bought

In less than 24 hours Warner Bros. and Amazon have bought rights to two creepypasta terrors

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On July 1, Warner Bros. Pictures won a bid among five studios for the rights to Siren Head, a viral siren-headed creature (the firefighter’s alarm, not the mythological creature) created by Canadian designer Trevor Henderson. A day later, Amazon MGM Studios, United Artists and Amblin Entertainment have closed a similar agreement for ‘The Mandela Catalogue’, a YouTube analogue horror series created by Alex Kister, after a bid between eleven studios. Neither film has a finished script or shooting date. But there is something in the environment that has led them to the purchase. Siren head. Zach Cregger, director of ‘Weapons’, will write the script for ‘Siren Head’ with Brian Duffieldwho will also direct it; Henderson, the character’s creator, is not involved in the production. The agreement required theatrical release as a condition for bidding, which has left out the large streaming platforms. streaming. Sony, Universal, Paramount and 20th Century Studios competed for the package before Warner took it for a seven-figure sum for the rights alone (that is, regardless of the cost of the film). But what is it? Siren Head is a humanoid being about twelve meters tall with two metallic sirens instead of heads, capable of imitating voices and sounds to attract its victims. Henderson published it for the first time in 2018 on Tumblr and Twitter. Its design refers directly to Slender Manthe creature that founded the genre creepypasta more than a decade before. The subsequent coverage of YouTubers such as PewDiePie or Markiplier in 2020 multiplied its reach. Unlike usual in this type of horrors creepypasta (very young and amateur creators), Henderson has already worked with major studios: he designed, for example, the nine monsters of ‘Tarot’, the 2024 Sony film produced by Scott Glassgold, one of the producers who is now repeating in ‘Siren Head’. Which makes it even more curious that Henderson is not going to participate creatively in the adaptation of his creature. Mandela Catalog. ‘The Mandela Catalogue’ follows a different pattern. Alex Kister, who created the series in 2021 at the age of seventeen, will direct the adaptation and will co-write the script with Tyler Clifton. Clearly the same scheme is being followed that worked so well with ‘Backrooms‘: the original creator is in control of the film, without intermediaries to reinterpret the material. ‘The Mandela Catalogue’ is a piece of analog horror, a subgenre that imitates television broadcasts and VHS tapes from the turn of the last century, popularized by the series ‘Local 58′ in 2015. Kister uploaded the first episode in June 2021 and the plot takes place in the fictional Mandela County, invaded by doubles called “alternates” who push their victims to suicide and manipulate television, radio and GPS; Its origin is attributed to a corrupted version of the archangel Gabriel. Creepypastas in cinema: origins. ‘Backrooms’, directed by Kane Parsons from his own YouTube series, premiered on May 29, and grossed $81.4 million in its opening weekend in the United States from a budget of about $10 million. A round business. One month later, world collection It exceeded 330 million. ‘Obsession’, also horror, not inspired by a creepypasta But it has also been directed by a YouTube creator, Curry Barker, and has earned 374 million worldwide. Both figures have convinced studios that horror born on YouTube and Reddit can replace traditional franchises to attract an audience under 25 years of age who increasingly goes less and less to watch superheroes or youth sagas. That public It had been the most difficult to recover for years for theaters, and ‘Backrooms’ and ‘Obsession’ are the first cases in which Hollywood feels that it has found a new vein. According to that same article, at least one representation agency has its employees combing subreddits for adaptable stories. An agency veteran acknowledged that they had already located “a handful” of threads with film potential. Qunflattering records. The last time Hollywood undertook such a maneuver—extrapolating the surface characteristics of a sleeper hit and churning out related movies like there was no tomorrow—it went so well. We are talking, of course, about ‘Barbie’: Amazon and Mattel They tried to apply the formula of toy origin, ironic tone and search for various sectors of the public to ‘Masters of the Universe‘. As we know, things did not work: the audience that filled the theaters was 68% male (as expected) and the collections fell by 70% in its second weekend. Mattel Films has been active for eight years and has only produced these two films. Although in many cases, in the cinema, the first to arrive is the one that takes the lead and the culture of exploitation is firmly established even among the culture of the big production companies, it is usually not a good idea to throw bunches of bills at projects that were not born organically, but in executive offices. The good part of all this? A couple of new and good looking horror movies. If they don’t work we will have time to cry. Again. In Xataka | The most promising horror movie of the summer comes not from Hollywood but from YouTube. And that’s not the most intriguing thing.

A Chinese billionaire bought the most expensive house in London. What happened next is a real estate horror movie

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In 2021, the Evergrande collapse It erased more than $300 billion in liabilities and triggered a real estate crisis that shook all of China. Among his most extravagant assets was a record mansion in London that today remains trapped in lawsuits, divorces and frozen accounts: a financial ruin turned into an empty monument. The perfect purchase that went wrong. Year 2020, a Chinese billionaire buys for 210 million pounds number 2-8A Rutland Gate, then the most expensive home ever sold in the United Kingdom. On paper it was the definitive investment: a palace with 45 rooms, four elevators, an indoor pool, 24 marble bathrooms and privileged views of Hyde Park. But what seemed like a prestige move ended up leading to a chain of misfortunes so strange that it seems written like a thriller. Since then no one has lived inside, the real owner was caught in a financial collapse and the building became an empty shell with only one “tenant”. Palace with a cursed past. The history of the building was already coming loaded with symbolism. For decades it was the London palace of Rafik Haririwho transformed it by joining together several Victorian houses and decorating it with almost obscene luxury, from gold-plated trash cans to bathrooms encrusted with semi-precious stones. Hariri was assassinated in Beirut in 2005 and, after passing through the hands of the Saudi royal family, the interior was auctioned piece by piece in 2015. That left the mansion empty, as if it had been dismantled before its next owner arrived. The Evergrande turn. The official buyer of 2020 appeared to be the Hong Kong tycoon Cheung Chung-kiubut later was discovered that the real owner was Hui Ka Yanfounder from Evergrande and for years the richest man in China. And there the descent began. Just a year later, Evergrande began with non-payment of debtsbecame a symbol of the Chinese real estate collapse and ended up collapsing in 2024. Hui ended up declaring guilty of fraud and other financial crimes, while the mansion was trapped in a legal tangle: registered in the name of his ex-wife, with frozen assets and no possibility of sale. The most expensive house in the United Kingdom lost in limbo and a symbol of the real estate gap. Fernstedt at the entrance to the house The empty house and the Swede on the porch. And it is at this point in history where the image appears that changes everything to this day. While inside the mansion there are dozens of empty rooms and millions of pounds tied up, outside, on the same porch, lives Anders Fernstedta homeless Swede who has been living at the entrance for three years. Your “camp” It is made of umbrellas, flowers, broken bicycles and stuffed animals. The paradox could not be starker, because he sleeps inches from one of the most crazy expensive shelters in Europe, but separated by a door that never opens. Ironically, the only stable inhabitant of the house does not have access to it. The fall of Anders. As to the history of man Swedish, is almost as chaotic as the architecture on which it rests. Andres was a technology journalist, then he worked in horticulture, collaborated with people from the Silicon Valley environment and even worked for The Economist as a freelance fact-checker. However, a chain of failed jobs, evictions, attacks and personal losses dragged him onto the streets. He ended up landing in front of the palace purely by chance: He was looking for a covered shelter and found an empty porch. He has since converted that space into a kind of makeshift garden and permanent bedroom. The symbol of a broken city. It had an extensive Guardian report that the story of Rutland Gate sums up a huge contradiction in London. While more than 300,000 homes remain empty in England and hundreds of thousands are waiting for a house, one of the most luxurious properties in the country has been closed for years because it is, in reality, a frozen financial asset. From that perspective, it is no longer a home, it is a figure trapped in offshore companies, lawsuits and bankruptcies. And in front of that door, every night, a man sleeps what represents just the other end of the system: someone with nothing, living in the shadow of a palace that no one can use. Image | Gareth E. Kegg In Xataka | Now that the Pope is in Spain, he should visit this surgeon’s castle. Inside is the smallest church on the planet In Xataka | In 1972 Italy wanted to put an entire city in a one kilometer building. Half a century later he is still paying the consequences

Two friends sold their company for 1.5 billion dollars and bought it back for 450 million: today it is worth 150 billion

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Buying low and selling high is one of the maxims of any financial operation if you want do well in life. It’s the advice likely followed by two immigrant friends from Asia who met playing basketball in Los Angeles. The story of these two friends is one of the most bizarre and fortunate in the technological business field, since they managed to sell their company for 1.5 billion, and then buy it back for 450 million and turn it into an empire of 150,000 million dollars. Its history is that of one of the best-known RAM and storage device companies since the late 80s: Kingston Technology. Two immigrants and the worst Monday in history John Tu came to Los Angeles from China in the 1970s. David Sun took the same route, but from Taiwan. They were both engineers and were looking for their big break in California. By the whims of fate, they both ended up playing basketball on the same basketball court in Los Angeles in the 80s. Everything else arose from that friendship. His first business was Camintonn, a memory-related components company used by personal computers that were beginning to make the leap from laboratories and electronics hobby clubs to offices and homes, driven by promising young people like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. After a few years of success and growth, Tu and Sun sold Camintonn in 1986 to AST Research for six million dollars. With that money in their pockets, the future seemed like a bed of roses for the two friends, but their joy was short-lived. The feared Black Monday The October 1987 crash on Wall Street caused a good part of his savings to disappear in one fell swoop. They were left with almost nothing. However, instead of looking for work in a company in the flourishing technology market of the time, they began their adventure as entrepreneurs again. “I told him: ‘You make something and I’ll sell it, like last time,’” Tu said. in an interview for Fortune. John Tu and David Sun, co-founders of Kingston Technology That same year they founded Kensington, a company with a name that seemed elegant and sophisticated, but another company had beaten them to it and registered it. So as they were fans of the folk group The Kingston Triothey chose to rename their company Kingston Technology and launched it in a garage in Fountain Valley, California. How much does current technology owe to California garages! From being born in a garage to being worth 1.5 billion To the contrary to Samsung or other brands, Kingston did not manufacture its own memory chips, but rather bought components from large manufacturers and turned them into products that people use: memory modules for computers, pen drives, flash cards, SSD disks. It was a model without great aspirations, but it worked with a precision that few could match. In fact, it is the same business model that it maintains today. By August 1996, the company was already valued at more than $1.8 billion, and SoftBank acquired 80% of Kingston for $1.5 billion. Masayoshi Son’s Japanese giant was then in the midst of a technological buying spree and Kingston was exactly the type of company it was looking for: profitable, well-positioned and growing. That is, with the acquisition of Softbank, Tu and Sun continued to be a decisive part of the company’s operations thanks to the 10% of the company that each one retained, and they also pocketed 700 million dollars each. Yes, I was not wrong: 700 million for each one, because the founders distributed 100 million dollars in extraordinary bonuses for your employees as a sample of thanks for your work. The deal was perfect because both employees and founders had put a lot of money in their pockets, but they continued working in the same position and with the same conditions as up to that date. What a bargain! …but there was still room for further improvement. Sell ​​high, buy low Three years later, in 1999, SoftBank came knocking on Kingston’s door again. The dotcom bubble was at its highest moment and Masayoshi Son wanted to recover liquidity to invest in the effervescent internet companies. Kingston was still a good business, but it was not the type of hypervolatile asset that Softbank was looking for at that time, so it offered them to recover the same 80% that it had bought from them for 1.5 billion. However, the new price was very different: $450 million. We guess holding back their laughter, Sun and Tu said yes. Obviously. In fact, they were even generous to Softbank. Just like you counted to Fortunein 1996 SoftBank had paid part of the purchase with a promissory note of 300 million that it had to pay in two years, but the investment bank did not fulfill its part and was late in that payment. Faced with such a breach, the founders could have recovered the company by contract in 1998. But they did not do so. They forgave their debt. “SoftBank was shocked,” Tu said. When Masayoshi Son wanted to sell Kingston, his first option was to sell it to them because it was his way of returning the favor they had done a year before. Thus, starting in 1999, Sun and Tu once again owned 100% of Kingston: 50% for each one. According to ForbesKingston Technology had a turnover of about $14.4 billion a year and ranked 28th on the list of the largest private companies in the United States. Its value is estimated at 150,000 million thanks to the memory shortage. A peculiarity of the company is that, despite being one of the most consolidated technology companies, it is still not listed on the stock market. No funds. Without external investors. Just the two friends who met on a court in Los Angeles almost fifty years ago and had two strokes of luck in their career that allowed them to become millionaires without losing control of the company they founded. … Read more

In 2014, Larry Page bought two private islands for $23 million. The problem is that they already had an owner and he won’t let them go.

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Buying a private island is not as easy as it seems. Especially if someone had already bought it before you. That is, broadly speaking, what the American justice system has been discussing for more than a decade, when Larry Page bought two of the five private islands that it has in the Virgin Islands area. The case has a little bit of everything: companies that negotiate in the shadows, a furious New York real estate developer and one of the co-founders of Google who, according to the documents that are coming to light in the trial, did everything possible so that no one knew that it was he who bought the island. Twelve years later, the dispute over ownership of the islands is still open, but the islands, meanwhile, remain in the hands of Larry Page. Two islands, two buyers. Great Hans Lollik and Little Hans Lollik are two small private islands in the archipelago of the US Virgin Islands. They are just over two kilometers from the north coast of the main island, Saint Thomas, and are located in a privileged enclave because they are surrounded by coral reefs and practically uninhabited, except for a few herds of invasive goats. In 2014, a company based in Palo Alto (California) appeared out of nowhere and bought the two islands that were for sale, closing a transaction worth $23 million, according to collected Business Insider. The problem is that a New York developer named James Eckel had been negotiating the purchase of the property for months. He had even offered 9 million dollars. The deal had not been closed, but he claimed to have a contract that gave him preference in the operation. When the Palo Alto company put its generous offer on the table, the seller chose 23 million and the developer was left hanging. That didn’t sit well with him. Trial for negotiating behind his back. From Eckel’s perspective, the seller (a company called Liberty Bankers Life Insurance Company) had committed to him in a sales contract, which he then ignored when a better offer appeared. So he went to court to claim ownership of the islands. What came next has been a decade of pilgrimage through the courts of Texas and the Virgin Islands. In 2019, a court of appeal of Texas ruled that Eckel was only entitled to compensation for economic damages, but not to ownership of the islands. But that didn’t close the case. The family office which manages Page’s estate and through which the purchase was made, sued Eckel’s company (called Great Hans LLC) to have the courts officially declare that the islands belong to him without any legal burden, so that the developer could not claim ownership again in the future. That process remains unresolved today, despite the fact that Page’s lawyers have been asking the judge to act for years. The opacity of fortunes. The most striking thing about the case is not only the dispute over the ownership of the islands. This is the time it took to find out who the real buyer of the properties was because they found themselves behind a thick corporate framework that protected his identity. The company that acquired the islands was Virgin Island Properties LLC, a limited liability company without a name behind it to reveal who put up the money with which the purchase was made. In fact, as as highlighted Business Insiderit took months of court proceedings and investigations for Eckel’s lawyers to reach Wayne Osborne, the man who manages the assets from Page since 2012. Osborne then confirmed that the purchase was for Page. In his statement he also explained that the islands had been acquired without the intention of building on them, and that the agent who negotiated the transaction (Gil Simon) did not reveal to the seller the identity of the actual buyer. It is a common practice in the operation of companies who manage large assets like that of the co-founder of Google: no document of the operation directly or indirectly mentioned Larry Page. The family office most discreet in the technological world. This trial has served as a window, albeit a very small one, to see how they work management structures of one of the family office most hermetic that exist…even for such a discreet area how is the one of the family office. The company that manages the 290.9 billion dollars of the second richest man in the world It’s called Koop and is based in Palo Alto. His philosophy is total opacity and to achieve it, employees sign confidentiality agreements before entering, LinkedIn profiles are deliberately vague and internal security is supervised by a former CIA agent, as revealed in a exclusive research of Business Insider in 2022. The entire society is organized so that Page does not appear in any of the documents of his own purchases. That is, keep the millionaire as far away as possible from his possessions, so that it is difficult to unravel the corporate network that is woven between the property and who really owns it. In fact, these companies do their job so well that when the judges in the Epstein case tried to locate Larry Page in 2023 to take a statement Regarding his role in the plot, a private investigation firm was unable to find a mailing address for him. It is not that Larry Page did not have a habitual residence, but that everything was designed so that he could not be linked to any real address. In Xataka | The most luxurious “hotel” in the world costs $70,000 a night because it’s not a hotel: it’s an LVMH private island Image | Flickr (Scott Beale / Laughing Squid)

“Entire boxes are bought, there is a lack of product and we are producing 24 hours a day”

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“I’m the typical nostalgic millennial, I admit that.” This is how our colleague Laura Sacristán of Xataka Mobile the article in which he narrates his experience completing the World Cup sticker album… digitally. It is a phrase that could summarize the entire text that is to come. And if one feels like Don Quixote in front of the windmills when trying to complete the Panini World Cup album. The one that the company has launched with the punctuality of someone who knows they have a good business on their hands. Among the strength of the world fifespeculation and the feeling of nostalgia, one buys the album assuming that it will be almost impossible to complete it. Working piecework But it doesn’t seem enough. “It had never started this way, especially in Spain and Portugal. In Brazil it has always been crazy, but, this year, there is a lack of product and we are producing 24 hours a day. We did not expect it” The statements are from Lluís Torrent, general director of Panini in Spain, to elDiario.eswho accepts that there is a shortage of stock in the stickers that our country demands. And the company claims that it had not seen the same fever for World Cup cards in our country as this year. Although the public is loyal to each year’s album, the World Cups have something special and that can also be seen in the results account by adding more followers. “There are adults who have reengaged. There is hunger and whole boxes are bought“, explains Torrent to the digital media. And our colleague confirms it. If she has made the leap to digital it is for a very simple reason: desperation. “They are sold out everywhere” is the answer she has heard the most in recent days. Fed up, she has forgotten the physical card. “The cards also serve as a socialization tool, you have to know how to organize them, exchange them, “They have a positive aspect of coexistence and sociability,” says Torrent. The problem is when the speculator takes over that “positive aspect of coexistence and sociability.” To both Laura Sacristán, Torrent, and everyone who approaches a kiosk, those who run them give the same answer: “people take away whole boxes.” The shortage remains in the market three weeks after this report from The Newspaper. The person who spoke then was Narayan, head of a kiosk in Sant Cugat del Vallés, stating that even they themselves have had larger orders rejected for their points of sale. More than 600 kilometers further away, in the Puerta Cerrada square in the heart of Madrid, another kiosk gives the same answer to some children who are trying to quench their thirst for stickers. Children who can go look for the ones that interest them most just a few hundred meters away. In the lower part of the Rastro, the fans They meet every Sunday to exchange the repeated stickers and complete the collection. Or buy them. Because the truth is that there is no shortage of those who resell the most sought-after stickers. On digital buying and selling portals it is not difficult to find individual trading cards for 30 euros (the equivalent of 20 sealed envelopes). if we talk about Cristiano Ronaldo either Messi. For an “extra sticker”, the stickers premium that Panini has launched along with the standard collection with another 80 prints, individual prices start at 50 euros and in some they reach 150 euros. Despite everything, Torrent defends that there is the same probability of an envelope containing the Lamine Yamal sticker as it is of JK Duverne, the Haitian defender who plays for the Belgian team KAA Gent. This World Cup, furthermore, is of special interest for collectors because everything indicates, if no one can remedy it, that it will be the last for Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar. But also, the collection is broader than ever because more teams than ever play in the World Cup. The result: 980 cards that represent the players of the 48 teams that complete the tournament this time. A figure never seen in Panini’s World Cup album and that falls like May water on the Italian company that this year will bill more than 100 million euros in Spain. A tiny part of the global result that is estimated at 1,400 million euros in this edition, they point out in Seville newspaper. An empire built on two factories, one in Italy and the other in Brazil. An empire built on childhood anxiety, hunger accumulated during the four years of the World Cup cycle and, above all, the nostalgic thirst that seems insatiable among the millennial generation. Photo | Panini and FIFA In Xataka | We are in 2026, but you will only see part of the World Cup in 4K. The “shitification” of the platforms gives us back DTT

These potatoes could only be bought in prison. They were so good that they ended up generating a black market outside of prison

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There is a food product in the United States that for decades could only be purchased if you were in prison or knew someone who was. And no, it wasn’t any illegal substance or a domestic missile launcher. It was a bag of chips. Especially good, yes. Prison potatoes. The Whole Shabang are potatoes whose flavor combines salt, vinegar and barbecue sauce (in the style of all-dressed chips popular in Canada, where they are manufactured), and which Keefe Group manufactured for years to sell exclusively in American prisons. Keefe Group is a company specialized in supplying the prison population that has existed since 1975, when it began selling instant coffee in a Florida prison. When the inmates came out and wanted to continue savoring The Whole Shabang, they discovered that they did not exist outside the prison. The potatoes began as a flavor within the Moon Lodge line, a brand that Keefe produced for prison commissaries. Commissary world. Within the walls, the product became something that went beyond the mere appetizer. The commissary is the space in prisons where inmates can freely spend the funds they have in their accounts. Potatoes were so popular that some inmates began to develop recipes made from the available products, with proper nouns like “chi chi” (improvised soup with ramen and potato). Cult. After its first appearance, for yearsformer inmates scoured the internet looking for them, posting requests on the Keefe Group Facebook page and organizing groups asking for them to be put up for sale. Except for occasional auctions on eBay, getting a bag was almost impossible without going to prison or visiting someone. In 2012, Keefe publicly acknowledged that he had a cult product on his hands, but he has not yet made it available for sale to the general public. Four more years later, the accumulated pressure finally made them give in and they began selling The Whole Shabang online. The price in online stores (at the moment it is not found in regular grocery stores), $18.99, is far from what it costs in prison, where the bags are much cheaper. The question is… do they taste the same in freedom, where competition abounds in the snack market and you don’t have the feeling of privilege at having found something genuinely tasty within the walls of prison? The prison business. The prison market in the United States moves about $1.6 billion a year, concentrated in three large operators: Keefe, Trinity and Aramark. Keefe It doesn’t just sell snacks.but also provides electronics, clothing, as well as hygiene products, telecommunications and software for penitentiary centers throughout the country. And it has experienced some controversies in its history: prisons receive commissions from suppliersso whoever wins a contract to distribute in a prison is not necessarily the one who offers better prices to the inmates, but rather the one who pays the most to the prison establishment. To Keefe, specifically, has been accused to take advantage of the fact that prisoners have nowhere to buy cheaper and the products experience a consequent inflation. The other luxury product. The Whole Shabang phenomenon raises a curious question: why does something produced for a captive market end up fascinating those who have the possibility of accessing any product in the world? Well, just like luxury: an object accessible to very few acquires symbolic value that goes beyond its real properties. In prisons, the mechanism is the same but taken to the extreme, and removing all the glamour. In fact, inside the prisons, The Whole Shabang functioned as a bargaining chip, as an alternative currency. Long live the fries. In Xataka | The María Islands: the “Alcatraz” of Mexico where the most dangerous criminals in the country ended up

Telecinco has just bought the rights to ‘El Rosco’ from ‘Pasapalabra’. The only problem is that ‘Pasapalabra’ is from Antena 3

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Among many other things that have happened in recent years with ‘Pasapalabra’, Mediaset paid a fine of 73 million euros for broadcasting the program without having the rights, lost the program in 2019 and has been watching for six agonizing years how Antena 3 turned it into the most watched contest in Spain. Now, Telecinco announces that it has El Rosco back. The only thing missing is everything else. Back to Mediaset. This Wednesday, Mediaset España confirmed in a very brief press release (consisting, in fact, of a single sentence, which could be interpreted as that Telecinco is not yet completely clear about its plans), that it is preparing “a new program that will include El Rosco as the final and main element.” we already knew that the Supreme Court had forced Antena 3 to withdraw that test from ‘Pasapalabra’, and abundant rumors were already circulating that approximately a year and a half ago Telecinco had closed the agreement to recover the test, conditional on the courts ruling in favor of the Dutch company MC&F, owner of the rights. High hierarchies. To get an idea of ​​how coveted the Rosco is, you only have to keep one thing in mind: the new agreement between Mediaset and MC&F was negotiated directly by Alessandro SalemCEO of the audiovisual group. What Mediaset has acquired is the license to use El Rosco: the circle of letters, the dynamic of “passing the word”, the repetition of unanswered questions and the final stopwatch. What it has not acquired is ‘Pasapalabra’ in its entirety: the full format of the contest belongs to ITV, which maintains its current contract with Antena 3. That is, the new Telecinco program cannot be called ‘Pasapalabra’ nor replicate the tests prior to Rosco. The importance of Rosco. All these shenanigans to acquire a test and not a program, without a doubt, put a question on the table: what is the true drawing power of Rosco alone if it does not have the previous forty minutes that generate tension and familiarize us with the contestants. That is the task that Mediaset now has before it: to build a program of prior tests that firmly support the star challenge. The fine. Telecinco does not come to this acquisition of Rosco with the joy of teenage boyfriends. The Provincial Court of Madrid sentenced Mediaset to pay 73.2 million euros to ITV for broadcasting ‘Pasapalabra’ without authorization between 2012 and 2019. The figure was increased considerably over the initial calculation of 44.3 million because the court estimated that the advertising revenue generated had been higher than those calculated in the first instance. Furthermore, the resolution recognized the “carryover effect”: the indirect benefit that the contest brought to the news and to the prime time later, which increased the main compensation by another 233,134 euros for that specific concept. Delicate moment. The Rosco announcement comes at the worst time in Telecinco’s recent history. The channel closed 2025 with a 9.5% annual quotathe worst record in its history for the fourth consecutive year. December 2025 marked an 8.4% share, the worst month in the regular season of his entire career. January 2026 was even more brutal: 8.5% and its worst start to the yearbelow the aggregate of the autonomous chains. The chain has been chaining minimums since July 2025, and they have taken brutal cost cutting measures such as merge the set of Informativos Telecinco and Noticias Cuatro. How Rosco affects audiences. ‘Pasapalabra’ is the most watched daily program on Spanish television for the sixth consecutive year, with an average share of 18.3% in the 2024/2025 season and a maximum of 21.1% in June 2025. But above all, El Rosco is the mechanism that keeps the viewer glued to Antena 3 until the nightly news. And whoever reaches the news program goes to ‘El Hormiguero’. Telecinco does not have anything comparable in that segment, but El Rosco as the driving force of a new contest would be a good way to fight Antena 3 at the time of day when the largest audience drags towards the final stretch of the day. Meanwhile, Antena 3 can continue broadcasting the already recorded episodes of ‘Pasapalabra’ that include El Rosco, until they receive official notification. Hectic times are coming in the afternoons of traditional television. In Xataka | Four years of historic audience lows: Telecinco is looking for oxygen this summer and its idea is to recycle presenters and formats

bought $87 million worth of ETH and sells it all in one quarter

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The Harvard investment fund prepared to buy Ethereum in autumn of last year. Three months later, he ended up selling everything. At the same time, it has continued to reduce its position in Bitcoinwhich has also been declining quarter by quarter since will reach its all-time high in mid-2025. The institution, which for a few years had been increasingly betting on cryptocurrencieshas experienced first-hand how the landscape has changed in a very short time. The play. The Harvard investment fund, known as Harvard Management Company, revealed in its latest filings with the SEC that it had completely liquidated its position in BlackRock’s Ethereum ETF during the first quarter of 2026. The position, valued at around $86.8 million, lasted just one quarter. In fact, at the time of purchase, the fund had become the largest new buyer of BlackRock Ether, as commented Bloomberg analyst James Seyffart told Fortune. At the same time, Harvard also cut its position in the Bitcoin ETF of BlackRock (IBIT) by 43%, leaving it at about 117 million dollars. It is the third consecutive quarter in which its crypto positions decrease. Why it matters. Harvard is not just any university when we talk about investment. Its endowment (the university’s permanent investment fund) is the largest in the world and many are attentive to its movements. That it has bet (and undone so quickly) on Ethereum gives clues about how institutions are viewing this cryptocurrency. The thing about Ethereum is that it has something that Bitcoin doesn’t have. And its network can host financial applications. That should make it more attractive in theory. However, what the numbers say is something else: the price of Ethereum has accumulated a drop of 29% so far this year, compared to 12% for Bitcoin, and in the last five years Bitcoin has clearly surpassed Ethereum. In detail. Harvard’s crypto story begins in the second quarter of 2025, when bought 1.9 million shares of BlackRock’s IBIT ETF for about 116.7 million dollars, making Bitcoin its largest position in listed equities, even above Nvidia or Alphabet. The peak came in Q3 of 2025, with 442 million in Bitcoin ETF. From there, the road was downhill, with a 21% cut in Q4, simultaneous entry into Ethereum for 87 million, and in Q1 2026 complete exit from Ether and a new 43% cut in Bitcoin. Between the lines. The exit of Ethereum in a single quarter suggests that it was a strategy that did not end up convincing. Harvard’s portfolio of listed equities It is only 16 positionsand this is a tiny fraction of its total $57 billion endowment. Its largest position currently is TSMC, with about 232 million, followed by gold, with about 200 million. Eric Balchunas, ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, counted Fortune that flows into Bitcoin ETFs remain relatively resilient despite the fall it is having in 2026. Regarding Harvard’s position specifically, he noted that, having many other assets that have performed well, “absorbing losses in Bitcoin may be more bearable, with the hope of a recovery.” He also recalled that endowments are “the most difficult institution to convince” to enter ETFs, which makes both entry and exit even more striking. ETFs at other universities. Among the rest of the universities, the panorama is different. Dartmouth maintained its position in IBIT unchanged during Q1 and expanded its crypto exposure with a new entry into Bitwise’s Solana ETF, being one of the first US universities to do so. Brown University He didn’t move his position either. at IBIT. Harvard, for now, is moving in the opposite direction. And now what. Harvard’s crypto strategy could also be conditioned by an internal factor. And NP Narvekar, the director of the endowment since 2016 and the architect of its shift towards alternative assets, has informed the board of his intention to retire, possibly at the end of 2027, according to account the Wall Street Journal. There is still no open successor search process, but it is a factor that may explain why Harvard is getting rid of somewhat riskier positions. Cover image | DrawKit Illustrations and Somesh Kesarla Suresh In Xataka | Two decades ago Apple left Intel because it didn’t know how to be a foundry. Now he comes back because he has learned his lesson

You bought an electric car to save. Here’s why you’re not doing it

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It’s 7:30 p.m. You get home, put away your coat, plug in the car and forget about it. You’ve done it like this every day since you bought the electric one. Until the electricity bill arrives and nothing adds up. The car doesn’t consume gasoline, yes, but something has gone wrong. That something has a name: you’ve been paying the most expensive electricity of the day to charge a battery that could have been filled for half the price while you were sleeping. It’s 7:30 p.m. You get home, put away your coat, plug in the car and forget about it. You’ve done it like this every day since you bought the electric one. Until the electricity bill arrives and nothing adds up. The car doesn’t consume gasoline, yes, but something has gone wrong. That something has a name: you’ve been paying the most expensive electricity of the day to charge a battery that could have been filled for half the price while you were sleeping. The 280 kWh error. Think of any family: apartment, refrigerator, washing machine, some heating. About 290 kWh per month. The day they park an electric car in the garage and start charging it at home, those 290 kWh become 570. The car adds about 280 kWh per month on its own, counting what is lost in the charging itself. If they plug it in in the middle of the afternoon, they are paying for that mass of energy at the most expensive price of the day. The same amount of kWh can cost twice as much depending only on the time at which it is consumed. The key is no longer just how much is consumed, but when it is consumed. The three traps. The first instinct when buying an electric car is to call the company and ask for more contracted power, for fear that the leads will trip if the car is connected with the washing machine running. Alejandro Diego Rosell, energy consultant and professoridentifies it as one of the most common and most expensive mistakes: oversizing the power means paying an unnecessary safety margin every month, even if you never use it. But the thing doesn’t stop there. Many users believe that the regulated market (PVPC) is the safest haven. According to Sergio Soto’s calculations, energy expert Roamsa model household with an electric car would pay about 101.67 euros per month in PVPC, penalized by hourly volatility and increases in prices in certain sections. Cheap when the price drops, yes. But unpredictable when it rises, and rises just when it is most consumed. And there remains the one that is most abundant in advertising and the one that deceives the most: EV rates. Rosell sums it up with a rule that should not be forgotten: “You are still saving 8 euros by charging the car and losing 15 in the rest of the house.” You have to look at the nightly price, but also what they charge during normal hours and what is in the fine print of the fixed term. Some EV rates offer a very cheap early morning to recover the margin the rest of the day. The name does not guarantee anything. The roadmap. For the electric car to be truly profitable, experts propose following these steps: Apply the exact power formula: Rosell proposes a simple account: Necessary power = simultaneous consumption of the house + charger power + safety margin. If at dawn you have a refrigerator, water heater and air heater consuming 1.5 kW and you charge the car at 3.7 kW, you need about 5.2 kW in total. With a safety margin, you would hire 5.75 kW, not 10. And there is a nuance that changes everything: a smart charger can automatically reduce the car’s power if it detects that the house is consuming more. The car waits. The leads don’t jump. Play two powers: Current legislation (2.0TD rates) allows contracting a lower power for the day and a higher power only for the night (valley). This way you don’t pay all day for a power that you only use while you sleep. Escape from commercial trends: Faced with the avalanche of so-called ‘EV Rates’ (specific for electric vehicles), Soto warns that the most economical option is usually a well-optimized classic rate with three-period time discrimination (DH3). In a practical case, this rate would lower the bill to 74.90 euros per month, representing a saving of 26.3% compared to the regulated market. EV rates are still competitive (about 77.50 euros), but they can be slightly more expensive than a good DH3. To compare without trusting advertising: the official comparator of the CNMC and the hourly prices of the PVPC published by Red Eléctrica in ESIOS are the reference tools. Install a smart charger. A conventional plug is slow and offers no control. A wallbox allows you to program the load so that it starts on its own during the cheapest hours and adjusts the energy so as not to exceed the contracted power. Rosell places the cost of the equipment between 400 and 800 euros; Soto, adding the complete installation, between 600 and 1,500 euros depending on the case. Important: the wallbox does not pay for itself only by the kWh saved, but also by the control, security and comfort it provides. And the investment is significantly cut with the Auto+ Plan, which subsidizes up to 70% of the installation for individuals and up to 80% in municipalities with less than 5,000 inhabitants. What if we collapse the network? With an increase in plug-in vehicle registrations which exceeds 44%it is legitimate to wonder if there will be blackouts when we all charge at dawn. Soto calls for calm: the problem is not that everyone charges at night, but that everyone does it at the same time and at high powers. With smart charging and distributed management, the grid holds up. Rosell adds something more important for the long term: the “eternal cheap night” is … Read more

Amazon had been building its alternative to Starlink for some time. Now the company behind the iPhone SOS has been bought

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If we think about satellite internet, the first thing that comes to mind is usually Starlink. It is logical: SpaceX has managed to occupy a large part of the conversation in this area. But, while that was happening, what we have seen is that Amazon had been building its own bet on low orbit with Leoa project with which he wants to gain relevance in an increasingly disputed market. Now that plan has taken a much more serious step. The company founded by Jeff Bezos has announced an agreement to acquire globalstarthe company that until now supports several Apple satellite functions on compatible iPhones and on the Apple Watch Ultra 3among them Emergency OSS via satellite. At the same time, both companies have communicated an agreement to continue these services and collaborate on future satellite functions supported by Leo. In other words, not only does it buy a strategic piece of the sector, it also fully enters into an already established relationship with Apple. Here the value of Globalstar goes well beyond its name or its relationship with Apple. What Amazon is buying is a combination of satellite fleet, infrastructure, spectrum and operational knowledge accumulated over years in mobile satellite communications. There is also a particularly relevant point: the acquisition gives it immediate access to radio spectrum rights, a piece that can accelerate its plans to offer services on mobile phones and other devices in the future. Furthermore, this operation does not appear in a vacuum. Leo had been trying to gain traction with his own deployment for some time: he already has more than 200 satellites in orbit, although he is still far behind SpaceX. At the same time, the firm has been teaching the product and clients: A few days ago it presented its aviation antenna and already has agreements with JetBlue and Delta to offer inflight connectivity starting in 2027 and 2028, respectively. There is another detail that helps measure the magnitude of the movement without losing sight of caution. The information published by the Financial Times places the agreement in 11.6 billion dollars and places it among the largest purchases in the company’s history, below Whole Foods but above MGMalthough on paper there are still pending steps before considering it resolved. The announcement itself specifies that closure is planned for 2027, provided regulatory approvals arrive and certain technical commitments linked to Globalstar’s satellite program are met. Viewed as a whole, this step helps to better understand where Leo wants to go in the coming years. We are not just facing a large acquisition, but rather an attempt to gain time, capabilities and position in a race in which Starlink continues to set the benchmark. The operation, if it ends up closing as planned, can change the starting point of the American giant quite a bit. Images | Amazon | Apple | globalstar In Xataka | Samsung faces a very serious problem to surpass TSMC with its 2nm chips: the 60% curse

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