impossible

Breaking the console market seemed impossible. The Steam Machine has the potential to do it: Crossover 1×31

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The arrival of the Steam Machine It took us all by surprise a few days ago. The console and PC hybrid developed by Valve may become a real meteorite for traditional consolesbut be careful because not everything has been said. Valve, which became famous after the development of the mythical ‘Half-Life’ended up becoming the great PC video game distributor of our time thanks to Steam. Although they already tried to attack the gaming PC market with their Steam Machines a decade ago, now the approach is very different. That first attempt came too soon, but things have changed a lot since then. Valve has made its Steam OS operating system (based on Linux) an excellent alternative to the one offered by Windows on PCs. Above all thanks to Proton, the layer that allows you to play Windows games on Steam OS as well as on Windows… or even better. We have seen the first clear example of the experience that Valve could offer in this sense in the Steam Deckwhich have been a modest success (about 6 million consoles sold), but which have sparked interest in portable consoles that even Microsoft has decided to manufacture with partners like ASUS. Now the Steam Machine proposes to be a promising alternative to the Xbox Series S/X and the PlayStation 5 and combine the best of both worlds: a console-type experience and almost the entire catalog of video games available in the world of Windows PCs. The only question is whether he will make it, and that’s where enters the price factor. It is a fact that we will know at the beginning of 2026, and it will be from then on that we will know if this machine works or not. We are talking about all of this precisely in this Crossover 1×31we hope you enjoy it! On YouTube | Crossover In Xataka | The question is not whether Tim Cook will soon stop being CEO of Apple, but who will succeed him: Crossover 1×30

TCL has entered the television market by doing what seemed impossible: democratizing the Mini-LED

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TCL has become one of the big revelations of 2025 in the television market thanks to its commitment to screens Mini-LED in the mid-range segment. This commitment to bringing high-end technology to the mid-range has caused the Chinese brand’s sales to skyrocket and has made it one of the main rivals to beat for manufacturers such as Samsung or LG, which have seen how his quota was reduced of sales among mid-range televisions. Good proof of this is that our readers have chosen the TCL C6K Premium QD-MiniLED as the best entry and mid-range television in the Xataka NordVPN Awards 2025. What is TCL’s recipe for success? The keys to TCL’s takeoff For years, TCL was seen as a secondary Chinese brand in the smartphone segment. cheap televisions in Spain. However, its real position is far from that perception: it is one of the three largest television manufacturers in the world, only behind Samsung and very close to LG in annual shipment volume. According to Omdia data and Counterpointboth TCL and Hisense have surpassed LG in the number of shipments in key segments such as advanced televisions (Mini-LED, large diagonals and higher ranges). In this segment, TCL already has a 19% global share and its revenue share has increased from 13% in 2024 to 16% in 2025, illustrating its growth in the mid-range television market and the increase in its sales volume. He starting point of TCL expansion we find it in the local Chinese market, encouraged for government subsidieswhich served as a launching platform to finance the expansion of the brand to the rest of the world’s markets. Premium TV (mini-LED) shipping data from 2023-2024 Source: Counterpoint As pointed out the analysis from Omdia, the great turning point for TCL comes when the local Chinese market, until then its main driving force, slows its growth. In 2025, domestic sales fell 12.2% year-on-year, partly due to the end of the incentive and subsidy programs that boosted demand. This slowdown catches TCL with its homework done in the international market, so, with China slowing downTCL has had no choice but to turn to other markets. And that is where its change of scale begins. Europe, North America and Latin America have become its new growth scenario. In a global context where global shipments of televisions fell 0.6% In the third quarter of 2025, TCL managed to grow 2%, and not because of a stroke of luck, but because of a very fine-tuned strategy that mixes price, technology and brand visibility. Year-on-year growth in the different global markets Source: Omdia Spain has become a strategic commercial laboratory for TCL, where it offers a powerful mid-range, marketing highly focused on sports in general and soccer in particular (with sponsorships for the Spanish team) and an aggressive presence in stores. The result is that TCL already competes in practice with brands that traditionally dominated the mid-range offering such as Samsung, LG and Xiaomi. Especially on the annual sales podium in several large format categories with models from 77″ onwards. The secret of TCL’s success The explanation for TCL’s growth in the mid-range television market in Spain does not have a single person responsible, but it has a common thread: TCL understood before anyone else what the European consumer was looking for after the pandemic. One of those keys is offered Mini-LED panels. Until two years ago, Mini-LED was an almost exclusive territory of the high ranges of Samsung, Sony or LG. But TCL (just like Hisense), has taken it to the mid-range. This has been possible because its costs were reduced and it became an affordable option. Suddenly, a television with spectacular brightness, good contrast and more dimming zones than traditional LEDs stopped costing thousands of euros. That has given TCL the ability to build a catalog that no longer only competes on price, but also does it in terms of quality and, most importantly, without the size limitations imposed by OLED technology. TCL is one of the few manufacturers that, for example, has 98 and 115 inch screens and They are leaders in that segment. This variety of diagonals allows it to reach both those who want a television with more inches for less money, and those looking for a better image quality without paying the extra cost of OLEDs. Maintaining low prices for a technology such as Mini-LED, which provides a very noticeable leap in terms of image quality, is essential in TCL’s trajectory. While brands like Samsung, LG or Sony differentiate themselves through their own processors and algorithms, TCL has opted for another way: controlling everything from the factory, but focusing on the hardware (panels) which is what it really controls. For this reason, TCL televisions do not have image processing or algorithms as refined as those of Samsung, LG or Sony, which have dedicated their efforts to developing them. For now, that is not your battlefield. Their focus is on the mid-range and volume, where good “high enough” quality outsells any AI algorithm. This strategy eliminates intermediaries and significantly reduces the cost of each panel. Their production of Mini-LED screens increased in 2024 and 2025, which has allowed them to amortize the technology faster by applying very tight margins and making it cheaper even when the competition still reserves it for its premium models. TCL sponsorship of the Spanish team TCL’s strategy regarding its prices is very reminiscent of Xiaomi’s in mobile phones from a few years ago. That strategy consisted of selling units with almost no margin until they gained market share, consolidated the brand and, from there, went up a notch towards more profitable premium products with investments in their own R&D. In that sense, TCL would already be on the second step: consolidating the market. All this happens just before the 2026 World Cup, an event that historically boosts sales of large televisions. And there TCL has an ideal product: Large format mini-LED at prices well below the competition and with a brand image close to … Read more

This is how the “impossible” photo of the man falling into the Sun was made

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It seems like a montage, but it is so real that it has gone around the world just when AI was making surreal images stop impressing us. Andrew McCarthy’s “The Fall of Icarus” has shown that there are still ways to outdo the machine with technical precision and months of planning. Logistical madness. In the photo, a backlit silhouette appears to have launched itself in free fall over the Sun. It is the skydiver Gabriel C. Brown transiting in front of a particularly active solar disk. On the other side of the telescope, the famous astrophotographer Andrew McCarthywhich had begun planning the capture at the beginning of the year. It is, quite possibly, the first photo of this type, since the list of variables to control was insane. They needed the optimal sun angle, a safe height for Brown to launch from, and a perfectly calculated glide path between the sun and the camera. Three-way communication. It was 9 in the morning in the Arizona desert. McCarthy had his telescopes ready and was in constant communication with both Gabriel Brown, the skydiver, and Jim Hamberlin, the pilot of the paramotor from which he would launch. McCarthy followed the aircraft with his telescope and, once it was aligned with the Sun, gave the order. “Okay, I’ll see you,” he said over the radio. “Jump, jump, jump!” Brown jumped at about 1,070 meters above sea level with the engine idling to ensure a perfect angle. “I got it, man!” he heard him say on the radio. The sixth time was the charm. McCarthy told Live Science that the biggest challenge had been finding the paramotor in the sky. Although it was about 2.4 km from its position, the point of the shot was to capture in detail the Sun, which was 50 million times the same distance. It took the team six attempts to correctly align the aircraft with the photographer’s position on the ground. When push came to shove, they could only make one jump, as folding the parachute for a second attempt would have taken too long. Is it really not a setup? It is not, and the secret is in the telescope. As explained PetaPixelcarried a hydrogen-alpha filter to block all sunlight except for a very specific red wavelength that emits incandescent hydrogen. This is how those infernal images of the solar chromosphere are taken: the layer of active “fire” on the surface of the Sun, with its filaments and protuberances especially visible during times of greater solar activity. It is not very different from how other photos of rockets and space stations passing in front of the Sun are taken, but with extra planning and audacity so that the protagonist of the image is, for the first time, a tiny person. Images | Andrew McCarthy In Xataka | We are used to seeing the Perseids looking up. This is what they look like from space, looking down

Faced with impossible housing prices, an alternative is gaining weight: living in a motorhome

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If you consult the online dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy you will see that, at least for academics, a mobile home It is a “vehicle with its own engine conditioned to make life in it.” In the Spain of 2025, that of the housing crisishe floor deficit and the price escalationcaravans increasingly have more of the latter and less of the former. They are still vehicles, but above all they are spaces in which their tenants live: they sleep, have breakfast, cook, wash, study or spend time reading or watching movies. They do not do it out of vocation (at least not in all cases), but out of necessity. Although they work, have a stable job and a salary, the money is not enough to access an increasingly tight real estate market, so they choose to do their daily lives in the few square meters of a motorhome. Housing, impossible. that the housing is getting more expensive (a lot) is nothing new. In fact, its price is one of the issues that most take away sleep to the Spaniards and has already motivated massive protests, some with a hint of tenant strike included. However, it is good to review a few data to understand the scope of the housing crisis that the country is experiencing. According to Idealista, rents have skyrocketed 96% in just a decade, a percentage that falls short if markets such as that of Palm, Tenerife either Malaga. The situation in the purchase and sale market is not much more buoyant. The increase in the price of the square meter, which fool around now with the values ​​prior to the brick bubble, have complicated access to the market, forcing families to dedicate years of salary to pay for housing. Result: homes that exceed the “effort rate” recommended economic and young people who only have one option left if they want to become owners: inheritances or donations. What if I move to a caravan? In view of all of the above, more and more people are asking themselves the question: if the market has become so draconian, if it prevents any ability to save and requires assuming exorbitant prices, why not change apartments for caravans? There is no data to help follow the trend, but a search on Google or diving on YouTube to check that abound the news of people who moves into mobile homes. It occurs in Balearics and Canary Islandsvery places touristifiedbut also in cities like Madrid. By necessity, by strategy. Although the price of housing is (almost) always the backdrop, not everyone who moves into a caravan does so for the same reason. There are those who take the step pure necessitybecause their salary does not allow them to rent a regular home, and those who decide to spend a stage of their life living in a caravan in order to gain savings capacity and make the jump at some point (without pressure or rush) into the buying and selling market. That is the case of Antonio, a 37-year-old civil servant who I counted these days to The Country What is it like to live in a caravan in Madrid. Although he has a stable job with a salary of about 1,900 euros per month, Antonio, a native of Alcoy, has lived in a motorhome since 2020. The formula gives him flexibility when he has to travel for work, allows him to have more private space than he enjoyed when he shared a flat and, above all, it seems like the smartest option today. “I live in a motorhome right now because I want to, not out of necessity. Although obviously if housing prices were different I would move to a house, my future project. What happens is that after this satisfactory experience I have become more demanding and I am not willing to be drowned like I did for 10 years,” relates. His mobile home, a second-hand 2003 Fiat Ducato Carioca, cost him 22,000 euros and by living in it, utility costs have been significantly reduced. Right now they don’t reach 100 euros a month. Are there more cases? Of course. The profiles vary greatly from one case to another. Also from one region to another. There are those who live in motorhomes because it is “the only solution” that finds itself in a market of skyrocketing prices, who are forced to opt for that exit while they work temporarily in tourist destinations and those who prefer to enjoy “their” handful of square meters before sharing a conventional and larger apartment with other colleagues. “I have everything in four meters, but it is mine and I don’t have to share a flat,” confessed in April to The Vanguard Begoña, a 61-year-old woman who lives in a motorhome in the Balearic Islands. “Here I have my kitchen, next to it I have the oven and the refrigerator and the field. I pay for parking, but it is infinitely cheaper than renting,” agreed in 2023 during a talk with La Sexta Carlos, a 23-year-old engineer from Murcia who had a job opportunity in Madrid. When he started looking at apartments he decided that the best thing was a caravan. Is there data? One of the big problems in tracking the trend is that it lacks official data as such. The INE census shows that in Spain there are 7,200 people registered in shacks and caravans, but that category does not have to fit exactly with that of people who choose to live in motorhomes and the statistical institute itself recognizes that when preparing the census it encountered “a certain limitation”, so the overall figure is probably higher. As a reference, in 2024 the local press pointed out that in Ibiza alone there were almost about thirty of caravan settlements. Even was spoken of locals with houses who chose to move into caravans in the high season to rent their houses to tourists. The goal: get some extra income in the summer. More registrations. … Read more

This is how an AI made an impossible pregnancy possible

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For couples facing a diagnosis of male infertility severe, like azoospermia (the absence of sperm in the ejaculate), the path is usually bleak. The solution goes through different very expensive techniques and in many cases invasive that can become inaccessible and leave a couple without options to have a biological child. But science has found a way to provide a solution to this problem, and artificial intelligence is the protagonist. The milestone. Columbia University has achieved the first clinical confirmation of a pregnancy using technology based on artificial intelligence to recover a sperm in a sample where there was none a priori. Now, this breakthrough offers hope for couples who are affected by severe male infertility. This success was reported in an especially difficult case: a couple with a 19-year history of infertility and many failed attempts to conceive a child. In total, the couple faced 19 cycles of egg retrieval and two testicular removal procedures that were not producing any results. But finally AI achieved something that traditional methods could not. Sperm hunter. The system used for this case is called STAR, which is the English acronym for Sperm Tracking and Recovery and it has three elements: A microfluidic chip: a small disposable plate through which the semen sample flows. High-speed imaging: A system that captures 300 frames per second as the sample progresses. A deep learning AI: the brain of the operation that will analyze all the images in search of the sperm that will give a new life along with the egg. The system with all these elements has the capacity to analyze the sample at a rate of 400 microliters per hour, processing up to one million images during this time. AI, which is based on architecture “You Only Look Once“, scans each frame in real time in search of sperm candidates so that they can later be extracted from the sample. But logically something so important cannot be entrusted to a single frame. That is why the AI, to be sure that it has seen a sperm, will use at least three frames where it is seen before giving the good news. Although there is one detail to resolve: a sperm is like a needle in a haystack (or even worse). This means that the moment there is a confirmed positive there is no time for a human to ‘catch’ it, but rather the system has a microfluidic mechanism that is activated and isolates the specific sperm in a volume of 300 nanoliters that can now be used by an embryologist. A success story. The couple in the studio was a major challenge. The man, 39, had azoospermia and had already gone through multiple manual searches and failed surgical extractions. The 37-year-old woman had a very low ovarian reserve. At first, embryologists began to look for some type of sperm in the semen, but there were no good results. That is when STAR was chosen to analyze 2.5 million images in approximately 2 hours, giving a result of seven sperm and two of them being mobile. Those two sperm, which would have gone completely unnoticed by the human eye (unless one was very lucky), were recovered and injected into two eggs. Both eggs fertilized and developed into embryos, which were transferred. Thirteen days later the good news arrived, as the patient had her first positive pregnancy test. A new path. As we mentioned at the beginning, this new AI-based identification system gives a lot of hope to couples who may have many problems getting fertilized due to problems finding any sperm in the ejaculate. Something that is currently in the research phase and is in the United States, so its landing in Europe may take some time. In Xataka | Having many children sounds great as a way to preserve the species. Until you start passing genetic mutations

you will just have to achieve the impossible

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It was the last step that separated Elon Musk from getting the biggest salary bonus in history US business. Tesla’s shareholder meeting has given majority support to its CEO who, if achieved, would become the world’s first billionaire. “Other shareholder meetings are boring, but ours are amazing,” said an exultant Musk on stage in front of some of his shareholders. Tesla’s plan, valued at nearly a trillion dollars, is based on the progressive unlocking of payments in the form of packages of shares and is conditional on Musk meeting a series of very ambitious objectives related to the company’s growth and technological development over the next decade, giving Musk tight control over the decisions the company makes. Approved and with grade. With the support of 75% of shareholders, Tesla has approved a plan that could give Elon Musk up to 423.7 million shares in the company over the next ten years. The estimated valuation of these shares exceeds one trillion dollars, a figure that, although extremely high, strictly depends on certain very specific and demanding objectives being met. It should be said that it has not been a simple negotiation, since Musk has faced important shareholders such as the Norwegian sovereign wealth fundwhich controls a stake of 11.7 billion, spoke out against of the Tesla CEO’s compensation plans clarifying that “while we appreciate the significant value created under Mr. Musk’s visionary role, we are concerned about the overall size of the award.” As a counterpoint, Musk controls approximately 15% of Tesla’s shares and, like any other shareholder, could also vote in favor of his compensation plan. “What we are about to embark on is not simply a new chapter in Tesla’s future, but an entirely new book,” Musk told a packed audience of shareholders during the act of voting. 1 billion, but with conditions. To receive the total remuneration, Elon Musk must meet different progressive milestones that will unlock 12 packages of shares that can only be made effective after seven years, which not only guarantees to keep Musk motivated with financial incentives, but are also golden handcuffs to keep him as CEO of the company for the next decade. The package of shares will provide Musk with control of 25% of Tesla’s shares, which implies that this package of shares is not only about economic compensation (very generous, yes), but it is about gaining more weight in the company and allowing Musk to impose his criteria in front of the board of directors. Something that I had been demanding for a long time to prevent they made him “an Altman.” Complicated milestones. Milestones Musk must reach to receive the full package include: raising the Tesla market capitalization from the current 1.5 trillion to 8.5 trillion dollars. This first condition is one of those that has most convinced the popular investor Cathie Wood, who wrote from her In addition, Tesla must manufacture and deliver 20 million vehicles, just at a time when Tesla sales in Europe and other markets record their worst figures. To put it in context, Tesla sold 55 units of its Model 3 in Spain during the month of October. It’s not going to be easy. Freelance future. Another of the great challenges that Musk will face to get his billion-dollar bonus, and one of the main reasons why Musk wanted more control within Tesla, are the future plans for the company’s autonomous car and humanoid robots. To unlock part of its salary package, Tesla must deploy one million autonomous taxis, reach ten million subscriptions to its self-driving cars, and sell one million humanoid robots. None of these three projects is 100% functional at present and there are only prototypes and partial tests. “I think it’s going to be the biggest product of all time, by far. Bigger than cell phones, bigger than anything. I guess one way to think about it is that every human being on Earth is going to want to have their own R2D2 or C3PO,” assured the CEO of Tesla in his speech to his shareholders. Perhaps the least commented detail is that, with this approval, Tesla gives the green light to the investments in xAIso Musk would have already achieved one of his objectives: obtain a constant line of financing that increases the value of your AI company. If you don’t get it you don’t get paid. The compensation plan does not contemplate a traditional fixed salary for Elon Musk for the next decade. All your compensation will be linked to the achievement of the set objectives. In addition, Musk would have to remain CEO for at least ten years to collect the package in full. This part has been one of the most talked about, since it gives Musk an almost messianic role at the head of Tesla in which he either takes the entire prize or leads Tesla to absolute failure. “This is not pay for performance. It is pay for power without control,” said to The New York Times Thomas DiNapoli, head of the New York public pension fund, which controls part of Tesla’s shares. It should be remembered that, currently, Musk receives a symbolic salary of a dollar a year for running the company. In Xataka | The shocking thing is not that Elon Musk has lost $80 billion in 2025: it is that others have earned $102 billion Image | Flickr (Gage Skidmore)

Ukraine has opened Russia’s cruise and ballistic missiles. War is impossible if your allies make weapons for you

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He fed up with Ukraine with the hole that exists around international sanctions it is palpable and numeric. kyiv intelligence has hundreds of reports in your possession that reveal that Russian drones have passed those sanctions for the lining. And not just drones, even in the tanks. The latest: Ukraine has begun analyzing parts of Moscow’s latest cruise and ballistic missiles. And what they found is a deja vu. Clandestine circuit. Three and a half years after the start of the invasion, Ukraine continues to dismantle the last Russian missiles and drones and find tens of thousands of parts inside made in the westthe majority of his “allies” (microcontrollers, sensors, connectors, converters) from countries that have theoretically embargoed the supply: United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan. Of course also, Moscow’s allies like china. In fact, Zelensky put in more than 100,000 the foreign components found only among 550 vectors used in a single recent bombing, confirming that the sanctions have not turned off the tap: if anything they have made it more expensive and slowed down, but not dried up. The escape mechanism. It we have counted before. The mode of entry does not require sophisticated espionage, but rather exploiting loopholes in global trade: pieces “dual use” sold to civil actors who then they deviatecomponents placed on the market before sanctions, networks of shell companies and brokers in lax jurisdictions, and triangulated purchases via third countries that do not apply or execute controls. The sanctions gave the West three years to close the gaps, but they also gave Russia (and those who traffic for it) the same time to learn to get around them. In practice, it is a market: if you pay more, there is always someone willing to move the merchandise with layers of opacity sufficient to break traceability. Iran and North Korea. Moscow relies on two veterans of the sanctioning regime: Iran (which has spent decades refining the engineering of commercial border hopping) and North Korea (capable of moving components and complete systems despite being formally embargoed). Cooperation with both not only transfers material: it transfers method. Both logistical routes and corporate and financial camouflage techniques now migrate to the Russian military supply chain. What is possible and what is not. They remembered on Insider that the West hardens the perimeter: compliance guides for companies, “catch-all” to block sensitive exports (even if they are not listed), border inspections, criminal threat to repeat offenders, closures of loopholes when Ukraine identifies specific pieces. But even so, the regime is not airtight: global trade in components is massive, triangulation via third countries It is structural and already exists “pirate” production replacement that replicates or falsifies sanctioned parts. By design, control is reactive: it is as if each new closure encourages Moscow to seek an alternative route. Partial effectiveness. Plus: just because embargoes haven’t cut off the flow doesn’t mean they’re irrelevant. London estimates that the sanctions have deprived Russia of at least 450,000 million of dollars and have multiplied by up to six the price of dual pieces, draining war liquidity and adding temporary friction to the Russian military chain. This, a priori, penalizes rhythms, quality, scaling and maintenance, even if it does not prevent the material from arriving. The structural limit. If you want, the export control It is an instrument of soft power: its real power depends on what the rest of the world is willing to do and tolerate. It can raise the cost, strangle necks, penalize intensities, but it can hardly seal an economy-state Russian size connected to global intermediaries willing to charge for the risk. The result is an industrial war where the blockade is never binary (flows / does not flow), but rather marginal: raising the cost per Russian shot, reducing the cadence, pushing failures due to logistical stress and buy time, but hardly prevent a chip made for a laptop I ended up controlling the guidance of a kamikaze drone over a Ukrainian city. Image | Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation In Xataka | After Cubans and North Koreans fighting alongside Russian troops, new guests have appeared in Ukraine: Chinese In Xataka | In 2023, a pilot from Ukraine had an idea for Star Wars. Not only did it go well: his kamikaze plan has rewritten the war manual

There are foreign bus companies trying to compete with Alsa and Avanza. And Spain is making it impossible

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The Spanish bus map is in the process of changing. Routes that do not make money, corridors that no one wants to access, companies that want to completely liberalize the sector and the doubt of, to what extent, foreign companies can enter to play in a foreign country. And Spain is trying by all means to ensure that the latter does not happen. What’s happening? If we adhere to Spanish regulations, right now a company dedicated to the transport of passengers by bus You cannot make international trips with stops to drop off and pick up travelers within Spain. Not, at least, permanently. The rule only allows this service to be carried out temporarily, in order to protect national routes. That is, this prevents a company from opening a route, for example, between Lisbon and Paris and from picking up and dropping off passengers within Spanish territory at its stops within Spain (in Madrid and Barcelona, ​​for example). It is understood that if this is possible it would be a direct competition to those who have been awarded those corridors. How do buses work in Spain? Spain uses a concessional model for its bus lines. This means that a broker goes out to tender and companies present their proposals playing with the price. The best offer is the one takes the concession and the one that begins to operate during the agreed years. The system has its advantages and disadvantages. Confebús, an association that defends this model, points out that it gives security to the client because transportation is guaranteed during the agreed years and a route cannot be abandoned. Companies like FlixBus are contrary because they understand that competition is limited and that they prevent the company from adapting to new circumstances. These circumstances, for example, leave some expired concessions or concessions that have never been put out to tender. It is especially serious on bus lines where a high-speed railway operates in parallel, since the train is much more competitive in price and time. Of course, the main people affected by the abandonment of these lines are the residents of towns with intermediate stops. And what about international travel? For some time now, Europe has wanted to liberalize the sector, as it has done with trains. Despite this, Spain is resisting and although at first it was proposed to jump to the direct competition model, finally we want to maintain the concessional system but with profound changes in the current map. With this system, services through cabotage are prevented. That is, the company picks up and delivers passengers within the same country along an international route. This is the argument of Avanza and Alsa to defend the latest ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union that has ruled in favor of Denmark before the opening of a file from the European Commission. However, the case that both companies put forward is not very representative of the open debate in Spain. What has happened in Denmark? Denmark has regulated the occasional bus service that operates through cabotage in the country to a maximum of seven calendar days in a month. The formula is also applied at other times in France, as both companies use in a statement collected by 20Minutes. Understanding that this contravened community rules, the European Commission has opened a file against Denmark but the Court of Justice of the European Union closes it, understanding that Denmark does not prevent the service, it only regulates it. That is, a company can act with a discretionary service through cabotage but within the regulations established by the country. But… what is discretionary? Here is a big part of the issue. European bodies have been discussing Whether or not Denmark allows cabotage service through discretionary routes but not regular routes. Discretionary routes are those that do not have a fixed route or established times. That is, they do not always leave on the same day of the week and at the same time from a specific city, for example. They are the typical routes for trips by tourists or supporters who go to watch a soccer match in another country. The limitation of those seven consecutive days within the same month that Denmark applies is designed so that foreign companies do not compete unfairly with their national companies, offering a regulated service camouflaged as discretionary. Implications in Spain? None. This is what FlixBus defends. The travel company maintains that this regulation, contrary to what Avanza and Alsa points out, has nothing to do with the regular and international routes that companies like them propose for our country. Routes in which they would use cabotage to make the line more efficient. They give as an example the route between Trier (Germany) and Madrid that FlixBus has requested with intermediate stops in Zaragoza and Barcelona that passengers could use to move within the national territory. The line has not been authorized and FlixBus appeals to the resolution of the European Commission of April 16 that forces Spain to open its lines to this service. Spain filed an appeal against this decision was dismissed by the Court of Justice of the European Union. What is Spain doing? Place all obstacles to the entry of new actors or the liberalization of bus lines, as demanded by Europe. The approval of the Sustainable Mobility Law On October 8, 2025, article 50 was eliminated, which allowed certain routes to be authorized in free competition. That is, for now, the battle to open new international routes that allow the transfer of travelers within the same country continues. Spain has the obligation to comply, if we adhere to what is required by the European Commission, but, for the moment, it still has not given the green light to this possibility. Photo | FlixBus and Eleazer Glez In Xataka | Until a few years ago, the towns between Madrid and Valencia had trains and buses. Now they only have one problem: the AVE

It was practically impossible for a satellite to “ruin” the photo of another satellite. With Starlink already go twice

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Until recently, the idea that a terrestrial observation satellite accidentally captured another satellite in the flight was as an unlikely coincidence as finding a needle in a haystack. Space is an immense emptiness and The satellites move very quickly. But in the last year we have witnessed this phenomenon twice. And on both occasions, the protagonist has been a Spacex Starlink satellite. In a secret military base in China. On August 21, one of the new Satellites WorldView Legion of Maxar It passed over the Gobi desert, in China, with the aim of photographing the Dingxin Air Base: a high secret installation where China proves its most advanced fighters. The satellite achieved the image, but an unexpected intruder appears in it. A silver ship with two large solar panels and three spectra of colors cross Maxar’s photo, creating what an executive of the company described on LinkedIn as “accidental art.” What we see is actually a single satellite, the Starlink 33828immortalized in different wavelengths on one of the most sensitive places of the Chinese army. The trick is in the camera. The curious multicolored image is explained by how observation satellites and the incredible speed at orbit move. These satellites do not take a single image, but a series of images in different spectral bands almost simultaneously: a high resolution (panchromatic) and several in different colors (red, green, blue …) of lower quality. Then, an algorithm merges all this information to create the final photo, already clearly color. The problem of that “almost simultaneously” is almost. When the objective is the earth, which is relatively still with respect to the satellite, the system works perfectly. But when another satellite crosses in the field of vision at a relative speed of almost 1,400 meters per second (about 5,000 km/h), the camera captures it in a slightly different position in each of the color layers. The result is that spectral effect with several colored shadows. The Google Maps Starlink. This is the second time that a Starlink satellite accidentally sneaks into an alien photo. As We count in April 2025a Reddit user discovered a very similar effect on a Google Maps image on a rural Texas area. On that occasion, the photo was taken by a Pleaiades European satellite, and the result was even clearer: five silhouettes of the same object, corresponding to the close, red, blue, green and pancromatic infrared bands. The enormous amount of satellites in low orbit is turning an astronomically unlikely event into a new normality. Why are Starlink satellites. Because they are a majority. Spacex already has More than 8,300 Starlink in orbitmore than all other satellite constellations together. With its plans to expand the network to more than 30,000, the probability that one of them is crossed in the viewfinder of another satellite is growing. But also, they fly low. To offer a low latency internet connection, the Starlink operate about 500 km altitude in the low terrestrial orbit. This is the same orbital “highway” that most use the earth’s observation satellites, such as the Worldview Legion of Maxar (which are 518 km). His paths are destined to cross. Beyond the visual anecdote, these images are the symptom that the low orbit is increasingly congested, which forces perform constant evasion maneuvers To prevent collisions. Image | Maxar In Xataka | What types of satellites exist: guide not to get lost in a gigantic network of which we are increasingly dependent

“It is impossible to make an electric car with SEAT if we want to earn money”

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The current interim CEO of the brand has put a brake on any short and medium term electrification plan for SEAT, focusing the entire electricity bet of the group in Cupra. In fact, it has been in the Munich Motor Show where some of the coupra models that will mark the future of the brand have been seen. An electric SEAT that does not arrive. “Today it is impossible to make an electric car with SEAT if we want An interview With the media. The shadow of An electric volkswagen for 20,000 euroswhich would materialize according to the company in 2027, unbalance all SEAT electrification plans. “If Volkswagen sells at that price, how much should Seat sell?” Haupt continued. The Raval Cupra makes an appearance at the IAA Mobility. Image: Cupra A two brand strategy. The decision to keep Seat out of the electrification responds to a clear commercial logic that HAUPT himself explains: “Seat today is an ideal complement to coupra, because they are in different segments, aimed at different customers.” While Cupra is positioned right now as the premium and sports brand that can assume electrification costs, Seat will remain in the field of combustion and hybridization. To this strategy is added the launch next month of The new versions of Ibiza and the Aronademonstrating that the company wants to continue betting on renewing its range of supervent vehicles. Cupra takes the electrical prominence. The group’s electric future is concentrated exclusively in Cupra, which next year will launch the ravalits entrance model from 25,000 euros with up to 450 kilometers of autonomy. This vehicle will occur in Martorell next to the Volkswagen Id.polowith an estimated capacity of 300,000 units annually between both models. HAUPT has also presented in Munich the Cupra Tindayaa concept car that will reach production “at the beginning of the next decade” and that marks the new brand design language. Of figures goes the thing. In the first semester, Seat and Cupra barely reached an operational benefit of 38 million eurosand Haupt It has been clear on the need to “reduce our cost structure.” Tariffs to the coupra tavascan manufactured in China have negatively impacted these results, although the manager is optimistic about a resolution before the end of the year after negotiations with Brussels. The future is still electric, but not for everyone. Despite how resounding his words have been with Seat, Haupt maintains that “the day will come where I suppose that the amount of electric cars will exceed combustion. That will allow us to improve component prices and make the electric car more affordable for the consumer and cheaper for us.” Meanwhile, the group continues to make the decision to play with Cupra and Seat to satisfy its entire audience. Cover image | SEAT In Xataka | Volkswagen presents the ID. Cross concept and the least is the car: the buttons return and forget the rare names

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