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Roman roads changed the world. And this Google Maps from 2,000 years ago allows you to explore them

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What have the Romans given us? It’s not a question I ask myself when I can’t sleep, but the brilliant satire that Monty Python captured in ‘Brian’s life‘. He aqueductsewage, education, irrigation, health, wine, public baths… and roads. At its peak, it is estimated that The empire’s network expanded over 120,000 kilometersbut as excavation has been carried out, more and more remains of Roman roads have been found. On some occasions we have brought some “Google Maps” of the Roman Empirebut what we have in our hands today is the culmination of an anthological work that compiles some of the most important sources of the arteries of the empire and captures those roads is an impressive interactive map with almost 300,000 kilometers of roads. The tool is called itiner-eand it is something that can absorb us for hours and hours. The Google Maps of the Roman Empire If you have already taken a tour of the mapyou should know that it is a living element. As discoveries are made and the location of the tracks is determined, the team will update the map. But what we currently have is the result of more than five years of work carried out by a team with members from both the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the Aarhus University of Denmark. In it study published in Naturedetail that it is “the most detailed and complete digital data set of roads in the entire Roman Empire” published so far. In fact, it exceeds the known length of Roman roads by more than 100,000 km thanks to both greater coverage at the focus and better spatial precision. Previously, the Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilizations (DARMC) mapped 188,554.7 kilometers. To do this, the researchers identified both the most important routes and the paths of archaeological and historical sources, locating them using both historical and current topographic maps. The main sources have been the Antonine Itinerary and the Tabula Peutingeriana, but the “milestones” and settlements close to each other (for example, limits of the empire, such as those near Hadrian’s Wall) are what have allowed researchers to assume the existence of roads that connected them. Other sources include summaries of the Roman road network in specific regions, maps from the Mapping Past Societies, the Barrington Atlas or the Tabula Imperii Romani, among many others. As a result of this work, the new map includes 299,171 kilometers of roads (to connect a territory of more than four million square kilometers), and they are divided as follows: 103,478 kilometers of main roads, 34.6% of the total. 195,693 kilometers of secondary roads, 65.4% of the total. And it is not that more than 100,000 kilometers have been taken out of the bag, but that roads that previously crossed rivers or were simple straight lines, have now been drawn with greater precision, adapting to the topographical peculiarities of the terrain. Now, although the work is amazing and we can see by playing with the different layers of information that many of the main roads coincide with current roads, the researchers confess that “only” the location of 2.737% of the Roman roads is known with certainty. That is why the vast majority of itiner-e roads show the legend “hypothetical” or “conjecture”, just before detailing the record from which they took the data. This certainty depends on: Certainty: segments well documented in the sources, which have been digitized with high spatial precision. Guess: segments with lower spatial precision due to a lower level of documentation. Hypothetical: paths that are speculated to have existed, but for which there is insufficient evidence to classify them within one of the above groups. For example, roads in desert areas where the infrastructure was less fixed and where several parallel roads have been found. But beyond satisfying our curiosity, something we can do with this map is… play. The team has including a function that is still in beta status and allows you to explore the time these routes took. To do this, we have to select between several points and select between four modes of land transportation: On foot at a speed of 4 km/h. By oxcart at 2 km/2. In an animal like a donkey at 4.5 km/h. And on horseback at 6 km/h. We can also select maritime routes with speeds of 2.5 km/h downstream and 0.6 km/h upstream. In the end, that rebel group from ‘Life of Brian’ was quite right when it came to saying that one of the most important things the Romans had done for them had been the deployment of roads. Because they were fundamental to speed up transportation within the empire’s domains, and that work is noticeable even today. They were the foundations on which we build our roads and urban centers. It is something that becomes clear when we observe that the only place in the empire in which there was not such an important or meticulous deployment, such as Africa and the Middle East, where trade on wheels was abandoned in favor of camel caravans in the 4th-6th centuries, has consequences today. Images | itiner-e In Xataka | Forma Urbis Romae: the gigantic map of Ancient Rome conceived in 1901 and still unsurpassed today

We have been talking about railguns for years without seeing their real damage. Japan just showed an image that says it all

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Japan is going through one of the most crucial transformations in recent decades: that of its rearmament. It is its most aggressive defense policy since Second World Warand the Ministry of Defense justifies because we are in the “most severe and complex phase of the last 80 years.” And there is nothing that better exemplifies Japanese rearmament than a cannon that, until not long agoit was science fiction material. The electromagnetic cannon. Reconfiguration. Starting in the 1990s, Japan stopped investing significantly in its Self-Defense Forces. He economic bubble burstthe “lost decade” and demographic difficulties implied that the military spending of 1% of GDP that they adopted after the Constitution of 1947 would be maintained. In 2023, things changed. As a result of geopolitical complexity, they decided that they would invest 2% of their GDP in rearmament. In figures, we are talking about about 271,000 million euros until 2027, but recently The target has been brought forward to March 2026. This reconfiguration will manifest itself in four dimensions: the aforementioned increase in military spending, the restructuring of the Self-Defense Forces, a relaxation of restrictions on the export of weapons and the expansion of long-range offensive capabilities. That’s where the railgun comes into play. Electromagnetic cannon. Like gunpowder, it fires a projectile that gains speed as it passes through a barrel. However, it uses electricity instead of gunpowder. Two metal rails form a circuit that, when closed by the projectile, generates an intense magnetic field. This produces a beastly force that propels the projectile at high speed, allowing hypersonic, precise and long-range shots. This speed would allow that would travel without detour even in the most unfavorable weather conditions. Japan has been investing in this field since mid of the 2010s, and a few weeks ago, the Japan Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Agency (ATLA) performed the first proof documented firing of a naval electromagnetic cannon at a real ship. Mounted in it JS Asuka test shipthe prototype is a cannon of 40 millimeters in caliber and six meters in length. It requires four huge energy containers to power the weapon and the projectiles used were small missiles of about 320 grams, stabilized by fins and without an explosive head. There is no need for an explosion: upon reaching those 2,300 meters per second, the kinetic energy is comparable to that of a 1,000 kilo car crashing into something at 140 km/h. Success. During them, the system achieved a record by firing projectiles at a speed of 2,300 meters per second. It is a speed of Mach 6-7, but in addition, they also pushed the useful life of the barrel to the limit. The estimate was about 120 shots, since it was established in previous phases of the investigation, but they got perform more than 200 shots without the system failing. ATLA had conducted open sea tests before, but never against a real target. And although they had already commented that the tests were a success, now they have shared photographs in which you can see the holes left by these projectiles. The target ship was in motion, but due to the enormous speed and stability of the projectiles thanks to the enormous power of the system, the entry holes allow an almost perfect view of the “cross” left by the projectile passing through the hull. Challenges. Now, understanding how a railgun works is easy, but executing it is extremely complex. It is a brutal technical challenge due to several factors: The stability of the barrel: the system generates tremendous heat, so dissipation systems must be effective enough not to compromise the integrity of the barrel. Wear and tear not only affects the speed and accuracy of the projectile, but can cause accidents on the boat itself. The energy: since it requires so much electricity to operate, it must have storage systems large enough to allow it to operate with the necessary power and during intense fire sessions. Miniaturization of the system: these cannons are extremely large and, although ATLA has managed to contain it quite a bit, mounting them on ships is not easy due to both the length of the cannon itself and the set of batteries required. Integrating a railgun into a ship is not easy. Perspectives. Currently, ATLA is working on evolving a system which might not be as far from the action as was thought a few months ago, and this miniaturization would allow it to be mounted on other types of vehicles, in addition to ground defense lines. But apart from as a weapon, the agency has mentioned that the concept of electromagnetic acceleration could be applied to other areas. For example, to the “mass throwers” ​​that would allow launching materials electromagnetically in space transportation. The problem is that other challenges are added, such as the imperative need to calculate the trajectory millimetrically or develop recovery methods for these goods. USA and China. And, although it may seem like another test of weapons, what Japan has achieved is a milestone. After fifteen years of research and some 500 million dollars invested in the technology, The United States left in 2021 the development of electromagnetic railguns (although they are now with larger versions). Japan has persevered and its testing demonstrates that the system can be viable in a real-world context. And another that has continued to develop this technology is China. They are keeping it more secret, but we have already seen images of Chinese ships with an electromagnetic cannon and power containers on the front. And that, precisely, it was these two countries that They are taking steps forward when developing this technology It’s not a coincidence. They are both engrossed in technological warbut also in a escalation of military tension that has been going on for months and that is leading both countries to accuse each other of invading their respective territory. Images | ATLA, Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force In Xataka | Taiwan has had an idea if Beijing invades it: surprise China underground

The bloodiest scene in the history of cinema left its protagonist in shock. 50 years later we know it was real

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Stephen King told that, for him, his Carrie It was like a pig taken to the slaughterhouse, and the blood of the animal reinforced the metaphor anticipating the massacre that would follow. Hence when the novel became a film, the most recognizable scene was the most visceral, organic and unpleasant of all. A gore moment that became celluloid history. The blood that changed terror. The Legend of Carrie (the movie) is born at the moment when a thick mixture of corn syrup and red food coloring falls on actress Sissy Spacek, a moment that has transcended horror cinema itself to become a cultural icon. The construction of the scene (the coronation interrupted by the explosion of humiliation and fury) concentrates the essence of a film that turned the artificial into something emotionally real. He Karo syrupheir to decades of cinematic experimentation with fake blood, here acquired an unexpected meaning by becoming the visual and psychological trigger for Carrie White’s transformation. Anniversary. Now that 50 years have passed since the original film, Spacek has remembered that that substance “warm as a blanket” in the first seconds soon became an exhausting, sticky and repetitive experience, forcing her even to sleep with the bloody suit so as not to have to reproduce the makeup application. But precisely that physical surrender, with its almost immobile and tragic presence under the weight of the thick liquid, is what granted to the plane that kind of mythical quality: the border between artifice and emotion is erased, leaving only the fixed gaze of a broken teenager who feels, for the first time, that the whole world is laughing at her. The infernal filming of a scene. The Independent said It’s been a few years since the prom sequence required almost surgical precision. Although the rest of the scene required more than thirty takes, the exact moment of the blood spill could only be filmed once or twice due to the impossibility of cleaning and recomposing the set. Spacek even accepted that it was her own husband who operated the cube mechanism to ensure that the fall was perfect, knowing that her interpretation would depend on how she received that hit of red viscosity. The fake blood was a physical enemy but also a dramatic element on which the story completely depended: its texture, shine, the way it adhered to the actress’s body and soaked her dress, everything contributed to giving the impression that something irreversible had happened. In fact, many of the scenes we saw ended up being very real: a stage that ended up accidentally burning, a team evacuated while the director I asked to keep rolling and injuries such as the perforation of an actress’ eardrum during the attack of the launched hose telekinetically by Carrie. What should have been millimeter choreography became an almost ritual experience, in which fire, destruction and general chaos seemed to respond to the internal logic of the film itself. The unexpected myth. Despite initial doubts, the rejection of critics who considered it a sensationalist spectacle and the fact that even the name of Stephen King appeared poorly written In the first previews, Carrie ended up transforming into a phenomenon. Its mix of operatic stylization, black humor, adolescent cruelty and symbolic violence connected with a much wider audience than expected, inaugurating a type of youth horror cinema that is still alive several generations later. For King, a small-town teacher who had thrown away the first pages to the garbage can before being rescued by his wife, the film marked the beginning of a hyperbolic race. For director Brian De Palma, it was the definitive consolidation of his baroque style, obsessed with the gaze, visual manipulation and expressive excess. A unique role. Of course, for Sissy Spacek, work meant an Oscar nomination and lasting recognition for a performance that combined absolute vulnerability and unleashed rage. On a personal note, I would say that none of the later remakesreinterpretations and adaptations managed to capture that mixture of innocence, evil and contained tragedy that the original became its hallmark. The validity of a story. The truth is that with the passing of the decades, Carrie has not lost strength. Quite the contrary, its contemporary reading resonates in a world where school violence, public humiliation and the feeling of youth isolation are part of the collective imagination. the movie speaks of the ritualized cruelty of adolescence, of vulnerability to changes in the body and of a universal feeling of maladjustment that Spacek described a few days ago on CNN like that “wounded teenager that we all have inside.” The combination of emotional realism and the tone of a dark story, almost biblical in some passages, turns the story into more than just an exercise in terror. The presence of a fanatic mother, the brutality of her classmates, and Carrie’s own inability to understand what is happening to her allow the story to oscillate between melodrama, religious parable, and Greek tragedy. The visual references, the use of color and the stylization of the final climax consolidate an imaginary that continues to define how psychological horror is filmed. in adolescence. The weight of artifice. Five decades later, Spacek’s memory of filming it’s contradictory: the physical hardness of the process, the exhaustion of wearing hardened layers of corn syrup, the extreme discomfort of the long days and, at the same time, the privilege of having worked on a project where each member of the team was dedicated to something that they did not know would transcend. That mix of technical suffering and unfiltered creativity explains why the blood scene has become an immutable symbol of horror cinema. What began as a practical necessity (creating cheap, realistic, and manageable gore) ended up leaving an indelible mark on how emotional violence is portrayed on screen. Perhaps for this reason, Carrie remains a most accurate study in fragility, repressed rage and the devastating power of humiliation, but also as a demonstration that even a sticky, artificial substance can, in … Read more

Italy has been importing its famous “Italian” tomato paste from China for years. And now China has a problem

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The powerful tomato sector Chinese faces turbulence. After achieving a prominent position in the global market and becoming the largest tomato orchard in the world, the Asian giant has encountered a drop in sales in a strategic market: the European market. More specifically in Italy, where the demand for vegetables from Xinjiang has deflated at the stroke of controversies. The data is quite eloquent. Only during the third quarter of 2025 did sales of Chinese tomato paste in Italy decrease about 80%. Tomato ‘made in China’? It comes with taking a look at the maps from World Population Review to understand the enormous weight that China has achieved in the world tomato market. According to its latest data, in 2023 the nation produced about 70.1 million tons. This places it considerably above India, which occupies second place with 20.4 million tons, Turkey (13.3 million), the US (12.4 million) or Egypt (6.2 million), which complete the ‘TOP 5’. Also from Spain, which occupies ninth place, with nearly four million. Extremaduran farmers warned about the growing threat from China a few months ago, who recognize that the competition exerted by the Asian tomato is already their “biggest problem”. It’s not just that China harvests tons and tons of vegetables, it’s that it does so at such low costs that they make its tomato paste (a fundamental product for the food industry) unbeatable. Click on the image to go to the tweet. Is he that attractive? Yes. And it is not something that is observed only in Extremadura. Just a year ago Francesco Mutti, CEO of the sauce manufacturer that bears his last name, recognized that much of the cheap tomato paste coming from China is produced in the Xinjiang region with “very, very low labor costs.” something similar they slid in 2016 from Las Marismas (Andalusia): “They ask us for European quality at the price of Chinese tomatoes, something impossible taking into account the costs.” In practice this means that China exports every year tons and tons of tomato to the European market, which in turn generates a lucrative business. OEC calculate That last year the Asian giant exported processed tomatoes worth 1.21 billion dollars. If we look at its main destinations, Italy occupied a priority place, with a value of 83.8 million dollars. And what has happened? That although China is a gigantic exporter and has managed to differentiate itself in prices, its product has been compromised by an unexpected factor?: controversy. I told it a few days ago Financial Times. News about the use of forced labor in Xinjiang (a region that has attracted attention of the UN for alleged human rights violations against the Uyghur minority) and the lack of clarity The labeling with which some Italian companies identify the origin of their products has conditioned Chinese pasta exports, in which large state companies play a crucial role. Result? Against this backdrop, to which is added the campaign of the Italian agricultural association Coldiretti, China has encountered a problem: a ‘pinch’ in exports that has left it with a huge stock of processed tomatoes. Financial Times assuresciting data from the platform Tomato News, that the Asian giant has a reserve of between 600,000 and 700,000 tons of tomato paste. To understand its scope, it is equivalent to six months of exports. Has demand dropped that much? Yes. The data shows that the Western market seems to want to move away from the doubts that shadow the Chinese product. In general, Chinese tomato paste exports decreased by 9% year-on-year during the third quarter of 2025, but if we focus specifically on sales to Western EU countries, that percentage rises to 67%. In the specific case of Italy, purchases plummeted by 76%. “It is clear that Europe has become a difficult place to export,” recognize to Financial Times Martin Stilwell, head of Tomate News, the source of the data. Do we handle more data? Yes. There are two other reveals. The first has to do with the value of processed tomato exports to Italy. If between January and September 2024, Chinese customs recorded about 75 million dollars, this year, during the same period, it did not even reach 13. The other data has to do with the volume of fresh tomato processed to turn it into pasta: 4.8 million tons in 2021, 11 million in 2024 and 3.7 this year (estimate). For Stilwell, the reading is clear: faced with the difficulties of selling, China chooses to cut expenses instead of increasing its stock. What does China say? That accusations about the use of forced labor in Xinjuang are “a lie” created and propagated by “anti-Chinese forces” to harm the country. The truth is that years ago the US decided to turn its back on imports of tomato paste from that region of the Asian giant and in the case of Italy they weigh somewhat more than the suspicions of the UN. In 2021 the Caribineri ‘hunted’ a company that labeled its canned tomato as “100% Italian” when in reality it included product from China. “If we assume that Italy has 80 companies related to tomato processing, three, four or five have committed dishonest practices,” Mutti assureswho regrets the damage this does to the reputation of the Italian sector. Images | Tom Hermans (Unsplash) and Arthur Wang (Unsplash) In Xataka | Four nations are fighting over a fruit that smells like rotten eggs. China has turned it into its gastronomic phenomenon

We know that role-playing video games were born 50 years ago. What we don’t know exactly is which game was the first

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If when they ask you about the first role-playing video game in history, a legendary franchise will undoubtedly come to mind: ‘Dungeons & Dragons‘. The influence of the then newborn board role-playing game was undeniable in the first titles of the genre, but to determine a foundational touchstone we have a serious problem: there are several candidates. The first roles. In 1975, half a century agothe genre of role-playing video games as we know it was born. Just one year after Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson will publish ‘Dungeons & Dragons‘, different American university students They transferred the board game experience to computer systems of the time (huge mainframes or data systems), creating titles like ‘dnd’, ‘pedit5’ and ‘Dungeon’. Those experiments laid the foundations for the industry along with early icons like ‘Spacewar’, but determining which came first is not so easy. Why D&D. Dungeons & Dragons It sold 3,000 copies during its first year.a modest figure but behind which there is a great cultural impact among university students. Some of the concepts that ‘D&D’ introduced in early role-playing games (life points, accumulating experience, progression by levels, character classes, dice system – that is, chance – to resolve combat…) were of a statistical nature. It was ideal to be processed by computerswho calculated probabilities faster than any human game master. The convergence was inevitable: American campuses brought together both programmers with access to computers and players obsessed with Dungeons & Dragons. Sometimes it was the same people. What was PLATO. This proto-internet served as the basis for many of these games to spread: its acronym is equivalent to Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations, it was developed at the University of Illinois in 1960, and was born as an educational tool, although it ended up going far beyond that initial purpose. Towards the mid-seventies This network connected approximately a dozen mainframes with several thousand terminals distributed globally. The system incorporated revolutionary technologies for the time: plasma screens with a resolution of 512×512 pixels, interfaces 16×16 touch points and transmission speed of 1,200 bits per second. But his true legacy was to become a precursor to the Internet by including discussion forums, email, chat rooms and, at a certain point in its history, real-time multiplayer video games. In this way, and as it could not be otherwise, the university students subverted the initially academic purpose of PLATO: the programmers disguised their games with names that pretended to be educational files to avoid being detected and deleted by university administrators (hence the cryptic titles, almost based on acronyms, of some games). The pioneer dungeon. In this way, and thanks to the possibilities that PLATO offered, during 1975 several programmers worked without knowing each other on the creation of the first RPG for computer. Rusty Rutherford, a 35-year-old doctoral student at the University of Illinois, developed ‘pedit5‘ (also called ‘The Dungeon’). The game featured a fixed 40-50 room dungeon with random monster and treasure encounters, establishing the concept of the “dungeon crawl”. The character combined the three classic ‘D&D’ classes: warrior, wizard and cleric. Players generated attributes such as Strength, Dexterity, Constitution and Intelligence, and had eight different spells at their disposal. The random nature of the encounters made it a direct precursor of the roguelike. The game could only hold 20 simultaneous characters, a limit that became a problem when its popularity exploded. The first final boss in history. Southern Illinois University students Gary Whisenhunt and Ray Wood completed ‘dnd‘ (‘The Game of Dungeons’) after ‘pedit5’ demonstrated the viability of the concept. ‘dnd’ expanded its offering with multiple dungeon levels, a teleporter system, and allowed players to leave the dungeon, recover, and return later, gradually accumulating power over multiple sessions. Its big innovation was a scoring system inspired by pinball machines, which made players collect gold and leave. The solution was to create an ultimate goal, the Orb, guarded by a dragon in the deepest levels. Thus, it was the first video game to feature a “boss fight”, a final climatic encounter. Technical sophistication. In California, meanwhile, Don Daglow was programming his own game, Dungeonfor him mainframe PDP-10 from Claremont University. Daglow implemented sophisticated mechanics: line of sight, fog of war, automapping, and NPCs with rudimentary artificial intelligence. The game required 36K of RAM, a very notable amount at the time. Finally, on November 4, 1975, John Daleske, Gary Fritz and their team released a second game called ‘Dungeon’ on PLATO, considered as one of the first MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons). That same year ‘Moria’ also appeared, by Kevet Duncombe and Jim Battin, allowing up to ten simultaneous players in the same game, which is a direct precedent for future MMORPGs. In Xataka | Virtual dungeons: The successes and failures of bringing ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ to video games

This woman has been accused for years of committing the only crime that has taken place in space. It was all a lie

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Six years ago, his face went around the world. Astronaut Anne McClain appeared in all the media as the alleged perpetrator of the first crime committed outside of Earth. Now we know it never happened. A little context. In August 2019, NASA opened a file to investigate what It seemed like the first crime committed in space.. Astronaut Anne McClain had been accused of identity theft and irregular access to her ex-wife’s financial records while she was on the International Space Station. Specifically, her ex-partner had accused her of “guessing” his credentials to spy on his bank account from space. He had made it up. Six years later, Summer Worden, McClain’s ex-wife and former US Air Force intelligence officer, has pleaded guilty to lying to federal authorities in a twist that definitively closes this unfortunate chapter for the astronaut. According to the official statement From the prosecution, an investigation revealed that Worden had voluntarily shared his credentials with McClain since 2015. The bank account in question had been open since 2018. Worden allowed McClain access until January 2019, at which time he changed the passwords, something he hid to incriminate his ex-partner. Custody of a child as a motive. The accusation came amid a messy divorce and a dispute over custody of a common child. McClain always maintained his innocence, arguing that he had simply reviewed the family finances to ensure there were sufficient funds for the child’s care, something he routinely did with Worden’s consent. The damage to his reputation was immediate and had ramifications and rumors beyond the legal. It coincided with NASA postponing the first all-female spacewalk in its history, starring McClain and Christina Koch. The reason was the lack of suitable suits, but the shadow of the accusation and public scrutiny always loomed over that decision. Redeemed. The resolution of the case comes at a sweet time for Anne McClain. The astronaut has continued working for NASA and, last March, she had the opportunity to return to the ISS as commander of the SpaceX Crew-10 mission. The sentence against his ex-wife will be handed down in February 2026. The maximum penalty is five years in prison and a fine of $250,000. Image | POT In Xataka | How many times have we gone to the Moon and why have only 11 military aviators and one geologist set foot on it in all of history?

Disney’s most profitable business for years has been amusement parks. And Netflix is ​​going to follow in their footsteps

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In a turn that will not be too surprising to those who closely follow the finances of entertainment giants like Disney, Netflix has made the leap to the physical world. Last Wednesday, the platform inaugurated its first permanent entertainment center in King of Prussia, a town located 25 kilometers from Philadelphia. A real dive into Netflix products that makes it clear that there are no authors or stars here, but a single corporation with things very clear. What does it consist of? Netflix House is a two-story complex with a surface area equivalent to a football stadium and that allows visitors to tour replicas of scenes from series such as ‘Wednesday‘, ‘The squid game‘ either ‘Stranger Things‘. For example, there is a replica of the room that Wednesday shares with Enid at Nevermore Academy, where visitors solve a murder with Thing through their cell phones, or a escape room based on ‘One Piece’. There is also a nine-hole mini golf course with automatic ball tracking technology, whose courses are themed to series such as ‘Bridgerton’ or ‘The Squid Game’. Finally, there are virtual reality rooms. As a culmination, a restaurant with dishes inspired by the series, and the TUDUM theater, with 229 seats for screenings. The company already plans to open a second headquarters in Dallas on December 11 and a third in Las Vegas in 2027. Admission is free, although the experiences have a cost: from $15 for a game of mini golf to $39 for the main immersive attractions. On the go. The flexibility of the model was demonstrated before the inauguration. The success of ‘The K-pop Warriors’ It caught those responsible for the installation by surprise, but its presence was incorporated into the venue on the fly with life-size figures of its protagonists and merchandising exclusive. And of course, more dedicated content is promised in the coming months. It is one of the strong points of the project: that although there is always the presence of timeless hits such as ‘The Paper House’ or ‘The Squid Game’, last-minute audience bombshells can be incorporated to make it an experience that breathes a certain life of its own. British roots. This concept that Netflix exploits does not come from the United States, but from the United Kingdom: for example, Fabien Riggall founded Secret Cinema in 2007 with the idea of ​​making your childhood wish come true of “living inside a movie.” Its first event brought together 400 people in an abandoned railway tunnel to screen a film whose title was kept secret until the last moment, with stages and actors decorated to give the atmosphere. Since then, the company has raised over £130,000 for charitieswith increasingly spectacular and complex installations. A few years before, in 2000, Punchdrunk already existed, immersive theater collective where the public was not limited to passively observing the work, but went on a tour of spaces where the action took place. London has ended up consolidating itself as global epicenter of these interactive experiences. Like a virus. Of course, this idea did not come from Netflix: its rivals have been operating comparable facilities for decades. Disney is the clearest example given its long experience in amusement parkswill allocate 60,000 million dollars to its experiences division over the next decade. Universal invested 7 billion in its recently inaugurated Epic Universe, based on franchises such as Harry Potter or Super Mario. Let us remember that Disney’s parks division contributes 70% of the profits of the company. Of course, be careful with the powerful comparative advantage of the Netflix proposal: entry to Netflix House is free. It’s just the beginning. This is not an isolated experiment or an extra next to Netflix’s main business: the platform’s decision to stop communicating its number of subscribers should give us a clue about how they have peaked in certain aspects, and need to continue expanding their reach. Netflix has reached agreements with cinema chains in the United States and sporting events have become core part of its offer. He has already made it clear that the plan is to open up to 25 of these Netflix Houses around the world and to continue releasing plays like ‘Stranger Things: The First Shadow‘. We are going to continue hearing about Netflix for a long time. Header | Netflix In Xataka | The chaos of streaming is causing a phenomenon that we thought was in recession: downloads are increasing

We have been fed up with spam calls for years and operators are finally going to do something: MasOrange will be the first

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We have talked about countless methods to try to deal with incessant spam calls; tricks to identify themas record them to be able to report… Operating systems have protections such as Google call filter and even The Government has promoted regulations to finish them off. It is striking that, given this panorama, we have not seen initiatives promoted by the operators themselves until now. MasOrange lays the first stone Image: MasOrange The operator has been the first to launch a tool to protect your customers from spam calls and fraudulent, it is a call filter that works directly on your network. To do this, MasOrange has teamed up with Hiya, a company specialized in caller identification using AI. The function It’s called ‘Visible Call’ and what it does is identify incoming calls suspected of fraud or spam. Through a notice on the screen, customers can decide whether to pick up or not. The functionality is free and will be activated on all terminals that have the function VoLTE. MasOrange’s proposal is very similar to other call filters such as Truecaller or the one that is integrated into the Android Phone app. The difference here is that it works directly on the network, so it will not be necessary to install any app. The first proposal to a problem that comes from afar The problem of spam calls is not something that started the day before yesterday; We have been suffering from them for years and it is not only about annoying business callsin recent years Telephone frauds have skyrocketed. The situation was such that we should have taken action on the matter much earlier. The operators They started blocking fraudulent calls and SMS this yearbut it was not on his own initiative, but as a consequence of the package of measures promoted by the Governmentwhich includes blocking calls from international origin and prohibition on making commercial calls using mobile numbers. According to an OCU survey from June of this year, 92% of respondents claimed to receive spam calls. This was before the new regulations came into force, but currently things are not looking much better. According to Facuaas of October of this year 4 out of 10 consumers continue to receive commercial calls. MasOrange brings its first proposal to a problem that, despite the obstacles, continues to find cracks through which to sneak through. Now the rest of the operators need to follow in their footsteps. Image | Pexelsedited In Xataka | Apple introduced the SPAM call filter as the star feature of iOS 26. It took me a week to deactivate it

Years ago, microbiota transplants seemed like something out of science fiction. Today they are already curing diseases

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Sometimes extreme situations require extreme measures, at least in the field of medicine and health. Perhaps to many, the idea of microbiota transplants It seems to them that it belongs to this range of extreme measures. Perhaps more so if we refer to this therapy by its first and last name, because we are talking about fecal microbiota transplants. Let’s start at the beginning, explaining what exactly these transplants are. Although its name is quite descriptive. The central idea of ​​this treatment is to take a sample of intestinal microbiota from a healthy person and transfer it to the patient’s intestine. For this, samples of fecal matter are used, feces from the donor that are treated for introduction into the recipient’s gastrointestinal system. The process begins, therefore, by taking a sample (or several) of the donor feces. First of all, it must be verified that these feces do not contain pathogens but that the “good bacteria” of our digestive system predominate in the sample. Once this filter has been passed, the sample is prepared in different ways depending on how it will be administered. One possibility is to dry, freeze and encapsulate part of these samples to administer them. through a pill. However, the most conventional options involve diluting the sample in saline water and then filter it and enter it into our system gastrointestinal, either through a tube introduced through the mouth or nose and that would reach our stomach; either through a colonoscopy, an endoscopy through the colon. Fixing the imbalance And all this, for what? Interestingly, if we are transplanting microbes from one person to another, the reason is to fight against a pathogenic bacteria, called Clostridioides difficile (C. diff). This is a bacteria that normally inhabits our system gastrointestinal without causing major discomfort. But not always. In these cases, C. diff It can take over the inside of our intestine, wreaking havoc on it. C. diff They feed on toxic compounds that they metabolize from some foods we consume and that can end up causing even more damage to our microbiota. This infection It is considered the main cause of diarrhea associated with medical treatments, but this It’s not your only symptom.These include fever, pain or tenderness in the stomach, loss of appetite and nausea, symptoms of gastroenteritis. Some more serious cases They can lead to dehydration, blood or pus in the stool, and kidney failure. One of the problems associated with this bacteria is the appearance of recurrent infections: many patients become ill again between two and eight weeks after the original infection. The potential of this tool is yet to be explored. A recent study, for example, explored the possibility of using this type of intervention to improve sports performance. A luck of “fecal doping” similar in some ways to existing techniques. Sport, and especially elite sport, can affect our microbiome, which in turn can be exploited in favor of the athletes themselves. These transplants have even been proposed in veterinary. Specifically, to help preserve koalas, as we saw in a studio also presented in 2019 in the magazine Animal Microbiome. Over the last few years we have been discovering new links between our gut microbiome and seemingly very distant aspects of our health. Now we even know that there is a connection between our brain and this one. Unfortunately, we still do not understand the causal relationships operating in this connection. In this sense, recently we came across a link between these transplants and autism. a study published in 2019 in the magazine Scientific Reports observed that symptoms linked to autism were reduced among those who had received this type of transplants. In Xataka | 50% of the population is infected with H. pylori. We are finally eradicating it and that has unexpected consequences Image | shameersrk / chriskeller

We have been believing that bacteria are a weapon against tumors for 150 years. And finally we have discovered how

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In the fight against cancer, there are many treatments that are emerging, being the immunotherapy one of the most innovative, although there are also other alternatives such as based on LED light. Now therapies continue to advance and science is already pointing to a group of bacteria to be able to destroy tumors without depending on the immune response, opening a new era in oncological medicine. It’s not something new. The idea of ​​using bacteria to treat cancer is not new: already in 1868 the German doctor Busch observed that some cancer patients experienced remissions after bacterial infections. Later, William Colby developed bacteria-based treatments that they laid the foundation of modern immunotherapy. However, these traditional therapies require a functional immune system, which is a serious problem for patients who are immunocompromised due to cancer. The present. a study published in Nature Biomedical Engineering presented an innovative “drug-free” strategy that uses a group of bacteria to fight cancer, rescuing this old idea of ​​bacteria against cancer. This treatment has not only demonstrated powerful antitumor efficacy, but it has done so by achieving complete remission of the tumor and, most importantly, it has been maintained for years in mouse models, even in those who are immunosuppressed. The most relevant thing is that the fact that a bacteria helps us with this disease has been achieved without the need to use genetic engineering that alters your RNA. And also, without generating toxicity on the body. A priori they are all advantages. A bacterial duo. The protagonists of this therapy are a bacterial group called AUN, composed of two specific bacteria: Proteus mirabilis (nicknamed A-gyo) and Rhodopseudomonas palustris (UN-gyo). And although we may all have in mind that bacteria are bad for humans, the reality is that They help us (a lot) starting with all those that are in our intestine. When this bacterial duo was administered directly into the blood of tumor-bearing mice, the results were dramatic: complete tumor remission and prolonged survival. And it wasn’t magic. How does it work? It is the obligatory question after seeing the results of this study. The researchers explain that what these bacteria do in short is block the arrival of oxygen and nutrients to the tumors, which literally causes them to suffocate. And a tumor is nothing more than a set of cells that have an advanced metabolism. When taking away their food they end up dead. In essence, these bacteria can reach the tumor and enter its interior, as if it were a Trojan horse. Upon arrival, it causes very small blood clots to form and only in the blood vessels that go to the tumor. In this way, blood clots block the passage of blood and, therefore, its food source. Bacterial transformation. Bacteria are STILL not passive agents, but are dynamic actors that change their behavior when detecting cancer. In this way, the study observed that the A-gyo bacteria undergoes a “wonderful fibrous transformation.” This change is not random. It is specifically activated when the bacteria encounters “oncometabolites“, chemical signals emitted by cancer cells. This highly mobile form of “swarm”, together with the toxins and hemolysins secreted by the consortium, seems to be responsible for the tumor vascular destruction without affecting the rest of the healthy cells. A safe treatment. Using live bacteria as therapy may sound risky, but the study spends much of its time demonstrating the safety and control of AUN. The first thing that has been seen is that the bacterial strains have a unique non-pathogenic profile. Furthermore, to achieve a 100% complete response and avoid the lethality of a single high dose, the researchers developed a “double dose” regimen: a first injection at a low dose, followed days later by a high dose. The low dose “primes” the body, consuming aggressive neutrophils and mitigating the risk of severe cytokine release syndrome. Looking to the future. Although the experiments were performed in mice, the therapy was tested against human cancer cell lines in xenograft models. In this case, cells from human colon adenocarcinoma, ovarian cancer and pancreatic cancer were used. The results in this case were very clear: all the tumors tested successfully disappeared in the mouse models, without very serious side effects. In this way, we are faced with a therapy that does not require any type of drug a priori and that can be self-managed. The authors of the study point out that this approach can revolutionize cancer therapy, but there is still a long way to go. Images | CDC In Xataka | Colon cancers are increasing alarmingly among young people. We have a suspect: sedentary lifestyle

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