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A Nazi officer has been watching you for two hours while you study, and has five million views on YouTube

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An austere room with an open door. Every three or four minutes, an SS officer entershe stares at the viewer and sees that he is doing exactly what he is supposed to do: studying or working. Except for a few threatening opening words and a sullen farewell, there is nothing more. With small variations (a Soviet officer, times that vary between one and four hours, setting in a sinister basement in some other video) we are facing a successful experiment with five and a half million views. Which connects with one of the most unique traditions of YouTube. The origin. It was published in September 2023 by the German channel Radical Living under the title “2 hours from a WWII German officer to help you study/work/focus.” The description, a laconic “Study with me.” The video accumulates more than five million views and carries, at the end of its description, the inevitable warning that “this work should only be seen as satire” and that the author condemns Nazi ideology. In March 2026 the same channel uploaded the soviet version: same formula, different uniform. Study with me. Having someone on the internet accompany you while you study is not new. The format is on YouTube since around 2014 and began to gain real traction around 2018, when creators around the world began posting recordings of themselves studying in real time, usually with lofi music in the background and visible timers, imitating the also inevitable Pomodoro technique. The mechanics are deliberately simple: the viewer puts on the video, sees someone working in silence (or, in this last variant, someone watching him) and that helps him to work too. Long live Lofi Girl. The absolute reference of the genre is Lofi Girlthe French channel created by music producer Dimitri, launched in February 2017, and which showed the continuous broadcast, livelofi music with an anime girl studying by the window. The channel exceeded 15 million subscribers in 2025 and the image of the girl with headphones has become one of the most recognizable icons of productivity culture on the internet. In July 2025 the character symbolically “graduated” with a video on TikTok showing her wearing a mortarboard and a laptop with the phrase “THE END.” Thus closing the era of the character’s continuous stream, which had lasted more than seven years. More variants. The success of Lofi Girl generated multiple imitations: the subgenre “dark academy“It brought gothic atmospheres, fireplaces, rain, dark wood and a fanfare of violins for those who prefer to study imaginatively in a Victorian castle (the success of ‘Wednesday’, in fact, did not come out of nowhere). Then came the fantasy environments: the library of Hogwartsa elven forestthe spaceship…Each variant adds layers of schematic roleplay, a narrative excuse for the viewer to “get in the mood.” The Nazi or Soviet officer is the latest mutation of that logic, taken to the point of absurdity (and of course, there is a Spanish version with Pepe Viyuela, who is already a subgenre in its own right) Why we like to be watched. There is a technical concept that may explain why these videos work: the body doubling. It emerged in the ADHD community to describe the fact that performing a task in the presence of another person (even if you don’t interact, review your work, or do anything specific) significantly improves your ability to concentrate and get started on tasks. There are already studies that talk about how body doubling It generates a feeling of responsibility that helps you stay on task. The presence (real or not, that doesn’t matter) of someone creates an external structure that the brain uses to regulate itself, something especially valuable for those who have difficulties with executive self-regulation. and the theoretical foundation It goes back even further: the psychologist Robert Zajonc described in 1965 “social facilitation”, that the mere presence of others increases the level of alertness and performance on tasks that we already master. That’s why it works to go down to work in a cafeteria, where no one knows each other. That’s why Lofi Girl works, and that’s why, in its own twisted logic, the SS officer works. In Xataka | We are experiencing a crisis of concentration. Experts are beginning to think that the problem is not mobile phones, but the algorithm

A woman won the lottery and had to choose between a million dollars or 1,000 a week forever

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Brenda Aubin-Vega was 20 years old when scratched a lottery ticket in Quebec and saw the jackpot appear. What came next was not a celebration without complications: before it was a decision that unleashed months of debate on the networks. The game is called Gagnant à vie —”winner for life”—and offers the lucky person the choice between collecting one million Canadian dollars at once or receiving $1,000 a week for the rest of their life. She chose weekly payments. In networks they put it in broth. The criticisms. When his case became publicthe opinions on networks did not wait. Many users on Reddit and in X They debated their decision. Some argued that weekly payments were the safe option for someone young. Others argued that rejecting a full million (in Canada lottery prizes are not taxed) was a textbook financial error. Taxes, inflation, index funds, historical returns were mentioned. Who is right? The age factor Brenda was 20 years old when she won the prize, so to equal the million with weekly payments she needs to collect for 19 and a half years, that is, reach 40. From then on everything is net profit. If he lives to be 60, he will have earned more than 2 million Canadian dollars. Until 80, more than 3 million. Statistical life expectancy works completely in their favor. Of course, once you die, the payments stop and there is no inheritance left to leave, unless you have been very very saver. The advantages of a million. With the single payment, the numbers are also seductive. A million invested in a low-cost index fund with a conservative 6% annual return becomes more than 10 million by the time Brenda turns 60, assuming she doesn’t touch the money. There is also a nuance that the debates on networks overlooked: inflation erodes those $1,000 per week over time. That is to say, what allows us to live comfortably today may be a modest income in 30 years. The best of both worlds. There is a third way and that is to collect the million and manage it as a personal fund, withdrawing a salary equivalent to the weekly payment and investing the rest. The problem is profitability. With a return of 6% per year, the capital would probably be depleted before retirement age. For the million to last until 80 or more, a higher sustained profitability is needed, an ideal scenario, but one that requires a more aggressive investment strategy and, above all, not making a single serious mistake for six decades. Other factors. On paper it sounds impeccable, in practice it requires a lot of financial discipline sustained over decades and the ability to deviate from the plan, avoiding unforeseen situations or impulsive purchases. The history of lottery prize winners It’s full of bad decisions and million-dollar prizes that disappear in the blink of an eye. In this sense, the winner may not have chosen the most lucrative option, but she chose the safest and, above all, the most comfortable if what you want is to have a safety net without having to complicate your life. Image | Quebec Loto In Xataka | There is something even more difficult than winning the Lottery Jackpot: not making mistakes with the Treasury when collecting it

5.4 million earthquakes gathered in an interactive 3D map

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Every day we detect 55 earthquakes on average, but one thing are earthquakes monitored and followed by the global network and another are microseisms: there the figure rises to 1,300 a day, according to data from the American National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC). It is totally and absolutely normal: the Earth is a dynamic system in constant reconfiguration where the movement of the tectonic plates releases large amounts of energy that seismography is responsible for recording. And thank goodness: beyond the impact and catastrophe of the largest earthquakes, these enormous databases are essential to predict them. But databases are unfriendly, so the EarthScope Consortium integrated into IRIS Data Services has developed the Interactive Earthquake Browsera seismic visualization tool that allows you to explore more than 5.4 million earthquakes on an interactive global map in Google Maps. The data comes precisely from the catalog of the USGS National Earthquake Information Center, the highest authority on the subject. The world map of earthquakes. The map shows complete global seismicity from 1970 to the present with dots. Each point represents an earthquake, and its position, size and color serve to qualitatively identify its geographical location, its magnitude and its depth of focus. The view can be overlaid with tectonic plate boundaries, making the map a direct tool for reading the internal structure of the Earth. This format allows you to identify at a glance the areas of greatest seismic activity and danger, such as the Pacific Ring of Fire or the oceanic ridges. The world map of earthquakes. SAGE How to use it. The points are just the beginning. In addition to being able to change the view from map to satellite format or zoom in on a specific area, it is possible to activate the 3D view, view animations or export the data directly to Excel or CSV to work with them. You can even change the data source to MIXED, which incorporates records from the International Seismological Center and expands coverage of small events outside of North America, although with less reliability in location. The most interesting thing is the filters that appear in the right column, which allows you to choose how many earthquakes to show in the window, select time intervals, magnitude and depth. The map of earthquakes in the Iberian Peninsula Some seismically hot areas. The Pacific Ring of Fire concentrates approximately 90% of all global seismicity and is the most visible region on the map: it includes the western coasts of America, the Aleutian arc, Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia and New Zealand and has earthquakes of all colors. The largest earthquake ever recorded, the Valdivia from 1960 with a 9.5, it occurred precisely there, in the subduction zone of the Nazca Plate under the South American Plate. It is followed by the Alpine-Himalayan arc, whose concentration of seismic activity on the planet is explained by the continental collision between the Eurasian, African and Indo-Australian plates. In this case, earthquakes rarely exceed 300 kilometers in depth, but they can be devastating due to their proximity to large population centers. The East African rift system is fascinating: it is an area where a continental plate is actively breaking up, with diffuse seismicity that marks the future boundary between two new plates. Why it is important. Visualizing global seismicity as a whole allows us to quickly recognize the boundaries between tectonic plates, the areas of greatest activity and the deep structures of the planet, something that normally escapes our eyes. This capability is essential for both research and seismic risk assessment in densely populated regions. For science, the option of filtering by depth is especially valuable as superficial, intermediate and deep earthquakes respond to different physical mechanisms and are located in very different geological contexts. Being able to separate and compare these groups facilitates the interpretation of data compared to a statistical analysis of the databases. In Xataka | People didn’t take drills seriously, so Japan found something much more effective: drills in video games In Xataka | There are scientists deliberately causing earthquakes in the Alps and they have a good reason for it Cover | IRIS

500 million euros are going to be spent on expanding the circuit in their town

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Formula 1 is much more than a motor sport. Each Grand Prix moves billions in advertising interests and investmentsthat’s why the main cities in the world they fight for having his own circuit in the championship. In Denmark, a group of investors wants build a circuit capable of entering the orbit of Formula 1. The plan puts on the table some 510 million euros in exchange, and is proposed on the foundations of a small circuit that already exists located in Padborg, a town in the south of Denmark with only 4,393 inhabitants. Two millionaires and the first Danish GP Perhaps the names of Henrik Lyngbye Pedersen and his son Mathias Lyngbye Villadsen will not be familiar to you. But if we tell you that his last name comes from one of the founding members of the main Danish pharmaceutical companymaybe they give you some clue. Both are heirs to the fortune of the brothers Harald and Thorvald Pedersenfounders of Novo Nordisk, creator of Ozempicand they have proposed an investment of 3.8 billion Danish crowns, about 510 million euros, to build a circuit with very serious aspirations. As and how to publish Motorpassionits objective is to build a track 6,006 meters long, with 18 curves and capacity for 100,000 spectators. Along with the expansion of the current layout, it is also planned to build a hotel complex, a conference center and a karting and motocross circuit. All this with the intention that the venue does not depend solely on the celebration of one Grand Prix a year, but rather leaves the door open to other events related to the world of motorsport. The current Padborg Park circuit is located between Padborg and Tinglev, on the land of a former airfield that opened as a circuit in 2003. Now, Henrik Lyngbye Pedersen and his son Mathias want to expand that space and officially turn it into the Denmark Circuit. Current status of the Padborg circuit The proposal to remodel this old airfield into a first-class circuit approved for Formula 1 It seeks to attract audiences from Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands, taking advantage of its proximity to the border and the connection routes with cities such as Flensburg. Rebecca Palmberg Steele, project director, assured that “the circuit will be located in a place that is the gateway to Europe, and this project has the potential to boost both the sport, the business world and the local community,” declared the one responsible for the Danish media Børsen. 510 million to bring Formula 1 to your home The heirs of Novo Nordisk have estimated an initial investment of 3.8 billion Danish crowns to create what would be the first circuit capable of hosting a Danish Grand Prix in the future. It is a huge investment for a facility that, until now, functioned as a minor circuit and as a training space. The circuit design has already been assigned to the Wurz Design studiofounded by former Formula 1 driver Alexander Wurz, who already has extensive experience in the private layout design for training and competition, such as Qiddiya Speed ​​Park Circuit in Riyadh or the RACC Driver Training Center in Madrid. The more than six kilometers of track would place it among the longest routes in Europewhile the capacity of 100,000 people makes it one of the largest venues in the north of the continent. However, for a circuit to host a Grand Prix, an FIA Grade 1 license is required, the highest level of homologation. The promoters of the project assure that this is the goal of the project, although they also make it clear that entering the Formula 1 calendar will not be easy since new tests are only incorporated when one of the venues stop celebrating themso the heirs of Novo Nordisk face an investment whose return is not assured. In Xataka | The Madrid F1 circuit is not yet finished but it has already had its first accident on the track: four workers with a van Image | Unsplash (Marti Sierra , hannah thiel)

Star Catcher has raised $88 million to build the first space power grid. Their plan is to recharge satellites with lasers

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As the pace of space launches increases and missions beyond Earth become more abundant and varied, it is important to look for new ways to obtain energy so that these ships can travel to their destinations. Fuel is not infinite, so there comes a point where it runs out. Therefore, there are three main proposals. One is to resupply the ships directly in orbit. Another option is to resort to nuclear energy. In fact, There are already several agencies working on it. Finally, there is the option of solar energy. Unfortunately, this has some limitations, but the American company Star Catcher wants to solve them through the world’s first energy network located in space. A good economic injection. Star Catcher just announced which has received 65 million dollars in a series A financing round. With what they already had in their coffers, the company has 88 million dollars. Enough to date its first release to the end of this year. Different ways to “squeeze” the Sun. The solar energy we are used to is obtained through plates with photovoltaic cells installed directly on the Earth. However, there are already companies that want to bring it directly from the Sun, even at night. Its goal is to use mirrors that reflect sunlight at will anywhere on Earth, whatever the time and whether the weather is good or not. The problem is that these companies They are being criticized a lot for posing risks such as great light pollution. On the other hand, what Star Catcher wants to do is slightly different. They will also take solar energy directly into space, but they will not direct it to Earth, but to the spacecraft that need it. It will be like a kind of space solar power plant. Optical beaming. Star Catcher will be based on a phenomenon known as optical beaming. This consists of extracting solar energy and using it to power a multispectral optical laser, with which it will be redirected to satellites from which it can be distributed at will to the ships that need it. To do this, they hope to be able to put a constellation of 200 satellites into low Earth orbit. Previous records. Last year, this company broke the world record for wireless electricity transmission by delivering 1.1 kW of power to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Now, they want to transmit directly to space. It also has limitations. Although this company does not have the same limitations as those that want to redirect sunlight to Earth, it involves placing an immense number of satellites in orbit, with the risk that this entails. Many experts warn that, in the same way that could happen with Elon Musk’s Starlink constellation, this type of infrastructure increases the risk of Kessler syndrome. That is, it could happen that one or more fragments of space debris collide with them, deteriorating and launching pieces into space that would become more space debris, which in turn would collide with more satellites or more debris. Thus, a very dangerous domino effect would be generated for satellites, ships and space stations that are in space at that time. Even more risks. On the other hand, the launches of the ships that will place the satellites into orbit are also a great source of pollution. In fact, recently has been published a study that warns of the large amount of polluting substances that these types of launches leave in the upper layers of the atmosphere, where, otherwise, the pollution would be residual. In short, this company will bring us great advances, but it will have to maneuver carefully so as not to bring even more problems. Image | Star Catcher In Xataka | Starlink’s dominance in space begins to move: another company already has permission for a constellation of 4,000 satellites

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

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

Spain’s problem is not the lack of buildable land. It is a huge land jam that blocks three million apartments in cities

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The brick crisis at the beginning of the century may be left far behind in time; But the truth is that, almost 20 years after the bubble burst, the sector has not yet recovered from its hangover. And that has dragged it into a paradox: although the country drags a serious deficit residential (some 700,000 homes) and prices they don’t stop going upin Spain there is a huge amount of immobilized buildable land, plots that after the crisis have ended up in the hands of municipalities incapable of promoting housing on them or of groups, funds and companies that have not been able to develop them or have not considered it viable. It might seem like a minor issue if it weren’t for the fact that there are calculations who estimate that that ‘big traffic jam’ of land is costing the cities of Spain 2.9 million potential apartments. That is, houses that could be built on developed lots, but for one reason or another they still do not go beyond paper. Just over half (1.5 million) are also concentrated in the 15 main metropolises. One figure: 1.5 million. The data comes from a study published in the last notebook of the Civic Circle of Opinion by Ignacio Ezquiagaeconomist and expert in the real estate sector. In it he basically dedicates himself to reviewing the “pending planned housing” in the main urban areas of the country. These are apartments and houses that should be built on plots of land in an “advanced state of urban development” or sectorialized (endorsed by a plan and the corresponding city council), but that still do not go from paper to work. Why is it important? Because as Ezquiaga’s study recalls, that bag of land could accommodate millions and millions of new homes. To be precise, it speaks of about seven million properties, although a good part is located in rural areas where the gap between supply and demand is not as serious as in the capitals. If we focus on the 86 urban areas of Spain, we find vacant land with the potential to host 2.93 million of housing. If we refine the shot even further and limit ourselves to the 15 main metropolitan areas of Spain, the figure remains at around 1.51 million homes. Of these, half a million would be located in areas with already urbanized land. Madrid, in the lead. In your studioEzquiaga includes a table prepared with data from the Ministry of Housing that shows that the largest housing stock planned and pending execution is located in the Madrid area, at least if we talk about raw figures. There the potential is 351,000 properties, almost 15% of the total existing housing stock in 2021. The potential is equally high in Murcia (226,600 units), Seville (142,900) and Barcelona (142,900), although in general terms it adds up to thousands of homes in all areas of the country. The smallest is Palma, with almost 12,000. In “dead hands”. To understand part of this large pool of stuck housing we have to go back almost two decades ago, to the bursting of the real estate bubble and its subsequent hangover. When brick ceased to be the business of the century and many developers were forced to close, the plots that had recently hosted residential projects began to become an asset with an uncertain future. A part ended up in private hands. Another, from the town councils. Their casuistries are different, but in the end the result is the same: what Ezquiaga calls properties in “dead hands”parked plots, stuck despite having the potential to inject millions of homes into a market that, 20 years later, is once again tense. “Judging by its urban status, blocked for more than two decades in which many have remained vacant, these are not temporary but structural situations; that is why they remind us, overcoming the distance, of those owners who went down in history as dead hands,” reflect. Who controls that land? As remember The Country There are two major fronts. 30% has remained in the hands of municipal administrations that once received them from the developers as part of the land that they had to give up to carry out their real estate projects. The problem is that not all town councils have the capacity, will or simply the resources to take advantage of that land and convert it into public housing (VPO). The result is that it ends up blocked, up for sale or redirected towards other uses, such as endowment services. The remaining 70% of the land depends on private entities, but that does not guarantee that it will be exploited and converted into housing. The key is whether or not its development is profitable. And if they can finance it. This also explains that when city councils opt for public-private collaborations to take advantage of the land they control, they do not always find partners willing to embark on the projects. One of the keys is provided by Ezquiaga in your studio: The 15 main metropolitan areas in Spain have land with potential for a million and a half homes, but only a third are located in environments with already developed land. “Vacant land”. Last year, in another study published by the think tank Funcas on the Sareb, Ezquiaga I already warned of the complexity of the scenario: “With a development industry with lower capacities compared to previous decades, the original projects were discontinued. Thus, many of the still viable lands would not adapt to the regulatory changes or the new territorial needs, paralyzing them and contributing to a surplus of vacant lands with negative consequences on the valuation of Sareb’s portfolio and, above all, for the long-term generation of new residential supply.” He is not the only one who has drawn attention to the land with still pending potential in the cities of Spain. The Ministry of Housing itself has analyzed the main pockets of land available in Spain for new apartments, focusing above … Read more

The sector already invoices 80,000 million a year, but OpenAI and Anthropic take 89% of the income

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Everyone wants to get a piece of the AI ​​pie, but the reality is that the pie today belongs to two companies: OpenAI and Anthropic. This confirms it an analysis from The Information in which the income of the 34 most relevant companies in the market today has been analyzed. The accounts are beginning to be striking, but so is the reality of this new technological duopoly. The sector doubles income as a whole. According to the data collected by this means, these 34 companies have an annualized income of 80,000 million dollars, about 6,600 million dollars per month. That represents 112% more than six months ago, which means that these companies have grown more than double in that period of time. The most relevant fact is not in fact that. But in reality Anthropic and OpenAI are the ones thatthey win. That figure would be promising if it weren’t for the other major conclusion of the study: 89% of that income goes to just two companies: Anthropic and OpenAI. The other 32 share “the crumbs”, because almost 9 out of every 10 dollars in income goes to the accounts of these two new technological giants. This is generative AI. The analysis published by The Information includes the 34 main companies in the generative AI sector. Therefore, hyperscalers (Amazon, Microsoft, Google) or other large technology companies that participate in other areas of the industry. The report is therefore especially striking when it comes to verifying how much these companies are earning, and the reality is clear: they have grown very, very quickly. But (I). We have two big buts. The first: although both Anthropic and OpenAI are growing significantly in revenue, it must be taken into account that not all of them are for these companies. Anthropic has to give up some of that revenue to both Amazon and Google because they resell their services. OpenAI must also share 20% of its revenue with Microsoft until 2030, which means that this year it will have to pay about $6 billion. Companies have turned to AI, and the big winners are both OpenAI and Anthropic, which has accelerated exceptionally in 2026. Source: VisualCapitalist. But (II). The second but is even more important, and is that of a reality that continues to be overwhelming: these companies continue to spend much more money than they earn. OpenAI itself has estimated an expense of 600 billion dollars in computing capacity until 2030, and only in 2026 are their losses expected to triple to 14 billion dollars. It doesn’t matter if you win a lot: you keep losing even more. With Anthropic there is no recent spending estimate data, but the company itself has a projection of a cash flow of $17 billion in 2028. That is not the same as profits but it is a clear indication of when it expects to stop losing money. The important thing here is that this is an estimate. It could be fulfilled, but it could also not be fulfilled. The little ones grow. Three of the best-known AI startups have crossed the barrier of 500 million annual revenues since December and they now join Cursor, which achieved it last summer. These are Perplexity, ElevenLabs and Cognition, which demonstrate that they are already capturing part of a market that does not stop growing… and spending. But the big ones don’t stop distancing themselves. Although all of these startups already have an important dimension, Anthropic and OpenAI are at another level. Both have grown exceptionally and in recent times we have seen the takeover from Anthropic to OpenAI, which already has managed to achieve in market valuation. The creators of Claude were valued at 380 billion in February, but the success of Claude Code and his models in business environments has caused its price to skyrocket. The company plans to raise tens of billions of dollars this summer to reach a valuation of nearly a billion dollars. Stock market IPOs in sight. Both OpenAI and Anthropic are preparing their respective IPOs, and in both cases they hope to lift each about 60 billion dollars from investors to become companies right off the bat with market capitalizations that could be around a trillion dollars. It is an extraordinary figure, especially considering that at this time only 13 companies around the world they exceed that figure. In Xataka | Google and Amazon Just Invested Billions in Anthropic: It’s the Biggest Clue About Who’s Winning in AI

move two million tons of sand

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The paradisiacal coastline of the central Algarve is facing one of the great coastal problems of recent decades, the result of rising sea levels and extreme weather events happening more and more often: the ocean is swallowing its beaches. So he has left behind the classic breakwaters to carry out one of the most ambitious coastal regenerations of its history: moving more than two million tons of sand from the seabed to the shore. There is no beach in the Algarve. The problem of erosion in the area of ​​Forte Novo beach and Garrão beach (both in the municipality of Loulé, Faro district) is not new, but this winter’s storms aggravated it in a worrying way, as explains the Portuguese Environment Agency: Their records have documented a maximum retreat of up to 15 meters on Loulé Velho-Trafal beach and 14 meters in the Quarteira-Garrão area. On Forte Novo beach, a retreat of an additional six meters was detected. These data place this section as one of the most critical in all of continental Portugal. Why is it important. Coastal erosion represents a real physical risk for the population and infrastructure: when the sand of a beach recedes in a sustained manner, the coast is directly exposed to the waves, which accelerates the erosion of cliffs, threatens nearby infrastructure and destroys the associated dune ecosystems. According to a report By 2024 published on the European Union’s Copernicus science platform, between 27 and 40 percent of European sandy coasts are experiencing active retreat, with special incidence in the Mediterranean and the Iberian Atlantic. On the other hand, the Algarve is one of the great tourist engines of Portugal. The region recorded more than 20 million overnight stays in 2023, according to the National Institute of Statistics Portuguese and in 2025 concentrated 85 beaches with the Blue Flag, the highest European certification of coastal quality. Losing beaches means losing its main economic asset, which mostly lives off of sun and sea tourism. Coastal erosion patterns in Europe. European Environment Agency Context. This intervention is part of the Integrated Coastal Zone Management Strategy of Portugal, which aims to achieve a harmoniously and sustainably developed coastal area within a period of 20 years (in force since 2009). The APA has already carried out similar and even larger operations: it holds the record Figueira da Foz, where it moved more than 3.3 million cubic meters of sediments in the Cova-Gala/Costa de Lavos section, with an investment of 21.1 million euros. The Quarteira-Garrão operation is, therefore, the second major operation of this type in just over a year, which reflects the State’s policy on coastal protection. The Quarteira-Garrão project is the technical response to a regional-scale problem of the erosive dynamics that affects the entire Gulf of Cádiz. Portugal has opted for large contributions of sand instead of building rigid rock breakwaters, following European trends. These types of solutions seek to have a lower visual impact and better integration into the dynamic coastal ecosystem. In figures. The operation, without being the largest in the history of Portugal, it has some numbers that impact: Transfer of approximately 1.4 million cubic meters of sand (about two million tons). Rehabilitation of 6.7 kilometers of coastline. Planned average widening of 37 meters. Tender budget: 14.9 million euros. How are they doing it. The technique that Portugal is applying is called artificial beach feeding or beach nourishment and consists of extracting sediments from nearby underwater areas and depositing them on the shore through dredging and pipelines. The project has been executed in phases, section by section and in coordination with the Cultural Heritage Agency of Portugal and after an environmental impact assessment: on the one hand, to control the deposition of sediments at each point avoiding saturation and on the other, because this underwater extraction area contains remains of underwater archaeological heritage. The works began between April 2 and 3 and completion was scheduled for May 6, in time for the beginning of the bathing season. Yes, but. The artificial regeneration of beaches is an effective solution in the short and medium term, but it does not solve the underlying problem as science warns: the deposited sand moves again due to the action of waves, currents and storms. In most cases documented in Europeregenerated beaches require new intervention after a few years (it can be more than a decade), depending on the energy exposure of the coast. The underlying structural problem is the chronic loss of sediment throughout the coastal system, aggravated by climate change, the rise in sea level and the reduction in the river supply of sand caused by the regulation of rivers with dams. If these causes are not solved comprehensively, beach recharge is putting a patch on. In fact, the APA itself recognizes it by framing the intervention within a broader coastal protection strategy and continuously monitoring for the next action. In Xataka | Portugal’s radical proposal to stop touristification: an underwater cable that connects with the US In Xataka | “I am an engineer, politics is not my profession”: the mayor of Lisbon has turned it into a magnet for European startups Cover | Bengt Nyman and Ludovico Ceroseis

Someone has gathered more than 13 million public contracts and has set up the Google of public procurement in Spain

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Every euro spent by a State Public Administration must be traceable by citizens. We don’t say it, the law says it. But theory is one thing and practice another: if you try, you will discover that sometimes it is a long, tedious and sometimes almost impossible mission. Let me explain: when someone wants to know which company a public hospital or city council has awarded contracts to, the official search path forces them to go through different platforms ranging from Public Sector Procurement Platform state to autonomous regions such as those of the Community of Madrid, the Basque Country or Galicia, because there are CCAA (quite a few) that have their own system and do not publish in PLACSP. This fragmentation makes the search difficult, as details the Public Procurement Observatory. So an engineer has set out to solve it by building a search engine for Spanish public contracts. The “Google” of public contracts in Spain. jobsearch.com solves this fragmentation problem with a single search engine. It is an independent project that aggregates, cross-references and allows you to consult in seconds the public procurement information that the State publishes dispersedly on a long list of different platforms. More specifically, it draws from 10 official sources, including the State Platform (PLACSP), the Official Journal of the EU (TED), and regional platforms of Madrid, Catalonia, Galicia, Andalusia, the Basque Country, Asturias and the Valencian Community, plus data from the Commercial Registry. The result is a search engine with around 13.4 million indexed contracts, without advertising, without tracking and with open source available on GitHub. Behind the project, Gerard Sanchezprogrammer and founder of BQuant and professor at the University of Navarra and the UPF Barcelona School of Management. Why is it important. Public procurement is not trivial: in Spain it moved more than 113 billion euros in 2024, the equivalent of 10.92% of GDP, according to the OIReScon Annual Surveillance Report 2025the official supervisory body of the Ministry of Finance. Each year a sum of money is allocated through procedures that must be public and auditable. The reality is that this audit is very difficult without tools. A CNMC report of 2019 highlights that public procurement represents between 10% and 20% of Spanish GDP and that Spain is one of the European countries with the lowest participation of companies in tenders: only one company participates in one in three state contracts. With data access tools that facilitate transparency, competition could be increased and the cost for public coffers reduced. Context. In Spain there are several laws that require public contracts to be published: there is the Law 19/2013 on transparency, access to public information and good governance with a triple objective of increasing transparency in public activity, guaranteeing access to information as a right and establishing good governance obligations for public officials, but also the Law 9/2017 on Public Sector Contractswhich is a transposition of European directives on public procurement. So the problem is not that there are no regulations, but rather their application and the dispersion of data. As explains the Public Procurement ObservatorySince March 2018, it has been mandatory for the entire public sector to publish the information on their contracts in the PLACSP, but the tool is also a headache as thousands of entities upload information manually and with free-writing text, which constitutes a continuous source of error. PreciselyBuscalicitaciones.com detects and documents these inconsistencies. How it works. Technically, the project downloads and normalizes the open data that each of those 10 official platforms publishes in structured formats such as XML, JSON, CSV. Each record is crossed with data from the Commercial Registry to enrich the information of the successful bidder. The search engine offers three main modes of use: search for contracts by winning company, contracting body, CPV sector or free text of the contract; see the complete history of awards of any company by its NIF and consult a public registry of contracts with anomalous amounts greater than 1,000 million euros. Yes, but. The first major limitation is structural: it depends on the quality of the data published by official sources and that quality can clearly be improved. If the source data is bad, the aggregator inherits that error. And we have already seen that sometimes it is and that it is certainly anything but homogeneous. On the other hand, this is the first version of the project and it shows: It has flaws and the coverage is not complete. Navarra does not appear on the list and sources such as the Valencian Community do not have an aggregate amount available, the Basque Country only has an amount in 106,000 of its 651,000 contracts and Catalonia has two separate entries with different coverage. On the other hand, the independent and altruistic nature of this public utility resource also has its B side: long-term sustainability, given its great magnitude. In Xataka | Someone has passed 12,000 laws and reforms to source code and now searching the BOE is no longer an ordeal In Xataka | The “ChatGPT for lawyers” exists, it was born in Spain and has just reached a milestone: becoming a unicorn Cover | Mockuphone and Gemini

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