achieve

They have tried to adapt it three times, but it is so strange that they never managed to achieve it

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As often happens periodically, Stephen King is back in fashion. HBO has released, with notable success, a new prequel, It is in series formatfrom ‘It’. And a couple more adaptations coincide on the big screen, ‘Chuck’s life‘ and ‘The long march‘, with a new version of ‘Pursued‘ around the corner. However, there are some of his works that resist adaptation. ‘The eyes of the dragon’ is one of the most unique cases. What is it about? The fantasy ‘The Eyes of the Dragon’ was published in 1984 and is one of his first exceptions to the pure horror universes that King had been generating since ‘Carrie’: a novel that mixes political intrigue, magic and a fictional universe in line with what he would later do, in a much more sophisticated way, in ‘The dark tower‘. The novel tells the story of the fictional kingdom of Delain, where the throne is marked by the struggle between two brothers, Peter and Thomas, and the dark power of the evil wizard Flagg (there is a connection, in fact, with ‘The Dark Tower’). Why is it special? It is a more accessible and less violent fantasy than his other books, designed for a broader audience and with an adventurous approach that distances itself from the crudeness of other books. It is this same uniqueness that has made it difficult to adapt, since it demands a certain visual finish that is not cheap to achieve. The mixture of classic fantasy elements with psychological suspense and King’s own tension also makes it a work that is difficult to pigeonhole. And we already know how little that is liked in Hollywood. First attempt. The first serious attempt to adapt “The Eyes of the Dragon” was through an animated film. It was going to be produced by the French studio WAMC Entertainment, it was announced in the late 90s to be released around the year 2000. It was a very ambitious project in terms of budget, estimated at around 45 million dollars, something unusual for an animated film that was not strictly children’s at the time. However, despite the initial investment and the enthusiasm of the parties involved, the production encountered multiple technical and financial difficulties that ended it: deadlines were extended, costs skyrocketed and the creative vision began to blur. Ultimately, the studio ended up losing the rights. Second attempt. In 2012 it was the turn of Syfy, the cable channel known for adapting with considerable success works that were considered difficult to bring to the general public, such as ‘Dune’. The idea here was to use the miniseries format that had worked for other Stephen King adaptations such as ‘The Tommyknockers’, ‘The Store’, ‘It’ or ‘Apocalypse’. However, the project did not advance much and neither creative teams nor anything that went beyond the pre-production phase were firmly proposed. Third attempt. And Hulu arrived in 2019. There was some commotion, because the showrunner assigned was going to be Seth Grahame-Smith, who as a writer has had a couple of hits like ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’ and ‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’, but who as a screenwriter has had a somewhat erratic career: he was assigned to sequels to ‘Gremlins’ or ‘Bitelchús’ a decade ago, and more recently he was the first showrunner from the ‘Green Lantern’ series, but ended up leaving the series. And yes, he produced the recent and successful films that adapted ‘It’ by, precisely, Stephen King. The project was compared in tone to a kind of ‘Game of Thrones’ for young people. In September 2020, however, Hulu announced the cancellation of production. The reasons were not entirely clear publicly, but there was talk of budgetary difficulties, strategic changes to the platform and the impact of COVID. We continue waiting. King is so prolific and his name is so attractive to the public that it is not necessary to squeeze every corner of his bibliography in search of material to adapt: ​​there is plenty. ‘The Eyes of the Dragon’, however, is a relatively strange piece in his work: we may see it adapted if at some point that long-awaited definitive version of ‘The Dark Tower’ is created, since both have multiverses that are easy to connect. Until then, we will continue with the raw and bloody visions of the most commercial King. In Xataka | ‘Blackwater’ is one of the publishing events of the moment: economical, best-selling, addictive and serialized

After many years trying to copy the Falcon 9, Elon Musk believes there is a company about to achieve it

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It seems unlikely today that a startup can be 10 years ahead of the competition, but that is the case with SpaceX. Elon Musk’s aerospace company dominates the industry thanks to the Falcon 9, a rocket that has turned 15 years old and has been almost a decade landing vertically without any other orbital rocket having managed to repeat the feat. Until now. The Falcon 9 has company. A few days ago, Elon Musk broke his usual disdain about the rest of the industry to point out a specific contender. The Chinese company Landspace is not only close to matching the Falcon 9, Musk admitted.but it could end up surpassing it. The reason? Its new Zhuque-3 rocket, which combines the general architecture of the Falcon 9 with key elements of Starship, SpaceX’s most modern and experimental rocket. The gigantic Starship “is in another league,” Musk said. However, recognized that the Zhuque-3 could reach “Falcon 9 levels of reliability and launch rate” in about five years. This is the Zhuque-3 rocket. The big bet of LandSpace, one of the private companies most powerful in the Chinese aerospace industryis a two-stage launcher with a first stage capable of landing vertically for reuse. Although it has a very similar power to that of the Falcon 9 (with a payload capacity in its reusable configuration of 18.3 tons), it is built in stainless steel instead of aluminum, and burns methane and liquid oxygen instead of kerosene, the same material and the same fuel as Starship. Landspace is just the first. If Zhuque-3 manages to successfully take off and land in the coming weeks, Landspace will be the first company to close the enormous distance that separates the industry from SpaceX (with permission from Blue Origin’s New Glenn, a larger and heavier rocket, which also hopes to take off and land successfully in November). These two will be followed by other models such as the CZ-12A from the Chinese state company CASC and the Tianlong-3 from the Chinese startup Space Pioneer. Next will come the Hyperbola 3 from iSpace, the Pallas 1 from Galactic Energy and the Gravity 2 from OrienSpace. All Chinese companies, driven by the liberalization of the space industry promoted by Beijing in 2014. Copy what works, then improve. Public incentives, such as very low-interest loans, only tell part of the story. If Chinese companies are on the verge of having their Falcon 9, it is because of their philosophy of first copying what works and then iterating until they improve on their Western rivals. Elon Musk’s recognition is, perhaps, the clearest sign that the race has changed. It’s no longer a question of whether someone will copy the Falcon 9, but rather who will be the first to surpass it using, ironically, SpaceX’s own ideas for its next generation of rockets. In Xataka | The race to become “China’s SpaceX”: who’s who in its private space launch sector

Saudi Arabia has insisted on connecting its two seas by train. And to achieve this it has been placed in the hands of a Spanish company

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Saudi Arabia has launched one of the most ambitious railway projects in the Middle East: the “Landbridge” or “Land Bridge”, a $7 billion high-speed network that will connect the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf. The infrastructure will link Jeddah to Dammam via Riyadh, covering nearly 1,500 kilometers with the aim of completely transforming transport and commerce in the Arabian Peninsula. A strategic corridor for goods and passengers. The project will reduce travel time between Riyadh and Jeddah from around 12 hours by car to less than 4 hours by train. But the goal is for the project to go beyond just transporting passengers, as it is also designed to turn the kingdom into a key logistics hub in the region, connecting large industrial ports such as King Abdullah Port and Yanbu with urban centers and airports. According to Saudi authoritiesthe Landbridge could generate savings of $4.2 billion annually in transportation costs and create up to 200,000 jobs in related sectors. Vision 2030. This megaproject is a centerpiece of Vision 2030the strategic plan with which Saudi Arabia seeks to diversify its economy and reduce its dependence on oil. The Saudi Railways (SAR) company intends to expand the country’s railway network from the current 5,300 kilometers up to more than 8,000. As part of this modernization, SAR has ordered 15 new trains capable of reaching speeds of up to 200 kilometers per hour and even hydrogen-powered models. Spanish participation in the project. The Landbridge is being developed by the Saudi China Landbridge Consortium, a partnership between Saudi Arabia Railways and China Civil Engineering Construction Company, with local support from Al-Ayuni Contracting. Between the international companies involved The Spanish company Sener stands out, which was selected in December 2023 along with Hill International (USA) and Italferr (Italy) to provide project management services. Firms such as Systra, Thales, WSP and other specialized consulting firms also participate. A project with a long history and new Chinese momentum. Although the Landbridge It was initially announced in 2004 and paused in 2010, gained new momentum after the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2022, when both countries committed to accelerate its execution. Chinese investment in Saudi Arabia has grown significantly: in 2024, the stock of direct investment reached 8.2 billion dollarsup 29% from 2023. China has become the largest source of greenfield investment in the kingdom, with commitments worth $16.8 billion in energy, manufacturing and logistics. Railway enthusiasm. Only in the second quarter of 2025, more than 2.6 million passengers They used Saudi trains, according to Okaz media. After the completion of the Landbridge, Saudi Arabia will have made a qualitative leap in its railway network and logistics capacity, so it remains to be seen how the process ends up developing and if it really ends up being a ‘miracle of the desert’. Cover image | Maximilian Dörrbecker (Chumwa), Railway Supply In Xataka | In 2018 it was a countryside on the outskirts of Chongqing. In 2025 it will be the largest train station in the world

achieve the same thing that Google achieved with Android

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In two years, Alibaba has gone from e-commerce giant in regulatory crisis a global powerhouse in open source AI. Its family of Qwen models has accumulated 400 million downloads and 140,000 derived models arising from it, figures that surpass any Western competitor, except one: Llama, from Meta. Why is it important. Eddie Wu, CEO of Alibaba, has openly said that Qwen aspires to be “the Android of the AI ​​era.” It’s not marketing: the company has released 357 models in less than two years, a pace that neither OpenAI nor Google maintain nor want to maintain in their public version. The strategy copies Google’s manual with Android: giving away the operating system to dominate the infrastructure that supports it. Only this time the dominant player doesn’t come from Silicon Valley. The context: Alibaba poured more than $800 million into the country’s top four AI startups —Moonshot, Baichuan, Zhipu, MiniMax— before realizing its own technology could lead the market. Now those investments have stopped because the bet is on home. The road has been brutal. Between 2020 and 2022, Alibaba lost half of its stock market value due to the Chinese government’s regulatory offensive. DAMO Academy, its research arm, fired 30% of his staff. Some key scientists such as Yang Hongxiacreator of M6; either Zhou Changtechnical leader of Qwen, left for other companies such as ByteDance. The brain drain left a crater. Even so, Alibaba has managed to get back on its feet. The unexpected turn. In January 2025, DeepSeek launched R1an open source reasoning model that rivaled the o1 by OpenAI then. It had rapid and global adoption, and Alibaba seemed to lose steam. Joe Tsai, president of Alibaba, admitted the hit: “We said, ‘How is it possible that they got ahead of us?’” The response was drastic. On the first day of the Chinese New Year—a sacred holiday in China—the AI ​​team canceled his vacation and launched Qwen 2.5 Maxsurpassing DeepSeek V3. The war was not over. In figures. Alibaba has promised to invest 380 billion yuan ($53 billion) over three years in AI and cloud infrastructure. It’s more than it spent in the entire previous decade. In the second quarter of 2025, AI-related revenue grew by triple digits for the seventh consecutive quarter. Alibaba Cloud increased sales 26% year-on-year. The stock is up more than 90% so far this year. a rocket. The strategy. Free models generate demand for GPUs and training. That demand is monetized on Alibaba Cloud. It is the Microsoft-OpenAI model for Azurebut here Alibaba is an investor and beneficiary. Unlike Amazon (without competitive open source models), Google (closed models) or Meta (without its own cloud), Alibaba unites open model, cloud and developer ecosystem. And it’s already the fourth world in cloud behind the Amazon-Microsoft-Google trident. Of course, Alibaba opted for the wrong architecture while OpenAI scaled with GPT. When ChatGPT took off in December 2022, it had to admit the mistake. In August 2023 he opened the Qwen code just as Llama 2 crashed in Chinese. He filled that space immediately. In February 2025, Apple chose Alibaba as a partner for Apple Intelligence in China. Beastly validation of the then most valuable company in the world. Months later, Wu detailed the roadmap: expand the context, from 1 million to 100 million tokensand scale from one billion to ten billion parameters. Quantifiable bets with assigned budget. ByteDance is the only rival that keeps the pulse. Missing. The western market. Qwen dominates Asia but has not penetrated Europe or America like Llama has (and it is not like it has swept mobile phones like Android). Besides… The big question. Can a Chinese company that has endured regulatory purges and talent drains become the global standard for open source AI? What remains to be seen is whether the West agrees to rely on an AI operating system designed in Hangzhou. In Xataka | ‘World models’ aim to be the next great revolution in AI: this is what robotics needs to look like movies Featured image | Xataka

The companies of AI tell us that they want to achieve an AGI. What they are really conquering is the economy of attention

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Sora 2 is already with usand with it a tool that will allow anyone to create great videos generated by AI. The problem is that we will have an even greater problem of “Ai Slop“(” Bazofia generated by AI “): Internet is direct to become an even more gigantic hay career for the economy of attention. What’s happening. In recent days we have seen a goal to launch vibes Ya Openai launch Sora 2. Both applications are actually platforms in which to discover, create and share videos generated with AI. Both democratize that access to generate video content easily through their AI models, and we will no longer have to be an expert in Premiere, Davinci or dedicate hours to the script, recording, editing and publication of the videos, because AI does everything much easier. That does not mean that this content will be better: only there will be more. A lot more. Sora’s website greets us with a “Explore” section in which we can move vertically to see content destined for one thing: to have us trapped by the Doomscolling. Trapped in doomscrolling. The result of these initiatives can be seen quickly in the Sora websitein the application of iOS (for the moment, only in the US) or in the Meta Ai Ai and vibes. Here we have infinite content that moves and whose cost of production for the user is zero euros (for a video, if you want to create many the thing changes and you will have to pay a subscription) and just a few seconds. The incentive not to stop creating videos is huge, because the promise is that “anyone can create viral videos.” But. What these tools raise is to turn the viral into a formula. For this, it is possible to use emotional templates in a simple and direct way and that appeal to our attention. We have filters of nostalgia, indignation and tenderness on demand, for example, and the risk is the death of authenticity: everything seems designed by an algorithm. Quantity (and immediacy), no quality. These platforms – and those that are to come – are like gigantic automated content farms and are designed for user retention, not to give value. The content is the new slot machine, and the “AI Slop” manages to exploit our cognitive biases better than ever. It is synthetic dopamine at an industrial scale. 11 tricks to dominate Tik tok More creators = more slaves on platforms. Facebook created its empire convincing users to create content for it. Suddenly they were creators and consumers, and social networks took advantage of the reef and put us to publish reflections, links, and share photos and videos of all kinds. For some that was not enough claim, but being able to do everything with AI can attract new audiences (creators?). The user is more than ever the unpaid worker and the product. And those platforms want to attract the maximum possible number of usuals for the same thing that Facebook did it 20 years ago: to monetize that attention. Will it give us the same not to believe anything? In that martemágnum of content generated by the contamination of the contents, it promises to be so exceptional that it will be more difficult to distinguish the real from what is generated by the. A couple of years ago the thing was relatively complicated with imagesbut today it is almost impossible. There is an obvious risk that goes beyond the Deepfakes and the possible fraud and scams: the threat is that We will not even believe that real images and videos are indeed real. The AI ​​Slop era began. The “AI Slop” or “Bazofia generated by AI” is content generated by AI which is technically impressive but probably lacks meaning, authenticity or purpose beyond achieving that immediate attention by users. We have already seen how these tools already serve to generate comments and texts of text and images, but the video is even more powerful. OpenAI wants to kill Tiktok. In fact, with Sora 2 and its new website and app the objective, whether indirect or not, is to end Tiktok, which He owned and lady of the short video format. That users can now generate content with themselves as protagonists doing all kinds of impossible things thanks to AI is an extraordinary claim for many traditional Tiktok users. The “cameos” are a possibly addictive and brilliant product to achieve that goal. Before uploading a video with which to create cameos or mixtures, Openai warns of the implications. Is that enough for us not to create them? But. Of course, risks are important in security and privacy. The fraud and scams with increasingly credible deepfakes will be difficult to detect, but it is also asked where privacy ends if a platform ends up having ours images, videos and audios that can be edited and remix if we allow it. OpenAi offers configuration options, parental controls And warnings when it comes to uploading content, but it is not clear if that will be enough. In Xataka | Differentiating the AI ​​content on the Internet is increasingly difficult. The solution goes through something similar to fillets

The self -employed cars promised to get rid of paying attention to them. At the moment they only achieve it every 9 minutes

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The Advanced driving assistance systemsor Adas, they have become an argument of Key sale for many car manufacturers. Functions such as Adaptive Cruise Controlmaintenance within the lane and Assistants for traffic jams They promise to relieve driving load, especially in dense traffic situations. However, A recent study by the American Automobile Association (AAA) returns us to reality: technology is useful, but the attention of the duct remains indispensable. A test in extreme conditions. The AAA chose one of the worst possible scenarios: Los Angeles highways in rush hour. For more than 16 hours, over 550 kilometers, five vehicles equipped with different level 2 ADAS systems (Those who attend, but do not assume total control) face the real world. The cars were instrumented with cameras and GPS to record every detail of their behavior. Less than 10 minutes of tranquility. Although these systems promise us to have great tranquility at the wheel (even if they are not self -employed at all), the reality is very different. On average, in this study it has been seen that every 9.1 minutes (or every 5.1 kilometers) a notable event was recorded that requires driver’s intervention. There are situations that are very frequent. Among these events that require a person to take control of the vehicle, the lane invasion stands out above all. This happens when another car gets into the lane in front of the vehicle, forcing the driver to intervene to adjust the appropriate safety distance to avoid collision in the face of speed decrease. But they stay here. Secondly, there is the inability of the car to stay perfectly focused on the lane, needing driver intervention in 72% of the occasions. This is very typical, especially when it comes to curves. But in addition to these, 71 more cases have been recorded in which the car did not resume the march after a total stop or 43 moments in which the car did not stop enough, being able to have caused an accident. There are differences between proven systems. One of the most interesting comparisons that was carried out in this regard was among the systems that require the driver to keep his hands in the steering wheel and the most advanced that allow them to remove them. Surprisingly, systems that do not require having their hands on the steering wheel are more reliable when requiring a driver intervention every 20.1 minutes. Instead, the most basic systems need human help with a frequency three times higher: every 6.7 minutes. Of course, the “hands -free” systems also asked the driver to take control every 15 minutes for security. The best security recommendation: to have common sense. Given these results, the AAA has launched a series of recommendations in the face of the proliferation of these driving aid systems and trust that can be deposited in them. They point to that the alert must always be maintained, since ADAS does not replace the driverdistraction must be avoided and above all know the car and how each system works before starting it actively. Right now, the goal ahead is to press manufacturers to make driving aid systems that are more reliable. And although driving technology advances by leaps and bounds, the human factor is still essential to guarantee security. The ADAS are already mandatory. Little by little, these systems are increasingly present in our day to day and without having to pay an extra in the car settings. Since 2022 all new approved vehicles They must include Smart Speed Assistant, Integrated breathalyzer or lane involuntary change alert. Images | Charlie Deets In Xataka | The new Mazda CX-5 has taken the physical buttons ahead. According to Mazda, it’s what we want

Nvidia and AMD can sell their chips from AI to China. The amazing thing is that to achieve this they will give the US a slice of 15%

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Nvidia and AMD have agreed to yield to the United States a part of the income from the sale of certain AI chips in China. This pact unlocks the export of these components to the Asian country after months of uncertainty, but does so with that unusual consideration. The context. The US government It has been for years imposing all kinds of prohibitions to Chips exports and advanced technology from AI to China. The goal has always been avoid that the Asian giant could compete. The shot has come absolutely for the cylinder headand the advance of Chinese AI models –As Deepseek– And chips –Like Huawei– They show that this tactic has not worked. Nvidia and its H20 chips. To try to avoid those vetoes, Nvidia He developed his H20 chip with the intention of meeting the requirements of the US government – not selling its most advanced chips – and thus continuing to obtain income in China. They didn’t even solve the problem, and the US government prohibited the sale of that chip in the Asian country. A dilemma that also involved AMD. US has faced for months A apparently impossible dilemma: to sell Hardware from AI to China, or that of not selling it to him and that they develop them. AMD was also in identical situationabsolutely blocked to be able to sell their chips from AI to China, which meant a colossal problem for their global income, which are nourished with force of sales in China. Solution: Give me my slice. What has unlocked all this scenario has been, of course, money. In an unprecedented agreement revealed In Financial Timesthe US government will allow NVIDIA and AMD MI308 to export to China, but 15% of the revenues of these sales will go to the United States government coffers. Jensen Huang had already notified. The CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huan, already warned that the blocking of the sale of its chips in China could cause A reduction of 15,000 million dollars In your income this year. The Asian giant represents 13% of the total income of Nvidia, but The sanctions They threatened the survival of this company (and AMD) in that country. A successful meeting. According to FT, the US Department of Commerce began to issue export licenses for the H20 Chips on Friday, two days after the NVIDIA CEO met with the US President Donald Trump. That meeting seems to have been the definitive After the theoretical initial agreement that both had reached less than a month ago. This had never happened. This “Quid Pro quo” is not preceded, FT analysts stand out, who point out that no US company had previously agreed to pay part of their income to obtain export licenses for their products. Even so, the pact follows the dictatorial position of President Trump, which In addition to its badly called reciprocal tariffs Does not to demand that companies manufacture the chips used in products that are sold there in the US, such as iPhone. The forecasts. According to analysts of the consultant Bersntein, Nvidia would have sold about 1.5 million H20 chips in China without exports controls. That would have meant revenues of about 23,000 million dollars, but now that figure is probably lower. Even so, it is expected that Chinese companies make great orders of both the Nvidia and AMD chips. A worrying precedent. Meanwhile, certain experts criticize this type of agreement. Liza Tobin, of the Jamestown Foundation, commented on how “Beijing must be gloating to see how Washington converts export licenses into sources of income. What will be the next one? Let Lockheed Martin sell F-35 to China in exchange for a 15 %commission?”. Image | Nvidia | Dominic Kurniawan In Xataka | China’s first avant -garde lithography machine is not the biggest US problem. They will be the other two that are on their way

Madrid needs to build a lot to relieve its serious housing crisis. You already have a (mini) plan to achieve it

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Madrid You need housing. A lot of housing. If the city wants to solve its mismatch between supply and demand and thus stop The climbing Price that he has long suffered needs to strengthen his market. It is not a simple task. Over the last years the capital has Moved file for example to avoid the escape of floors towards the holiday rental or clear land in which Raise new houses. With that backdrop, his City Council has just taken an important step with which he hopes to create hundreds of households in a new urban widening. Objective: to stop one of the Great challenges of the capital. What happened? That Madrid has taken an important step that will allow (partly) to relieve one of its most pressing problems: The lack of housing. A few days ago the City Council advanced in the procedures to clear the situation of an area of 218,000 m2 located east of the capital, together with San Fernando de Henares and Coslada, and in which 700 houses will be built, 50% official protection. What exactly? Advance in the long bureaucratic journey that the project has to complete before the first stone is placed. Last week the Government Board of Madrid approved Submit to the public information process the Sector Plan for the ‘Development of the East-Esanche of San Fernando’. The objective: ultimately, order the land located next to San Fernando de Henares and Coslada to “transform” with green areas, services … and houses. The Governing Board also approved to send the document to the Community of Madrid to activate two other essential bureaucratic gears: the strategic environmental assessment and the territorial impact report. For now, the project already has a favorable report from the General Planning Directorate. Click on the image to go to Tweet. Where will it be built? East of Madrid. To be more precise, near the roads M-45 and M-50 and the Regional M-206, between the towns of San Fernando de Henares and Coslada. Towards the East limits with the Parque Roma-Coronas neighborhood (S. Fernando de Henares), to the Oste with Jarama (Coslada) and to the south beautiful with the hills (Madrid). The Consistory recalls that under the ground the Metro line 7 runs, not far away are the Central Coslada and S. Fernando. The idea is not to build only 700 homes, green areas and other equipment, but “integrate” the new neighborhood into the surroundings, especially with Romoronas Park and Jarama, “giving continuity and harmony to the whole set, also with the metropolitan forest,” Clarify José Luis Martínez-Almeida’s team. The Consistory wants to integrate the improved road into the urban framework, preventing it from acting as a kind of “barrier”. Why is it important? Because among other things the Ensanche of San Fernando plans to create about 700 new homes, half with some degree of public protection and the rest available for the free market. And that is an important news in a city that suffers a deep mismatch between demand and the supply of residences, which translates into a deficit that some voices of the sector They relate precisely with the lack of soil available for construction. The Association of Real Estate Promoters of Madrid (Asprima) Calculate that every year they are necessary 40,000 New households in the community, well above the production of new construction. According to their estimates, over the last years housing deliveries have remained between 7,200 of 2014 and the “peak” of 23,500 last year. In 2023 and 2024 he estimates that 16,000 and 18,600 began respectively, which gives an idea of the stage for the next few years. And what does that suppose? “There is much more demand than supply and that translates into a price increase. In addition, there is an embolized demand for more than 175,000 homes,” warned Real Estate Consultores Forum in a 2024 analysis. In its last year’s report, Asprime already remembered that the INE forecasts pass through that in the coming years (between 2022 and 2037) the population of the Community of Madrid grows almost 13% to exceed the 7.8 million inhabitantswhich will fully affect its real estate market, tensioning it even more. “This growth will cause the community to build housing in the next 14 years for 573,738 new homes, passing the housing park of the 2,636,988 existing in December 2022 until 3,210,726 of December 2037. It means building more than 40,000 homes a year, compared to the 17,000 that are currently built,” collect The promoters report. The collective is part involved, but it is not the only one who has warned of the hole, a problem that extends to other regions of the country and also has pointed out The Bank of Spain. Does it affect something else? Yes. The mismatch between supply and demand, added to other factors such as The pressure that holiday rentals exercise, it is felt on several fronts. For example, in The speed with which the floors find tenant or buyer or The hard conditions who are forced to assume those interested so as not to be expelled from the market. If there is a clear indicator of the imbalance it is nevertheless the price. Idealista calculates that M2 costs € 5,718 In the capital, 23.7% more than a year ago. In the case of rentals the rise was from 11.3%. Images | Quique Olivar (UNSPLASH) and Borja Carabante (X) In Xataka | In Madrid the number of Latinos has shot. And with them a new phenomenon: 15 -year -old parties for Madrid

Nothing’s CEO wants to conquer the mobile market with crazy designs. He has told us his very complex plan to achieve it

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Carl Pei is one of the CEO that gives off the most in the technology industry. You saw a cowboy and basic shirt, they warn me that it is shy and, after a few minutes of interview, we end up smiling, commenting that “the vibes” are the future, and remembering the old days of Cyanogenmod out of formalities. Those who have been in El Cotarro to know Carl from that Old OnePlus who only sold his phones by invitation. With Nothing, the approach is different. A London company with the focus on design and with a clear slogan: “Make Tech Fun Again”. Looking up Nothing began with a Phone (1) that attacked the mid -range. He continued with a Phone (2) that took a specifications and, in 2025, attacks the market with a mobile of 799 euros with a high range. I can’t help wanting to know why. Carl explains that for Nothing, both the Phone (1) like him Phone (2) They were flagships. It sounds like a statement Marketinianbut it is not: “For a company, a flagship is the best mobile you can do.” For the first time, they believe they are at an engineering point in which they can compete with the best in the market, a point where they are finally ready. Sailing a high range is risky, and throwing it being oriented to a concrete niche, it is even more. Nothing is not in volume, it is not desperate to launch product and points directly to “the most creative users.” All this sounds very good, but it is worth asking if A company can be profitable and sustainable living as “creative users”. “We are focused on new generations of consumption. We focus on people who are interested in technology, design and creativity. Our consumer is much younger than the average consumer, it is around 26 years.” Does the strategy work? Yes. Carl tells me that they have folded the volume of business, exceeding one billion dollars in the accumulated sales. He knows that they have been focusing on software for years, but they intend to double software investment to be even more attractive. They also have an important investment behind, in which investors take a direct role in the decisions made by the company. “Sometimes it is uncomfortable, because they give their opinion in front of the rest of the members of our table. But I think it is really important to find ways to keep us connected with this base, especially when the company grows. It is difficult to hear uncomfortable truths when you have that type of structure, we always know what people want us.” The present Carl Pei during the presentation of Nothing Phone (3) and the Nothing Earphone (1). Image | Xataka With Nothing Phone (3) comes the whopping seven years of security updates and five software. Maybe it’s time for Get out of stopping a mobile per year if mobiles are getting older and more. Or maybe not. “On average, people renew phone every three years. So there will always be someone thinking about the following. But we are also seeing a trend of people who want to keep their device for a longer time. That is why we want to give even longer support.” The phone also lands with an integration of quite discreet. Essential Search Essential Space Minor translation functions Is enough to compete, taking into account that There are already those who integrate the AI Even in the most basic apps of the system (telephone, keyboard, camera …)? Carl is clear that Nothing’s approach is cautious, because they see “a lot of hype” in the market. It drops that, even if they have launched these functions, “the Roadmap is long, there will be updates and updates.” But, beyond promising that in the future AI will be more complete, it is not afraid to admit that it agrees. “This is almost like a hygiene factor, right? We have to take care of that basic part, but that is not what excites us most. What really excites us is how we apply this new technology to redefine the way people use products, especially in the software part. But yes, that basic work is necessary. You have to do it. The market is doing it and I think we can do much more.” Image | Xataka To close the block, I ask Carl for something practically inevitable: How are geopolitical tensions between the United States and China livingand if your supply chain is being affected. The Nothing Phone box (3) shows a clear “Made in China”, so there is nothing to hide. Here he tells us that most of their products are manufactured in India, and some of them in China. Apart from this, he affirms that they are in the process to start producing in other parts of the world. It does not seem too worried, and the reason is simple. “Being a startup, we can be quite agile and reagents, whatever happens.” The future of smartphone Nothing Phone (3). Image | Xataka A question that I like to ask the main responsible for Tech companies is how they look in the future. And being, honest, the answers are usually little concrete. It is something completely normal: neither should get wet with compromised statements or, really, it is easy to predict with where today’s technology is going. But Carl is a Jugónand it is clear that the future of the smartphone goes through a single app capable of controlling everything. That agriculture that we have spent so much speaking throughout 2025. The key is that, When everything is … what will be the reason to decide between one device or another? It clarifies that it is still distant, and that no one would buy a phone without apps today. The key will be on the path that is to achieve it, a path to combine and melt all software and hardware. “I think Essential Search is a good example. … Read more

There is a career to achieve the cheapest and most powerful model. And against all prognosis, China is winning it

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On May 20 Google launched Gemini 2.5 Pro and Gemini 2.5 Flash in preliminary version. These new AI models were better than ever, and to demonstrate the company included in its announcement several graphs and comparative tables. They looked at how both surpassed their rivals both in the field of reasoning and in the traditional performance (Benchmarks of Mathematics or Programming), but there was also another fact that Google presumed: Google: The cost of Gemini 2.5 Flash. Source: Google. That table published by Google made it clear that Gemini 2.5 Flash It was clearly the winner of that comparison in the important price/benefits ratio. What Google did not say is that this success of this model was the exception to the rule, because in that race for having cheap and powerful models, China seems to take the lead. He does it at least if we attend to the cost of using these models. In Xataka we have analyzed that cost based not on the price of subscriptions for end users, but on the cost of access to the API, which is the one that allows developers to integrate these models into their own chatbots and their services. The API prices of each model clearly differentiate two uses from artificial intelligence. On the one hand, how much does it cost to write something for the model to then process it (the so -called input tokens). On the other, how much does the text generated by the model once processed the answer (the so -called output tokens). The entrance tokens They are usually five times cheaper than exitbecause processing the request and generating text is much more expensive than receiving it, analyzing and “understanding it.” We wanted to compare the cost of the main models of the AI ​​developed in China and those of the US, and although as always are not all that are, if they are all. The resulting table is as follows: These prices are public and very easy to find in the case of US AI models (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google) but not so much in the case of Chinese models (Deepseek, Qwen (Alibaba), Doubao (Bytedance), GLM-4 (Zhipu), Ernie (Baidu)). Be that as it may, the table, ordered from the cheapest to the most expensive, demonstrates that today Chinese models are especially cheap. Only Gemini 2.5 Flash Preview manages to compete – and does it exceptionally. In the rest of the cases, the AI ​​models in China win the battle for cost. It must be noted that, Like all comparisons, this is unfair. And it is because that table does not take into account the benefits of each model. Openai O3 and Anthropic Claude Opus 4, the last and most powerful models of those companies, are especially precise in their answers, but each consultation consumes much more resources (computation, energy) and that makes it logical that they are much more expensive than their competitors. But these models are also designed for very special cases and for specialized, detailed and deep consultations. In the vast majority of cases it is not necessary to use these models, and that is where they are competing for example Deepseek R1 or Gemini 2.5 Flash Preview: in the price/benefits ratio. Models with variable prices That price battle has made us see in recent times two techniques that some companies are applying to the prices of use of their APIs. The first one is to differentiate normal entries and outputs of inputs (and even exits) cache. Deepseek API prices. Attentive to the lower left: according to the time you use them, they can leave cheaper. Source: Deepseek. The explanation is simple: a “normal” entry is a request or question that the model has never processed and therefore has to process completely. If the entrance has been caught (Cache hit) is because that request has been processed in the past, so the system can obtain the response of its cache, which significantly reduces the computational costs. Deepseek, Google, Anthropic and Openai offer this type of option, as can be seen in the table. The second technique is to use variable prices according to (at the moment) the time slot in which we use these models. This is what Deepseek has done, which has “day” and “night” prices according to UTC schedule. If you use the Depseek API from 18:30 to 2:30 (Peninsular schedule in Spain), it will be half price. Good news: AI is every time (much) cheaper While China and the US fight who has the most powerful model or who has the cheapest model, what is constantly happening is that the AI ​​price is falling remarkably. It is an observation that several experts such as Ethan Mollick, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who recently analyzed how That price/benefits ratio does nothing but improve. The models are getting better and cheaper. Other experts such as Raveesh Bhalla – explained by Netflix and LinkedIn – also reflected this evolution at the beginning of the year. Then he showed how the cost of an O1 level model had dropped 27 times in the last three months. Moreover, at this rhythm the GPT4 level models – which a year ago were absolute referents – will be reduced 1,000 times in just 18 months. We are living it in price reduction. Dane Bahey, from Openai, said at a conference in September last year how the cost per million tokens had fallen from 36 dollars At just 0.25 dollars In the last 18 months. And that price drop is still clear and fantastic for users. Thus, we are facing a career that at the moment has a lot of stretch: China’s models carry the lead if we attend only to their cost, but careful, because we must also take into account the benefits. It is true that these Chinese models have already shown in the benchmarks that have been showing that they compete from you to you with the best US models, and now it remains to … Read more

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