market

Is it worth paying more for the most compact smart ring on the market?

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The market of wearables in format of smart ring It is in a moment of maturation and one of the undisputed kings of the sector, Oura, has made a move. With the recent launch of Oura Ring 5the company seeks to protect its throne against some increasingly aggressive rivals. However, the Oura Ring 4 It is still a very powerful option in stores and often has good offers. If you are thinking about making the leap to invisible technology, we analyze in depth what changes, what remains and which of the two models best adapts at your finger and your budget. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links OURA Ring 4 Smart Ring The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Technical sheet of both Oura smart ring models feature oura ring 5 oura ring 4 thickness 2.28 mm (40% more compact) 2.88mm broad 6.09mm 7.9mm weight Between 2 and 2.69 grams Between 3.3 and 5.2 grams materials Aerospace Titanium Titanium sizes available From 6 to 13 From 4 to 15 autonomy Between 6 and 9 days Between 5 and 8 days Water resistance 100 meters (IP68) 100 meters (IP68) price (from) 429 euros 379 euros subscription 5.99 euros per month (mandatory) 5.99 euros per month (mandatory) The key differences to note Design: the Oura Ring 5 no longer looks like a device tech Without a doubt, the greatest evolution of Oura 5 It’s your “slimming“. Although the Oura Ring 4 was already stylish at the time, it still felt like a slightly thick or technological ring compared to a traditional wedding band. On the other hand, the Oura Ring 5 has achieved reduce its total volume by 40%. At only 2.28 mm thick, it is very discreet and blends perfectly with conventional jewelry. The largest size of the Ring 5 (2.69 grams) weighs less than the smallest Ring 4 size (3.3 grams). If it could previously be annoying to sleep with the previous model, the new one solves this problem completely. Of course, you have to be careful with the sizes. To achieve this size, Oura has had to sacrifice options. The Oura Ring 5 It is only available in sizes 6 to 13while the Oura Ring 4 ranges from 4 to 15. If you have very thin or very large fingers, the previous model is still your only option. Sensors and precision Both devices use LED light combinations (red, green and infrared) along with temperature sensors and accelerometers to monitor your health 24/7. The difference lies in the physical layout. By downsizing on Ring 5, the sensors now protrude less but they make better contact with the skin. Oura says that although the Ring 5 traces 12 signal paths (compared to the Ring 4’s 18), its new algorithms and improved component power offer even more accurate and stable heart rate and blood oxygen readings during nighttime movements. The software does not discriminate (for now) One of the most honest points from Oura is that the big software news reaches both generations. The ecosystem releases powerful tools such as Health Radar (designed with Resmed to measure nocturnal blood pressure and breathing patterns), the AI medical advisor Counsel Health and metrics for users using GLP-1 weight loss medications. So you won’t miss out on any of these health benefits if you decide to save and opt for the fourth-generation model. Autonomy: being more compact does not make it impossible for the Oura 5 battery to last longer It can be thought that a ring 40% smaller would house a tiny battery, but Oura has redesigned the battery to improve autonomy. The Oura Ring 5 promises between 6 and 9 days of actual usescratching an extra day of average autonomy compared to the 5-8 days offered by the Oura Ring 4. Both models They are loaded using their own basealthough the Ring 5 now has an optional very convenient aluminum travel case, sold separately. So… which model to choose The initial outlay of the Oura Ring 5 starts in the 429 euros for its standard finishes (silver and black), scaling up to 529 euros if you are looking for the new premium finishes like Deep Rose. For its part, the Oura Ring 4 is part of the 379 eurosa difference that usually widens when we find specific sales. In both cases, remember add the 5.99 euros per month subscription to unlock your metrics, which is mandatory on both generations. If you still hesitate between the Oura Ring 4 and the Oura Ring 5, here is the key to choosing. Buy the Oura Ring 4 if: You are looking for the best quality-price ratio: The software, graph and health analysis that you will see on your smartphone are exactly the same. You have an extreme size: If your finger requires a size 4, 5, 14 or 15, Ring 5 does not directly manufacture your size. You take advantage of an offer: If you find it discounted by a margin of more than 70 or 80 euros compared to the new model, the smart purchase is to go for the previous generation. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links OURA Ring 4 Smart Ring – Rose Gold The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Buy the Oura Ring 5 if: You are looking for maximum comfort: If you are a light sleeper or are not used to wearing rings, the Ring 5’s smaller millimeters and grams justify paying for the novelty. You want it to pass for real jewelry: Its aesthetics are impeccable and the internal sensors are barely noticeable when touched with your finger. You want to stretch the battery to the maximum: Its small extra autonomy guarantees you forget about the charger for more than a week. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide … Read more

China manufactured more solar panels in one year than the planet can absorb. Now the market is devouring itself

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In early 2026, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz shook energy markets. Consumers, frightened by the volatility of fossil fuels, looked in all directions for alternatives. What they found was a disconcerting paradox: the planet had—has—a historic surplus of clean, cheap energy. There was no shortage of solar panels. There were plenty of them. And no one really knew what to do with them. Economist Adam Tooze summed it up bluntly in his column Financial Times: “Clean energy, on a scale that would have seemed utopian at the time of the Paris Agreement in 2015, is now within our reach. The price of solar panels has plummeted. And yet factories are paralyzed.” It’s not rhetoric. It’s a diagnosis. After a huge increase in investment since 2020, Chinese companies reached a production capacity of 1,000 gigawatts of solar panels per year. To get an idea: in 2023 global demand was only 451 GW, according to Energy News. Chinese production of solar cells that year—588 GW—already doubled international demand. And they continued building. The result was what economists call “involution”: a spiral of destructive competition where companies destroy each other with none winning. More than 40 Chinese manufacturers have gone bankrupt, been acquired or delisted. A third of the staff of the surviving big five were laid off. JinkoSolar, the world’s largest supplier, registered in 2025 a drop in revenue of 29%, a drop in gross profit of 86% and net losses of 4.45 billion yuan. In this way, in June of last year, more than 30 manufacturers They agreed to an OPEC-style pact to stabilize prices and curb supply. Six months later, the result was a disaster: far from stabilizing, production reached historic highs, installations tripled and losses continued to accumulate. “Since when are solar panels just another commodity? They are a technological miracle. They make us cultivators of the sun,” details Adam Tooze in his column. And in all that time, the price of a solar module fell to $0.10 per watt, according to EnkiAI —well below the $0.16/W production cost of the most advanced TOPCon modules. It is, strictly speaking, the largest climate technology sell-off in history. This is not a steel crisis. It’s something else When economists talk about Chinese overproduction, the debate usually revolves around steel, cement or electric cars. But Tooze makes a distinction worth hearing: Solar panels are no ordinary commodity. They are the result of half a century of research—from NASA spinoff programs in the 1970s to the big energy push of the Carter era—and, along with batteries, they are the master key to a sustainable future. Wasting that surplus is not just an economic problem. It is a civilizational irrationality. According to the OECD, China invested less than $18 billion in sector support over 15 years to build an industry capable of providing more clean energy than the world can easily absorb. That figure is less than the cost of building a medium-sized international airport in Europe, or what the US spent on a single Gerald Ford-class aircraft carrier. The concentration of power in the supply chain is also unprecedented in the history of energy. China controls more than 80% of the entire global solar production chaindirect result of the plan Made in China 2025 with which Beijing decided to stop being the world’s cheap factory and become its technological supplier. By the end of 2025, its operational module capacity exceeded 900 GW, several times the total global demand. The five largest Chinese manufacturers concentrate more than 50% of the market. LONGi Green Energy alone shipped more than 45 GW in 2025 – more than the entire US domestic manufacturing capacity (73 GW). Never in the history of energy has a single nation so completely dominated a key technology for the decarbonization of the planet. Not even oil at its peak. And the climate paradox is painful: since the Paris Agreement of 2015, a scale of deployment like the current one would have seemed like science fiction. The goal was to stop global warming. The instruments to do so are manufactured and stacked in warehouses. What fails, Tooze points out, is coordination: what Keynes would call a global “chaos,” a catastrophe of collective planning. The global bet Chaos has its own correction mechanisms, even if they are painful. In China, the crisis has already forced the Government to act a few months ago, Beijing called for ‘concerted efforts’ to end price war. The proposed measures include capacity control, minimum guideline prices, mergers and acquisitions, and intellectual property protection “to promote the high-quality development of the photovoltaic industry.” In practice: the Chinese State orchestrating an orderly rescue of the sector that it itself encouraged to grow without limits. The consolidation had already started before. In August of last year, several players in the sector launched a plan for large manufacturers to jointly invest $7 billion in buying and closing the least efficient facilities, according to OilPrice.com. In practice, a cartel to stop the bleeding. Prices already reflect the shift. According to ABC SolutionsChinese modules have risen between 10% and 20% in 2026 due to the adjustment of overproduction and new logistics tariffs. Wood Mackenzie forecasts a further rise of 9%. The window for the big bargain is closing, although prices remain historically low. The critical variable for 2027 is how the surplus is resolved: through orderly consolidation or through new business disruptions. Meanwhile, Chinese foreign business continues to boom. As Tooze points out in the FTexports of Chinese solar technology to virtually every country except the United States are skyrocketing. And manufacturers have evolved: they now integrate batteries into systems to offer greater stability to the grid, pushing the product towards the complete solution instead of the isolated module. Storage batteries, which They have also reached historical lows in cost Pushed by the same dynamic of overproduction, they thus complete the package: panel plus storage, at a knockdown price. Domestic demand will also recover. China exceeded 1,230 GW of installed solar capacity … Read more

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

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

Now they are returning to Romania leaving a void in the labor market

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During the 2000s, Spain was the host country for many Romanian citizens. With the real estate bubble about to explode and a financial crisis in the making, the outlook in Spain was still better than that of the Romanian economy. Now, almost three decades later, those emigrants return to a growing Romania, leaving Spain without a valuable skilled labor. The Romanian exodus. According to Eurostat databetween 2010 and 2013, Romania’s population decreased by more than two million people. A good part of these people had emigrated to countries such as Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria or Israel. According to the INE data Regarding the foreign population residing in Spain in June 2013, the Romanian community was the largest in 2012 with 798,970 people of that nationality, closely followed by the Moroccan nationality with 771,632 people. The latest data from December 2025 available data reveal that, currently, the population of Romanians residing in Spain barely exceeds 609,270 people and has fallen to the third largest community in the country. Qualified workforce. Most of those migrants who arrived in Spain in the early years of the 2000s did so fleeing unemployment and the poor economic situation in sectors such as construction or agriculture in Romania. These new workers incorporated as labor for those sectors in Spain, and the second generation of those citizens was formed to become a skilled workforce for the Spanish labor market. The Romanian miracle. In recent years, the economic situation in Romania has given a turnaround. “When the Romanians overthrew its regime in a rapid (and violent) revolt in December 1989, it was one of the poorest countries in Soviet-dominated Europe. That is no longer the case. After a slow start, Romania’s free-market reforms took effect. The country’s economy has quadrupled in size since 1989, and it has joined NATO and the EU,” noted Daniel Fried, former US ambassador to Poland in a report for Atlantic Council. According to data According to the World Bank, the GDP Per Capita adjusted by purchasing power parity (PPP) of Romania has gone from 13,313 dollars in 1990 to 40,666 dollars in 2023, compared to the 31,639 dollars that Spain registered in 1990 and the 47,142 dollars in 2023. The most notable difference in the GDP of both countries was recorded precisely in the period of greatest migration of Romanians to Spain, between 2000 and 2012. This is what Csaba Balint, member of the Board of Directors of the National Bank of Romania (BNR), rated of the “golden era” of the Romanian economy. Coming home: exodus 2.0. After the invasion of Ukraine, the economic boom and the Romania GDP growth has slowed down, but continues at a rate of 0.7% in 2025. However, this upward trend has built the foundations so that those first migrants who arrived in Spain in the 2000s can return to their country, just as the Spaniards who emigrated in the 60s and 70s returned years later. According to the immigration data According to the INE, between 2024 and 2025 alone the population of foreigners with Romanian nationality decreased by 11,193 people, chaining the downward trend of recent years. This workforce is now much better trained and more productive than the one that arrived at the beginning of the millennium. The return of Romanian citizens to their country is another factor in the labor shortage recorded by the construction sector, since a good part of this migrant population were bricklayers, carpenters, electricians or plumbers and they filled those positions that now they are left without generational relief. A version of this article was published in January 2025 In Xataka | With unemployment at historic lows, Spanish companies are looking for workers. The problem is that they can’t find them Image | Unsplash (aboodi vesakaran, Mina Rad)

Mexico wanted to end telephone anonymity. SIMs are already being sold with someone else’s identity on the black market

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He Mexican government made the decision to end the anonymity of cell lines and thus put an end to telephone extortion. The goal is for each number to be linked to a person by June 30; after that date, all unregistered lines will be disconnected. The problem is that on the black market there is already a way to circumvent this rule. What is happening. They tell it in Xataka Mexico following a newspaper investigation Millennium. In the historic center of CDMX anyone can buy a SIM card already activated under the identity of another person, without having to leave their personal data. It costs 200 pesos and can be done in minutes. He modus operandi. The official process To register a mobile line, you must provide your identification document or passport and perform biometric identification using a selfie video. The sellers of these SIMs take a photo of the barcode on the card and send it via WhatsApp. In a few moments, the fraudulent registration is done and they even offer a guarantee if there is a problem. All for 200 pesos: 100 pesos for the SIM and 100 pesos for the procedure. A striking detail is that the majority of SIMs sold with this method are from Movistar. Deepfakes. Although it is not clear how registration is carried out, it has already been confirmed that the identification system is not infallible. As reported in The Countrythe system cannot distinguish between a real person or a deepfake made with AI, so registration can be done on behalf of anyone simply by having their data and a photo. False lines have even been registered using the senator’s data Gerardo Fernández Norona. Fear of identity theft. There is another problem with line logging related to trust. Many citizens flee from the registry for fear that their personal data will end up on the black market. It is not an unfounded fear, it is something that already happened in a previous attempt to create a database with mobile phones in 2008. The initiative was called Renaut and ended up being eliminated in 2011 after complete databases were leaked and sold on the black market. Later, in 2022, the Supreme Court invalidated another attempt because it considered it violated the right to privacy. Massive line losses. This distrust has had an impact on telephone companies’ numbers. Many prepaid users have preferred to let their lines die rather than comply with this obligation. Taking into account that in Mexico more than 80% of the market is prepaid, this translates into massive line losses. In the first quarter of the year, AT&T Mexico lost a whopping 577,000 lines, while Telcel lost 483,000. With contract users there is not so much resistance since when signing with the operator the personal data has already been delivered. An unreal goal. The government is putting pressure with advertising campaigns to get registration done before the deadline, but it does not seem realistic that they will achieve it. As of May 19, there were registered 49.5 million lineswhich represents 30.7% of the total, which is about 160 million lines. As we said, if the plan continues as planned, all lines that have not been registered before June 30 will be disconnected. Image | PublicDomainPicturesedited In Xataka | Not content with flooding your email, spam and scams are now arriving in your mailbox.

Wallapop believed it had conquered the second-hand market in Spain. Until Vinted appeared

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Wallapop, formerly known as Fleapster. Wallapop It was founded on May 23, 2013 in Barcelona with that name that referred to the famous “flea markets”. Its promoters, Agustín Gómez, Gerard Olivé and Miguel Vicente, started with the support of the Antai Venture Builder accelerator and an initial catalog that they had obtained by shopping at flea markets. The app was designed to meet someone nearby and do the exchange in person, so geolocation was essential for this first version. The team understood a couple of ideas that gave the app a definitive boost: sending a sofa from Seville to Vigo is a pain, and trust between buyers and sellers grows when the seller is three streets away. To make themselves known, they gave part of the company to Atresmedia in exchange for television advertising space. The result was a campaign that turned “Walla!” into a recognizable catchphrase before anyone knew quite what it meant. Vinted, the power of moving. Vinted has five more years of history. Milda Mitkute ​​founded it in 2008 in Vilnius, Lithuaniawhen I was 22 years old and needed to get rid of more than a hundred clothes before moving. At a party he met Justas Janauskas, a computer engineer who built the first version of the site in ten days. The original name was manodrabuziai.l (“second-hand clothes” in Lithuanian) and in the first version they forgot to include a buy button. The platform expanded to Germany the following year, under the name Kleiderkreiseland did not arrive in Spain until many years laterwhen Wallapop already dominated the local market. Differences in use. The most visible difference between both platforms, and the one that most influences the behavior of their users, is who assumes the costs of the transaction. At Vinted the seller does not pay commission. Publish, sell and receive the full price in your wallet. The buyer assumes a protection fee of 0.70 fixed euros plus 5% of the price of the item, which covers incident management and payment retention until confirmation of receipt. Vinted eliminated seller fees in 2023. At Wallapop, in-person sales have no commission, which for bulky or high-priced items is more profitable for the seller. When Wallapop Envoys is used (the logistics service integrated into the app, which generated 74 million euros in 2024) the platform applies a management fee of around 10% of the sales price. There is also a second way of monetization for the platform, which has grown strongly: visibility services that give more relevance to an ad. generated 22 million euros in 2024, 27.6% more than in 2023. An important income for Wallapop, since it represents money for the platform regardless of whether the sale closes. The figures. Let’s look at some figures from 2024 and 2025 that allow us to trace the real state of each company. Vinted closed 2024 with 813 million euros in revenue36% more than the previous year, and a net profit of 76.7 million, which represents an increase of 330% compared to 2023, its first positive year. In 2025, Revenues rose to 1.1 billion (+38%). Net profit, however, fell 19% that year to 62 million due to spending on the expansion of Vinted Go to Spain and Portugal and the launch of Vinted Pay. Wallapop, for its part, closed 2024 with 101 million in revenue (+13%)consolidated losses of 25 million and the first break-even operating in the Spanish market since its foundation. In an average year, platform users generate sales of between 2,000 and 2,500 million euros, according to the company itself. Since 2013 it has accumulated more than 120 million euros in lossesalthough the trend is for a sustained reduction in those red numbers. Enter Korea. This same year, Naver, South Korea’s largest technology company, completed in January 2026 the acquisition of 100% of the company in an operation valued at 600 million euros. The transaction makes Wallapop the European spearhead of Naver in the recommercejoining Poshmark, which already performs these functions in the US and which the Korean group bought in 2023. The CEO of Naver Europe, Seokjoo Han, declared in Barcelona that the group intends to use the city as a base to expand into more European cities, relying on the parent company’s capabilities in artificial intelligence and search. Southern Europe: here we are. What is happening right now in Spain is the clearest reflection of the evolution of the sector. The trade in reused items in Spain reached a volume of 13.8 billion euros annually by 2025equivalent to 0.86% of the national GDP. It is a market that has been growing at a faster rate than general consumption for years, driven by inflation since 2021. Vinted has responded to this situation with the launch of Vinted Go in 2025. The company already operates this network in five markets (Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain), following the leap that Wallapop made some time ago from being a second-hand app to having a delivery infrastructure (although Vinted has its own logistics operator and Wallapop works with InPost). Wallapop, meanwhile, has been expanding its catalog beyond household objects for years. The engine is one of the categories where it maintains leadership in Spain. And the entry of Naver introduces the possibility of technological improvements in search and personalization that until now were out of reach. Both are getting closer to their rival as time goes by: Vinted is becoming less specialized in clothing, Wallapop is becoming more technological. A final and personal appreciation. Without this implying tipping the balance towards one of the two apps (which is not the purpose of this article), I would like to express my personal experience, linked to my long career selling items especially related to leisure (books, comics, movies, video games). For some time I have noticed how Vinted, which just a couple of years ago did not allow you to buy much beyond clothing, has made a very notable leap towards collecting: its presence in … Read more

The Steam Deck OLED went on the market for 569 euros. Three years later it costs 35% more for an obvious reason

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Since the Steam Deck is in stores, we are witnessing the most hardware era from Valve in many years. And of course, entering this swamp has its pluses and minuses. After months of irregular availability, Valve’s portable console is returning to the shelves. The problem is that it has done so with a considerable price increase: more than 40% in both models. It is another example that today, being an early adopter pays off. what has happened. Valve has updated the prices of the Steam Deck OLEDits only range since it retired the LCD model half a year ago. The 512 GB model goes from 569 to 779 euros, while the 1 TB model goes up from 679 to 919 euros. They are 210 and 240 euros more expensive, respectively. In the United States the rise is even more prominent, increasing its cost by more than 40%. If there is any good news that we can get from this, it is that both models are once again available to buy on Steam after a long season of intermittent stock. Valve’s justification. The company has in a brief official statement that “these new prices reflect the current state of component costs and other global logistics challenges across the industry.” That is, you pay more for exactly the same device that existed a few months ago. The real culprit: RAM. Behind all this is rising memory prices. The cost of RAM has skyrocketed in recent months due to the enormous demand from large technology companies, which They are building data centers for their artificial intelligence projects at a frenetic pace. This has led to widespread memory and storage shortages affecting the entire industry. It is not an isolated case. Valve is the latest manufacturer to join a worrying trend. nintendo recently announced a price increase for the Switch 2citing precisely the “recent rebound in the prices of memory and other components.” sony It has also gone through several climbs price since the release of PS5 and Microsoft He has also done the same with Xbox Series on more than one occasion. The outlook, in general, is complicated. And it is that according to Circana datathe average price of new hardware in the United States has gone from $235 in November 2019 to $439 in November 2025. That the 1 TB Steam Deck now costs more than a PS5 Pro It’s pretty crazy. What this changes. The Steam Deck was born as a clever cheap gateway to the portable gaming PC, an alternative that has even ended casting doubt on the future viability of gaming on Windows. With this increase, it is no longer that economical option, especially since there is no longer an LCD model. And now, with the most expensive base model, the Nintendo Switch 2 curiously becomes the cheapest alternative for those looking for a portable console, despite its recent price increase and all. And now what. After the rise, now what everyone wants to know is what will happen to the price of the Steam Machine and the Steam Framehardware that Valve intends to launch this year. The company finds itself in a complicated situation in this regard, especially in a context of supply problems. At the time, those responsible for the console they said that it would cost something “more in line with what could be expected from the current PC market.” Given what we have seen with the Steam Deck, now we have more doubts than ever. In Xataka | Project Helix is ​​the new Xbox machine and the warning is clear: it is not going to be cheap

Nvidia and Samsung are the names of AI. Quietly, someone is eating up the server processor market

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Artificial intelligence is about to enter a new era. After plunder the internet and drink all human knowledgetraining is no longer the obsession of the big AI companies and the inference is about to take the baton. That inference will reach its climax with the explosion of AI agents and that implies a change in balance: GPUs will continue to be key, but CPUs will take on a greater role. Inference requires other types of resources other than training and that is why Nvidia is preparing with its platform Vera Rubinbut also the rest of the industry. Intel has already said that is moving its production lines towards the Xeon, the server processors, while ARM It is seeing green numbers because a few months ago it presented a powerful processor for AI. The one that is also seeing the ‘stonks’ grow is AMD. Although its name sounds less than that of Nvidia, AMD is very present in the AI ​​race. It has secured the best memory for its new platform, it has a GPU for training and also the processors EPYC for servers. These are precisely the ones that are giving you joy. AMD EPYCo record According to analysts Mercury Researchboth ARM and AMD have had a spectacular quarter. Both have continued to eat market share from Intel (which is why it seeks to respond) and, in the case of AMD, in the first quarter of this year they have reached a record 46.2% revenue share in x86 CPUs for servers and 30% of the CPU segment. Here are two numbers to keep in mind. The first is that AMD was already coming from a fairly comfortable position, with a 41.3% revenue share in servers in the last quarter of 2025. Thus, it seems that this growth to 46.2% is not too big, but the second number that must be taken into account is the one that allows us to see the company’s leap in this segment. It is estimated that the company It had only between 1% and 2% CPU share for servers in 2018. Since then, AMD has been doing things very well both in consumer computers with their Ryzen as in servers with its EPYC, which has allowed it to eat Intel’s share by leaps and bounds. And just as important as the quota are the company’s results, not because they interest us in terms of money, but because it gives us an idea (just like what is happening with Nvidia, SamsungSK Hynix or Micron) of how far we are from being able to see competitive prices again in the consumer market. Because it is estimated that this part of the business focused on data centers left 5.8 billion dollars in AMD, an increase of 57% year-on-year. It surpasses Intel (5.1 billion), being the first time this has happened in the data center sector and, in addition, AMD projects a growth of more than 70% year-on-year in the data center segment. In this particular battle, we have already commented that Intel is not sitting idle and has new processors for data centers, a great projection being the great american foundry and we will have to wait to see the efforts to reconvert their production lines to return to the Xeon. What is evident, according to estimates, is that the server processor market is experiencing an impressive increase due to this new generation of AI and is wait that goes beyond 30,000 million in 2025 up to 170 billion dollars by 2030. Landing this for us, the users, this implies one thing: if it was already expensive to build a PC due to RAM and SSDnow other components such as processors or motherboardswho are also reorienting the business. In Xataka | The US confesses its worst nightmare: if China invades Taiwan and controls TSMC, the US economy will collapse

China and Nvidia star in the “great technological divorce” of 2026. A bureaucratic hell that is erasing it from the market

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Talking about Nvidia is talking about artificial intelligence glue. The GPU giant has invested millions financing cocompanies like OpenAI or Anthropicbut along the way has not forgotten startups or to make purchases for strengthen your position in the market. The problem is that it is missing out on a potential $50 billion market: China. Because Nvidia is eager to enter China, but it is trapped between bureaucracy, the Trump Government, Xi Jinping’s Government, and the smuggling of its graphics cards. The great divorce. In a very short time, Nvidia has gone from dominating the Chinese GPU market for artificial intelligence to losing it completely. The restrictions of the Trump Administration and the intensification of the trade war between the powers left Nvidia out of the game. Either it would adapt its GPUs and create less capable versions of those it sold in the West or it would not be able to sell in China. For a time, Nvidia was selling the H20 to adapt to the new rules, but it is something that has taken its toll. As AI needs demanded more powerful GPUs and own chinese industry with Huawei, Cambricon and Moore Threads was developed, Nvidia was being left out of the game. Official quota. In the middle of last year, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang pressed Donald Trump to see reason: it was better for Nvidia to be able to enter China both to make money and to slow the accelerated development of the domestic industry, one that Western restrictions had given wings to. In the end, the US gave in previous tariffs of 25% and one condition: all GPU orders from Chinese companies to Nvidia would be reviewed one by one. There is a problem: the US body in charge of reviewing these export licenses has decreased by 20% in recent months, which is causing delays of months when it comes to fulfilling an order. From when a Chinese company asks for Nvidia GPUs until they are given an answer, the ‘chinese dragons‘They have already released some product. The result? Huang points out that Nvidia has gone from being a leader in China to have a 0% quotapainting the situation as a true drama and pointing directly to the strategies of both China and, above all, the United States as the cause of his company falling into the offside of the large Asian market. Furthermore, it is China itself that encourages its companies to, to the extent possible, use Chinese hardware that they is developing at accelerated rates. “Official” fee. But the fact that Huang claims that his market share in China is 0% does not mean that there are no GPUs for AI in China because it seems that there are H100, H200 and even B200 due to something very simple: smuggling. Despite the proprietary technological solutions they are developing, it is evident that a large part of the AI ​​industry is built with Nvidia GPUs and that implies that the tools are very well optimized for them. There are several occasions in which Nvidia AI chip smuggling networks have been reported, with modest seizures on occasions (just tens of millions of dollars) and somewhat larger seizures on others (hundreds of millions in a few months). Chinese companies obtain these chips through indirect routes from Hong Kong and Singapore and, although Nvidia tries to trace the origin, the clandestine flow and opaque chains make the task complex. trapped. Someone is lining their pockets and that someone is not Nvidia. And the problem is that Huang’s pressure had an effect, but the solution they gave him is not as agile as the market needs. Returning to the issue of bureaucracythe United States Office of Industry and Security, which is responsible for reviewing these export licenses, reduced its workforce by 19% in 2024. Specifically, those who develop standards linked to the semiconductor industry and review licenses have decreased by 20%. The result is an average of 76 days to resolve export requests, something that is extending so far this year and which is disastrous news for both Nvidia and others deeply involved in the AI ​​segment, such as AMD. From China, things are not much better, since companies must make it very clear why they need Nvidia AI chips and cannot meet their objectives using national alternatives. Jensen, almost excluded. In any case, it is evident that Huang does not like to be missing the AI ​​party in China, in the same way that he is going to miss the new trip of Donald Trump and other executives to a summit between Trump and Xi Jingping that will be held between the 13th and 15th of this month. Or so it seemed. This is an event in which conversations will focus on agriculture and commercial aviation, so a priori Jensen didn’t have much in mind. But of course, alongside Trump are CEOs like Elon Musk, Cristiano Amon or Tim Cook, among others. And, although it seemed that he was not invited, as we see in South China Morning PostIn a message from Trump on his social network, it was confirmed that Huang will finally accompany him on the trip. In the end, it’s about money. Jensen Huang doesn’t want China to have the best chips because He wants to save those for the United States.but it is a very large market in which Nvidia can offer chips strategically: it makes money while making companies opt for its product instead of that of the Chinese companies themselves. In Xataka | Nvidia’s superpower is not having money, it is making everyone work for it: Foxconn is the latest to join

Anthropic does not offer its services in China. So China has invented a black market for Claude tokens

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Claude has become in the most desired model by the most demanding developers and engineers, but it is not available in mainland China for regulatory and safety reasons. The demand there remains notable, and to satisfy it, an underground token economy has emerged that allows local developers to access models such as Claude Opus 4.7, avoiding all the measures imposed by the blockade. No paying with Alipay. One of the measures that Anthropic imposes to prevent the use of its models in China is to only accept international credit cards such as Visa or Mastercard. Their payment gateways reject local payment methods like Alipay or Wechat Pay, giving Chinese users a first and important hurdle. One that they have already overcome. Virtual cards. What they are doing in China to overcome this problem is using virtual credit cards (VCC) like DuPay or WildCard. With these services it is possible to obtain Hong Kong or US credit cards financed with cryptocurrencies or through local transfers. This makes it possible to deceive the billing systems of Anthropic and other companies that offer banned services to Chinese users. SMS verifications They are also solved through “SMS farms” that also avoid this problem and even others such as identity verification that also have implemented in Anthropic. The “Transfer Stations” arrive (中转站). Another problem is that even overcoming that first barrier, latency and micro-cuts mean that the use of Claude in China is affected by continuous connection problems. To avoid them, so-called “Transfer Stations” have emerged, which are nothing more than servers that act as a bridge between foreign servers and Chinese users. These gateways receive requests from China and forward them to Anthropic servers as if they were coming from an authorized location. The latencies are also relatively low, which means that for Chinese users the experience is basically identical to that of a user in the US or Spain, for example. These stations are publicly known and do not only appear in listings on GitHub: there is a ranking with the best. Claude is almost free in China. The surprising thing about these methods is that they don’t just give Claude access in China: they do with ridiculous prices which can be 10 and even 5% of (growing) original price of the service thanks to those transfer stations. The question, of course, is how it is possible to access Claude at those prices. The almond tree trick. Thanks to the transfer stations, developers can access Claude at a price of 1 yuan for every dollar of tokens, or in other words, up to a 90% reduction in the official price. It is something that is discussed publicly and that makes it clear that several methods are used to achieve this: Mass purchase of capacity, Use of accounts created with stolen or fraudulent cards, Use of promotional credits, and A simple hook: providers lose money with Claude, but they manage to attract developers to whom they then sell more profitable local models like DeepSek. Am I really using Claude? One of the growing risks in the cheap token market is direct fraud. Some Chinese resellers have been caught red-handed offering what they call the “Claude API” when in reality what they were providing were much cheaper and mediocre models. For a user to detect this type of deception it’s very difficult unless you are working with complex tasks or you have already used models and know more or less what to expect from them. For victims, the effect is clear: they believe they are paying for the intelligence of Opus 4.7 when in reality they are receiving answers from a low-end AI model. Goodbye to privacy. When a user purchases tokens at one of these transfer stations, they completely give up the confidentiality of their data. All queries and responses end up passing through the intermediary’s servers, which can and apparently does use them to sell them to AI companies that use them to post-train their models. So everything they do and say when using these models is filtered and used as training data without the user knowing. A double business. For these providers, this business of reselling conversations is especially interesting in the face of the famous “distillations” of US models that take advantage of this data to “copy” the capabilities of those models and apply them to Chinese models. Anthropic can read us, but (theoretically) it doesn’t. It is true that the conversations we have with Claude (from Spain, for example) are also stored on Anthropic’s servers, but the company makes it clear in your privacy policy that does not use that data. In fact, we can even explicitly prohibit the company from using them in the privacy settings of Claude’s account. The game of cat and mouse. At Anthropic they know very well what is happening and they are trying to prevent it. For example, they have begun to intensively block IP ranges associated with VPN services or data centers known to be used in these transfer stations. Even so, Chinese providers usually respond with an “elastic” architecture that allows IPs of domestic residences to rotate, making the traffic appear completely normal. Image | Xataka with Magnific In Xataka | There is a thing called “Ornn price index”, it is out of control and it is bad news for everyone

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