Month: October 2025

Follow the presentation of Vivo’s new flagship live

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Today we have an important appointment with Vivo. The Chinese company, which already surprised us last year with the Vivo X200 Proreturns to the fray with its new flagship, the Vivo X300 Pro. It is a device that seeks to become the king of mobile photography and today we are going to get to know it better in person. And did we mention that you can get one for free? We’ll tell you more right away. The presentation of the device will take place today, October 30, at 5:00 p.m. Spanish peninsular time. You can follow it with us at YouTube and TikTok and the schedules are the following: Spain: 17:00 (16:00 in the Canary Islands). Mexico: 10:00 AM Colombia: 11:00 AM. Venezuela : 12:00 PM. Argentina, Chile: 1:00 PM. Follow the presentation of the Vivo X300 Pro live What we hope to see The main protagonist of the day is the Vivo X300 Pro, the company’s new high-end. We have known about the terminal for a few weeks, since it has already been presented in China. If you want to work up an appetite you can read our first impressions. The Vivo X300 Pro stands out for its ISOCELL HPB “Thanos” 200 megapixel telephoto signed with ZEISS APO lenses signed by ZEISS, as well as its main LYT-828 sensor created by Sony. We will clear up doubts in the analysis, but the preliminary results of the camera are sensational. And let’s not talk about the external attachable telephoto lens, capable of magnifying the result of the mobile phone up to 2.3 times. Vivo X300 Pro | Image: Xataka The camera is, without a doubt, its great strong point, but the other sections of the technical sheet do not fall short either. The device mounts a MediaTek Dimensity 950016 gigabytes of RAM and 512 GB of storage, all under a 6.78-inch LTPO AMOLED panel loaded with technology and powered by a huge 6,510 mAh battery. What is left to discover? The price. It is one of the most important data and the one that, with complete certainty, we will learn about during today’s presentation. Another thing that we will reveal during the live is the winner of the draw that we are carrying out on Instagram and which we warned you about a few days ago. Because yes, one lucky person will be able to take a Vivo X300 Pro home completely free. You still have time to participate. How to get a Vivo X300 Pro for free Getting a Vivo X300 Pro is very simple. You just have to participate in the giveaway that we are carrying out on Instagram. The steps are very simple and You can find the legal bases here: You have until Thursday, October 30, at 4:30 p.m. (mainland Spanish time) to participate, so you still have time! Image | Xataka In Xataka | Vivo V60 Lite 5G, analysis: three days of real autonomy are no longer science fiction

Silicon Valley doesn’t know what to do with so many unemployed engineers. Spain does not know where to get what it needs

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The global technology sector has been facing a kind of roller coaster very conditioned by AIin which while in some corners of the planet there is a commitment to destroying employment in this sector, in other countries it is created at a frenetic pace and even a scenario of staff shortage skilled. Since mid-2022, Silicon Valley has not stopped destroy technological jobs. On the other hand, in Spain the trend is just the opposite, and this sector has not stopped growing at a notable rate, being the exception among advanced economies. Global downward trends. A recent analysis by economist Brendon Bernard for the employment platform Indeed in Canada confirms that job offers in technology have slowed down in countries like the US and Canada. This change occurs after a crisis caused mainly by the pandemic and the collapse of the metaverse, which caused rounds of massive layoffs in large technology companies and drastic cuts between 2022 and mid-2023. The appearance of ChatGPT and the AI ​​fever managed to stop the downward trend in the sector’s offers, but the initial boost that AI seemed to give has stalled and technological employment in the world has not recovered its 2022 levels. Spain follows its own path. As and how they stand out in The Economistamong all this downward trend in technological employment in advanced economies, one stands out that marks a totally opposite path: Spain. Bernard’s study highlights that, while large advanced economies such as the United States (-34%), the United Kingdom (-41%), France (-38%) and Germany (-29%) reduce the number of technological job offers compared to their pre-pandemic levels, countries such as Singapore, Spain and Australia draw a graph in the opposite direction, creating new job offers at a double-digit rate. Technological employment in Spain. In Spain, technological employment is growing rapidly. According to data According to the Cotec Foundation for Innovation, 494,000 new positions have been created in technological activities since 2013, of which approximately half (about 240,000) have been generated after 2020. The weight of technological employment over total employment is especially high in communities such as Madrid (10.5%), Navarra (10%) and Catalonia (9%). On the other hand, regions such as the Balearic Islands (2.7%) or the Canary Islands (2.2%) have a lower concentration of technological job offers. Lots of supply, but much more demand. In fact, the rebound in the Spanish technology sector faces a serious challenge: staff shortages. According to the report HR Trends 2024‘ prepared by Randstad, more than 30% of companies reported difficulties in finding qualified talent in digital areas, which causes certain positions to take months to fill. This generates tensions in the technological labor market and increases competition by the professionals available. The Cotec Foundation report indicates that the growth in technological employment is based largely on programming, consulting and computing, which account for nearly 80% of the employment generated since 2020. To give a concrete example, Randstad data indicates that, during the third quarter of 2024, employment among programmers in Spain registered an increase of 16.4%. Demand reaches universities. According to the report’The Future of Talent in Artificial Intelligence and Data in Spain‘ prepared by INDESIA, in 2023 5,000 job offers in AI and data science were left unfilled per lack of trained candidates. The education system can only train about 6,000 new professionals annually in these areas, while demand is increasing. Núria Ávalos, general director of INDESIA, explained to The Country that “many grades are now emerging, but until these people are in a position to take on positions such as a data architect there are a few years left”, which exacerbates the gap between supply and demand. In response, companies and universities are exploring joint training models, where companies themselves become training centers to urgently cover this need for qualified talent. What AI gives you, AI takes away. Despite the good figures for technological employment in Spain, it is inevitable to observe the United States labor market as a canary in the mine that reveals where the trends in the futureand has already begun to give the first signs. While it is true that the arrival of AI stopped the decline in employment, as AI gains skills in programming and basic tasks, it is also promoting job automationwhich reduces the number of necessary technological employees, especially among those who just begin their working career. We are seeing a clear example in the latest layoffs from large technology companies, where not only are “accessory” positions for an approach whose objective is the development of AI, but engineers who until now are being fired they were developing that AI. In Xataka | Big Tech doesn’t stop firing its engineers. At the same time, they have stepped on the accelerator in hiring Image | Unsplash (Fatemeh Rezvani)

Some investors are already boasting about the fortunes they lost

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The digital age has given us few genuinely pure pleasures, but one of the indisputable ones has been watching that train wreck in slow motion (well, not very slow) that was the fall from grace of NFTs. First, international cryptobrokers They tried to convince us that paying millions for a certified jpg was a safe investment. Just a few months later, those images were worth just a few dollars. The fall has been so precipitous that now, many of those same investors laugh at their own financial misfortune. It is the definitive death certificate of NFTs. What happened then? The NFT phenomenon began with early experiments as early as 2012 with the so-called Colored Coinsbut the real boom started in 2017 with CryptoKitties on Ethereumwhich showed the potential of NFTs: basically, they are unique digital assets that “represent” the ownership of a digital or physical object, certified using blockchain technology to guarantee its authenticity and uniqueness. Unlike cryptocurrencies, which are interchangeable with each other, each NFT is unrepeatable and cannot be replaced by another identical one, functioning as a digital certificate of ownership and authenticity.​ In 2021, NFTs reached their peak of popularity with multi-million dollar sales such as Beeple’s “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” at Christie’s for 69 million dollarsand iconic collections like Bored Ape Yacht Club They generated great attention and million-dollar valuations. However, after a spectacular boom, the market began to decline in 2022 due to oversupply, extreme speculation and concerns about scams, resulting in an abrupt drop in sales. Eat the rich. After the collapse of 2022a certain tendency was generated on the internet to mock the speculative bubble that enveloped NFTs in 2021 and the enormous losses suffered by many investors: around 95% of NFTs had lost all value. Already then the practice of sharing screenshots of NFTs at a loss became fashionable. In part it was a recurring joke from the very origin of the phenomenon, in which people shared the capture of an NFT, showing that there was no essential difference between an NFT and the copy of an NFT, beyond a document that certified which was the “original” and which was the copy. Famous people in disgrace. The internet likes nothing more than laughing at a celebrity or a millionaire, and even more so when they fall into the clutches of a pyramid scheme with planetary reach. For example, much was said about Justin Bieber, who bought a Bored Ape NFT for $1.3 million in 2022 and fell 95% in value in 2023. Another classic example: the NFT that was a screenshot of the first tweet of Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter. It was sold in 2021 for $2.9 million and less than a year later its owner tried to resell it, reaching an offer of a few thousand dollars, that is, a loss of value of more than 99%. In July 2023, it was worth $3.77. In general, NFTs and their physical volatility gave rise to a good amount of scandals and scams in which celebrities such as Seth Green, Jay Choy and Melania Trump were involved. From lost to the river. Curiously, many of those who lost millionaire amounts with NFTs are showing their shame on social networks, and describing how much they spent and how much their investment is now worth: a mix of collective warning and taking misfortunes with humor (because they can) which, of course, is spread to the derision of the influencers who tried to sell the motorcycle to their followers. A tweeter He bought this monster for 17,000 and now it’s worth ten dollars. The user @NFTsAreNice (lol) bought this for 31,000 and now it’s worthless. Another investor spent three fucking million in thiswhich is now worth 25,000. It has gone even worse for this other one, who invested 1.8 million and now it’s worth 450. They all use the formula “I bought this NFT in 2022 for…”, and the curious thing is that many of them are still in the cryptocurrency or NFT business, and have profiles as supposedly reliable investors. Significantly, some of them have received in response to their laments messages of “You don’t cry in the casino”, a typical phrase that cryptobrokers utter when they fall into heavy losses after heavy investments. Come on, the “who wants a bag” of a lifetime. In Xataka | The first trial on NFTs and copyright in Spain confirms it: everything always revolved around profits

NVIDIA has risen to the top for its AI data centers. Your next big leap: cars

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NVIDIA has unveiled its platform Drive AGX Hyperion 10a computing and sensor system designed for any manufacturer to produce Level 4 autonomous vehicles. Uber has already signed an agreement to deploy 100,000 units across its global network starting in 2027, and Stellantis, Lucid and Mercedes-Benz have also joined the project. Why is it important. For years, autonomous driving has been a persistent promise often wrapped in marketing. NVIDIA has turned that promise into an industrial offering with standardized architecture, certified chips, and out-of-the-box simulations. It does not sell autonomous cars, but it does sell the operating system that will make them possible. The contrast. Tesla has been selling autonomy as a leap of faith for a decade, with permanent updates, its own fleet and promises of “millions of autonomous Teslas” every year. NVIDIA, on the other hand, offers an open platform where any manufacturer can plug in their hardware. Tesla wants to be an equivalent to Apple in cars. NVIDIA prefers to be something more similar to Windows. Between the lines. Automotive only accounts for NVIDIA 1.3% of its revenue, but that segment is growing faster than the rest. In any case, Uber’s announcement has no real timetable for those 100,000 units unless it has been made public. Waymo, which has been developing its robotaxis for years, is already its sixth generation and it has the financial muscle of Alphabet behind it, it barely operates 2,000 of them. There is a considerable gap between ambition and reality. The backdrop. Drive Hyperion 10 is based on two Thor chips (2,000 teraflops each), fourteen cameras, nine radars, one LiDAR and twelve ultrasonic sensors. NVIDIA has designed it with full redundancy: if a component fails, the vehicle stops safely to avoid chain errors that multiply the potential damage. Lucid will be one of the first in offering level 4 autonomous driving to individual customers and not just fleets. Its interim CEO has admitted that so far they have disappointed in terms of driving assistance. Their commitment to NVIDIA is the classic implicit recognition: it is better to buy the brain than to build it. The money trail. NVIDIA will not continue building robotaxis for now, but for now it sells infrastructure: chips, simulation software, synthetic data… And it charges for each vehicle that uses its platform. It’s a more predictable revenue model than depending on full autonomy to arrive one day. Huang, in any case, has said that that moment is near. The interesting thing is not whether he is right, but that his definition no longer depends on blind faith. It depends on regulators, certifications and industrial tests. Autonomy has ceased to be science fiction and has become an engineering problem. And those problems are solved with processes, not with promises. In Xataka | China has turned the electric car market into a crazy race. And Porsche pays for it with billion-dollar losses Featured image | Xataka

Thousands of people bought the “romantasy” fashion book because it was cute. An unpleasant surprise awaited them.

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The consumerist desire that invades any area of ​​our lives also contaminates our hobbies. We are no longer talking about your identity being determined by your style when it comes to dressing or the music you listen to; Now, not missing the latest literary viral phenomenon in #Booktok also forms that identity that is built through what we consume. And if not tell everyone who bought ‘Catabasis‘, the author’s new novel RF Kuangfor its colorful edition and supposed themes related to a whole legion of readers, only to end up with a disappointment that leads them to abandon it after a few pages. Be aware of the latest news and let your private library be ground zero of your literary diogenes, full of those decorated songs so instagrammableis a new aspect of consumerism. The essential thing is not to search and select a book that suits your taste or surprises you, but to look for that pompous edition in trend on Tiktok. With the rise and increase in the number of readers has given way to a community on social networks that consumes books, mostly from a specific genrehe romanticasyand that follows like a mantra literary fashion of the month. As we have mentioned, marketing strategies can confuse the public and in order to attract the largest number of buyers, sometimes blur categories and genres that should be delimited. The fever for colored songs As a regular reader, it is healthy to get out of that nebula and inform yourself well about the reading you are going to do or, on the contrary, go with an open mind and let yourself go when starting those new pages. Because if you don’t, you can come to ‘Catábasis’ looking for a romance within an academic-fantastic environment and end up with your head full of equations, formulas and philosophical postulates. If we dive in reviews from ‘Catábasis’, we will find an alleged romance Dark Academia with the clichés of rivals to lovers (rivals to lovers), forced proximity (forced proximity) or one bed (the famous trope of rom-coms where the protagonists are forced to share a single bed). This would lead us to place our perception of the work in an erroneous perspective. The novel has been sold as if it were addressed to the general public, when It’s niche. Doctoral thesis, graphic description. RF Kuang is not your typical romance writer. In his previous books such as the ‘Poppy War’ trilogy (named by Time as one of ‘The 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time‘) we find an epic fantasy of Asian inspiration; in ‘Babel’, a criticism of British imperialism; and in ‘Amarilla’, a satire on the publishing world. Perhaps it is from there that we have to establish the starting point of ‘Catábasis’. It may be that the public has been launched en masse to buy Kuang’s new novel infected by expectations, but just look at social networks to see that the outcome has been disappointing for not a few. The result of this phenomenon is curious because the criticisms of Kuang’s novel are based, for the most part, on issues that have little to do with its theme or the characters. It seemed that part of the book’s audience, directly, I didn’t know what he was facing. On this occasion the #Booktok community was a victim of “what goes” and an elegant and striking edition: but, dear readers, not everything has to be romance and romanticasy. This lucrative sales strategy that consists of labeling all the literary novelties under clichés that are associated with romance to attract more attention ends up being a double-edged sword for books like Kuang’s. hell is a campus In this new novel we find the story of two Cambridge doctoral students who, after the death of their thesis advisor, decide to travel to hell to look for him and obtain a letter of recommendation that will determine their professional future. And yes, we can accept the label Dark Academia since it has several of its elements, just as we also find a romance that floods and emerges throughout the story; but ‘Catabasis’ (a Greek term that refers to the descent to hell and subsequent exit from it), is about something else. RF Kuang, in essence, uses the underworld as MacGuffin to create a critique and a satire of the academic world through a raw and realistic vision. Sounds good, maybe not so good. The author shoots us with scenes in offices that cause more chills than Dante’s own inferno; while talking about toxic rivalries, directors who abuse their power, gender inequality and academic obsession with knowledge. And, despite fantasy and a system of magic based on logic and paradox, these unreal situations trigger a conversation and social criticism about the academy. While the protagonists Alice and Peter wander through the “eight circles of hell” we are immersed in numerous philosophical and mathematical elements. Dante, Piranesi, the myth of Orpheus or the scrolls of Hecate are part of the daily narrative. The book is full of mathematical theories, academic references, and terms that will make you stop several times to do a Google search. The fact that for some doctoral students hell is, literally, their own university, already makes us suspect that we are not facing a rivals to lovers to use; not even in the face of academic criticism of Ali Hazelwood style. ‘Catabasis’ is dense and requires active reading; In fact, we can say that it is an essay disguised as a novel that sometimes sacrifices the rhythm of the plot or its development in favor of the style and ideas it wants to convey. With an acidic, witty and harsh tone, Kuang uses Alice as the epicenter of the narrative. A character who is not designed to make you like him, but to embody the loss of health and identity caused by the pressure of his tutor and the academic environment. The message that we can filter is quite clear: Sartre said that … Read more

one will give in on tariffs, the other on rare earths

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Donald Trump and Xi Jinping They have met in BusanSouth Korea, in their first face-to-face meeting in six years. The goal: to see if there was any way to deal with all the chaos of their trade war, one that has shaken global markets and threatened to destabilize the world economy. After shaking hands at Gimhae air base, Trump stated that it was going to be a successful meeting, although he also warned that Xi is “a difficult negotiator.” What has been agreed. After approximately ninety minutes of talks, Trump assured that there would be significant tariff reductions. On the one hand, the president claims that tariffs related to fentanyl will drop from 20% to 10%which would place the total tariff burden on Chinese products at around 47%, compared to the previous 57%. Just like the media points outChina, for its part, has agreed to postpone for a year new restrictions on the export of rare earths processed, critical minerals for sectors such as defense, technology and renewable energies. In addition, Beijing will resume the massive purchase of American soybeans, a relief for North American farmers, tremendously affected by the absence of China in their market this year. Why is it important. This meeting comes after months of commercial escalation which has made investors and allies alike nervous. Logically, the fact that the two largest economies on the planet confront each other has consequences at a global level. Chinese restrictions on rare earths and lithium batteries threatened to cripple essential supply chains, while US tariffs on technology have curbed China’s ambitions in artificial intelligence. Furthermore, the agreement reached in Kuala Lumpur prior consultations sets the stage for a truce that, if fulfilled, could inject stability into a highly volatile global economy. We have to wait for results. Despite the optimistic tone, there is room for caution. Trump and Xi have already signed a “phase one” agreement in 2020 that forced China to buy more American agricultural products, something that Beijing barely complied with, according to words from WSJ. This time there are more elements at stake: the suspension of US investigations into Chinese maritime and logistics industries, review of technological export controls, advances in the case of TikTokrare earths, Taiwan and more. According to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, both sides “have reached consensus while respecting principles of equality and mutual benefit.” It remains to be seen if that consensus ends up materializing. What was not touched. Trump claimed that Taiwan was not discussed at the meeting, allaying fears in Taipei about possible American concessions in exchange for trade advantages. Just like they explain From WSJ, the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, had already publicly ruled out this possibility days before. Regarding Ukraine, Trump said they discussed the issue “extensively” and that both countries will work together to find a solution, although he did not give details. Curiously, according to point The Guardian, minutes before the meeting, Trump ordered the Pentagon to resume nuclear weapons testing, although the president later suggested it was not related to China. And now what. Xi has declared that both sides should “finish follow-up work as soon as possible” to implement the consensus reached. trump confirmed that he will visit China in April and that Xi will travel to the United States later. It remains to be seen if what Trump has loudly announced ends up materializing or if, on the contrary, it remains another meeting of unfulfilled promises. Cover image | Guardian In Xataka | China wants to achieve technological independence in the worst possible place for the US: its army

The white Iberian lynx of Jaén seemed like a feat of nature. I was actually just stressed.

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In recent days, a photograph has flooded social networks and headlines. In it you can see an Iberian lynx with white fur that a priori marked a historical moment: the first case of albinism in the Iberian lynx species and precisely in Jaén and that pointed to a genetic anomaly that reduced the pigmentation of the coat without affecting the color of the eyes. But the reality has been very different (and a little disappointing). The importance. A priori, this photograph taken by Ángel Hidalgo marked something historic and could have changed the perception that biologists had of the species. But in the end it was not like that, as specialists have been able to see of the Life Lynx Connect Project: He’s just stressed and got gray hair (the same thing that happens among humans). The context. Ángel Hidalgo, 29, has been using cameras for years phototrapping to document the fauna of the southern peninsula. “When that white figure appeared on the screen, I knew I was looking at something unique. I call it the white ghost of the Mediterranean forest,” he reported on his social networks. His image, accompanied by hashtags such as #linceblanco, went viral in a few hours on social networks. At first, several media outlets pointed to a case of leucism, well documented phenomenon in birds and mammals, but never scientifically confirmed in Iberian lynxes. However, the inspectors and biologists of the Iberian Lynx Recovery Plan quickly came out to clarify the misunderstanding. “The animal exists, the photograph is authentic, but it is not leucism,” explained Javier Salcedo, Andalusian coordinator of the Plan. “This is a temporary alteration in pigmentation that may be related to high levels of stress or an episode of physiological weakness. It is completely reversible and does not pose a risk to the health of the specimen.” When stress dulls the color. The color of mammalian fur depends on the amount and type of melanin synthesized by cells called melanocytes, as occurs in humans. A melanin that is highly controlled by different hormonal pathways that are sensitive to many external factors such as cortisol that can partially block the activity of melanocytes. The problem in this case is that cortisol is known as the stress hormone, and therefore greater stress reduces the activity of these melanocytes. This phenomenon has been described in a wideo range of animals, from laboratory mice to arctic foxes and primates, in published studies in Nature, Pigment Cell & Melanoma Research either Scientific Reports. Even humans experience it: the well-known “grayness due to stress” responds to the same mechanism. In the case of the Iberian lynx, an animal especially sensitive to disturbances in its environment, a prolonged period of tension—due to territorial competition, scarcity of prey or human noise near its breeding areas—is enough to activate these processes. Lessons from a biological mirage. The media commotion also reflects a contemporary phenomenon: how social networks can transform a simple image into scientific news. In this case, misinformation about leucism and albinism spread faster than technical clarifications from experts on X or Instagram. In this way, we are reminded that in conservation science, physiological details matter as much as big numbers. A single lynx that changes its color due to stress can reveal accumulated tensions in an entire ecosystem, but not a very rare mutation in its genetics that causes that curious coat. Cover | Angel Hidalgo In Xataka | The most fearsome animals in the world: when nature is much more dangerous than humans

What’s new and how to update

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We are going to tell you the news of the next version of Android Autosince we have with us the Android Auto 15.6 beta that allows us to see what is coming. Again it is a version no new features or external changes that you are going to notice, although yes anticipate the arrival of a very important novelty. Therefore, we are going to review what specific new features this new version of the operating system for the car brings. Remember that you will be able to use it directly on the vehicle’s screen, connecting your Android mobile via cable or wirelessly if the car is compatible. What’s new in Android Auto 15.6 beta As we told you at the beginning, the first thing is to let you know that this new version has no external news. You will not find any new options or functionality, and when you update you will find that apparently nothing has changed and that everything remains the same. However, in its internal code we find clues of a novelty that will arrive in the near future. It is about the possibility of pin widgets to the screen of Android Auto just as we do on the mobile. The interface of this in-car system already had a widget system for the taskbar. You have it on the side, and when you click on it it goes to the lower area of ​​the screen. But with this change we have something different, something like pinned mini apps from which we can decide the scale. At the moment, there have been signs in the code that you can only have one widget at a time. There are a small variety of them such as a large clock, stopwatch, time in another part of the world, appointment calendar, weather forecast, etc. They can be adjusted in size. Yes indeed, this feature is not ready yetbut they add it to the source code of the application to work on it in the background. And why is this going so slow? Well because The Android Auto news goes insideand being a system to use in the car any error in the app can be fatal. That is why in the Android Auto updates They can’t just release a new feature and then improve it, because each failure can cost lives. They do it the other way around, they improve it in the code without releasing it, and then they start making it public. How to update Android Auto Beta As this is a beta version, you will still have to wait a few days until it reaches its final versionsince the betas are closed, although in this link You can try your luck in case there is a gap in the beta program, something that doesn’t usually happen. The other method to test the beta is download and install its APK fileavailable in the Android Auto page on APKMirror. On this website you will have to choose between the ARM and ARM64 architectures, although if your mobile is current it will almost certainly be the ARM64. Once the file is downloaded, you have to install the APK on your Android manually and restart. In Xataka Basics | News from Google Maps: new incident reports arriving for mobile and Android Auto

15 years were not enough for Amazon to defeat Steam. Now that defeat is taking its toll on him.

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In 2025, Amazon faces a deep crisis that challenges its hegemony. The obvious signs are mass layoffs what you are facing in the last few days, or the massive crash of your cloud serviceAmazon Web Services (AWS), which globally affected numerous digital platforms. But before, there have been multiple signs, some more subtle than others, that have made it clear that his gigantism was preventing him from precisely combating apparently much weaker rivals. One of its last bosses, Ethan Evans, has made it clear by recounting how Amazon tried to impose itself on the leading digital video game distribution platform, Steam. And despite having many more resources, it failed miserably. A revealing chapter. The failure of Prime Gaming within Amazon is a revealing chapter, and has been clearly exposed by Ethan Evans, former vice president of Prime Gaming. In a post that shared on his Linkedin profileEvans said that Amazon decidedly opted to compete with Steam, trusting in its size and resources to prevail. However, this strategy not only failed, but also showed a deep disconnection with the ecosystem in which its rival operated. According to Evans, the company tried everything to unseat Steam, from mergers with smaller stores that it intended to grow, to launching its own services such as Luna cloud gaming platform. But it never managed to deliver an experience that was significantly better. What went wrong. Evans says that one of the critical failures was underestimating the value of Valve, which combined a robust offering with a consolidated community and an interface adapted to the needs of players. Amazon mistakenly believed that its dominant presence and technological infrastructure would be enough, without understanding that players had already solved many of their problems and were unwilling to change. Evans adds to all this problems of focus, frequent changes in direction and the lack of a clear value proposition within a highly segmented and competitive market. As Evans himself says, there were experts who pointed out that this failure was foreseeable given the saturation and maturity of the digital gaming market, where differentiation requires not only capital, but also an innovative vision and solid relationships with users. Prime Gaming, in free fall. Prime Gaming is, perhaps, one of the departments of Amazon’s business that is suffering the most. In 3dJuegos they detail a “huge” cut that especially affects its MMO projects. Amazon will carry out a restructuring that will bring with it a very significant number of layoffs, including a total of 14,000 employees, with a direct impact on the Irvine and San Diego studios, which worked on titles such as ‘New World’ and the MMO based on ‘The Lord of the Rings’. Despite these cuts, Amazon will keep its video game division active, but with a different approach: they will focus on more sustainable products and agreements with third parties instead of continuing with their own big-budget developments. They continue to function as a distributor of the new ‘Tomb Raider’ and the Open world driving game from Maverick Gamessimilar to ‘Forza Horizon 5’. They also have a project from their studio in Montreal, ‘March of Giants’, moving forward with a closed alpha. The official justification for the restructuring is linked to the need to be “more agile” in a context of the explosion of artificial intelligence and changing markets. Goodbye, ‘New World’. Without a doubt, the project that suffers the most from these changes is ‘New World’, an MMO that will soon be discontinued and whose servers will close sometime in 2026. Season 10 and the latest updates, including the ‘Nighthaven’ expansion, will be the last content that the game will receive. As a way of thanking the community, Amazon made the “Rise of the Angry Earth” expansion free for all PC players, which multiplied users to a very notable but apparently insufficient 40,000 daily players. Massive restructuring. Amazon is preparing, at all levels, for major structural changes, starting with the massive reduction of its corporate workforce. As has been knownAmazon plans to cut between 14,000 and 30,000 jobs globally. The impact of the layoffs will be especially felt in areas such as human resources, advertising, payments, device development (including Fire TV), customer analytics and Audible. The overcontracting that took place during the pandemic and the need to redirect resources towards strategic areas such as artificial intelligence are presented as some of the reasons in a very complex situation. In Xataka | Amazon has calculated how much it costs to lay off 600,000 employees: 30 cents per item sold and many robots

the architect of the chinese electrical empire

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On November 20th our Xataka NordVPN Awards 2025which you can follow from our website. In them we will reward, as always, the most important devices and technologies of this year. And of course, in its fourth edition, we will present the Xataka Leyenda award. This recognition, achieved by Pedro Duque in 2021, Margrethe Vestager in 2022 and Matt Mullenweg in 2023recognizes the journey and career of someone of great relevance in science and technology. Today we have the honor of announcing the fourth winner of this award: Stella Li, global executive vice president of BYDthe company that has transformed the automotive industry. Stella Li will join us during the Xataka NordVPN 2025 Awards gala in a few weeks (you can still get a ticket) and we will do an interview that you can see and read on Xataka. You can follow it live with us. Almost three decades of total transformation Li has been with BYD for almost thirty years. He joined when it was a battery manufacturer with two dozen employees that supplied Motorola. Today he directs operations in 88 countries of a company that is approaching a million workers and exceeds $100 billion in revenue. In 2024, BYD manufactured 4.27 million electric vehiclesmore than any other manufacturer in the world. At the beginning of the year she was appointed World Car Person of the Year 2025the first woman and the first Chinese to receive this recognition. His philosophy is direct: “Our common enemy is the internal combustion engine.” He does not see competitors in Tesla or Volkswagen, but rather allies against oil. A rare bird. The industry has been betting on specialization for years, but Li has promoted the opposite: BYD manufactures everything in-house, from screws to chips. When the 2021 semiconductor crisis paralyzed competitors, BYD accelerated. This integration allows BYD to sell the Seagull for 9,000 euros and a luxury Yangwang for 300,000 both models being profitable. With 110,000 engineers, the company registers 32 patents daily. Solid state batteries, your great future betare confirmed for 2030, with 10,000 engineers dedicated exclusively to its development. Execution speed The Brazil plant was announced in December and was already operational in March. The Spanish network has gone from zero to 65 dealers in a year and a half months. When Europe imposed 17% tariffs, BYD pivoted to plug-in hybrids within weeks and sales skyrocketed 892%. Pure speed. Li has not focused his strategy on exporting Chinese cars, but on something very different that explains his success: creating local ecosystems. Hiring in California, development of specific flex hybrids for Brazil, software adapted for each European market… One of its latest movements has been the announcement of 20,000 million euros in European investments and the creation of 10,000 jobs in Hungary. You still have time to get your tickets for the gala Xataka NordVPN Awards 2025 on November 20 in Madrid! Join us and discover the best technological products of the year in a free event full of gadgets, humor and surprises. Advice offered by the brand Despite his growing importance, Li does not have social networks. He gives interviews, but not many. Her public profile is inversely proportional to her impact: she has opened 230 stores in Europe in 12 months, she already has a presence in 88 countries and has multiplied the value of BYD by 20,000 since 2003. She herself was personally in charge of the openings of the first offices in Hong Kong, Rotterdam and Chicago. Three decades of institutional memory converted into the greatest competitive advantage. Stella Li has transformed the global automotive market without having to make media noisecombining strategic patience Zen and very high speed of execution. For all this journey she is the winner of the Xataka Leyenda 2025 award. In Xataka | Stella Li, vice president of BYD: “In five years we will be one of the three main manufacturers in the world, I am convinced” Featured image | Xataka

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