money

Google is making money by betting on its rivals. Some already give you more profit than your own business

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Alphabet published a few days ago its latest quarterly resultsresults that break all their records with 112.1 billion dollars in net profit, 298% more than a year ago. The surprise lies in the origin of this profit: almost all of it comes from the accounting revaluation of two stakes in companies that Alphabet does not control: SpaceX, which is already listed on the stock marketand Anthropic, which doesn’t do it yet but he is expected to take the step soon boosted by a financially spectacular 2026. For Alphabet, advertising grows 24% in the company’s revenue. Google Cloud soars 82%. And yet, 88% of the quarterly net profit comes from the revaluation of two financial bets that today compete with central areas of the group. In detail. Participation in SpaceX goes back a long way. In 2015, Google invested 900 million when the company was valued at 10,000 million. After the June IPO, at a valuation of 1.77 billionthat package is worth 94.1 billion. A multiple of more than one hundred times the original capital that rewarded Google’s good eye more than ten years ago. Anthropic’s is a shorter story. And more expensive. Alphabet has injected 13.3 billion into it from April 2023with commitments for up to an additional 30,000 million. The private assessment of the laboratory behind Claude It has gone from 350,000 to 965,000 million in one year. In 10-Q, Alphabet’s private holdings total 124.3 billion. Virtually everything is Anthropic. Between the lines. On the B-side of the album, Anthropic is signing engineers from DeepMind quite regularly. Its model competes with Gemini in the same field (API for developers, programming agents, business assistants), and a good part of the companies that do not want to be tied to Google choose it precisely for that reason. Every dollar that Anthropic collects from Alphabet also increases the value of Alphabet itself. SpaceX instead operates starlinkthe satellite network that supplants the ambition that Google tried and left with Project Loon. Sundar Pichai has not sold a single share of SpaceX or Anthropic. And yet, the market has recognized almost 100,000 million in profit from them. Yes, but. Capital gains are not cash. Of the 94.1 billion in SpaceX, 80,000 cannot be sold in the short term. And 14,100 are blocked until the third quarter of 2027. Anthropic remains unlisted, so the valuation is worth until the next round or until the next cut. The royal treasury, meanwhile, is being emptied. Alphabet has raised its investment guidance for 2026 to the range of 195,000-205,000 million (from the 180-190,000 announced in April), and quarterly free cash flow has gone into the red. The accounting balance of the party is paid by the data centers. And now what. The restrictions on SpaceX are beginning to be lifted after its first presentation of results as a listed company, scheduled for August 4. With 94 billion in shares blocked and an investment plan that is close to 200 billion annually, Alphabet has obvious reasons to sell part of the position. As soon as possible. Doing so implies an uncomfortable admission because it recognizes what this quarter already leaves black and white: that the company has earned more by financing its rivals than by running its own business. And with his business it is not that he has earned little. Except that the free cash flow is negative due to the enormous investment that the AI ​​career requires. In Xataka | The EU has just fined Google 890 million for the DMA. The figure weighs less than a paragraph almost hidden in the statement Featured image | Xataka with Magnific

“Do not increase the power at home. Turning it up and not taking advantage of it is wasting money”

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In the first six months of 2026, 63,201 electric cars have been purchased in Spain, according to ANFAC data. Its market share is already close to 10% and in June it exceeded one more point. The growth compared to 2025 is 36.69%. If we add plug-in hybrids to this data, 21.79% of the cars purchased in our country have a zero-emissions label. To understand what we need if we want to buy one of these cars and the cases that revolve around installing a plug, we have spoken with Antonio José Pérez, CEO and co-founder of My Car Charger. a boom. “Since 2023 we have no truce. Since the beginning of Moves II Planspecifically. When you set up the business you have to be knocking on all the doors and sowing the seed, insisting a lot when sending a budget; but now there is no time, the clients come to you. Since 2023 we are not in Christmas, nor in summer, nor anything. This doesn’t let up. Last year I was only able to take a week’s vacation in June,” explains Antonio José Pérez about the boom that the plug-in car is experiencing in our country. Also, they explain to us, “we offered training to salespeople because they know about the car, they have the information on the specifications, but when a client asks them: ‘Well, where do I charge this? Can I take advantage of my solar panel installation to charge the car?’, well, they didn’t know. The aids. From Mi Car Charger they explain that one of the reasons why the electric car seems to be taking off is the aid. Antonio José explains that the MOVES II Plan was a before and after. Later the third edition of the same project arrived and today the Auto+ Plan. “Waiting for it, many people are waiting for it. It was said that it was going to be in May, after the end of July… at the moment, nothing“, they remind us. And it was promised that the Auto+ Plan would be ready in January 2026 and that the aid discount would be applied at the time of purchase. At the moment it is announced but not active and it has been said that it will be retroactive to January 1. This implies that there are companies advancing aid with interest-free loans but It is money that the client has to return because, supposedly, at some point that help will come in. Of course, they are aid for the purchase of cars and this time a subsidy for the installation of the charger is not contemplated. “I always say that the aid has little help if you have to pay 100% at the beginning, receive it over time and, to make matters worse, pay it on income the following year. In the end, what was going to be 70% ends up being much less,” the company complains. And how much does it cost? The installation of a charger for an electric car varies greatly depending on whether we live in an individual house or store the car in a community garage. And the fact is that in a house it is very easy to reach the electrical network and pull the cable to where the charger is most convenient, not so in a garage where the square will be more or less far from the meter panel. “In a single-family home it usually takes about 3 or 4 hours of work. The charger has a more or less fixed price, but what varies is the meter of wiring, the labor and the amount of material. It usually ranges between 1,200 and 1,500 euros with VAT,” explains Antonio José Pérez. The difference with a community garage is “the hours of work and the meter of cable,” he emphasizes. And being more or less close to the meter panel varies a lot in the final bill. “We connect from there and we have to see the path to the garage.” The neighbors. “You have to see if the line passes over a neighbor’s square. If you have to drill a hole there, you have to ask for permission to work in their square for that time because logically there can’t be any cars,” they tell us from Mi Car Charger. That can be a problem. “Normally nothing happens, although in Seville we had the case of a neighbor who was an opponent of the electric car and did not want to see one near his square. We looked for an alternative on the route. We had to go around more and pull more meters of cable, which makes the installation more expensive because you always look for the shortest path, but in the end it was done,” he explains to us. Can I refuse to have them work on my garage space? The point is that in a community garage, the owner of the electric car You just have to inform the community of owners of the works but it cannot deny you the right to mount the charger. But a parking space, its space, is private. “We have even been presented with the Civil Guard in some installation. There is a figure that is the right of way. If your garage space falls in the way of the common services, such as the meter room, you are obliged to allow work to be done in your garage space. Although luckily we have never had to use that figure,” Antonio José Pérez explains to us. Essential. “What I recommend, and it almost comes from the factory, is that it has dynamic charging. It is what is called the ‘power balancer’. If you have 4 kW contracted, the system distributes those 4 kW between the consumption of the house and the charger. If less is consumed in the house, the more power the charger has. It is an intelligent load. And finally, another essential: “support is paramount. We have been testing many … Read more

“I don’t understand Stallone, I have the impression that he only does it for money”

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That phrase from Clint Eastwood is not current, but belongs to 2003, to a profile that Lillian Ross wrote about Eastwood for ‘The New Yorker’. Curiously, after that Stallone returned to Rocky, but he did so with a film that was a huge critical and public success. And Eastwood did not return to any of his previous films. That is, a quarter of a century later, the quote is nuanced but it essentially means the same thing. What is it coming for? That “I don’t understand Sylvester Stallone. I have the impression that he only does it for money” was said within Eastwood’s broader reflection on his own career: he was talking about Harry Callahan, about the risk of stagnating artistically, about the need to grow instead of going backwards. At that time, it was not known whether ‘Rocky Balboa’ would end up being a worthy film or a nostalgic wreck. In 2003, filming hadn’t even started. It was cool. Three years later, Stallone wrote, directed and starred in that sixth installment. The critical reaction far exceeded that of its two predecessors: Rotten Tomatoes Today it scores 78% out of 180 reviews, well above the reception that ‘Rocky V’ had in 1990. In commercial terms, ‘Rocky Balboa’ grossed 155.9 million dollars with a budget of 24 million. The installment that recovered Rocky was a very worthy tribute to a classic character. Everyone sins. Eastwood was also not free from the impulse to resurrect characters. He played Harry Callahan five times between 1971 and 1988, until ‘The Blacklist’, the last installment of the saga. When a sixth Callahan was finally ruled out, Warner Bros. did not close the door: in 2004 it considered relaunching the franchise with Dwayne Johnson as a thirty-something detective. The plan died due to Johnson’s own box office failures. Without consequences (relatively). However, Eastwood has remained true to his words: in 2003 he had already abandoned Callahan’s films many years ago and was fully immersed in a career as a complete auteur accepted by Hollywood. Words are always relative, yes, because at the end of the day… what are films like ‘Unforgiven’ if not late sequels to his successes as a protagonist for directors like Leone, where the director wonders what happens when the icons reach an advanced age and all the treasures obtained by clean shooting have come to nothing? What remains The really valuable thing about this statement, which we must remember that the current nonagenarian Eastwood has not uttered, is that it is infinitely nuanced: Rocky returned to one of his classic franchises (and would do so again with ‘John Rambo’, another critical – to a lesser extent, yes – and public success), but it was a more than worthy return. And Eastwood would stay true to his words, but four Dirty Harry sequels are there to remind him that there is no one with a completely irreproachable career. In Xataka | “They were not used to silence”: when Clint Eastwood set foot in Spain for the first time in 1964, he was marked forever

“There are legal grounds that justify Renfe returning the money if you travel without air conditioning”

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Madrid-Extremadura without air conditioning. Not, at least, working at full capacity. That is what is being experienced on some Renfe trains. As confirmed by Renfe itself, the heat is being so intense these days that, in some cases and to protect the train itself, the air conditioning is turned off. And for this you can ask for your money back. Yes, grab a chair. an oven. This is what some of the train cars are becoming. Renfe Madrid-Extremadura trains that these days travel through the plains of Toledo and Extremadura before reaching Badajoz. And just as CCOO unions have denouncedin some of these trains the air conditioning is being turned off. According to Renfe, this is because the trains are being exposed to such high temperatures that the train itself has to protect itself because the cooling system is not enough to keep it running. Saving resources, trains turn off the air conditioning in some cars and continue to their destination. Controlled? At Renfe they assure that yes. The company accepts the union’s criticism but assures that the train crew is ordered to move passengers from cars without air conditioning and relocate them to where it does. In addition, they assure that when these extreme weather conditions occur, they stop selling tickets to ensure that there are enough free seats to relocate passengers. And your rights? Your right as a consumer allows you to file a complaint and even request a refund of the ticket money. This is what they point out from the OCU, an organization from which they tell us the following: “The relationship between the traveler and the railway company is articulated by a transport contract whose content is not exhausted by the obligation to transfer, but rather includes the conditions under which this must be provided. And although there is no legal rule that recognizes an express right to a full refund of the ticket for traveling on a train without air conditioning, there are legal bases that can justify said refund when the breakdown constitutes a serious breach of the transport contract” And it is also confirmed by Renfe itself who confirms that the traveler has the opportunity to file a claim if they consider that the conditions of the service do not meet expectations. And the European Union defends that if the consumer does not receive a service of a quality as expected, he will have the right to request a refund of the ticket when the company does not ensure the “cleanliness of the rolling stock and the station facilities (control of air quality and temperature in the carriages, hygiene of the sanitary facilities, etc.)”, as reflected in the Regulation on the rights and obligations of railway passengers. Some minimums. As stated in this document, all companies that offer public transport services must adhere to minimum quality standards to offer their journeys. The company states in the general contracting conditions that the client has the right “to receive the contracted service in adequate conditions of quality and safety.” If these minimums are not met, customers have the right to claim the money for the ticket and the company will be obliged to provide a response in less than three months. “The fundamental question of whether or not to obtain a refund will depend on whether the absence of this service is considered an essential breach of the contract or not, depending on the specific conditions of the case,” they specify in the OCU. And they emphasize: “It must be sufficiently argued, not in general, but in this case, that the lack of air conditioning cannot be equated to a simple annoyance or a minor incident on a high-speed train during the summer, but rather a direct breach of the essential conditions of the service. For example, if the train runs for several hours with very high temperatures and without cooling, it can be argued that there is defective performance of the contract, it is not an accessory service (like the Wi-Fi connection for example)” The cases already known. As Renfe and the Facua experts recognize, complaints about not offering air conditioning on the train are not entirely unrelated to the company. In 2018a user claimed from Renfe (and won) the return of his ticket because the air conditioning had broken down. But the most striking case is the one that Facua itself reported a few weeks ago. The consumer defense organization pointed out that one of its members had gotten the money back for a Zaragoza-Barcelona match for this same reason… but The claims spanned three years. in which they had to communicate with Renfe on various occasions. Is it a precedent? The most important thing here is that the facts known and defended by Facua do not generate any type of legal precedent because there is no judicial ruling involved. It is “a solution reached extrajudicially between a consumer and Renfe, with the collaboration of a consumer association (Facua), and therefore does not consolidate any rights. Traveling by train without air conditioning does not automatically generate the right to a full refund of the ticket,” they explain from the OCU. They emphasize, on the contrary, that “the relevance of the case lies in the fact that the railway company itself recognizes that a breakdown of this nature can justify, in itself, the full refund of the amount paid” and that if we find ourselves in this situation “it is advisable to complain to the company. If no response is obtained or it is not favorable, legal advice can be sought, such as that provided by consumer associations, as well as appeal to the Transport Arbitration Boards or the Courts.” Photo | Pablo Nieto Abad In Xataka | If the question is who is going to pay your compensation for taking five hours to Madrid-Barcelona, ​​the answer is clear: nobody

Generation Z is breaking a rule Baby Boomers have always followed: don’t talk about money

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Nightly, in The Revoltdozens of guests face two of the most uncomfortable questions that can be asked of a person: about your sex life and about money. With the arrival of sex education to the classrooms, the taboo of talk about sex has been reduced, but when it comes to talking about salary, almost everyone hesitates. They change the subject, let out a nervous laugh, or dodge the answer as best they can. Money is still the true taboo of spanish after-dinner. Outside of Spain, something similar had been happening for decades. There was no talk about salary, neither with friends nor family. That unwritten rule, which boomers and generation X strictly followed, generation Z is definitively breaking. We don’t talk about money. The silence about money did not come out of nowhere. It has roots in social comparison: talking about what you earn puts you in a success or failure scaleand that is uncomfortable. The ethics of effort also weigh, the idea that having little money is synonymous with little ambition, something that in Spain is also mixed with a religious component that associates wealth with greed, as the economist Joan Tubau said. in an interview for The World. The sociologist Iván Parro matches in which money stopped being just a means of exchange and began to become a means of identifying social status. Having or not having money defines, in part, your place in the group. That’s why building a wall on your salary also protects your ego. Nobody wants to expose their position on that scale in front of others. Generation Z does not shut up. Mary Julia Koch, editor of the Wall Street Journal, explained it in one of his interventions in Fox Business. His generation has grown up publishing his entire life on social networks: romantic relationships, friendshipsuniversity life and work. Talking about salary was, according to her, the next logical step. And that step is already being taken on a massive scale. According to a Stepstone study74% of those under 30 years old already talk openly about their salary, compared to less than half of those over that age. Economic pressure helps to understand this opening: high rents, precarious jobs and a generation that needs to compare figures to know if they are being paid well. “Generation Z and Millennials are increasingly better informed about the salary they can expect, as they discuss it more openly than older generations,” the report notes. In Spain it is still difficult to talk about money. Here the change goes more slowly. According to data from a Younited analysis collected by The Newspaper51% of Spaniards prefer not to talk about money openly, and up to 60% of those under 40 believe that it should not be done in public. Culture is important, but so is the lack of training. The Bank of Spain itself makes it clear in its latest Financial Competencies Survey: almost half of the population considers that their knowledge is low or very low. When you don’t know how something works, it’s easier to avoid talking about it than to risk appearing ignorant. A new language to talk about money. This change in tone also has its own face in Spain. Streamers like Ibai Llanos have managed to talk about salariesrents or mortgages sound like a normal conversation and not a meeting with the bank, something that has helped the creators become the gateway to financial education for many young people. The secrecy of a lifetime is being dismantled little by little, between reels posted on social networks and a generation that already sees silence about money as more of a disadvantage than a taboo. In Xataka | If the question is how much money does it take to be happy in Spain, a study has the answer: double what you earn Image | Unsplash (Marionel Luciano, Emil Kalibradov)

Alibaba’s Qwen AI model is the new crown jewel. The only problem is that they don’t make money from it.

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Jack Ma he returned like a prodigal son to the international scene in February of last year. He did so at an event with the president of China, Xi Jinping, and that represented an important support for the technological leader. Since then his company, Alibaba, has not stopped flooding us with its open AI models, Qwen, but that strategy is having the same lights and shadows as its competitors. Devastates downloads. Alibaba launched its Qwen family of models in 2023 and released them with open weights almost immediately. That made them a perfect alternative to be able to use them locally and to also be able to tune them in all types of scenarios. In January 2026, Qwen was already the open AI model most downloaded in the world with close to a million daily downloads according to data from Hugging Face. By the end of 2025, Qwen was already the most downloaded open weight model in the world by far. Source: AI Base. But popularity does not equal income. In the first quarter of 2026, Alibaba indicated that it had obtained revenue of $1.3 billion related to AI, just 4% of its total revenue. The figure is very short, especially if we take into account that Alibaba plan to invest $55 billion in AI infrastructure by the end of 2027. Investors want profits now. Company shares have fallen 37% on the Hong Kong stock market this year: investors are clearly concerned about the lack of return on this bet on AI, something that we have also been seeing for some time in the US market. Internal divisions. The pressure to turn these open models into a business seems to be dividing Qwen’s own team. In March its chief engineer, Lin Junyang, announced his departure from the companyand he was followed by several key engineers amidst internal disagreements on how to monetize the model. The company has already started move token in the field of proprietary models: in April already released three of them in a few days. War with the US and Anthropic. Meanwhile, the company also faces external pressures. The Pentagon has included it on a blacklist of companies that Washington says support the Chinese military, something Alibaba denies. Additionally, Anthropic recently sent a letter to US senators accusing Alibaba of try to copy their technology using 24,000 fraudulent accounts. Alibaba has declined to comment on the matter. Alibaba has the same problem as OpenAI. Richard Lin, vice president of the company Datastrato, has been involved in the panorama of open AI models in China for some time, and his message reminds us of a palpable reality not only for that market, but for all startups and AI companies: “At the moment there are no AI companies with a sustainable business model. It is not a healthy industry.” The message is as true as it is forceful, but all AI companies would surely respond with what Zuckerberg said: “Losing a couple hundred billion dollars would be a bummer, but that’s better than being left behind in the race for superintelligence.” The funny thing is that they are both (probably) right. Image | qwen In Xataka | China’s open AIs aren’t “beating” ChatGPT, they’re doing something more important: catapulting their industry

Sony has told you why it stops selling games in physical format. The real reason, of course, is the same as always: money

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Sony has announced that in January 2028 will stop manufacturing physical discs for PlayStation. Among the brief reasons given for making this decision is adapting to the player’s preferences, and following the trends that rule the industry: digital games sell more than physical ones, therefore, this is the choice of the players, which must be adhered to. However, what you have to look at there to find Sony’s true motives is “best sellers.” And specifically, we have to ask ourselves what economic benefit Sony extracts from these sales. The clear accounts. You just have to take note of the profit percentages that Sony makes with each game sold to understand the operation. According to the analysis of consultant Serkan Toto, Kantan GamesSony receives around 54% more for each digital copy of its own game than for the same physical copy. At a price of 70 dollars, a digital game leaves you the full 70 dollars, because there is no external store that takes commission (of course, from there you have to extract development, marketing and corporate costs, if the game is from an external studio). The same title on disc, after deducting the distributor’s margin (about 30%) and the manufacturing cost (about 5%), is left with a profit of about $45.50. Although the calculation is approximate and countless external actors must be taken into account (especially third parties), the comparison makes clear the maxim that is guiding these decisions: the fewer intermediaries, the greater the profit margin per unit. Less physical. Added to this is that the physical aspect already weighs little in the company’s overall income statement. According to a corporate report of the company itselfphysical software represented only 3% of its revenue in 2024. All these decisions must also be contextualized: at a time when Your Playstation 6 can cost a thousand euros sales price and that the current component crisis promises not only to continue, but directly double next yearcutting that 3% can save millions. Kill the second hand. There is another figure that should be taken into account: resale. Every second-hand record that changes ownership is a sale from which Sony does not see a euro. An Alinea Analytics analyst said that “what this is all about is profitability and control for PlayStation”, two very juicy terms in this new situation because a digital code, apart from all the savings in intermediaries that we said above, is linked to a personal account that cannot be resold or lent. Every second-hand product that Sony was unable to sell now becomes a new purchase at full price, or is not produced at all. This second-hand market is not exactly marginal, and is now being seen to disappear. GameStop saw a 14% drop in its quarterly revenue last March, and explicitly attributed to the shift towards digital. The analysis firm Circana estimates that spending on new physical games in the United States has fallen to 1.6 billion dollars in the last year, compared to a maximum of 11.5 billion in 2009. In other words, we have had an almost uninterrupted decline for seventeen years. It’s the market, friend. Sony has taken the most aggressive step, but the direction had already been set from different parts of the sector for some time. A week before Sony’s announcement, Rockstar confirmed that The physical edition of ‘GTA VI’ will not have a disc version. Both Xbox and Playstation have sold versions of their latest consoles without a disc reader. It is an inescapable trend, which began on PC and in stores that have ended up becoming massive options, such as Steam, and which reveals that a corporation will always prefer, rather than a one-time sale, that we are subscribed (literally or figuratively) to a constant purchase, to a service that never ends. Therefore, saying that the player has chosen digital for convenience is, at the very least, a liquid truth. As he told newsletter ‘Friday in Kiribati’we must not get carried away by that discourse: we have not chosen the preeminence of the digital, it has been imposed on us: “it seems that during the last decade no one has designed consoles without a reader, exclusive discounts for digital versions, subscription catalogs, stores integrated (and hyperpresent) in the designs of the systems, games that, despite having the disc, need to connect to the internet (…) nor have they invested obscene amounts of money in convincing us that getting up from the couch to change a disc was a thing. of the past.” Image | Photo of Alexey Savchenko in Unsplash

“When things move fast, people make mistakes and it costs them money”

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Next to the Fiorano track, the small circuit inside the Maranello factory on which Ferrari tests its F1 cars every winter, the noise is deafening. “When things move too fast, people make mistakes,” he explains. Bogdan Botezaturesearch director of bitdefenderone of the largest cybersecurity companies in the world. Botezatu could refer to the sports cars that, right at that moment, are spinning around the circuit without stopping. But he’s actually talking about something else. Last month, Bitdefender released its first Cybersecurity Grand Prix Fan Threat Indexan elaborate study of the risks and threats that spectators of sports around the world, including F1, face every weekend. The purpose of the investigation is simple: to show the multiple tools that hackers have around them to violate the privacy of viewers and, in the most extreme cases, raid their bank account. “Frauds are evolving. Last year, cybercrime had a turnover of around 9 billion (trillion in English) of dollars globally. Of those 9 billion, only 1 billion came from the scamming“explains Botezatu. His index aims to monitor how scams evolve. In the middle of the Soccer World Cupwith millions of viewers glued to their mobile phone screens every day, the phenomenon is more current than ever. Bitdefender, however, focuses on another area: motorsports. For years, the company has collaborated closely with Ferrari, whom it sponsors and offers cybersecurity solutions for its F1 team. This is no small matter: Ferrari, like all other F1 teams, jealously protects its technical findings. Industrial espionage has always been the order of the day in a competitive environment. With Bitdefender, Ferrari aims to limit damage in today’s highly digitalized environment. “If you look at what happens to large companies, they are constantly being attacked by ransomwareintellectual property theft, infiltrations… But they are protected, they have their own cybersecurity teams, they can protect their perimeters, they can service their infrastructure, they have agreements with companies like Bitdefender. They are protected,” Botezatu points out. We are not, he implicitly suggests. “Things at home are fundamentally different,” he continues, “spectators watching F1 or other motor sports don’t have these safety nets, they aren’t even aware of the risks of cybercrime.” When we sit in front of the television to watch an F1 race or a soccer match, we focus on sport. The only problem is that on the other side of the screen there is a army of scammers and hackers trying to take advantage of the show. To take it out at our expense. The range of tools available to scam us is wide. From merchandise from smuggling (fake t-shirts, accessories, jackets, caps; in the case of football teams, t-shirts) to fraud in the purchase of tickets (often with juicy and pompous “last minute” offers), passing through the ecosystems of streaming. Much of Bitdefender’s talk emphasizes this last aspect. How it works The order of the factors is almost always the same: before a big event, such as an F1 GP or a football tournament, there is an uptick in fraud due to illegal tickets, in addition to a growth in fake advertisements. merchandising. During the celebration of the event, the numbers increase exponentially. streaming malicious, in most cases disappearing at the end of the show. After the race or the game, the scam in the form of highlights or surveys that give rise to abuse. “In the case of motorsports, its ecosystems are dominated by speed. You have to sell or buy tickets quickly, you have to find a service streamingyou have to find legitimate stores merchandising. If there are mistakes, they cost money,” Botezatu reasons. “And there is also an emotional investment during the weekends,” he adds, pointing to the impetuous, nervous and effusive aspect of the sports fan. It’s not just about watching an F1 race or a soccer match: you want be part of itso decision making is sometimes conditioned. Bogdan Botezatu. One of the advantages of protecting users during sporting events is that the behavior of cybercriminals is predictable. The scammers They know that the activity is concentrated during the weekends on Telegram or Discord channels and on streaming unofficial. There are suspicious VPNs, aggressive ads, fake subscriptions and a long list of mechanisms to capture our attention and surprise us. Its operation, in the case of streamingis always the same: First there is amplification on social media: Telegram channels, Facebook groups, Discord servers and Reddit discussions. Then direct monetization is sought: unlock payments, force interactions with ads, redirect users, push notifications push. He streaming of the race is secondary. And finally, the infrastructure is disposable: domains that appear and disappear just before and after the race often use the “cc” domain. Another problem identified by Bitdefender is the services of streaming of Android. We talk about applications like Playfy TV and Cricfy TV. According to them, they require installing APKs and are risky. At the same time, all this It is related to the “streaming boxes” offered by Chinese companies, specifically BADBOX 2.0. They put malware on Android, phones, tablets and much more. Its impact is very high, they seek compromise devices before even reaching the consumer. Using this technology we open our devices to the enemy, according to Botezatu, who specifically focuses on this mechanism. He streaming sports is fundamentally based on Discord servers, Telegram channels and communication systems. backup They work by invitation. The references of streaming They are deleted after the races, the servers are migrated and there is a very high link rotation that makes it impossible to chase them or protect against them effectively. For all this, the Bitdefender expert insists, it is very important to be aware of the risks involved. His summary is very simple: if you have to install something, a bad sign. Given the location of the talk, in the heart of a racing circuit, and the orientation of Bitdefender, sponsor of an F1 team, it is natural to suspect that his efforts are aimed at motor sports fans. and your Fan Thread Indexin … Read more

Volkswagen needs money and getting rid of its Italian jewels is already on the table

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Ducati, for sale. Reason, here. Lamborghini, for sale. Reason, here. Those are the posters that could hang on the door of the Volkswagen group headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany. At least that’s what they claim Financial Timeswhere they claim that investment banks are pressuring the automobile conglomerate to get rid of two of its most glittering assets. The company announced a few days ago that plans to lay off 100,000 workers. The notice is the continuation of another threatthis time from December 2024. At that time, the company already claimed to be immersed in a huge restructuring process because, according to its directors, It was “essential to survive”. The result, as we say, was a first threat: 35,000 layoffs. That promotion of incentivized sick leave and layoffs (which later amounted to 50,000 employees) to avoid factory closures is forgotten. At least that’s what I anticipated Manager Magazine just a few days ago. And the fact is that the accounts, they say, do not add up and it will be necessary to raise the level of layoffs to 100,000 employees. In the conversations that revolve around that conversation, another idea has come up: sell. Sell ​​companies that are a flagship of quality and good work within the Volkswagen Group. They explain in Financial Times and collect other German media such as Auto Motor und Sport that investment banks are already putting pressure on Volkswagen’s management to slim down its portfolio. And those indicated are clear: Ducati and Lamborghini. Now that we can To understand why Lamborghini and Ducati would be in the spotlight, the British economic media and the German motor media point to one name: Everllence. Everllence is a company specialized in the production of large engines for very specific sectors such as maritime or energy production. A few days ago the sale of 51% of the company was confirmed in an agreement that was estimated at 7.4 billion euros. A maneuver that, apparently, has been received with very good words by the rest of the Volkswagen Group investors. And the idea, therefore, is to continue. Although they are two of the great jewels of the automobile conglomerate, Ducati and Lamborghini are also attractive in the eyes of a potential buyer. The main incentive for their purchase is that these are companies that obtain enormous economic performance from their products, which establishes part of the future success for whoever is willing to buy the company and, above all, increases the sales value that the German group can obtain. The possible sale of Ducati, in fact, It was already put on the table in 2017 but for now he is still part of the company. In this case, the colleagues explain Motorpassion Motorcycle It would be a sale of the company. In the case of Lamborghini, an IPO would be contemplated. The movement, evidently, would have the intention of raising funds to strengthen the restructuring that the company has advanced. A few weeks ago, the Volkswagen Group already divested itself of Bugatti, a company whose cars require a very high leverage of money since they are vehicles produced by hand in a large part of their process. The company still had a 45% stake in Bugatti through Porsche, after in 2021 it already sold the remaining 55% to the Rimac Group, owners of the car company. super luxury electric cars. In that sale the amount of the operation was not made public but our colleagues from Motorpassion They stated that the figure reached was estimated at around 500 million euros. That investment banks target Ducati and Lamborghini, as we say, is no coincidence. Stellantis, for example, has a problem with Maserati since it is having a very difficult time relaunching the brand but, above all, it is a firm with very little projection in case someone wants to buy it, as explained in the podcast Power Art. And for Volkswagen, getting rid of both companies totally or partially would mean an immediate injection of capital. The question is whether it is a good idea in the long term. In the case of Lamborghini, some models share research and development with Audi such as the Urus and the Q8 or the most recent Audi Nuvolaria spectacular supercar that It exists only because the Lamborghini Temerario already existed. That is to say, Lamborghini is intricate within the rest of the Volkswagen group, it is not like Bugatti which in many cases walked a path parallel to that of the rest of the company. For the Germans, the Italian firm is more than just very high profit margins, it is a test bed and a breath of fresh air for stagnant companies like Audi. Photo | Ducati and Audi In Xataka | You buy a “European car”, you receive Chinese technology: more and more brands from the old continent refit Asian vehicles

Europe has realized that nothing matters in technological sovereignty if it does not spend money on something crucial: defending its submarine cables

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There is a type of technological infrastructure that is invisible, but that has become essential in recent years: submarine cables. Conflicts like those of the Red Sea either the ukrainian war have shown that the seabed is a new battlefield. Damaging submarine cables havoc can be wreaked, and the European Union has just outlined its plan to strengthen the security and resilience of these cables. The goal? Track and stop threats in real time, but also repair underwater cables that enemies have attacked as soon as possible. Plan of action. In recent months, Europe has been weaving a plan to protect its submarine cables. These cables carry most of the world’s Internet traffic (an estimated 99%), but also other essential goods such as energy, vital when we want to tackle offshore energy. Hence the importance and, obviously, why the attacks also focus on them. Only in the first months of 2025 were more than a dozen submarine cables cut which seem few, but it really is something that can wreak havoc. And, therefore, Europe started to define an Action Plan with four main categories of action: Prevention: carry out risk assessments coordinated by countries and prioritize the financing of “smart” cables with redundancy. Detection: improve the monitoring capabilities of sea basins such as the Mediterranean or the Baltic to obtain a situation picture in real time. Response and recovery: strengthening rapid repair capacity and improving EU crisis protocols to act in a coordinated manner when a cable is damaged. Deterrence: use diplomacy and ultimately sanctions to respond to hostile acts. With global partners, promote a pact to encourage “cable diplomacy.” Repair of a cable Quick response. But of course, if deterrence does not work, we must act, and more recently, the European Commission has announced the steps to reinforce that strategy that aims to ensure that a damaged submarine cable causes as few headaches as possible. With an allocation of 40 million euros, the Commission seeks to guarantee a rapid and effective response to disturbances of submarine cables in emergency situations through adaptable modules. These modules, like repair kits, will be strategically positioned in various sea basins so that, in the event of a cable break, the ships repairing the cables will have quick access to these modules. It is one more step in a strategy that already had a first pilot call for 20 million euros a few months ago and whose objective was to finance modules in the Baltic Sea. Booster. Another measure will be the installation of the first two regional cable centers. In the Baltic, a Regional Center will be opened that will be responsible for strengthening surveillance and response mechanisms. The idea is that, with an allocation of 2.5 million euros, the information exchange platform and the capacity to both detect and prevent threats to maritime infrastructure will be improved. Finland will be the coordinator of the center together with Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Latvia and Sweden. On the other hand, in the Mediterranean, another center will be supported with 3.3 million euros. The task will be to make decisions, exchange information in real time and the same as in the Baltic: anomaly detection and coordinated response to incidents. Italy will be the coordinator together with Greece, Cyprus and Malta. With the first regional cable centers, Europe moves towards enhanced capabilities, strengthening our ability to detect threats, act faster and respond together – Henna Virkkunen, Executive Vice President for Technological Sovereignty, Security and Democracy Next steps. In the end, these two strategies are part of a much larger plan in which they had already been assigned 595 million euros to 74 continental connectivity projects. In February of this year, the Commission also advertisement a package of some 347 million euros exclusively for submarine cable projects (construction, monitoring and repair), which shows that it is a strategic, basic infrastructure that fits in with the technological sovereignty plan that Europe is pursuing after seeing associations with allied countries weakened in recent years. Image | What’s Inside? In Xataka | A third of the world’s population cannot read this: the UN reveals that 2.9 billion people have never accessed the internet

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