age group or any specific player profile: “It’s all-encompassing, whether it’s someone who knows Mario from the games or a kid who’s never played before.” Mario is an IP that generates value regardless of whether its audience has ever touched a controller. In other words, he is a much more valuable client, because there are no limits regarding age or hobbies. It doesn’t stop, it doesn’t stop. The expansion continues: Donkey Kong Country opened in Osaka in December 2024, expanding the space of Super Nintendo World by 70%. Epic Universe, Universal’s new park in Florida inaugurated in May 2025has its own Super Nintendo World. And there is a version under construction in Singapore. Takahashi has mentioned that franchises such as ‘Splatoon’ or ‘Zelda’ are part of the expansion plans into new media, although there are hardly any specific announcements. Of course, the sequel ‘Super Mario Galaxy’ arrives on April 1. Video games are just one more link in a chain of dividends that have turned Nintendo into a very different company than it was a few years ago. In Xataka | No one would think of leaving ‘Super Mario 64’ on for 14 months. But whoever does it will find a surprise

Thousands of people were following the Iran war with satellite images from Planet Labs. So the US has closed it

by

The satellite images are a key piece for modern military intelligence. They are the eyes on the ground, they allow you to see where the enemy is, their supply routes, their defenses and plan more precise attacks. For the public, they are the direct window to the battlefield and in the Iran conflict there are two companies that are deciding whether to let us watch or not, one is American and one is Chinese. Guess who is who. The Planet Labs blackout. It is a satellite earth imaging company based in San Francisco. It operates a network of more than 200 satellites that allows them to provide global coverage of the planet, recording more than 300 million square kilometers of images collected every day. Planet Labs images have been key in conflicts such as the ukrainian war or the escalation of tensions between China and Taiwan. However, when it comes to a conflict in which the US is the protagonist, things change. The restriction: On March 6, Planet Labs announced a four-day delay in the publication of its images of the Middle East, a measure they described as “temporary and intended to protect personnel and operations.” The controversy: What is striking is that the delay affected countries with a US military presence (Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates), while the images of Iran continued to be published almost in real time. This unleashed reviews on Xcalling it a measure to manipulate public opinion by hiding the damage to US bases, while only showing the damage caused to Iran. The extension: The company recently extended this delay to 14 days. According to statements to Reutersseek to ensure that your data “does not contribute in any way to attacks against allied, NATO personnel or civilian populations.” Mizar Vision. Given the Planet Labs blackout, there is a company that continues to offer satellite images almost in real time. It is about Mizar Vision, a Chinese startup based in Shanghai that does not have its own satellites, but instead purchases commercial images. Its value is that it applies an AI layer that detects, geolocates and tags military assets in almost real time and publishes them on Weibo, the Chinese social network. There is an account on X with the same name, but the company has already confirmed that It is not an official account. Attack prediction. Two days before the attack on Iran, Mizar Vision published images which showed planes lined up on the runway of the Diego García base, signaling that the attack was imminent. They were high resolution images in which details such as the model of the aircraft could be distinguished. They also identified other key infrastructures such as the anti-missile systems that the US has in Jordan and the al-Udeid base in Qatar, all of them. attacked by Iran days later. Mizar Vision is the open window to the battlefield, but we can all look, the Iranian army too. The shadow of Beijing. The images prior to the attack were shared by accounts with links to Chinese People’s Liberation Army. They count in The Country That analysts wonder to what extent the Chinese government is encouraging the publication of such detailed images, with such precision and in real time in a context of such tension. The company continues to publish images of US military movements in the region. In Xataka | A creepy sound is being repeated in the Middle East: it is called C-RAM, it comes from the US, and it is the prelude to a firestorm Image | Mizar Vision

We thought that in prehistory people ate pure meat. The burnt bottom of a pot just showed that we were refined chefs

by

For years, popular culture has sold us the image of a prehistoric man whose diet was based almost exclusively on devouring large amounts of roast meat. However, science has been dismantling this myth for years, and now a study has analyzed the remains embedded in ancient vessels, which is the equivalent of ‘socarrat‘of Valencian paella. And the results suggest that our ancestors were, in reality, extremely creative cooks. What has been seen. Beyond what we think, that the prey of the day was hunted and immediately roasted on the fire, science has proven that European hunters almost 8,000 years ago combined freshwater fish with a wide variety of vegetables, using advanced culinary techniques to improve flavors and neutralize toxins. Something similar to what we do today in the kitchen, as reported by El País. Where did we see it? The study, with Spanish participation, reached this conclusion without having to search in the fossilized bones, but in something much more subtle such as the scabs of charred food adhered to 85 ceramic fragments that come from 13 archaeological sites in northern and eastern Europe. How it was done. Once these remains were located, it was decided to apply cutting-edge technology, such as scanning electron microscopy combined with molecular analysis of these remains. Until now, plant remains in archeology used to be underestimated because they degrade much faster than animal bones. But the electron microscope has revealed an astonishing level of detail, detecting plant cell tissues and microscopic fish scales that have been able to survive millennia thanks to being burned and adhering to clay. The results. With all these techniques we have been able to answer what was cooked in those clay pots, and the truth is that we must forget the idea of ​​​​having a piece of meat on the fire, but instead recipes have been revealed that meticulously mixed proteins and carbohydrates. The researchers were able to see remains of freshwater fish here, highlighting carp and barbel, leafy vegetables such as spinach, roots and bulbs such as beets, and also berries. Viburnum opulus. A prehistoric chef. Perhaps the most fascinating discovery of González Carretero’s team is the sophistication of the culinary techniques, since the berries of Viburnum opulus They are known to be slightly toxic when raw and have a tremendously acidic and bitter taste. However, prehistoric inhabitants discovered that by simmering them in a broth with high-fat fish, the bitterness was neutralized, making them digestive and safe for human consumption. And this mixture was not accidental, but a handed down recipe that always sought to improve the flavor. Culinary revolution. This work joins a growing wave of studies that are rewriting the history of our diet. Already in 2018 it was published in PNAS the discovery of the oldest “bread” in the world in Jordan, baked 14,400 years ago, long before agriculture was invented. But now these food remains point to the fact that the so-called paleo diet did not exist as they wanted to sell it to us. We learned that our ancestors knew their environment perfectly, mastered the processing of toxic plants and spent time preparing complex stews where vegetables and tubers were main dishes, not a simple garnish. Cover | Generated with Nano Banana 2 In Xataka | We have been relying on the Nutri-Score in stores for years. Science believes that its real impact is zero

Many people hide behind anonymous accounts thinking that no one can discover them. AI has bad news for them

by

Accounts without a profile photo or real name plague social networks; perhaps even you, who read these lines, are the owner of one. We do not judge, there are many reasons not to show your face on networks and, in fact, anonymity is the pillar on which the internet has been built. However, if you thought that calling yourself ‘user84721’ and having a landscape photo protected you, researchers have just shown that accounts can be deanonymized in minutes with AI (of course). The study. A team of researchers has published a study called “Large-scale deanonymization online with large language models” which is echoed Guardian. In it, they demonstrate how an LLM-based agent is able to compromise anonymous social media accounts with astonishing efficiency. The process consists of three steps: the LLM extracts identifying data (age, location, interests…), looks for possible matches in other users and finally reasons which are the best candidates, verifying the matches and eliminating false positives. Minutes. This is how long it took to identify users on sites like Reddit, Hacker News, and Anthropic Interviewer Dataset participants with this method. In the image you can see how, based on a few pieces of information such as where the student studies, the approximate age, the city and the name of the dog, they achieve a match with the user’s real profile. This is a fictitious case, but in the experiment they managed to identify real users by cross-referencing information with Linkedin profiles and other platforms. According to the researchers, LLMs allow for large-scale deanonymization of accounts, far exceeding the speed and efficiency of classical methods. They also highlight that there is not always enough information to reach a match, so everything depends on the online footprint of each user. Consequences. Researchers warn that this use of AI could be used for problematic purposes, such as governments that want to identify activists or cybercriminals seeking to launch highly personalized attacks. In addition, it must be taken into account that the system is not infallible and there may be false positives. Speaking to The Guardian, Peter Bentley, professor of computer science at UCL, warns that “People are going to be accused of things they haven’t done.” The end of anonymity. As we said at the beginning, the Internet has been built on the anonymity of its users, but we are experiencing a regulatory shift that pursues precisely put an end to it. We see it with the ban on social networks or the blocking of pornographic websites for minors promoted by countries such as United Kingdom, Australia, Denmark and now also Spain. These initiatives require the identification of users to be able to access certain content through video selfies, electronic ID, verification systems with AI… There are many options, What is not clear is its effectiveness. Image | Own preparation on a background of Google DeepMind In Xataka | There was no need to invent a “pajaport”, Google already includes it in Android. The real challenge is in Europe

In London more and more people lose money when they sell their house. The question is whether it is the canary in Europe’s mine

by

Located north of the Thames, Tower Hamlets is one of the districts most emblematic from London. In fact, it covers a large part of the East End, the historic center of the capital. For years (like most of the city) it also represented something else: a juicy market for those who wanted to invest in housing and achieve high returns. Not anymore. In 2025 about 30% Of the owners who got rid of their homes in that neighborhood (mostly apartments) had to do so for less money than they paid at the time. And it’s not just something that happens in Tower Hamlets. What has happened? That in London housing is no longer an infallible business. This is suggested at least by the latest study published by Hamptons, which reveals that in 2025 Londoners were the Britons most likely to lose money from the sale of their properties. Even more than its neighbors in the northeast of the United Kingdom, who have spent years leading the ranking. “Rising London house prices are no longer the safe bet they once seemed,” concludes the report, which is supported by the Property Registry. What do the figures say? that last year 14.8% of people Those who sold their home in London did so for less money than they originally paid. It may seem like a modest percentage, but it is striking for several reasons. To begin with because it is the largest in the entire United Kingdom. The national average is 8.7% and there are British regions where this indicator is much lower, such as Wales (6.2%), East Midlands (6.7%) or West Midlands (6.9%). London has effectively ousted Nort Easth, which had dominated the sales ranking with losses for the last decade. Is Tower Hamlets a unique case? No. Tower Hamlets is the London district where the trend is best appreciated, but is not the only one in which a significant proportion of homeowners (28.2%) have lost money by getting rid of their homes. In the City, 26.2% of sellers closed transactions in “red numbers”, in Kensington & Chelsea 22.4%, in Westminster 22.1% and in Hammersmith & Fulham 20.8%. Curiously, in the cheapest district of London, Barking & Dagenham, only that indicator is much lower: 5.3%. “In some cases, even homeowners who bought a decade ago risk getting back less than they paid, something almost unthinkable in 2015. And for many the sums are small,” the study insists. “In the coming years it is likely that more sellers will have missed out on the price boom that London experienced between 2012 and 2016, as they bought at the peak of the market.” Is there more data? Yes. The Hamptons report raises some interesting ideas. For example, most of the sales with losses (close to 90%) were carried out by apartments. If we talk about houses, the photo is somewhat different. Hamptons technicians recognize that in 2025 the average seller in London pocketed 172,500 pounds more than what they originally paid when purchasing their home, but they insist on the increase in sales at a loss: if in 2019 they represented 5.9%, in 2025 “red” operations already represented 14.8%. Is it the only report? No. Over recent months, more analyzes have been published showing that the London property market is not going through its best moment. There is talk of a price drop of 5.1% at the end of 2025 (which takes the market even further away from the 2022 data) and even from a sluggish prime housing market that will not rise until at least 2028. “In London, the growth of house prices is no longer a safe bet,” he explains to Financial Times Aneisha Beveridge, Hamptons manager. There is studies which show that prices are declining in half of London’s neighborhoods, leaving a “two-speed” market: that of the most expensive (and volatile) areas and the cheapest, which has demonstrated greater resilience. In December Bloomberg warned that homes worth more than two million run the risk of depreciating, losing almost 5% of their value in one year. What is the reason? The big question. When explaining the London trend the analysts they point out several factors. One of the main ones is the regulatory change, marked by the end of discounts to the purchase of housing and a greater penalty for the purchase of second homes and houses as investments. The authorities have also focused on the prime segment, rethinking the status nom-dom for large foreign fortunes and raising local taxes for the most expensive properties. Added to the above is the influence of Brexit, the exorbitant prices that London reached in 2022 or how difficult it is for families to access the market, partly because the cost of rent neutralizes the ability to save. The question that some are already made is whether London is an isolated case or should be understood as a canary in the mine for other European capitals. Image | Benjamin Davies (Unsplash) In Xataka | Housing is getting so expensive that in the United Kingdom there are already people opting for plan B: living on boats

3.6 million people watched the Goya gala. Only a small part went to see the nominated films

by

The gala of the Goya 2026 has scored a 26% screen share, its best figure since 2020 and the second highest since 2010, in a context of television consumption down. Paradoxically, this massive attention contrasts with a box office that remains stagnant and with an audience that prefers to see Spanish cinema on television platforms and events rather than in theaters. Technology and new consumer habits explain this gap. The figures. The broadcast of the gala on RTVE’s La 1 brought together an average of 2,396,000 viewers and reached a 26% share. In his analysisVertele emphasizes that linear television consumption has been significantly reduced in the last decade, with fewer people watching DTT at the same time than in 2010. That the gala reaches percentages comparable to fifteen years ago in an ecosystem fragmented by streaming and delayed viewing platforms suggests that the Goya remains an event capable of bringing together a mass audience in real time, in the style of a sporting event. These good figures are part of five consecutive years of growth for the gala in audiences, with an increase of 1.6 share points and 56,000 viewers compared to the 2025 edition. However, the majority of the films that competed for the award that night had not managed to recover their investment in theaters. Less box office. According to the official data published by the ICAASpanish theaters closed 2024 with 72.9 million spectators and a collection of 484.6 million euros, figures that represent a 5% decline in attendance compared to the previous year. The share of national cinema within this shrinking market was around 18.65%. But that percentage is not sustained by the auteur films that dominate the Goya nominations, but rather the exact opposite: family comedies and commercial thrillers. This can be applied to the big winners of this editionwhich we summarize in this table. All of them enjoyed subsidies between one million (except Sorda, with 800,000 euros) and 1,200,000. That is to say, they are films highly valued on the awards circuit, rather than by the general public. In this way, the market bifurcates, and the cinema that really fills theaters, such as the family comedies by Santiago Seguraare left out of the Goya. QUALIFICATION BUDGET COLLECTION SIRAT 6.5 million euros 2.87 million euros Maspalomas 5 million euros 716,000 euros Deaf 2 million euros 735,000 euros Sundays 4.7 million euros 3.7 million euros dinner 5 million euros 716,000 euros The captive 9.8-15 million euros 5.2 million euros lto Spanish exception. It is not something that happens in all countries: in France, the eternal model in which we want to see ourselves, French films raised 44% of the year’s box office. But at the same time, the three most watched French titles of the year (a comedy with disabled actors, an epic adaptation of Alexandre Dumas and a romantic drama) are films that also aspire to the Césars, their equivalent to our Goyas. Subsidies are also comparable in quantitybut here the number of releases has skyrocketed (168 in 2016, 364 in 2025), while the collection has decreased (from 111.5 to 85.6 million in the same period). And yet… the Goya audience demonstrates every year that there is interest in the industry. There is a potential audience that debates whether ‘Sirat’ deserved to win more awards than ‘Los Domingos’, but they did not go to the cinema for the premiere of ‘Sirat’. The hinge of the platforms. Three weeks after its very limited theatrical release, ‘The Snow Society’ landed on Netflix: in its first eleven days accumulated 51 million views and closed the first half of the year with 103 million views, becoming Netflix’s third most viewed film globally. The fact that he had that success right after leaving the theater sums up the problem. In October 2025 Netflix advertisement that they would spend one billion euros on Spanish production between that year and 2028. All this in Tres CantosNetflix’s largest production space in the entire European Union. Since its arrival in Spain, Netflix has produced more than a thousand titles with Spanish teams, generating 20,000 jobs in the sector. Amazon Prime Video follows a similar logic, although with less weight in its own original production. The money from the platforms has allowed Spanish cinema to produce on a scale outside the traditional financing system (subsidies, investment from traditional chains). For this reason, and in the face of competition from platforms, which produce and release almost immediately in their space, in 2022 the Spanish exhibitors They formally requested a minimum window of one hundred days between the theatrical release and the arrival on platforms, shorter than the windows in France (15 months) and Italy (3 months). At the moment, there is no regulation and each window is negotiated separately. The power of the Goya. However, there is a Goya Effect at the box office. Last year, when ‘El 47’ and ‘La infiltrada’ won the award for Best Filmthe two tapes their box office skyrocketed by more than 70%. It is something that carries lifetime happening with the Oscars, but here we do not have the muscle of international Hollywood distribution. In Spain, ‘Los Domingos’ continues in 50 cinemas and ‘Sirat’ in 35 throughout Spain. It is insufficient for them to experience notable growth. But these are the highest grossing ones: the Goya, their audience proves it, they generate real interest, but the majority of the winning films, such as ‘Sorda’ or ‘Maspalomas’, are already streaming. The impact of the awards does not benefit the box office because there are no open avenues to do so. In Xataka | Santiago Segura is so clear about his success that with ‘Torrente Presidente’ he is trying something: without a trailer or a pass for critics

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.