ambitious

Mexico has made an extremely ambitious bet on the Mayan Train. And now a judge has suspended her

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“It is a magnum opus, we are not exaggerating if we say that there is no one like it in the world today.” The phrase It was pronounced at the end of 2023 by former Mexican president Manuel López Obrador, and although in politics (no matter the nation) the use of superlatives is common, the truth is that it was not misguided. What López Obrador was referring to was the Mayan Trainan ambitious railway circuit of more than 1,500 kilometers that started more than two years ago between Campeche and Cancun and continues to take shape become a priority of the Government. Mexico needs it to be a success, but not at any price. What has happened? That the Mexican justice system has just reminded the country’s administration that, no matter how important and strategic it may be, the Mayan Train cannot advance with its back to the regulations. That is why it has issued a suspension order that will mark the works of one of its most controversial sections. For the project to continue advancing, from now on the authorities will have to put more effort into protecting natural resources in one of the most sensitive areas through which the railway must circulate: the region located between Cancún and Tulum, right where it passes. Section 5 of the Mayan Train. What has justice done? Dictate a final suspension order focused on that specific section. That does not mean that it has condemned the project or that the Mayan Train should give up its Cancún-Tulum stretch, although it does represent a wake-up call for those responsible for the project and a reminder that the work must advance while respecting its environment. Basically what the magistrate has done is demand that the environmental authorities of Mexico confirm that the project complies with the regulations and are responsible for monitoring it. The court order obliges the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (Profepa) to carry out direct and permanent inspections in the Cancún-Tulum section. No revisions on paper or reports signed from the offices in Mexico City, miles from where the works are being carried out. The ruling was issued thanks to the mediation of the organization ‘Save me’ and is addressed to Profepa and the General Directorate of Crimes, Commutations, Complaints and Complaints. Is it so important? Yes. According to precise The Chroniclerthe order places several duties on the competent agencies that, in practice, will force them to reinforce their surveillance. To begin with, they will have to carry out direct, field supervision of the project. They must also verify the effects on protected species, the protection of cenotes and control underground rivers. Finally, the ruling points out the need to prepare detailed reports. If these demands are not met, those responsible could face sanctions. What do environmentalists say? Sélvame has valued the judge’s decision as “a significant achievement” in the defense of the media. “It is an important step towards the protection of natural resources and guarantees that verification, inspection, conservation and protection actions will be carried out in the event of pertinent public complaints,” celebrate. The groups that have been warning for some time about alleged irregularities, such as tree felling or unsupervised work that affects wetlands, they advance that they will be attentive so that the order is carried out. What area does it affect? That is one of the keys. The Mayan Train is a wide railway circuit, more than 1,500 kmbut the focus has been placed on a very specific point: Section 5, which is in turn divided into various segments (north and south) between Tulum and Cancun. In total, according to the Mayan Train Guidemeasures just over 100 km. Beyond its length, shorter than other sections, the local press stands out which is one of the most sensitive. The reason: the presence of vulnerable ecosystems, caves and underground rivers and the threat to their biodiversity. In August 2024 the Verified platform assured that the construction of the Mayan Train had affected approximately 7.3 million trees, a good part (3.5 million) in Section 5. In 2024 A court has already ordered work to stop until geological, geophysical and hydrological studies are delivered. Why is it important? To begin with and as López Obrador himself recognized in December 2023, when he presided over the inaugural tour of the Mayan Train, because the railway circuit is not just any project. And not only because of its impact on the environment, its dimensions, its costs or enormous ambition. With it, the Mexican authorities aspire to promote the development of the southeastern region, articulating a new communications backbone that favors tourism. The problem is that its implementation is not being easy. Its premiere has not had the expected success (at least in passenger traffic) and its management has just change handsmoving to the Secretary of Defense. Images | Mayan Train In Xataka | In case Machu Picchu had not already become a tourist theme park, Peru has had an idea: add an airport

Spain has started its most ambitious defense program. It is not a tank or a drone, it is the brain to control Europe’s troops

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Spain built its land defense looking outward, integrating into foreign programs and adapting doctrines from when the tank symbolized power, deterrence and industrial sovereignty. From joining NATO in 1982 to the missions in the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army was accumulating operational experience, but always with one constant: the key technology came from outside. Today, the debate no longer revolves around how many vehicles you have, but rather What role do you want to play? now that the war changes again. From cannon to code. The Ukrainian experience has finished burying the idea of ​​the battle tank as an isolated and self-sufficient platform, pushing Spain to rethink its land doctrine from the roots. Instead of investing in more armor and weight, the Ministry of Defense has opted for a conceptual leap: prioritizing information, connectivity and speed of decision as key factors of survival in a “transparent” battlefield, saturated with sensors, drones and smart munitions. In that context PAMOV is bornnot as a new tank or a combat drone, but as the nervous system that must govern all those that come after. PAMOV, the brain. The Superior Ground Combat System program, awarded to Indraseeks to define the digital architecture of the future Spanish armored combat beyond 2040. We are talking about an initial investment around the 45 million euros and a strong R&D component, one whose objective is not yet to manufacture platforms, but design and mature subsystems that will allow the integration of manned and unmanned vehicles, sensors, weapons and command and control into a single cooperative tactical network. The tank, therefore, stops being the physical center of combat and becomes just another node within a distributed “system of systems.” INDRA The tactical cloud. One of the pillars of PAMOV is the creation of a combat tactical cloud capable of fusing in real time information from on-board sensors, aerial and ground drones and external sources. As? Through artificial intelligencethe system detects, classifies and prioritizes threats, reducing crew cognitive overload and accelerating decision-making in high-pressure environments. The 360 degree visionsupported by AI and augmented reality, allows you to “see through” the armor and regain freedom of maneuver against the proliferation of drones and loitering munitions. Less tons, more platforms. Plus: the lessons of Ukraine have highlighted the limits of the continued growth in weight of battle tanks, some already close to 80 tons, with enormous logistics costs and restrictions of mobility. In this sense, Indra’s approach is committed to distribute capabilities between multiple lighter platforms, many of them unmanned, that operate in tandem with the main tank. Here are names that are common today in the Ukrainian war, such as UGVs and UASwho would advance ahead “taking on the most exposed missions and acting as extenders of ISTAR capability“, in addition to (obviously) reducing human risks. Modularity and weapons of tomorrow. The PAMOV is conceived as an open architecturemodular and scalable, one capable of being integrated into different present and future vehicles. This allows on paper to progressively incorporate new technologies, from advanced active protection systems to directed energy weapons and, in more distant phases, even future hypersonic systems without having to redesign the entire platform. Hence, it is emphasized that the key is not in the specific weapon, but in the system being able to govern, coordinate and exploit it within the tactical network at the right time. Technological sovereignty. The concept is going to be repeated more and more in the old continent. In the case of Spain, with a 95% of national developments and the participation of SMEs, startups, universities and technology centers spread across several autonomous communities, PAMOV is presented as a strategic commitment for the country. As we remembered yesterday, the nation seeks to stop being just a simple buyer or late integrator to become technology provider criticism in European programs like MARS and, in the long term, the MGCSseeking to be on par with France and Germany. The final objective is that the Spanish contribution to the European car of the future is not only steel, but intelligence that governs it. Another way to fight. Finally, and if you will, beyond technology, the impact of PAMOV points above all to doctrinal. For the Army it means moving from individual platforms to cooperative networkschange the way we command, train and operate, and prepare for high-intensity scenarios with fewer personnel and greater dependence on software. From that perspective, the future Spanish battle tank will not be defined by its caliber or its weight, but by its capacity. to connect systemsdominate the information and decide faster than the opponent. Image | Rheinmetall Defense, Oscar in the middleIndra In Xataka | Spain has been a weapons exporting power for decades. Now he has made a decision: keep them In Xataka | Ukraine has found what it needed in an unexpected ally. Spain had the missing piece against the shahed drones

Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold, first impressions. Samsung’s most ambitious leap in foldables has fine print

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Imagine carrying a cell phone in your pocket that can transform into a 10-inch tablet when you fully deploy it. That is the promise of Samsung Galaxy Z TriFoldan idea that was already on the table and that really makes sense as soon as you have it in front of you. Closed, it behaves like a bar format phone with a 6.5-inch screen, something familiar and relatively comfortable, but just start opening it to understand that the South Korean company wanted to go one step further. I think it’s not just about gaining inches, but about materializing a complex idea. After the initial impact, my first reading of the Galaxy Z TriFold is that of a device that surprises with its degree of maturity within a still young category. It is noticeable that Samsung has focused on the solidity of the whole, on how the pieces are assembled and on conveying a certain confidence when handling it, something that, as my colleague Javier Lacort commented in 2024, has not always been evident. Before moving forward, it is worth remembering that we are dealing with first impressions, they are clear sensations, open questions, but without a thorough approval in search of definitive conclusions. Samsung Galaxy Z Trifold technical sheet Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold dimensions and weight Folded: 159.2 x 75.0 x 12.9 mm Unfolded: 159.2 x 214.1 x 3.9 mm (screen with SIM tray) / 4.2 mm (center screen) / 4.0 mm (screen with side button) 309 grams indoor screen Dynamic AMOLED 2X 10 inches 2160×1584 269 ​​ppi 1600 nits peak brightness 120Hz (adaptive) outdoor screen Dynamic AMOLED 2X 6.5 inches 2520 x 1080, 21:9 422 ppi 2600 nits peak brightness 120 Hz (adaptive) processor Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy (3nm) memory and storage 16 GB of memory with 1 TB of internal storage 16 GB of memory with 512 GB of internal storage Not compatible with microSD rear camera 12 MP Ultra Wide Angle, Dual Pixel AF, F2.2, 1.4 μm, 120° 200 MP wide angle, autofocus, OIS, F1.7, 85˚, 2x optical quality zoom 10 MP PDAF telephoto, OIS, F2.4, 1.0 μm, 36˚, 3x optical zoom, up to 30x digital zoom front camera 10 MP F2.2, 1.12 μm, 85˚ selfie (outdoor screen) 10 MP F2.2, 1.12 μm, 100˚ selfie (indoor screen) battery and charging 5,600 mAh QC2.0 and AFC connectivity 5G LTE Wi-Fi 7 Bluetooth 5.4 operating system Android 16 One UI 8 others IP48 resistance price From 3,594,000 won The promise of a 10-inch tablet, and the price you pay for it To fully understand what this Galaxy Z TriFold proposes, we must stop at its physical approach. We are not looking at a conventional folding device, but rather a device with three panels and two folds that only supports two real ways of use: closed, like a phone, or completely open, “like a 10-inch tablet.” Unlike the approach we have seen in the Huawei Matewhere it is possible to use the device partially deployed with two active panels, there is no middle ground here. When you use it unfolded and the interior screen becomes the center of the experience, the TriFold begins to justify its approach. We are talking about a 10-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X panel with 2160 x 1584 resolution, 120 Hz and a density of 269 ppi, figures that explain why it feels so visually solid indoors. My contact with the device has been in the Samsung offices, in the evening and with artificial light, and in that context the experience has been excellent, with vivid colors and constant fluidity. It is true that the maximum brightness of the interior panel is 1600 nits, compared to 2600 nits for the exterior screen, but I have not had the opportunity to test it outdoors. When you leave content consumption, the TriFold lets itself be loved in multitasking scenarios. The screen offers real margin to maintain multiple applications open at the same time without the experience feeling limited, something that marks a distance from smaller folding products. Everything is more comfortable and less compressed, and the whole thing conveys a sense of order that is appreciated. It also seems relevant to me that it allows executing Samsung DeX directly on the screen itself, without an external monitor, because it reinforces your productivity focus. Now, in the hand, the Galaxy Z TriFold makes it clear from the first moment that it is not a light or discreet device when closed. With its 309 grams and a thickness of 12.9 mm when folded, it feels powerful, even more than one would expect when reading the technical sheet. That said, it is also worth putting it in perspective, because in numbers it does not go to the most extreme part of what we have seen in first generation folding devices. Opened, the perception changes noticeably, the weight is better distributed and the whole is surprisingly manageable for a 10-inch screen. One of the elements that caught my attention during the test was the way in which the TriFold manages its own folding. It is not just a question of hinges, but of how the device conditions the user’s gesture to protect itself. The route is clearly defined and if you try to close it incorrectly, the phone responds with a vibration and a warning on the screen that tells you not to continue there, something that reinforces the feeling of being in front of a product designed to avoid errors. Although the interior screen is the TriFold’s great attraction, it is also its most delicate part. When unfolded, the two folds are there and are part of the experience, although not in an intrusive way. It is not something that is constantly obvious and, in many moments, you can forget about them, but when you change the angle or the light hits it in a certain way they appear. In my case, for years the folds have bothered me a lot in folding ones, but over time I have learned to … Read more

Opera Neon promises to be the future of the browser. It is an ambitious vision yet to mature

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I’ve been using it for a week Opera Neon and I don’t know if I’m testing the future of web browsing or participating in a psychological experiment on how much friction a human tolerates before returning to their usual browser. Probably both. Neon comes standard with everything that any veteran Opera user takes for granted: side messaging integrations, music apps in streamingthe multimedia panel… It is the reminder that, despite all the agentic experimentation, there is still an Opera underneath: practical, comfortable and designed for those who live glued to several platforms at the same time. The promise is seductive: a browser that not only answers questions, but act for you. Who browses, compares, reserves, creates. Who understands what you want to do and does it while you focus on more important things. Opera calls this “agentic AI“, and technically it is correct: Neon can take control of the browser, open tabs, fill out forms, compare products. It is AI with hands, it is Opera’s proposal for the same field as Perplexity with Comet or OpenAI with ChatGPT Atlas. The problem is that those hands are sometimes clumsy, unpredictable and dangerously overconfident. Opera Neon maintains all the classic features of Opera, such as the side panels to display messaging mini-applications or streaming music on an upper layer. In the image, Apple Music. Image: Xataka. Three brains in one body To understand Neon you have to accept that It is not an AI browser. It is a browser with three AIs living together. Chat, Do and Make. Each one with its function, its purpose, its personality. And here begins the first big problem: knowing which one to use at all times is a guessing exercise. Chat is the most familiar. A conversational chatbot that answers questions, summarizes pages, translates texts. Typical. It works well when you’re not making things up, which is about 70% of the time. I asked him to count the comments on several articles and he responded with 400 words explaining that there were none. when there were four. Do is where magic and terror live. You ask him to book a CrossFit class, find the cheapest flight to Lisbon, compare prices on headphones, unsubscribe from some newsletters. And sometimes it does. Open tabs, browse websites, fill out fields. Watching him work is hypnotic. It’s also slow, erratic, and occasionally catastrophic. In a test I asked her to add flowers to a store cart. Instead of somehow inferring my zip code or asking me about it, he directly introduced 28001: madridcentrismo to the song. While I, helpless, did click on the correct options that I was completely unaware of. There is no way to correct it while working. You can only watch, like someone who sees their autonomous car getting dangerously close to the cliff. A zip code just because, 350 km from my house. Image: Xataka. Neon spent an absurd amount of time wandering around the web, adding the bouquet to the cart, getting stuck on the shipping zip code, not feeling like anything productive was happening. Image: Xataka. Another example with Do: Image: Xataka. What he did was open Google Shopping, enter the term and not be able to click ‘Search’, apparently due to some subtle change in the website’s code. I gave it myself and Neon continued. It took a long time just to choose the order by price from lowest to highest. Finally he wrote the answer: Image: Xataka. Happy ending, although it is difficult to think of use scenarios where the use really compensates for the time and supervision it requires. If someone doesn’t know about Google Shopping, this is a good use case. If someone knows Google Shopping, they only have to do two clicks. Another example: reading some recipes Straight to the PalateI asked him to add all the ingredients necessary to make them to the Mercadona cart. Let’s go to trouble. Image: Xataka. Image: Xataka. This was one of those scenarios where there was no way I was going to complete the mission. Image: Xataka. Make is the most ambitious. Generate code, build web applications, create videos. I asked him for a memory game with Spanish vocabulary and he did it in minutes. Rough, but functional. It’s like having a mini-developer living in your browser, working in a virtual environment that disappears when you close the tab. A brilliant idea. A little polished perhaps, but brilliant. Image: Xataka. There are also the cardsa kind of templates prompts that function as mental shortcuts. You can combine them – “summarize + compare”, “decisions + follow-up” – or create your own so you don’t start from scratch every time you talk to the AI. It’s a simple but powerful idea: it makes user learning part of the system. Similar to what you propose Day with his Skills. It’s a good idea. What is not being said about Opera Neon Here comes the part that interests me the most, the one I read between the lines after a week living with this thing. Opera Neon is not really a product. It is a testing ground with product pricing. It is a public beta disguised as a premium service. And that wouldn’t be so much of a problem if it didn’t cost $20 a month. Let me be clear: I’ve seen enough technology launches to recognize when a company is testing concepts in the open field. And Neon is that. The bugs They are not occasional, they are structural, like the hallucinations. The Do agent disconnects if your computer goes to sleep. Chat responses are verbose. The Cards interface—those shortcuts prompts reusable—is full of examples with no real useful content. Cards examples interface. Image: Xataka. But there’s something more interesting going on here. Opera is making a counterintuitive bet at the worst possible time. We are in 2025: Google gives away Gemini in Chrome. Perplexity has Comet. The Browser Company (Arc’s company) has Day. Microsoft puts Copilot everywhere. And OpenAI recently launched ChatGPT Atlas. … Read more

Iryo arrived in Spain with a very ambitious plan to tighten the screws on Renfe. It has just asked its Italian parent company for a ransom

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Iryo has a problem in Spain: it can’t get clients. Or, we should say, it does not get enough clients to start making its railway project profitable in our country. Its occupancy rate in each and every one of the corridors is better than that of Renfe or Ouigo. In some cases it is certainly worrying. This is leading it to lose tens of millions of euros. And they have already asked Italy for help. 32 million euros. They are the ones that Iryo has lost in 2024. The losses are added to the 79 million euros that the company already lost in 2023 and the occupancy rates of 2025 are not inviting optimism. Although the company defends that They aim to be profitable this yearthe truth is that they had to pick up the phone and dial a number that begins with +39. Help. The call for help has reached Italy. In November 2024Trenitalia has already increased its participation in the company to go from 45% of the capital to 51%. The objective was clear: to provide the Italian parent company with full control of the company and, in this way, have greater room for maneuver to provide it with funds. However, the process to achieve profitability has become complicated. Air Nostrum and Globalia, which are part of the company’s shareholders, committed to putting up 15 million euros more to face possible losses this year. This economic push is just one more within a package that provides aid which has already had contributions of 44.7 million euros in April of last year and almost 35 million euros in the summer of 2024. The occupation. One of the problems that Iryo has encountered is that it cannot fill its trains. If we go to the CNMC datathe Italian company has the worst occupancy data of all Spanish high speed. Madrid-Barcelona: Occupancy of 96.4% (Renfe 112%, Ouigo 99%) Madrid-Seville: Occupancy of 83.2% (Renfe 93.3%, Ouigo 86.4%) Madrid Málaga-Granada: Occupancy of 82.2% (Renfe 93.3%, Ouigo 93.9%) Madrid-Valencia: Occupancy of 70.2% (Renfe 73.3%, Ouigo 88.8%) Madrid Alicante: Occupancy of 66.6% (Renfe 75.9%, Ouigo 87.8%) Added to this is that its power to attract customers by price is much smaller than that of Ouigo since only in Madrid-Alicante does it offer cheaper tickets than those of the French company and for just a few cents. In the rest of the corridors, Iryo is more expensive than the services of Ouigo and AVLO (Renfe). The plans. Yet, Iryo continues defending who aspire for 2025 to become their turning point. They plan to balance their accounts this year and make the jump to profits in 2026 and 2027. To do this, they trust in the arrival of new trains that will expand their capacity and allow them to play on price, first by lowering the price of the ticket and, second, by amortizing Adif fees more easily. In the words of its CEO, the company hopes that Galicia can be another beta where it can make money. However, it must be taken into account that the line moves between the Iberian width and the international width. S106 trains that can “jump” between both tracks are committed to Renfe and the only way to operate would be with a transshipment, which is more costly in time and less attractive to the customer. But it is not the only case. Perhaps the most worrying thing about Iryo’s situation is that, at the moment, Renfe and Ouigo are also losing money with high speed in our country. Since the market opened, the benefits have been exceptional. In 2024, Ouigo received an additional 25 million from SCNF, its French parent company, to cover losses. The initial investment of 200 million had to be expanded given that the company plost more than 40 million euros only in 2024. It is one of the reasons why the Government alleged that from France they were doping the company economically to weaken rivals. Despite everything, Renfe has also suffered heavy losses with high speed. In 2023 they exceeded 120 million euros in losses although in 2024 profitability has already been closelosing in this case about three million euros. Of course, Renfe Viajeros (the part of the company that competes with Ouigo and Iryo) did achieve just over five million euros in profits. Photo | Trenduck In Xataka | Spain wanted to turn the train into the great alternative for traveling in summer. Renfe has never had so many dissatisfied customers

an idea as ambitious as it is risky

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The United States has a company that wants to take artificial intelligence beyond the laboratory. It’s called Shield AI and its next creation, the X-BATaims to make it the protagonist of a new era in defense. It is a combat aircraft capable of taking off and landing vertically, but its most striking feature is not in the design, but in its pilot: an AI system called Hivemind that will make decisions for himself in mid-flight. The project seeks to demonstrate that a machine can direct a complex military mission as effectively—or more—than a human. Shield AI She is not a newcomer. Founded in 2015, it has gone from a small startup to one of the most promising companies in American defense. CNBC points out that is valued at $5.3 billion after its latest round of financing. His career includes relevant contracts with organizations such as the United States Coast Guard, which in 2024 awarded him almost 200 million dollars for his V-BAT drone. After that boost, the company redoubled its commitment to artificial intelligence, placing its Hivemind software as the axis of its strategy and its future combat aircraft. This is how Shield AI wants to reinvent air power: total autonomy and low cost The X-BAT is designed to operate where conventional fighters cannot. It can take off and land vertically, allowing it to operate from ships, remote islands or improvised bases without the need for a runway. With a range of more than 2,000 nautical miles (approx. 3,700 km) and a flight ceiling exceeding 50,000 feet, it aims to redefine autonomy on the battlefield. Its compact structure, with a wingspan of about 12 metersfacilitates transportation and storage: three units fit in the space occupied by a single traditional fighter. As we say, the real leap is not in the aircraft, but in the intelligence that governs it. The company assures that Hivemind, its autonomous flight system, has already been validated on different platforms and real test environments. According to the company, it can operate even when there is no GPS or communication with bases, which would allow it to keep the mission active in scenarios where a human pilot could not react as quickly. Shield AI describes Hivemind as a system capable of observing, deciding and acting in milliseconds, applying a continuous decision cycle inspired by the military doctrine of the “OODA loop”. According to Shield AI, the X-BAT is designed to go into combat. It can carry air-to-air and air-to-surface weapons both in its internal bays and in external mounts. The company details that its architecture supports everything from light missiles to long-range attack munitions, in addition to a set of active and passive sensors that cover the entire detection spectrum. These include a electronic warfare package which would allow it to operate in environments with signal interference or attacks. Altogether, it seeks to combine stealth, autonomy and offensive power in a single system. Shield AI’s economic proposal is one of the most striking arguments: the company claims that the X-BAT could be produced for around $27 million per unit, a figure that – if confirmed in production – would be a fraction of the cost of fighters like the F-35, whose unit price exceeds 100 million dollars. This difference would not only reduce the initial bill, but, according to the company, would allow more aircraft to be deployed and multiply sorties in a theater of operations; However, the expected cost reduction depends on economies of scale, supply chain and maintenance costs that are not yet demonstrated in mass production. Shield AI ensures that the development of the X-BAT is progressing according to the planned deadlines. The company claims to have completed wind tunnel, engine and structural section testing, as well as radar signature testing. Its objective is to carry out the first flights with vertical takeoff and landing in 2026, reach operational capacity in 2028 and start production in 2029. For now, this is an internal calendar and not a contractual commitment, but the company presents it as a demonstration that aerial autonomy is no longer a laboratory idea, but a program under construction. The autonomy of the X-BAT also forces us to think about its digital security. Systems controlled by artificial intelligence depend on complex software and networks, which exposes them to possible attempts at interference or manipulation. If the data they process is altered, their behavior could be affected. Shield AI has not yet detailed how it plans to protect the aircraft’s information flow, although in defense programs it is not unusual for certain technical aspects to be kept under wraps. Images | Shield AI In Xataka | Ukraine cannot believe what it found inside Russia’s ballistic missiles: déjà vu

‘Universalis V’ Europe is the most ambitious strategy game in history. And brings surprise: he was born in Spain

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‘Universalis V’ Europe, the last installment of the legendary Strategy saga of Interactive Paradox, is an ambitious jump in depth, realism and complexity for the Fans of the genre. The series, venerated for two decades and competing face to face with giants as civilization It reinvents itself to offer unprecedented historical simulation. But the most interesting of all is that, after four deliveries developed in Swedenthis fifth part is being developed entirely in Spain by the Paradox red study, based in Barcelona. It goes more. We attended the presentation that Paradox red carried out in the Comic-with Malagajust a few weeks after its launch on November 4, and between Sonia Linares (Director of Operations), Álvaro Sanz (Head of Content Design) and Matías Tiscornia (2D Art Coordinator) made it clear that the title was, above all, “” Ambitious. We have people with 7000 hours played at our games, people who live the saga. ” And it is from a superficial first glance: “The fourth install 500 years of simulation. And so with everything: in ‘EU4’ there were 900, and here, 2,000. In the previous delivery, 16 combinations of land (climate, topography and vegetation), and now we will have 672. in ‘EU4’ there were 367 cultures, and in ‘EU5’, 2,000. And if there were only 27 religions there, we will now have 300. 16,000 kilometers of map and more than 500 years of history, from 1337 (the beginning of the War of the Hundred Years) until 1837 (the dawn of the Victorian era). That is, the players will live the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the absolutism, the revolutions and other key periods structured in six ages (traditions, rebirth, discovery, information, absolutism and revolution). Exhausting but infinitely stimulating. Three pillars. To stand this ambition, the game has been based on “three organic pillars: first, A credible world based on systems, mechanical, etc. simulations; Second, an almost infinite rejugability, that thousands of hours occur for the family’s freedom of action; And third, that the game is really from the community: we have spent the last year and a half of development going to the forum every week to be part of the creation of the game, talk to the community directly, ask what they want, to make fixes and changes instantly, all thanks to the community. “ Maximum detail. All this sets in an obsession with absolutely demential detail: for example, the team presented us with a panoramic view of how the game in 1337 was contract according to variables controlled by the player. ” There are mechanics for exploration and colonization of territories, “with the possibility of sending populations to colonize, create commercial companies and exploit resources.” And of course, possibilities of diplomacy and war. Even music. In total, “more than 100,000 lines of content, more than 60 countries with unique content made by hand, more than 8,000 events, 2,000 decisions, hundreds of forms of government, laws, privileges and situations. More than 1,300 historical characters have also been investigated. And that only in 1337 dynamic that changes according to the player’s actions. And much more. And with this we are only scratching the surface of what the game contributes, since decisions have been made of enormous complexity. For example, “if there is an empire that includes different ethnicities within it, it is tried to reflect the genetic and cultural burden throughout the country.” And all this embodied, as the art coordinator told us, in “Illustrations of events, disasters and dynamic organizations, showing the cultural diversity of the game and how the same event can manifest itself differently in different cultures.” That is, a huge and even effort to the ambition of the project, for an entirely developed game in Spain but has an absolutely international scope. So much, which covers five centuries. In Xataka | This war strategy video game has a very special player: the pentagon

The most ambitious shootings of the platforms are made in Spain, becoming one of the “sets” of Europe

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Madrid has consolidated in 2025 as a global epicenter of the Spanish audiovisual sector: a powerful economic hub promoted by the film and television industry at European and international level. We can say that Madrid has become one of the most important “sets” in Europe thanks to multinational investment such as Netflix. Let’s review the data that are configuring this stimulating situation. Some data. The Madrid community contributes 2.6% to regional GDP Thanks to its audiovisual ecosystem (More than 3,500 companies that generate 29,000 direct jobs, with a global impact of more than 7.2 billion euros). This strong presence is supported by the advanced infrastructure of studies and sets and the presence of large multinationals such as Netflix and Disney, which have opted for the region as the basis of operations in Spain. Of all this has been spoken In the context of the San Sebastián 2025 Film Festivalwhere digital plans and cultural transformation have been exposed such as “Spain, Hub Audiovisual of Europe”. Why Madrid. There are a number of characteristics that make Madrid this powerful audiovisual at European and even world level. Among others, it has a great business and economic concentration (environment rich in producers, studies, digital platforms and specialized services) and an advanced infrastructure (studies and sets where more than 1,400 shootings were recorded in 2024, 32% more than the previous year). All this has the support of the Community of Madrid: 240,000 euros for 2025 and 2026 destined for initiatives such as the Audiovisual Observatory of Madrid or training activities for professionals. Netflix in Madrid. One of the clearest cases of implementation of an international draft model has been that of Netflix, which has just released ‘the atomic refuge’, its most expensive series to date, as told ‘the world’: During the filming 400 technicians and 4,300 extras participated, often exceeding the usual teams. The production was developed on the Vancouver set in Colmenar Viejo, which occupies 7,200 square meters, with large and multifunctional sets that can house up to 300 people working simultaneously in different areas. A considerable investment. Netflix will invest 1 billion of euros in Spain between 2025 and 2028, reflecting the growing relevance of the country, and especially its capital. Spain is the second European country where streaming platforms more investwith 2,000 million destined for production in 2024, surpassing Germany and France. Between 2014 and 2024, The average annual growth of the sector Spanish audiovisual has been 14%, a figure much higher than the European average. Filming tourism. The audiovisual generates direct and multiplier economic impact in the regions where it is rolls, from accommodation and services to tourism linked to shooting places. The latter has grown markedly in Spain in recent years, with 40% of travelers interested in visiting shooting placesaccording to a recent study. Destinations such as Madrid, Andalusia and Catalonia benefit from the visibility provided by films and series, which also boost local economies and promote cultural heritage. Header | Netflix In Xataka | When analyzing the most viewed films of Netflix during this year, the notes and opinions throw a devastating verdict

99% of the Internet travels through submarine cables. Now there is a much more ambitious plan in progress: join the electricity grid

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At first glance, the seas are an empty landscape. Under its waters, the image is another, through it a network of invisible highways that already support our day to day: the submarine cables that carry the 99% of world communications. Now, a new generation of electrical interconnectors – thousands of kilometers and gigavatio power – aspires to bring sun, wind and hydraulic where they are missing, when they are missing. The promise is simple: that electricity travels with the sun and wind through schedules; The execution, not so much. The starting point: The North Sea. The United Kingdom and Denmark premiered at the end of 2023 the Viking Link, a 765 km cable that crosses the North Sea and allows you to import electricity when wind is missing on the island and export when left over. It is the longest interconnector in the world in operation, but, as Financial Times warned: “It may not be for a long time.” The British media report details That on the horizon there are much more ambitious plans: join Canada with the United Kingdom and Ireland through a 4,000 km cable, link Morocco with Europe or export Australian solar energy to Singapore through more than 4,300 km of submarine cable. Through the cables. This new megaproject makes it clear that countries have been pursuing a connection with renewables for some time, because there is a mismatch between production and consumption, and we must solve it. The most illustrative example is AapowerLink in Australia. The Suncable company plans to install 3 GW from Solar in the northern territory, store part in batteries and sell it both to Darwin and Singapore, through an underwater cable of more than 4,000 km. In the words of his CEO, Ryan Willemsen-Bell, collected by Financial Times: “Australia has abundant land and sun. The ability to share those benefits with our neighbors has enormous potential.” In parallel, the North Atlantic Transmission One Link seeks to connect the Canadian hydroelectric plant with Europe. The time differential is its great asset: when Canada sleeps, the United Kingdom starts the day; When in the North Sea, wind blows at midnight, New York is preparing dinner. A lesson from the Internet. The idea may sound futuristic, but there are already solid precedents. As we have underlined Xatakathe entire planet is furrowed by submarine data cables, authentic digital highways that have demonstrated the viability of infrastructure of tens of thousands of kilometers. The Southern Cross Cable Network, 30,500 km, connects Australia, New Zealand and the United States since 2000. The newly opened 2Africa, 45,000 km, surrounds the African continent and reaches Barcelona and India. And in Spain, cables such as tide (6,605 km, Meta and Microsoft) or Grace Hopper (7,191 km, from Google) link Bilbao with the east coast of the US. The experience of these data networks provides an obvious parallelism: if we already move information on a global scale, why not also clean energy? Although not everything is so easy. From Financial Times alert a tensioning supply chain: The manufacture of cables, transformers and converting stations does not supply. The waiting deadlines are lengthened, and the availability of specialized ships to tend cable is limited. To that are added political risks. In Norway, the export of electricity to its neighbors has triggered the internal debate on prices. In the United Kingdom, the Government rejected this year to support the X-Links project to bring energy from Morocco, claiming “high level of inherent risk”. And with the ongoing Ukraine War, the threat of sabotages to critical infrastructure It is a fact. Looking inside. In the Spanish case, the problem is more domestic than international. As we have explained in Xatakathe country has run more than anyone to lift renewables in the “emptied Spain”, but has not deployed the cables to bring that electricity to the cities. The result is a “broken bridge”: at noon there are plenty of cheap megawatts that are cut or sell at zero price, and at night the network needs gas support, more expensive the market. According to data from the AELēC employer, 83.4% of connection knots are already saturated, which prevents hooking new consumptions such as industries, data centers or electrolyiners. The challenge, in short, is not to plan and reinforce the networks; as well as improve interdependence with other countries to break With the French bottleneck. A map of interdependencies. Beyond the technical and economic, these electric highways draw a new geopolitical map. Just as pipelines and gas pipelines marked the twentieth century, renewable interconnections can define alliances and dependencies in the XXI. The engineer Simon Ludlam, co-founder of the Canada-UK project, summed it up in Financial Times: “The most important nuclear reactor is in heaven, and its energy can be shared thanks to the rotation of the earth. But we need to be interconnected.” The sun that shines in the Australian desert or the water that falls in Canada could light, in a matter of seconds, the lights of cities to thousands of kilometers. The energy transition not only depends on producing renewables, but also on learning to move them. If the pipelines defined the petroleum geopolitics, the electric highways can become the invisible arteries of the coming world. Image | Unspash and What’s Inside Xataka | The Google Maps of submarine cables: an imposing interactive map that allows us to know the skeleton of the modern world

Openai estimates that it will enter 200,000 million dollars in 2030. The figure, like everything in OpenAi, is extremely ambitious

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OpenAI has set a target of 200,000 million dollars for 2030, as reported The Information. Your own internal documents reveal that to achieve this you will need multiply by 13 your current income In less than five years. Why is it important. The company is burning billions per month and plans to spend 90,000 million only in R&D by 2030. This represents 45% of its projected income, well above the percentage allocated by large technological ones, which remain mostly between 15% and 30% of their gross benefit, not even their income. If Openai’s income is below the goal, that percentage will be even greater. The figures. Openai expects to move from 13,000 million income at 2024 to 200,000 million in 2030. Its R&D expenditure would be proportionally double that of the most successful technological technological ones, much more mature and settled. To achieve this, it basically depends on large companies continue to invest in generative. If there is A brake on investmenteven if that does not imply the burst of a bubble, OpenAi will have accounting problems. In addition, this projection rises up to only one semester. OpenAI has increased the expected billing by 2030 by the beginning of the year. The big question. Is a business model sustainable where almost half of the income – even the gross benefit – is destined for research and development? If business income does not rise as Openai projects, the company will have a serious problem. Yesterday it was announced Your agreement with Oracle committing to a huge investment level to which you can hardly face except that you change the screws, or to deliver a good part in kind (business use licenses), as Microsoft did with it paying in Azure credits. In Xataka | Baidu is no longer satisfied with being the Chinese Google. His new AI model also wants to turn it into China Openai Outstanding image | IlgmyzinXataka

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