admit

TicketMaster executives privately admit what their clients have suspected for years:

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Slack messages exchanged in 2022 between two regional directors by Live Nation (declassified this past March 12 in full antitrust trial) describe their own clients as “idiots” from whom they are “robbing hands full.” These are not mere private outbursts: they are involuntary testimony to how a company that controls 80% of the primary ticket sales market in the US works. It is no surprise to those who have been paying parking fees of $250 for a Kid Rock concert for years. But seeing it in writing has a special weight. What they said. Ben Baker, then regional director of ticketing for Live Nation venues in Florida and Jeff Weinhold, senior director in the Virginia area, had been exchanging views on their work for months. In one conversation, Baker boasted about what he was doing with the add-ons that raised the base price of a Kid Rock concert in Tampa Bay. Baker wrote that the customers were “stupid” and that he almost felt sorry for taking advantage of them. Weinhold responded that he had VIP parking for $250. Baker’s retort: ​​They were “robbing them hand over fist, baby, that’s how we do it.” and there is more details: Baker speaks of income of $124,790 in upsells (upgraded tickets, VIP tickets, or better seats) for a Dead & Co. concert, followed by Weinhold’s suggestion to dynamically raise prices before sending the marketing email. “LOL. I’m evil,” Weinhold wrote. Baker used the internal term “dyn up” to refer to raising prices through dynamic pricing. There are also conversations about designing the purchasing interface so that artist names appear next to the upsellsa technique that Baker himself admitted to having “stolen” from the competition. Beyond the anecdote. Live Nation tried to keep the messages from reaching the jury. Their lawyers downplayed them, and when they became public, the company issued a statement attributing them to “a junior employee talking to a friend.” It is not clear Which of the two regional directors with responsibility for pricing are referred to as “junior.” Lawyers for the plaintiff states argued precisely that they are not irrelevant messages: artists have no interest in milking their fans, but Live Nation can do it because artists have nowhere else to go. The giant controls approximately 80% of the ticketing in large US venues and 60% of concert promotion, according to data cited during the trial. The construction of the empire. This vertical concentration was not built overnight. The merger between Live Nation and Ticketmaster was approved in 2010 and created a model in which the same company promotes the tour, manages the venue and sells tickets. After, Ticketmaster also began to charge commissions for resale among fans, which was especially noticeable during the pre-sale of Taylor Swift’s ‘Eras ​​Tour’ in 2022, when the collapse of the system led to a Justice Department investigation and hearings in Congress. And the dynamic pricing model has already been successfully exported (pecuniary) all over the world. The agreement. On March 9, the DOJ and Live Nation agreed to a surprise settlement that ended federal involvement in the trial without the judge being informed until the last minute. The terms required the company to limit its service fees to 15%, cut exclusive contracts with venues to four years, divest from 13 amphitheaters and open its marketplace to competitors like SeatGeek. The agreed payment amounts to between 280 and 300 million dollars for the states that accept the agreement. What the pact does not contemplate is the separation of Live Nation and Ticketmaster. And now. More than 27 states, including New York, California and Illinois, rejected the federal settlement and decided to pursue the lawsuit on their own, since the crucial monopoly issue had not been addressed. Furthermore, the case is not exclusively American. In September 2024, the European Commission launched an investigation into Ticketmaster following the Oasis pricing scandal in the UK, where tickets went from £135 to £350 in a matter of minutes during the sale. The Live Nation model is neither an accident nor a deviation. Baker and Weinhold’s chats reveal, and this is the truly uncomfortable part, that company policy has been exactly what it seemed to be for years. In Xataka | Spotify killed the record and the industry pivoted to concerts. Netflix killed cinema and the industry was left with a “space crisis”

Thousands of CEOs admit that nothing is changing (yet). The productivity paradox of the 80s resurfaces with force

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AI will make us more productive, the studies said and AI advocates. It is a discourse that is already well known and seemed reasonable: models allow us to automate routine tasks and use that time on other productive things, right? Well, the truth is, (at the moment) no. And what is happening is curiously the same thing that happened 40 years ago. The productivity paradox. In 1987 the economist and Nobel Prize winner Robert Solow realized of a singular paradox in the so-called “information age”. The transistors, microprocessors, and integrated circuits discovered in the 1960s were supposed to revolutionize businesses and dramatically increase productivity. What happened was just the opposite. Productivity growth did not accelerate, but rather slowed down: between 1948 and 1973 it was 2.9%, but since 1973 that growth was only 1.1%. So much chip for nothing? It seemed that way, at least those first few years. History repeats itself: AI is of little use. As they point out in Fortunethat paradox has resurfaced just now that we are suffering exactly the same thing with AI. A new study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) reveals a striking conclusion after surveying no less than 6,000 CEOs, CFOs and other managers from several countries: they see very little impact of AI on their real operations. AI is not changing anything. Although two-thirds of the managers surveyed indicated that they used AI in their processes, this use was very limited: about 1.5 hours per week. 25% of participants indicated that they did not use AI at all at work. Nearly 90% of the companies that participated highlighted that AI has not influenced their hiring or productivity in the last three years. But they are optimistic. The use of AI by these executives appears to be very limited at the moment, but those same companies are still waiting for a substantial impact. In fact, they expect productivity to increase by 1.4% in the next three years. Another paradox: these first years AI was supposed to cut hiring by 0.7%, but respondents revealed a 0.5% increase in those hiring. The data confirm that at the moment, little. The truth is that the vaunted AI revolution has still not become a reality, at least in terms of productivity and economic return. Economist Torsten Slok recently indicated that “AI is everywhere except in macroeconomic data: you don’t see it in employment, productivity or inflation data.” His thesis: the impact of AI is currently almost zero. In fact, except in the case of technology’s “Magnificent Seven,” there are no signs of profit margins or revenue expectations. But these revolutions take time. The revolution that semiconductors brought us took a while to crystallize, but it ended up doing so: in the 1990s and 2000s were produced productivity improvements such as an increase of 1.5% between 1995 and 2005. There are experts who they point because in fact this change in trend has already begun to occur: in the US, GDP in the fourth quarter grew by 3.7% despite the fact that there were job cuts. That points to an increase in productivity. Slok also pointed to this possibility, and theorized that the impact could end up having a “J” shape, first slowing down and then exploding. Let them tell the steam engine. Previous industrial revolutions, such as the one that produced the steam engine or, even more importantly, electricity, took their time. The initial delay disappeared over the course of subsequent decades because these technologies needed time to spread to the rest of the productive sectors. Excessive optimism does not help, of course, and at the moment what is reasonable seems to lie somewhere in between: neither “AI is useless” nor “AI will do everything for us.” Perhaps the only thing AI needs—in addition to improving—is for us to give time to time. It is not in vain that many describe it as “the new electricity.” Image | The Standing Desk In Xataka | Until now “software was eating the world.” Now AI is eating software

ChatGPT is already our first line doctor (although we don’t want to admit it)

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ChatGPT has become one of the biggest attention grabbers in historyand now ChatGPT Health is going to take that further. Not competing with the GP, but yes occupying that space that we have filled with nightly Google searcheswith visits to forums where a stranger tells you that that mole does not have to worry you, or with the brother-in-law who knows a little about those topics. We’ve been delegating our fears to slightly ridiculous spaces for years, and now OpenAI is going to offer one that’s a little less ridiculous. The interesting thing is not that AI knows medicine. The LLMs They have been passing clinical exams for years and have resolved, better or worse, several doubts. The interesting thing is that we trust it more than real institutions or people. Two hundred and thirty million people asking ChatGPT about their health every week is a fact that says a lot about our psychology. We’d rather ask a chatbot than wait three weeks for an appointment or bother a friend at eleven at night. Everything before admitting out loud that that pain scares us. ChatGPT Health presents itself as a kind of “pocket doctor”, but it functions as a confessor. Because “should I worry about this?” It is never just a medical question. It’s existential. And the app never judges you, never gets tired, never makes you feel like you’re overreacting. He responds instantly, in a reassuring tone, citing studies that you will never read but that make you feel informed. Deep down, we know he can skate and invent things, but that doesn’t matter as much to us as gaining peace of mind for a while.and that feeling does manage to convey it. Even though There have been shady cases that have ended badly. OpenAI says this is not a replacement for the doctor. Of course not. But functionally it is already doing it. Not in a serious diagnosis, which is where we still go to the hospital, but in who decides when something is worth worrying about. Who immediately interprets those blood test numbers, or who tells us if we should change our diet or exercise routine. In the daily practice of managing a body, the doctor has become the second option, ChatGPT is now the first line. It may be uncomfortable, it may displease, but it is what is already happening. That is, in fact, the awkward twist: ChatGPT’s competition is not so much with doctors as with the emotional support network we used to have. We asked our mother, our partner, our friend who studied nursing. Now directly to ChatGPT. And with Health, this will go even further. Because it’s immediate, it’s fast, it doesn’t make you feel vulnerable and you can delete the conversation if the response starts to scare you. ChatGPT Health is the consolidation of the symptom of structural loneliness that we have not even consciously chosen. It’s just that annoying someone has become emotionally costly, while asking a machine that simulates empathy (sometimes Claude calls me ‘brother’) is fluid and simple. OpenAI did not invent this dynamic, it just came naturally when people made ChatGPT a habit and now he has optimized it to better monetize it. In Xataka | ChatGPT has been a tool. If you start remembering all our conversations, it’s going to be something else: a relationship. Featured image | Xataka

More and more people admit to using AI to summarize books

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Marcos, a 21-year-old student, acknowledges that it costs him “a lot” read a book whole because he can’t find “neither the time, nor the way, nor the desire.” That is why he uses AI when he needs to read a text or book for class. “Who hasn’t used it today?” he asks. For her part, Raquel, 24, also relies on artificial intelligence tools when she doesn’t have the time or “inclination” to read. She admits that she has sometimes felt that by using AI she was missing out on a story that she might like, but she doesn’t regret doing it—and she’s sure she will do it again. Neither Raquel nor Marcos believe that using these types of tools is dangerous or worrying, they simply consider it a change like any other in their generation. “It’s not that shocking, generations simply change, we read differently. We are a generation that reads through mobile phones and technological devices,” explains Marcos. The search for shortcuts not to read It is not something new or exclusive to current generations. Students have always found ways to avoid books and get by on assignments or exams: copying summaries already made by publishers, asking a classmate for an explanation, or resorting to platforms such as Vago’s Corner. With the advent of AI, not reading is even easier. A search on social networks is enough to find dozens of publications with recommendations of applications, websites or AI tools that “promise” those who use them not need to open the book. Under titles like “Do you find it difficult to read books due to lack of time? I share 4 IA that read for you (and improve your understanding)!”, tools are released that summarize any text or book, and that are also capable of creating mental maps, presentations, videos or even podcast (in case you don’t even have time to read the summaries). Ok boomer. (Clay Banks/Unsplash) On these same platforms, young people express the relief they feel at not needing to read when they don’t want to. A Tiktok user He suggests in his videos that he is “happier” for not having to “read 765 pages of a PDF”, since he only reads “the summary and the flashcards” that an application creates for him. “Spanish people are reading more and more” AI has become another accessory in our daily lives, a tool that we use for more and more things. We have verified its potential by solving operations or programming, but also by writing and summarizing texts. From there a question arises: if artificial intelligence can write, summarize and even tell us stories, can AI replace reading? For now, in Spain, no. The statistics of reading in our country reflect a growing interest in reading in almost all age groups: the percentage of Spaniards who read in their free time This 2025 has exceeded 65% for the first time, breaking the myth that young people no longer read —75.3% of the population between 14 and 24 years old read in their free time. This good reading health coexists with a new reality: young people incorporate artificial intelligence into their daily lives with astonishing naturalness. According to the report This is how we are. The state of adolescence in Spain, by Plan International By 2025, 62% of girls and 59% of boys between 12 and 21 years old surveyed use AI to resolve questions related to their studies. In fact, 68% of them and 61% of them fear “developing a certain dependence on this technology.” Reading, therefore, does not disappear, but it begins to share space—and time—with a tool that can replace, complement or transform the way young people relate to it. AI’s abilities to write texts are already well known to users. teachers. What, according to Patricia Sánchez, a Language and Literature teacher at an institute in Leganés, is beginning to worry them now is another, less visible effect: how it can affect to development of students to delegate tasks such as reading, understanding or interpreting a text to the AI. “At certain ages there are tasks that we should not leave in the hands of technology,” says the teacher. Don’t ask him where he gets the summary of the book, mind you. (Emiliano Vittoriosi/Unsplash) Teachers like Sánchez warn that using AI to read, summarize or write instead of doing it yourself—especially at an early age—can slow down the development of fundamental skills such as reading comprehension, writing or analytical skills. Sánchez sees it as problematic that “they do not acquire certain skills”, that “they do not make efforts, that they do not make mistakes and therefore are not able to solve them.” Organizations like the UNESCO or the World Economic Forum They point out how delegating activities – such as reading – to technology can affect memory and learning ability. According to a analysis According to researchers at the University of Chile, the “passive use” of AI tools like ChatGPT can “undermine the very foundations of literacy.” The authors recognize that AI has a great potential in the educational field, but they warn of the need to work and “practice intensely with written texts” in order to develop “good reading comprehension and writing skills.” They agree with Sánchez that with reading we not only acquire information, but it is key to strengthening vocabulary, comprehension, reasoning and critical thinking. According to researchers, “reading acts as a workout for the brain.” The CEOs who no longer read Sánchez is not worried that his students have not read Bohemian lights; He is concerned that in the future they “will not understand” a news story when they read a newspaper, or that it will be more difficult for them to “understand the world in general, have the patience to stop, think, assimilate, be able to create an opinion…”. This is why a good use of technology must have a “prior basis.” Once the basic competencies and skills surrounding reading have been acquired, for Sánchez AI can be an ally. … Read more

More and more people on the Internet and in real life admit to having a single friend: chatgpt

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A Perogrullada: The impact of artificial intelligences is reaching our day to day. The virtual space is already being deeply transformed by the IAS in search engines, websites and, of course, in all the work behind, generating more content, helping to produce it. But … And in the traditional space? Is analog life transformed into the same extent by the IAS? Without a doubt, yes, to the point that we already have to talk about how we manage our Personal relationships with the IAS. Chatgpt as a friend. The Derek Thompson essayist said a few days ago in X that our interpersonal relationships have made a new deadly leap with Tirabuzón. And as proof provides a series of conversations that he has found in Reddit where several users confess that Chatgpt has become Your best friend. The Subnet dedicated to the popular AI It is full of threads “by pathetic that sounds, Chatgpt is my only friend” or “I feel that Chatgpt is my only friend.” Bumper people. One of them He begins saying “I know it is a robot. I know that everything is programming. But I have often encountered opening to Chatgpt on personal issues and asking for kind or encouragement.” That is, as he says, he uses AI as if it were a good dog: he does not judge, he always accompanies, he is aware that he is not a human. Another case He says that “honestly, he would be happy to have a friend as cultured and committed as Chatgpt. This person does not exist, and if it exists, he would be too busy to talk to me.” In most of these cases, similar constants are repeated: they are people who have just come out of a relationship or friendship and seek a substitution, being very aware that it is before synthetic beings: “They make me feel heard when I let me out in, something that my parents do not even do. They always want to know how I go in mind and how my projects go, which is even more pleasant.” One thousand and one cases. These cases with chatgpt are Only the tip of the iceberg. While this is the most popular conversational, there are other oriented even in this same direction. Replika either Woebot They allow to have conversations designed to serve as sentimental support to users or hold daily conversations, Share emotions and give emotional advice. More complex and specific are others that offer talks with specialized approaches, such as Receive Couple Therapy. And of course, quotes: Yourmove either Rizz They help generate interesting conversations and profiles … with real people. The bowling clubs. Let’s go to the initial point of this transformation to understand these processes. Derek Thompson Loate a key point In 2000 in ‘Bowling Alone‘(in Spanish,’ Only in La Bolera ”, today impossible to find), Robert D. Putnam analyzed the decline of social capital in the United States since 1950, with the decline of all forms of social relationship in person. Some examples? Decreased electoral participation, assistance to public meetings and work with political parties, to which distrusts in government, more accentuated from the sixties. Bowling are their perfect symbol: the number of people who go to bowling has increased, but the number of clubs has descended to do so in company. The guilt of technology. Already by then, Putnam pointed to a problem with technology and how it individualized people’s leisure through television. In those incipient days of the use of technology to entertain, Putnam dared to talk about “virtual reality helmets”, that for now they have not been massified as much as he predicted, but in reality the thing would get closer to another invention to which he pointed in his book and who did not pay so much attention: the then newborn Internet. The figures. The percentages and data make it clear to what extent the Internet has contributed to creating this less “social” society: almost 40% of adults admit that The use of social networks makes them feel more alone or isolated. A study by the European Union affirms that spending more than two hours a day on social networks is associated with a significant increase in loneliness, especially when the use is passive (the famous doomscroll). And, finally, There are studies They claim that the intensive use of the Internet (more than 10 hours per week) substantially reduces the time dedicated to interacting face to face or phone with friends and family. It comes. Anyone who has tried still in an embryonic state as Replika’s voice model It may be part of the future that comes to us, and that it is inevitable to relate to the movie ‘Her’, to see the friendliest side (although not exempt from bitterness) of the matter. Voices no longer realistic from a technical point of view, but capable of generating absolute empathy and that is beyond the disturbing valley. If ChatGPT and his still rudimentary conversations already provide a certain sense of warmth, the immediate future promises to even more use interpersonal relationships. If we are able to detect them. Image | Photo of Brooks Leibee in Unspash In Xataka | The best PROMPTS to save working hours and do your homework with Chatgpt, Gemini, Copilot or other artificial intelligence

He was saved by a script that did not admit a detour

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In June 2024, Apple presented one of the most ambitious movements in its recent history: the integration of Apple Intelligence on its devices and, with it, a reinvention of Siri. That Keynote promised something that many had been waiting for years: a truly useful assistant, capable of understanding the User contextoffer precise answers and execute actions taking into account our personal information. Concert tickets, hotel reservations, shared links in messages or calendar locations: everything would be available to the new Siri. The enthusiasm was immediate. Apple raised it as an important transformation and, implicitly, as one of the necessary steps to catch up in the race for artificial intelligence (AI), accelerated after the launch of Chatgpt In November 2022. But the illusion evaporated soon. In March this year, The company confirmed that Siri’s new version would not be available until 2026. The announcement was a dry brake. For many, it was not just a disappointment: It was a blow to the credibility that Apple had been growing for years. And, despite this, the company did not offer too many explanations. The future simply was postponed. We cannot deny that Apple knows how to handle times. Dominates as nobody the art of anticipating what is to come, even when what it appears apparently is not completely finished. John Gruber hinted at himone of the most influential voices of the Apple environment, noting that some of the functions presented at the WWDC probably did not exist as such. Or, if they did, they were still far from being functional. The secrets behind one of the most epic technological presentations in history And it is not the first time. In fact, this strategy has a clear precedent, perhaps the most revealing of all: The presentation of the first iPhone in 2007. An event that has become myth within the history of technological marketing, with Steve Jobs announcing “a revolutionary and magical product.” But what few knew then, and many still ignore today, is that this device just worked on the day of their debut. Literally. A report by The New York Magazinebased on interviews with former Apple employees, reveals the ins and outs of that historical Keynote. Among the testimonies, Andy Grignon, a senior engineer responsible for the device communication modules, stands out. According to the iPhone software, it was plagued with errors: the songs were half reproduced, the videos tended to block and The system could collapse If the tasks were not executed in the precise order. The memory was so limited that a few simultaneous operations were enough to cause a restart. Given such a panorama, the engineers designed an emergency solution: “The Golden Way.” It was an exact sequence of actions that Jobs had to continue without deviating a millimeter. Only then could they make sure the phone did not stop responding in full demo. To cover your back, Jobs would have several identical units on stage. If one was blocked, it would happen to the next without the public noticing. To that technical tension, they explain, the aesthetic demand was added. Jobs didn’t want a camera to sign up for the device to show it on screen. I wanted one direct projectionclean, without visual interference. To achieve this, the engineers incorporated personalized plates and video cables that extracted the signal of the iPhone itself and sent it to the projector. It was a fragile and artisanal system, but it fulfilled its mission: it made everything seem natural, almost magical. The wifi was another headache. With thousands of people in the room, many with technical knowledge, connectivity could be compromised. To avoid this, Apple modified the Airport software responsible for giving connection to the iPhone, adapting it to operate at frequencies reserved to Japan, outside the usual range in the United States. A risky, but effective trick to ensure a stable signal during the presentation. The calls were also carefully prepared. AT&T, at the time exclusive partner of the iPhone, installed a portable mobile tower To guarantee a stable signal. Even so, demo devices were configured to always show five coverage bars, regardless of the real quality of the connection. Against all forecast, the presentation was impeccable. Jobs followed the script with surgical precision: he showed music and videos, sailed on web pages, sent messages, made a call, explored photos with tactile gestures and, in one of the most iconic moments, used Google Maps to locate a Starbucks and ask, like a wink, 4,000 coffees. The public surrendered. No one could imagine that this advanced iPhone was, at least at that time, a perfectly rehearsed staging. The level of secrecy was such that, according to The New York Magazine, one of the engineers interviewed assured that some suppliers, such as Marvel Technologies, did not know until the same day of the presentation that their Wi -Fi and Bluetooth chips were being used on a mobile phone, and not on an ipod. Apple even designed false schemes to mislead and avoid leaks. We may be, once again, before one of those staging that Apple dominates like nobody. We do not know with certainty how advanced is the new Siri, but the truth is that, unlike what happened with the iPhone, We are still waiting to see your most ambitious proposal in years. Siri aims to become a transforming tool, but for now it has not gone from being a promise. Images | Apple (1, 2) In Xataka | The new M3 ultra marks a turning point: Apple will not create an ultra version for each generation

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