thought

AI is bringing back into fashion something that we thought was only for geeks: the command line

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At first it was the command line. It was 1982, maybe 1983, and I first saw a ZX Spectrum 48K. That fascinated me not only because of the noises and beeps and colors and crappy and wonderful games, but because you wrote something on the screen in text mode and suddenly things happened. I would end up having a C64, which of course was far better 😉 but that’s another story. Then, a couple of years later, a personal visit to the IT department of El Corte Inglés, which was one of the few places where one could no longer see computers, but touch them. That was like the Apple stores of today, and preteens and not so preteens came there not to see machines, but to feel them. Hello, old friend. There were PCs there, of course. Boring and gray and yet also wonderful. And the first thing they did when they turned on was ask the date and time to adjust their internal clocks, and I was amazed and thought in my innocence, “Oh my God, how clever is he that he asks the date and time to be super updated.” And immediately afterwards, of course, the MS-DOS logo appeared and that terrible and magical prompt at the same time (or a similar one, because I doubt they had a hard drive): C:\ I was little, but human-computer interaction had long been dominated by that technology: the command line. You wrote, the machine responded. The UNIX systems did it before, the “operating systems” of the Spectrum or the C64 later, and of course it was also done by that MS-DOS that seemed amazing because once again I, in my innocence, did not even know that there was already a brilliant crazy visionary out there who was selling some simply amazing little machines with a 7-inch screen that They greeted you with “Hello, I’m Macintosh”. Everything changed (quite) quickly and suddenly the command line became somewhat awkward, clunky, obsolete. Everything had to be visual. Windows and graphic elements evolved so that we wrote less and clicked (not to mention scrolled) much more. And in the last 30 years we have not stopped doing that and defending that the graphical interface was perfect for humans and for most scenarios in which we have to talk to our machines. And it was. And it is. But AI has changed that. Hello again, CLI The explosion of generative AI has turned this situation 180 degrees. It is true that in recent years we have used AI through (mostly) a browser or a mobile app that was actually an embedded browser, but over time we have seen that if we wanted AI to do things for us, there was a problem. Than to AI has a hard time seeing and working with a graphical user interface. But at the same time there were those who realized that what AI did like angels was work with a command line interpreter or CLI. It suddenly made sense to use the terminal again or our computer consolebecause the AI ​​felt at home with it. I didn’t have to recognize and interpret the screen: I just had to read it, and that was wonderful. That is why we have seen how Claude Code (or Codex, or Gemini CLI, or similar tools) has become an absolute marvel. One that suddenly returned us to the command line and a terminal in which we felt like we were in the ZX Spectrum that I saw when I was 9 or 10 years old. You wrote and the machine responded, and here it was the same, but of course, wildly. What seemed like something relegated to the realm of programming is slowly making sense for many other scenarios. You can actually use Claude Code or Codex like you use ChatGPT, for chatting, but it seemed like they could only be used for programming. And not. We are seeing how more and more solutions designed to take advantage of the power of generative AI are programmed with a text interface, for the command line. Those tools They are designed to be used much more by an AI than by a human. They also come in there the MCPs that connect AI models with tools and services like Slack, GitHub or AWS, and if those services have their own versions of themselves in text mode, the AI ​​will be able to use them much better and much more efficiently. We have the last example in Google Workspace CLIa platform that allows Drive, Gmail, or Calendar to be used from the command line. It is not designed for humans—although we can use it—but rather for AI models to take advantage of it. It’s a gift from Google to the machines, and one that is not at all generous: what the company wants here is to convince the machines to use its services. The humans have already won. btop, a system monitoring tool that makes use of a text-mode interface that is still wonderful. Source: Wikipedia. It’s just an example, because little by little we see how the command line is experiencing a second youth. We no longer only talk about the GUI (Graphical User Interface), but from the TUI (Text-based User Interface). It is something that has always had its place, especially in the Linux operating system, where tools like btop or Neofetch showed that text can be (very) pretty, but now. These are just two examples, because there are dozens of them. Hundreds. Probably thousands. Not necessarily beautiful, but efficient and functional, like mutt (mail client) or Midnight Commanderlegendary file explorer in text mode. For AI, these types of apps are wonderful, because I insist, it does not have to make an effort to understand what is happening: it reads text at full speed and understands and acts. And that is vital for those AI agents who are beginning to conquer everything and everyone. OpenClaw, for example, is showing us that potential … Read more

I thought portable consoles were already defined. Lenovo has decided that they can also be folded in half

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I think Lenovo is one of the brands that takes the most risks in the computer segment. And in the consoles: Lenovo Legion Go It’s a good sample. With several models under its belt, the brand has come to the MWC in Barcelona with a hybrid that is, above all, extravagant. But also original, I think there is no better way to please everyone. Do you want a portable screen to play with physical controls? Covered. A more compact panel to make it less uncomfortable? Check. Option to play with the panel vertically and horizontally? Of course. What if the controllers can become a standalone controller? And even with a mouse option. The Lenovo Legion Go Fold doesn’t marry anyone. Just because, It also has a foldable screen. Lenovo Legion Go Fold technical sheet Lenovo Legion Go Fold Concept SCREEN 11.8 inch POLED panel Resolution 2,435 x 1,712 pixels, 16:10 165Hz refresh 100% DCI-P3 500 nits Tactile DIMENSIONS AND WEIGHT 189.1 x 282.5 x 8.5mm 868 g (638 g modular + 230 g controls) PROCESSOR Intel Core Ultra 7 GRAPHIC CARD Integrated Intel Arc 140V GPU 64TOPS, 8 Xe-cores, 1.95GHz RAM 32GB LPDDR5x-8533 STORAGE 1TB PCIe SSD (Gen 4) 2242 OPERATING SYSTEM Windows 11 OTHERS Color: Eclipse Black PRICE Unspecified It is neither one thing nor another, it is everything It is not just a folding tablet, nor a video game console, nor a convertible laptop: it is everything at once. And with a format that can be expanded almost to the unimaginable within the gamer field. Goes from a tablet style surface to a console Steam Deck. Detachable, of course. Just like what happened to me with the modular laptop that Lenovo also brought to MWC, the Legion Go Fold goes a step further when you think it can’t expand further. Broadly speaking: It is a gaming tablet with anchored physical controls. It can be used both vertically and horizontally. It is a large tablet that folds in half into a smaller one. It runs Windows and has a keyboard as an accessory, so it can become a travel laptop. As was the case with the original Legion Go, the controllers can be joined together to function as an independent external controller. As a cherry on top, one of the controllers anchors to the base to become a mouse with a trigger. The device is a concept that is not yet definitive. However, it appears to be fully functional, all parts make sense, They are solid enough and they can be combined without excessive complication. Like all moving parts, the anchors are somewhat delicate to place: you have to remove a lock, slide the control down and separate it outwards. The lane is not too long, it gave me the impression that it was not as firm as it should be. Given the weight and size of the tablet, I don’t think it will be excessively comfortable for long periods of gaming. At least as long as he stays in suspense. A folding screen? Why not If it already seems strange that a tablet has two console controls anchored to the ends, seeing how the screen folds is the ultimate. Because of the size and because the folding looks somewhat rough: the edge is thick and leaves the panel exposed. However, it is the only way to fold the tablet so that it continues to function as a touch device. The folded Legion Go Fold is much more comfortable to play with. The problem is that Windows does not allow itself to be tamed to multiformat: System orientation does not adapt to portrait orientation. I also noticed different errors when resizing the windows, with the touch on the screen and with some buttons on the controls. The problems of direct. It is a concept and it is appreciated as such, a “I’m going to see how far I can go with removable elements.” The result is very curious to see, not so much to enjoy. At least in regards to everything related to the screen, because the design of the controls, its buttons, the detail of the mini-screen on one of the controls and its versatility are noteworthy. Quite far from viability Playing with an unfolded tablet of this size is not very comfortable, having physical controls attached even less so. Lenovo has already more than proven the Legion Go format, it is the path it is going to follow. And surely the experience gained with the Fold will help to improve the commercial family, such as adding a small screen to the controls. Lenovo is the PC manufacturer that usually surprises me the most with its proposals. Take risks even if these experimental products do not go beyond concepts. And when I tried them I found solid, well-thought-out devices with established technologies. I don’t think that combining a folding tablet with controls will come to fruition, but who knows. We ended up seeing it in stores the same way. Images | Ivan Linares In Xataka | Best tablets in quality price. Which one to buy based on use and recommended models

Catalonia wanted to create the mother of networks for its public headquarters with Huawei equipment. He thought better of it

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The Catalan Court of Public Sector Contracts has partially upheld the appeal presented by Telefónica and Cellnex against the award of the XCAT network contract to sirt and Huawei. The project to interconnect the strategic infrastructures of the Catalan territory will not be able to rely on hardware from China. Why? Catalonia has a fiber optic backbone network, a backbone that supports the Catalan administration. Hospitals, educational centers, public data centers… An infrastructure that has been around for years seeking independence with Spain and that, through the XCAT project, it was preparing its biggest technological leap in decades thanks to the local company Sirt Connecta and Huawei’s network technologies. The offer. Providing it with a budget of 127 million, the Generalitat was finalizing a plan to connect more than 5,400 institutional headquarters. All with its own infrastructure so as not to depend on national giants such as Telefónica, Vodafone or MásOrange. Sirt’s offer with Huawei was the best valued by the CTTIthe computer lung that supports digital services in Catalonia, but Telefónica and Cellnex filed an appeal before the Catalan Court. not so fast. Despite offering a cheaper proposal, Telefónica-Cellnex saw the balance tip towards the Sirt-Huawei proposal. They thus presented an appeal in which they challenged the award of the contract, criticized the technical assessment and indicated their doubts about the technical solvency and real capacity of Sirt to execute said contract. The Catalan Court of Public Sector Contracts has partially upheld the appeal presented by Telefónica and Cellnex, thus suspending the award. There is more. The European Commission’s proposal for a new cybersecurity law, presented on January 20, makes the awarding of the contract even more difficult. Europe wants to expressly prohibit (although the law will not come into force for at least a year) the use of Chinese technology in fixed network infrastructure. In other words, Catalonia cannot use Huawei equipment. If the court’s decision is appealed and the Sirt-Huawei solution is implemented, in just a year and a half all Huawei equipment should be replaced with others of Western origin. The silent dismantling. In recent years, the three large Spanish operators have expelled Huawei from their network cores. Telefónica now works with Nokia and Ericsson Orange with Ericsson Vodafone with Nokia The next step is what the Sirt-Telefónica conflict leaves us with: small local operators will also have to banish Chinese equipment from their hardware core to comply with upcoming European regulations. In Xataka | Huawei MatePad 11.5 S 2026, analysis: the secret of its success is visible and it is called PaperMatte

We thought it took us a long time to learn to cook. Until some 780,000-year-old carp teeth rewrote history

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If we think about the technology that has most transformed humanity, it is easy for the wheel, the steam engine or the microchip to come to mind in a more current way. However, there is a much older and more fundamental “technology” that literally changed our anatomy: the kitchen. The evolution. For decades, paleoanthropologists have debated At what exact moment did our ancestors stop consuming raw foods to start processing them through the control of fire. The most recent evidence not only rewrites our chronology, but confirms that mastering cooking was the true driving force of human evolution. How do you know? Date something as precise as the beginning of cooking, but the reality is that Until recently, indisputable evidence of the continued use of fire for cooking They were around 600,000 years old. However, a great finding published in the prestigious magazine Nature in 2022 set back this evolutionary clock. In this case it was at the site of Gesher Benot Ya’aqovin Israel, remains of large carp teeth were found. With these samples and through advanced techniques such as X-ray diffraction, the researchers demonstrated that these remains had been exposed to controlled and relatively low temperatures, being less than 500 °C. The first date. With this evidence it seemed quite clear that it was not an accidental fire, but rather that it was dated 780,000 years ago these animals began to be cooked. This is consistent with the fact that Acheulean hunter-gatherers were already exploiting aquatic habitats, selecting nutrient-rich fish and cooking them in what archaeologists call “ghost hearths,” which were structured fire zones. Another hypothesis. Although direct evidence pointed us back to 780,000 years ago, biological clues suggest that the culinary revolution began much earlier. This is what primatologist Richard Wrangham pointed out, in his book Catching Fire and in subsequent studies published in Current Anthropology, proposing that systematic cooking emerged with Homo erectus approximately 1.9 million years ago. Your arguments. To be able to give this date, this expert focuses mainly on energy efficiency, since he points out that cooking predigests food, breaking down fibers and starches. This allows you to obtain many more calories with minimal effort. But the most relevant thing is that by facilitating digestion, the Homo erectus It no longer needed a massive intestinal tract to process hard, raw vegetables. And here size matters, since intestinal tissue and brain tissue are energetically very expensive, and so, by shrinking the intestine, the excess energy could be redirected to the growth of a much larger and more complex brain. But this softer diet also explains why the molars of the Homo erectus They shrank and their jaws became less prominent. Beyond nutrition. The implementation of cooking not only brought anatomical benefits, but studies indicate that in the case of the first hominids, this was essential for roasting raw meat and killing the bacteria that were inside. But in addition, fire control and the ability to process food were key tools that facilitated human migration. In reassessments of classic sites, such as the Zhoukoudian caves in China, they confirm that the Homo erectus pekinensis used controlled fire to cook deer meat in specific stratademonstrating that this practice was essential for adapting to colder climates outside of Africa. Images | Michael Lock

Europe has thought of throwing three robots into a volcanic lava tube and now colonizing the moon or Mars is closer

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While the mission Artemis II Its objective is for human beings to return to the moon after more than half a century later, space agencies continue to investigate how to reach other planets and there space robotics is essential because well: space in general and places like Mars are the most inhospitable for life. So a European research group in which, among other entities, the European Space Agency participates, has introduced an autonomous robotic system inside a volcanic lava tube in Lanzarote, like collects this paper published in Science Robotics. Their conclusions bring us closer to a future colonization of the Moon or Mars. The context. Neither Mars nor the Moon have a flat desert surface, but rather they constitute volcanic worlds where there are underground cavities formed millions of years ago by liquid lava. We are not talking about small cavities precisely: there is space for a city to fit in as long as low gravity allows sizes of kilometers, how this study explains. Lava tubes are present on the Moon, on Mars and also on Earth, without going any further we can find some in Hawaii or the Canary Islands, precisely where the research was carried out: The lava tube of La Corona de Lanzarote has sections that reach 30 meters wide and high, come on, that It’s a cave like a cathedral. Why is it important. Because the space environment is harsh: there are extreme temperatures, radiation and meteor showers, a crude combination that makes it difficult for life to exist or simply to establish an eventual foundation for human civilization. On the other hand, if there is any remains of life or frozen water left, these caves are the ideal place to look for it. These structures are strategic because they function as natural shielding against ionizing radiation, extreme thermal flows and meteorites. So the next generation of robots will have the mission of exploring those underground lava tubes on Mars and the Moon to see what their conditions are like. The Lanzarote experiment. Anyone who has been to Lanzarote will know that it has places that seem taken from outer space. That is where the La Corona lava tube is where three different robots with different roles began their characterization mission without GPS or sunlight: The lookout stays outside mapping the entrance. The Explorer: It is essentially a cube full of cameras that you drop into the hole to look before anyone else. The speleologist, who rappels down to enter the darkness at a depth of 235 meters. The discovery. That they did 3D mapping as they progressed was just one of the objectives of this mission, led in the technical section by the German Center for Artificial Intelligence. But what is as important as how: the robots were not controlled with a remote control, but rather functioned autonomously, making their own decisions on the fly. Their performance in collaborative tasks is essential since in space the radio signal takes minutes to arrive from Earth. First Lanzarote, then Mars. The test carried out on heterogeneous and cooperative space robotics was a success, although there is still room for improvement regarding navigation without light and how the sensors respond to interference from the environment. In Xataka | Mars has just entered the exclusive club of planets with rays. This is discouraging news for NASA. In Xataka | We knew that Mars has gravity. Now we have just discovered the unexpected effect it has on the Earth’s climate Cover | dfki

The world has been fascinated by the collapse of the Mayans for decades. In reality, almost everything we thought we knew was wrong.

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They cultivated fields, raised livestock, built some of the most amazing buildings on the planet, developed a rich culture that included advanced astronomical knowledge that still intrigue today to the experts. The Mayans are one of the most fascinating civilizations on the planet. And rightly so. Without it it is impossible to tell the history of Central America. However, little by little and as technology allows us to delve into their secrets, we begin to understand something: much of what we thought we knew about the Mayans was wrong. And that includes its collapse. What happened to the Mayans? The question is very simple. His answer not so much anymore. As our knowledge of the Mayan civilization has expanded (thanks to resources such as LiDAR technology) has also mutated the idea that historians had of its decline. I remembered it recently in Guardian Marcus Haraldsson remembering what we know about Tikalone of the largest urban centers of the Mayans, located in what is now Guatemala. “Sudden and disastrous”? The most recent stele located at the site dates back to the year 869 ADwhich leaves the question of what happened in Tikal from that date on. For a time historians assessed the possibility of a “sudden and disastrous” collapse that marked its fate; But today that explanation seems increasingly distant. Now experts are leaning towards another option: a broad period of decline of around 200 years during which farmers moved north and south and powerful urban centers were abandoned in favor of settlements such as Chichén Itzá, Uxmal or Mayapán, towards the north of the Yucatán Peninsula. There is even talk of the period Classic Terminalwhich goes from the years 750 to 1050. Changing perspective. This perspective has been adapted over the decades and goes beyond the period of decline of the Mayan civilization. “We are no longer really talking about collapse, but about decline, transformation and reorganization of society, as well as a continuity of culture,” comment to Guardian Kenneth E. Seligson, associate professor of archeology at California State University (CSU). “There have been several similar changes in places like Rome. (But) we rarely talk about the great Roman collapse anymore because they re-emerged in various forms, just like the Mayans.” But… What happened? What exactly happened for many of the main Mayan settlements (not all) to begin to collapse towards the 9th and 10th centuries It remains a complex and highly discussed topic. Today the authors point out a combination of factors including changes in trade routes, adverse weather, severe and prolonged droughts and wars, among others. The truth is that in the middle of 2026, researchers continue collecting clues that helps us clear up unknowns about that period. The importance of water. You don’t have to go far back to read new discoveries that tell us precisely about the collapse of the Mayan civilization. Last August a group of scientists published a article in which they basically emphasized the “important role” that “prolonged droughts” played in the Mayan decline. For their study, the researchers analyzed a stalagmite located in a cave in the Yucatan, a true geological and archaeological treasure if its oxygen isotopes are analyzed. The examination revealed a series of periods of severe drought between 871 and 1021, during the Terminal Classic, stages marked by water shortages during which the Mayans found it “extremely difficult” to grow their crops. It may seem exaggerated, but the study revealed eight droughts during the rainy season that lasted at least three years. Not only that. The longest drought lasted about 13 years. Other previous studies, carried out from sediments collected in the Chichankanab lagoon or stalactites rescued in Belizehad already suggested the role that climate played in the Mayan collapse. Question of droughts (and something else). Months after that study, in November, Benjamin Gwinneth, from the Université de Montréal (UdeM), published another that helps complete the ‘photo’. The Canadian institution recalls that between 750 and 900 AD the population of the Mayan lowlands suffered “a significant demographic and political decline” that coincided with “episodes of intense drought.” What Gwinneth’s work questions is whether this collapse is explained only by the lack of water. Curiously, their research is also based on the analysis of sediment samples dating back to around 3,300 years ago. And what exactly did he do? Gwinneth dedicated himself to analyzing samples taken from Laguna Itzán, in present-day Guatemala, near an archaeological site Maya. To be precise, they focused on three “geochemical indicators” that reveal the evolution of fires, vegetation and population density in the area (something they estimate thanks to fecal stanols) for thousands of years. The first conclusion they obtained is that the first settlements appeared in the area 3,200 years ago and for centuries the Mayans cultivated, burned to clear forests and used the ashes as natural fertilizer. It also gradually increased the population of the area. Over time they even changed their “agricultural strategy”, dispensing with fire. A “stable” climate. The second conclusion (and this is the interesting part) is that, unlike Mayan populations located further north that did suffer “devastating droughts”, in Itzán the climate was relatively “stable” thanks in part to its geographical location, near the Cordillera. Curiously, that did not free Itzán from the crisis that they suffered in other areas of the Mayan world. The question is obvious: Why? If it kept raining there, what dragged them into the crisis? “Although there was no drought in the area, the population decreased during the Terminal Classic period. Indicators show a drastic drop, traces of agriculture disappear and the site was abandoned,” Gwinneth points out.which recalls that some archaeologists place the beginning of the Mayan collapse in the Itzán area. Why is it important? Because it suggests that drought (no matter how stubborn) is not enough on its own to explain the Mayan decline. “The answer lies in the interconnection of Mayan societies,” reflects the expert. “Cities did not exist in isolation. They formed a complex network of commercial ties, … Read more

We thought that AI was going to take our position. The reality is that it is making us work more and rest less

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The most pessimistic vision of the future of AI predicted that the automation of processes would mean the elimination of many jobs. The most optimistic assure that AI will not replace employees, but rather will enhance your skills making them more productive, which will translate into shorter days. A analysis of Harvard Business Reviewbased on eight months of observation at a US technology company with about 200 employees, reveals something very different: AI is making employees take on more tasks, but also make them work longer days. Do more with AI. The study observed that the use of AI in the company It did not simplify the work, but rather expanded it. The researchers observed that employees, product managers, and designers began using AI on their own initiative, even though the company did not force them to do so. What it did do was provide business subscriptions to those who decided to use it in their work. This use made employees begin to tackle more and more tasks, not only within the scope of their position, but, for example, employees from the sales department asked AI for help. to program a tool to help them in their task. Employees argued that, with the help of AI, they had immediate response to their ideas and projects, which allowed them to accomplish more tasks. The end of breaks. The help of AI and the elimination of friction in starting new tasks motivated employees to take on more and more tasks, increasing their daily workload. The most curious thing is that the researchers discovered that this additional motivation also implied that employees gave up their natural rest times. The increase in workload, even voluntarily, increased their levels of cognitive fatigue and exhaustion, influencing their decision-making capacity. By not having to stop and reflect in front of a blank page of a report or simply go to a colleague’s desk for help with a question, employees endured greater mental strain. This progressive exhaustion had an impact on worsening of work quality and in personnel turnover due to burnout. Fast pace and multitasking. He productivity increase The initial advantage that AI provided made it possible for employees to have several open fronts. The researchers detected that employees assigned a task to the AI ​​(or even several tasks in parallel processes) and, while obtaining a result, started a new task. This practice caused a state of perpetual multitasking, with frequent interruptions and “juggling” between different ideas and open projects, which contributed to exhausting employees’ cognitive capacity a little more. More work for you, more work for others. Daring to take on tasks that did not correspond to them, in turn caused a supervision overload for the departments to which it did correspond. For example, if someone in the sales department created code to streamline the analysis of their sales data, that would require the engineering department to review that code to make sure it was correct. that is correct and safeincreasing your workload with unplanned projects. Blurred boundaries between work and life. One of the most notable consequences is how AI acts as an always-available “co-pilot,” removing barriers between work and personal hours. The employees who participated in the analysis ended up extending their work hours on their own initiative, reviewing ideas or polishing the work they had started with AI at home. As its authors point out, “organizations could see this voluntary expansion of work as a clear victory. After all, if workers do it on their own initiative, why would that be a bad thing?” However, this apparent initial advantage for companies can mask a long-term problem “Overwork can impair judgment, increase the likelihood of errors, and make it difficult for organizations to distinguish between true productivity gains and unsustainable intensity,” the researchers note. The report ‘Barometer of AI in the world of work’ prepared by PwC, corroborates that in companies with a high implementation of AI, productivity increases between 20 and 30% on average, but it is only maintained at these levels if it is accompanied by ethical governance and redistribution of efforts. Without these adjustments, the promise of efficiency becomes a trap of greater individual effort that ends up burning out employees with heavier workloads and longer hours. In Xataka | “The world is in danger”: Anthropic’s security manager leaves the company to write poetry Image | Unsplash (Christina @wocintechchat.com)

If you’ve ever thought about “leaving everything and going to the mountains,” these thinkers have a lot to tell you

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In recent days it has gone viralMrinank Sharma’s departurehead of AI Safeguards at Anthropic (that is, the company’s team focused on security, misuse and model safeguards). In the letter that Sharma made publicafter explaining that “the world was in danger”confessed that he was going to the United Kingdom to study and write poetry. The idea of ​​”taking back control of your life” has been in the air for years and has an incredible capacity to mutate and adapt. Yes in 2021 lthose who left work spoke of low pay, lack of progress and feeling disrespected, now we talk about ethical issues and existential anxiety. What persists is that “leave everything and go to the mountains.” AND There are good philosophical arguments for this.. The philosophy of sending everything to hell Cristian Bortes – British Museum Or at least that is what many philosophers throughout history believed. Among the great practical philosophical traditions of Hellenic culture, Epicurism and its proposal to retire to live in peace is perhaps the best-known example. Although it has often been the product of stereotypes and misunderstandings, the school of Epicurus and company understood philosophy as a kind of philosophy of the soul: a kind of, following the ideas of Christopher Gill, a preventive psychological medicine. In this sense, withdrawing, stopping depending on the external, was not a way of being right, but rather of living without anxiety: of dedicating oneself to pleasure. At the end of the day, the epicurean garden that has been painted as an ode to hedonism is, in reality, a search for a friendly place that reduces stimuli, comparisons and needs. In the end, and translating it to our days without all the ontological scaffolding behind it, it is realizing that we are leaving our lives in a race whose goal we have not chosen. Is build a good place to live. However, it is not the only way to see it. independent people Rafael Sanzio Other Hellenic schools, such as the Stoics or the Cynics, were much more radical. Or, rather, hard. With their doctrinal differences, they sought internal independence, autarky. Imported to our days consists of going beyond building a shelter and going on the offensive. Modern life chains us in a thousand different ways (mortgage, career, reputation, schedules, etc…) and, for this reason, retiring goes far beyond a healing practice: it is a practical theory of freedom (liberation). This connects directly with another tradition: that of the hermits and ascetics that goes from Valerio del Bierzo to the eastern saints. There are many ways to justify it, but the idea is always the same: if to sustain your life you need to be liked, be productive and be available, you are not free; You are functional. And being functional to the material world, being functional to the system prevents you from aspiring to higher goals. think better With the birth of the modern world, we began to think about retirement in a different way: as a way of thinking well, of thinking better. The Montaigne tower or Rousseau’s walks have often been seen as a form of misanthropy. But, in reality, they were a way to get away to gain perspective, calm the soul and practice some mental hygiene. It has a lot to do with the idea of ​​disconnection retreats, although since the time of the French solitaries, society has spread its tentacles so much that it has become much more difficult: our minds are always foxes. Withdraw in protest The arrival of modernity also brought us political retreat. That is, leaving as a protest. When you can’t reform the world, sometimes the only lever is the way out. Or, what is the same: if in classical antiquity ostracism was the punishment par excellence, now it emerged as a tool. Refusing to cooperate with an unjust, corrupting or downright absurd order. It is true that much literature considers this type of flight as a sign of cowardice, but it is also true that (lucid or not), it is never neutral. Many reasons, the same gesture Be that as it may, we must not ignore that, in the background, there are always structural reasons: historically, the impulse to withdraw usually intensifies when certain collective sensations invade society: the feeling of the end of the era, acceleration, saturation, existential anxiety, problems of legitimacy. Just what we suffer today. And in the face of this, tranquility emerges as a rare commodity to seek and pursuea way to recover in the current mare magnun. For this reason, many people have begun to understand that ‘going to the mountains’ does not have to be a gesture of evasion, nor a way of disengaging from reality: it can perfectly be a “moral relocation”: a way to become better, to start again, to gain momentum. In Xataka | Seneca, philosopher: “It is not that we have little time to live, but that we do not stop wasting it”

Science now believes that our biological expiration date is more hereditary than we thought.

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For years, the scientific consensus and popular culture have repeated a reassuring mantra: genes they only determine 20 or 25% of life expectancy. The rest of this fell on our shoulders directly with the lifestyle, diet or even the environment we surround ourselves with. But this figure, which corresponded to old studieshas changed radically. The study. A study published this week in Science has come to shake the foundations of biogerontology. Led by molecular biologist Uri Alon of the Weizmann Institute in Israel, the research suggests that We have been massively underestimating the role of DNA. Something that they have been able to know after cleaning the data from the statistical “noise” with a very resounding conclusion behind it: the heritability of human life expectancy is around 55%. What we knew. The percentage of participation of current genetics was based on research carried out in the 90s and whose key was the definition of “dying.” The oldest studies analyzed cohorts of Danish-Swedish twins taking mortality as a whole. In this way, if one twin died of cancer at 90 and the other from a car accident at 30, the statistics interpreted that genetics had very little influence. The present. But now, Alon’s team has applied a new mathematical model to separate two concepts that used to be mixed up. One of these was extrinsic mortality, that is, deaths caused by external and random factors such as accidents, pandemics or wars. On the other hand, we have intrinsic mortality, which is true biological aging and is not due to an accident, but to the ‘wear and tear’ of the organism over time. In this way, by removing the noise of extrinsic mortality from historical data, the weight of genetics begins to skyrocket. The results. The new study, published at the end of January, is not just based on a simulation but has analyzed decades of records. On the one hand, data from twins born between 1870 and 1900 have been reanalyzed, which are the original studies where the extrinsic factor was included. By removing it, the genetic correlation again became much stronger. The team crossed their models with sibling data for 444 American centenarians confirming that extreme longevity clusters in families much more than chance or shared environment could explain. In this way, the study corrects what experts call prior estimation biases. That is, the 20-25% figures were not wrong. per sebut they included too much “bad luck.” Lifestyle matters. That the weight of genetics is much greater than we think, does not mean that we should abandon the gym and a balanced diet. And although genetics determine 55% of aging, the other almost half continues to depend on the environment and lifestyle. And this must continue to be maintained. On the other hand, this has enormous implications for personalized medicine. If the “expiration date” of our tissues is more programmed than we thought, anti-aging therapies will have to focus much more on editing or modulating that genetic load, and not just on telling us to eat more vegetables (which too). Images | LOGAN WEAVER | @LGNWVR In Xataka | In Spain there are already 148 people over 64 years of age for every 100 young people. And that is a ticking time bomb for the economy.

We thought that the 72 billion that Meta spent on AI in 2025 were outrageous. It was just the appetizer

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The big tech companies They are spending a lot of money on AI infrastructure and, far from slackening, the figure is only increasing (and not a little). In the case of Meta, the company planned to spend $66 billion in 2025, but in October they had to correct the figure to $72 billion. 2026 has just begun and the figure they have just given is directly insane. Doubling down, literally. Between 115,000 and 135,000 million dollarsthese are the figures that Meta handles for the year 2026. It is almost double what they spent in 2025, a figure that, as we said, they had to correct towards the end of the year, so let’s not rule out that it ends up being more. The spending will mainly be intended to “support the efforts of Meta Superintelligence Labs”, that is, to build more data centers. Which by the way, more than 6 million dollars have been spent on advertising campaigns to convince us that data centers are cool. Record results. The fourth quarter of 2025 has been very good for Meta. Revenue grew 24% compared to the same period of the previous year, reaching 59,000 million dollars and a net profit of 22,800 million dollars, figures that exceed forecasts. According to its CEO, the good results are thanks to the implementation of AI in its advertising services. Recovering confidence. In the previous quarter, the huge spending on AI generated many doubts among investors and, although the results were also good, shares fell up to 8%. This time it has been different and, although spending will skyrocket even more, shares are up 10%. It seems that they trust Zuckerberg’s direction again. Where is the ceiling? It is difficult to know, but what we do know is that since 2023 it has been increasing exaggeratedly. And not a little. According to Meta datain 2023 they spent 28 billion dollars, in 2024 they rose to 39 billion and in 2025 to 72 billion. The jump has been getting higher and higher with each year, I wonder when they will let off the accelerator. All for AI, but without AI. All the big technology companies are spending a lot on AI, but what is striking about the case of Meta is that has not yet launched its new models. To put it in context, Meta’s expected spending is higher than Google’s in 2025, but Google has Gemini while Meta has promises. After the fiasco of Call 4Zuckerberg set himself as a target Completely remodel your AI department. It was spent a fortune in hiring new talentscreated a secret laboratory next to his officeha cut the Metaverse department (also with layoffs) to move resources to AI. The ambition is huge: creating superintelligence. At the moment, what we know is that they are preparing a language model called Avocado and another for image generation that they call Mango. They better measure up, otherwise They will always have the public. Image | Unsplash, Meta In Xataka | Three years after the metaverse fiasco, Zuckerberg has another burning nail for Meta: digital glasses

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