weeks

five laptops on sale at ASUS Weeks

by

With how difficult it is nowadays to ride a PC for parts (in part, because of the price of RAM), laptops have an advantage. The difficult thing perhaps is choosing one that suits our budget and our needs, since not all of us are looking for the same thing. Are you looking for a new team? Well, don’t lose sight of the ASUS Weekswhere we have a lot of laptops (and more devices or components) with quite interesting discounts. In this promo, available until next June 14we can find discounts of up to 69%. There is a lot to choose from, but we have selected five laptops that we find especially interesting: ASUS Zenbook DUO by 1,899.99 eurosa very versatile laptop that has two OLED touch screens. ASUS ProArt P16 by 4,099 eurosa laptop designed for professionals with 64 GB of DDR5 RAM and an RTX 5080. ASUS ROG Strix G18 by 2,449.99 eurosdesigned for demanding players thanks to its RTX 5070 Ti. ASUS TUF Gaming A16 by 1,249.99 eurosa cheaper gaming laptop that has great value for money. ASUS ExpertBook P5 by 1,029 euros– Lightweight, 14-inch laptop that’s perfect for working or studying. ASUS Zenbook DUO The first of the laptops that we bring you is this Zenbook DUO, a very special device that has two 14-inch OLED screens. This is very useful in terms of productivity, since it allows you to have a larger workspace. In addition, it has a detachable full-size keyboard and a stand for the screens. In terms of components, the truth is that it is a powerful device designed to perform at a high level for years. It has an Intel Core Ultra 7 255H processor along with 32 GB of LPDDR5x type RAMas well as 1 TB of storage in the form of SSD. Its current price is 1,899.99 eurossince it has a discount of 100 euros in ASUS Weeks. ASUS Zenbook DUO (UX8406) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links ASUS ProArt P16 At ASUS Weeks we can also find equipment very oriented towards the professional world and the most demanding users. This ProArt 16 is a very clear example of this, since we are faced with a laptop with a top spec list: uses a Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor, 64 GB of LPDDR5x RAM and an RTX 5080. In addition to this, it also mounts ora very good 16-inch OLED touch screen with 120 Hz and WQUXGA resolution (3840 x 2400 pixels). To all this we must add a series of very interesting ASUS tools, such as Muse Tree or StoryCube. Its RRP is 4,499 euros, but it is available for 4,099 euros. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links ASUS ROG Strix G18 There are many gaming options in these ASUS Weeks. The first of the two that we bring you is this ASUS ROG Strix G18, a laptop designed for enthusiastic gamers looking for very high performance even at 1440p. As a graph, mount one of the most balanced from NVIDIA: the RTX 5070 Ti. In addition to this, it also has a good processor such as the Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX, 32 GB of DDR5 RAM and an 18-inch IPS screen with 240 Hz and anti-reflective technology. All this makes it a laptop designed to play now and for many years at a good level and with DLSS 4.5. Its RRP is 2,799 euros, but we can get it for 2,449.99 euros. And it comes with the new and long-awaited ‘007 First Light’ as a gift. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links ASUS TUF Gaming A16 Are you looking for a more affordable gaming laptop? Then perhaps this ASUS TUF Gaming A16 is more suitable for you, which is now available for 1,249.99 euros (instead of the 1,499 euros it usually costs). Despite being cheaper than the previous one, it is still a very interesting option that comes with an RTX 5060, a graphics card that is also still compatible with NVIDIA’s DLSS 4.5. To all of the above, we must add a Ryzen 7 260 processor, 32GB DDR5 RAM and 1 TB of SSD. Its screen in this case is 16 inches and has a 1920×1200 resolution, but it still has a good 120 Hz refresh rate. Like the previous one, it also includes the new ‘James Bond’ game as a gift. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links ASUS ExpertBook P5 To finish this selection of laptops, we have this ExpertBook P5. It is a device designed to work or study, but also to be very easy to transport everywhere with us. Despite having a metal chassis, It barely weighs 1.29 kgso you won’t have to carry a contraption with you every time you go to the office or university. And how are the specifications? Well, it’s not bad at all: it has an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V, 32 GB of DDR5 RAM and a 14-inch screen with 2.5K resolution and a refresh rate of 144 Hz. It has a discount right now of 90 euros compared to its usual price: it costs 1,029 euros. ASUS ExpertBook P5 (P5405) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images | ASUS In Xataka | Best laptops in quality price. Which one to buy based on use and seven recommended models In Xataka | What is the best laptop for working in 2026. Tips and recommendations

In a few weeks, cinemas will receive the most nostalgic fantasy of the year

by

Today many speak of it as one of the most anticipated releases of the summer, perhaps as a familiar and colorful contrast to denser proposals such as ‘The Odyssey‘. And yet, ‘Masters of the Universe’ has a history of war of rights, box office failures and various confrontations behind it that has turned it into a feat worthy of one of its most tumultuous adventures that, four decades after its creation, this Conan in space reaches the screens. Failure after failure until the final victory. In August 1987. Cannon Films, the Israeli-American production company that had built its reputation on low-budget action films in franchises such as ‘The American Warrior’ or ‘Missing in Action’, bet heavily on ‘Masters of the Universe’ as an entry ticket to the Hollywood of the big studios. With a budget of $22 million (huge by Cannon standards) and ambitious marketing campaigns that presented it as capable of rubbing shoulders with ‘Star Wars’, the result was a resounding commercial failure: only 17.3 million in collection, which contributed to the collapse of the company. Fans of the very popular animated series that served as an advertisement for the new releases of the toy line protested against the most discussed decision in the movie: Instead of showing the fantastical world of Eternia, most of the story took place on Earth, far from the magical creatures and epic battles that had fueled the spectacular illustrations on the action figure boxes. The reason for that decision was strictly economic: Eternia was very difficult to bring to life on the screen with the budget Cannon had at his disposal. 39 years of waiting. What came next was one of the longest sagas of frustrated development in modern cinema. The rights to the franchise passed successively through Warner Bros. (2007), Columbia Pictures (2009), Netflix (2022) and finally Amazon MGM Studios. Multiple names were linked to creative teams and cast, such as Jon M. Chu, McG or John Woo, and Noah Centineo was in talks for the lead role. Already with Amazon, Travis Knight was announced as director and Chris Butler as screenwriter. Was the first time in almost four decades that a ‘Masters of the Universe’ completed its production. FBarbie actor. The film comes in a very specific context for Mattel: the company has been trying to become a generator of successful franchises for Hollywood for two years. ‘Barbie’ raised more than $1.4 billion worldwide and won an Oscar, becoming the benchmark for Mattel’s entire film strategy. Since then, the company has more than fifteen announced projects including adaptations of Hot Wheels or Polly Pocket. The comparison with ‘Barbie’, however, falls apart in some respects. They are essentially different franchises and possibly very different films (‘Masters of the Universe’, quite possibly, has nothing of that intelligent pop feminism capealthough it very possibly has the same ironic approach to characters who, without humor, would not support an updated review). The toys are not the same either: Barbie is a ubiquitous brand in global culture, while He-Man is niche generational nostalgia. A nostalgic artifact. Travis Knight’s debut was ‘Bumblebee’, the excellent spin-off of ‘Transformers’ that bathed in adventurous simplicity what in Michael Bay’s installments had been a crazy epic. From his ‘Masters of the Universe’ has said that “we are not making a cartoon, we are making a live-action fantasy film” The cast is one of the strong points of the project: Nicholas Galitzine is He-Man, Camila Mendes is Teela, Alison Brie is Evil-Lyn, Morena Baccarin is the Sorceress, Idris Elba is Man-At-Arms and Jared Leto is Skeletor. Travis Knight is very aware of the responsibility he has to the franchise’s fans: “When we started envisioning this world, we wanted to do the fans justice,” Knight said, adding that “watching them come to life on the big screen makes you a little emotional.” The challenge. The first box office forecasts They place the domestic opening between 25 and 35 million dollars for the weekend of June 5. With an estimated budget of between 170 and 200 million dollars, they are clearly insufficient. Can the movie get young audiences interested in He-Man, Skeletor, and Eternia in 2026? Without a doubt, a pertinent question, because it can guarantee continuity for other toy franchises or the lock for Castle Greyskull for another four decades. In Xataka | The toys of the future will include AIs to be able to interact with us: Barbie and OpenAI are already taking steps in that direction

The longest solar burst ever detected lasted almost three weeks. Four ships had to join forces to study it

by

Four different spacecraft have confirmed the detection of the longest solar burst ever recorded. measured to date. Previously, the longest known lasted 5 days. However, the one just described in a studio in The Astrophysical Journal Letter It was much longer, as it lasted from August 21 to September 9, 2025. No more and no less than 19 days. Four ships, one answer. This very special solar burst was detected for the first time by Solar Orbiter of the European Space Agency (ESA). The objective of this spacecraft is none other than to study the poles and solar winds, as well as the Sun’s magnetic field, from a close distance. It was not the first solar burst that he had detected, but he had never encountered one of these characteristics. The results were confirmed twelve days later by the ships wind and Parker Solar Probeboth from NASA. A few days later, the STEREO-Aalso from NASA, again supported the same result. A type IV burst. This long burst is a type IV burst. A phenomenon that occurs when electrons are trapped in the Sun’s magnetic field is known as a solar flare, so that they begin to spiral around its lines, generating a large amount of electromagnetic radiation. There are five types. Those of type IV They have wide bandwidths and can last for hours. The duration of this was much longer, which is why it attracted so much attention. The key is in coronal mass ejections. Solar flares are completely harmless. And, unlike other phenomena, such as solar winds or coronal mass ejections, they do not release plasma or charged particles, only radio waves. Therefore, they would not affect telecommunications on Earth. Now, in this case it has been seen that the burst could be related to coronal mass ejections. According to the clues collected by STEREO-A and the scientists’ reconstructions, there must have been 3 coronal mass ejections that served as food for the radio burst. But what is that? Coronal mass ejections are abrupt releases of plasma that are generated in the solar corona when a lot of energy accumulates in it. Possibly, these three ejections were supplying electrons to the explosion, such that there were always electrons trapped and rotating around the magnetic field. That, possibly, is what made this burst last so long. When he was running out of “food”, the Sun was giving him more. Very important. These types of findings are very important because they help us better understand how the Sun works. Solar activity follows cycles of approximately 11 years, with peaks and low points. In 2025 there was a big peak, especially active. Studying everything that happened at that time is very useful to better understand this type of phenomena, especially those that can affect telecommunications, such as solar winds or coronal mass ejections themselves. In this case, the ejecta had not been seen as such, but the long trail they left had been seen. Analyzing that footprint is as useful as it is for paleontologists to study those left by the dinosaurs. Image | THAT In Xataka | The Webb and Hubble telescopes simultaneously observed Jupiter’s auroras. The problem is that they didn’t see the same thing

Meta employees have not known for weeks if they are going to be fired. Meanwhile, the company records everything they do on the computer

by

Meta is one of the companies that is betting the most on AI. Zuckerberg’s company is investing massively in the development of new data centers and critical AI technologies. And in the midst of this transformation, your employees find themselves vulnerable to mass layoffs, surveillance, and pressure to embrace the technology that could replace them. What exactly is happening. Meta has told its employees in the United States that it will record what they type on their keyboard, how they move their mouse, where they click, and what appears on their screen. The tool, internally called the Model Capability Initiative (MCI), runs in the background on corporate computers and also takes periodic screenshots, according to counted Reuters, which had access to the internal memos. The company’s stated objective is to train its AI models so that they learn to perform everyday tasks on a computer in the same way that their employees do. Reaction. When the company announced the measure, hundreds of workers responded on internal channels, mainly asking how they could disable tracking. Andrew Bosworth, Chief Technology Officer at Meta, affirms That option does not exist on business laptops. However, that has not calmed the reaction of its employees. And it is that according to account In the New York Times, one employee even wrote to him directly: “Your insensitivity to the concerns of your own workers is troubling.” And all while they don’t know if they are going to be fired. Two days after announcing the tracking system, Meta confirmed which will lay off approximately 8,000 people on May 20, which represents around 10% of its global workforce. According to NYTwho spoke with several of his employees, many workers have been in a state of uncertainty for weeks. Some admit to being looking for work elsewhere. Others directly try to give signals that they want to be included in the layoffs to collect compensation. “It’s tremendously demoralizing,” wrote one of the users in an internal message to which the media had access. What Meta says. The company insists that the data collected is not used to evaluate employee performance or for any purpose other than training AI models. “If we are building agents to help people complete everyday tasks on computers, our models need real examples of how people use them,” explained a company spokesperson told the BBC. Meta also states that there are safeguards to protect sensitive content, although without specifying which ones. What employees say. The story is different from within. A worker who preferred not to be identified described the situation is described as “very dystopian”: knowing that every small action you perform on the computer is being recorded, just when the company is announcing layoffs, generates a feeling that is difficult to ignore. Another former employee said that it is “the last way they shove AI down your throat.” Legislation. In the United States there is no federal law that limits this type of workplace surveillance, as long as employees are informed of it, according to explained told Reuters Ifeoma Ajunwa, a law professor at Yale University. The situation is radically different in Europe, since Valerio De Stefano, a professor at the University of York specialized in labor law and technology, counted to the same means that this practice would probably violate the General Data Protection Regulation European. In countries like Italy, tracking productivity through electronic means is outright prohibited; In Germany, courts only allow keystroke recording in exceptional circumstances, such as suspicion of a serious crime. In Spain it would also be a very difficult measure to justify, and would directly clash with the RGPD. AI, at the center of everything. Beyond monitoring, Meta has been reorganizing its internal structure around artificial intelligence for months. It has organized mandatory training weeks for employees to learn how to use AI agents, introduced internal dashboards that measure consumption of tokens (the minimum unit of AI that measures its consumption) to foster competition between workers, and is creating a new generic professional profile called AI builder that replaces more specialized roles. And now what. May 20 is the date proposed by Meta to announce another wave of mass layoffs. Until then, thousands of the company’s employees live with the uncertainty of whether they will remain with the company, while also tracking their activity. Meta’s CFO, Susan Li, admitted during a call with investors that the company “really doesn’t know what the optimal size of the company will be in the future.” A phrase that is probably not reassuring for those who expect news on May 20. Cover image | Compagnons and Goal In Xataka | The Musk-Altman trial is giving the spectacle it promised: a soap opera of dirty laundry in which no one comes out well

Meta plans to cut 10% of its workforce in May. Its employees have been surviving a “28-day hell” for weeks

by

When last week the news was leaked that Meta was going to lay off 10% of its staff (again), the company had no choice but to make its decision public through a statement before I’m ready for it. The director of human resources, Janella Gale, acknowledged the leak and confirmed what many already feared: around 10% of the workforce will receive their dismissal notice. next May 20. The problem is that no one knows yet which profiles or departments will be fired. As the employees themselves said, this wait is precisely what is hurting them the most. There is a date marked on the calendar, there are figures on the table (about 7,800 positions eliminated plus another 6,000 that will be left uncovered), but there are no names. And in that void, thousands of employees have been trying to work normally for weeks without knowing if they will continue to occupy that table next month. Four weeks in limbo. “Welcome to the 28 days of hell.” This is how a Meta employee summed up the situation in an internal forum, and the expression quickly spread through the company’s internal communication channels. As and as detailed Business Insiderthat same uncertainty is breathed in the publications of the employees in the Blind app, where anguish, black humor and unanswered questions are mixed about what criteria will determine who stays and who leaves. In Blindan employee asked how to find motivation to work during the next few weeks knowing that layoffs are a fact and we can only wait for the names to be given to make them effective. One response summed up the general mood: “I’m getting motivated to do things that I can put on my resume for my next job,” said a Meta employee. In Meta’s own internal forums, others claimed to be focused on demonstrating results quickly, before D-day arrives, in an attempt desperate to avoid dismissal. A state of anxiety that has already lasted since 2022. For many Meta workers, this round of layoffs is not an isolated surprise. Since 2022, the company has gone through several waves of cuts, and that has left its mark on the employees who kept their jobs when thousands (hundreds of thousands, actually) of colleagues were falling into the different rounds of dismissal that Meta has applied since 2022. One employee admitted to feeling more anguish about the possibility of surviving layoffs than about being fired, because those who stay know that they will have to take on a greater workload in an increasingly pressured company. This phenomenon, called survivor syndrome, It is more common than it seems and is fueled by that uncertainty of someone who faces a situation that they know and that they know will get worse, and that perhaps they will fall into the next round of layoffs. In fact, according to some comments in that application, some employees admit to having mentally disconnected from work, and there are even those who are considering maneuvering to be included on the layoff list and thus collect compensation. AI as a background to the cut. Another factor that contributes to undermining the morale of employees who must deal with “their 28-day hell” is that, in reality, these dismissals do not occur because they are doing their job poorly or because of the company’s financial problems, but rather because of a strategic bet that puts the AI as an absolute priority for the company. If there is only one dollar to spend, that dollar will be invested in AI. “We are doing this as part of our continuous effort to manage the company more efficiently and to compensate for the other investments we are making,” said Meta’s human resources manager in her statement. Goal plans to allocate between $115 billion and $135 billion in capital investment this year alone, double the capital that he destined in 2024 to this end, with artificial intelligence as the main destination of money. Mark Zuckerberg has been making it clear for months that AI is the absolute priority of the company, which leaves positions that are not aligned with the development of that technology in an increasingly complicated position. What awaits those who are fired. Meta cuts come at the same time as Microsoft announces early retirements volunteers for the first time in its 51-year history. This new strategy is raising alarm bells about whether AI-powered automation is starting to cause a structural labor crisis in the technology sector. According to the company’s statement, Meta employees who finally receive their dismissal letter on May 20 will receive compensation of 16 weeks of base salary plus two additional weeks for each year worked in the company. “We will also cover the cost of COBRA health insurance for US employees and their families for 18 months. Packages outside the United States will be similar, but will vary by country, as will local deadlines and processes,” states the internal Meta statement signed by Gale. In Xataka | “They blame AI for layoffs they would do anyway”: Sam Altman confirms that AI has been used as an excuse to lay off Image | Unsplash (Mariia Shalabaieva, Arif Riyanto)

The most viral group in recent weeks is also the strangest and most incomprehensible group you will hear today

by

Two figures with masks with very long noses and white suits with black polka dots (or black ones with white polka dots). A double-neck guitar with more frets than usual. A looper operated with bare feet, also painted with polka dots. And 27 minutes of music that divide the scale into 24 tones instead of the 12 of the Western system. This is how Angine de Poitrine entered the lives of millions of people who had never heard of math rock in their lives. How we met Angine De Poitrine. The video that changed everything was recorded by the Seattle public station KEXP during the Transmusicales festival in Rennes, in December 2025. They published it on YouTube in February 2026. In a matter of weeks it has accumulated millions of views, it has almost 8. In the comments, someone wrote: “The AI: Humans no longer have anything to do in music. Angine de Poitrine: Hold the triangular Martian beer for me.” Quite a diagnosis of the crux of the matter. Twenty years playing the Martian. Khn and Klek de Poitrine (pseudonyms, obviously) have been making music together for more than two decades, since they were teenagers. They launched Angine de Poitrine just before the pandemic, in 2019, although they didn’t start performing regularly until 2023. The name, which in French means “angina pectoris”, is a devotion to the absurd, like everything in this project: the costumes came about as a joke because they wanted to play twice in the same week in the same venue, but the venue wouldn’t allow it, so they dressed up to be booked as if they were another group. And they kept the costumes. But what is this? The music that Angine de Poitrine plays is objectively difficult to describe. Themselves They have defined it as “dada-Pythagus-cubist rock-mantra”which does not clarify much but does point to the unclassifiable spirit of the project. Khn plays a double-neck bass guitar custom builtwhich allows you to play microtones, the intervals between conventional notes. Activate the looper with bare feet while Klek maintains a usually frenetic rhythm on the drums, brimming with changes of rhythm and time signature. What is microtonality. The melodies are based on a system of 24 tones per octave instead of the 12 usual in Western music. Some of his compositions move in time signatures as infrequent as 10/4, 17/4 or 28/4. For a listener accustomed to the Western tradition, the result sounds slightly “out of place”, in a constant tension that is difficult to express. Danick Trottier, musicologist at UQAM, has explained that the duo works primarily with quarter tones, half a standard semitone, creating a dramatically dissonant effect. Influences? There are a few: Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart, Primus, King Crimson, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, and more exotically, Indonesian gamelan and Middle Eastern music. It is not exactly the list of references of a group that thinks about the mass market. And that is the key to why they have attracted so much attention. Nobody knows who they are. The anonymity of its members goes beyond a mere nod to the Internet, but is taken very seriously. Their manager, Sébastien Collin, has undertaken a task of meticulously removing any mention of the band’s two members’ real names on the internet, and the group’s website warns that Angine de Poitrine is “an anonymous artistic project” and that any speculation about the identity of its members may constitute an invasion of their privacy. It goes viral. When KEXP (with a long history of presenting groups that end up becoming references) published the video, the reactions came in cascade: guitarists, jazz fans, progressive rock fans and people who had not paid attention to current music for years decided to spread it. Rick Beatoone of the most watched music analysis YouTubers in the world, claimed to receive 25 emails a day asking about the duo, more than about any other artist in the history of his channel. Dave Grohl He stated that the duo “literally blew his mind” and that he didn’t know how to explain it except to say that they had to be seen. The snowball was unstoppable. What makes the phenomenon unique is that the virality It wasn’t just from top to bottom.: Many of those respected voices started talking about the duo because their own listeners kept sending them the linkmaking fans the real engine of spread, not passive recipients. Ahead of the popes music intellectuals. Immediate success. Success has immediate and quite striking economic translation. Tickets for his concerts in Toronto already have resale prices of over $500. The vinyls of their first album, ‘Vol. YO’, They have sold for $2,000.. Their concert dates in New York, Los Angeles, the United Kingdom, France and Belgium sold out in minutes. This past April 3, 2026 they published ‘Vol. II’, their second album, which includes three of the songs from the already iconic KEXP video and three new compositions. Complex but accessible. There is something paradoxical about Angine de Poitrine: inaccessible music usually slows down uninitiated listeners. Here the opposite happens: difficulty generates analysis and curiosity, and this attracts more listeners, who return to the original video, wondering: “Why do I react like this to this strange thing?” James Gutierrez, assistant professor of music at Northeastern University, point because the thirst for something “obviously insimilable” is the axis of the reaction: this band is the emblem of something that no AI can convincingly replicateand in these times of predictable successes, where it is valued that everything is categorizable, the inimitable is an unexpected value. Another distinguished opinion: Pierre Michaud, associate professor of composition at the Université de Montréal, attributes the success to a “stroke of genius” that combines extreme complexity with a casual presentation. The geopolitical context also appears in the analyses. Gutierrez points out that in a 2026 marked by political gravity, something admirable, creative and playful activates the right mechanisms in the public. We can breathe easy: we continue … Read more

Congratulations, you already program without knowing how to program. Now prepare to wait six weeks for Apple to listen to you

by

James Steinberg is a New Yorker, 35 years old, and has two professions. The first, cat sitter. The second, develop applications through vibecodinga technique in which knowing what one wants and iterating with AI manages to replace (in part) deep knowledge of areas such as software architecture or programming. Steinberg is not the exception, but the new norm in a phenomenon in which amateur programmers are saturating the software distribution system. Let them tell Apple. Wanting is power. There was a time when publishing an app on the App Store was a rite of passage for an engineer or software developer. After months of fighting with Swift or Objective-C, the app was ready and all that was missing was the blessing of the App Store and its strict terms of use. Today that wall has fallen, because since the vibecoding has appeared, the creation of software is no longer about being able to do things, but about wanting to do them. However, this democratization of programming comes at a price: before the problem was writing code, but now the bottleneck is get the App Store to validate it. The growth rate of apps published in the App Store has grown extraordinary since the end of 2025. The impact of vibecoding is evident. Source: BI. The explosion of agentic software. Data from the consulting firm Sensor Tower confirm that we are facing an extraordinary situation. In January 2026, the volume of new apps launched in the App Store in the US grew 54.8% compared to the previous year. A very similar figure had already been recorded in December: a 56% increase compared to the same month in 2024. Here there is not suddenly a batch of experts fresh out of university programming as if there were no tomorrow, but rather a bunch of “amateur programmers” who have used vibecoding to program their apps in a matter of minutes or hours and who have uploaded them to the App Store. Apple has a problem. When Steinberg or any other developer tries to publish their app on the App Store, they run into a problem: Apple’s validation process is dragging out and the average wait time is around six weeks to achieve the desired “green light.” Apple, aware that this saturation can damage its reputation, has wanted to come forward with figures to calm the market’s spirits. Apple says one thing, developers another. According to the company, 90% of the proposals it receives from all these programmers are reviewed in less than 48 hours, and the average wait is, according to the company, 1.5 days. In the last twelve weeks, Apple employees have analyzed more than 200,000 weekly shipments, which seems to make it clear that, at least according to them, the bottleneck is not that big. The developers don’t seem to be of the same opinion, and in forums and social networks there is talk of how reviews of existing updates take up to a week and new releases enter a kind of administrative limbo that exasperates this new legion of programmers. Apps that are AI Slop? A potential reason for this slowdown in deadlines may not only be the quantity of apps, but their quality. Both among traditional programmers and probably within Apple itself, there is a fear that this new batch of apps “vibecodeadas” is largely another variant of the “AI slop” or “AI Slop” that has already been presented in the form of images or videos. For some experts, many of these apps are mediocre, have been generated with little supervision and simply seek to monetize search niches. The strict terms of the App Store may be criticizable, but they are a kind of retaining wall that could flood the App Store with absolutely irrelevant apps. The App Store facing the dilemma. Forrester analyst Dipanjan Chatterjee indicated in Business Insider that “this is not a problem that Apple can get out of by rejecting apps. As AI accelerates the creation of applications, the company will have to evolve from artisanal surveillance to curation at scale.” Or what is the same: either Apple automates part of the process, or waiting times will continue to increase. The other option: tighten the entry criteria for apps created with AI so much that it disproportionately penalizes the developers who use these tools… of which there are more and more. Wanted vibecoder. What seemed like a hobby for hobbyists is becoming an increasingly striking economic ecosystem. According to Business Insiderplatforms like Lovable already publish job offers in which they are looking for “vibecoders professionals”, which seems to validate this new type of programmer, no matter how much the traditional market criticizes him. But. This avalanche of applications created with AI may be striking, but comments from professional developers usually agree on the same thing: these apps are more difficult to maintain in the long term. Even Linus Torvalds, who had partially fallen into the networks of AI, I warned him: “AI will be a tool, and it will make people more productive. I think vibe coding is great for getting people to start programming. I think (the code it generates) is going to be horrible to maintain… so I don’t think programmers will go away. You’ll still want to have people who know how to maintain the output.” Image | James Yarema In Xataka | Vibe coding wants to help Open Source. But developers don’t want AI botches

Something that happened 30 km from the North Pole six weeks ago is about to ruin Palm Sunday. The culprit has a name and surname

by

There is a line that connects something that happened 30 kilometers from the North Pole six weeks ago with the foremen looking at the weather report on the afternoon of Palm Sunday. And that line has a name: a cold episode as real as it is unusual. -35 degrees at 5,500 meters. This meteorological indicator is a perfect summary: they are thermal values ​​typical of the harshest part of winter at the end of March. However, we should not overstate the issue as has been done in recent days. So what’s going on? The configuration is simple: a powerful blocking anticyclone is establishing itself between the south of the British Isles and the north of the Peninsula. That will channel a polar mass over the continent. Spain in particular will be under the influence of a slightly warmer branch, but (still) very cold for the time. Palm Sunday (i.e. March 29) will be the ‘climax’ of the onset of cold: The two main weather models in the world indicate -35 degrees. A good part of the eastern third of the Peninsula and the Balearic Islands will be in full “climate January” during the first half of Easter. The good side. According to AEMETthe anticyclone will block the rains during most of the festivals. It cannot be ruled out that “someday something will sneak in”, but scant rainfall is expected in most of the west and south of the peninsula. What can we expect? That’s the most complicated part of all this. The context is complex: an exceptional winter (the wettest in at least 47 years), a historic number of high-impact storms (at least 19) and reservoirs at 83.2% of their capacity. But the underlying mechanism complicates everything even more. In early February, sudden stratospheric warming occurred at the north pole, fragmenting the polar vortex. What we are seeing now is a coherent scenario with that. Holy Week, in this context, acts as a media amplifier. What’s going to happen. Because make no mistake, the snow level below 600 in the north is going to collapse many roads (just when more people are moving), the uncertainty in the northwest is going to complicate life for processions and agriculture can affect many plants in full bloom. Now, all of this falls within the typical Easter ‘playbook’. So no, it won’t be a perfect week: but we certainly shouldn’t expect a “universal flood” either. Image | Tropical Tidbits In Xataka | The rain has transformed the driest desert on the planet into a sea of ​​flowers. It’s a sight to behold and a problem for experts

Drones cannot be stored for more than eight weeks

by

For years, many European countries filled huge underground warehouses with ammunition capable of remaining operational for decades. In fact, some projectiles stored in Finland They have been waiting for more than 30 years without losing effectiveness. However, the weapons that are redefining today’s conflicts work with software, radios and chips that change at a pace much more similar to that of consumer electronics than that of traditional artillery. This difference is forcing armies to reconsider an unexpected question: how to prepare for a future war when military technology ages almost as quickly as a simple mobile phone. Rearmament enters the era of the drone. Because European defense was based on a relatively simple logic inherited from the Cold War: fill warehouses with ammunition, missiles, mines or artillery shells capable of remaining operational for decades. In countries like Finland, as we said, there are camouflaged deposits with huge reserves of ammunition that have been stored for years and are still fully usable. However, the Ukrainian war has shown that the battlefield of the 21st century increasingly revolves around cheap drones, software and electronic warfare, which has led NATO and European governments to rethink your investments. At the next summit of the alliance, precisely how to shift part of military spending from traditional systems (such as tanks or heavy artillery) will be discussed. towards emerging technologies based on drones, AIs, satellites and digital networks, in an attempt to adapt to a form of warfare where the speed of innovation is as important as firepower. The big problem: drones expire. This strategic change has revealed an unexpected dilemma. Unlike an artillery projectile or missile that can be stored for decades, drones depend on software, communications and electronic components that evolve at a rapid pace. The experience in Ukraine has shown that a dominant model on the front can become unusable a few weeks later due to new jamming systemsfrequency changes or improvements in autonomous navigation. That is why several European officials warn that storing large quantities of drones may be useless: because by the time they reach the battlefield, many will already be obsolete. Even governments calculate that certain models may become outdated in just eight weeksa reality that completely breaks with the classic logic of accumulating arsenals for years for a future conflict. Electronic warfare and useful life of a weapon. The main reason for this accelerated expiration is not so much in the hardware of the drone as in the electronic environment in which it operates. On the Ukrainian front, the constant struggle to dominate the radio spectrum It forces you to continually change frequencies, antennas, radios and control systems to avoid enemy blockade. A drone that works correctly today can stop doing so in a matter of days if the adversary develop new techniques of interference. Therefore, what really ages is not the fuselage of the device but your digital ecosystem: software, data links and navigation algorithms. In this context, the life cycle of a drone is more similar to that of a phone or a computer than that of a tank or a missile, which makes constant updating an essential requirement if the drone is not to become a “brick.” The industrial paradox. This phenomenon places governments before an industrial paradox difficult to solve. To prepare for a crisis, Europe needs an industry capable of producing large-scale drones quickly, but producing them too soon can be counterproductive because they would be left outdated before use. Some manufacturers hold that the only way to solve this dilemma is to buy drones now to train the armed forces, develop doctrines and build an industrial base capable of increasing production in the event of war. However, even the most optimistic companies recognize that multiplying production has limits: They can escalate tenfold in an emergency, but hardly a hundredfold overnight. The military revolution. Despite these challenges, the strategic logic of drones is difficult to ignore. Analysts and companies in the sector highlight that, for the price of two Leopard tanksa country could deploy hundreds of teams of attack drones capable of stopping entire armored units. This economic change is transforming the way we think about war: cheap and numerous systems can neutralize heavy platforms that for decades symbolized military power. For this reason, Bloomberg reported that NATO is studying how to combine traditional hardware with new digital technologies that allow us to close the gap with the United States and adapt to the new operating environment. The future of rearmament. In summary and in view of this new reality, many European governments believe that the solution is not so much to fill warehouses with drones, but create industrial ecosystems able to adapt and quickly produce updated versions when necessary. This implies, a priori, connecting armed forces, software developers, engineers and manufacturers in a continuous cycle of innovation that allows systems to be modified several times a year. Thus, instead of static arsenals, the objective becomes a flexible industry capable of evolving at the pace of electronic warfare. In other words, the great challenge of European rearmament It is no longer just about spending more and more money to stockpile weapons like there is no tomorrow, but about accepting that, in 21st century warfare, even the most decisive weapons can become old before they leave the warehouse. Image | Aerospace, State Border Guard Service of Ukraine In Xataka | Europe has successfully tested a special command against Russia’s biggest threat: underwater drone swarms are ready In Xataka | Europe faces a question it can no longer avoid: how to respond to a war that is rarely declared

This Star Trek movie was canceled in 1977 because science fiction had no future. Two weeks later Star Wars premiered

by

In the mid-1970s, ‘Star Trek‘ was experiencing a unique phenomenon in the entertainment industry. The original series, canceled in 1969 after three seasons of discreet audiences, had found an unexpected second life. Continuous reruns and fan enthusiasm (the first phenomenon of its kind to develop pop culture) encouraged Paramount to extend the original mythology. In 1976, a full-page advertisement appeared in ‘The New York Times’ proclaiming the imminent production of a Star Trek film: ‘Planet of the Titans’, and which aspired to take the franchise into uncharted cinematic territories. The origin. Producer Gerald Isenberg assumed executive control of the project in July 1976, intending to transform ‘Star Trek’ into a first-rate cinematic event. To direct, Paramount hired Philip Kaufman, a filmmaker whose profile was unconventional for a franchise. Kaufman would direct acclaimed works such as ‘Chosen for Glory’ and would delve into a science fiction very different from ‘Star Trek’ in the remake of ‘Invasion of the Ultracorps’ in 1978. But by 1976 he had already directed the western ‘No Law or Hope’ and the arctic adventures of ‘The White Dawn’. Chris Bryant and Allan Scott, British writers of the superb and extremely rare ‘Shadow Menace’, were chosen as scriptwriters. The conceptual basis of the project was nourished by ambitious sources: Kaufman and Isenberg structured the narrative inspired by the novel ‘The Last and the First Humanity’ by Olaf Stapledon, which traces human evolution over billions of years. As a scientific advisor, Paramount hired Jesco von Puttkamer, a NASA engineer. Ralph McQuarriewhose conceptual work for ‘Star Wars’ was then in full development, would do the designs. The conflicts. Creative tensions quickly emerged. Kaufman aspired to create a cinematographic work that would dialogue with ‘2001: A Space Odyssey‘ in visual and philosophical complexity. Gene Roddenberry, creator of the original series, defended its essence. Bryant and Scott they were trapped between these two incompatible visions, trying to balance the artistic ambitions of one and the fidelity of the other. The budget, initially set at three million dollars, rose to 10 million. What was it about? Captain James T. Kirk has disappeared three years ago, during a rescue mission near a black hole. The Enterprise remains operational, but Spock has returned to Vulcan. When Starfleet detects anomalous energetic emissions coming from the same black hole where Kirk was lost, Spock rejoins. They discover a planet trapped inside the black hole, the mythical home of the Titans, an ancient civilization possessing technology superior to that of humans. The planet is being inexorably sucked into the black hole. Spock locates Kirk, scarred by years of isolation and transformed by cosmic forces. The planned outcome was the most radical bet: to escape collapse, the Enterprise deliberately enters the black hole, emerging not in its time, but in our prehistory. The crew discovers that they themselves are the Titans of mythology. Kirk is Prometheus, the bringer of fire to early humanity. The script does not clarify whether the crew would finally manage to return to their time or would be trapped observing the slow development of human history that they themselves had started. Kirk is dead. But… why make a movie in which the legendary Kirk is practically absent? William Shatner’s contract with Paramount had expired, leading Bryant and Scott to develop a first draft that eliminated Kirk. After several weeks of work, the studio informed them that an agreement had been reached and that Kirk should be reinstated as the lead. This twist forced a substantial rewrite of the material. And the situation with Leonard Nimoy was even more complex: the actor withdrew from the project due to a conflict over the unauthorized use of his image as Spock in a Heineken advertisement, but an agreement was finally reached. The cancellation. Bryant and Scott submitted their first completed draft on March 1, 1977, after months of intense creative negotiations, but ultimately walked away from the project. Kaufman personally took on the rewrite of the script. His version intensified the role of Spock and developed the dynamic with a Klingon played by none other than the legendary Toshiro Mifune. Just when he was convinced he had found the definitive story, he was told that Paramount had canceled the project. This happened in May 1977, just seventeen days before the premiere of ‘Star Wars’. Kaufman would always remember the phrase that a studio executive told him as justification for the cancellation: “there is no future in science fiction.” Why was it cancelled? They converged different factors: the increase in costs, the fear that ‘Star Wars’ would saturate the science fiction market and the belief that they had distanced themselves too much from the original series. When ‘Star Wars’ grossed more than $775 million worldwide, Paramount pitched ‘Star Trek: Phase II,’ a television series planned as the flagship of a new company television network. It would also be cancelled, although one of its scripts would eventually become the basis for ‘Star Trek: The Motion Picture’, released in December 1979. The legacy. ‘‘Planet of the Titans’ was not the first failed attempt to bring ‘Star Trek’ to the cinema, but rather one more link in a chain of frustrated projects that reflected Paramount’s uncertainty about how to capitalize on the franchise: there are cases as popular as the legendary and disturbing film ‘The God Thing’, written by Roddenberry himself in 1975, or the many attempts to recruit science fiction authors to contribute ideas for films, as happened with Harlan Ellison in the late seventies. And although something remained from the film in the future after the cancellation of ‘Planet of the Titans’ (for example, the concept designs They were reused in 2017 in ‘Star Trek: Discovery’), this cursed movie is the perfect example of what ‘Star Trek’ has always been. A sign that there are more ways to do science fiction outside of spectacle pulp of Star Wars and, at the same time, the confirmation that it is very complicated to do so. In Xataka | More and more … Read more

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.