internet

They work surprisingly well… until the Internet fails

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A few weeks ago I traveled to China to attend the Beijing Auto Show. If the three or four trips I have made to China have taught me anything, it is that there nobody, practically nobody, speaks English. Communicating is therefore a combination of hand signs, signals and three or four loose words. That, or use a translator like Google Translate, which has several problems: The live interpretation function requires an Internet connection, something that in China, for whatever reason, is not always available. You can download the languages ​​and write to translate, but only they understand you. Your interlocutor is still unable to communicate. You have to be with your phone in your hand all the time, something that is not always possible, comfortable or viable. Then it dawned on me. The last time I went (not here, but the previous one) I noticed that in all the stores I had entered they had a little gadget from a local brand called iFlyTek that translated in real time. And I thought, what if I try one of their devices in China? And that’s what I did. I took with me the iFlyTek AI Translation AirBudsheadphones with real-time interpretation, to try them out. And very well, until the connection stopped working. Now I understand everything iFlyTek AI Translation AirBuds | Image: Xataka The headphones are of the type clip in semi-open formatthat is, they hook to our ear from behind to leave the ear more or less free and bring the microphones closer to our mouth. Because no, they are not headphones for listening to music (which we can do, mind you, but it is not the best experience by any means), but for making calls and talking to people. And there they deliver beautifully. It’s curious. Almost all the headphones I have tried tend to bend their knees when making calls. The music is very enjoyable, but the calls are a bit meh. These are the complete opposite. I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone to listen to music, but I have never tried headphones that pick up my voice better. and the voice of our interlocutor (we will return to this later). The key to these headphones is that they translate and interpret in real time. Already I tried some from another brand years ago and the experience was mixed, but with these I was frankly surprised. They connect to an app called Bavvo which, as we will see later, I had to test in beta version, but in this case it worked correctly. I hope you have wide pockets | Image: Xataka The headphones pick up voice very, very well, even in distant and busy environments. In the middle of the BYD hall they were doing a demo with a frozen car and the presenter not only spoke Chinese, but she did it at a somewhat low volume. Added to the hustle and bustle of the hall, it sounded average. Well even there, The headphones were capable of picking up your voice, translating it and interpreting it to Spanish directly in my ear. The translation takes a while to start, but when it starts it doesn’t stop. The problem is that, by default, the voice is a little slow. I ended up setting it to x1.2, because at x1 I felt like I was falling behind in the conversation. The voice is a bit-quite robotic and makes it not overly pleasant to listen to for a long period of time, but that’s better than… not understanding anything. Then the connection stopped working and I was left without Internet. For much eSIM with VPN or a lot paid VPN Whatever you wear, the reality is that connectivity in China is a real pain and can fail. When I lost the Internet I was left without simultaneous interpretation. Luckily, it was shortly before I left the event, so it served me well enough. iFlyTek AI Translation AirBuds | Image: Xataka When I got home, and with a proper connection, I tried them again and, indeed, it is another movie. If in China they knew how to measure up whenever there was a connection, the question was whether they would be able to help me in one of the most tedious tasks you can do in this, our work as tech journalists: attending a conference in Chinese without subtitles or translation. Like the Xiaomi 17 Ultra, for example. Well yes, the answer is that they fulfill their mission with great solvency. By having a nearby audio source in a quiet place, the headphones pick up voice beautifully and translate well. I didn’t watch the entire conference, but the time I watched it I was able to follow it without the slightest problem. It has its things, because Chinese can be very poetic sometimes and the translation is sometimes too literal, but otherwise I must admit that I have no complaints. When the connection is good, the translation performance is very good If we talk about a conference in English, French or German, three quarters of the same. The interpretation is good and more than enough to follow the thread of a presentation or a talk. I did the exercise of following this TED talk in German without watching the video or activating subtitles, as if it were a podcast and, although the robotic voice that speaks in my ear in Spanish becomes heavy, I have been able to follow it without problem. iFlyTek AI Translation AirBuds | Image: Xataka It’s also possible to give a headset to another person and translate in real time between headsets, which is fine if the other person is trustworthy, but for me personally, It makes me a little sick. It is true that the headphones do not go into the ear and well, okay, but sharing headphones is, for me, like sharing a toothbrush: just because you can, doesn’t mean you have to do it, and even less so with someone you probably don’t … Read more

When Jeff Bezos asked his parents for $240,000 to found Amazon, they asked him only one thing: “What is the Internet?”

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In 1995, Jeff Bezos decided quit your stable job and well paid as an analyst on Wall Street to set up a business selling books online. At that time, Jeff Bezos was not the millionaire he is today, so he went to his parents and asked them for help investing in Amazon. His father’s first question was clear and direct: “What is the Internet?” Miguel and Jacklyn Bezos didn’t know much about this new technology, but they knew that their son was determined to make the most of it. According to the writer Brad Stone in the book “The dream store. Jeff Bezos and the era of Amazon“, Bezos warned his parents: “There is a 70% chance you will lose everything. “I just want to make sure I can come home for Thanksgiving if this doesn’t work out.” Without hesitation, the Bezos invested a good part of their life savings in their son’s project. Today, that initial investment has grown by 38,200% and is worth more than the GDP of Iceland and the Maldives combined, making his father so rich (his mother died in August 2025 at age 78) that, according to what he said The Wall Street JournalMiguel Bezos is hiring a CEO to manage the assets of his Family Office. The origin of a historic fortune In the mid-nineties, Mike Bezos, of Cuban origin and with family ties in a small Valladolid municipalitydecided to entrust the family savings to his son Jeff and, in the process, becoming the first investors after the founding of Amazon. According to documents According to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Bezoses’ initial investment was through the purchase of 582,528 Amazon shares and, just a few months later, they expanded their investment by purchasing 847,716 more shares. In total, 1,430,244 shares at a purchase price of 17 cents per share. That leaves a total investment of $243,141.48. As and as revealed Bloombergit is quite a fortune for a couple formed by a single mother who had to raise her son alone with a very poor salary while studying a career, and of a Cuban immigrant who arrived in the United States at the age of 16. After thirty years, if the initial investment had remained intact it would amount to about $92.9 billion. However, after various sales and donations of shares, the family wealth of Jeff Bezos’ parents exceeds $40 billion. CEO wanted for a fortune According to estimates by The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg, Aurora Borealisthe company in charge of managing Miguel Bezos’s assets, was founded in 2020 and, if it were a person, it would rank 48th among the largest fortunes in the world. list of Forbes millionaires. Aurora Borealis is currently one of the family offices most relevant in the world due to its volume of assets. The company manages assets of a very diverse nature, from those founding shares of Amazon to investments in funds and philanthropy projects through the Bezos Family Foundation. The growing assets of Jeff Bezos’ father reached such levels that it became necessary to professionalize the team that manages it from Aurora Borealis, signing as CEO to Valeria Alberola, an executive with experience in managing large assets. For reference, the new manager of Amazon’s founding fortune managed the investment and philanthropy activities of Ben Walton, heir to Walmart. Their goal, to make Miguel “Mike” Bezos even richer. The story of Miguel Bezos’s fortune is not only relevant for having facilitated the founding of one of the largest companies in the world, it is also a unique phenomenon since it is unusual for a family loan of just under $244,000 to end up making the founder’s parents millionaires, and not external investors. Was a risky bet which turned out well, but could also have left Jeff Bezos banished from Thanksgiving dinners and his parents with a serious financial problem. In Xataka | Technological millionaires boast of ecological awareness. Their superyachts and private jets tell another story Image | Flickr (George W. Bush Presidential Center)

Jeff Bezos asked his parents for their life savings to found Amazon. They only asked him one question: “What is the Internet?

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In 1995, Jeff Bezos decided quit your stable job and well paid as an analyst on Wall Street to set up a business selling books online. At that time, Jeff Bezos was not the millionaire he is today, so he went to his parents and asked them for help investing in Amazon. His father’s first question was clear and direct: “What is the Internet?” Miguel and Jacklyn Bezos didn’t know much about this new technology, but they knew that their son was determined to make the most of it. According to the writer Brad Stone in the book “The dream store. Jeff Bezos and the era of Amazon“, Bezos warned his parents: “There is a 70% chance you will lose everything. “I just want to make sure I can come home for Thanksgiving if this doesn’t work out.” Without hesitation, the Bezos invested a good part of their life savings in their son’s project. Today, that initial investment has grown by 15,500% and is worth more than the GDP of Iceland and the Maldives combined, making his father so rich (his mother passed away a few weeks ago) that, according to what he said The Wall Street JournalMiguel Bezos is hiring a CEO to manage the assets of his Family Office. The origin of a historic fortune In the mid-nineties, Mike Bezos, of Cuban origin and with family ties in a small Valladolid municipalitydecided to entrust the family savings to his son Jeff and, in the process, becoming the first investors after the founding of Amazon. According to documents According to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Bezoses’ initial investment was through the purchase of 582,528 Amazon shares and, just a few months later, they expanded their investment by purchasing 847,716 more shares. In total, 1,430,244 shares at a purchase price of 17 cents per share. That leaves a total investment of $243,141.48. As and as revealed Bloombergit is quite a fortune for a couple formed by a single mother who had to raise her son alone with a very poor salary while studying a career, and of a Cuban immigrant who arrived in the United States at the age of 16. After thirty years, if the initial investment had remained intact it would amount to about $72.6 billion. However, after various sales and donations of shares, the family wealth of Jeff Bezos’ parents exceeds $40 billion. CEO wanted for a fortune According to estimates by The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg, Aurora Borealisthe company in charge of managing Miguel Bezos’s assets, was founded in 2020 and, if it were a person, it would rank 48th among the largest fortunes in the world. list of Forbes millionaires. Aurora Borealis is currently one of the family offices most relevant in the world due to its volume of assets. The company manages assets of a very diverse nature, from those founding shares of Amazon to investments in funds and philanthropy projects through the Bezos Family Foundation. The growing assets of Jeff Bezos’ father have reached levels that have made it necessary to professionalize the team that manages it from Aurora Borealis, signing as CEO to Valeria Alberola, an executive with experience in managing large assets. For reference, the new manager of Amazon’s founding fortune managed the family office of the Walton familyfounders and owners of the Wallmart supermarket chain. Their goal, to make Miguel “Mike” Bezos even richer. The story of Miguel Bezos’s fortune is not only relevant for having facilitated the founding of one of the largest companies in the world, it is also a unique phenomenon since it is unusual for a family loan of just under $244,000 to end up making the founder’s parents millionaires, and not external investors. Was a risky bet which turned out well, but could also have left Jeff Bezos banished from Thanksgiving dinners and his parents with a serious financial problem. In Xataka | Technological millionaires boast of ecological awareness. Their superyachts and private jets tell another story Image | Flickr (George W. Bush Presidential Center)

The strangest museum on the internet has a collection of plugs from around the world that reflect electrical chaos

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Between 1880 and 1930, different countries around the world made an important electrical decision: choosing a type of plug. More or less, everyone did it on their own. When they wanted to realize the amalgam of pegs they had created, it was too late: they were trapped in the infrastructure they had installed. Bridging the distance, like It happened to the Madrid metrowhich turns left. As a consequence, more than a century later you have to put an adapter in your suitcase when you go on a trip. As you travel around the world you can discover them all, or more quickly and educationally: you can also visit the Museum of Plugs and Socketsa Dutch website (one of the old school ones, judging by its design) that has catalogued, photographed and rigorously explained all the domestic sockets that there are and have been on the planet following the technical references of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), the international organization that has to bring order to this chaos. The 15 plugs in the world. The IEC uses the letters A to N (curiously, Thailand’s O came later) to classify the types of domestic plugs existing in the world and Here you can consult the complete list. The museum links each letter with its corresponding standard: the NEMA for North America (letters A and B), the CEE for continental Europe (letter C), but be careful because Switzerland has the SN 441011 standard and the J plug, BS 1363 for the United Kingdom (letter G), AS 3112 for Australia (letter I)… each with its dimensions, voltages, pins and safety standards. From my own experience, I forgot to buy specific adapters a long time ago and opted for a universal adapter to live quietly in the hodgepodge. Because why not say it: from the point of view of practicality, this horde of pegs is a glaring failure of technical coordination unmatched in any other industrial sector. Types of plugs in the world SomnusDe via Wikipedia The failed attempt at a universal standard. In the 1930s, the IEC set itself an impossible mission (judging by the results): to achieve international standardization of domestic plugs and sockets. In 1986 he published IEC 60906 standard with that ambition. No need to say it went wrong. Only Brazil in 2002 and South Africa in 2013 adopted the IEC 60906-1 standard and even then, both countries allow multiple standards. The EU said “no, thank you” remembering Rocío Jurado and her “it’s too late now, ma’am.” With complete honesty, the European Commission recognized in 2017 that harmonizing the continent’s plugs would require transition periods of more than 75 years, an investment estimated at 100,000 million euros and would generate some 700,000 tons of electrical waste. That oddity called Switzerland. That strange case called Switzerland. It is no surprise that the Swiss citizenry likes to go it alone: ​​it is there, between Italy, France and Germany, but it does not belong to the EU nor does it use the euro. So, as we mentioned above, has its own plug defined by standard SN 441011 (until 2019 it was SEV 1011) and the J plug, which is only used there and in the Principality of Liechtenstein. In addition to being an “exclusive” plug due to how little it is used compared to others, it also has a particular geometry in the shape of a hexagon. Paradoxically, when the IEC designed what was to be the universal plug in 1986, it based its shape on the Swiss T12 plug, although with differences in the diameter of the pins and the displacement of the ground pin. The world tried to copy Switzerland to create a global standard, but Switzerland continued on its way. The plugs that said goodbye. The museum has an entire section dedicated to plugs that were developed as alternatives to current standards and have been out of production for years and some almost extinct. Some of the most striking cases are the British Wylex and Dorman & Smith, the impractical hook-shaped Hakenstecker or the Greek Tripoliki with three pins arranged in a triangle. Surely all of them now coexist in physical museums and in this digital museum that constitutes the best archive of the failure of global electrical standardization. In Xataka | What plug do I need depending on the country I am going to travel to and what are the best universal adapters Cover | Digital Museum of Plugs and Sockets

There is a million-dollar industry selling stoicism on the internet. His recipe for success is to do just the opposite of what Stoicism says.

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“My father is hooked on stoicism.” A few days ago, a Reddit user told thatin the last six months, his father had been deep into all kinds of YouTube videos about stoicism. “He spends hours watching (…) what seems AI-generated self-help garbage, made to validate ego and increase paranoia of the people.” “The strange thing is that real Stoicism seems like it is made to teach you self-control and emotional discipline, but it has become more reactive, cynical and critical,” he explained. And, really, It’s not strange at all. ‘Stoick’ is a soccer player Shiromani Kant The truth is that, today, becoming a Stoic does not mean reading Marcus Aurelius but rather following accounts, buying books, subscribing to newsletters, watching videos and consuming content. A content that, by the way, is adjoining with pop psychology, “CIA manipulation tactics,” mind games, “reading people” techniques, and other genres of conspiracy thinking. We have been hearing for years that philosophy “is back”that masculinity is in crisis and does not stop looking for alternative options, that a handful of ideas from 2,000 or so years ago are changing the way thousands of people face their daily lives. It’s time to treat that “wave” for what it is: a huge lie. No matter where we look (and except for a small group of popularizers that fit in the trunk of a car), Stoicism is neither a real philosophical movement nor a collective practice. Modern stoicism is a niche market for content creators—books, newsletters, subscriptions, merchandising, courses—who make a living precisely from the discomfort they claim to alleviate. The boom of pop stoicism Jan Demiralp As I have told on other occasionsin 1965, during the Vietnam War, the pilot James B. Stockdale He was returning from a combat mission when he was hit by enemy fire. Passed seven years in unspeakable conditions; between torture and humiliation specifically designed to break him from the inside. But he was lucky. In his own words, the only thing that helped him overcome captivity was the memories of a small book that had been given to him during his time at the university: the Enchyridion, the best-known book by Epictetus, one of the great Stoic philosophers in history and to whom the motto “sustine et abstine“(“endures and renounces”). In it, in the EnchyridionStockdale understood that the “reflective mind” could distance itself from brute and instinctive emotion and return to what was experienced with clarity of judgment and equanimity to find peace of mind. Not only did he understand it, but he spent much of the rest of his life spreading and defending it. In general terms, Stockdale is the fundamental piece of the reconversion of classical Stoic philosophy into pop culture; the place where Epictetus connects with late US capitalism. I tell this to make it clear that the fashion for stoicism is nothing new. It has been on the rise for half a century and, at least a decade, completely out of control. What has happened in recent years is that this ‘boom’ has been consolidated as an industry. The r/Stoicism subreddir (where I got the story that opens this text) went from 840 members in 2012 to 610,000 in 2024. On TikTok, the hashtag #stoicism gathers 645,000 posts. Ryan Holiday He has sold more than 10 million copies of ‘The Daily Stoic’, has more than three million followers on Instagram and two on YouTube. And, in Spanish, we also have examples of this genre of philosophical self-help. Philosophical self-help? We might think that calling a philosophy more than 2,000 years old “self-help” is audacious on my part. However, academic criticism specialized in Stoicism has reached (it has been difficult, but it has reached) the same conclusion. Massimo Pigliucci (professor at the City College of New York and one of the most important and rigorous neo-Stoics) coined the term ‘broicism’ in 2019 to discover the ‘masculinist’ appropriation of this philosophical school. In 2022, Mark Dery published “How Stoicism Became Broicism“. This is a very interesting text (and debatable in some points) that very clearly x-rays the problem I am talking about. In 2025, in fact, the researcher Erhan Ağaoğlu published an analysis about stoicism on TikTok which makes clear the identification between this “stoicism” and the patterns of aggression, self-isolation, self-improvement and the vindication of traditional masculinity. There are those who believe that this is problematic and those who argue that it is not. What there is no doubt about is that it is not stoicism, neither classical nor modern, nor of any kind. It is, in any case, ‘ultra-processed pseudo-philosophy’ ready to consume in the context of the attention economy. A very successful one, yes: not all cultural products show that ability to scale in this marked way. Why is this happening? Jaime Spaniol Sociologists who are working on the topic agree that there are, at least, three factors that explain it. The first is the “replacement of traditional frameworks related to the in-person community (religious or not).” The hypothesis is that a sector of the population has emerged (especially young and male) that does not have ‘frameworks of meaning’ to manage adversity. Stoicism, like all the movements that are emerging around it, have become a kind of ’emotional toolbox’ without religious or therapeutic component. The second factor would be a certain “crisis of masculinity.” That crisis is what They have been trying to suture the ‘manosphere influencers’ since Jordan Peterson and it is part of the tectonic movements that are turning Stoicism into ‘pseudophilosophy’. Finally, the ‘platformization of absolutely everything’. That is, the dynamics that facilitate and promote platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, YouTube or X. Where some people want to see a renewed interest in philosophy, there is a push by algorithms for short, imperative and motivational content. And what’s the problem with all this? The first consequence of this phenomenon is that what we now understand as ‘stoicism’ is nothing like classical stoicism. But surely that is not the most important thing. Because the … Read more

one where Google, Amazon and Microsoft pay a toll so that we all have internet

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In March 2024, several countries in East Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia began experiencing strange internet outages and massive slowdowns in digital services. The origin was not in a cyber attack or an electrical blackout, it was on a ship reached during an attack in the Red Sea that had accidentally dragged its anchor onto the seabed and damaged several undersea cables essential for global communications. Iran’s plan B. For decades, the Strait of Hormuz was seen as the great bottleneck energy of the planet, the route through which much of the world’s oil circulates. It happens that the war with the United States and Israel has made Iran discover something much more important: the Internet also circulates under those waters. As? Apparently, CNN told that Tehran has understood that the submarine cables that connect Europe, Asia and the Gulf are an infrastructure as strategic as oil tankers, and it wants to convert that geographical position into a new source of power. The idea that begins to emerge in Iranian discourse is very clear: if the world needs to pass data under Hormuz, large technology companies such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft or Meta should accept some kind of tolllicense or submission to Iranian rules. In other words, Hormuz would no longer be just a lever about global energybut also about the digital economy. The invisible cables. The great Iranian strategic discovery is born from an inconspicuous reality: almost all global traffic data depends on physical cables laid on the seabed. Banking payments, cloud services, military communications, streaming platforms, stock market operations and much of the artificial intelligence infrastructure pass through them. Some of these cables cross areas near Iranian waters, especially in the Persian Gulf. Although many of the international routes were designed to directly avoid Iranian territory, Tehran understands that proximity is enough to put pressure. The regime has understood that interrupting or threatening these corridors could generate enormous economic and psychological damage, even without firing a missile. The threat of submarine warfare. At this point it should be noted that Iran has not promised to sabotage cables directly, but it has launched deliberately ambiguous messages about possible interruptions or damages. Precisely this ambiguity is part of the strategy. The country has underwater drones, mini-submarines and capable naval forces to operate in the Gulfwhile its regional allies have already accidentally demonstrated in the Red Sea the enormous impact that a simple underwater incident. The real Western fear is not, therefore, a total internet blackout, but rather a chain of disruptions: financial delays, problems in data centers, degradation of business networks or difficulties in repairing critical infrastructure in the middle of a military crisis. In a world completely dependent on data, touching these cables means little less than touching the global economy. The inspiration of the Suez Canal. Tehran clearly looks to the Suez Canal as a model. Egypt has been monetizing for decades its strategic position by charging tolls and taking advantage of the passage of submarine cables between Europe and Asia. Iran wants to partially replicate that logic, although applied to a much more hostile and militarized environment. In fact, the media linked to the Revolutionary Guard they already talk about compulsory licenses, passage fees and exclusive rights for Iranian companies in charge of maintenance. Legally the scenario is complex and many operators will probably ignore the threats while US sanctions are in place, but the simple fact that Iran is openly raising this idea demonstrates how it has changed his strategic vision on Hormuz. The new discovered power. In short, and as we have already seen with crude oil, what is truly important is not whether Iran will one day manage to collect money from the big Western technology companies, but rather that it has discovered a new form of pressure global. For years, Tehran believed that its greatest weapon it was oil. Now you have understood that the world depends even more on invisible data flows that happen under the sea. That is possibly the great geopolitical transformation that Hormuz is currently revealing: a classic maritime strait is also becoming a critical point for the global digital economy. And that means that future international tensions will no longer revolve solely around the control of energy, that too, but also the control of the infrastructure that supports nothing more and nothing less than the internet. Image | Nara, Wikimedia, Collinpetty In Xataka | The war in Iran is doing something that not even Ryanair imagined: making 20 euro flights a relic of the past In Xataka | Dubai has come to the same conclusion as Russia. To protect your oil from drones there is something better than missiles: giant cages

Orange’s “life insurance” to protect the internet

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More than 95% of international internet traffic travels over cables that are at the bottom of the sea. Africa and Europe start from very different positions, but they are essential to sustain essential services on both continents, such as the cloud or financial systems. Thus, while Africa It is the continent where demand grows the most bandwidth in the world and faces the problem of relatively old cables designed for much lower traffic than the current one, Europe has consolidated strategic nodes in places such as Marseille, Lisbon or the south of England, but is still exposed to the same risks of concentration and aging. Via Africa is born from both needs, the new submarine cable that Orange and an open consortium of seven operators have announced. The Via Africa cable. Via África is a new submarine fiber optic cable that will connect southern Europe with South Africa bordering the Atlantic. It will have European connection points in the United Kingdom, France, Portugal and the Canary Islands. On the western African coast, its nodes will be in Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea, Ivory Coast and Nigeria, although both the final complete route and other points in southern Africa are still pending definition. In any case, The reason for this cable is improve the diversity and resilience of international communications between both continents. Sketch of the layout. Orange Why is it important. To start with, this cable is the answer to that veteran and undersized infrastructure of the African continent and its growing demand at a time when cloud services, artificial intelligence and teleworking are skyrocketing traffic. Furthermore, the African Atlantic coast has some critical points due to the high concentration of marine infrastructure, such as the Ivory Coast, where several cables converge in the same physical place. This example is not coincidental: in March 2024 they failed the four cables that were there at that time at the same time due to a rockslide. The result? 13 West African countries with connectivity at minimum levels for weeks. But the problem is not only African: when these cables fail, Europe loses traffic capacity to the continent, dragging down operators, companies and cloud services that depend on that route. What Via Africa proposes is precisely a geographically different route, that is, an alternative that breaks that dependency. Six cables, the same physical point in the Ivory Coast. Submarine Cable Map Context. The African Atlantic coast is already served with cables such as SAT-3/WASC (2002), WACS (2012), ACE (2012), MainOne (2010) or Google’s Equiano (2023), but some of these systems are aging or have proven to be vulnerable. This new cable adds to a wave of investment in African submarine infrastructure, such as the recent 2Africa in Meta (2025) or the Medusa in the Mediterranean (2026). Orange needs few introductions: it manages more than 450,000 kilometers of submarine cables around the world through its subsidiary Orange Marine and in fact, last year charge two new cable carrier vessels to reinforce its maintenance and deployment capacity in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, with delivery scheduled in 2028 and 2029. How are they going to do it?. At the moment the only thing that there is closed It is a Memorandum of Understanding for its construction by a group of investors among which are CanalinkGUILAB, International Mauritania Telecom, Orange Group, Orange Côte d’Ivoire, Sonatel and Silverlinks. From here, the process starts with a route study to determine the optimal route in terms of resilience, technical feasibility and economic efficiency. Likewise, the business consortium will prepare the bidding process to select the cable manufacturer, the next step. Yes, but. The announcement is a memorandum with big names behind it, not a construction contract, which means that the stage of the operation is extremely early: it could take years until it is operational or even never materialize. In this sense, logically there are still important unknowns pending that range from the total layout and its length, all the nodes, the manufacturer and installer and the route sheet with a date for its entry into operation or the cost. Furthermore, Via África is going to enter a space that is not free: Google already operates Equiano on the same coastal strip and Meta has its own cable circumnavigating Africa with the very long 2Africa of 45,000 kilometers. In short, it will have to compete with the infrastructure of the large hyperscalers. In Xataka | The submarine cables belonged to the teleoperators, and now the big technology companies are controlling them In Xataka | The first great Atlantic submarine cable that connected us to the internet says goodbye for a simple reason: it was too expensive to repair it Cover | Bryan Christie Design and Orange

Reddit was one of the last refuge platforms for Internet users. You just took a step in a worrying direction

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The social network Reddit has become the best source of human data on the internet. It is in fact one of the few remaining refuges from that “human network of networks” with which it all began, but this singular and anarchic social network has just taken a disturbing step: wants to force you to install their app when you use it from your mobile. uncomfortable notice. Millions of people use Reddit daily on their mobile, but in recent days they have encountered an uncomfortable message: a notice that forced them to use the Reddit mobile application instead of being able to continue using the browser to enjoy the famous thematic subreddits. There are many those who they have warned of the problem with diverse messages in the forums of the platform. In one of the most popular subredits, r/technology, the message that talks about the topic has nearly 20,000 positive votes and 4,200 comments. What Reddit says. Company spokespersons indicated at Ars Technica that Reddit has launched a test “for a small subset of mobile users that encourages them to download the app after visiting the site. These users are already familiar with Reddit and we have seen that the experience is much better for them on the app.” Personalization = data collection. The platform argues that if users take advantage of the app they can have a tailored news thread and better searches, but criticism has not been slow in coming. The Ars Technica editor who wrote on the subject himself commented how this notice has also reached him—not us, perhaps because we are not in the United States—and this sounds disturbing. And it sounds like that because it is just how apps like TikTok, X or Instagram work, which have managed to polish their content recommendation algorithms so that the user ends up condemned for doomscrolling. And that would point to Reddit’s ambition that we simply do nothing but be on Reddit. The danger of making your users angry. It is ironic that a platform like Reddit, which has always largely depended on the traffic brought to it by Google, decides to break with that way of reaching its forums. Those responsible for the platform seem to be confident that its content is essential enough for its users to convince them to download and use the app. The question is whether this will not cause an exodus of users. A small solution. Apparently is it possible avoid the message if we clean and we empty both the cache and the cookies of the mobile browser that we use to browse Reddit. This temporary patch can help you continue using Reddit directly from the mobile browser you use. Wall Street rules a lot. This apparent degradation or evolution of the service certainly seems to be aimed at maximizing profit. By going public, Reddit has to prove to shareholders that it can generate growing revenue. And if you can lock users into your official app, you can ensure that no one (including AI) can access that valuable content without going through your controls. Image | Brett Jordan In Xataka | Reddit, nude scenes and a forum out of control: this is how a Dane ended up being convicted in a case that sets a precedent

Vevo was all over the internet in the 2000s. Today is just another forgotten episode of the old music industry

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In December 2009, two of the biggest record labels on the planet organized a party in New York with Bono as the guest of honor to celebrate the launch of something that, according to them, was going to give them back control of the music business on the Internet, which, as we will now see, was not going through its best moment. It was called Vevo, an acronym for “Video Evolution.” The (r)evolution lasted less than a decade: the fundamental changes in the business and the arrival of a different way of understanding music videos relegated it to the secondary level of nostalgia for millennials which is today. Bad times. In the late 2000s, The music industry was collapsing.. Income from record sales had been falling for years due to the combined effect of piracy and chaotic digitalization, unbeknownst to the labels, and which was very far from the orderly and official moment that it is experiencing today thanks to streaming platforms. For example: YouTube (which had already been bought by Google in 2006) accumulated hundreds of millions of video clip views without the labels seeing a single euro in compensation. Attempts were made to renegotiate the terms of that relationship, without success: Warner Music was the first to withdraw their entire catalog from YouTube in 2008. Ideaca. Doug Morris, then CEO of Universal Music Group and a central figure in the creation of Vevo, envisioned a way to enter the internet and video clip business when he saw his grandson consuming online video clips with advertising, which led him to ask how much money Universal was generating with those reproductions… The answer was obvious: zero. From that point on, Morris pressured companies like Yahoo and MTV to compensate him for playing his videos. He did end up reaching an agreement with Google. Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Vevo! Vevo officially launched on December 8, 2009 following an agreement between Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and EMI, with Warner Music Group joining years later, in August 2016. Vevo would provide the official catalog in high definition, YouTube would serve as a mass distribution platform, and both parties would sell advertising on that inventory. In October 2009, the Abu Dhabi Media Company already had invested about 300 million dollars to operate in the United States and Canada. Immediate result? Spectacular. In its first month it was already the most visited music site in the United States, surpassing Myspace Music. The economic impact was also rapid: according to Vevo’s CEO at the time, the average CPM of an online music video went from $3 before launch to more than $30 in 2013. In 2012, Vevo accumulated 41 billion views annually across its network, with a catalog of around 75,000 videos. By August 2013, Vevo had surpassed MTV in terms of digital viewership: 609 million video views versus MTV’s 261 million that month. Vevo Certified for artists who surpassed 100 million streams became an indicator of cultural relevance comparable to a number one on sales charts. Issues. However, Vevo’s structural problem was not the audience, but your delivery model. Although the company had a turnover of $250 million in 2013, more than 90% of that income was shared between labels, Google and music publishers. Universal and Sony captured 55% of the total and Vevo operated at a loss. It was, in practice, an advertising inventory manager without its own capital: it generated value for its shareholders, the labels and Google, but not for itself as an independent operating entity. In 2014, the company hired Goldman Sachs and The Raine Group to find a buyer willing to pay nearly $1 billion for the company. None appeared. Vevo ruled out the sale and announced that it would seek profitability through its own means. Change of course. In April 2015, Erik Huggers (creator of the famous BBC iPlayer) arrived as the new CEO. Vevo then wanted build your own applications for mobile and connected TV, reduce its dependence on YouTube and eventually launch a paid subscription service. They began developing apps for iOS, Android and connected TV platforms, but it was short-lived: the paid subscription project was canceled in February 2017, and Huggers left the position. Sizes and layoffs took place and the commitment to technological autonomy ended. Coup de grace. In January 2018, YouTube automatically migrated subscribers from Vevo-branded channels (such as “RihannaVEVO” or “JustinBieberVEVO”) to YouTube’s new Official Artist Channels. That same week, YouTube relaunched YouTube Music as a paid subscription service, directly competing where Vevo had tried to enter. Paradoxically, Vevo had broken even that year for the first time. But the proprietary model had never caught on, and without it, there was no reason to maintain the infrastructure. What’s left of Vevo. Vevo has not completely disappearedlike other projects of the time. The company pivoted to the connected television business and FAST channelsthe free shelves with advertising. Its library exceeds 900,000 video clips and generates approximately 25,000 million monthly views. The model is, ironically, the one that MTV never managed to make happen: a free music network supported by advertising, although in the case of Vevo, distributed over the Internet instead of cable. Vevo’s footprint is not entirely negative: it set the standard for the official high-definition music video on YouTube, created the monetization infrastructure that allowed video clips to become a business again, and demonstrated that the recording industry could negotiate on an equal footing with technology platforms. But the fact that the video clips have ended up becoming amateur choreographies on TikTok is something that, of course, the CEO of Universal could not foresee. In Xataka | MrBeast created an extreme survival challenge with the goal that no one could overcome it. Until ‘Juan the Mexican’ arrived

compulsive internet use

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For decades, the image of teenage rebellion has been linked to the bottle, secret tobacco or the first joint you take. However, young Spaniards are currently greatly reducing the consumption of these productsalthough to replace it they are choosing to have a quite compulsive addiction to the internet or to the scroll infinite in some applications like, for example, TikTok. The decline of alcohol and tobacco. The data that gives us joy regarding the most harmful consumption among our young people comes from the survey STUDIES 2025 prepared by the Ministry of Health through the National Plan on Drugs. Here you can see how, while in 1994 81.4% of young people between 14 and 18 years old admitted to having tried alcohol on some occasion, now in 2025 this figure has fallen to 73.9%, with consumption in the last 30 days standing at 51.8% of cases. If we focus on both alcohol and cannabis, we also observe all-time lows in consumption in the age group between 14 and 18 years. Although the current problem is focused on flavored vapers or electronic cigarettes, which do have a large presence in this age group compared to the attempts made to regulate it. The new drug. If we were left with only this half of the photograph, we might think that today’s teenagers are simply the healthiest in history. But here the same Ministry of Health, via another report of research, points to the relationship between young people and technology, which explains, in part, why they spend less time on the street drinking bottles or trying tobacco. In this way, there are several important data here: 19.4% of students aged 14 to 18 have problematic use of the Internet. 15.3% show clear signs of problems with social networks, trapped in addictive design mechanics, which is what we know as doomscrolling. 5.2% present symptoms compatible with video game addiction, something that has also been motivated by the famous ‘loot boxes’ that promote addiction to games of chance, since if they are looking for a specific aesthetic change, they must be lucky to find it in a virtual box or envelope. We have a great challenge. What these reports tell us is nothing more than that the problem that we suffered in our youth has mutated and has been updated to something much more modern and difficult to detect. Before, the smell of tobacco was a clear sign that something was happening, but today a teenager may be developing a severe addiction locked in his room, while his parents think he is just “on his cell phone.” This has meant that public policies are now focused on this type of addiction, also with some measures that are already being heard, such as the veto on access to social networks. to minors under 16 years of age in our country to control these addictive practices that the applications try to reinforce. In Xataka | Snapchat has almost 1 billion users and invented the king format of the Internet. He still doesn’t know how to make money with it

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