worse

They say things get worse before they get better. The RAM crisis teaches us that they can always get worse

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The current situation in which hyperscalers have made all the hardware manufacturers produce almost exclusively for them is leading us to a curious scenario. Apart from the huge RAM and SSD crisis that affects everything –and everyone– Changing from one technology to a newer one no longer depends so much on the needs of a company but on what is barely available on the market. AND The Elec points to a movement by Samsung that represents a new thrust for mobile phones, computers and everything that has soldered RAM. No more LPDDR4 modules. LPDDR4 LPDDR5. They stand for Low-Power Double Data Rate, the low-power version of the RAM tablets that we can buy when building a PC, for example. Unlike conventional RAM pickups, LPDDR memory is soldered to the boardachieving very high speeds with a minuscule energy cost. That is why it is the preferred one for smartphones, tablets and ultrabooks, but it is also ideal for some miniPCs that have become popular in recent months. The downside is that it cannot be expanded or replaced, but its features make it the only option for certain devices. The most powerful versions mount LPDDR5 and LPDDR5Xbut there are still many devices that have the fourth generation versions for cost savings reasons. The turn comes when, according to the South Korean media The Elec, Samsung has begun to cut off the supply of LPDDR4 and LPDDR4X modules to its customers. Translation. Although they are memories with a decade behind them, mid-range and entry-level mobile phones, as well as many other devices, continue to have these versions to keep prices low. At a time when the market is more volatile than evermaintaining those competitive prices by mounting memories that are still interesting in certain ranges was a strategy that made a lot of sense. However, as the media points out, Samsung seems to want to focus on the production of LPDDR5 and LPDDR5X memories. By converting the output lines of the LPDDR4 memories, they will be able to manufacture more new generation RAM, but the price to pay will be that mobile manufacturers will have to switch to that LPDDR5. Mid-range and entry-level smartphones will be faster, but also more expensive. The price to pay. A few weeks ago we already said that the impact was evident. memory represented 20% of the bill of manufacturing an entry-level mobile phone, being one of the most expensive components. And, at that time, the figure was expected to reach 40% by the middle of this year. With this reconversion of Samsung’s lines, we will see where the percentage increase is in a year in which it is already estimating a drop of more than 10% in mobile shipments. The calculations They are tremendous: In the entry range – increments of 30 dollars per unit. In the middle range – from 60 to 80 dollars per unit. In the premium – from 100 and 150 dollars per unit. Samsung itself is not spared. Here you can think that Samsung has a lever to eat the mobile market. That is to say, if it is one of the three that controls the memory production segment and, in addition, has its line of mobile phones and tablets, it can give preferential treatment to its ‘brothers’ to maintain the price in the midst of the crisis. Well no. They already commented that this was not going to happen and, furthermore, it is already flirting with the idea thats Galaxy A17 be an example of this movement. The company’s entry-level mobile has the Exynos 1330 SoC that supports both LPDDR4X and LPDDR5 memories. When the supply of LPDDR4X runs out, they will move to the new generation, which will mean that there will be two different A17s, one of them being one with 50% faster memory than the other. They go direct with HBM. But, as two pieces of news are better understood together, at the same time that the abandonment of the LPDDR4 production lines is pointed out, we have confirmation that Samsung is going to press ahead with the development of HBM memories. These are high-bandwidth memories that are packaged in AI training and inference platforms, and have been reported that Samsung has managed to reduce the HBM memory development cycle from two years to one. It’s a necessary boost to continue being both NVIDIA and AMD’s preferred choice for AI hyperscalers. Shortage. Putting all this together, the result is that there is a RAM crisis for a while. The bottleneck of the industry is enormous and that only three companies –SK Hynix, Micron and Samsung– are the ones who call the shots, and all have opted to satisfy the demands of AI, does not help the situation return to normal. Although there is Chinese companies that may have their opportunity In this scenario, the reality is that the estimate is that all the production of the large It will barely cover 60% of the memory demand until 2027. These companies, of course, are doing great. An example is that, in three months of 2026, Samsung earned more than in all of 2025. But for users and the consumer industry itself, the reality is different. And the worst thing is that there is no realistic date when we will start to see a recovery. NVIDIA has taken the lead, AMD tooand it is no longer just the US and China that need memory: Europe also wants its share of the pie. There are voices that They aim for 2028 as the year of recoverybut other forecasts they go above 2030. What is clear is that there is a crisis ahead In Xataka | TSMC’s only problem was that it was in Taiwan. So the United States has decided to get her out of there

everything that could go wrong went worse

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In 2017, the technology company Plexcreator of the free streaming platform with his same namedecided to organize something that should be the event of the year for its employees: a whole week in Honduraswith a “Survivors” theme, to unite the company’s 120 remote workers. The budget that the company had allocated for that activity team building It wasn’t exactly modest: $500,000. The reality was, according to everyone who was there, something radically different. The experience was so “unique” that almost a decade later, the protagonists continue to tell it and even The Wall Street Journal has been echoed of that trip. And what they describe sounds more like a collective joke than a business trip. When chaos unites more than planning Corporate retreats have been gaining weight in human resources budgets for years, especially in companies with distributed teams to unite teams that do not see each other face to face throughout the year. According to IEBS data collected through the specialized portal Trafalgarpolo86% of companies that implement these corporate retreats report improvements in internal cohesion and talent retention, especially when your teams operate remotely. Plex is the perfect example: a streaming platform, whose employees work all over the world, that needed something to truly unite them. Something like a survival-themed experience, which in the end turned out to be more real than they would have liked. Keith Valory, CEO of Plex, acknowledged in the WSJ that the result was exactly what was expected despite the chaos: “You forge very strong bonds on these trips. It’s like the force that gives life to the company.” Almost a decade after that trip, many participants continue to work together and the adventures of Plexcon 2017 remain one of the team’s favorite topics of conversation. They even have a video of his adventure. Review by the CEO of Plex about his trip to Honduras The first signs that something was wrong on that trip came weeks before it began. Sean Hoff, founder of Moniker Partnersthe event’s organizing agency, told the WSJ that “about three weeks before arriving in Honduras, we received an email from the hotel’s general manager saying ‘I’m leaving. I wish you the best with your retirement.’ I knew something was wrong.” Three days later, another email: the head chef would no longer be at the hotel. Without a manager and without a chef, buses in Honduras began to fill with Plex employees. The adventure promises. The arrival did not reassure anyone. Scott Olechowski, product director and co-founder of Plex, said that they found the arrival disturbing: “Dirt roads. You approach and there are surveillance towers around the property and people with machine guns.” Many employees began to wonder where had they been taken. The first to fall was, precisely, the CEO who was supposed to lead the week with his team. Keith Valory disobeyed the unanimous advice of avoid raw vegetables and ate a salad. “I caught a E.coliwhich is the worst thing you can catch in your entire life. I lost between 8 and 10 kilos. The doctor came and they nailed an IV bag to the bedpost,” the manager told the American newspaper. Tarantulas, anthills and 38 degrees in the sun With the CEO prostrate, the tests with survivor theme They started under a blazing sun and at almost 38 degrees Celsius, led by an ex-Navy SEAL they had hired. In one of the tests, an employee had to eat a dead tarantula. He was from Texas and claimed to have eaten worse things. One of the survival tests consisted of eating spiders and insects In another test, another employee fell onto an anthill of fire antswhich forced give antihistamines urgently. There were no pills left, so they had to inject it directly into the affected buttocks. The infrastructure of the “luxury” complex didn’t help either. In the absence of the main chef (who had resigned weeks before the group’s arrival) the food came half cookedwater and electricity were cut off at any time of the day and the solar panelscovered by vegetation, could not charge the batteries and the premises were dark during the night. Sean Hoff, the person responsible for making everything go well on the trip, ended up with palpitations caused due to dehydration from running from one side of the complex to the other in high temperatures, trying to solve the problems that kept arising. “They had to call an ambulance and give me an EKG. They told me, ‘Sir, you need to slow down. You’re pushing your body to the limit.’” Stress tests for office workers devised by a special forces soldier One morning, a Plex employee found in his shower an animal similar to a porcupine which, apparently, had fallen from the ceiling during the night and became trapped in the screen. Stuck on an island with reggae and beer One of the nights they organized a dinner on one of the paradisiacal beaches on the premises. What should have been a pleasant evening with the sound of the sea as a soundtrack, ended with many attendees bitten by sand fleaswhich forced antihistamines to be distributed among employees. The next day, the group traveled to the neighboring island of Utila to visit the reconstruction of a baseball field that the company had financed. What no one had calculated was the return trip: the runway was very small and only allowed eight-seater planes. To make matters worse, it had no night lighting, so the planes could not operate at night. Despite hurrying as much as they could in the transfers, part of the group was trapped on the island without being able to return to the compound where they were staying until the sun rose again. One of the employees who was trapped wore out the antihistamines and had to notify a local doctor who improvised an intravenous line to administer it. Maybe karma wanted to wink at them, and the group that was stuck on the island spent the rest of … Read more

The Tax Agency does not want you to use ChatGPT for Income. The problem is that their alternatives are worse

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The general director of the Tax Agency, Soledad Fernández, has opened the Income 2025 campaign with a clear message: do not use ChatGPT to make your declaration. “With how much the Tax Agency team has dedicated themselves to providing the best help and assistance tools, I wouldn’t risk doing it with ChatGPT,” he said. The warning has a certain meaning. The language models They can hallucinate, they do not have access to your real tax data, and asking them to manage your return involves passing them personal and financial information that ends up stored on private servers. The risk of error (and sanction) is real. That said, there are more nuances. Why is it important. The Treasury notice comes at a time when millions of Spaniards are looking for any shortcut to avoid one of the most tedious procedures of the year. If the official answer is “trust our tools”, the logical question is: are those tools really up to the task? Between the lines. What the Treasury does not say is that the underlying problem is not ChatGPT: it is that the Spanish tax system is opaque enough that using an AI seems like a reasonable solution. If millions of citizens are tempted to delegate their declaration to a chatbot, it is because something has failed before. The complexity of personal income tax (with its regional deductions, its cases of ascendants and descendants, its special regimes) is not an accident of design. It’s the design. The current situation. Treasury has presented improvements in Web Rental for this campaign: more access to data capture windows, greater interaction between sections and better information on subsidies. It has also improved its app. And it maintains the traditional channels: The plan “We call you“starts on May 6 (appointment from April 29). In-person attention in offices, from June 1. They are real advances, but gradual. Renta Web continues to be a platform that requires prior knowledge to navigate with ease. The Treasury virtual assistant resolves generic doubts, but not specific cases. Yes, but. The alternative that remains for those who do not master taxation is to pay a manager. A service that has a cost that not everyone can afford, and that turns a right (understanding and managing your own declaration) into something that must be outsourced. It’s the equivalent of IKEA selling its furniture without instructions and then complaining that people look up videos on YouTube to assemble it. The big question. The Tax Agency also assures that it does not use AI in the processing of files or in extensive control, and that its risk analysis systems “cannot be considered AI in the strict sense.” Although it leaves the door open for its future use. The question they do not answer is another: if AI is good enough for the Treasury to study it internally, why can’t it be part of a solution that helps the taxpayer from within the system, with their own data and with legal guarantees? In Xataka | Draft Income Tax 2025: how to enter and present your 2026 declaration online with the Tax Agency website Featured image | Xataka

It’s science and that’s why they sleep worse than men

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When sharing a bed with another person, there is a chance that there will be an eternal nighttime thermal war, with one person roasting in the heat and pulling the duvet down, while the other freezes and seeks refuge under the covers. For years, this has been treated as a simple couple anecdotebut the truth is that it has a physiological reason behind it. And something that has been seen is that women, statistically, sleep worse than men, with the thermostat being the culprit. Sleeping differently. To understand this phenomenon, we must first know how our body works when it prepares to rest. In this case, in order for us to fall asleep and enter the deeper phases, our core temperature must drop. However, during the REM phasethe body needs this temperature to rise slightly again. This is where the biological conflict comes in, as is exposed in the podcast Sleep is a Skillwhere a specialist explains how women generally tend to have less muscle mass and a lower basal metabolism than men. This translates into a skin temperature between 3 and 4 degrees colder, meaning that, with colder extremities, women prefer warmer environments to be able to reach that optimal temperature that induces sleep. Something that opens up many anecdotes, like how in a couple women need a sheet to sleep in in the summer. Their differences. In general terms (which is not universal), while men need the room and bed to be cold at the beginning of the night to lower their core temperature quickly, Women require a warmer environment to compensate for colder skin. and not suffer alterations in your sleep architecture. What science says. In the literature, there are multiple studies that confirm these gender differences in thermoregulation. One of these was published in 2023, where it was shown that women recorded higher skin temperatures than men during the sleep phase where there is higher quality. That is, it requires a warmer microenvironment to have a much more adequate sleep. Furthermore, several studies published in Journal of Sleep Research reveal that women reach nocturnal body temperature minimums earlier than men. But also, its temperature drops are less pronounced, which directly affects the quality of continuous sleep. The use of technology. Given this problem, there are companies that have set to work to do something that would a priori solve this problem for couples: use smart mattress covers to regulate the temperature on each side of the bed so that women sleep better. It is true that the data they rely on internally to sell their mattresses still has to be validated. Even so, the pre-existing scientific evidence is robust. Women are not “chilly” on a whim, but their biology requires a different thermal environment to be able to rest properly. Perhaps the definitive solution to disputes over the duvet is not by giving in, but by dividing air conditioning technology in the bed. Images | Vitaly Gariev In Xataka | We thought insomnia was just not being able to sleep. Now we know that there are five different disorders

The Adamuz accident has plunged demand for the AVE by 30%. It is a fact that hides something worse: mistrust

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The high-speed accident in Adamuz (Córdoba) has turned the Spanish railway upside down. Closures, speed restrictions and a loss of credibility in the service have directly impacted the sales of the three companies that operate on Spanish roads. And it has translated into data: a 30% drop in sales. The data. Demand for high-speed trains has fallen by 30%, according to data collected by Trainlinea railway ticket price comparator that operates in our country. The information was released by Pedro García, its general director in Europe and Spain, at an event organized by the company this week. According to this platform, the demand for banknotes has fallen by 30% in the weeks following the Adamuz accident (Córdoba) in which 46 people died after an Iryo derailed and, still under investigationthe subsequent crash and derailment of an Alvia that was traveling in the opposite direction. No trust. We could say that it hints at it but it is almost a cry: the customer is distrustful of high speed. It is not only a question of security, the drop in demand is undoubtedly influenced by speed restrictions that have been imposed and the cancellations late in the day between Madrid and Barcelona. It must be taken into account that, in just over a month, we have had the following schedule on the Spanish railway lines: Later. In the current state of high-speed lines, only one thing is clear: the train is going to arrive later. First of all, because Adif is reviewing all avenues and that requires, for example, In Madrid-Barcelona, ​​25 minutes have already been added by default to the journey. And that is in the best of cases. Because as reported by a train driver Xatakathose who drive the trains have the power to stop the train or move more slowly if they consider that the tracks are not safe or, at least, not at maximum speed. Their repeated complaints have led to temporary speed limitations that have been activated and deactivated but, ultimately, yours is the last word. This situation has been experienced with the reopening of the Madrid-Seville line. The driver, passing through the Adamuz section He stopped the train thinking that something was happening on the premises.. Then it turned out that, simply, confusion had arisen due to repairs carried out. to the plane. This distrust has caused a transfer of passengers to the plane. And the thing is that, especially companies, have been putting aside the use of the train for daily trips between Madrid and the large capitals of Spanish provinces. Especially in the Madrid-Barcelona route, where business use of the train was very high, demand for air travelers skyrocketed to the point that Iberia capped dynamic prices at 99 euros. The Ombudsman even asked the CNMC to study the price increases that were experienced in the following days in airlines and car rental companies. The rise in demand for aircraft between Madrid and Barcelona has been such that Vueling has returned to the Air Bridgea route that had abandoned in a movement where, without a doubt, The arrival of Ouigo and Iryo on Spanish roads had influenced. And an impact on the accounts. The combo of cancellations, high-speed restrictions and insecurity in arriving at the agreed time has caused a hole in the accounts of the large railway companies. According to theEconomistalready in January 2025 the losses were recorded at more than one million euros per day if only the cut in the southern corridor was taken into account. In The reason They raise the impact to a loss of 109 million euros in Malaga tourism alone. Losses that are yet to be quantified for companies but that arrive at a bad time, just when Ouigo and Iryo aspired to make money in our country after completing its landing phase. Photo | Samson Ng. D201@EAL In Xataka | The first AVE trains are more than 30 years old and are still in circulation: Renfe has not yet found a company for their maintenance

If the question is whether they forgot the elevator shaft in the tallest residential skyscraper in Spain, the answer is simple: it was much worse

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For many years, the Mediterranean horizon was the canvas on which Spain projected its most audacious ambitions, including some extremely difficult to catalog. In times of prosperity, the sky seemed limitless. Then, each silhouette in height began to count a different story about risk, pride and collective memory. The vertical dream born of euphoria. He Intempo building started to get up in 2006at the exact moment when credit was flowing without brakes and Benidorm continued to feed its obsession with growing towards the sky as if there were no tomorrow. We are talking about two tower-shaped monsters of almost 200 meters joined by a golden diamond, a hyperbolic architecture that promised mark an era and become the new icon of the Mediterranean “Beniyork”. The project was born with generous financing from a Galician box and with a ridiculous social capital compared to the magnitude of the work, a disproportion (and a nonsense) that today sums up better than anything the climate of that Spain that believed that the cranes would never stop turning. From the symbol of the future to the monument to the bubble. But the crisis of 2008 changed the script suddenly. The loan skyrocketed above 100 million, the financial institution went bankrupt and the debt ended in hands of the Sarebthe bad bank. The works were paralyzed, the developer entered into internal conflict and the building was left with its structure practically finished but trapped in a legal and financial limbo. For years, his shadow threatened to add to that long list of phantom monsters, in fact, it was the golden skeleton that dominated the Poniente beach, a mass visible for kilometers that summarized the collapse of a model economical based on brick and easy financing. The reality was worse than the myth. Then came the stories and legends, one turned into a meme and repeated a hundred times even in media reference. It happens that, it is not that in the tallest residential skyscraper in Spain they forgot the elevator shaft, it is that the reality it was much worse. The work accumulated erratic decisions, changes in construction, salary delays, serious accidents and chaotic management in which floors were concreted without having definitive plans for the upper ones. The project was at 93% with 100% of the loan consumed, there was physical risk due to the deterioration of the structure and a bankruptcy of creditors that left the fate of the giant in the hands of judicial administrators and investment funds. The problem was not a cartoonish technical detail, but rather a chain of incompetence, financial strain and poor planning that jeopardized the building’s entire viability. The elevator hoax that went around the world. Impossible to ignore it. The story that the architects “forgot the elevator shaft” was born of an ambiguous phrase and it became the perfect headline summer 2013. The image was irresistible: a skyscraper of almost 200 meters incapable of climbing its own neighbors. However, elevators existed, of course, and They worked and were planned in the plans. The photographs and subsequent media visits clearly demonstrated. It didn’t matter, the hoax was amplified in international media that they added layers fiction, from cables that didn’t fit to impossible redesigns. That anecdote overshadowed what was truly relevant: the problem was never technical, it was structural in business and financial terms. Rescue, redesign and change of owners. Years passed, and the bad bank promoted the necessary competition to prevent the tower from deteriorating and facilitated liquidity to complete the work. Later, an investment fund acquired the assetremodeled interiors that had become obsolete and corrected questionable decisions, such as hideous finishes that obscured the homes or layouts that did not take advantage of the sea views. Finally, the top diamond was reconfigured to offer more attractive apartments and the complex was relaunched, now as a luxury residential with thousands of square meters of common areas, hotel services and international marketing. From ghost to icon. Thus, and after more than a decade of delays, the Intempo residential skyscraper finally opened its doors and began to hand out the keys to his first clients. In total, 256 homes, 11 elevatorscomplete technical plants and a structure that rested on piles designed to support both towers. From that moment on, the colossus stopped being a simple media skeleton and became a building with neighbors and real activity. Its golden silhouette left behind the stories to keep you awake, it no longer represented only the bubble and failure, but also the resilience of a city that had made verticality its hallmark. That is why it is worth saying it once again: Intempo was not the skyscraper that forgot the elevator, it was the skyscraper that survived its own time. Image | Enrique Domingo, Diego Delso, Tim Rawle In Xataka | Matalascañas is an example of a major architectural failure: thinking that the beach of your childhood was going to be how you remember it. In Xataka | Parking lots were the goose that laid the golden eggs for bricks in Spain. Until someone created the tomb of Las Teresitas

The special effects of 2025 are worse than those of 2010. And part of the blame lies with us viewers

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When James Cameron released ‘Avatar’ in 2009, the film industry contemplated what seemed the future of visual effects. The film set a technical standard that, paradoxically, today’s cinema not only has not surpassed, but often does not even reach. The problem is not technological: software tools have advanced exponentially since then. But the industry has evolved in a way that everything looks worse than before. The sooner, the better. It is not necessary to go to the undisputed peak of the digital image that represented Cameron’s movie. ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest’ featured Davy Jones and his beard of tentacles, one of the best live-action CGI integrations ever seen. ‘Interstellar’ featured the participation of astrophysicist Kip Thorne for their spatial sequences. It is enough to compare the photorealistic texture of Na’vi or Jones with the plasticized finishes of Marvel or DC to see that something fundamental has changed in the way of producing special effects. The common denominator in all of them was time. In this analysis about the visual effects crisisit is explained that the productions of that decade had post-production calendars that ranged between 18 and 24 months. ‘Avatar’ He had two full years for the effects phase. Its consequences have started from comparable times. The spectacular images in ‘Inception’ of the city folding in on itself, another milestone of the era, took months of planning. Luxuries that are practically unthinkable today. Increasingly. The problem is the quantity. The latest studies indicate that while a commercial film from 2010 contained approximately 600 shots with visual effects, current productions usually exceed 3,000 shots. This 400% increase has not been accompanied by proportional budgets or calendars. Quite the opposite: hasty effects, poorly worked compositions and a digital homogenization that detracts from the personality of the images. Tremendous expectations In your situation analysisTreehouse Detective explains the case of the prequel to ‘The Thing’, which in 2011 remade John Carpenter’s 1982 classic. The special effects team Studio ADI, led by Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr., built physical creatures with animatronics and prosthetics over several months of pre-production. After test screenings, Universal Pictures made a decision that Gillis would rate how devastating: Almost all practical work was replaced by CGI in post-production. Audiences expected to see digital effects in a science fiction horror film and considered practical effects “old-fashioned.” Paradigm shift. This case illustrates a profound cultural shift in expectations. During the 2010s, CGI went from being an exceptional tool for what was thought unattainable with practical effects to becoming the standard. The irony is that the greatness of films like ‘Alien’ or ‘Jurassic Park’ (where CGI was mixed with practical effects) was built precisely on the tangibility of their creatures. But the industry, and with it the audience, developed a dependence on digital finishing that is associated with prestige and quality, regardless of whether the final result can be improved with traditional effects. The economy of effects. The proliferation of streaming platforms has radically reconfigured the economics of special effects. Films produced directly for Netflix, Amazon Prime or Disney+ operate with significantly lower budgets than productions destined for cinemas, while the public maintains their visual expectations. This impossible equation has put pressure on the entire FX production chain. The era of auctions. The contract awarding system has evolved towards an auction model that prioritizes cost and speed over quality. The studios put projects into competition between multiple effects companies. The one who offers to complete the job in less time and for less money gets the contract. This process creates a competitive spiral in which small studios accept unsustainable conditions in the hope of maintaining their position in the market. Studies that close. It is a system that sometimes has extreme consequences. ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ case: after the public’s rejection of the character’s original design, Paramount ordered a complete redesign. Moving Picture Company, the studio responsible for the effects, had to redo hundreds of shots without a deadline extension or significant additional budget. The studio closed its Vancouver headquarters shortly after, with multiple sources indicating that the project had contributed significantly to their financial problems. It is not an isolated case: Rhythm & Hues, winner of the Oscar for the effects of ‘Life of Pi’ in 2013, declared bankruptcy weeks before the awards ceremony. The company had agreed to complete the job at a loss to maintain its reputation, a pattern that media outlets such as VFX Voice have documented. Visual effects artists and technicians frequently operate in crunch to meet deadlines that were unfeasible from the beginning. The lower union rate In the visual effects sector, unlike other technical departments in film, it leaves these professionals without protection against abusive working conditions. The causes. The deterioration in the quality of the special effects does not respond to a single cause, but to pressures from two opposite directions. Movie studios have optimized their production structures to maximize profit margins, outsourcing visual effects work to companies competing in a wild race. The public has developed inflexible expectations about the omnipresence of CGI, rejecting alternatives. As technology advances, the time and money available to apply it decreases. Just compare budgets: ‘Avatar’ operated on a total budget of $237 million, of which a substantial portion was allocated specifically to technological development and visual effects over several years. Meanwhile, an MCU production distributes a similar budget among multiple items (salaries, marketing) while compressing post-production calendars to just six or eight months to meet immovable release dates, established years in advance. In Xataka | Either CGI designers get their act together or our televisions will continue to put their movies on the ropes

Science explains why the cure can be worse than the disease

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At the time of want to lose a few kilos The truth is that many different strategies emerge, such as eliminate sweetsstart exercising more or eat much more protein. But, on the other hand, there are strategies that are really extravagant and that are spread by influencers of our society that do not have any solid foundation. The last one arrives from actor Matt Damon who claims to have lost a few kilos thanks to leaving gluten out of his diet. A discrepancy. And the reality is that science has a lot to say about this decision. Since the ‘gluten-free’ foods that now flood supermarkets were born as a medical necessity for 1% of the population. But now it has become a holy grail of weight loss following the following logic: ‘if I cut out bread and pasta, I lose weight. Ergo, gluten makes you fat.’ There is no evidence. Nutritional science has bad news for these peopleincluding the actor, since eliminating gluten does not have a specific slimming effect. In fact, if you do not have celiac disease or gluten sensitivity diagnosed, eliminating it can even be counterproductive for cardiovascular and metabolic health. It’s a calorie deficit. The first myth to debunk is that gluten, per sebe a metabolic villain that makes us accumulate fat. According to a systematic review published in International Journal of Cardiovascular Sciencesgluten-free diets are not associated with greater weight loss compared to normal gluten-containing diets in healthy adults. So… why do some people swear they lost weight by giving up gluten? The answer lies in the changes that accompany this diet, but not in gluten. And when you give up gluten, you automatically stop eating calorie-dense ultra-processed foods such as industrial pastries, cookies, refined pasta… In this way, you eat fewer total calories and this is what causes you to lose weight and not the absence of gluten. The effect of water. In addition to this caloric deficit, a pilot study in athletes noted that the rapid weight loss after six weeks without gluten was primarily due to loss of fluid and glycogen stores, not an actual metabolic advantage. Fewer refined carbohydrates mean less water retention. But if there was any doubt, another clinical trial in patients with a metabolic problem in their history detected reductions in waist circumference and triglyceridesbut without changes in weight. In this way, the researchers suggest that this is due more to better food selection and glycemic control than to a “fat-removing effect” of gluten. A flat stomach. Another of the great thoughts that can be heard in this sense is that people who do not eat wheat feel much less bloated. And this is real, but the culprit is not gluten, but from the fructans of wheatwhich is basically a type of fermentable carbohydrate that produces a lot of gas and bloating. In this way, the abdomen looks much flatter, but not because of a loss of fat. The cardiovascular paradox. But although gluten is seen as a demon, the reality is that it has several intrinsically good things. For example, gluten is often accompanied by whole grains, and whole grains are cardioprotective. This is evidenced in a study published in the BMJ with more than 100,000 participants who were followed for 26 years. This concludes that gluten consumption does not increase the risk of coronary heart disease. What’s more, when the data was adjusted, a higher gluten intake was associated with a lower risk of coronary heart disease. That is why the authors warned: promoting gluten-free diets in healthy people can reduce the consumption of whole grains and, therefore, negatively affect cardiovascular health. And in diabetes. In this case they were three large studies that showed an inverse relationship: Those who ate the most gluten had a 13% lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes compared to those who ate the least. The why? Again, the fiber and micronutrients associated with the cereal that contains gluten. The problem of the accused. When we see that something is ‘gluten free’ we may think that we are looking at something much healthier. But the reality is that sometimes, to compensate for the lack of elasticity and texture that gluten provides, The food industry often reformulates products by adding more saturated fat, more sugar and reducing the protein it contains. Furthermore, gluten-free diets in non-celiac people have also been associated with a lower intake of fiber, B vitamins and a worse long-term cardiometabolic profile. Who should give up gluten? Science is quite clear in this case: who needs it, that is, the 1% of the population with celiac disease. And logically also people with non-celiac gluten sensitivity who may have major digestive problems. For the rest of the population, eliminating gluten offers no clear nutritional benefits. On the contrary: there is a risk of spending more money on products with a worse nutritional profile, reducing the consumption of cardioprotective fiber and attributing to gluten a success that, in reality, simply belongs to eating less ultra-processed foods. Images | Wesual Click Towfiqu barbhuiya In Xataka | Food has been filled with contradictory messages: a sports nutritionist helps us understand what’s behind it

Women consistently sleep worse than men. And science has finally discovered why it is

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For years we have been able to have a perception in many homes: the women tend to sleep worse, wake up more and feel more tired than men. This is something that for a long time has been dismissed as a subjective perception, but Science has now wanted to close the debate, pointing out that it is not only a perception, but that there is a gender gap documented. The data. The Global Sleep Survey 2025carried out on a massive sample of more than 30,000 people in 13 countries, has produced a key figure: 38% of women have problems falling asleep more than three times a week, compared to 29% of men. Something that in Spain is not a very different situation, since according to the cross-sectional studies recently published in Naturewomen have much higher scores on the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), indicating worse subjective quality. In this way, while 44.6% of Spanish women report poor sleep quality, in men the figure drops to 30.1%. A paradox. Tests with motion sensors suggest that women sometimes have higher “sleep efficiency” on paper, but it is perceived as greater exhaustion. The person responsible for this is the sleep fragmentationwhich is related to constant waking up or even in mothers due to having to get up to care for a baby, for example. The hormonal factor. It is undoubtedly one of the big differences that exist between men and women, since estrogen and progesterone levels fluctuate drastically during the menstrual cycle, pregnancy or menopause. In the specific case of menopause it can be seen as a drop in the level of estrogen, in addition to produce alterations in bone formationalso increases the immediate degradation of rest. The data indicates that 51% of the Menopausal women suffer from sleep disordersshown a big difference: 44% of women in this stage report serious problems compared to 33% of non-menopausal women. If we go to pregnancywe see something similar with physical (from discomfort) and hormonal disruptions that create a pattern of alertness that often doesn’t fully recover until years after childbirth. The mental load. Beyond the hormonal load, the social factor is, perhaps, the most difficult to correct. One of the most important is the role that women have in many cases regarding the care of other people. According to the data compiled by the University of Michigan and diverse reviews on BMJ Openemployed women wake up twice as often as their partners to care for children or dependent relatives, even when they are the main breadwinners of the home. This “caretaker” role keeps the brain in an “alert” situation, making it attentive to whether a baby cries at night or a dependent family member has any need. This causes 76% of caregivers to report poor sleep quality.since the brain cannot unconsciously disconnect to monitor the well-being of the environment. Its consequences. Poor sleep not only means being tired the next day, but also has more serious clinical consequences. One of the most important is the increase in the probability of having a metabolic diseasesuch as diabetes. In addition, it increases accelerated cognitive deterioration and causes an increase in anxiety and depression disorders. And what is interesting in this case is that the female brain in sleep deprivation is more vulnerable to emotional dysregulation. The solution. The scientific community, from the Sleep Research Institute (IIS) to publications in Frontiers in Psychiatryagrees that it is not enough to increase “sleep hygiene” by leaving your cell phone before going to sleep, for example. It mainly aims at social therapy, making changes in the structure of the home that avoid fragmentation of sleep by getting up to take care of someone, for example. But logically, if you are in a perimenopause situation, you should also choose to go to the doctor to receive pharmacological treatment whenever there is significant hormonal deregulation. Images | Slaapwijsheid.nl In Xataka | If you fall asleep in less than five minutes, you don’t have a “superpower”: it’s a warning signal from your brain

McDonald’s has not learned from Coca-Cola and has presented a Christmas advertisement made with AI. The reactions have been even worse

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Everything indicates that the negative reaction to use of AI in Coca-Cola Christmas ad It has set a precedent… but it has not discouraged large corporations. MacDonald’s has made its own greeting with synthetic images and the reaction has been so overwhelmingly negative that the company has decided to remove the spot from social networks. Once again, issues such as creativity, aesthetics, profitability over ethics and, above all, what majority reactions they are generating are put on the table. What has happened? McDonald’s Netherlands has withdrawn its Christmas campaign generated entirely with artificial intelligence after facing a avalanche of criticism on social networks (and after being forced to disconnect comments on their profiles). The advertisement, ironically titled “It’s the most terrible time of the year”, is a perversion of the classic Christmas carols, and showed disasters with a festive atmosphere: traffic jams in which Santa Claus is involved, rebellious fir trees, unpalatable family members… the whole pack of suffering of these dates, to remind us that at least we have McDonald’s left. The problem. As happened with Coca-Cola, the problem is twofold. Aesthetically, the result is spooky.: Disturbing physics, expressionless faces, slapstick humor taken to the extreme because of that strange elastic and surreal violence of the AI. But above all, it makes viewers and critics wonder about the ethical legitimacy of this type of operationswhich completely dispense with human capital to produce more and faster. We are facing the first steps of an experimentone that corporations will put into full gear as soon as public rejection eases. Who has done it. The burger brand had entrusted production to the Californian duo MAMA (Mark Potoka and Matt Starr Spice), together with the AI ​​division The Gardening.club of the studio The Sweetshop. In a post that has since been deleted, the directors defended their work: The announcement required “seven intense weeks” of work, investing in it “more hours than in traditional production. Their central argument: “AI didn’t do it. We did it.” The controversy with Coca-Cola. The McDonald’s disaster represents the year’s second major Christmas controversy involving AI-generated advertising. A month ago Coca-Cola ignited a similar debate by launching its remake of the iconic 1995 ‘Holidays Are Coming’ spot, this time produced using generative artificial intelligence and starring animals… after the poor reception that a spot with the same concept but starring people had in 2024. The Atlanta multinational hired three specialized studios (Secret Level, Silverside AI and Wild Card), but the reaction from the public and critics was devastating. A reflection on that rejection, in reference to the 2024 ad with non-existent humans: Tim Halloran, who worked for a decade in Coca-Cola’s brand management division, stated that the campaign constituted “a violation of the brand promise” of Coca-Cola since, “for years, the core of that brand has been the idea of ​​authenticity.” Toys R Us too. Ahead of Coca-Cola’s first spot, in June 2024, Toys R Us debuted “the first commercial ad created with Sora,” OpenAI’s text-to-video tool. The one-minute spot narrated the origins of the company through its founder Charles Lazarus, combining images of the boy who would end up creating the store with the mascot Geoffrey the Giraffe in completely synthetic sequences. The industry reaction was almost unanimouswith people like Joe Russo stating in X that the ad It was “shit”. The impact on brand perception was measured Marketing-Interactivedocumenting negative reactions from 53.4% ​​of the spot’s viewers. The problem of authenticity. Behind the rejection of these ads there is a deeper problem than mere poor technical execution. In December 2024, NielsenIQ published research that revealed how viewers cognitively processed AI-generated advertising, and the result was not very promising: consumers consistently rated these contents as “annoying,” “boring,” and “confusing,” even when the technical quality was high. Neeraj Arora, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explained why the rejection is particularly acute in the Christmas context, with special attention to the Coca-Cola spot: “The holidays are a time of connection, of community, of coming together with family, and that’s a big part of what the holidays are about. But when you introduce AI into the mix, it doesn’t fit: it doesn’t fit with the festive moment, but also, to a certain degree, it doesn’t fit with Coca-Cola and what the brand stands for.” Christmas, traditionally a space of emotional authenticity, collides head-on with the synthetic nature of AI. Controversial results. The cases of McDonald’s and Coca-Cola illustrate a contradictory reality: the speed of production and cost savings that AI promises do not necessarily compensate for the loss of emotional connection with audiences. The consumers are developing rapidly the ability to identify synthetic content, and their immediate reaction is rejection. In Xataka | The secret formula of Coca-Cola is in a safe in a town in Valencia. The same one who claims his authorship

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