Mobile Tech & Gadgets

which cars can circulate and which rest on February 21

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This Saturday the Hoy No Circula Saturday scheme is once again applied, the program with which the Secretariat of the Environment of Mexico City (SEDEMA) limits the circulation of certain vehicles to contain pollution in the Valley of Mexico. Again, those planning to use the car will have to carefully check the finish of its license plate and the verification hologram before hitting the road. The restrictions They do not only remain in the 16 municipalities of CDMX, but also reach several metropolitan municipalities of the State of Mexico. The program also operates in: Atizapan of Zaragoza Coacalco de Berriozábal Cuautitlan Cuautitlán Izcalli Chalco Chicoloapan Chimalhuacan Ecatepec de Morelos Huixquilucan Ixtapaluca Peace Naucalpan de Juárez Nezahualcoyotl Nicolas Romero Tecámac Tlalnepantla de Baz Tultitlan Chalco Valley Also, remember that if your route passes through any of these locations, the Saturday No Circulation Day also applies. What cars and license plates does Hoy No Circula Saturday affect? The principle of the program is to reduce the number of cars in circulation to lower emissions, but Saturdays are governed by specific guidelines that are added to the scheme from Monday to Friday. Not all vehicle owners rest on the same weekend: the hologram, the finish of the license plate and whether Saturday corresponds to an odd or even week define who stays parked and who can leave. It is important to take into account that the Saturday Today Not Circulating is not in effect throughout the day. The application schedule goes from 05:00 to 22:00so that outside of that interval—at night and early morning—the program does not restrict vehicle traffic, as long as no environmental contingency or other additional provision is decreed that imposes extraordinary limits. In the case of February 21, 2026, the calendar indicates that it is the third Saturday of the month, which is why it is considered an “odd week.” Under this configuration, vehicles with hologram 1 and plates whose ending is an odd number are those that must remain out of circulation during program hours. If your car meets that combination, you will have to leave it stored until after 10:00 p.m. On the contrary, cars with hologram 0 and 00 maintain permission to circulate without restrictions within the framework of Today No Circula Saturday. Those with hologram 2 cannot circulate under any circumstances on Saturdays. In addition to the previous cases, remember that there are a series of exempt vehicles that can circulate without being affected by these limitations. These are: Electric, natural gas or hybrid technology vehicles Units registered with plates for people with disabilities All those intended for urban public transport services (including funeral services) Those dedicated to school or passenger transportation Those assigned to public security and/or civil protection Those who decide not to comply with the provisions of Hoy No Circula are exposed to a significant financial penalty. The fine for violating the program ranges from 20 to 30 times the Measurement and Update Unit (UMA), which is equivalent to approximately 1,924.40 pesos at the minimum and up to 2,886.60 pesos at the maximum. Added to the economic impact is the possible immobilization of the vehicle and the time spent resolving the situation before the authorities. Which cars and license plates are affected by Hoy No Circula Saturday? In conclusion, if you are going to travel by car this Saturday through CDMX or through the suburban municipalities of the State of Mexico included in the program, it is advisable to check before starting what hologram your vehicle has, what the ending of your license plate is and if the calendar shows an even or odd week. Hoy No Circula Saturday focuses on removing the most polluting cars from circulation, but at the same time it forces people to better plan trips and evaluate mobility alternatives when the vehicle must rest. Photo | Gilbert Ng In Xataka | The countries that pollute the most in the world, gathered in a detailed graph

the division enters a new stage

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On a Friday night we tend to be focused on other things, not a movement that reconfigures Xbox’s leadership. However, that is what we have found: the retirement of Phil Spencer, the resignation of Sarah Bond as president of Xbox and a new name at the head of Microsoft Gaming. The information, published by IGNpoints to a replacement that few publicly anticipated. And when we talk about the two most visible faces of the division in the last decade, we are not talking about a simple internal adjustment, but about a turning point. In detail. Phil Spencer will leave his position as CEO of Microsoft Gaming on Monday, February 23, 2026, according to sources familiar with the matter cited by the aforementioned media. In the email sent to staff, Spencer himself explains that the conversation began months ago: “Last fall, I told Satya that I was thinking about taking a step back and starting the next chapter of my life.” The transition, he maintains, was designed in advance. In parallel, as we say, Sarah Bond has presented her resignation as president of Xbox. It has not been proposed as a natural succession or as a staggered relief, but rather as an exit that coincides with Spencer’s retirement. The new boss. The name that the helm takes is Asha Sharmauntil now president of CoreAI, the area focused on product and artificial intelligence within Microsoft. As his LinkedIn profile shows, he joined the company in 2024 and was previously VP of Product and Engineering at Meta and COO at Instacart, in addition to serving on the board of The Home Depot. His profile comes from the field of product and large-scale platforms, rather than from a public career linked to the historical management of Xbox. The redesign does not remain in the executive management. Matt Booty, until now head of Xbox Game Studios, is promoted to Chief Content Officer and will work closely with Sharma. It is not a minor change: it begins to play a central role in the content strategy at a time when the portfolio of studios and franchises is one of the division’s most visible assets. Three commitments. In his first message to the team, Sharma structures his roadmap into three clear axes. The first is direct: “First, great games. It all starts here.” It speaks of unforgettable characters, heart-warming stories and creative excellence, and promises to empower studios, invest in iconic franchises and support new ideas. Within this framework is the promotion of Booty, whom he defines as someone who understands “the craft and challenges of building great games.” The second axis goes through what it calls “the return of Xbox”, with an explicit reaffirmation of the console’s role in the brand’s identity after 25 years. The third looks at the “future of gaming,” with new business models and shared tools for developers and players in an environment where gaming lives across diverse devices. Balance and what’s coming. The transition, at least on paper, has been designed months in advance and with an orderly transfer. Spencer will continue in an advisory role over the summer, but formal leadership will change hands on Monday, February 23, 2026. From now on, the focus will shift to execution: how the commitment to big games is realized, what real weight the console will have in the strategy and how cross-platform expansion will be integrated. The relief is defined; The stage begins that we will have to measure in facts. Images | Xbox In Xataka | Video games have grown a lot this year. But the money goes to China, Roblox and the owners of mobile platforms

NASA just classified the 2024 incident at its highest level

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When NASA launched the Commercial Crew programdid so with a clear idea: to partner with private companies that would design and operate their own ships under fixed-price contracts. Boeing and SpaceX have been part of this scheme since its origin, with the aim of guaranteeing regular manned access to low orbit. The Starliner manned test flight in June 2024 was to complete the technical validation process of the Boeing capsule before its certification, but anomalies detected during the mission completely altered the initial plan. Now, when officially classifying This test as a “Type A Incident”, NASA places what happened at the highest level of its incident scale and recognizes that the magnitude of the episode goes beyond a simple technical setback. What happened in 2024. On June 5, 2024, the CST-100 Starliner took off heading to the International Space Station on its first crewed flight with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on board. The mission was initially planned to last between eight and fourteen days as a comprehensive test of the system. However, during the approach They detected helium leaks and failures in the thrustersand NASA explained that a loss of maneuverability occurred as the crew approached the station, although control was regained before docking. The stay ended up extending up to 93 days and, after reviewing the flight data and performing tests on the ground, The space agency decided that the vehicle would return in September 2024 without the astronautswhich finally returned to Earth in March 2025 aboard SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission. A devastating report. The independent investigation team, formed in February 2025, examined the technical, organizational and cultural factors that contributed to the problems with the test flight. According to their conclusions, there was a combination of hardware failures, gaps in the qualification processes, leadership errors and cultural dysfunctions that generated risk conditions incompatible with the safety standards of the agency’s manned flight program. NASA has indicated that it accepts this document as the final report and that work to identify the technical root cause continues. What does “Type A mishap” (Type A Incident) mean? NASA uses this category as the highest level within its incident system. Let us remember that this definition includes cases such as damages exceeding 2 million dollars, the loss of control or destruction of a vehicle or the loss of human life. In the case of the Starliner flight, there were no injuries and, according to the agency, the mission regained control before docking, but there was a loss of maneuverability during the approach and associated financial damages. The designation recognizes that there was potential for a major mishap and that the conditions generated cannot be dismissed as a simple technical mismatch. SpaceX Dragon 2 NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman was explicit in addressing the cultural dimension of the problem. “It is decision-making and leadership that, if left unchecked, could create a culture incompatible with human spaceflight,” he declared at the press conference. The head of the agency maintained that the classification as “Type A mishap” seeks to “make things clear” and ensure that what happened is recorded appropriately for future learning. He also admitted that allowing the program itself to initially investigate itself was “incompatible with NASA’s safety culture,” a practice that, he explained, it has decided to correct. Boeing’s response. In a statement released after the report’s publicationthe company stated that it remains “committed to NASA’s vision of having two commercial crew providers” and thanked the agency for the research. Boeing maintains that in the 18 months since the test flight it has made progress in corrective actions to address the technical challenges detected and has driven cultural changes within the team. Images | POT In Xataka | NASA’s megarocket no longer leaks: Artemis 2 passes its vital test and clears the path to the Moon

no to all military use

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The race to dominate artificial intelligence has narrowed to a handful of actors capable of competing at the highest level. Anthropic is part of that small group along with names like OpenAI or Google, and their models Claude they have gained ground in areas such as programming. In that big moment, however, the company faces a delicate decision: maintain certain limits on the military use of its technology, even at the cost of straining its relationship with the United States Department of Defense. The standard that changes everything. According to Axiosciting a senior administration official, the Pentagon is pressuring four leading AI laboratories to allow the use of their models for “all lawful purposes,” including in especially sensitive areas such as weapons development, intelligence gathering or battlefield operations. Anthropic, however, would not have accepted those conditions after months of difficult negotiations, which has led the Department of Defense to consider reviewing its relationship with the company. The lines you don’t want to cross. Faced with this broad demand, those led by Dario Amodei have made it clear that they maintain specific limits. The company insists that two areas remain out of discussion. A spokesperson told the aforementioned media that the company remains “committed to using cutting-edge AI in support of US national security,” but clarified that conversations with the Department of Defense have focused on “our strict limits around fully autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance,” and that these issues do not “relate to current operations.” The episode that ended up raising the tension. The Wall Street Journal statedciting people with knowledge of the matter, that Claude was used in a US military operation in Venezuela to capture Nicolás Maduro through the relationship with Palantir. In that same text, the AI ​​company responded that they cannot comment on whether their technology was used in a specific military operation, classified or not. And he added that any use, whether in the private sector or in the Government, must comply with its use policies. What is at stake. Beyond that episode, Axios reported that from the US military level “everything is on the table,” including the possibility of reducing or even breaking the relationship with Anthropic. The same senior official cited by the media added that, if this path is chosen, there would have to be “an orderly replacement,” which suggests that the process would require a certain amount of time. WSJ provides another interesting fact: last year a $200 million contract was signed between Anthropic and the Department of Defense. The substance of the dispute. At a time when AI companies seek to consolidate incomejustify valuations and demonstrate usefulness in critical environments, the relationship with the defense sector is a showcase and a source of first-rate business. At the same time, it is also an area where ethical and strategic limits become more visible. Anthropic’s decision to maintain certain restrictions may reinforce its identity as a security-oriented company, but also limit its access to million-dollar contracts. Images | Anthropic | Oleg Ivanov In Xataka | Data centers in space promise to save the planet. And also ruin the earth’s orbit

the dangerous viral trend that turns a common medicine into a lethal Russian roulette

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Something that may be quite internalized in society is that taking too much of a medication Anyone can have a very harmful effect on the body, and logically we avoid taking a lot of ibuprofen or paracetamol at once. But social networks have taken this as a new challenge which consists of taking paracetamol pills in a group to see who can achieve spend more time admitted in the hospital due to the liver failure it generates. Crazy. What has been dubbed the “paracetamol challenge” on social media is becoming a real nightmare for emergency and toxicology services. And it is no wonder, since behind the false sense of security that an over-the-counter medication such as paracetamol gives, hides a mechanism of implacable toxicity capable of destroying the liver of a teenager in a matter of hours. At an international level. The phenomenon is not new, but it has raised alarm bells internationally due to its recent outbreaks. In the United Kingdom, newspapers such as The Independent have been echoed of police warnings after registering cases of teenagers intentionally intoxicated in Soutampaton due to this challenge. And, although the first thing you might think is that it is a suicide attempt, since paracetamol is one of the ways used to do it, the reality is that they do it because of a challenge seen on TikTok. This too has reached countries like Belgiumwhere health authorities have had to launch a strong alert about videos that encourage people to overdose on this medication. In Spain. Has not been left behind our country, which has also reported cases of adolescents who have followed this challenge. But to such an extent that in Malaga There have been two hospital admissions due to liver failure due to a drug overdose. The paracetamol trap. Although it is a medication that can be found over the counter, in the case of Spain, generally the dose is 500 mg, the truth is that it has a great danger behind it, since paracetamol overdose is one of the most frequent and potentially lethal pharmacological poisonings. But the great deception of this challenge is that symptoms of poisoning do not occur in the first hoursbut a teenager can ingest several grams of acetaminophen and feel at most mild nausea or vomiting. In this way, while the young man thinks that “nothing has happened” and that he has won the challenge to his friends, the liver is silently collapsing. In days. International clinical guidelines place special emphasis on this: late liver deterioration, since the symptoms of severe liver failure appear only three days after taking the paracetamol overdose. And here on many occasions it is too late to act from medicine, which causes the death of the patient. The mechanism. Playing the “paracetamol challenge” is, in medical terms, playing Russian roulette, since massive intake of this drug saturates the metabolic pathways of the liver, generating a highly toxic metabolite called NAPQI that destroys liver cells when in large doses. With a normal and scheduled intake, this metabolite is produced, but the liver can control it by transforming it into another product that it quickly discards. But when the amount is very high, the liver literally has no capacity to process it into something less harmful. The treatment. Right now, the only thing that has shown a reversal of liver damage from acetaminophen overdose is N-acetylcysteine. However, the effect decreases as time passes, and it is ideal to administer it in the first eight hours after an overdose with paracetamol. The problem is that the teenager can hide that he is beginning to feel bad because he has a feeling of guilt or even fear of the consequences that his actions may have on his parents. This is why it may be the case that you arrive late to a hospital to receive treatment and that the window available to do a stomach lavage or even for a liver transplant to arrive is very small. Raise awareness. The “paracetamol challenge” is not just another Internet hoax, but rather it is a direct fight against the biology of the human body in which the prize for “lasting longer in the hospital” can be multiple organ failure or ending up on the waiting list to receive a transplant. In this way, the most important thing is always to make minors aware of how serious it can be to take too much paracetamol, since it is possible that they do not know that something that a priori ‘cures’ their fever or discomfort can end up killing them. Images | danilo.alvesd In Xataka | Ozempic not only eliminates hunger, it is rewriting the supermarket ticket: goodbye to ultra-processed foods and spending on snacks

There was a time when Megaupload conquered the world of downloads. And their king was Kim Dotcom: Crossover 1×39

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At the beginning of the 2000s there were practically no legitimate alternatives to access film, series or music content through streaming, so there were those who took advantage of the circumstance to propose “dark” options. P2P networks were clearly one of those options, but we also attend at that time at the birth of phenomena like Megaupload. This platform became an absolute internet giant, and its creator, Kim Dotcom, is already a living part of the history of the network of networks. This hacker and entrepreneur managed to put an entire industry in suspense while making gold and living like a king. However, justice ended up going after him, and that spelled the end of Megaupload. The raid that ended with his arrest It became news with worldwide coverage, and that marked the definitive end of that platform. Two years later, Mega would appear, a much more “formal” and less obscure alternative, but Dotcom would end up breaking away from it shortly after creating it. Since then this entrepreneur has become a kind of political activist who tries by all means to ensure that justice I couldn’t unload all my weight against him. Whether he does or not remains unknown, but one thing is certain: the story of Kim Dotcom and Megaupload They deserved their own episode. of Crossover. On YouTube | Crossover In Xataka | Megaupload, rise and fall from grace of the portal that changed downloads on the Internet forever

NATO’s notice to shield our electrical grid

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The blackboard hanging behind the bar at Squat 17b, a venue in kyiv, does not list drink offerings, but instead keeps a countdown of the days Ukrainians must endure the harsh winter. Inside, the bar lacks electricity and is illuminated only by candles, while customers shiver on stools drinking beer cooled by the freezing temperatures themselves. This print, described by Financial Timesis the result of an exceptionally harsh winter, with temperatures reaching -20 degrees Celsius. What is emerging in Eastern Europe is a reality that some analysts They already describe how “thermal terror”: the cold turned into a weapon of war. Russia does not merely seek to degrade Ukrainian military capabilities; It deliberately targets substations, power plants and distribution networks to make everyday life physically unfeasible. Heating, electricity and water become strategic objectives. Away from the trenches, the front line has moved to the transformers and electrical substations. In the first weeks of the year, Russian forces They have attacked the Ukrainian energy sector more than 200 times. Russia has launched coordinated waves of up to 40 missiles and 400 drones in a single night, seeking to overwhelm air defense systems. Ukraine lost up to two-thirds of its electricity generation capacity after the first months of bombing. And yet, the infrastructure resists. The new frontier of sabotage Faced with the increase in physical and hybrid threats, the European electricity industry has begun to issue clear warnings. “The last year has shown us that continuing with the current model in Europe is no longer an option,” said Leonhard Birnbaum, president of Eurelectric, in statements collected by Euronews. For the sector, security of electricity supply It has become a strategic issue. At the end of December, Poland’s security systems they detected what his Government described as “the strongest attack against Polish energy infrastructure in years.” The Sandworm group—a unit linked to the Russian GRU—managed to disable remote terminal units (RTUs) at at least 30 energy facilities. These RTUs do not generate electricity, but they allow substations and plants to be monitored and controlled. The attack affected plants cogeneration and systems that connect wind and solar farms with the grid. To achieve this, they used a destructive malicious code known as wiperdesigned exclusively to delete files and permanently render computers unusable. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned thathad it been completely successful, half a million people would have been left without heat in the middle of winter. This use of a wiper marks a qualitative leap: Russia has gone from simple digital espionage to destructive sabotage against critical infrastructure of a NATO member country. Physical espionage is added to the cyber threat under the sea. The Russian spy ship Yantaroperated by the Russian Deep Sea Research Directorate (GUGI), traveled for almost 100 days through the waters of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Their goal was to map and monitor the undersea cables that Europe and North America depend on for their digital communications and energy. These types of covert operations in the “gray zone” seek to measure NATO’s red lines and open the door to possible power or communications outages to force political negotiations. How did we get here? As the historic American general Omar Bradley recalled: “Amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics.” For any developed nation today, the most critical logistics system is its energy infrastructure. For decades, Europe built a deeply dependent on imported fossil fuels. Dependency became vulnerability. As he remembered Bloombergthe European Union paid almost €22 billion in Russian fossil fuel imports last year, more than it provided in direct financial support to Ukraine. Changing models has ceased to be a climate issue and has become a pure survival instinct. The old continent has proven that filling its territory with renewable sources and electrifying the economy builds a much more solid structural wall than the old addiction to foreign fossils. And the shield is already working. A look at the data collected by the think tank Agora Energiewende In his latest report, Europe’s energy security on the path to climate neutrality, reveals a brutal cushion: the simple deployment of wind and solar technology during the last five years (2019-2024) avoided having to buy and burn 92 billion cubic meters of gas. However, this transformation introduces new risks. Modern power grids are more digital, more interconnected and more decentralized. According to the same report Agora Energiewendethe challenge is no longer just to ensure fuel supply, but to guarantee network stability, cybersecurity and industrial resilience. More nodes mean more potential entry points for attacks. Added to this is the technological dimension. How to collect Euronewsbetween 70% and 80% of the solar inverters installed in Europe come from Chinese manufacturers such as Huawei or Sungrow. In a highly digitalized system, hardware control also potentially implies software control. Energy as defense policy Faced with this vulnerability, Europe is obliged to treat energy security as a defense policy de facto. A coalition of defense experts, including retired military leaders such as British Lieutenant General Richard Nugee and Dutch General Tom Middendorp, has urged European governments to count low-carbon energy spending against NATO’s target of allocating 1.5% of GDP to critical infrastructure and civil resilience. In statements collected by Guardianretired Lt. Gen. Richard Nugee said, “To have a strong military deterrent we need a resilient homeland. And low-carbon energy is a critical component.” According to Bloombergthis vision is gaining ground in the European strategic debate: the energy transition is no longer just climate policy; is security architecture. The tactical key to this new defense is decentralization. Unlike large centralized plants that are easy targets for missiles, wind turbines and solar panels are much more geographically dispersed, making them significantly less vulnerable to large-scale attacks. To sustain this new model, Euroelectric proposes three fundamental pillars: Better planning: Preparedness frameworks should span the entire value chain, include all energy carriers, and anticipate long-term external threats. Massive flexibility: It will be essential to deploy new storage and demand management technologies to complement the variability of renewable energies. … Read more

Millennials used the term “TL;DR.” Generation Z is replacing it with something more radical: “AI;DR”

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He infinite scrollsocial networks and AI have made our attention be a rare commodity too valuable to happily distribute it in contents without substance. Millennials got used to ask for quick summaries with the term “TL;DR” (Too Long; Didn’t Read). The summary: a lot of text. Generation Z, transgressive and cornered by AIyou have found another way to filter what is and is not worth your attention. If a content looks generated by AIis sent with only five characters: “AI;DR” (AI, didn’t read). This tag is used to mark content that is perceived as “slop”. AI-generated filler that wastes time without providing real value. Behind this label there is satiety, but also a form of defending something as basic as wanting to read people who have taken the trouble to write a text. From “too long” to “too artificial” Tony “Sid” Sundharam, co-founder of the app Sink Ithe defined in his blog the essence of the new term: “For me, writing is the most direct window into how someone thinks, perceives and understands the world.” For a growing portion of young people, delegating that window of humanity in an AI it breaks the pact of honesty between whoever writes and whoever reads. In the background, a much more powerful idea is latent: “Why should I bother reading something that someone else is not interested in writing?” “TL;DR” was born, as internet memes do, as an inside joke on forums and networks. A way to admit that the effort-reward balance had been exceeded. The text it was too long to dedicate time to it. Over time it became a kind of generational nod: there was a lot of information, little time and limited patience for infinite blocks of text. “AI;DR” reuses that same structure, but changes the paradigm. Now the problem is no longer the length (or at least it is not the main reason), now the problem is the origin of the content. The idea is not that the text is long, but that seems generated by an AIwithout its own voice, critical sense or experience behind it. When someone labels a text like this, they are not asking for a summary. You’re saying it’s not even worth starting to read. A few days ago, my colleague Javier Lacort, counted that AI is conditioning us to look for the “summarize” button in all the contents to save time, thus depriving us of the luxury of enjoying a reading in its entirety, with its nuances and its readings between the lines. AI may be more efficient saving reading time, but taking a toll on the essence of the message. Fatigue in the face of AI “slop” In the new paradigm of rapid content consumption, “AI;DR” becomes a kind of advertisement between humans. A quick way to point out that something smells automated and that it might be better to pass by. When someone answers “AI;DR” to a textis doing more than just complaining about AI. As Sid explained on his blog, the fact that someone has had an idea, fought over it in front of a blank page, and spent time putting it in order are “rudimentary work tests from a pre-AI era,” small stress tests that they legitimize the author before the reader. Faced with that, the famous “dead internet theory“. Machines writing for machines. The same generation that lives surrounded by automation and intelligent assistants is valuing what cannot yet be falsified so easily: one’s own style, strange ideas, imperfect phrases that reveal that there is a person behind it. TL;DR:Generation Z has popularized “AI;DR” (AI; ​​didn’t read) as an evolution of the classic millennial “TL;DR”, to quickly discard texts that appear to be generated by AI or artificial filler without an authentic human voice. In Xataka | While companies boast of efficiency due to AI. Generation Z only sees temporary contracts and closed doors Image | Unsplash (Firza Pratama)

Video games have grown a lot this year. But the money goes to China, Roblox and the owners of mobile platforms

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The global video game industry had a turnover of around $185 billion in 2024 and continues to grow. But there is a catch: this growth does not reach the studios or the area that traditional players look at, those of the console wars and the old PC Master Race. Matthew Ball’s usual annual report leaves a less complacent diagnosis: revenue is concentrated in China, on platforms like Roblox and on the owners of mobile operating systems. The rest survive as best they can. The Old Times (2021): There is still talk about how great the year 2021 was for video games. It seems like it was yesterday when the pandemic (insert meme of Grandpa Simpson telling stories to the kids here) confined hundreds of millions of people to their homes, and games (mobile, console, PC, free, subscription) absorbed the benefits of that confinement. As Ball, CEO of Epyllion, analyzes in The State of Video Gaming in 2025the factors that drove that peak were an extraordinary sum of factors: mobile platforms, free-to-play models, games as a service, the cross play and new genres like battle royale and social play. Downhill. The flip side of that was a much bigger recession than expected: global spending on video games fell 3.5% in 2022 and barely recovered a few percentage points towards the end of 2024. According to the consulting firm MIDiA Research, the sector had enjoyed growth of 26.3% in 2020 and 9.8% in 2021, and the rebound was inevitable. According to Ball, the engines that had driven the industry between 2011 and 2021 stopped all at once: the smartphones They were no longer surprising with each interaction, social networks were paralyzed, the free-to-play was normalized. 6.5% of total gaming time in 2023 corresponded to new video games, says Ball, and only four titles shared half of that percentage. Layoffs in full force. He report also speaks how the sector’s layoffs since 2022 illustrate this adjustment: more than 44,000 jobs, 61% of them concentrated in North America. This does not mean that it is the end of the industry or that the same pattern is being repeated. crash 1983, as has been said (the industry is too diversified and globalized to repeat a systemic collapse of that magnitude). What we are paying is the cost of having built a structure designed for an industry in continuous growth during the pandemic. The Chinese monster. Ball puts on the table that global spending on video games grew by approximately $10 billion between 2021 and 2025. But… where did that money go? The report assures that to Beijing: about 4,000 million of that growth is from the Chinese market, and another 1,500 million are from titles developed in China sold in international markets. In total, Chinese publishers have racked up about half of global growth since 2019. And there are more data: Gamer spending in China reached $49.2 billion in 2024, with a base of 722 million active gamers, more than double the total population of the United States. China is already the first market in the world by income. Not foreigners. Very significantlythat market remains almost closed to foreign games. 84% of Chinese gamers’ spending goes on titles produced in China, and that percentage has increased, as unusual as it may seem: 20% of Chinese domestic spending goes on imported titles (a figure that also registered a decrease of 5% between 2023 and 2024). It is comparable to what happens with cinemawith local films devouring foreign ones at the box office. A situation favored by a combination of factors: First, the Chinese regulatory framework favors national titles through a licensing system; second, development costs are substantially lower than in the West; Finally, the work culture of the country’s studios allows for more intensive production cycles. You don’t have to dig far to find examples of great Chinese international successes: ‘Genshin Impact‘, from miHoYo, raised more than $3.5 billion in its first year70% outside China with a character design rooted in anime. ‘Honor of Kings‘, from Tencent, dominated the Chinese mobile market for years before making the international leap with adaptations of character names. AND ‘Black Myth: Wukong‘, developed with support from Tencent, sold ten million copies in its first three days launching in August 2024, betting on the opposite of assimilation: an unequivocally Chinese mythology without thematic concessions to Western taste. Roblox sweeps. The numbers sing: 70% of the growth of the video game market outside of China in 2025 was absorbed by ‘Roblox‘. Which is an infrastructure on which millions of creators build interactive experiences using the platform’s own tools. Players access it for free and spend real money on cosmetic items and access within these worlds, transactions that are carried out in Robux, the ecosystem’s virtual currency. Of every dollar spent,’Roblox’ historically retained around 70% leaving the creator with approximately 25 or 30 cents. In September 2024, ‘Roblox’ announced a new delivery model for paid games that increases the creator’s commission up to 70% on titles that sell for $49.99. What does this translate into? In 2024, ‘Roblox’ paid around $923 million to its creators (an increase of 25% compared to 2023), while its total revenue grew by 29% until reaching 3.6 billion dollars. Its intentions are colossal: CEO David Baszucki stated that the company’s goal is to capture 10% of the global video game content market. Some more questions. Just to finish outlining the portrait: ‘Roblox’ registers sustained net losses (a accumulated deficit of 3.5 billion) with the logic of the platform in the expansion phase, sacrificing immediate profitability. Some observers they point because ‘Roblox’ has become the video game equivalent of YouTube, a platform that extracts value from the work of its creators in the form of data, advertising and infrastructure. And one last thing: two titles on the platform (‘Blox Fruits’ and ‘Brookhaven RP’) each accumulate 60% of the monthly gaming hours of all of Electronic Arts. 30%. If the global video game market reached an all-time high in … Read more

Google is once again leading the AI ​​race and has something that no rival can match

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Google has launched Gemini 3.1 Proan incremental update of its flagship model that comes loaded with surprises. And according to its benchmarks, the model has much more to say than it seems. In abstract reasoning, Google wants to start setting the pace on Anthropic and OpenAI. But their ace in the hole is not just that, because they have something that other startups cannot replicate: their entire ecosystem and how they are integrating AI into it. What just happened. Just three months after launching Gemini 3 ProGoogle has published Gemini 3.1 Pro. The curious thing is that the jump is much more impressive than it may seem if we only looked at that “.1” in front of it. According to the company, the new model significantly improves the reasoning of the previous one and represents the intelligence base that already fed the Gemini 3 Deep Think update, presented last week. It is available today in the Gemini app, in NotebookLM (for Pro and Ultra subscribers), in the API through AI Studio, and in enterprise environments through Vertex AI. Data. In the ARC-AGI-2 benchmark, designed to evaluate the ability to solve completely new logical patterns, without the possibility of having seen them during training, Gemini 3.1 Pro has achieved 77.1%. To put it in context: Gemini 3 Pro stayed at 31.1%, while Claude Sonnet 4.6 marked 58.3% and Opus 4.6 68.8%. That is, Google has not only closed the gap, but has gone over it. It should be noted that never before has a mid-term review of its models recorded such a pronounced advance in reasoning. What the numbers say in the rest of the benchmarks. In the comparative table that accompanies the advertisementGemini 3.1 Pro tops the majority of categories evaluated: it obtains the best result in Humanity’s Last Exam without tools (44.4%), it leads in GPQA Diamond with 94.3% in scientific knowledge, and it doubles the previous model in APEX-Agents, the benchmark for long-term tasks. It also excels in MCP Atlas (multistep workflows), BrowseComp (agent search) and MMMLU (multilingual question and answer). It should be noted that, according to these benchmarks, it is not better in everything: in GDPval-AA Elo, which evaluates tasks in real-world work environments, Claude Sonnet 4.6 surpasses Gemini 3.1 Pro with 1,633 points compared to 1,317. And in SWE-Bench Verified, the programming test with agents, Opus 4.6 scores 80.8% compared to Google’s 80.6%. However, in the global calculation, the balance clearly favors Google’s new model. In Arena Leaderboard (the classification based on user votes) still places Claude Opus 4.6 ahead in text and code, although here “the sensations” of each user take more prominence when it comes to rating, than anything else. A clear competitive advantage. The strongest argument in favor of Google does not even have to do with the power of its latest model. The company doesn’t need to convince you to use its AI: it’s already where you are. Search, Gmail, YouTube, Android, Docs, Drive, Google Photos, Maps… Its AI does not depend on you opening a specific application, but is integrated into the ecosystem that millions of people already use daily. For the rest of the startups (OpenAI, Anthropic…), they need you to use their models in specific environments (ChatGPT, Claude). Google is simply already there. It’s a moat that perhaps not even the best model in the world could sweep right now. And then there’s the price. Gemini 3.1 Pro comes to users with a subscription to Google AI Plus, Pro and Ultra, although you can also try it on a limited basis in the free plan. It should be noted that it is currently in a preliminary version. The narrative that Google wants us to have in our heads is that, for a modest price, you have access to that model, plus everything the company offers in its ecosystem, including storage. That, right now, is very difficult to overcome. Additionally, for developers, the API is also offered at a very competitive price. So, from a practical point of view and from the pocket, Google is giving everything so that all its users continue using its ecosystem, with or without the best AI. The “.1”. The AI ​​race has been at a frenetic pace for months. And the most interesting of all is that Google, which arrived late for the racehas had a hell of a year in which he has structured all the mess he had with his AI. The jump from Gemini 3 to 3.1 in reasoning is greater than what many rivals have achieved between full versions. And it has done so while maintaining the advantage of being the company that controls the most relevant entry points to the Internet. It remains to be seen how they solve monetizing your artificial intelligencebut they have certainly put in the work. Cover image | Alex Dudar and Google In Xataka | The scientist who made the AI ​​we know today possible has just raised 1 billion. His new goal is to teach him to see space

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