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Because of climate change, by 2100 we will lose the equivalent of what 2 billion people eat each year in crops.

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We all know that climate change affects crops. the drought, global warmingextreme rainfall and many other related weather phenomena can seriously endanger agricultural activities. Given that these are the main livelihood of millions of people around the world, it is a situation that is worth analyzing carefully. It is precisely what has done recently a team of scientists from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria. After comparing historical episodes of extreme heat with crop yield data from the FAO, they observed that we have been gradually losing crops for several years and that this, as climate change progresses, will only get worse. So much so that by 2100 losses of 160 billion dollars annually are estimated. Only three crops. The situation is even more worrying if we take into account that the data has been analyzed for only three crops: cornsoybeans and wheat. These were selected because there was sufficient data from FAO to carry out both phases of the statistical analysis. The first, calibration, was carried out with data from 1974 to 2004. On the one hand, historical records on episodes of extreme heat and drought were taken and then they were confronted with the existing information on the yields of these crops in different countries around the world. Thus, it was possible to obtain a formula on the correlation between climate and crops. This formula was then validated with data from 2007 to 2019. The objective was, with the climate information for that period, to calculate how it would affect crop yields. For the validation to be positive, the results should coincide with the true performance that was recorded at that time. And so it was. The data coincided and were not at all encouraging, as the first losses began to be detected. Specifically, there was a 3.5% decrease in crop yields. It may seem like little, but as explained to New Scientist one of the authors of the study, Kai Kornhuber, are relevant figures about a global impact, which could even trigger serious crises at a regional level. In fact, there are already annual losses of 20 billion dollars. A worrying situation in 2100. With the model already validated with known data, these scientists ventured to analyze an unknown future. What they saw when entering data for a scenario high emissionswith current trends, was very worrying. According to their calculations, global yields will fall by around 35% by 2100, with annual losses exceeding $161 billion. Another of the authors of the research, Yi Ling Hwong, explained in May at a meeting of the European Geosciences Union that the losses would be roughly equivalent to what around 2 billion people consume in a year. Crops affected by climate change around the world. The calculations have been made at a global level. There would be losses in all countries, including developed ones. However, these scientists warn that the situation will be especially serious in developing countries, where many people depend on agriculture for their livelihood. It can be solved. The positive part of all this is that, according to the authors of the study, you can try not to reach those figures. Kornhuber recalls that climate scientists make these statistical calculations with the goal of making people react and their predictions ending up being wrong. Therefore, they hope that this data will be disseminated and will help farmers to find ways to adapt, choosing new crops, according to the climatic conditions of each area and customizing irrigation. Limitations. This study on how climate change affects crops has limitations that must be recognized. Firstly, only three crops have been calculated. Others could be related to worse or better data, so it cannot be extrapolated to everything that grows on earth. On the other hand, only climate data related to extreme heat and drought are taken into account, but not with the floods or hail, for example. These are also phenomena associated with climate change that affect crops to a large extent. In addition, some scientists outside the study consider that the statistical calculations used may be good for making short-term forecasts, but not for the end of the century. Some even believe that the data may be overestimated. Even so, the authors of the study insist that it is better to be somewhat alarmist so that measures are taken than to underestimate the data and, with the truth in the face, it is too late to take action on the matter. Because that is the great reality of all this. Something has to be done. Data can be the push needed to get started once and for all. Image | Magnificent In Xataka | Google has shown with its AI that the prediction of storms and hurricanes is outdated. This is how your new model works

Nvidia is willing to guarantee $250 billion for OpenAI to have its own data center, according to WSJ

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Nvidia is considering becoming the main financial driver of one of the largest AI infrastructure projects to date. And according to has advanced The Wall Street Journal, Jensen Huang’s company is negotiating to offer a guarantee of about $250 billion so that OpenAI can rent a colossal data center campus in Ohio, USA. All, without the agreement being closed yet. What exactly is the agreement about?. Nvidia’s endorsement would not be direct money for OpenAI, but rather a financial guarantee. According to the media, it would help those responsible for ChatGPT can lease a 10-gigawatt project that SoftBank’s energy subsidiary, SB Energy, is building in southern Ohio. With the backing of Nvidia, this project could obtain debt financing on better terms, something especially relevant because OpenAI, being a private company that has not yet made a profit, does not have sufficient credit rating to be able to invest in this type of project on its own. Why is such a guarantee necessary?. Without the backing of a creditworthy partner, it would be much more expensive for SoftBank to borrow the money needed to build such infrastructure. Just like share WSJ, by putting its signature as a guarantee, Nvidia reduces the risk that lenders assume and makes the operation cheaper. In the jargon of the sector this is called “credit wrapper”, and it is not the first time it has happened. In fact, Google has endorsed Anthropic data centers before, in part to boost sales of its own AI chips, according to collect the same medium. Figures that give vertigo. The entire project, also counting the chips that will go inside the facilities, could exceed $500 billion, which would make it the largest data center announced to date. The guarantee of 250,000 million would cover the rent and construction debt, but not the semiconductors. For this, Nvidia is separately negotiating another financing for the purchase of chips by OpenAI, which could reach an additional $350 billion, according to share from WSJ. The role of the Government of USA. The project’s electricity is under government control and is financed, in part, thanks to a recent trade agreement with Japan, which committed to invest $33 billion in a natural gas plant in the same area, as remember the WSJ. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick is directly involved in deciding who has access to that energy. The chosen site is, in addition, a former uranium enrichment center already closed, about 80 kilometers south of Columbus, which would allow us to avoid a good part of the problems of permits and opposition from residents around the area that other similar projects in the country suffer. She is not the only one interested. OpenAI has been in talks for weeks to take over that space and it is, according to the WSJ, the candidate that has shown the most interest. But she’s not alone, as Anthropic, Microsoft and Google have also spoken to Lutnick about the same issue in recent weeks. Getting energy power has become the big bottleneck for all companies training large-scale AI models. What does each party gain?. For OpenAI, this agreement would represent a change of model, as it would be its first data center as a direct tenant, a step towards controlling part of its own infrastructure instead of depending exclusively on renting capacity from Microsoft, Amazon and Oracle, as it does now. The company has already raised its computing spending forecast until 2030 to $750 billion, compared to the $600 billion it managed at the beginning of the year. For Nvidia, with a market value close to $5 billion, endorsing these types of projects ensures future demand for its chips for years. The shadow of circular financing. This type of operation, in which large technology companies finance infrastructure that later generates business for themselves, worries a large part of the market. Gary Tan, portfolio manager at Allspring Global Investments, counted to Bloomberg that “although Nvidia’s investments and partnerships bolster confidence in long-term AI builds, investors remain concerned about circular financing.” Nvidia itself has warned in its latest annual report that these types of agreements could reduce its short-term liquidity and increase its exposure to the credit risk of its clients. And now what. Negotiations are still in an early phase and conditions could change or even break before anything is signed, according to quote from Bloomberg. The first phase of the project, with about 800 operational megawatts, would not be ready until 2028. So it seems that we will have to wait to find out if it ends up materializing and how exactly it does so. Cover image | Steve Juvetson, NVIDIA In Xataka | “The world doesn’t realize how much the AI ​​industry depends on scientists in China” Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia

Poland has 500 kilometers of train to build and 32 billion euros saved. And Spain wants to take over them

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Spain is a railway power. It is because we are the second country in the world in high-speed roads. But also because our companies are among the most sought after when it comes to carrying out a new project. We have examples of all kinds that point to all the processes necessary to start a train on the track. That is why Poland has trusted Spain for an investment that should completely change its infrastructure. 32.2 billion euros. This is what Poland will invest to move forward Port Polskathe project that wants to completely change the image of the country to turn it into a key axis in central European mobility. With the intention of completely renewing the way its citizens move, Poland has launched a series of investments that include road improvements but, above all, an intermodal center a few kilometers from Warsaw. This space will house a new airport for travelers that also wants to offer itself as a strategic place for the transport of goods and serve the military forces of the European Union and NATO. But, above all, it will be the nerve center of a new high-speed train network. Polish trains. The project includes building 480 kilometers of high-speed roads that will connect four of the five most populated cities in the country. From Port Polska you can travel to Warsaw, obviously, but also to Lodz, Poznań and Wroclaw (Wrocław). The network will have the capacity for trains to reach 350 km/h but they will move at a maximum of 320 km/h. In this way, an infrastructure is developed that is considered key to the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T)the same one that is committed to the development of Madrid-Lisbon high speed. The first section, between Warsaw and Łódź, is expected to be operational in 2032 and the line to be fully operational in 2035. And Spain? One of the countries most involved with the project is ours. In fact, Óscar Puente (Minister of Transport) met a few days ago with Dariusz Klimczak (Minister of Infrastructure) in relation to the investments that Spanish companies have there. This meeting has been accompanied by a second one in which Adif, Renfe, Acciona, Aldesa, CAF, Elecnor, Idom, Indra, Lantania and Talgo have met. And all of them are seeking entry into this 32.2 billion euro project, either in terms of the construction of the necessary infrastructure, its management or the contribution of the trains that must pass through the tracks. Among the latest major advances, Adif renewed its agreements underwriting the company’s work in “the design, construction and maintenance of railway infrastructure, the transfer of knowledge and skills, as well as the development of “local content”, in order that the greatest possible part of the technical knowledge and the benefits of the investments made remain in Poland”, They explained from the Polish embassy. Waiting for news. At the moment, ACS, Acciona and Ferrovial each lead one of the six consortia that aspire to take the first batch of investments to build the Polish high-speed train, they explain in Expansion. In addition, Ayesa will supervise the 17-kilometer stretch from Lodz to Wrocław. Ineco and Adif collaborate, as we said, in the design of the high speed and Idom is immersed in the airport’s ICT services. They are not the only ones. In addition to the development of this new high-speed rail infrastructure, Renfe also operates in Poland. And with the help of Leo Express, the Czech company of which Renfe has been the majority shareholder since 2021, the Spanish company offers its services between Warsaw and Krakow. Besides, In February they announced that they were increasing cross-border services and that they would put more trains on the route between Prague and Krakow given the good results. Photo | Port Polska In Xataka | César Franco, engineer: “If we spend hundreds of millions to circulate three AVEs a day, we are making a mistake”

6.3 billion more in three years

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The US thing with data centers has become a matter of first order and reason for rejection by a large part of the population. In addition to the pollution issuethese enormous infrastructures represent a brutal burden on the electrical network and citizens have been seeing for years how your electricity bills become more expensive. Well, they are going to go up even more. what has happened. They tell it in New York Times. Each year, PJM organizes an auction in which electric companies bid the price at which they are willing to offer electricity during peak demand. The results of the last auction amount to 6.3 billion dollars that will be added to the final bill of clients over the next three years. Why is it important. PJM acknowledges that, despite attempts to increase capacity: “electricity demand is growing faster than new generation can be built to meet it.” And they do not hesitate to name the culprit of this situation: “the main engine of this growth is the data centers”, enormous infrastructures that are being built at a speed that the electrical grid cannot match. In figures. PJM is the largest electricity operator in the United States and its network serves 13 states, including Virginia, where the largest cluster in the world is located with more than 650 data centers. The 6.3 billion extra costs will be distributed among 67 million households, but the serious thing is that this is the last of many increases. According to Monitoring Analytics, the company in charge of monitoring the PJM market, since 2024 these auctions have already led to an increase of $29 billion in the bills of all clients. Slowness. States and consumer advocacy associations criticize that PJM is very slow in connecting new generation energy such as solar, wind or batteries, solutions that would help alleviate the strain on the grid. We saw this recently when the heat wave stressed the network so much that had to allow data centers to connect their diesel generators. In states like California or Texas they did not have the same problem because they have an extensive battery system that allows them to store energy for this type of situation, but in the PJM area they are not prepared. And now what. PJM depends on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, so states can’t do anything to stop price increases. Governors’ hands are tied, but that doesn’t mean they can’t do anything. In 2024, the governor of Pennsylvania sued PJM for the increased cost of the bill. The result was an agreement that capped the price set in the auction. For its part, the state of New York has announced a statewide moratorium that prevents building large data centers for a period of one yearwhile evaluating their environmental and energy impact. Image | Xataka with Magnific In Xataka | The myth of the decentralized internet, on a map: a third of the world’s data centers are in a single country

how a probe launched in 2006 woke up and warned Madrid from 9.5 billion km

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About 9.5 billion kilometers from Earth, a ship built by humans more than two decades ago continued to advance through a region of the Solar System that we barely know. He had left in January 2006had left Pluto behind and had been in hibernation for 321 days, almost silently, while its trajectory took it further and further away from us. So after almost a year, New Horizons sent the signal confirming his awakening. It did not bring spectacular images nor did it announce a great discovery: it simply told us that it had come out of its dream and was still in good condition. That signal did not respond to an order sent from Earth that same morning. Before going into hibernation, the team had uploaded a sequence of instructions to the main computer that told the probe when to wake up its systems. New Horizons executed that programming on June 23 and came out of hibernation without needing a new order from our planet. Only then did he send his message to us. When the Deep Space Network station near Madrid received itabout eight hours and 52 minutes had passed since waking up. From this station near Madrid confirmation was received that New Horizons had woken up and was still in good condition. Hibernating didn’t mean turning off the ship and hoping it would come back on months later. During that period, a good part of its systems remained disconnected to reduce consumption and wear, but the flight computer continued to monitor the general condition while the vehicle rotated stably on itself. Once a week, in addition, it sent a simple beacon to indicate if everything was still in order. This way, the team could know that New Horizons was still healthy without maintaining constant communication or unnecessarily occupying the ground antennas. The system that remained in control was not like the computers we carry in our pockets. The command and data management system is supported by a 12MHz Mongoose V processorprotected against radiation and designed to resist rather than run. This component distributes orders among the subsystems and executes routines that allow the probe to react without immediate intervention. Upon certain failures, the ship can initiate a recovery, switch to backup components, or send a request for help. At that distance, autonomy is not an added function, but a condition for survival. The probe also could not send each measurement at the time it was obtained. His observations were stored in two 8 GB solid state drivesa main one and a backup one, while the computer organized and compressed them for later transmission. Seen from our current devices, that memory is almost insignificant; in deep space, forces you to manage each data carefully. The team had to prioritize and wait until the vehicle could point correctly toward our planet. Discovering something was only the first part: we still had to get it to us. A space probe designed to last The next problem was keeping alive a machine that was traveling further and further away from the source of energy that illuminates our planet. New Horizons does not rely on solar panels, but rather a radioisotope thermoelectric generator that uses the heat released by the decay of plutonium-238 to produce electricity. The power it delivers slowly decreases over the years, so each instrument turned on implies a decision. On the other hand, the insulating layers retain the heat generated by the electronics themselves, while automatic heaters intervene when this protection is not enough. After visiting Pluto and Arrokoth, New Horizons continues to move outwards from the Solar System Finding us from the far reaches of the Solar System requires much more than turning on a transmitter. The spacecraft observes the stars and compares what it sees with a catalog stored on board to determine where it is facing. Its small thrusters then make the necessary adjustments to align the main antenna with the Earth. That antenna cannot move independentlyso the entire vehicle must be placed in the correct direction before starting unloading. Only then can the stored data begin a nearly nine-hour journey to us. The paradox of that hibernation was that New Horizons was still doing science. Although the controllers were not sending commands or downloading information, three instruments remained active to study the particles, plasma and dust surrounding the probe. SWAP, PEPSSI and accountant Venetia Burney continued to take measurements and retain them for when regular communication could resume. The mission had reduced much of its activity, but not its ability to observe: even during the longest sleep in its history, outer space continued to pass through its sensors. A ship launched two decades ago does not age like one of our devices: no one can bring it back, change a part, or connect it to a more powerful energy source. What the team can do is teach you how to better manage what you still have. Before its final sleep, New Horizons received a crash protection update to address the gradual drop in power and increased communication delays. Her awakening was not, therefore, an isolated trick, but the result of twenty years of learning to keep her alive from a distance. Images | NASA | In Xataka | NASA is looking for four people who want to live a year on Mars without leaving Earth

Intel just put 5 billion and an asterisk on the table

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Europe has been trying for years gain weight on the world map of semiconductors. It is not just about manufacturing more chips, but about reducing dependence on supply chains concentrated outside the continent and regaining ground in the most advanced processes. The United States pursues a similar objective and has reinforced its efforts to attract investmentsfactories and jobs linked to strategic technologies. This industrial race has left a striking scene: one of the largest American companies in the sector has decided to bet billions on expanding its production on European soil. That company is Intel, that has announced an investment of 5,000 million euros to expand and modernize its Leixlip complex, in Ireland. The goal is to increase production of Xeon 6 processors and certain upcoming Xeon products made with Intel 3, the most advanced process the company currently produces in Europe. The move, however, comes after the manufacturer canceled its industrial projects in Germany and Poland. The European Union reinforces its production, but the fine print forces us to clarify how far this victory really goes. More capacity in Ireland, but a European chain still incomplete The core of the plan is not to build a new factory or expand the clean room, but to better equip Fab 34, Upgrade your facilities and extend your automated network that moves the wafers during the numerous stages of the production process. This infrastructure will allow the different modules of the campus to be integrated more fluidly and increase the efficiency of the whole. Intel began rolling out the program in early 2026, although it has not detailed when it will complete the improvements. The expected result is a greater volume manufactured with Intel 3 taking advantage of the existing space. Fab 34 began full-scale production in 2023 and turned Leixlip into Intel’s large European advanced manufacturing center. The installation was born working with Intel 4, used in the first Core Ultra, and later incorporated Intel 3 for the Xeon processors. Both technologies use extreme ultraviolet lithography, known as EUV, to print smaller, more complex structures on wafers. When it began its activity, Fab 34 became the first European factory to use this technique in high-volume production. Main entrance to the Robert N. Noyce Building, Intel headquarters in Santa Clara, California The expected increase responds, according to Intel, to greater demand for server processors and infrastructure linked to artificial intelligence. Although GPUs and accelerators attract much of the attention, data centers still need CPU to run general loadsmanage resources and maintain the platforms on which these specialized systems work. The Xeons occupy precisely that space within their catalog. Expanding the volume of Intel 3 would allow us to better supply that market without waiting for a new plant to be ready. The disbursement also comes after a major financial pivot around Fab 34. In 2024, Apollo contributed $11.2 billion and acquired 49% of a joint venture tied to the facility’s production, although Intel maintained ownership and operational control of the factory. The company repurchased that stake in April 2026 for $14.2 billion. Three months later, it again commits capital to the Irish infrastructure after recovering 100% of that company. Intel’s European bet had been much more ambitious. The company introduced Fab 34 as one piece of a future chain that would combine wafer production in Ireland with two new advanced factories in Magdeburg, Germany, and an assembly and testing facility in Wrocław, Poland. That deployment was to cover within the Union several of the main stages necessary to convert a wafer into a finished processor. The projects were postponed in 2024 and definitively abandoned a year later, when Intel decided to adjust its investments to expected demand. The 5,000 million asterisk appears there. Europe will be able to manufacture a greater volume of advanced wafers, but it will still not have the complete framework that Intel had promised to build within the EU. The company maintains its main assembly and testing operations in the United States and Asia, after canceling the Polish facility that was to cover those stages. Leixlip reduces some of the external dependence, although it does not by itself convert Xeon production into a fully European chain. Images | Intel In Xataka | SK Hynix is ​​betting that the memory cycle is dead. He proves it by doing just what always killed him.

Instagram and Facebook are “addictive” by design. And Meta faces a fine of 12 billion dollars

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The European Commission has concludedpreliminarily, that Meta violates the Digital Services Act (DSA) due to the “addictive” design of Instagram and Facebook. The organization and Meta have been arguing for years over a multitude of aspects related to the security and privacy of their social networks but, this time, the move could be very expensive for Mark Zuckerberg’s company, as it could be forced to redesign both applications and face a fine of up to $12 billion. por that. The conclusion of the European Commission comes after an investigation of more than two years which, if confirmed, would force Meta to change the internal functioning of two of the most used social networks on the planet. And it comes at a time when regulatory pressure on big technology companies for the protection of minors it doesn’t stop growingboth in Europe and in the United States. In detail. According to has explained The European Commission itself in an official statement, Meta “did not adequately assess the risks of its addictive design for the physical and mental well-being of users, including minors and vulnerable adults.” The European organization points directly to several specific functions: Personalized recommendations. Autoplay (automatic playback of content). The infinite scroll. Push notifications. Brussels maintains that these tools push the user to continue viewing content almost unconsciously, which the institution itself describes as going into “autopilot mode.” It also ensures that Meta ignored available data on the time that minors spend on Instagram and Facebook at night, as well as the role that formats such as reels or stories could play in excessive or compulsive use of the applications. Between the lines. What is striking is not only that Brussels points out the design of the apps, but also questions the tools that Meta already offers to limit their use. The Commission states that screen time controls, even those enabled by default for teenagers, “can be easily dismissed” and do not truly reduce use of the service. Regarding parental control, consider that it only works if parents have technical knowledge and dedicate time and effort to configure it, something that, according to the organization itself, limits its real effectiveness. Nor does he consider the mental health warnings that Meta offers in its “safety center” as sufficient. With these arguments, the Commission proposes that Meta should introduce specific design changes: deactivate functions such as autoplay and infinite scroll by default, incorporate effective screen pauses and adjust its recommendation system so that it depends less on keeping the user engaged, according to the institution’s own statement. How much money is at stake. If the conclusion is confirmed, Meta could be fined up to 6% of its annual worldwide turnover. Taking 2025 revenues as a reference, close to $201 billion, the penalty could be close to $12 billion. That can make goal. It should be noted that these are still preliminary conclusions and that there is still no firm sanction. Meta has the right to defend himself, review the documentation in the file and respond in writing before Brussels adopts a final decision. In parallel, the case will be consulted to the European Committee for Digital Services. The context does not play in favor of Meta. This research It has been open since May 2024and it has not been the only one. In parallel, the company faces another European investigation into its age verification systems for children under 13 years of age, whose preliminary conclusions were published in April, as detailed by the Commission itself. In addition, Brussels is preparing a report, scheduled for next Monday, on a possible ban on the use of social networks for minors under 16 years of age throughout the community bloc, according to they count from The Verge. Pressure also comes from the United States. In August, Meta will sit on trial over whether its applications are intentionally addictive, in a case in which several states are jointly demanding compensation that could reach $1.4 trillion. depending on the medium. And it would not be the first judicial defeat, since in March, a Los Angeles jury already declared Instagram and YouTube responsible for damaging the mental health of a 20-year-old girl, in a case that forced the companies to pay 6 million dollars jointly, according to share from Bloomberg. QEU says the Comywentn. “Protecting the physical and mental health of Europeans must be a priority for social media platforms,” ​​he said. declared Henna Virkkunen, Executive Vice President of the European Commission for Technological Sovereignty, Security and Democracy. Virkkunen added that the Digital Services Law “offers a clear framework to hold platforms accountable for the addictive design of their services and their effects”, and assured that Brussels is “fully committed” to enforcing European regulations. What Meta says. A spokesperson for the technology giant declared to the BBC that the company did not agree with the conclusions, “which do not properly take into account the important measures we have taken to protect teenagers.” “We share the European Commission’s commitment to providing adolescents with safe and positive online experiences, and we will continue to engage constructively with them,” it continued. And now what. The case enters a phase of allegations that may be prolonged. This is not the first time that the DSA has resulted in sanctions, since the norm itself has already been used to fine X 120 million eurosand with 200 million euros to the Chinese e-commerce giant Temu. We’ll see what happens with Meta. Cover image | Guillaume Perigois and Goal In Xataka | Anyone can tag you on Instagram to generate AI deepfakes with your photos. It’s Meta being Meta

$30 billion worth of Broadcom chips

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Apple has announced an extension of your agreement with Broadcom which, according to the company itself, will exceed $30 billion. For the company, it is the largest single commitment within its American Manufacturing Program (AMP), but it is also another handful of bills that once again demonstrates how the semiconductor industry is being the central axis of the strategy of big technology. The context. Apple has been trying to demonstrate to Donald Trump’s government for more than a year that is moving part of its production chain to American soil. And it has no other choice, since this commitment is framed within of the 600 billion dollar investment plan in four years that the company announced in 2025, after Trump threatened to impose 25% tariffs on iPhones if Apple did not manufacture more components in the country. According to collect According to the Financial Times, that promise is similar to another similar one that Apple already made during Trump’s first term, when it committed to investing $350 billion in the United States. In detail. The new agreement with Broadcom provides for the production of more than 15 billion chips manufactured in the United States and will create hundreds of jobs, according to Apple. its official statement. Broadcom, which was already working with Apple to supply connectivity components, will expand and modernize its plant in Fort Collins, Colorado, with an additional investment of $1.5 billion. That plant will manufacture advanced radio frequency components, including FBAR filters, which allow Apple devices to connect to mobile, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth networks. Neither Apple nor Broadcom have yet confirmed when they will have everything ready to work with this new capacity. Between the lines. The announcement comes two days after Broadcom will inform to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it had signed new long-term agreements with Apple to develop custom ASIC-type chips (application-specific integrated circuits, increasingly used in artificial intelligence workloads) that will extend until 2031, according to collects Reuters. So the $30 billion figure now confirmed by Apple puts concrete numbers on those long-term deals. In the last year, Apple has been replacing some of the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity chips that it previously bought from Broadcom with its own designs. This had raised doubts among investors about whether Broadcom would lose weight as a supplier, something similar to what happened with Qualcommwhose 5G modems Apple has been phasing out in favor of its own C-series chips. However, it appears that Broadcom will continue to supply other RF components and, according to Bloombergis also working on technology that will support the first artificial intelligence server that Apple plans to deploy next year. The voices. Apple CEO Tim Cook has qualified the components that will be manufactured in Fort Collins as “essential to deliver the performance and connectivity our customers expect,” and thanked President Trump and his Administration for “supporting important projects like this.” For his part, Broadcom’s CEO, Hock Tan, said he was “proud to continue working with Apple after decades of joint success” and highlighted that the agreement will allow it to expand its manufacturing footprint in Colorado. Why it is important. Apple is not massively restructuring its global supply chain, which remains highly concentrated in Asia. Your strategy, as explains the Financial Times, has been to focus on chips, which are the highest-value components in its devices, and announce purchase commitments with manufacturers that already operate in the United States, such as TSMC in Arizona, Texas Instruments in Texas or GlobalFoundries in New York. The Broadcom deal is, so far, the biggest piece of that puzzle. And now what. The announcement comes at a time of transition for Apple. Tim Cook will step down as director of the company on September 1, position that John Ternus will assumecurrent hardware manager. Cook will remain with the company as CEO and, according to Bloombergis expected to maintain his role as the main interlocutor with the White House, a role that has been key to sustaining Apple’s relationship with the Trump Administration in recent months. In Xataka | The US taught that access to advanced AI can be cut off. China is studying the same thing, according to Reuters, and Europe is watching from the outside

Xbox wants to have 1 billion players a day. It’s what 25 Steam would do on their best day

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Another day in the video game industry, this Monday Microsoft announced layoffs at Xbox. 1,600 at once, five studios to make a living and another 1,600 layoffs over the next few months. To carry out the restructuring, what is known as “Xbox reset”Microsoft put Asha Sharma at the head of the company who came from one of the company’s AI divisions and who arrived with a clear mission: to break with the past. After weeks of good words, drastic decisions began and, in a release gigantic, justified the decisions of layoffs and restructuring (the consequences of which we still do not fully know, since we have been learning about layoffs in different Xbox studios for two days). There are interesting data, such as extreme bureaucracy within Xbox that had complicated things in recent years, the enormous investment in Game Pass and the fact that caught my attention the most: the number of daily players that Xbox wants. Because Sharma talks about wanting a billion people to be “entertained” with Xbox every day. And, after wondering what it means to have a billion people every day on your platform, I have only been able to come to one conclusion: I would like to see how they do it. The Xbox of a billion players and the old woman’s account I don’t say this in a defiant sense, but out of genuine curiosity. I would like to see how Xbox, or any company, for that matter, is able to bring together a billion people a day on its platform. Sharma comments that they see themselves capable of achieving that goalbut the point is that there are many more stimuli than ever and, furthermore, setting these goals only has one consequence: when they are not met, there will be more ‘resets’. Let’s go in parts. The changes they are making seek to ensure that “Xbox has a bigger future, not a smaller one.” Furthermore, he notes that “the next decade of games will be bigger, more global and more creative than anything we’ve seen before.” Said like this, you may think that they are going to invest a lot (they themselves say that they are going to invest a lot, but with a better focus and discipline), but there is a problem: are there really that many players willing to be on your platform? What is an Xbox? Answering the first question, players… there are. We are more than 8,000 million people throughout the world and esteem what’s there around 3 billion people who play video games. This in total, not on a daily basis and, furthermore, you must keep in mind that everything is mixed here: the accounts include everything from the most ‘Eat’ of ‘Call of Duty’ to your grandfather who plays ‘Candy Crush’ or a Facebook game. Responding to the second, Sharma says they want a billion people entertained with Xbox. And not only those who have a console count (whose sales are quite poor), but also those who play from PC and Xbox games on Steam and platforms like PS5. That is, everything that has the Xbox seal. That said, let’s tell why one billion people seem to get it “easy” Yes, you have so many franchises and you are present everywhere, but things get complicated if we put the magnifying glass on the few games that can really help the company achieve those figures. They are all estimates, but we would talk about 110 million monthly players in ‘Minecraft’, between 70 and 90 million (counting mobile phones) monthly in ‘Call of Duty’ and between 200 and 300 million players diaries in ‘Candy Crush’. There we see the dimension of mobile games, really, and how they crush those on more traditional platforms. ‘World of Warcraft’ too would enter there, with about 9 million monthly players. These are figures that many companies would like, but they are far from those 1,000 million a day that Sharma points to. To further contextualize, Steam, which is another of the huge video game platforms, had its historical peak of players a few months ago, reaching more than 42 million. In the last 24 hours, almost 39 million people connected and, as we see in graphs like Steamdb, they are very stable… and in growth. Well, Sharma wants the same as they would get 25 Steams every day. As a player, I would love to have so many people because it would allow, perhaps, the industry to be somewhat more sustainable because there would be many more players among which smaller studios could find their place to grow, but the problem I see with these accounts is that, publishing that you want there to be 1,000 million people on your platform, the only result (the most likely, at least) is failure. And when you fail in such a large company when you have set this as an objective, the manager is not the one who pays the bill: it is the employees. It’s something we see constantly and We come from three years of constant layoffs in the industry to be optimistic about the issue. What we have seen these days is that they are changing the strategy in that sense. They are releasing the smaller studios that do not sell to bet on what makes money. An example is King (‘Candy Crush’) and Mojang (‘Minecraft’), which They will report directly to herwith Sharma being the one who will make the decisions to achieve the objective. Another thing is whether people who watch the ‘Fallout’ series, a game series whose license belongs to Xbox, count as “people entertained by Xbox.” We just have to wait and see what happens, but it is evident that Xbox’s turnaround is there, releasing studios that were developing games with soul to bet on what makes money. After all, it is the objective of every company. In Xataka | The best time to buy an electronic device was yesterday. The second best time is today

Microsoft bet 80 billion that you would play hundreds of titles. It failed because you just wanted to play the same old game.

by

I have dozens of games in my library. Do you know how many I play? to two: from time to time I play a FIFA (I’ll always continue to call it that, I’m afraid) and if I get around to it I’ll hit the old ‘Battlefield 1’ that still has me conquered. In recent years I have enjoyed ‘Ghost of Tushima’, ‘Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’ or ‘Sifu’, for example, but while I was spending hours on those half a dozen titles, many others that I have in my library are simply collecting dust. Surely many of you play many more games and invest much more time in this, and Microsoft was surely thinking of you when it configured its future strategy. Xbox’s ambition was great until it wasn’t The idea in 2020 was clear, and those responsible for Microsoft said that There were 2.8 billion gamers in the world and they wanted to conquer them all. As? Well, with two great projects: Spend a million in buying video game development studios to constantly grow the catalog, and, of course, Create the ‘Netflix of video games’ with Xbox Game Pass Both ideas seemed to make a lot of sense and many gamers, especially those of us who were from Xbox, felt excited by that ambition. Xbox Game Pass seemed to be really exceptional for gamers and a nightmare for Sony, and although the operation to buy Activision Blizzard and franchises like ‘Call of Duty’ It was exceptionally expensive.the play again seemed like a fantastic bet for players of all types. But lo and behold, it wasn’t. These days we have known that Microsoft has spent close to $80 billion on agreements that would give it access to titles such as the aforementioned ‘Call of Duty’ or ‘Skyrim’, so that these video games could be available from day 1 or almost from the first moment on Xbox Game Pass. They wanted to create a catalog that would allow gamers to play hundreds of titles, including the most recent “triple A” titles, as part of the subscription to that service. They were wrong. And we also thought that the idea made sense. less is more The truth is that the strategy has not worked out well for them. The company has announced that will lay off 3,200 employees in its Xbox division20% of its staff, and will also allow five development studios to leave the company to follow their own path again. Maybe the answer wasn’t having more games. Steam already gave a strong clue at the beginning of 2025 when it pointed out that its platform It had become a video game dump.: Of 19,000 titles in 2024, almost no one played 80% of them. As in many other areas, the long tail theory prevails: interest is concentrated in a handful of contents that, on their own merits (perhaps seasoned with some luck) become absolute successes. The reality for the vast majority of gamers is the same: there are too many games on the market and people simply don’t have time to play all of them. Let’s be handsome or uglyWe insist, there is no time for so many video games. My colleague Jose García wrote in 2021 his particular reflection on how many we have become new digital Diogenes When it comes to video games: we get countless new games (most of them free) on Epic Games, Steam or GOG, but we have them collecting virtual dust in our library because we will never play many of them. My situation was also reflected in another text by Isra Fernández: Being a gamer after having children is complicated. The Netflix of video games was a utopia The picture that this situation paints for us is one that we intuited and made sense, but that we deceived ourselves by rejecting. Creating the Netflix of video games was impossible because video games are radically different to series or movies. While one consumes series or movies once and abandons them probably forever, gamers return to the video games we like again and again. We don’t spend an hour or two on them, but dozens and even hundreds of hours both in solo games and in games against other players on the internet. The way of consuming both content is precisely what destroys the illusion that a Netflix of video games makes sense. Xbox Game Pass offers us hundreds of titles so we can try them (and buy them) if we want, but we rarely do. I myself enjoyed Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for three years, and although I tried around twenty titles during that time, I always ended up returning to my classics. The options were wonderful, but I just didn’t have time for them. because when I wanted to play, I wanted to go back to my FIFA or my ‘Battlefield 1’. Microsoft itself already accused the problem when it gave us the worst news two years ago by raising the price of Xbox Game Pass. That was not enough, because a few months later he uploaded it again. The service was becoming more exclusive than ever, and it was doing so for one simple reason: they weren’t making enough money with it. But there is another problem that It is not just about consuming, but about producing. The “Netflix rhythm” is also unviable: there four scriptwriters start writing and in six months the platform releases a series that people devour in a weekend. In video games things are different, with increasingly longer and obscenely expensive developments. The famous availability of games available on “day 1” does not help either. That AAA video games worth 70 or 80 euros are available for free to subscribers was wonderful for us, but a shot in the foot for the company’s accounts. Building loyalty was important, but that was killing income for developments like these in which a lot of time and money is invested. The conclusion is clear in retrospect: Microsoft’s strategy was fantastic for … Read more

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