Mobile Tech & Gadgets

NVIDIA and OpenAI know that the AI ​​bubble can burst in their faces. His solution: let dad pay for the state

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Too big to fail or, in English, “too big to fail.” It is a theory of economics and finance which argues that certain corporations, especially banks, are so large and so interconnected that their failure would have catastrophic consequences for the global economy and therefore must be rescued by governments. The speech gained traction in the 2008 financial crisis and is beginning to sound again from the mouths of NVIDIA and OpenAI, no less. Government support. At an event of WSJSarah Friar, CFO of OpenAI, stated that the company will not go public in the short term (she says until at least 2027) and that its priority is growth and investment in R&D, above profitability. The most striking part of his speech was when he said that they hope that the government will support the financing of future agreements related to data centers. That OpenAI is burning astronomical amounts of money to lead the AI ​​race is something we have been discussing for a long timebut it is the first time that they directly appeal to the state to guarantee it. Shortly after, Friar collected cable in a post on LinkedIn: “OpenAI does not seek government support for our infrastructure commitments. I used the word ‘support’ and that confused the message,” but the seed was already planted. Depreciation. OpenAI is closing deals to secure computing capacity. We have seen it with his alliance with NVIDIAwith amdwith Broadcom and more recently with amazon. The complexity of the situation is that the depreciation rates of AI chips remain uncertain. As it says Washington Post’s Gerrit de Vynck in XOpenAI is going to need the best chips to be at the forefront of the AI ​​market, but financing this demand is not the same if the life cycle of the chips is seven years, as if it is only two years. The money is flowing, the question is for how long. In this uncertain scenario, government support would act as a safety net so that banks and private equity firms would feel more comfortable and continue releasing billions for OpenAI. China will win. NVIDIA is also appealing for government involvement in subtle ways. In a Financial Times event in London, Its CEO Jenshen Huang has warned that “China is going to win the AI ​​race.” Their arguments are that China has more flexible regulation and government subsidies for the energy your data centers needthat It is not little. This energy advantage allows China to compete even if they cannot buy NVIDIA’s most powerful chips. Huang doesn’t say it directly, but it is a clear wake-up call: either you subsidize the energy our data centers need or China will win. The fear. The question has been hanging over the air for a long time: Are we witnessing a new bubble? The investor Michael Burry thinks soand he is not just any investor, he was the one who made gold when the real estate bubble burst in 2008 (the movie ‘The Big Short’ is based on his story). The thing is, Burry just bet short against NVIDIA, which recently It was valued at 5 billion dollars. Fear of the bubble continues to grow, according to a Coatue report and the number of fund managers who believe we are in a bubble increased to 54% in October, up from 37% in July this year. 48% of the S&P 500 index corresponds to AI-related stocks. Fountain: Bianco Research Numbers. The fear is not at all unfounded and all you have to do is take a look at the numbers. Account Tomás Pueyo in Uncharted Territories that the economy should be in recession, but the numbers show the opposite and AI is behind this growth. The S&P 500 index is through the roof and 48% of this growth corresponds to AI-related stocks. The share price is far above what it was in the dotcom bustall with ridiculous benefits. And that’s not all, the economic growth of the United States in 2025 is due almost entirely to the construction of data centers for AI. According to the Economist Jason Furmanwithout taking data centers into account, the GDP of the United States would have grown only 0.1% in 2025. The creator of the newsletter Today in Tabs He gave a very graphic example: “Our economy could be reduced to three AI data centers in trench coats.” Tightrope. Returning to OpenAI, its financial director assured the Financial Times that it could be profitable simply by stopping investing too aggressively since it has a “very healthy” margin structure. The thing is, they can’t do it. OpenAI needs to achieve AGI, its great promise and the only thing that could justify this insane investment. If it fails, will cause a shock wave that can impact NVIDIA, AMD, Oracle… and end up dragging down the global economy. The competition tightens, Anthropic is eating the business market’s toast and Google is not only winning every time more users with Geminireached record revenue in the last quarterwhile OpenAI lost $11.5 billion in the same period. It doesn’t look good. Images | Wikipedia In Xataka | NVIDIA will invest 100 billion in OpenAI so that OpenAI buys chips from NVIDIA. And it’s a disturbing sign

Portal is now a laptop to play PS5 in the cloud

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When Sony announced PlayStation Portal in May 2023, skepticism was general. A device costing more than 200 euros that only allowed a PS5 to play remotely seemed like a limited proposal in a market where Steam Deck and switch (plus the increasingly populated panorama of Laptop PCs and the chinese devices) They already offered complete experiences. However, Sony seems to have realized that it has a device with potential in its hands and has taken a step in an unforeseen direction. The limitations so far. Portal is an additional screen that allows you to view the content and games of your mobile device on a mobile device. PlayStation 5. It has no autonomy outside the console, and its range of action is the one that has the Wi-Fi to which you are connected (or a second Wi-Fi: there is the possibility of connecting the home console to one Wi-Fi and the Portal to another). A considerable limitation that hindered the possibilities of a technically very interesting device (especially in the imitation of the DualSense and the quality of the screen). Surprise success. But the device sold out in the United States and the United Kingdom within two days of its launch in November 2023, and Sony admitted that sales of the device They exceeded their internal projections. It is estimated to have sold between 420,000 and 630,000 units in the United States from its launch through July 2024, and data from early 2024 indicated that approximately 3% of the 65.5 million PS5 owners owned a Portal, which translates to almost 2 million units sold globally. The true strategic turn. It arrives now, in November 2025, two years after launch. Sony has introduced an update that updates the cloud gaming that has been available for a year in beta mode. From now on, you can run your own digital games on PlayStation Portal, along with titles from the PS Plus catalog that could already be previously streamed. Thousands of compatible PS5 titles from users’ personal libraries are now supported, including titles as diverse as ‘Astro Bot’, ‘GTA 5’, ‘Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’, ‘Fortnite’ and ‘Resident Evil 4’. The update has also added features that were not yet available in the beta: support for 3D audio, password lock, in-game purchases and new accessibility options, as well as a redesigned interface with three tabs: “Remote Play”, “Cloud Streaming” and “Search”. Testing ground. PlayStation Portal has functioned in the last year as a perfect testing ground for Sony. With a relatively modest investment, in a device that was essentially a DualSense with a screen, Sony has studied the behavior of users with cloud gaming without launching into something as expensive as developing a laptop. Usage data, for example, reveals that the device wakes up a lot at night, around nine o’clock, suggesting that users first play the console and then switch to the Portal when other family members use the TV. It is not an obstacle. Playstation Portal does not compete with portable consoles such as Nintendo Switch or Steam Deck. Rather, it complements the PS5, and does not cannibalize sales of the console (undoubtedly, an issue that should currently concern Microsoft, which with launches like the ROG Ally Xbox you can prepare to sell even less hardware). In fact, Playstation Portal requires users to have already entered the PlayStation ecosystem, especially now that unrestricted cloud gaming (beyond purchased digital games) is limited to subscribers of PS Plus Premium, the most expensive tier of the service. Overtaking Xbox on the right. Microsoft has bet very heavily on cloud gaming as an integral part of the Game Pass Ultimate experience. Sony had been lagging behind until now, but with this it has its own hardware (not like the ROG Ally “licensed” by Microsoft) to give an extraordinary push to its own cloud game. No one else among the majors has something like this: a console for an official PS5 streaming experience… with the controls cloned to a DualSense. Will we see a laptop? It is the big question that remains to be answered. These sales figures, as surprising as they are for Sony, are still insufficient to justify the cost of a complete laptop with its own ecosystem. The ghost of PS Vita failure It must still weigh too much in Sony’s offices, but the success of Portal opens the door to a future hybrid console: one that runs games natively (although these do not exist in physical format, but does not depend on an internet connection) and that also does so with titles in the cloud. Are we facing the future of consoles or just a smart move on the part of Playstation? In Xataka | At E3 1995, PlayStation only needed two seconds to destroy SEGA. And it changed video games forever

The industry became obsessed with training AI models, while Google prepared its masterstroke: inference chips

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In recent years, what was truly relevant was training AI models to make them better. Now that they have matured and training it no longer scales as noticeablywhat matters most is inference: that when we use AI chatbots they work quickly and efficiently. Google realized this change in focus, and has chips precisely prepared for it. Ironwood. This is the name of the new chips from Google’s famous family of Tensor Processing Units (TPUs). The company, which began developing them in 2015 and launched the first ones in 2018now obtains especially interesting fruits from all that effort: some really promising chips not for training AI models, but for us to use them faster and more efficiently than ever. Inference, inference, inference. These “TPUv7” will be available in the coming weeks and can be used to train AI models, but they are especially aimed at “serving” these models to users so that they can use them. It is the other big leg of AI chips, the really visible one: one thing is to train the models and quite another to “execute” them so that they respond to user requests. Efficiency and power by flag. The advance in the performance of these AI chips is enormous, at least according to Google. The company claims that Ironwood offers four times the performance of the previous generation in both training and inference, and is “the most powerful and energy-efficient custom silicon to date.” Google has already reached an agreement with Anthropic so that the latter has access up to one million TPUs to run Claude and serve it to its users. Google’s AI supercomputersand. These chips are the key components of the so-called AI Hypercomputer, an integrated supercomputing system that according to Google allows customers to reduce IT costs by 28% and a ROI of 353% in three years. Or what is the same: they promise that if you use these chips, the return on investment will be multiplied by more than four in that period. Almost 10,000 interconnected chips. The new Ironwoods are also equipped with the ability to be part of joining forces in a big way. It is possible to combine up to 9,216 of them in a single node or pod, which theoretically makes the bottlenecks of the most demanding models disappear. The size of this type of cluster is enormous, and allows for up to 1.77 Petabytes of shared HBM memory while these chips communicate with a bandwidth of 9.6 Tbps thanks to the so-called Inter-Chip Interconnect (ICI). More FLOPS than anyone. The company also claims that an “Ironwood pod” (a cluster with those 9,216 Ironwood TPUs) offers 118x more ExaFLOPS FP8 than its best competitor. FLOPS measure how many floating-point math operations these chips can solve per second, ensuring that basically any AI workload is going to run in record times. NVIDIA has more and more competition (and that’s a good thing). Google chips are a demonstration of the clear vocation of companies to avoid too many dependencies on third parties. Google has all the ingredients to do it, and its TPUv7 is proof of this. It’s not the only oneand many other AI companies have long sought to create their own chips. NVIDIA’s dominance remains clearbut the company has a small problem. In inference CUDA is no longer so vital. Once the AI ​​model has been trained, inference operates under different game rules than training. CUDA support remains a relevant factorbut its importance in inference is much less. Inference focuses on obtaining the fastest possible answer. Here the models are “compiled” and can run optimally on the target hardware. This may cause NVIDIA to lose relevance to alternatives like Google. In Xataka | When you’re OpenAI and you can’t buy enough GPUs, the solution is obvious: make your own

There is a corner of Spain that God has taken a liking to: Alicante, Murcia and Almería

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“In Murcia there has to be a tarp or something, it’s not normal.” It José Montiel said while looking at a map with the rain that is going to fall in Spain in the coming days and the truth is that it is difficult to disagree. In the last few hours, we have had the combination of a trough and a river of humidity that have produced a squall line over the peninsula, leaving in its wake intense winds, considerable rains and many storms. Everywhere, less in the southeast. What happens in Alicante, Murcia and Almería? Strictly speaking, nothing new happens. The southeastern corner of the peninsula has been recording national minimums throughout the modern period. It is enough to look at the stations around Cabo de Gata to discover that the annual accumulations are very low (around 200mm/year) and if we go a little further inland, to Tabernas for example, the figures are only about 50mm higher. Although with enormous irregularity, yes. It is not surprising, therefore, that desertification is devouring that corner of Spain. Nor does the Köppen-Geiger classification indicate that these are the most arid climates in the country (rivaling only some areas of the Canary Islands). But why? There are three fundamental reasons that explain why the southeast of the country receives so little water. The Azores anticyclone: The great Atlantic plug affects a large part of the country, it is true. We must not forget that, according to the latest studies, Spain faces the driest climate in its last 1,200 years and the progressive strengthening of that anticyclone is to blame. However, due to the trajectory of the winds in the northern hemisphere, not all parts of the territory are affected equally. You just have to compare the climate regime of Galicia with that of Murcia. The Betic mountain ranges: Although we sometimes tend to forget it, in the south of Spain there are a series of really high mountain ranges. The highest mountain on the peninsula, in fact, is in the Baetic mountain ranges. These constitute a true orographic wall that intercepts humidity and generates a very long rainfall shadow over the southeastern coast. Come on, the water stays west of the mountains. Evapotranspiration totally uncontrolled: We are talking about an area with very high insolation and very high evapotranspiration. It’s not just that it rains little, it evaporates a lot and that generates a “deserted” terrain that is unable to take advantage of the rains when they arrive. And that, in an area where DANAs are key, is a problem. Everything is getting worse. We might think that all this is normal and yet it is not. We are inserted in a time of changes and IPCC forecasts are gloomy: to the Mediterranean as it is one of the places in the world where the reduction in precipitation is most directly linked to warming. It is estimated a drop of 4% for each degree more in the central and northern Mediterranean. The best example is this same 2025. Despite the historic rains that have occurred this yearthe balance of the southeast will be bad. And, while illegal water trafficking schemes continue to grow, There are initiatives to continue building transfers that they bring to the region the liquid that does not fall from the sky. The problem is that, whether we want to see it or not, we need more far-reaching changes than what we currently seem to be able to assume. Image | ECMWF In Xataka | Long periods of drought are going to become more and more normal. It’s time to get used to them

It’s not that there are hungry bears, it’s who is left to face them

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In 1976, the Government of Japan registered 500,000 licenses first level hunting. By 2012, the licenses did not arrive at 100.00. These data did not have much importance in the nation’s newspapers until someone noticed. The bears have taken over “rural Japan”, they are hungry and have no resources to contain them. In the background, a national demographic crisis, and another at an international level that have turned the animal into the number one danger. First they were emergency huntsnow it is directly the army. A sinlife. Japan is experiencing the biggest rebound of bear attacks recorded since data exists, with more than a hundred injured and at least twelve people dead since the spring, along with more than 20,000 sightings reported in the first half of the fiscal year alone. The meetings already are not restricted to mountainous areas: the animals appear in gardens, stations, schools, supermarkets and thermal complexes, which has generated a feeling of constant danger in regions that traditionally associated autumn with hiking, local festivals and enjoying the autumn landscape. Bears everywhere. The density of sightings is concentrated in the north, especially in Akita and Iwatebut cases have also been confirmed nearby from Tokyo and Osakaa clear indicator of the loss of ecological boundaries that separated the forest from the urban. The result is that a season that used to symbolize serenity, hiking and foliage viewing has become a period continuous alertwith cancellations of marathons, school walks and tourist events, and with hikers changing destinations, traveling in groups and equipping themselves with bells, radios and repellent sprays. Depopulation, aging and warming. He increase in attacks It is not a casual or strictly natural phenomenon: it is the accumulated consequence of decades of rural depopulation, aging community and environmental alterations. In large areas of the north, entire towns and neighborhoods have disappeared emptying and agingdrastically reducing the human presence that previously deterred bears from approaching. The figure of the local hunter, key to managing fauna, is has become scarcewith hunting associations composed mainly by elderly men that they can no longer intervene quickly enough. At the same time, the reduction of acorn and beechnut cropslinked to climate change, has decreased the food available in the woods, driving bears into abandoned fields and home orchards, where they find unguarded persimmons, chestnuts, and apple trees. Extra ball. In many villages, the ancient satoyama landscapes (the buffer strips between forest and crops) have been abandoned, erasing gradients that previously marked clear boundaries between the wild and the human. This spatial and ecological convergence has made the encounter with bears stop being a contingency and become an something statistically probable in certain areas. The army warms up. The seriousness of the situation has forced the central government to intervene, deploying troops in Akita to support local authorities who admit they are overwhelmed. However, the military They do not have authorization to kill animals: their role is restricted to installing traps, transporting authorized hunters and helping to remove carcasses, while the lethal component falls on a network of hunters whose capacity is already insufficient. This model highlights a growing contradiction: Self-defense forces, already limited in personnel, must address a prolonged civil emergency in parallel to their defense mission. As we countthe government has started preparing emergency measures that include relax the rules hunting in urban areas, hire new shooters, reinforce monitoring and use drones with deterrent sounds, but these actions require time, interprefectural coordination and specialized training. The feeling of citizen vulnerability persists because the problem does not depend only on individual captures, but on the restoration of a territorial balance that has been eroded for decades. Social and psychological impact. Plus: the increase in attacks has modified the daily routines in affected regions. Parents accompany their children to school, residents avoid going out after dark, farmers work in fear, and hikers reconsider activities that were previously seen as an essential part of seasonal well-being. Surveys show that more than 75% of hikers now feel anxious about the possibility of encounters with bears, and more than half have changed or canceled plans. The feeling of insecurity has even crossed cultural identity Japanese autumnassociated with contemplation, gastronomy and a slow pace. This emotional transition from enjoyment to caution reflects that the problem is not only one of fauna, but of social structure: when the territories they lose populationservices, surveillance and organized community, also lose their capacity to absorb and manage natural risks. Crisis and bears. The crisis of bear attacks in Japan it is not an exceptional episode but the visible manifestation of a deep dynamic where depopulation, aging, ecological transformation and weakening of rural management converge on a new vulnerability. While bears search for food and territory, humans they withdraw from spaces who previously maintained a controlled cohabitation relationship. The answer cannot limit yourself to hunting more or install more traps: It will require rethinking the revitalization of rural environments, restoring satoyama barriers, training new cohorts of managers and strengthening community capacity. The immediate future will bring a temporary truce with hibernation, but the trend indicates that spring and next fall they will stress again this border. Seen this way, the question that arises is not only how to protect the population, but how to reconstruct a territorial balance that allows the human and the wild to continue coexisting without fear replacing daily life. Image | Animals, US Department of Defense Current Photos, jasohill In Xataka | Faced with the largest flood of wild bears in memory, Japan has taken a measure: emergency hunts In Xataka | Wolf hunting throughout Spain depended on a red button that changes its status. And Europe has decided to press it

what can you do to solve it on Android

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The Google application is one of the ones that consume the most battery on Android. Therefore, we are going to give you some tips to avoid consuming so muchsince being an application of the system itself, you cannot simply uninstall it and use another one. Yes, Android has its own internal system to manage applications in the background and prevent them from consuming too much, although sometimes it misses some, and Google’s is one of them. That’s why these tips They are important when you want to optimize consumption and make the battery last longer. This does not mean that consumption is always excessive.but there may be specific moments when the app loses control. In these cases where suddenly this app seems to “block” in a certain way, it starts swallowing like crazy. The advice is both for this and when it is something recurring. Check for updates When an application has a bug, it is normal for developers to try to release an update to fix it. Therefore, if you did not have consumption problems until now but suddenly you do, try checking for updates in case it is a problem that they have started to detect after a previous update and solve it soon. Unfortunately, Android is such a giant ecosystem with so many mobile models that the problem may not be widespread, but rather affects only your mobile model or a few. In these cases the solutions may take a little longer to arrive. in the form of an update. Restart the mobile The trick of turning off and on again is still a good way for all the internal processes of your mobile to stop and start from scratch. Thus, if the problem with the Google app is due to something specific, it is normal that restarting your phone will solve this. In fact, the advantage of this is that if the excessive consumption problem is from another app, it is also possible that it will be solved by restarting. But the negative part is that restarting the mobile also represents a peak in consumption because all the processes start again, so be clear. Force stop or clear cache If you don’t want to restart your mobile, you can also restart only the application from scratch without touching the rest of the things. You can do this by forcing the app to stop and then open it again if you want from scratch or simply stop using it. You can also clear the cache so that the app looks like it was just installed. To do this, you have to enter the Android settings, and click on the section Applications. Inside here, click on Google, and inside its configuration screen enter the section Storage and cache. Here you will have buttons to clear all storage data or cache. In Xataka Basics | How to delete your data and user accounts from your Android apps from Google Play with its new section

Bar terraces have been colonizing the squares of Spain for years. Logroño is proving how difficult it is to change it

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The terraces of the hoteliers have become a huge hot potato for town councils. It’s nothing new. Their coexistence with the neighbors, especially in the most touristic neighborhoods and with the greatest concentration of homes (as happens in many historic centers) led years ago to not a few town halls to take action and declare acoustically saturated areas. However cases like the one from Logroño They remember that the terraces continue to be a focus of debate. And above all, it is not always easy to balance the interests of bars and neighbors. There, in fact, they have generated a thorny controversy. Why Logroño? Because your City Council has proposed updating the terrace ordinance. In fact the document will pass today by the local plenary sessionheaded by Mayor Conrado Escobar and where the PP has a majority. The new standard will bring important changes for the sector and comes preceded by an intense debate. However, if there is something that stands out (or not) it is for having managed to be the target of criticism from both the neighbors of the historic center as well as the hoteliers. Both are suspicious of the rule, although for different reasons. What does the ordinance say? The Town Hall defend that “rearranges” the public space and “reduces” the hours and surface of the terraces. To be more precise, the municipal government highlights three points. The first, a significant cut in the hours of these facilities: from Sunday to Thursday their maximum time will be 00:00 and on Fridays, Saturdays and the eve of holidays, 1:30 a.m. “One daily opening hour is reduced from Sunday to Wednesday, two on Thursdays and a half on weekends with respect to the current norm,” clarify from the Consistory. And the other two objectives? They go through the “reorganization of public space”, restricting the surface that the terraces can ‘colonize’ to give “priority” to pedestrians and increasing the occupancy rate. Another of the guidelines that will appear in the ordinance has to do with the number of tables and chairs that each premises can install to seek “proportionality between the space occupied and the square meters that businesses have granted in their licenses.” The maximum allowable surface area will also suffer a snip: from 120 to 100 m2. What do hoteliers say? Which is a bad idea. And that will have consequences that go beyond the sector. In statements collected by Europa Press, Hostelería Riojana warns that the ordinance “destroys an essential part of the activity of bars, cafes and restaurants in the city” and warns that the terraces are “a hallmark” of Logroño, one that from now on “will be disproportionately limited and restricted.” “It puts Logroño’s tourism at risk and therefore the viability of the hospitality sector in the city, since part of its income comes from these spaces,” they insist. The hoteliers go further and point out that with the new ordinance the City Council “does not ensure the proper balance” in the coexistence between neighbors and businesses and leaves local hoteliers in a delicate position, “increasing legal uncertainty and encouraging arbitrary decisions.” In summary, the sector considers that the rule represents “a real setback” for tourism and demands that the City Council review it. In fact, in June he submitted more than twenty pages of allegations to the draft, although most of them did not materialize. And the neighbors? They’re not much happier. At least those in the historic center. The association Old Town Lawsuit already has shown his discomfort and they accuse the mayor of showing “feeling” toward “the lobby hotelier”, wasting in the process the opportunity to improve the current rule. “It is a cowardly ordinance, which has nothing to do with the one proposed by the municipal technicians a few months ago and which, in practice, means removing four tables and half an hour less than the one that is especially generous with the hospitality industry and anachronistic regulations of 2012, which had turned Logroño into the paradise of drinking and drunk tourism.” Is there any more lake? Yes. One of the keys to their anger is the differences between the draft standard and the final project. As you remember, the first document advanced the closing on weekends at 1:00 a.m., when the tables should have been cleared. The Government ended up incorporating an amendment that raised the limit at 1:30 a.m. the days of greatest demand, such as Fridays, Saturdays and holidays. Another of the most sensitive changes is related to the authorized size for terraces based on the surface area of ​​the premises. If the useful area was taken as a reference, it would have been transferred to the real area, which includes bathrooms, kitchen or warehouse. The Town Hall itself remember that the preliminary project was approved in February and later went through a phase of allegations before receiving a first approval in May. Does it only happen in Logroño? No. A year ago we told you how Seville wanted to review its ordinance to facilitate coexistence between the terraces of candlelights and the neighbors, which also sparked considerable debate there. Other locations, such as Madrid, Vigo, Barcelona either Malagato name just a handful of examples, have seen firsthand how complicated it is to regulate terraces. In the background is the enormous weight they have in the Spanish sector: a 2021 report published by the Madrid City Council estimated that terraces, “a substantial source of income”, provide between 20 and 25% of business billing. The calculation was made in the middle of a pandemic, but it is still revealing. Images | Logroño City Council and Chris Arnold In Xataka | The hoteliers promised themselves happy with the enormous business of the terraces. Until the new anti-smoking law arrived

a country with octogenarian millionaires and wealth about to change hands

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Forbes Spain has just published your list of the 100 largest fortunes in Spain in 2025. In total, the largest fortunes in the country add up to 258,870 million euros, which is 7% more than the previous year. Beyond the fact that Amancio Ortega repeats for another year as the greatest fortune in Spain, few changes in the names that form itwith respect to other previous lists. However, there is one fact that draws powerful attention: of that total of 258.87 billion euros, 111.2 billion are in the hands of people over 80 years of age. In other words, 42.96% of the great Spanish wealth is concentrated in the hands of octogenarians. Octogenarian fortunes. Forbes data shows a clear pattern: 28 of the 100 largest assets belong to people over 80 years old who together control more than 111 billion euros. If the range is extended to the 70 to 79 age group, the sum of assets increases by 37.2 billion euros, which raises the total wealth in the hands of those over 70 years of age to 148 billion, close to 57% of the total. Spain is, literally, an economy controlled by septuagenarians and octogenarians. This data contrasts with the reality of other countries. For example, in the United States the average age of billionaires is around 65.7 years, according to the report ‘The Wealth Report 2025′ prepared by Knight Frank. In 2014, this average age was 63.3 years. If we focus on the 400 largest fortunes in the US (Forbes 400), the average age rises to 70 years. An aging country in every sense. The case of great fortunes is only a reflection of a broader pattern. According to data According to Eurostat, the average age in Spain is approximately 45.4 years, which places our country among the oldest in the European Union, whose average was 44.7 years in 2024. This demographic structure is also replicated in the business environment. According to data from ‘Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2024 Report’the number of entrepreneurs under 35 years of age has decreased by 25% in the last decade, while the average age of IBEX 35 directors and directors exceeds 61.2 years, according to data of the CNMV. Fortunes of the last century. Unlike the United States, where the origin of great fortunes It is linked to technological innovation —Elon Musk with Tesla and SpaceX; Larry Ellison with Oracle; Mark Zuckerberg and Meta or Jeff Bezos with Amazon—the greatest Spanish fortunes come from much more traditional sectors. According to Forbes Spain 2025, the dominant branches are textiles and distribution (Inditex, Mercadona, Tendam), banking and investment (Santander, March, Abelló), infrastructure and construction (Ferrovial, Acciona) and tourism (Meliá, Barceló). In the vast majority of cases, these are businesses founded or consolidated in the 20th century and today managed by the second or third generation. They are not fortunes born from disruptionbut of the continuity of the family business. At the gates of the “Great Transfer of Assets”. The aging of the economic elite in Spain anticipates a generational wealth transfer unprecedented in our country. Taking data from Forbes, the 111.2 billion euros controlled by people over 80 will inevitably pass at the hands of heirs or successors in the coming years. This transfer of wealth that, sooner rather than later, the richest in Spain will face, also has different implications. First of all, they must start succession processes. Something that, in the case of Amancio Ortega, for example, is in the hands of his daughter Marta Ortega which currently runs Inditex, but leaves great unknowns in many other financial empires. Furthermore, this transfer of assets between the heirs of great fortunes will contribute to reducing the concentration of capital in a single person, given that this assets are usually distributed between several heirs. In Xataka | “They don’t need half a billion dollars to live”: Mick Jagger refuses to leave a million-dollar inheritance to his eight children Image | GTRES, Mercadona, Ferrovial

What happens to human creativity when thousands of human creatives fall in love with AI

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It is not every day that one attends an event taking a walk with the sea and the sunrise in the background. But that’s just what happened to us Upscale Confa conference organized by the Spanish company freepik. The objective: to serve as a meeting point for a creative community that is absolutely dedicated to the world of AI. It is the third edition of Upscale Confthe second in Malaga —San Francisco was the other venue in May—and it is clear that we are facing what is little by little becoming one of the great events of the intersection between human creativity and creativity? of generative AI models. It doesn’t seem like attendees have too many doubts about it. After the almost inevitable queue for accreditations, two days of talks, workshops and much, much begin. networking. Showing a QR code on your mobile to connect to LinkedIn is the modern version of the business cards of yesteryear. To me, a very occasional user of this network, I find that surprising and very invasive: hey, I might not want to follow you on LinkedIn. I liked it better when you simply asked for the email—which didn’t commit you as much—and even more when people gave you their business card, which was almost like a trading card from before. You didn’t just keep business cards: you almost collected them. That time seems to have almost vanished. AI democratizes creativity made into an image Be that as it may, once inside the atmosphere is surprisingly optimistic. No one here seems to be worried about being replaced by an AI, something that It has already begun to be seen in China in 2023 in creative works. There are no nerves or restlessness in the respectable: only expectation and acceptance of an apparent reality. The one that AI is here and no one is going to stop it. Compared to other conferences with a more technical background, here is a scent of discovery. Wanting to know what this can give. To listen to the people who are trying to be the spearhead explain how their relationship with AI is going in what was theoretically the last frontier that AI would never conquer, human creativity. I come across attendees from here and there and I ask two of them what their motivation is for attending Upscale Conf. Andy and Antonio are from a tourism agency in Malaga and they explain to me that they already use AI in the software development part, but curiously, not so much in the visual and creative part. The argument is forceful: “in the tourism sector, using artificial photos can be very dangerous.” And yet, they come to take the pulse of this apparent revolution and learn from it. What I find everywhere are very diverse profiles and, curiously, not necessarily linked to the creative segment. I speak with (another) Antonio, who like me has gray hair and who, like me, is also optimistic about the future of AI. He is not creative, but rather helps companies understand the potential of AI for a fundamental aspect: productivity. And like the kids from Malaga, you are here to learn, discover and be inspired. Four guys who are talking animatedly tell me the same thing practically when I interrupt them and ask them what sectors they come from. There is a little bit of everything. One of the boys, a content creator, took advantage of current tools to demonstrate that kitten olympics They can have a lot of pull. DEPT’s Marten Kuipers made it clear that not everyone sees this creative AI thing as a good idea. He, like the rest of the attendees, has a different opinion. Two others, in the real estate segment, are investigating possible uses of generative image and video AI for their business. The fourth, in the consulting branch, explains to me that the other great reason is not only to learn, but a classic of events: networking. Meet people and make yourself known. Putting faces to people with whom you had been exchanging messages for months (or years?) on Twitter (sorry, X) or on Instagram or LinkedIn. From IG or TikTok influencers to creatives who take advantage of AI But in all cases, we insist, absolutely optimistic atmosphere between professionals from both sides who seem to see this as an opportunity. One in which some are certainly making gold: several of the speakers at the event are new stars in the firmament of content creators. PJ Accetturo during his presentation explaining how to make a viral video. The idea is still the important thing, the process and the prompts are surprisingly “normal”. For example, PJ Accetturo, creator of the famous trailer for ‘The Lord of the Rings’ in Studio Ghibli style…before OpenAI I would copy the idea. Or Yonatan Dor, who have managed to get their gritty videos created with AI—using the image of Trump, Musk or Kamala Harris—become viral phenomena that already have hundreds of millions of visits. AI helps, but it doesn’t come close to doing everything. Laura Pin showed in her 90-minute workshop how she combines Midjourney, nanobanana, Magnific, Topaz AI, Photoshop and Lightroom to achieve just what she had in her head. The attention to detail is extraordinary. We walked through the different conferences and workshops and, as in any event, we found a little of everything. The days begin with the entrance of Linus Ekenstam (@LinusEkenstam), popularizer and influencer of this segment, who acts as master of ceremonies throughout the event. As a good communicator, you know some useful tricks: Start with a good personal story to hook attendees. He tells how when he was little a friend gave him a computer and he slept with the machine next to him, like a stuffed animal, because he was afraid that that treasure would be stolen. Joaquín Cuenca, CEO of Freepik, announcing the launch of the new collaborative service on his platform, called Freepik Spaces. Then it comes Joaquin Cuencafounder and CEO … Read more

A loaf of bread costs one euro in the supermarket. For the same price Europe just bought 18 fighter jets

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A loaf of bread from a supermarket or basic bakery usually around the euro in many cities. An automatic coffee machine in stations, hospitals or universities is also found at that price (okay, not always). In supermarkets, seasonal fruits such as a large apple, a banana or a loose piece of fruit can be around the amount. Even a single bus ticket in some cities is still close to the euro. What we were never going to imagine is that what a loaf of bread costs, 18 fighter jets cost. A strategic transfer. The transfer of 18 F-16 fighters from the Netherlands to Romania for the symbolic price of one euro It is, on the surface, an administrative gesture, but in practice it constitutes a strategic move with direct implications for the European security architecture and for the war in Ukraine. The formalized operation the full incorporation of these devices to the European F-16 Training Center (EFTC), installed at Fetești Air Base 86, in the southeast of Romania, and whose function is train Romanian and Ukrainian pilots in the management of the F-16 under interoperable NATO standards. Further. The presence of these aircraft on Romanian territory no longer depends on Dutch ownership, which allows expand and secure training places, adjust training rhythms to Allied needs and consolidate Romania as a key country on the eastern flank, in a context marked by Russian pressure in the Black Sea and on the border with Ukraine. Romania as a hub. The EFTC has become a space where instructors, pilots and technical personnel from multiple NATO countries and Ukraine work under homogeneous methodsensuring that new F-16 operators not only learn to fly the device, but also to integrate it into air defense doctrines, airspace control and combined operations. The center benefits from a tripartite structure: Romania provides the base, infrastructure and logistical support; The Netherlands provided the aircraft, and Lockheed Martin, as manufacturer, supplies instructors and advanced maintenance. Implications in war. This combination facilitates training of ukrainian pilots in an environment that reproduces real mission patterns and also guarantees constant course rotation without depending on US airspace or dispersed structures. The fact that these F-16s are European AM/BM standard models, the same ones that Ukraine has begun to receive from various allies, allows for immediate continuity: what is learned in Romania is translated without transition to combat operation. Relevance for Ukraine. The nation has received commitments to deliver dozens of F-16s from from Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and Belgiumand its arrival has marked a slow but cumulative turning point in the modernization of its air force, until now dominated by MiG-29 and Su-27 Soviet design. The pilots trained in Romania (and in parallel in the United States) are already operating on defensive missions against Russian attacks with missiles and drones, and the value of the F-16 depends on both its number and the degree of training and the ability to sustain its maintenance and doctrine. In that sense, the EFTC is a structural piece, since it guarantees not only initial learning, but continuous trainingthe accumulation of Ukrainian instructors and the doctrinal integration with allies who have already dominated the apparatus for decades. Furthermore, the future possibility of these same aircraft transferred to Romania ending up in Ukraine is not ruled out, especially as Romania moves towards adoption of the F-35planned for after 2030. Implications. Plus: The strengthening of the EFTC reflects a broader shift in European defense: The progressive reduction in the number of F-16 operators in Western Europe, replaced by the F-35, has left room to reorient these aircraft to training, interoperability and reinforcement functions on the eastern flank. Romania, together with Bulgaria and Slovakia, is part of the group of new F-16 operatorsbecoming recipients of capabilities previously concentrated in northern and western countries. This geographical shift of air capabilities towards the east is significant because it accompanies the shift from the center of gravity strategic of NATO after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Training, maintenance, doctrine and response capabilities are now concentrated in territories closer to the possible confrontation. Other transfers. The symbolic sale of weapons between allies has relevant precedents that show how the financial price can be irrelevant compared to the strategic objective. The best known case is the transfer of 22 fighters MiG-29 from Germany to Poland in 2002 for one euro per unit, an operation that allowed Polish air capacity to be maintained while Berlin advanced in its modernization and that, years later, facilitated the shipment of those same devices to Ukraine. Another example is the transfer of former Hamilton class coast guard cutters by the United States to the Philippines. for a dollarwithin the program Excess Defense Articlesstrengthening Philippine naval capabilities in the South China Sea without a prohibitive cost. Added to this is the howitzer transfer self-propelled M109L from Italian arsenals to Ukraine, also under symbolic conditions, when the priority was no longer their accounting value, but rather putting proven, repairable and compatible systems with available ammunition in the hands of the Ukrainian army. At one euro. The sale for one euro It is not an isolated symbolic gesture, but the formalization of a capacity transfer process that consolidates Romania as NATO strategic node in air training and preparation, reinforces the technical base of the Ukrainian air force in transition, and reflects the structural readjustment of European defense to the east. He EFTC It provides not only pilots, but also doctrine, interoperability and operational continuity at a time when the stability of the eastern flank depends both on the number of aircraft and the quality and consistency of those who operate them. Image | US Air Force, Dutch Ministry of Defense, Romanian Ministry of Defense In Xataka | A very dangerous idea is gaining strength in the corridors of Europe: paying Russia in kind In Xataka | The war in Ukraine has triggered delays and canceled flights. And Europe has the solution: a wall of drones

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