reason

Sony closes its games to PC and Capcom confirms that half of its sales come from there. A contradiction with a reason: Playstation 6

by

Sony has decided that titles like ‘Ghost of Yotei’ will not come to PC, ending six years of multiplatform strategy. The twist is striking for the moment: Capcom has just confirmed that 50% of its sales already come from the PCand expects that number to continue growing. Two giants of the industry from Japan, two radically opposite bets on where the future of the business lies. The breakup. After weeks of rumors in that direction, Bloomberg confirmed that Sony has canceled plans to bring its big single-player exclusives to PC. TO ‘Ghost of Yotei‘, one of the most celebrated PlayStation releases in 2025, are joined by ‘Saro’, the next Housemarque game. The multiplatform experiment that Sony started in 2020 with ‘Horizon Zero Dawn‘It has lasted six years. The withdrawal is not total. According to sources consulted by Bloomberg, games as a service (the imminent ‘Marathon’, ‘Marvel Tokon’ or ‘Horizon: Hunter’s Gathering’) will maintain a multi-platform launch, because their business model depends on building player bases as wide as possible. ‘Death Stranding 2: On the Beach’ and ‘Kena: Scars of Kosmora’ will continue to be ported to PC this year, as they are titles from third-party developers published under the PlayStation umbrella. Calm rhythm. Sony’s release rate on Steam was never that of a furious competitor: the titles arrived between one and three years after their console debut, which meant that the ports had to compete against previous versions that had already suffered price discounts, to which was added the incessant pace of new releases for PC. These are some of the reasons why Sony may the bills didn’t work out: ‘Ghost of Tsushima’ reached a peak of 77,000 simultaneous players, but ‘Horizon Forbidden West’ and ‘The Last of Us Part II Remastered’ did not exceed 40,000 and 30,000 respectively. To retreat. This leaves some decisions made by Sony recently up in the air: in 2021 acquired Nixxes Softwarea Dutch studio specialized in porting games to PC (‘Tomb Raider’ trilogy, ‘Deus Ex: Mankind Divided’), and it is not clear what its future will be with this new strategy. Furthermore, on the 19th Bluepoint Games closedthe studio responsible for the remakes of ‘Demon’s Souls’ and ‘Shadow of the Colossus’, with around 70 employees affected. Sony think tank CEO Hermen Hulst spoke internally of an “increasingly challenging industry environment”, with rising development costs and slowing growth. Bluepoint had been working on a ‘God of War’ project in the form of a game as a service. Print money. In February 2025, Shuhei Yoshida, former president of PlayStation Studios, described the strategy of bringing games to Steam as something which is similar to “printing money” because the cost of a port is only a fraction of that of developing an original game. Why the change in strategy? PC numbers weren’t bad in absolute terms: Sony’s five best-selling titles on Steam together they surpassed 43 million copies and generated more than $1.2 billion in gross revenue for the company. The problem may well be the value they subtract from the hardware: they generate income but not a loyalty to the ecosystembecause a PC gamer does not need to buy a Playstation console. In the end, as Bloomberg pointed out, PC ports represent less than 2% of Sony’s total annual revenue. And there is something else: apparentlythere is a real concern about the design of the next xboxwhose architecture is closer to a Windows PC than to a conventional console, with the possibility of supporting multiple stores, including Steam. The PlayStation exclusives available on Steam could run perfectly on an Xbox, which would make Sony investing money to literally benefit its most direct competitor. Capcom prefers the PC. A day before Bloomberg published Sony’s new policy, Capcom released the Q&A transcript of its fiscal third-quarter results. An investor asked about the PC strategy regarding ‘Resident Evil Requiem‘ and its technical commitment to that platform. The company’s response was that the PC already represents approximately 50% of the total units sold for Capcom, and the internal expectation is that that figure will continue to grow. Already in October 2021, the company’s COO Haruhiro Tsujimoto stated in an interview that the company’s goal was that the PC became its main platform and that the proportion of sales between console and PC will reach 50-50 in 2022 or 2023. The prediction has been fulfilled with only a couple of years of delay. Revenue generated via Steam grew by 61.1% between April 2024 and March 2025 and in that same period PlayStation’s share of Capcom’s total revenue fell below 10%. The differences. Of course, there are differences to take into account between Capcom and Sony. Capcom has no hardware to sell, and its only incentive is to maximize the distribution of its software catalog across all platforms. Sony, on the other hand, manages a complete ecosystem that includes a console, digital store, subscription and accessories, and each decision has to be measured not only in direct sales of that title but in the impact on the value of the hardware and loyalty to the ecosystem. They are different business structures. Things that happen. All this happens the same year that Valve announces its new Steam Machine, in which the ROG Ally with branding from xbox It corroborates after the Steam Deck that the power of PC hardware can reach the living room, and that Microsoft officially embraces the idea that its games do not need an Xbox to be played. What justifies buying a dedicated console in 2026? Sony clearly focuses its sights on the most successful name in the industry at the moment: Nintendo. If you have to sell hardware, the key is exclusivity and making your object essential. It only remains to be seen if Playstation 6 will be so essential. In Xataka | Playstation 6: all the information we know (or think we know) so far

Employment among those over 65 triples and reaches the maximum in the historical series. There is a good reason: retirement

by

The labor market in Spain has recorded several notable milestones in recent months: record contributions, lowest unemployment rate in decades and recovery of youth employment. However, the last annualized EPA data They hide a story that goes beyond global figures. According to Annual average data for 2025 published this week by the INE, the employment rate among those over 65 has reached its historical maximum, and the reason is not that older Spaniards have discovered a sudden love for work. There is something structural behind it that deserves a closer look. An aging workforce. The aging of the population in Spain, and the changes in the pension system that were approved in the 2011 reform, are quietly but very significantly redrawing the Spanish labor map. What a decade ago seemed like a statistical anomaly has today become a consolidated trend with direct consequences on the future and viability of public pensions. The EPA data of the fourth quarter of 2025 indicate that at the end of the year there were 4,926,300 employed people over 55 years of age in Spain. This represents a growth of 23.3% in this age range since the 2022 labor reform, compared to the 11.3% average increase recorded by the rest of the ages. But the most striking thing is that the employment rate among those over 65 years of age has tripled compared to the levels of a decade ago, with 14.25% for men between 65 and 69 years old and 12.29% for women in the same age group, compared to the 5% that was registered in 2015. The employment rate for men between 60 and 64 years old is around 58% in 2025. highest since the early 1980s. All this used to be retirement. What largely explains this rebound in employment among the population over 65 years of age is not a greater demand for experienced workers, but rather the progressive delay in the legal retirement age. In 2026, the legal age for access ordinary retirement For those who have less than 38 years and 3 months of contributions it is 66 years and 10 months. This displacement forces many people to remain active beyond the age of 65 at which they could previously retire. Howeverthe report ‘Quarterly Labor Market Observatory‘ prepared by Fedea and BBVA Research confirms that the increase in senior membership is mainly due to the aging of the population and the delay of retirement agewhich often responds to the need to continue working due to financial difficulties. Staying in the job market at that age is not easy. However, although the data points to record percentages compared to historical figures, the reality is that their employment situation is not a bed of roses. a study of the BBVA and Ivie Foundation has revealed that those over 55 years of age register for the first time an unemployment rate of 9.8%, exceeding the unemployment rate of the group of people between 25 and 54 years of age. Furthermore, six out of ten unemployed of that age group They are long-term unemployed, a percentage that triples that of young people between 16 and 24 years old. The data depict a labor market in which workers over 55 years of age they lose their jobs a decade before their retirement age, and must survive throughout that time either with temporary employment, or in a situation of chronic unemployment due to lack of opportunities. At the other extreme, the employment rate of 14.2% shows those who have managed to stay afloat or get out of that hole. The pension system, the backdrop. Behind all these figures there is a reality that economists have been pointing out for years: the pension system needs people to work longer. to be sustainable. The reforms have been moving incentives in that direction, tightening the requirements for early retirement with greater pension reduction coefficientsand with a progressive increase in the necessary years of contributions. The result is what the data is already showing: there are more and more people who cannot retire at age 65 and must extend their working life until age 67 (effective in 2027) to access their retirement pension. In Xataka | What is the regulatory base: how it is calculated in 2026 with examples Image | Unsplash (Matt Bennett)

The first great Atlantic submarine cable that connected us to the internet says goodbye for a simple reason: it was too expensive to repair it

by

It has been at the bottom of the sea for more than two decades, forgotten. But now, finally, the TAT-8, the first fiber optic cable that crossed the Atlantic and connected us to the Internet, is being removed from its place. And to understand the importance of this, it is worth telling its story, since perhaps the Internet would not be as we know it without this cable. The cable that started it all. On December 14, 1988, AT&T, British Telecom and France Telecom developed TAT-8, the acronym for Trans-Atlantic Telephone 8. It was the eighth transoceanic cable system between Europe and the United States, but the first to use optical fiber. Before him, transatlantic cables ran on copper, with very limited capacity. With the TAT-8, voices and data traveled converted into pulses of light through glass threads thinner than a hair. Just like account Wired in its report, at the inaugural event, writer Isaac Asimov connected by video call from New York with audiences in Paris and London to celebrate, in his own words, “this inaugural voyage across the sea on a ray of light.” Why was it so important? When it came into operation, the Internet was still too technical a concept for the general public. But the TAT-8 literally built the highway on which everything later circulated. The curious thing is that in just 18 months it already reached its maximum capacity, so this forced new cables to be laid as soon as possible, especially after the outbreak of the world Wide Webelectronic commerce and in a context in which the Internet became increasingly relevant. By 2001 the TAT series had already reached 14. Disconnection. Just like account In the middle, in 2002, the TAT-8 suffered a breakdown, and repairing it was not worth it, it was that simple. With more modern and higher capacity cables already operational, it made no sense to invest in their recovery. It went offline and was abandoned at the bottom of the Atlantic, where it has remained for more than two decades. Now they are taking it out of the sea. According to collect Wired, a specialist company called Subsea Environmental Services is physically recovering the cable with its vessel MV Maasvliet. It is one of the few companies in the world whose entire business consists of recovering and recycling retired submarine cables. The operation involves dragging a flat hook across the seabed, waiting hours until tension is felt in the cable, and then hoisting it aboard meter by meter. The workers they explain As the ocean floor is an increasingly crowded space, and recovering old cables frees up routes for new ones. What is done with the remains. The TAT-8 is not thrown away. Fiber optic cables contain high purity copper, steel and polyethylene, all recyclable materials with market value. Copper, especially, is a valuable resource and may become scarce in a few years. And according to the International Energy Agency, in less than a decade could be scarce if the industry does not find new sources. On the other hand, the steel of the cable will end up being converted into fences, and the plastic, processed in the Netherlands, will be transformed into pellets to manufacture non-food packaging. In fact, just as they count At Wired, you may soon be using shampoo in a bottle made from remains of the first fiber optic cable to cross the Atlantic. Sharks. Curiously, the TAT-8 is at the epicenter of one of the legends that has lasted the longest in this sector: that sharks bite internet cables. Just like share In the middle, it all started with a test prior to the TAT-8, the Optican-1, which ended up failing due to problems in its insulation. A Bell Labs engineer appeared at a conference with shark teeth that had supposedly been removed from the damaged cable. The story spread instantly. As well as point At the time, AT&T even included four pages on protection against shark bites in its press kit for TAT-8. Actually, there has never been consensus about whether the sharks really caused that damage. Subsequent tests in aquariums, where they were starved to see if they would bite into wires with electric fields, did not yield any clear patterns. At least the outcome of all that testing and debate was positive, as engineers added a layer of steel between the insulation and the fibers, which improved the cable’s overall resistance to abrasions and damage of all kinds. Cover image | What’s Inside? In Xataka | In 1901, a Spanish man had one of the ideas of the century: invent the remote control before television

An economic science fiction text has sunk Visa and Mastercard in the stock market. The reason is more disturbing than the story itself

by

Citrini Research, a hedge fund American published this week a text written as if it were a macroeconomic memorandum from June 2028. It is not a prediction, its authors warn. It is a speculative exercise. A feasible scenario. It has achieved 24 million impressions, and counting. It is not an anecdotal tweet. The markets they have responded by sinking. Visa has fallen 4.4%. Mastercard, 6.3%. American Express, almost 8%. And Capital One, 8%. This deserves an explanation. And it’s not what it seems. Between the lines. The market reaction is not explained by the specific content of the Citrini Research report, which includes arguments as debatable as that AI agents will abandon cards to pay with stablecoins in Solana. Antonio Ortiz, technology analysts, has pointed it out precisely: part of the argument “it is from the first of Twitter AI-hype“. The idea that an agent will compare twenty food delivery apps vibecodeadas to find the cheapest one smells like a caricature of the future. But the panic is not irrational. It is precisely the panic of not knowing where the limit is. Why is it importantand. What has moved the market has not been so much the thesis about payments but the thesis about the destruction of value. And that is solid: many billions of dollars of market capitalization have been built on a single foundation: that humans are slow, impatient, forgetful and loyal out of inertia. That we do not compare prices. That we renew subscriptions that we do not use. And that we pay commissions that we do not negotiate. An AI agent has none of those weaknesses. And that changes everything. The backdrop. Citrini’s report comes at a time when the so-called “saaspocalypse“is no longer a metaphor. WSJ states that investors are terrified by the possibility that AI ends up doing the work that large software companies bill for today. ServiceNow, Salesforce, business management platforms… all built on the premise that companies need software for their employees to do their jobs. But… what happens when employees disappear? What if the software itself can be replicated in weeks with agentic coding tools? Citrini’s fiction begins exactly there, in early 2026, when a competent developer can reproduce the core functionality of a mid-market SaaS in a few weeks, and constructs a scenario of systemic collapse. The big question. The report’s most disturbing argument is that in every previous technological cycle, job destruction created new jobs that only humans could do. This time, AI is already occupying those new positions as well. If that’s true—if AI improves faster than workers can reorient themselves—the self-correcting mechanism that has always kept creative destruction from turning into outright destruction wouldn’t work. That is the scenario that the markets have discounted this week, even if only partially and speculatively thanks to a creepypasta financial. Yes, but. The scenario requires assuming a speed of adoption that is not guaranteed, a completely absent political response and a total absence of new economic sectors. None of the three conditions are set in stone. Furthermore, as Antonio points out, there is some collective hysteria in the reaction: each announcement or “scary story catches attention and moves investors.” Markets are trading in panic over the unknown. But there’s an important difference between saying “this scenario won’t happen” and saying “this scenario is impossible.” And that difference is exactly what has the market nervous. The alarm signal. The most striking thing this week is that a speculative text, written in economic science fiction format, has been enough to move billions in market capitalization. That says a lot about the state of certainty in the markets regarding AI: it is practically non-existent. Nobody really knows how much a company whose moat It is human friction in a world where that friction is disappearing. The canary is still alive. But investors have stopped trusting the canary. In Xataka | AI promised to revolutionize all sectors. It has only revolutionized programming while the rest is still waiting Featured image | Avery Evans

Marie Curie died 92 years ago. Your personal notebooks are still buried under layers of lead for a good reason

by

If you visit the basements of the National Library of France (BnF) and you want to look at some of the bibliographic gems that are kept there, you will most likely be forced to respect a series of measures, such as wearing gloves or handling the books in perfectly controlled conditions. The objective is obvious: protect the volumes. From you, from excessive exposure to light, from degradation. Things change if what you want to read is one of the notebooks that Marie Curie scribbled in her laboratory. In that case it is you who they must protect. Literally. The fact that there are dangerous publications may be a controversial statement that may or may not be shared, but in the case of the folios handwritten by the famous Franco-Polish scientist, it leaves little room for debate. Despite Madame Curie He died in 1934, almost 89 years ago, his notebooks continue to cause concern among archivists. and it is quite normal so be it. When Marie Salomea and her husband, Peterinvestigated in their laboratory with uranium, little was known about the potential damage of radiation, so they did not apply the basic safety measures that govern any radiological task today. So things—supports the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH)— “no wonder his workspace and notebooks became contaminated.” Pierre and Marie Curie, in the laboratory, around 1904. To avoid possible risks, the handwritten notebooks are kept in the basements of the National Library of France inside special boxes, made up of several layers of lead. Not only that. As detailed in 2021 by the BBC networkthe French institution requires researchers who want to handle the notebooks in person to first put on some protective suits specials and, of course, that they sign a document in which they exempt them from any responsibility. Is such misgivings justified? When reading requires a special suit For their research, which led to the discovery of polonium and radium, the Curies accumulated, crushed and manipulated enormous quantities of minerals containing uranium in their laboratory. He knowledge about natural radioactivity It was very recent at the time and the couple, who contributed to their research, were unwittingly exposed to its harmful effects. Themselves and, of course, all the material they used. Including notebooks of notes. To understand the conditions under which they worked, it is good review the notes by Marie, collected by Philipp Blom in ‘The years of vertigo: Europe, 1900-1914’: “One of our joys was entering the workshop at night; everywhere we saw the faintly luminous silhouettes of the capsule bottles containing our products. It was a beautiful sight and always new to us. The glowing tubes looked like dim fairy lights.” It was not strange, they say, that the pair of scientists carried flasks with polonium and radium in their coat pockets or kept them in their desk. Marie herself ended up dying in 1934 from a aplastic anemia which was probably caused by his frequent exposure to radium samples and polonium. “Taking into account the half-life of 1,600 years of the radius and the sensitivity of current radiation detectors, it is also not surprising that this contamination is still detectable today,” comments the ACSH in an article dedicated to the topic. The experts, BBC specifiescalculate that given that on average radium atoms take about 15 centuries to disintegrate, it is not unreasonable to think that the notebooks should remain in their lead box during that period. The National Library of France is in any case not the only one to preserve Curie’s notebooks. The Wellcome Collection It also has a volume, digitizedwith notes on experiments and radioactive substances and sketches. The volume dates from between 1899 and 1902 and was written in Paris. To avoid scares in 2014 The Aurora firm examined the material and concluded that it was contaminated with radius-226. The ACSH states in any case that the volume “does not represent an appreciable risk.” Fortunately, the notebook can consult now from homeonline, or even downloaded in PDF. The theme of “the contaminated notebooks” of Curie generate so much interest that it even has your own entrance on the website Marie-curie.eu, focused on the figure of the two-time Nobel Prize winner, and numerous articles have been written on the subject. Notebooks are not the only ones in a similar situation. The BBC explains that the house south of Paris where Marie Curie worked until 1934 is also affected by the radiation levels generated during her experiments. The block has even earned the ironic nickname of “Chernobyl on the Seine”. When he was buried in Paris Pantheoneven Marie Curie herself ended up in a lead sarcophagus almost an inch thick. Image | Aurora In Xataka | In 1968 a man had the idea to create the first tablet in history. The problem is that he was decades ahead of his time. In Xataka | The first hard drives in history were gigantic. Then a miracle happened: miniaturization

China manufactures 90% of the world’s humanoid robots and the reason is not its industrial policy: it is crossing the street

by

On Chinese New Year, 16 Unitree humanoid robots danced a folk dance before almost a billion viewers. The West reacted as always: some with panic, others with disdain, others with an undisguised admiration that sometimes tends to concoct theories with more clichés regarding China than real analysis. None of those answers is entirely true and that blindness has a cost. The context. China manufactures about 90% of the humanoid robots sold in the world. In 2025, about 13,000 units were shipped, with Chinese companies (AgiBot, Unitree, UBTech…) dominating the ranking by volume, according to Omdia data collected by Bloomberg. Tesla, with all its brand reputation and all its industrial apparatus, internally deployed around 800 units of the Optimus that same year. The figure. He Unitree G1 It costs $13,500. He Tesla Optimus will exceed 20,000. That gap is the difference between being able to iterate ten times with the same budget or staying at one. Between the lines. The story circulating in the West has two versions, equally lazy: The first: all this is the five-year plan, the hand of the State, industrial policy made robot. The second, reserved for the most condescending: it is because they copy. Neither of them explains what is really happening. China’s advantage in robotics does not come from the Communist Party. It comes from the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze Delta: the two densest manufacturing ecosystems on the planet. Motors, actuators, sensors, custom PCBs… everything is available within walking distance. Is what it describes Rui Xuan engineer who has worked in robotics startups in China and Silicon Valley. When Unitree wants to test a new joint design, it crosses the street and comes back with the right component. A team in San Francisco has to wait weeks to receive the same component from China. The background. That difference in iteration speed changes everything in hardware engineering. It stops being a problem of talent, because Chinese and American engineers are equally capable, and becomes a problem of infrastructure. Breaking a robot, learning, replacing it, and trying again: that’s what builds cumulative technical advantage. If breaking a robot costs three weeks of logistics, learning stops and times become longer. Yes, but. China does have state support, and it is completely legitimate to point this out. The government has injected a lot of money into that sector and has set production targets. But it’s not that Silicon Valley is an impoverished region: it has more capital, investors with more experience and resources, and more decades of experience financing high-risk bets. If this were a war to see who has the fattest checkbook, the United States would win handily. But it is not. Furthermore, Chinese state money comes with strings attached: it is classified as “state asset” and founders assume personal liability if the company fails. That pushes capital toward politically safe bets, not necessarily toward the most innovative ones. The question. Can the West make up ground in robotics? Yes, but not like he’s trying. Attracting foreign talent helps on the margin, but does not solve the underlying problem. The equalization involves building local supply chains capable of delivering a spare part in two days, not two weeks. And that is not an immigration or R&D problem. It is an industrial-based problem, and solving it takes many years of work. And of thankless work, from which those who arrive later may reap the fruits. Until then we are going to see many more viral videos of Chinese robots doing pirouettes with increasing naturalness. And it’s because they’ve built the best environment in the world to break things and try again. In engineering, that explains almost everything. Featured image | CCTV In Xataka | Folding clothes or taking apart LEGOs has always been a tedious task. Xiaomi’s new AI for robots has put an end to it

There’s a reason why the Japanese don’t need to dust as much as we do. And you can apply it easily

by

When I was little and living in Switzerland, there was an unspoken rule that we all knew: the shoes They didn’t go beyond the doormat. It was common to see small shelves outside the doors, on the landing, where footwear that had walked on the street was abandoned. For us it was the norm, but when we crossed borders, that custom faded. Today, however, the situation seems to be changing globally. What we previously saw as a cultural curiosity of Japan or a Nordic eccentricity is beginning to make sense in the rest of the world. The contrast is fascinating. While in many Western homes cleaning is understood as a reaction (cleaning what has become dirty), in other cultures it is a preventive lifestyle design. In Japan the secret is not to clean for hours, but to prevent dirt from getting cross the threshold: “Cleaning is not a reaction, but a life design based on prevention.” This philosophy even extends to the air they breathe; Japanese residential ventilation technical documents highlight the critical importance of creating “air passages” by opening opposite windows to expel suspended particles, an obsession with environmental hygiene that invariably begins at the front door. And it’s not just a matter of visual perception. A study from Macquarie University in Sydney, puts it in perspective: until 60% of the dust and the dirt that accumulates inside a house comes from outside, and enters precisely through our feet. The architecture of custom Why is the world divided between those who barefoot and those who don’t? The answer lies in a mix of climate, architecture and philosophy. In Japan, the border is physical. According to the digital media Nipponthe houses have the genkana specific area at the entrance with a step called agari kamachi. This step marks the sacred boundary between the “outer world” (dirty) and the “inner world” (clean). Furthermore, traditional Japanese architecture uses floors tatami (straw mats), a delicate material that would be destroyed by rigid street shoes. In the Anglo-Saxon world, resistance it’s cultural. Journalist Jeff Yang tells in The Guardian a revealing anecdote about his Taiwanese aunt, who told him a lapidary phrase when she saw him enter wearing shoes: “When you enter my house with shoes, you are walking on my heart.” This clash illustrates the division: for some it is respect; for others, as indicated Real Simplewhere only 31% of Americans always barefoot, is an uncomfortable imposition. In Spain, the story is different and has its own peculiarities. There is no deep-rooted tradition to take off your shoes when entering. Historically, doing it in someone else’s house could even be interpreted as a lack of education or excessive trust (“taking too much confidence”). Unlike Nordic or Asian countries, Spain relies on reactive cleaning, something that users on discussion forums such as reddit rsummarize with humor and irony: “We can afford that custom because we invented the mop.” However, the trend is changing after the pandemic. More and more hosts are imposing the “zero shoe” rule for hygiene. It is the case of the influencer of lifestyle Patricia Fernández who, cited in Readingsassures that “removing your shoes at the entrance is your number 1 rule”, always offering comfortable options or baskets with slippers for your guests. Beyond the visible dirt, taking off your shoes has a profound psychological and symbolic impact. It’s not just hygiene, it’s a transition ritual. Dr. Manuel Viso explained that taking off your shoes sends a powerful signal to our brain: “Let’s change the environment, relax, we’re home, we’ve left work behind.” It is a physical switch for mental disconnection, how to change clothes. From an energy perspective, Feng Shui expert Gloria Ramos details in Interior Magazine that the main door is “the mouth of Qi“(vital energy). Leaving your shoes lying around or entering with them blocks that energy and the well-being of the home. Even the way you do it matters, in Japan etiquette requires not only taking off your shoes, but turn them so that they point towards the door (ready for departure) and do so without turning your back on the host, a gesture that denotes respect and consideration towards the community that inhabits that house. Science tips the balance decisively This is where the cultural debate collides with microscopic reality. If you thought your shoes were clean because you didn’t step in mud, experts have bad news. “99% of the shoes analyzed test positive for fecal matter,” pharmacist Álvaro Fernández flatly states. in The Aragon Newspaper. This is because we walk through streets where there are invisible remains of animal excrement and dirt from public toilets. Microbiologist Jonathan Sexton, from the University of Arizona, confirm in Very interesting that almost all soles harbor bacteria such as E.coli (present in 96% of cases) and Clostridium difficilea bacteria that causes serious intestinal problems. But it’s not just bacteria. According to The Conversation, Shoes carry pesticides from gardens, lead from urban dust, and carcinogenic asphalt sealants that end up in the air in our living rooms. It is important not to fall into alarmism. Although shoes are centers of dirt, they are not the only culprits. A published study in Scientific Reports warns that mobile phones are also “dangerous microbial platforms“that harbor a wide spectrum of organisms, often resistant to antibiotics, and that we constantly carry on our faces. It is another reminder that objects such as cell phones or kitchen sponges can have as much or more bacterial load than footwear. Still, experts like Kevin Garey they clarify thatalthough for a healthy adult the risk of infection from the floor is low (since we do not live at ground level), the recommendation is strict if there are crawling children or immunosuppressed people at home. The trend is clear: the frontier of the doormat is hardening in the West, but with our own style. we don’t have genkanbut we have learned to adapt our halls. More and more homes are incorporating benches, wicker baskets or narrow shoe racks … Read more

Yes, the DGT has limited the maximum speed to 80 km/h and has prohibited overtaking. And there’s a good reason for that: wind.

by

In Spain the weather is bad. I don’t know if you had noticed but we have had rain, snow and very strong winds for a month and a half. Meteorological events that are impacting all types of sectors. Also that of mobility, where closed roads, incidents on the road and restrictions are being the general trend. If you go to your favorite social network and read that the DGT has limited the speed to 80 km/h, don’t panic. It’s normal. At 80 km/h maximum. And overtaking prohibited by order of the DGT. It is a headline that has been repeated in the last two days and has spread across social networks. Headlines that hid an essential word to understand the information: temporal. Meteorological storm, because the restrictions are due to the clash of storms that we have chained for days and weeks in the Iberian Peninsula. And temporary because the restrictions are not definitive, they are simply used to maintain safety on the road. The restrictions. One of the provinces that found the most restrictions of this type during the past weekend was Castellón. The region has had to live with an orange alert for wind and the DGT decided that the maximum speed at which one could drive on Saturday was 80 km/h on three roads in the province, where overtaking was also prohibited. The trucks They were also not allowed to circulate on the AP-7. Yesterday, Sunday, normality was recovered. These restrictions have obviously been temporary. And, effectively, the DGT can apply temporary restrictions on speed or overtaking for meteorological reasons, just as can close a road to traffic due to snow or it can be restricted to those who They drive with chains or winter tires. For security. The wind is a danger on the road and overtaking is critical when there are very high wind gusts. In particular, some are very dangerous: Screen effect: when you drive through a tunnel or infrastructure that cuts off the side wind and it disappears. At that moment, a gust of wind can move the car to one side of the road and If we are caught off guard the movement will be sharper. Overtaking: something very similar happens when we overtake a large truck or van. In this case, if we are fighting a crosswind, passing a vehicle will automatically cut off the force we receive. You have to be careful because normally we have been moving the steering wheel to the right slightly to counteract the force of the wind. By overtaking the truck, that resistance disappears and we can go against the vehicle on our right, adding that the truck or van fights not to go to the left, which can end in contact. Furthermore, when overtaking, we will again feel the screen effect described above, so we must be careful and remain attentive. Trailers: Both situations are especially dangerous if we drive a vehicle with a trailer since, in that case, the car does not receive the same forces as its rear part and, in an extreme case, movement angles that are difficult to manage can arise. What does the DGT recommend? The first thing we must do is adapt our speed to the traffic circumstances. The DGT has the power to reduce the speed of the road to 80 km/h and prohibit overtaking, but the logical and essential thing is to apply common sense and take your foot off the accelerator. Taking this into account, we must remain very attentive to resolve any gusts of wind. If this happens, you have to act gently, calmly. The DGT also recommends circulate in high gears (one lower than usual) to have a greater response from the engine if we need to get out of trouble. And remember that the more voluminous and taller a vehicle is, the more risk it has of overturning, the more complex it will be to control it and the more care we must take when overtaking it. Photo | Theo Lonic and DGT In Xataka | Everything I learned the day I was surprised by the snow: tips for driving on ice when the situation gets complicated

Spain and Portugal have “free” energy right now. If we do not share it with Europe it is due to only one reason: France

by

While the Iberian Peninsula registers a surplus of unprecedented renewable energy at bargain prices, the rest of the continent continues to be suffocated by triple-digit bills. In the middle of these two realities a wall rises, not of stone, but of political and nuclear interests: France. The northern neighbor acts as a plug that prevents cheap energy from the south from flowing north, protecting its atomic industry at the expense of European consumers’ pockets. Two Europes disconnected. The data from February 11 are a blow to the table of European integration. According to the records of OMIE and ESIOSthe average daily market price in Spain has plummeted to €4.23/MWh, with hours in which producers have had to pay for injecting energy (negative prices of -€0.42/MWh). The situation in Portugal is even more extreme: the megawatt hour is paid at €0.34, that is, practically free. However, it is enough to cross the Pyrenees for reality to change drastically. The price map ESIOS turns central and northern Europe red: Germany pays electricity at €100.62/MWh, Belgium at €72.04/MWh and the Netherlands at €88.70/MWh. France, strategically located in the middle, enjoys a comfortable price of €13.61/MWh, benefiting from buying cheaply from the south without missing out on the flow to its northern neighbors. This disparity perfectly visualizes the concept of “energy island”: a peninsula overflowing with resources that does not have enough bridges to share them. The great uncoupling of February. What we are experiencing these first two weeks of February is what experts call a “total decoupling.” According to the analysis of Aleasoft Energy Forecastingthe arrival of several Atlantic storms has triggered wind and hydroelectric generation on the peninsula. By adding the solar contribution, the supply has far exceeded the internal demand. The Iberian market (MIBEL) has seen how their prices They fell by 43% in Spain and a staggering 74% in Portugal in just one week, reaching daily averages of €0.54/MWh, values ​​that had not been seen since April 2024. Meanwhile, the Energy Charts graphs show that Germany has continued with prices oscillating above €100/MWh for much of January and early February, still depending on non-renewable sources. The drama of throwing away energy. Having cheap electricity seems like excellent news for the domestic consumer, but it hides a serious systemic inefficiency. As there are not enough cables to export this surplus to a Europe thirsty for cheap energy, Spain is forced to carry out curtailment (technical discharges). As we have already explained in Xatakawe are literally throwing away around 7% of clean energy because it “does not fit” into the grid and has no outlet. This scenario causes zero prices that, paradoxically, can ruin renewable investors, who need profitability to continue deploying parks. Furthermore, the situation has uncovered the seams of the Spanish internal network. The network is administratively “collapsed”: the CNMC has had to delay until May 2026 the publication of the capacity maps because, under the new security criteria, 90% of the network nodes appear saturated. Only 12% of connection requests are being approved, which means that we have the energy, but the cables are missing to bring it to new industries and homes. The French nuclear “bunker”. If there is excess energy in the south and lack in the north, why not build an electric highway? The answer has its own name: nuclear protectionism. President Emmanuel Macron has declared that interconnections They are a “false debate”arguing that Spain’s problem is a “100% renewable model that its own network does not support.” However, the data refute the Elysée story. As expert Joaquín Coronado explainsSpain is not 100% renewable (it closed 2025 at 55.5%) and, in fact, it was Spain that came to the rescue of France in 2022 and 2025, exporting electricity through its combined cycles when the French nuclear park failed due to corrosion and heat problems. The reality, according to the CEO of RedeiaRoberto García Merino, is that the blockade “is not technical, it is pure geostrategy.” France needs to make profitable a pharaonic investment of 300,000 million euros in its nuclear park and fears that the massive entry of Spanish solar energy, much cheaper, will sink the prices and competitiveness of its reactors. Therefore, Paris has explicitly excluded of its 2025-2035 network plan the key interconnection projects for Aragon and Navarra, keeping the Iberian Peninsula as an island with only 2.8% interconnection, very far from the European objective of 15%. Any solution on the table? Brussels’ patience is running out. The European Commission has already issued an ultimatum to Francegiving him a period of nine months to unblock the situation and present a political declaration of commitment. Meanwhile, the only project that advancesalthough slow, is the submarine cable through the Bay of Biscay. Redeia confirmed that the laying campaigns will begin this summer of 2026, with an eye on its entry into operation by 2028. An unsustainable contradiction. Within the European Union, it is happening that while one member country desperately seeks energy autonomy and competitive prices for its industry, it allows another of its key partners to keep the door to the south closed. Spain could be Europe’s green battery, but without export capacity, that wealth is diluted in negative prices and technical waste. Everything happens while France acts as a strict customs officer that protects its atoms, preventing the European Union from truly being an energy union. Image | freepik Xataka | The great electrical jam in Spain: we have plenty of electricity, but there are no cables to build houses and invest more

OpenClaw is the most viral, fascinating and dangerous AI of the moment. For this last reason, it has joined forces with VirusTotal from Malaga

by

In 2025 we had a ‘DeepSeek moment’ and in 2026 we are having an ‘OpenClaw moment’. This AI agent is super powerful, but also super insecure. There is, however, good news, because the Malaga company VirusTotal has partnered with the OpenClaw project to try to mitigate one of the most important cybersecurity risks of this AI agent: its skills. what has happened. OpenClaw (formerly Moltbot, and before Clawdbot) has announced that it has begun a collaboration with the Malaga cybersecurity company VirusTotal, owned by Google. The agreement will see VirusTotal be in charge of “scanning” and analyzing the so-called “skills”, which work like OpenClaw plugins and add all kinds of functions. They do it, of course, but many take the opportunity to introduce malicious instructions that allow them to steal data and remotely operate other people’s AI agents. More security for disturbing AI. Peter Steinberger, creator of the project, has joined Jamieson O’Reilly, cybersecurity expert and founder of the company Dvulnand Bernardo Quintero, founder of VirusTotal, to offer that “additional layer of security for the OpenClaw community.” In it official announcement explain that “all the skills published in ClawdHub (the project’s official skills “store”) are now scanned through Virus Total’s Threat Intelligence system, including its new capability Code Insight (code inspection)”. Bernardo Quintero indicated on Twitter how the effort has already allowed 1,700 skillls to be identified as malicious. If the skill is malicious, it is blocked. This analysis carried out with the VirusTotal tools allows us to identify skills as malicious and block them immediately so that they cannot be downloaded. Not only that: those skills that have been classified as benign are analyzed again every day to detect scenarios in which for some reason they could end up becoming malicious. Still, be careful. Those responsible for OpenClaw warn: the VirusTotal scan helps a lot, but it is not a total guarantee that any skill can perform malicious actions on the machine on which we have our AI agent installed. The attacks of prompt injection Sophisticated skills can manage to cross that barrier, but of course this collaboration means that OpenClaw users can be much calmer regarding the skills available in the ClawdHub repository. OpenClaw wants to be much more secure. This first effort joins OpenClaw’s ambition to have a complete cybersecurity model which includes things like a public roadmap for your new developments in this area, a formal communication process, and details about full audits of your code. Plugging a problem that could kill OpenClaw. The OpenClaw project soon went viral due to its eye-catching options, but shortly after doing so a security audit initial 2,851 skills detected 341 malicious skills. Companies like BitDefender also joined these efforts to avoid problems with tools like AI Skills Checker to check whether a skill was dangerous or not. These malicious skills were, for example, capable of executing shell commands on the victim machine, which gave the attacker complete control of those resources. Attacking the machine is confusing it with natural language. Normally cybersecurity attacks are complex, but the problem with AI agents is that they work with natural language. This implies that to infiltrate these systems you do not have to use code, but simply “convince” and “trick” the AI ​​with natural language. That is where prompt injection attacks come in, which consist of giving instructions to those AI agents that can confuse them to obtain something that theoretically they should not allow them to obtain. Personal data, API keys of the models we use at OpenClaw, email accounts and passwords for all types of services… the possibilities are endless, and OpenClaw, which has access to all of this to operate autonomously, can end up being “tricked” into transferring said data. Beware of OpenClaw. These problems now seem a little less feasible thanks to the collaboration with VirusTotal, but those who are trying OpenClaw on their machines or any other platform should be very alert from the beginning. There are guides that help you install it with some barriers important security issues, and the project itself has a command (‘openclaw security audit –deep –fix’ to audit the most important problems and address them. In Xataka | OpenAI has a problem: Anthropic is succeeding right where the most money is at stake

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.