Mobile Tech & Gadgets

Ten years ago, Bnext was the great hope of fintech. They ended up crashing

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Founded in 2016 by Guillermo Vicandi, Bnext It was born as a fintech alternative to traditional banking. In fact, their visible heads assured that it was not a bank, despite offering an account and card. The growth was as fast as the fall. After the collapse of its cryptocurrency, The app announced its closure on April 13. What was Bnext. It was not a bank, that’s what its creators constantly said. It was an electronic money entity (EDE) alternative to traditional banking. In practice, it offered what a bank offers: account, card, loans, insurance, currency purchases, investment plans. The difference was the model: Bnext always acted as an intermediary, connecting the user with the best products on the market through a single app. No offices, no paper, no queues. The golden age. In 2019, Bnext was one of the most visible projects on the Spanish fintech scene. became the fintech that grew the most in Spainwith more than 156,000 registered users and more than 100,000 active clients holding a Bnext VISA. Your second round of financing It closed with 22 million eurosthe highest figure seen in Spain (in 2019) since the Valencian Hawkers raised 55 million euros. That same year, they partnered with giants like MyInvestor to offer financial products. The stumble. Bnext’s first setback comes a year later, in 2021, after its landing in Latin America. Its partner, Cacao Paycard, did not obtain authorization to operate from the National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV), which translated into a fine of 2.6 million Mexican pesos (about 150,000 euros at the current exchange rate) to Bnext for misleading communication. There was no plan B. Bnext had to cease operations in Mexico, close all its accounts and lose more than 230,000 clients who had trusted the company prior to the sanctions. Meanwhile. In Spain, alternatives like Revolut were growing like wildfire, and Bnext was beginning to run out of oxygen. In 2021, they decided to ally with Algorand, a blockchain firm that became one of the company’s main shareholders. After the alliance they announced their own token: B3X. The play didn’t go well. On March 1, 2022, it was launched to the public with a starting price of two euro cents. Today it cannot even operate from the app, since the service has been dismantled. Its price before the debacle: 0.00006 US cents. What happens to Bnext users. Bnext accounts and cards have already been canceled and the product is no longer marketed. No payments, transfers or receipts can be uploaded. Payroll cannot be received The balance of the account may be requested during a repayment period of 20 years Cryptocurrency management is referred to Onyze… via email User data will be deleted in accordance with the GDPR You will no longer have access to the marketplace services Bnext was once the great hope of Spanish fintech. Now rest in peace. What will become of the company. The company gives the finishing touch to its app, but does not completely cease its operations. “The fintech business and market has changed considerably, and with this, we have had to pivot our value proposition. After several years offering products to the end consumer and in an increasingly competitive environment and with more complex regulation, we have decided to take a step towards the future, focusing on helping companies launch their own payment products.” Guillermo Vicandi, CEO of Bnext. Bnext closes as a neobank, but pivots towards financial infrastructure services. In Xataka | Europe had been asking for a big hit on the table for some time. Revolut just gave it a huge valuation

If you thought the crisis in Hormuz was enough, the war in Ukraine has triggered another maritime drama in Europe: the Gulf of Finland

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About five years ago, the container ship Ever Given became stuck in the Suez Canal for six daysblocking one of the most important commercial arteries in the world and leaving hundreds of ships trapped waiting. That incident, caused by a failed maneuver and adverse wind conditions, was enough to disrupt global supply chains in a matter of hours. A new seafront. As global attention focuses on the Strait of Hormuz, the war in Ukraine has opened another critical scenario much closer to Europe: the Gulf of Finlanda small but key space for Russian energy exports. There, far from spectacular drones or large fleets, the conflict manifests itself in a more silent way but just as revealingwith ships detained, routes blocked and growing tension between actors trying to avoid a direct escalation. This new focus demonstrates that the war is not only being fought on the land front, but also in the nerve centers of maritime trade. Ukraine attacks and a collapse. The situation has its origins in a clear kyiv strategy: to hit key russian ports to export oil, such as Ust-Luga and Primorsk, where it comes a fundamental part of the income that finances the war. The attacks have drastically reduced the operational capacity of these facilities, leaving dwhole days without activity and causing an immediate chain effect. The result: a unprecedented maritime traffic jamwith dozens of oil tankers (many of them linked to the so-called “floats in the shadows” Russian) accumulating waiting to be able to load. A system on the limit. They remembered this week in Political that this traffic jam in the Gulf of Finland is not just a striking image, but a symptom of something deeper: an energy and logistics system that begins to fracture under the pressure of war. Unlike conventional vessels, these tankers cannot be easily redirected to other ports due to the risk of being detained or sanctioned, which forced to remain anchored for days or weeks. As a result, there is an unusual concentration of aging and, in many cases, unsafe ships in European waters that were not prepared to absorb that volume. Europe trapped between control and escalation. Under this scenario, countries like Estonia and Finland They are in a particularly delicate position, since, despite being within the NATO framework, they have chosen not to intervene directly against these ships. The reason is clear: any attempt to stop or board an oil tanker could trigger a Russian military responseas already happened when a Russian fighter intervened to protect one of these ships. Since then, Moscow has reinforced its naval presence in the area, making it clear that it considers these strategic routes a red line. The Mirror of Hormuz. There is no doubt, what happens in the Gulf of Finland connects directly with the crisis in Hormuz: In both cases, the war moves towards maritime straits where traffic control becomes a strategic tool. The difference is that there is no formal block here, but an indirect disruption which generates similar effects, with stopped ships, tense routes and altered markets. In both scenarios, it is enough to interfere enough to collapse the system, and also without the need for a total shutdown. A war that spreads across the map. If you like, the result is a conflict that is no longer limited to Ukraine either to the Middle Eastbut it extends to the critical nodes of global trade, affecting Europe directly. The Gulf of Finland has thus become in another hot spot where energy, legal and military interests intersect, with an extremely fragile and volatile balance. And what seemed like a localized war is proving to have a much greater scope, generating new sources of tension that, like in Hormuz, can escalate quickly. without prior notice. Image | LAC, NormanEinstein In Xataka | If fog was deadly in Ukraine’s winter, spring is offering Russia a key advantage: greenery In Xataka | Ukraine is close to what no one has achieved in a war: shooting down missiles for less than a million dollars

LIDL has joined the latest trend to make lots of money: setting up your own low-cost operator

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Lidl is at the doors of launch a low-cost mobile phone serviceeven more competition for a Spanish MVNO market that is beginning to become saturated and in which it seems practically impossible to surpass the current king: Digi. The LIDL plan. Grupo Schwarz, owner of LIDL, has acquired 9.9% of the communications provider 1Global, currently operating in Spain under the Orange network. The plan is to create a virtual mobile operator (OMV) to offer low-cost telephone services, wanting to expand the proposal throughout Spain and 30 more countries. The how. The service will be offered through LIDL’s nerve center for the smartphone: LIDL Plus. The application will allow the contracting and management of the service, ensuring the executive of the hypermarket chain that it will offer “simple connectivity.” LIDL has an important advantage over the rest of its rivals: physical presence throughout the entire Spanish territory and a potential customer in search of low prices. It is not the first in its sector: Eroski and Carrefour They were among the first in Spain to offer this service. {“videoId”:”x85jqs5″,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”DIGI TV Ad: "Enjoy with DIGI the advantages of going it alone"”, “tag”:”mobile”, “duration”:”40″} The electrical phenomenon. The MVNO market is beginning to become saturated with more and more companies outside the sector. The keys? Low operating costs and high margins. The most recent example is PcComponentes, which overnight became an operator with the help of Likes Telecom, a Spanish company focused on the creation of telecommunications brands. We also have recent examples in Revolut, Klarna or N26, players in the financial sector introduced into the world of telecommunications. A simple way to diversify sources of income and build customer loyalty through applications they already use. In Xataka Digi is dropping prices to attract more and more customers in Spain. The problem is that he still doesn’t make any money. Yes, but. None of these players are fighting to win the telecommunications market, where the king is simply unbeatable. DIGI is not only the low-cost operator with the largest volume of clients in Spain: it is the only one that can face giants like Telefónica, MásOrange or Vodafone (whom to pretend to surprise in the coming months). In Xataka | Digi wants to become one of the largest teleoperators in Spain. And that is why it has gone from 4,000 to 10,000 workers. (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news LIDL has joined the latest trend to make lots of money: setting up your own low-cost operator was originally published in Xataka by Ricardo Aguilar .

The price of diesel is beginning to fall, but it is still far from what it cost before the war: what can we expect now

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Last Wednesday, April 8, the announcement of a temporary ceasefire two weeks between the United States and Iran, conditional on the partial reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, triggered an immediate reaction in energy markets. The barrel of Brent oil accumulated a weekly drop of 13.77%the highest in nine months, placing the price more than 15 dollars below the level at which it was trading just a week before, when it was still above 110 dollars. That shock has arrived, with a dropper of course, to Spanish gas stations. What you see at the pump right now. On Friday, April 10, the average price of diesel in Spain was around 1.87 euros per liter, with a drop of 1.67% in the next 24 hours compared to the previous day. A still timid drop if one takes into account that diesel was quoted at an average of 1,881 euros per liter during the week of March 27, the highest price since it came into force. the fuel tax reduction approved by the Government. And filling a 55-liter tank of diesel cost about 103 euros, according to data of that same period. Why oil has fallen. The key is in the Strait of Hormuz. Around 20% of the world’s oil passes through it, and its blockade since the beginning of the war had skyrocketed crude oil prices to almost $146 per barrel at the worst times. When talks between the US and Iran were announced for the start of a truce, the price plummeted from $110 to $94 in a matter of hours. Why does it take so long to be noticed at the gas station? Here comes into play what we have been explaining these days in our coverage: the rocket and feather effect. When oil rises, the price of fuel at the pump reacts almost immediately; when it goes down, the correction arrives weeks late. Distribution companies quickly transfer crude oil increases because they anticipate that replenishing fuel will cost them more. But when the price drops, they claim to have stock previously purchased at higher prices, thus delaying the drop. According to Bloomberg Linein Spain the movements in the price of gasoline have been minimal, even upward at times, with variations of less than 1% despite the sharp decline in crude oil. How long do you have to wait? The deadlines vary depending on the source, but there is consensus that the drop will not be immediate. Just like they count From Autopista, the most favorable purchase prices take between 14 and 28 days to reach gas stations significantly, and after four weeks. But of course, all this in case nothing else happens that affects the price, something that we unfortunately do not know about. The tax reduction what we have in Spain. The Government approved fiscal relief measures that have acted as an extra cushion. The first vice president and Minister of Economy, Carlos Body, wait that the fall in oil prices “will also end up resulting in a drop in fuel prices”, after the reactivation of maritime activity in the Strait of Hormuz. However, the European Commission has warned Spain that the reduction in VAT on fuel from 21% to 10% has failed to comply with Community regulations, which adds uncertainty as to whether this aid can be maintained. What can happen from now on. The most favorable scenario, and also the most fragile, depends entirely on the ceasefire holding. Matt Smith, of business analytics firm Kpler, warns that “there will be a lot of reluctance and caution when passing through the strait because it seems that Iran will still be patrolling it,” which will delay the normalization of maritime traffic and, with it, the sustained drop in crude oil. As if that were not enough, oil production in the region fell more in March than in the worst times of the pandemic, and recovering that productive capacity will take time. The American EIA (Energy Information Administration) foresees that the price of crude oil could begin to moderate in the second half of 2026, as long as the international situation stabilizes. But there is no guarantee. What we must not lose sight of. Although the current trend points to a downward correction, current prices are still much higher than before the conflict. The price of fuel in Spain had been relatively stable at the beginning of 2026, with gasoline at around 1.45-1.50 euros per liter, before the escalation of the war changed everything abruptly in March. Returning to those levels is not something that will happen overnight, so for now it seems that we will have to stay alert to learn more information about the situation. Cover image | Roberto Rodríguez and engin akyurt In Xataka | With oil skyrocketing, Japan has resurrected an old idea to extract infinite energy from the ocean

You can watch Atlético de Madrid-Barcelona without permanence and regardless of which operator you are

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April is passing and little by little we are getting closer to the Champions League final. We don’t know who will reach the final, but what we do know is that tonight one of the best ties that the quarterfinals have given us will be decided. We are talking about Atlético de Madrid-Barcelona FCa great game that we can see on Movistar Plus+ for 9.99 euros per month (or 99.90 euros per year). Although, of course, the platform has much more. Monthly subscription to Movistar Plus+ The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Without permanence, you can try Movistar Plus+ for a month for very little The option of going to a bar or a family member’s house to watch football is always there, but if we have the opportunity to watch it at home, even better. Movistar Plus+ broadcasts tonight’s game and we can get a month of the platform to watch it. The best? We have several weeks ahead of us to see a lot of things and, if it doesn’t convince us, we can unsubscribe at any time. By subscribing today, obviously the greatest incentive we have is the great game between two of the best teams we have in LaLiga. Now, as we have a whole month to watch Movistar Plus+, we will also have the chance to see other very interesting matches. We summarize some of them below.: Betis – Sporting Braga: April 16 Atlético de Madrid – Real Sociedad (Copa del Rey): April 18 Manchester City – Arsenal: April 19 Girona – Betis: April 21 Getafe – Barcelona FC: April 25 or 26 Champions semi-finals (one match): April 29 With the Free Plan of Movistar Plus+ we cannot see any of these matches, but neither his extensive catalog of movies. There’s a lot to choose from right now with tapes like ‘The Fury‘The Pianist, ‘Conclave‘ either ‘Sirat‘, just to mention a few examples. And that’s without counting what’s to come, with gems like ‘Weapons‘. To all of the above we must add that we can download what we want from Movistar Plus+ and watch it offlineideal if you plan to take a getaway next long weekend. In addition, it also supports two simultaneous plays, even if they are not at the same address. This way you can share your password with a friend or family member without problem. Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images | Movistar Plus+ In Xataka | Mega-guide to set up a home theater: projector, screen, sound system and more In Xataka | The best streaming platforms 2025 | Comparison of Disney+, Netflix, HBO Max, Prime Video, Movistar Plus+, Filmin, Apple TV, SkyShowtime and Rakuten TV: catalog, functions and prices

James Webb has bad news for the largest natural laboratory for rocky planets, but there is still some hope

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The star TRAPPIST-1 and the seven known planets that surround it are a natural laboratory in which the evolution of rocky planets can be studied. This has led many scientists to focus their attention on them, in search of a possible habitable planet. However, observations made by an international team of astronomers with the help of the James Webb Space Telescope They are not very encouraging. Planets without atmosphere. The James Webb Space Telescope has a very powerful infrared radiation analysis instrument, with which it can analyze the temperature of the planets it observes. These emit infrared radiation whose intensity is proportional to their temperature, so a thermal map can be made. That’s what these astronomers have done. They have initially focused on two of the planets that orbit TRAPPIST-1: TRAPPIST-1a and TRAPPIST-1b. The resulting heat map shows that neither planet has an atmosphere. They may have had it one day, but possibly TRAPPIST-1 itself destroyed it. It is a very uninspiring result for the search for habitable planets in this system. Lights and shadows of TRAPPIST-1. So far seven exoplanets have been discovered orbiting TRAPPIST-1. They are all very close together. In fact, its seven orbits are concentrated in the distance between Mercury and the Sun. What happens is that this red dwarf is less energetic than our Sun, so the temperature would not be as suffocating. All of these planets are rocky, like Earth, and in fact, some are very similar in size. There could be an exoplanet with conditions similar to ours. The problem is that red dwarfs They emit a lot of radiation and energetic flows of particles that could destroy their atmosphere.. And of course, without atmosphere, there is no life. Tidal lock. All planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system are tidally locked. This means that its rotation and translation period around the red dwarf they are synchronized. As a result, there is one side continuously exposed to the star and another on the opposite side. On one side it is always day and on the other it is always night. NASA/JPL-Caltech Extreme temperatures. When a planet is tidally locked, there can be two situations, depending on whether it has an atmosphere or not. When there is an atmosphere, heat flows from the light side to the dark side, so that the entire planet has a stable average temperature. On the other hand, if there is no atmosphere, the dark side can be frozen and the illuminated side can be scorched. In the two exoplanets analyzed by James Webb, it has been seen that temperatures are around 100ºC-200ºC on the illuminated side and -200ºC on the dark side. Therefore, it is confirmed that there is no atmosphere. And now what? Despite this hard blow, there is still hope. The two exoplanets that have been analyzed are not in the star’s habitable zone. This is the distance from it at which the temperature is adequate for the water, if any, to remain in a liquid state. At that exact point there are only TRAPPIST-1e, TRAPPIST-1f and TRAPPIST-1g. Furthermore, the former has a density and size very similar to those of Earth. James Webb has all his attention on this exoplanet right now, to repeat the process. If there were an atmosphere on it, it could still remain on the list of possible habitable planets. It’s still interesting. Despite the first blow, TRAPPIST-1 remains a very interesting system for understand the evolution of rocky planets. The Earth was lucky not to lose its atmosphere; but, beyond those, the evolutions can be similar. Furthermore, we have not yet ruled out that TRAPPIST-1e has an atmosphere. Let’s go step by step. Image | NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI) In Xataka | There is only one chance in 11,000 years to reach the planet Sedna. Some Italians want to use this nuclear engine

Amazon Web Services is such a profitable business that its CEO is already thinking about something more ambitious: competing with NVIDIA

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Andy Jassy is the CEO of Amazon and an advocate of artificial intelligence to the point that he expects AI to transform the company’s workforce in the coming years. It makes sense that he is the captain of a liner that has turned to the AI ​​business, since before succeeding Bezos, he came from leading Amazon Web Services. And in his last letter annual to shareholders, Jassy leaves several notes that give us clues about the future of the company. It plans to compete against NVIDIA and SpaceX. And they have 200 billion dollars to invest. The photo. The company is going like a rocket. amazon hill 2025 at 717,000 million dollars, exceeding by 12% the 638,000 million of the previous year. Operating income increased by 17% to 80,000 million and, for its part, AWS cloud business it also worked well, achieving 24% year-on-year in the last quarter. They have done so, according to Jassy, ​​without being able to meet the demands of some clients due to the current situation of the data centers, but even so, they are more than happy. Burning pasta. And those good vibes are going to reach Amazon to invest some 200,000 million dollars in the coming months. The CEO has commented that “they are not going to invest that amount in 2026 following a hunch,” also pointing out that they are not going to be conservative in their bets and that what they are looking for is to lead the artificial intelligence business. HE wait that 50,000 of those millions will end up in the pockets of an OpenAI that will need a boost after the NVIDIA “sit-in”he Sora’s closure and Disney’s withdrawal of investment. Those 200 billion will be concentrated on AI infrastructure, a bet on the future that can add pressure to margins in the short term, but from which they expect a lot.or when the business starts operating. For its part, OpenAI is going to invest 100 billion in AWS over the next eight years. The chickens that enter by those that leave, like almost everything in this AI market. business engine. What business? Well… the one with the chips. Amazon is one of the companies (like Goal, tesla or one’s own OpenAI) that buys from NVIDIA, but that also you are developing your own solution. There are three proper names: Graviton, Trainium and Nitro, training and inference chips (depending on the case) whose business is growing at triple digits year-on-year. Specifically Trainium, which is the chip used to train some of the company’s models, can “save tens of billions of dollars a year.” But it’s not just about saving money by having the chip made at home and do not depend on NVIDIA prices and market competition: it is about not depend on NVIDIA itself at all. The NVIDIA Garden. We have already explained on more than one occasion how NVIDIA is the engine of the artificial intelligence business. Not only do they have the hardware that powers the data centers of the main AI players, but they have the money to invest in both established companies and, above all, in the startups that can define the future of the sector. And Jassy aims, directly, to become a hardware rival, one that competes with NVIDIA, AMD and even with the reborn Intel. According to the CEO, if Amazon were to sell its chip on the open market, it could represent a market of about $50 billion annually, more than double its current chip market. It would still be well below some of its rivals, but it could sell its hardware in conjunction with its AWS software. It would be by selling that “complete AI package” where Amazon would be strong against its rivals. Amazon’s Starlink. Wanting to step on the hose of the strong hardware trio is not the only field in which Jassy wants to play. We already know that Bezos, founder of Amazon, has its space businessbut in parallel, the own Amazon is deploying its Kuiper project. It is its own constellation of satellites in low orbit for broadband Internet that aims to be direct competition to SpaceX and Elon Musk’s Starlink. The deployment began in 2025 with a modest 27 satellites, but this 2026 They want to launch another 3,200. In the end, as all mega-companies want, Amazon seeks to be ubiquitous and permeate absolutely every millimeter of the business. Now, although its capacity in AWS is indisputable, competing against NVIDIA is a big deal. Jensen Huang’s company is TSMC’s first customer -the great global factory-, has deployed very aggressively and intelligently in the AI ​​segment, creating a network that is difficult to replicate and, in addition, has ensured itself to be the main customer of Samsung and SK Hynixthe companies leading high bandwidth memory without which AI cannot take off. Image | Amazon (edited) In Xataka | If you think the internet was much better before AI, congratulations: they have created an extension for you

We believed that tons of feces were the big problem with the touristification of Everest. Until the scam rescue arrived

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Everest may be the roof of the world, but it has long ceased to be the remote and isolated place they found themselves seven decades ago. Edmund Hollary and Tenzing Norgaythe first to summit its icy summit. The best proof was left to us just before the pandemic by Nirmal Purja, the author of one of the most famous (and striking) snapshots of the mountain: in it we see a very long row with dozens and dozens of tourists climbing in single file towards the summit, just as if they were queuing to enter the Louvre or board a cruise ship. That Everest has become a monster touristified It’s no surprise. What is curious is that there are people (presumably) breaking the laws to take advantage of that demand and defraud the insurers. A huge theme park. One would expect the highest place on the planet to be an inhospitable place, reserved for the most intrepid locals and adventurers. Perhaps it was like this in the 1950s, when Hollary and Norgay ascended to more than 8,800 meters of altitude to reach its summit. Not today. The photography that Purja took in 2019 is just the graphic verification of a phenomenon that can be measured in figures… and even in feces: Everest is a tourist icon that they visit every year hundreds and hundreds of climbers, leaving behind millions of dollars and a trail of tons of waste. You will find more infographics at Statista Where there is tourism… There is business, of course. That universal truth is applicable both in Amsterdam, Florence either Barcelona such as in the remote Himalayas, which over the last few decades has seen a thriving industry take shape dedicated to serving those who visit Everest. According to the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTC), in 2023 alone Nepal’s tourism sector generated revenue worth about 2.5 billion of dollars and boosted hundreds of thousands of jobs, both direct and indirect. Even Nepal has considered shoot 40% the fees he charges mountaineers, a source of income that among other things helps him clean the region. Where is the problem? Beyond the environmental impact that this overcrowding has in the mountain range, there is actually no problem in travel agencies, Sherpas, transportation companies, hotels and other businesses oriented to Nepalese tourism trying to make money. Climbing Everest doesn’t come cheap, but at the end of the day, whoever wants to pay for it. The problem is that not all of these professionals respect the law when looking for ways to make money. What’s more, there are those who have no qualms about cheatfalsify and commit millionaire frauds. Mountaineering and picaresque. The news I advanced it a few days ago The Kathmandu Postone of the largest English-language newspapers in Nepal. The Central Investigation Bureau of the Nepalese Police (CIB) has revealed a network dedicated to deceiving insurers who cover mountaineers in the Himalayas. Their modus operandi may vary, but the idea is always the same: alleged scammers make fraudulent ransoms to claim compensation. It may sound rudimentary, but the scam takes advantage of two circumstances that work in its favor. First, in rescue operations speed prevails, so there is no room to wait for the approval of the experts. Second, deceived insurers are often based thousands of kilometers away (in London or Paris), making it difficult for them to confirm what is happening on the ground. One goal, two methods. How do you prepare the scam? The CIB has identified two methods. The first is quite simple and requires the tourist to participate in the deception. If a climber is exhausted after days (or even weeks) of hiking and wants to save the trip back to camp, his guide can offer him a way out that is as comfortable as it is ethically questionable: faking an illness so that the insurance company can mobilize a rescue operation. The second method is a little more complicated, but the end result is the same. The guides or accommodations take advantage of the client’s ignorance to make them believe that the symptoms of altitude sickness (which are usually resolved with rest, hydration and a gradual descent) are actually signs that they are at serious risk, even of death. The key is to suggest the hiker enough so that he ends up asking to be evacuated by a charter helicopter. And where is the business? In the cost of the operation. It is not just that the company that provides that service charges the insurer for a helicopter that was not really necessary, it is that, precise The Kathmandu Postoften manages to expand its profit margin. As? It carries several passengers on the same flight and then sends separate invoices to their insurance companies. In practice that means that a single $4,000 charter flight can end up giving rise to three separate claims worth $12,000. Added to this are alleged treatments in the hospital, even when the client in question did not need assistance. For example, the Nepalese newspaper talks about cases in which treatment is claimed for hikers who were actually in the cafeteria. Not all people who are involved in this mess have to participate in the deception. He post speaks of falsifications of flight manifests or reports with digital signatures of completely unrelated doctors. One figure: 20 million dollars. At the end of March the CIB accused 32 people for this type of crimes, which according to the AFP agency amounted to a total scam 19.69 million of dollars. It may seem like a lot, but the figures revealed by the CIB investigation are eloquent: between 2022 and 2025, it identified 4,782 foreign patients treated in the investigated hospitals. Of these, inspectors believe that 171 corresponded to simulated evacuations. During that period some health centers received deposits worth millions of dollars related to those services. The older ones are the helicopters. Poisoning? The CIB investigation has attracted the attention of the media everyonealthough their headlines often focus on another … Read more

expensive literary retreats to overcome mobile addiction

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February weekend, Welsh coast. A group of women sits around a table accompanied by appetizing portions of pasta and fruit. They ignore each other very politely. Nobody looks at their cell phones, but at the voluminous books they carry with them. They open them, begin to read their own in silence, and pay 1,200 euros (or more) for that strange privilege. Expanding business. In the United States and the United Kingdom, a new category of travel experience has been born: reading retreats. A group of people meets in a rural house or hotel boutique during a weekend to advance their personal readings, in friendly silence and without obligation to read a common book, as happens with reading clubs. Very expensive and exclusive, prices vary from company to company Page Break (between $1,000 and $1,200 per weekend) up to Ladies Who Lit (£3,450 for four days in Mallorca) or Bad Bitch Book Club (between $950 and $1,750). It’s his thing. Although today it is perceived as a solitary activity, reading as something introspective is a historically anomalous perception. For centuries, reading was a social practice: families gathered by the warmth of the fireplace to listen to loud sermons, women sharing stories while they sewed, travelers exchanging books in train cars. In fact, the appearance of the railway in the 19th century generated an entire industry: the publisher Henry Walton Smith began selling cheap novels on the platforms of London stations, and Allen Lane installed a vending machine for books from the Penguin publishing house (the Penguincubator) in the subway lobbies. It is read less.The decline in reading rates is well documented. From 2003 to 2023, the share of Americans who read for pleasure daily fell from 28% to 16%, approximately 3% annually. The report from which these data come, prepared from more than 236,000 participants, indicates that the drop is more pronounced among the population with the lowest income and lowest educational level, although the decline affects all demographic groups. Teleworking has also affected a historical reading space: the commute to work. The importance of BookTok. But in the face of this general decline in reading rates, especially in more modest classes, there is a demand for reading as a form of leisure that disconnects from the connected and hyperactive rhythm in which we live. Paradoxically (coming from a social network), the TikTok reading community has a lot to do with this new vision of reading: with 200,000 million views under the hashtag booktokthis social network is already a sales engine that rescues titles from oblivion and catapults works by independent authors to the best-seller lists. According to the founder of The Literary LeagueAccording to Gabi Valladares, who has organized reading retreats at the Scribner’s Lodge resort in the Catskills, “book vacations offer a built-in connection point,” adding that they are “undemanding,” combining time with authors and other fans with free hours to simply read. It disconnects. The idea, even though the Internet is the platform for disseminating this type of retreat and its philosophy, is to disconnect from the online world, in search of recovering uninterrupted reading. As Leah Price points outauthor of ‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Books’, the current problem is not work, historically the main competitor to reading, but “the competition from short-form digital content.” The year 2018, when Wi-Fi reached the entire New York subway network, was described as “horrible” for reading in the subway by Uli Beutter Cohen, who interviews travelers about their reading for his Instagram account Subway Book Review. Some clubs. Bad Bitch Book Club was born in 2018 as a Facebook group of friends with common interests. By 2020, confinement boosted the page to 38,000 members worldwide, receiving income of around $200,000 annually through a Patreon subscription of 14 per month. Their summer camps in The Forks, Maine, received 500 applications for 240 spots spread over three weekends. Page Breakfounded in 2024 by Mikey Friedman, has a different proposal: participants read aloud (in turns, we imagine) the same novel throughout the weekend, interspersed with frugal meals and themed games, getting closer to the idea of ​​a traditional book club. For a recent retreat in the Joshua Tree, California desert, the company received 50 applications for 15 spots, which were assigned by lottery. Your goal: millennials and zetas too busy to commit to a conventional book club. Women. The profile of attendees is overwhelmingly female. Emma Donaldson, founder of Boutique Book Breaks (spa hotel retreats in the English countryside), notes that to date she has only had one male guest. The organizers attribute this bias to the feminization of the publishing industry in recent decades and to marketing for these retreats that adopts the language of well-being: candles, bath salts, non-alcoholic cocktails… Theorist DeNel Rehberg Sedo connects the popularity of these women’s reading clubs with the awareness groups of the 1960s and 1970s, speaking of spaces that “continue the training of women and distance them from domestic responsibilities.” The metaphor of well-being is not accidental. When the debate Often focused on choosing between reading as accelerated consumerism or as a reflective practice, these retreats offer a middle ground. The possibility of reading slowly, without being accountable to any algorithm, in the company of other people who also do not understand why the hell reading a book has become something that costs so much work these days. Header | Photo of Michael Kyule in Unsplash

Intel seemed like an exiled company. Then April came.

by

Intel stock has spent most of the year so far trading at between 42 and 48 dollars. At the time of writing these lines it is worth 65. A vertical rise of more than 50% in just nine sessions that allows it to once again be above 300,000 million dollars. Nothing like this had ever happened before in the company’s stock market history. Why is it important. The market has been punishing Intel for years. It went from $65 per share to less than $20 in four years. Now it is resurrected after losing technological leadership to TSMC, after seeing how AMD took away share in servers and after several years selling assets to survive. What has happened in this month of April is a change of narrative. And in markets, narrative is almost everything. The three catalysts. The story has been built on three pieces of news that arrived in a few days: On April 1, Intel announced the repurchase of the 49% that Apollo Global Management had in its factory in Leixlip (Ireland) for 14.2 billion dollars. Apollo had paid 11.2 billion for that stake in 2024. That Intel now recovers it with a 27% premium It says a lot: Intel has stopped selling assets to survive and has started buying and expanding. The market interpreted it as a sign of strength and the stock rose almost 9% that day. On April 7, Intel confirmed its participation in Terafabthe chip manufacturing macro project promoted by Elon Musk together with Tesla, SpaceX and xAI. The goal of the complex, located in Austin, is to produce one terawatt per year of computing capacity to drive advances in AI and robotics. On April 9 it was announced a multi-year agreement with Google to deploy future generations of Xeon processors and IPUs in their AI data centers. The following days saw the accumulated increases: Intel closed on April 8 at $58.95, with an increase in a single session (11.4%) and a volume of shares (179.7 million, 64% above its average for the previous three months) skyrocketed. Between the lines. The buyback of the Irish factory is a declaration of intentions on industrial sovereignty. The facility produces chips with the processes Intel 4 and Intel 3both essential for advanced manufacturing in Europe. Regaining full control of that factory, just when geopolitics has turned dependence on TSMC into a strategic problem for the West, gives Intel an argument that it did not have two years ago. Surprises life gives you. Yes, but. It’s often a great idea to respond with a cold read to market enthusiasm. The analyst consensus remains cautious, with a median price target of between $47 and $48well below where it is trading now. Furthermore, the debt has increased with the purchase of Ireland, Terafab is still a project in a very early stage and the first quarter results, scheduled for the 23rd, will test whether the stock market euphoria has a solid basis or if it has been too far ahead of operational reality. The big question. Can Intel support this narrative with real numbers? The CEO, Lip-Bu Tanhas been at the helm for just over a year and has already managed to stabilize the ship: the 18A process It went into volume production in January, there are more than 200 PC designs based on it, and he himself admitted in the fourth quarter earnings presentation that Intel had underestimated demand. But Intel has not yet won the battle of foundry: that is to come, and TSMC will not wait quietly for someone to overtake it. In Xataka | In the midst of the RAM crisis, Intel counterattacks with ZAM. It is the chip to break South Korean hegemony Featured image | Xataka with Mockuuups Studio

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