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Netflix makes more money than ever and its shares fall 9%. The explanation is that Netflix is ​​the new mainstream

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Reed Hastings founded Netflix 29 years ago with an idea as simple as it was revolutionary: charge a fixed fee in exchange for access to content on demand and without interruptions, in a digital version of the video store by mail in which the company took its first steps. This Thursday, as the company posted solid quarterly results that still disappointed Wall Street, it was announced that Hastings will step down from the board of directors in June. The man who built Netflix is ​​leaving now that the platform is no longer what he envisioned. The results. The results for the first quarter of 2026 are, in absolute terms, notables. They reached 12.25 billion dollars, 16% more than in the same period of the previous year, meeting what the company itself had projected and slightly exceeding the average expectations of analysts. Net profit grew 82% to $5.23 billion. It is a spectacular percentage, yes, but that earnings per share of $1.23 includes the $2.8 billion break-up fee Frustrated deal with Warner Bros. Discoverywhich inflates the accounting result. Without it, the number would have been more modest. And that’s why shares fell 9% on Wall Street. Fall in the stock market. The main reason for this stock market crash was not the data for the quarter, but the outlook for the second. Netflix projects 13% growth in revenue for Q2, to about $12.6 billion, when the Wall Street consensus was closer to $13.1 billion. The difference is small in relative terms, but enough to remind us that investors have been accustomed for years to Netflix far exceeding its forecasts. Goodbye Hastings… The company has also announced that Reed Hastings, co-founder and until now president of the councilwill not stand for reelection when his term expires at the shareholders meeting on June 4, 2026. This ends 29 years with the company which he himself co-founded. Hastings had already given a step back in January 2023when he left the co-CEO position in the hands of Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters. His definitive departure from the board, the company explained, responds to his desire to focus on philanthropy and other projects. During the call to analysts after the presentation of results, Sarandos had to respond to whether Hastings’ departure had any relationship with the failure of the operation with Warner Bros. Discovery. Sarandos stated that “I’m sorry to anyone who seeks palace intrigue. Reed was a great defender of that agreement.” …hello to the announcements. Hastings was for years one of the most visible skeptics within the company regarding the use of streaming advertising. In 2022, when Netflix first lost subscribersdeclared to be “against the complexity of advertisements.” Four years later, the advertising business has become one of the structural pillars of the company. The company works with more than 4,000 advertisers, 70% more than the previous year, and the advertising-supported plan already accounts for more than 60% of new registrations in the 12 countries where it is available, according to data from Netflix itself. The projection of advertising revenue for 2026 is 3,000 million dollars, double the 1.5 billion generated in 2025. It is paradoxical that the platform that has been seen as an evolutionary step of traditional television, without its inconveniences (among which, without a doubt, is advertising), now competes directly with YouTube and linear television for brand advertisements. What’s more: Netflix has migrated its advertising technology to its own platform, leaving behind dependence on Microsoft, and programmatic purchasing It is already close to 50% of its advertising business not tied to events. The paradox. That is, everything in these results points to a great paradox. The company itself recognizes which represents less than 5% of the share global television, but projected annual revenues of between $50.7 billion and $51.7 billion place it among the largest media companies on the planet. And meanwhile, its shares fall 9%. There is an explanation for all of this. For years, Netflix was a company of exponential growth, the type of asset that technology funds love: skyrocketing subscriber metrics, unstoppable geographic expansion, its own content that accumulated prestige and audience… Now it is something else: the mainstreamprofitable and predictable, with several monetization levers (subscription, advertising, live sports, gaming) and a business model that is no longer surprising, but widely imitated. A solid company, with a dominant position and prospects for growing profitability, but at a calm pace, in the medium term. It is certainly not the Netflix that Hastings built. In Xataka | Netflix is ​​desperate to find the next franchise that will make it gold. The problem is that he can’t find it.

The price of diesel is beginning to fall, but it is still far from what it cost before the war: what can we expect now

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Last Wednesday, April 8, the announcement of a temporary ceasefire two weeks between the United States and Iran, conditional on the partial reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, triggered an immediate reaction in energy markets. The barrel of Brent oil accumulated a weekly drop of 13.77%the highest in nine months, placing the price more than 15 dollars below the level at which it was trading just a week before, when it was still above 110 dollars. That shock has arrived, with a dropper of course, to Spanish gas stations. What you see at the pump right now. On Friday, April 10, the average price of diesel in Spain was around 1.87 euros per liter, with a drop of 1.67% in the next 24 hours compared to the previous day. A still timid drop if one takes into account that diesel was quoted at an average of 1,881 euros per liter during the week of March 27, the highest price since it came into force. the fuel tax reduction approved by the Government. And filling a 55-liter tank of diesel cost about 103 euros, according to data of that same period. Why oil has fallen. The key is in the Strait of Hormuz. Around 20% of the world’s oil passes through it, and its blockade since the beginning of the war had skyrocketed crude oil prices to almost $146 per barrel at the worst times. When talks between the US and Iran were announced for the start of a truce, the price plummeted from $110 to $94 in a matter of hours. Why does it take so long to be noticed at the gas station? Here comes into play what we have been explaining these days in our coverage: the rocket and feather effect. When oil rises, the price of fuel at the pump reacts almost immediately; when it goes down, the correction arrives weeks late. Distribution companies quickly transfer crude oil increases because they anticipate that replenishing fuel will cost them more. But when the price drops, they claim to have stock previously purchased at higher prices, thus delaying the drop. According to Bloomberg Linein Spain the movements in the price of gasoline have been minimal, even upward at times, with variations of less than 1% despite the sharp decline in crude oil. How long do you have to wait? The deadlines vary depending on the source, but there is consensus that the drop will not be immediate. Just like they count From Autopista, the most favorable purchase prices take between 14 and 28 days to reach gas stations significantly, and after four weeks. But of course, all this in case nothing else happens that affects the price, something that we unfortunately do not know about. The tax reduction what we have in Spain. The Government approved fiscal relief measures that have acted as an extra cushion. The first vice president and Minister of Economy, Carlos Body, wait that the fall in oil prices “will also end up resulting in a drop in fuel prices”, after the reactivation of maritime activity in the Strait of Hormuz. However, the European Commission has warned Spain that the reduction in VAT on fuel from 21% to 10% has failed to comply with Community regulations, which adds uncertainty as to whether this aid can be maintained. What can happen from now on. The most favorable scenario, and also the most fragile, depends entirely on the ceasefire holding. Matt Smith, of business analytics firm Kpler, warns that “there will be a lot of reluctance and caution when passing through the strait because it seems that Iran will still be patrolling it,” which will delay the normalization of maritime traffic and, with it, the sustained drop in crude oil. As if that were not enough, oil production in the region fell more in March than in the worst times of the pandemic, and recovering that productive capacity will take time. The American EIA (Energy Information Administration) foresees that the price of crude oil could begin to moderate in the second half of 2026, as long as the international situation stabilizes. But there is no guarantee. What we must not lose sight of. Although the current trend points to a downward correction, current prices are still much higher than before the conflict. The price of fuel in Spain had been relatively stable at the beginning of 2026, with gasoline at around 1.45-1.50 euros per liter, before the escalation of the war changed everything abruptly in March. Returning to those levels is not something that will happen overnight, so for now it seems that we will have to stay alert to learn more information about the situation. Cover image | Roberto Rodríguez and engin akyurt In Xataka | With oil skyrocketing, Japan has resurrected an old idea to extract infinite energy from the ocean

Memory prices have started to fall in some markets. There is still a long way to go to close the AI ​​crisis

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There is a scene that repeats itself every time the market gives a truce, even if it is minimal: it is enough for the price of a key component to begin to fall for the feeling that the worst is over. This is exactly what is happening now with DDR5 memory. In recent weeks falls have been recorded in the retail channel of several markets, and that has reactivated an inevitable question among those who have been following the evolution of prices for months: whether we are facing the beginning of the end of the memory crisis or simply a one-time adjustment. An extended pressure. To understand what we are seeing now, it is advisable to broaden the focus and look at the recent path of the market. The rise in memory prices It has not only hit the user who wants to update their equipment, but also manufacturers, distributors and assemblers, in a context marked by supply and demand tensions that have been conditioning purchases and strategies for months. Therefore, we are facing a pressure scenario that has ended up affecting a good part of the hardware market. Where and how much prices are falling. Beyond perception, what there is right now is a measurable change in some shop windows. TrendForce aims to clear declines in the retail channel in several regions. In Europe, the German market recorded a monthly drop of 7.2% in March 2026, while in the United States there have been discounts of more than 20% on specific 32 GB DDR5 kits. The most striking case is China, where 16 GB modules have fallen between 25% and 30% from the peaks at the beginning of the year. A correction. Behind this adjustment there is a much more earthly explanation than it might seem. According to the analysis firm and the industry sources it cites, the main factor is less traction in consumption after months of high prices, which has led many buyers to delay decisions and distributors to accelerate the release of inventory. Added to this is a common lag between the spot market and contracts, which can take between one and two months to translate into actual shipments. The noise around TurboQuant. In parallel with this correction, an element has appeared that has fueled the debate in the market. TurboQuanta compression algorithm from Google, has been interpreted in some recent coverage as a sign that the pressure on RAM could relax. However, the most prudent readings They point in another direction, pointing out that this is an incremental improvement and not a change capable of alone altering structural demand, especially in memory for servers and loads linked to artificial intelligence, which remains high. End of the crisis? All this fits into an idea that the sector itself repeats quite clearly. From Taiwan-based memory manufacturers, contract prices have remained stable despite volatility in the retail channel, and demand in segments such as servers, DRAM and HBM remains strong, partly supported by multi-year agreements with large customers. In this context, the current correction is interpreted as a specific adjustment, not as a sufficient turnaround to consider the current episode of tension resolved. Caution and more caution. What we are seeing in some markets is a temporary relief for the consumer, yes, but everything indicates that it is a correction within a cycle still stressed by underlying factors that have not disappeared. The most optimistic forecasts speak of a progressive normalization towards the end of 2026 in some segments, while others place it even further. With this scenario, ending the memory crisis would be getting ahead of events that, for now, are still far from being confirmed. Images | Andrey Matveev In Xataka | AI urgently needs memory, so Samsung and SK are going to inject $1 billion into China

Europe fled from Russia’s gas to fall into the arms of the United States. The Third Gulf War proves that it was a trap

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Behind troop movements and sea blockades for the Third Gulf Warthere is a much quieter script twist that is shaking the foundations of the continental economy: false European security. A problem that comes from the other side of the pond. After the energy crisis due to the Ukrainian War (still valid), Europe thought it had solved its great energy vulnerability by changing the gas that arrived through Russian gas pipelines for liquefied natural gas (LNG) that crossed the Atlantic in ships from the United States. The idea of ​​the European Union was to bet its imports on Washington to diversify sources and avoid future geopolitical blackmail. However, the American lifeline has turned out to be punctured. With the global market in maximum tension due to the war in Iran, the US is not guaranteeing European supply and makes gas subject to trade wars and political whims. The real Achilles heel. Europe now depends on the United States for two-thirds of its LNG imports, according to the center for economic studies Bruegel. As global supply falls due to the conflict, Asian buyers — who traditionally sourced from the Gulf — are competing aggressively for flexible gas ships. The result is a bidding war to the highest bidder: according to Bruegelseveral shipments of American LNG have already been diverted from Europe to Asia in the midst of the conflict. At the diplomatic and commercial level, the situation with our “savior partner” is enormously unstable. In the midst of this crisis, Donald Trump has come to criticize European allies, urging them on social networks to “get their own oil,” according to Bloomberg. As if that were not enough, political friction over the conditions of the trade agreement between the EU and the US has caused senior US officials to threaten retaliation, casting serious doubts on Washington’s previous commitment to sell $750 billion in energy products (including its precious LNG) to the European bloc. The price of the “green illusion”. The impact of this imbalance is being brutal for European pockets. According to the Financial Times Based on data provided by the European Commission itself, the bill for EU fossil fuel imports has increased by 14 billion euros in just 30 days of conflict. Gas prices have experienced a rise of 70%, while oil prices have become more expensive by 60%. This puts in front of the mirror what in Euractiv have baptized as “the green illusion” of Europe: a glaring structural failure in the energy transition. Despite having invested nearly one trillion euros in renewable energy, the European Union’s energy dependence on imports remains at 60%, practically the same figure as in 2004. An ineffective design. The reason for this price contagion lies in the very design of the European electricity market. By operating with a marginalist system, the most expensive technology (usually gas) is the one that sets the price of electricity for everyone, as explained in Strategic Energy. In countries heavily dependent on gas to generate electricity, such as Italy, gas sets the price 89% of the time, exposing citizens directly to international volatility. However, there is hope if you do your homework. In Spain, the enormous growth of wind and solar energy has caused the gas only mark the price of electricity 15% of the hours, much better shielding the country against these external shocks. In fact, it’s not all bad news: solar electricity generation has saved the EU from spending 2 billion euros in fossil fuel imports only in the first 20 days of March. And now what? It doesn’t look like we’ll get a break anytime soon. The crisis will not be brief, as the European Commissioner for Energy, Dan Jørgensen, has strongly warned. who has made it clear thateven if peace were declared tomorrow, prices would not return to normal in the foreseeable future. The European Commission is already finalizing a “toolbox” with emergency measures that will suddenly return us to the scenarios of 2022. On the table in Brussels is the possibility of recovering taxes on extraordinary profits that fell from the sky (windfall tax) for energy companies. Drastic measures in sight. Brussels also foresees drastic measures to contain demand based in the well-known 10-point plan of the International Energy Agency. This would translate into recommendations to Member States to encourage teleworking, reduce speed limits on motorways and promote both public transport and car sharing. At the strategic level, to stop the bleeding in LNG prices and prevent the US from playing against Europe with Asia over shipments, the think tank Bruegel proposes a radical solution: that the EU act as a bloc and coordinate its gas purchases directly with large importers such as Japan and South Korea to avoid a bidding war. The invisible problem. To understand the complete picture, we must talk about the great bottleneck that almost no one talks about: concrete and copper. European renewable deployment is colliding with a lack of capacity in electricity networks. According to a report from the climate think tank Emberat least 120 GW of planned renewable energy projects in Europe are at risk simply because the grid cannot support them. The logjam is monumental, with almost 700 GW of renewable projects stuck in connection queues awaiting permits across European countries reporting this data. And this is not just a problem of the macro plants of large corporations; It directly affects the average citizen. According to calculations in the same report, 1.5 million European homes could face delays in being able to connect the solar panels on their roofs due to obsolete distribution networks that do not have the capacity to take on the energy. A chronic gap. The underlying problem is a chronic gap in the system itself. As pointed out EuractivEurope has changed how it generates its electricity, but it has not electrified its real economy. Cars continue to burn oil, heavy industry continues to use fossil gas and the general electrification of the economy has been stagnant for ten years. Europe has spent … Read more

In 1954, Ann Elizabeth Hodges was hit by a rock. And thus he became the only person who has had a meteorite fall on him.

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Let’s say you’re on your couch enjoying a quiet afternoon. Suddenly, an infernal sound wakes you up just a moment before you see how a rock violently destroys your bookshelf, your old “vintage” radio and bounces towards you. It will take you a little longer to realize that the rock has passed through the ceiling before hitting you. And as strange as this story may seem, it is totally true. It was a clear afternoon in 1954 when a meteor struck Ann Elizabeth Hodges. The woman was lucky and only received a huge bruise on his waist. But he could have experienced a consequence as tragic as that of his poor radio. After all, we are talking about a piece of rock that fell at hundreds of kilometers per hour, burning on its frictional path towards the surface of this small planet. Ann ended up in the hospital but not because of the blow, but because of a small nervous breakdown caused by the huge crowd that came to see what had happened. Let us remember that in the 1950s, the Cold War was in full swing and conspiracy theorists did not miss an opportunity to see Soviet planes fly over (and explode) in American skies. So, after the sighting of the meteorite, a small host of curious people gathered around the Hodges house. And here began the adventures of the famous Sylacauga meteorite, whose name is due to the Alabama town where it fell. The fragment that hit Ann was called “Hodges meteorite“, while the complete meteorite, which broke into three about nineteen kilometers above the surface, it was much larger, probably almost half a meter. After the commotion, the assistance to Mrs. Hodges and the uncertainty, the United States Air Force sent a team to collect the remains of the meteorite. The stone’s fame rose incandescently over the next few days, continuing until a couple of years later. The media and residents of the entire region echoed the impact and there were those who wanted to buy the meteorite. For his part, Eugene Hodges, Ann’s husband, hired a lawyer to recover the rock from the hands of the State. At the same time, finding out about the mess, Bertie Guy, the landlord of the house, claimed ownership of the stone, much to the chagrin of the Hodges, with the intention of covering the repairs that the meteorite had cost her. The stress caused by all this diatribe and as attention on the meteorite faded, along with the potential buyersthey pushed Ann to donate the Sylacauga meteorite fragment to the Alabama Museum of Natural History. But Ann, according to the chronicle, never stopped being afraid of something falling through her ceiling again. Other “lucky” people in the history of extraterrestrial impacts Anna E. Hodges is the first and only person (at least reliably) to have been injured by a meteorite. But it is not the only case related to an extraterrestrial rock described in our history. Luckily for the rest, none of them have been hurt, if we can believe their version. Let’s go back to August 1992, in Mbale, Uganda. A boy was heading to the village when a fireball thundered in the sky. Shortly after, a pebble hit the top of a banana and fell on his head. According to reports, a huge meteorite weighing almost a ton would have exploded fourteen kilometers from the surface, disintegrating. Did the fragment belong to that meteorite? We will never know for sure. This is what happens with hundreds of other testimonies that ensure the impact of a meteorite: unlike the Sylacauga meteorite, there is no evidence or analysis that demonstrates the origin of these rocks. That does not mean that there are, as we said, dozens and dozens of stories about meteorites (many of them with tragic endings). An example can be found in the 2016 Indian story in which it was stated that a bus driver had killed by space rock impactafter an explosion was heard. NASA, however, confirmed that this was not possible since the incident did not coincide with any detected or predicted astronomical event. The protagonists of other documented cases have had much luckier in which the meteorite passed very closely, without hitting them. We are talking, for example, about Michelle Knapp, whose Chevrolet was pierced by a meteorite to his surprise, in 1992. Not so long ago, in 2004, an alien rock happily entered through the roof of the Archer family home in Auckland, New Zealand. The rock just bounced and she remained lying, expectant, on the floor of her living room. If you want to join the club of those “hit by a meteorite” you better be patient. Just like calculation an engineer at the German Aerospace Center named Christian Gritzner, a while ago, the chance of this happening is 174 million. To do this, it calculated the surface area we occupy, our average life expectancy and the habitable surface area. That, added to the calculations of meteorites that fall per year, provided the result we were talking about. Fragment of the Chelyabinsk meteorite It is estimated that up to 10,000 tons of material interstellar crashes to Earth every year. It is not a trivial number. Why aren’t stories of meteorites falling on us more frequent? The first and most important reason, without a doubt, is the fact that almost everyone does it at sea. After all, water occupies most of the earth’s surface. On the other hand, a large amount of this material disintegrates in its fall, leaving a faint trail of dust and gas. As we mentioned, there are many testimonies collected in the press and reports from people who have had a supposed meteorite fall on them. In fact, many of the versions date back a long time, even from other times when “the stars fell from the sky.” But we can assure you that Ann Hodges’ case is unique and special. Nobody would want a monster like the … Read more

Meta has been buying chips from NVIDIA and AMD for years. Now it also makes its own so as not to fall short

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Meta has not thrown in the towel with its MTIA (Meta Training and Inference Accelerators) chips. And although they didn’t have it all on their sidestopping depending on NVIDIA is a very juicy candy to jump to conclusions. For that very reason, They have presented a roadmap of four new chips with which the company intends to accelerate both its content recommendation systems and its generative AI capabilities. The first chip is now operational; The other three will arrive before the end of 2027. Below are all the details. Dependence. For years, Meta has relied almost entirely on NVIDIA and AMD to power its data centers. The development of our own silicon is complicated, but if it is achieved, it can be a very successful financial and strategic bet in these times. According to statements According to its vice president of engineering, Yee Jiun Song, designing its own chips allows the company to “eliminate what we don’t need,” which directly translates into cost reduction. Added to this is greater independence from possible price variations or supply restrictions. Which is exactly what you have announced. The four new chips are the MTIA 300, 400, 450 and 500. Each one has a different use: The MTIA 300 is already in production and is intended to train the algorithms that decide what content Facebook and Instagram users see. The MTIA 400 (known internally as Iris) has completed laboratory testing and is en route to data centers. Meta claims that it offers performance “competitive with leading commercial products,” according to its official statement. The MTIA 450 (Arke) will double the high-bandwidth memory compared to the 400 and is scheduled for early 2027. The MTIA 500 (Astrid), the most advanced, will arrive in mid-2027 and will incorporate, according to the company, improvements in low-precision data processing. The chips are manufactured by TSMC, the world’s largest semiconductor producer, and have been developed in collaboration with Broadcom on the RISC-V open architecture. The rhythm is the most striking thing. What’s unusual is not just that Meta makes its own chips, but the speed at which it plans to do so. The usual cycle in the industry is one or two years between generations. Meta aims to release new versions every six months. “The pace of AI evolution is so fast that we always want to have the most advanced chip available when we need it,” counted Song. This accelerated cadence is possible, according to the company, thanks to a modular design that allows components to be reused between generations. ANDthis does not replace NVIDIA. It is important not to lose sight of the context. Meta remains one of the largest buyers of GPUs on the market. just a few weeks ago signed multi-million dollar agreements with NVIDIA and AMD to supply chips for the next few years, and has also reached an agreement to rent computing capacity on Google chips, as share Wired. MTIA chips are designed for specific and internal tasks (inference and recommendation systems), not for training large language models, so this strategy is complementary to your chip plans with NVIDIA or AMD. Nor should we forget that Meta recently had to abandon its most ambitious training chip, known internally as Olympus, after the project became complicated in the design phase, according to counted The Information. Susan Li, CFO of Meta, confirmed at a Morgan Stanley event that the company still has the goal of developing processors capable of training models, but without giving more details. And now what. The real test of this bet will come when the chips are deployed at scale. The challenge at the moment is to guarantee HBM memory supply before a RAM crisis that is affecting the entire technology sector. Song himself recognized to CNBC that the company “is absolutely concerned” about it, although it stated that they have assured supply for their current plans. In the long term, we will see if Meta can achieve something similar to what Google did with its TPUs. Cover image | Mariia Shalabaieva and Goal In Xataka | OpenClaw has caused a real media earthquake in China. The Government has prevented its officials from using it

Telecinco audiences have been in free fall for four years and their recovery has come with an unexpected format: blind weddings

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He success of ‘Married at First Sight’ on Telecinco and the more than 410 million dollars generated by ‘Love Is Blind’ on Netflix show that realities Romantic and friendly blind weddings are no longer entertainment to watch on the sly and feel guilty. Now they generate very profitable franchises and, in the case of Mediaset, a welcome boost of oxygen to their disastrous audiences. Getting married without knowing each other: the origins. Well, the origins are the traditional weddings of convenience, but let’s talk about TV. In 2013, the Danish public channel DR3 broadcast the first episode of ‘Gift ved første blik’, where a panel of experts in psychology and compatibility paired strangers who would meet for the first time at the altar, getting legally married before starting to live together. The success in his country was immediate and generated the ‘Married at First Sight’ franchise, which has had 35 different versions before reaching Spain, where it was already seen in 2015 on Antena 3. In 2026 it reached a new version on Telecinco. The hearings. The result in terms of audience has been very stimulating for the Mediaset channel, after months of trying with launches and schedule changes that have not quite worked out. The premiere recorded a 13.9% audience share and nearly 947,000 viewers, leading its time slot, with a devastating 22.2% in the age group of 25 to 44 years. The following weeks consolidated and even improved those numbers, reaching 14.2%. 44% of viewers who saw the premiere repeated in the second broadcast, which indicates a level of loyalty that Telecinco needs like breathing. For this reason, it has already announced the renewal for a second season. We already know the context: Telecinco is going through a very serious audience crisisclosed 2025 with a 9.4% average annual share (the worst result in its history), which may end up impacting its advertising revenue. That is why in 2026 Mediaset is adopting a conservative policy, returning to its realities classics and experimenting just enough with programs like this one, new but with proven formulas. Blind dates. Meanwhile, Netflix finds success with a very similar format: ‘Love Is Blind’, which the platform premiered in 2020. In it there were no experts who matched the contestants, but rather a group of single men and another group of single women who got to know each other on dates without seeing each other physically, until couples were formed and we saw them becoming intimate in coexistence. Thirty million households watched it in the first four weeks of broadcast. The franchise has already spread to eleven countries, from Brazil to Japan. The figures for ‘Love Is Blind’. The data analysis company Parrot Analytics has estimated that he reality has generated more than $410 million in global subscriber revenue since its premiere. The secret of these stratospheric figures (and other realities platform romances like ‘Jugando con fuego’) is in its structure: fixed format, rotating casting with each season. It’s like a fictional franchise, but at a much faster pace, because each season is produced before the previous one ends. The cost of between 100,000 and 500,000 dollars per episode makes these programs much more attractive to platforms than fiction. When Netflix saw what it had on its hands (‘Love Is Blind’ remained among Netflix’s ten most viewed titles in the United States for 86 days in 2022) it did not put all its eggs in the same basket: it diversified the bet into different countries, each with its regional peculiarities, which multiplies income without doing so proportionally to the cost because, for example, the advertising is done. Furthermore, unlike the binge watching Common on Netflix, episodes are released weekly, which keeps the conversation going on networks. A historic format. They are not the first programs of this type: ‘Blind Date’, on ABC in 1949, when there were hardly any televisions in American homes, and ‘The Dating Game’ in the sixties They exploited similar starting points. What ‘Married at First Sight’ brought was the panel of experts that gave a pseudoscientific excuse to the fooling around between strangers and the inevitable marital quarrels. But what makes them a financial triumph is the economics of their production, which has turned Netflix’s proposal into one of the most profitable ideas in the history of the platform. In Xataka | Spotify and Netflix join forces, entering unexplored territory that has nothing to do with music, movies or series

Someone bet $30,000 that Maduro would fall the night before he fell. He has won $400,000

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Early on Saturday, January 3, a raid by the United States Delta Force broke into the Fuerte Tiuna military complex, located in the south of Caracas, to arrest Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores, the president of Venezuela and his wife. Shortly after, someone was looking at his account. Polymarket and he rubbed his hands: that same Friday he had invested $30,000 betting on Maduro’s departure. With his arrest on Saturday, he had obtained a profit of $436,759.61. How lucky. A new account and a lucrative “hunch”. Polymarket’s Burdensome-Mix account barely I was a week old on the PolyMarket platform, but in record time it became one of the most fervent and active in “predict”“ Maduro’s departure during the hours before the operation. In a few hours he had gone from injecting money when the bet investment was at bargain prices to skyrocket: his participation had obtained a total return of more than 1,333.33% and a profit of at least 1,233.33% more than what he bet in less than 24 hours. PolyMarket. Tyson Brody Many people may have been caught off guard by Maduro’s arrest, but it certainly wasn’t for everyone: there are people who anticipated events and earned thousands of dollars as a result. Whether for him pizzometer or looking at Polymarket and company, something was brewing. In fact, there are already those has developed a tool to track suspicious activity on Polymarket because yes, there are those who decide to invest in what Elon Musk will become president of the United States and throw away his money like that (spoiler: he is South African and the US Constitution vetoes the presidency to foreigners), but he has long since emerged as one of the best seers of immediate events. As explained one of the creatorsPolymarket API keys are available to everyone and from here, it’s a matter of analyzing new wallets, unusual sizes and repeat entries into certain market niches. Suspicious behavior like the one that took place on Friday, when his tracker flagged five different alerts hours before Operation Absolute Resolve happened. The market that was betting on Maduro’s departure rose strongly before 10 p.m. on Friday after being at very low figures during the previous weeks, as picks up The Wall Street Journal. Polymarket What has happened in Venezuela. Nicolás Maduro was captured by US special forces following Operation Absolute Resolve in an intervention that threatens international lawalthough the United States relies on its domestic jurisdiction. Yesterday he was transferred to Stewart Air National Guard Base, a military airport in New York, and later landed at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where he will face trial for drug trafficking and weapons possession. Donald Trump gave the details of the operation at the relevant press conference ensuring that “We are going to govern Venezuela until there is a safe transition” and that after the operation, American energy companies will take care of Venezuela’s oil industry. The official White House rapid response support account published a video where Nicolás Maduro was seen detained, being escorted through a hallway while he congratulated the new year to the people who were in his path. Tap to go to the post The insider trading of the prediction market. The Polymarket user’s operation draws so much attention that it seems evident that he knew what was going to happen in some way, which closes the circle to spheres very close to the president insofar as neither Congress nor his Defense Committee knew about this operation (much less had they authorized it, as he complained the governor of New York State on Twitter). Needless to say, what is known in financial markets as insider trading (trafficking of privileged information) It also happens in prediction markets like Polymarket, Kalshi either PredictIt and it is not only that it is allowed, but it is an ecosystem that favors it: Polymarket accounts are anonymous, global and transparent using technology from the blockchainso from there it is not possible to pull the thread of that lucrative operation. Furthermore, they are decentralized systems and operations are in USDCa stablecoin linked to the US dollar to avoid volatility and with very low commissions. The Polymarket phenomenon returns to its old ways. This is not the first time we have talked about Polymarket in terms of striking movements linked to politics, so Maduro’s thing is not something that is new. Without going any further, these markets came to the fore when they were revealed announcing a clear discrepancy in the 2024 United States Presidency elections compared to traditional analyzes and in turn, most accurate with respect to reality. With that move, French investor Freddi9999 struck gold: betting Due to Trump’s victory, his profits amounted to 85 million dollars, according to Bloomberg. Polymarket and company are not a mere betting platform like those for sporting events, but they have changed the discourse from betting to investmentwhich affects both linguistics and regulation. Thus, they are defined as “event contracts”, which allows them to sneak into the traditional financial system with the approval of leading players in the sector. like the owners of the New York Stock Exchange. The idea on paper is simple: as a user, you can express your opinion by buying or selling shares in eventual outcomes of events in operations executed between peers using smart contracts. Markets grow as they have more participants and prices mirror the perceived probability of an event occurring. It is clear that a lot of money can be made by predicting major news events, although we will have to see how long. In Xataka | Five years ago he worked from his bathroom on the brink of ruin. Today he runs a company valued at 8 billion In Xataka | I don’t bet, I invest: Polymarket and company have sophisticated gambling addiction to the point of making it indistinguishable from “investing” Cover | Chancellery of Ecuador from Ecuador, CC BY-SA 2.0 and Hanna Pad

that our feces do not fall into oblivion

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For decades, the intimacy of the bathroom was a forbidden territory even for the most invasive technology, a space culturally shielded from the modern obsession with constant body measurement. However, what a long time ago started in Japanaims to become the gold egg mine of the West: the business of human feces. The unexpected rise of “fecal data”. Bloomberg remembered it in a piece this past weekend that began with a scene that occurred recently and that symbolized the turning point: a gastroenterologist holding in hands a piece of feces dried on the set of a podcast, debating their form as if evaluating a piece of sculpture. The fascination by intestinal transitpreviously relegated to the clinical setting or to certain biohacker nicheshas jumped to the mainstream driven by an industry that identifies in fecal matter a vast new territory of data capable of anticipating diseases, adjusting lifestyle habits and recording dimensions of health that until now escaped the digital radar. What began as humor, modesty or taboo has become the basis of an emerging market in which bathroom technology giants and biomedical startups see a completely virgin field comparable, in potential, to the early days of the smart watch. From taboo to smart device. The jump is not accidental. The almost simultaneous appearance of two products from giants in the sector (the line Neorest by Toto and the sensor Kohler Dekoda) demonstrates that the industry has decided to turn the toilet into an ecosystem of continuous physiological analysis. For companies that have been innovating in the domestic environment for decades, the bathroom represented the last intact space, and at the same time the most intimate and emotionally charged, a place where people isolate themselves, reflect and lower their defenses. The new devices are supported precisely in that stillness: algorithms, optical sensorsspectroscopy and small cameras work silently to analyze parameters such as color, consistency, volume, hydration, hidden blood or patterns linked to gastrointestinal inflammation. In the Toto model, the toilet itself take the initiative: illuminates the material, captures its fall, compares it with the Bristol clinical scale and sends conclusions to the user’s mobile phone in less than a minute. They are systems that do not require discipline, manual registration or will: the bathroom operates as an automatic laboratory integrated into the daily routine. Toto’s Nearest The clinical leap. Although at first glance it may seem like a technological extravagance, the medical logic behind these devices is compelling. The specialists they underline that serious diseases (from inflammation to colon cancer) begin to manifest themselves subtly in the fecal pattern months or even years before severe symptoms appear. Hence a toilet capable to detect changes before a patient reaches “six or eight bloody liquid stools” can literally save lives. In a context in which health systems increasingly treat pathologies associated with lifestyle, a discreet and automatic home detector is a prevention tool. first order. For vulnerable people or groups with a higher incidence of intestinal diseases, technology can shorten diagnostic times, avoid hospitalizations and reduce healthcare costs through continuous monitoring that was previously unthinkable. From Japan to Silicon Valley. The expansion of the sector is not limited to Asia: American companies like Toi Labs They have oriented their technology towards nursing homes, hospitals and care centers, where the taboo disappears in the face of necessity. In that area, the fecal monitoring provides critical information on hydration, nutrition, risk of infections and evolution of chronic pathologies. In parallel, researchers as Park Seung-min have taken innovation to the extreme, designing prototypes capable of identifying users through anal topographyan idea as bold as it was problematic that was finally discarded due to its obvious implication in terms of privacy. Your project evolved to Kanaria Healthwhich seeks to develop a toilet capable of acting as an early warning system, not only in digestivebut also in hormonal or metabolic processes, from ovulation to drug detection. Institutional interest in Asia and the United States confirms that governments see this technology as a public health instrument, capable of anticipating problems in vulnerable populations without increasing pressure on medical services. Kohler Dekoda Sensor The intimate dilemma. But this technological advance runs into the most delicate wall of the 21st century: privacy. Physiological data is, by its nature, much more sensitive than the pulses of a watch or the calories counted by an activity bracelet. In a scenario in which some governments have used health information to persecute citizens (as is happening in the United States after legal setbacks on reproductive rights) an inevitable question arises: who will guard the toilet data? Extreme cases, such as political leaders who travel with private bathrooms to avoid leaks, they serve as a reminder of the strategic value of these samples. For users, accepting a device that analyzes blood, hormones or illicit substances means trusting that this information will not be exploited, hacked or prosecuted. The challenge for the industry is to demonstrate that the health benefit outweighs this risk, generating safe, anonymous and shielded systems. Obsession and risk. The expansion of smart toilets also reveals a certain tension of our era: the balance between healthy monitoring and anxiety due to excess of data. As with fitness devices, there is a risk that users end up “chasing their own tail”, interpreting every minor variation as a problem to the point of paranoia. At this point, the experts remember that the real value is in medium-term trends, not in compulsive daily observation. For those who do not suffer from digestive diseases, the usefulness can (or should) be marginal if it is not integrated into a rational habit. Even so, the possibility of aligning diet, hydration and exercise with an objective intestinal pattern marks a qualitative leap in bodily self-knowledge. The immediate future. He advancement of the sector suggests that, in a few years, the smart toilet It will be as common as digital scales or air purifiers. The combination of cheap sensors, artificial intelligence and a growing culture of self-care pushes towards a domestic … Read more

We’ve been hearing for years that washing your hair too much causes it to fall out. It’s exactly the other way around

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Enter the shower, wash your head and when looking at your hands or the floor find a tangle of hair. A scene that can be everyday for some people and that can lead to conclusions, such as if you wash your hair very often. falls more and can lead to alopecia much earlier. Something that is nothing more than a myth that is quite widespread, but that dermatology tries to disprove. We don’t tear it off. The idea that you can have in mind with this scene that we have related is that by rubbing your head you are pulling out your hair from the roots. But this is a serious misconception, as you remember the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery (ISHRS) when pointing out that hair loss in the shower is not related to the mechanical action of rubbing. The hair that we see between our hands or on the floor was already loose before entering the shower as it found itself in what is called telogen phasethat is, fall or rest phase. The only thing washing does is make it come off more easily, something that also happens when we comb our hair or when we rub the pillow. Because that hair was already unsalvageable. This is something that the Spanish dermatologist Óscar Muñoz himself defends, who in a recent interview which stated that “h“There are those who believe that when they wash their hair falls out more, but the only thing they are seeing is the hair that was already destined to come off.” A bad idea. At the point of not washing your hair in order to save it, it is not the most advisable thing to do. Especially because it can have the completely opposite effect. All this because the fat accumulation or sebum in the hair, beyond being an aesthetic problem, it is also a breeding ground for fungus like the Malassezia which can give us more headaches. All this because a fungus on the scalp It generates a response from our body as it is a threat that results in seborrheic dermatitis that generates a state of inflammation in the scalp that aggravates androgenic alopecia, which is what we are seeking to control. The medical recommendation is clear: regular hygiene (even daily if necessary) with mild shampoos to keep sebum and inflammation at bay. The stress. A clear culprit It has nothing to do with shampoo. The. scientific literature confirm that there is a clear link between stress levels and the follicle since when cortisol, the classic stress hormone, is triggered, it is also generated an inflammation which can cause the follicle to go into a shedding phase. Although this effect is not seen at the time of upset or peak stress, but 2 or 3 months after the stressful event. The good news is that it is a reversible condition, but a sustained state of stress can create a vicious cycle that perpetuates the problem. What works. Although we have seen that the myth of not washing your hair does not work to prevent hair loss (it even aggravates it), the question we ask ourselves is what works. Science has a great battery of options such as broccoli and soybeans. In this case there are interesting studies in mice where broccoli extracts either phytoestrogens Soybeans modulate hair growth. Although logically eating more broccoli does not stop androgenic alopecia, it does open up very interesting avenues for further research in the field of aesthetics. The drugs. Beyond diet remedies, which can be more homemade, dermatologists have a range of treatments that offer great results. The first-line ones are finasteride and minoxidil, which have demonstrated with robust evidence behind them a good ability to stop miniaturization and improve capillary density. Although the fear of sexual adverse effects exists, trials indicate that the incidence rate is low. Images | Donald Teel Towfiqu barbhuiya In Xataka | When they told us all the advantages of intermittent fasting, they forgot one small detail: that it could make us bald.

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