problem

Nvidia has just presented the definitive chip against Intel and AMD. There is a problem: Windows

by

The Nvidia processor for PC is the “the wolf is coming” of consumer technology. The company has been the reference for years in GPUs for gamers and flirted with SoCs thanks to the Tegra chips (which are what give life to both nintendo switch like to nintendo switch 2), but for computers they still couldn’t find a way to get equipment with 100% Nvidia guts. That just changed with the presentation of RTX Spark chips. It is a SoC that directly attacks the binomial Windows PC = Intel or AMD CPUone that is positioned as the alternative to those traditional options and that is specifically designed to compete for the heart of the consumer PC. Specifically, for laptops. Now, although Microsoft and Nvidia have been generating excitement for a few days and pointing out that it is the new era of the PC, there is a problem. Windows. The brake is no longer silicon, it could be Windows The theory is very interesting. RTX Spark combines a CPU Grace up to 20 cores that it has developed together with MediaTek (this is curious) with an RTX Blackwell GPU with 6,144 cores. TSMC (how could it not be otherwise) has given life to chip in a 3 nanometer lithography. Not only is it powerful, but it has up to 128 GB of unified memory (the same design that we see in Apple Silicon) and an interface NVLink which allows communication between RAM, CPU and GPU to be very, very fast. Nvidia talks about rendering heavy 3D scenes on laptops, running models with 120 billion parameters, and at the same time running games at 1,440p above 100 FPS with DLSS and ray tracing. The best? That Jensen Huang stood out at the Computex conference showing this in very thin and light laptops. It is the same strategy that Qualcomm follows. own Microsoft has already presented a Surface with RTX Spark and it is an architecture that makes a lot of sense in the universe of current light but powerful laptops… and also in desktop computers like a mac mini or of a mac studio. And, compared to the more traditional PC industry, the GPU is estimated to be in the range of a RTX 5070 for laptops. In the absence of testing it, it is undeniable that it looks good and that, although there are data that are not so favorable (such as bandwidth when compared to the most powerful Apple), it is a good addition to a segment in which, if we left the Intel/AMD duo, the only one that was trying was Qualcomm with devices like the Snapdragon X Elite. And there is the key: RTX Spark, like Qualcomm chips, is focused on being the heart of a Windows that is at its brightest. Because RTX Spark is a chip with ARM architecture and, although in office tasks Windows ARM It moves well, under more demanding tasks is when it begins to not be up to par. Microsoft’s system, which they themselves know is not at its best level of popularity due to the whole issue of AI features, has many shortcomings in its ARM version when it comes to gaming, precisely what Nvidia is promoting. It is also not the best optimized on laptop computers, something that is being seen with type machines. Steam Deck. The heart of the new Surface We are seeing it in recent years with PC-console asus, MSI either Lenovo: The hardware is good, but Windows drags down the experience significantly. The paradox is that the Steam Deck, being the least capable on paper, is usually more recommended precisely because it avoids Windows and relies on a system much more fine-tuned for that format. With RTX Spark, the two companies say they have been working for a long time to solve those problems and make this time, Windows on an ARM chip feel different with support for games with anticheat and native for personal agents. We will see in practice what ends up arriving, but two things are clear here. The first is that Microsoft gains aggressive hardware to compete face to face against Apple in the field of very powerful laptops with long battery life. The second is that Qualcomm is no longer alone in that corral and now it will be very interesting to see what hardware it responds with. Because Nvidia already has the chip, the CUDA ecosystem and agreements with all manufacturers, as well as the support of the giant TSMC. The “weak” link, therefore, is not silicon, it is a Windows on ARM that has improved a lot in recent yearsbut that is the element that will have the most to prove. In Xataka | Graphic muscle for Windows and a slam of the door on Android: the exclusivity toll that Nvidia demands with its new ARM architecture

One of the most feared airports in Europe faces a new problem. And it comes from the Atlantic

by

There are airports that seem designed to remind us how complex flying is. It also depends on the exact place where you are trying to land. In Madeirathat reality is understood very quickly: Cristiano Ronaldo airport It coexists with the Atlantic, with difficult terrain and with winds capable of altering operations. The novelty is not that it is a demanding airport, something well known, but that Portugal has put figures to a problem that seems to have worsened. The data. He put the information on the table Hugo Espírito SantoSecretary of State for Infrastructure of Portugal, during a parliamentary hearing held at the end of May. According to DNOTICIAS.PTweather records show an “abnormal variation” in wind speed starting in 2015 at Madeira airport. The average climb is around three knots, approximately 5.5 km/h, a figure that may seem small from the outside, but which in an infrastructure so sensitive to the wind has very concrete operational consequences. In the words of the president himself, this increase “makes a large part of the operations unviable.” An airport conditioned by its geography. To understand why three knots matters so much, you have to look at where the runway is. Euronews describes the airport as one of the most demanding in the world due to an unpleasant combination: one end built on concrete pillars, terrain that rises quickly in the vicinity, cliffs near the other end and winds generated by the nearby mountains. This mix can translate into local turbulence, waiting in the air, detours or cancellations when the weather is not good. Looking for an explanation. After recognizing the average increase of three knots, Espírito Santo explained that the Portuguese Institute of the Sea and Atmosphere and the National Civil Engineering Laboratory are analyzing the phenomenon to determine its causes. That caution is relevant: we know that the records show an abnormal variation in wind speed, but not why. In an airport so exposed to local conditions, this difference between confirming the problem and explaining its origin is key to not taking for granted what is still being investigated. New system. The MAWINDS system combines LIDAR and X-band radar to analyze weather conditions in almost real time around Cristiano Ronaldo Airport. The project was presented by the Portuguese Government in December 2024 with an investment of 3.5 million euros assumed by NAV Portugal, although its technical incorporation was not yet fully closed in May 2026. Its purpose is to better detect episodes of turbulence and adverse wind before they affect the operation. Technology still in development. Everything seems to indicate that installing such a system is not equivalent to fully incorporating it into operations from one day to the next. The Portuguese infrastructure manager acknowledged that there were still no preliminary reports on MAD Winds and attributed the delay in its certification to the complexity of an unusual technology. As he explained, before being installed in Madeira this technology had only been deployed in four airports. That is to say, the airport already has a more advanced tool for observing the wind, but its full use still depends on technical work that cannot be simply accelerated. The roadmap. When MAWINDS was presented in December 2024, it was explained that a one-year pre-operation phase was opening to generate data and give ANAC the necessary information before considering, in the future, a possible revision of the wind operating limits. The system is not only designed to better look at the weather, but to build a sufficiently solid database to allow regulatory decisions to be made without lowering the priority of safety. Images | Madeira Airports In Xataka | The biggest move in history will be in Dubai: 35 billion dollars to build the largest airport in the world

The problem is not that middle managers are retiring en masse. Generation Z doesn’t want their job.

by

The inverted population pyramid that we have in Spain means that hundreds of thousands of professionals with decades of experience behind them retire every year. Area directors, zone managers, team leaders and other intermediate and management positions that have sustained the structures for decades. The problem is not their exit, which should be a normal and expected process, the real challenge for companies is that now no one wants to take your place. The situation even has a technical name “succession crisis” and the data confirm it. According to data collected in the report ‘Human value: global trends on the future of work‘ Prepared by Manpower Group, 57% of companies globally recognize that their aging workforce is already affecting their human resources strategy. Key management positions are retiring and Generation Z does not seem willing to fill them. Reasons are not lacking. Retirements skyrocket. The first to reach retirement age have been the generation of baby boomersbut the first members of generation Only in Spain, in 2024 they registered 368,065 new retirements, 12.6% more than the previous year, while the 345,000 retirements registered in 2025 show a sustained rhythm for the following years. As pointed out to ExpansionAccording to Óscar Berumen, CEO of Grupo Viraal, what is lost with these departures is not just a vacant position: “When a company lets these profiles go, it loses technical knowledge, strategic memory and a deep way of understanding the business.” It is a type of knowledge that is not contracted with a typical job offer. Generation Z is very clear that they do not want to ascend. The phenomenon even has a name: conscious unbossingor the total disengagement from decision-making positions that generation Z is putting into practice. According to a survey From recruiting firm Robert Walters, 52% of Gen Z professionals actively avoid middle management positions throughout their career. 69% describe them as roles in which a high level of stress is required, in exchange for low financial reward. In other words, the salary improvement that companies offer does not compensate for the additional mental load that promotion entails, which is why young people from Generation Z are not willing to give up mental health or reconciling their personal life. According to the latest data for 2024 from the INEthe average salary of those under 25 years of age in Spain was 1,372.8 euros. Take on more responsibilities without real compensationGraphic is not the most attractive proposal, which is why many young people prefer to fulfill their current positions and maintain conditions compatible with their personal life. AI accelerates the problem from another side. As if the refusal to promote was not enough, the emergence of AI in the workplace has added another reason to stay away from promotions. According the data collected by Revelio Labs for Business Insiderjob offers for middle managers in the US were 42% lower than the maximum recorded in April 2022. The consulting firm Gartner calculated that by 2026 one in five companies will use AI to eliminate more than half of their middle management positions. The last ones layoffs in big technology such as Amazon, Google or Meta have not occurred in a context of financial crisis, but have been carried out with the intention of flattening internal structures. This flattening has especially affected to middle management who were dedicated to transferring the objectives to the rest of the staff and managing their execution. Now that job AI is going to automate itwhich is why young people do not want to play those roles and put a target on their back in the next round of layoffs. A perfect storm. According to estimates of the report According to ManPower Group, by 2030, more than one in four workers in advanced economies will be over 55 years old. Generation Among millennials, that figure rises somewhat more, to 56%, but it is still a minority. Companies that operate with structures designed for linear upward trajectories face the major problem that that model no longer fits the way young people understand work today. The gap left by boomers and generation X will not disappear just because of the passage of time. Organizations will have to decide whether to redesign the role of middle managers to make it attractive again, or they learn to function without them. In Xataka | Finding a job had always been a good way to escape poverty: in Spain it is no longer true Image | Unsplash (tommao wang)

The problem is not spending a lot of tokens, it’s that most of them are being wasted

by

A year ago, Sam Altman did a striking prediction: as the production of data centers becomes automated, the cost of intelligence (AI) should at some point converge with the cost of electricity.” Or what is the same: access to AI would be very, very cheap. That has not happened by any means, but in addition to spending a lot of tokens, we are wasting them. So much AI for what?. He phenomenon of tokenmaxxing -he rampant token consumption more like fashion than something useful—has begun to set off alarm bells, because companies have realized that they are spending small fortunes for their employees to try to get the most out of AI. AI dismissal. A study by the startup EntelligenceAI affirms that for every dollar invested in AI, only 18 cents end up reaching production. The remaining 82% ends up being invested in correcting errors, rewriting code and executing review processes that do not generate direct value. This is what they call “unproductive spending,” and it is a warning sign because the success of this technology does not depend on us using AI non-stop, but on using it to improve productivity. Uber warns. Andrew Macdonald, COO of Uber, I questioned openly whether this massive spending by companies like yours on AI is really justified when it is not linked to improvements in productivity. The company has been one of those that has decided to cut spending on Anthropic models because the available annual budget had already been “vented” to use them. Investing in tokens ends up being unprofitable: the “useful part” is less than a fifth of what is invested, according to EIntelligence AI. The uncertainty is there. Other experts They warn just the opposite: This is just the beginning of what is to come, so taking action against AI consumption may be counterproductive. The problem is not so much that AI is being used, but rather that it is being wasted: this obsession with consuming tokens caused the CFO at Amazon, for example, to tell his employees “Don’t use AI just for the sake of using it”. The company rewarded those who used AI the most, so many ended up using it for trivial, redundant or useless tasks. Use AI appropriately. Matan Gringberg, CEO of the AI ​​startup Factory, told in WSJ how a manager at a major financial institution had told him that his employees were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on tokens. The problem was that some were using the most powerful models to answer simple questions or just to chat. The message here is clear: these models must be used appropriately to avoid wasting them: “If your daughter needs private algebra classes, you can probably find someone cheaper than Albert Einstein to give them to her,” he concluded. We are consuming tokens beyond our means. At the Google I/O event Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet, explained that the company currently processes more than 3.2 trillion tokens per month, seven times more than a year ago. Faced with this demand, both it and other companies are “punishing” the trivial use of AI models. AI agents consume tokens like there’s no tomorrow. What has also happened is that the arrival and popularization of agentic programming tools, such as Claude Code, Codex or Antigravity, causes many more tokens to be consumed because with them it is possible to automate the execution of programming tasks (or other areas) on a continuous basis. The AI ​​model prepares a plan, executes it, and at each step thinks and evaluates its responses before continuing with the plan. This process is intensive in token consumption, and is the main reason why token consumption has skyrocketed. Flat rates, nothing. Monthly plans like ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro offered leeway for developers to consume huge amounts of tokens with hardly any limitations. However, both OpenAI and Anthropic and other companies have begun to change their strategies, limiting the cases in which these flat rates can be used so that users cannot abuse them. If they want to consume more they can, but always through a pay-per-use philosophy: the more you use, the more you pay for something that at least helps users be aware that they cannot use super-powerful models for useless conversations with their chatbots. Image | Xataka with Magnific In Xataka | If the question is whether using ChatGPT or Claude in English is more efficient and saves tokens, the answer is: yes

We know exactly what AI costs, but we are unable to measure what it produces. And that is a serious problem

by

We know very well the cost of developing AI: mammoth data centershe electricity consumption skyrocketedhe tech capex through the roof… The problem is that it seems that all this is not having a return, or not enough to justify tremendous investment. The fear of the bubble is justified, but maybe we were wrong and the problem is another: that our measuring tape is broken. The hidden production. In an extensive and in-depth analysis in the newsletter Semianalisysuse the term ‘dark output’ in reference to the economic value that AI is generating, but which current measurement systems do not see well and therefore does not have an impact on GDP. This hidden production has two aspects: Hidden production by substitution: These are jobs that used to be done by a human for a price and that can now be done by AI for a fraction of that cost. There is a very graphic example with the writing of wills, a job that historically cost $400, which had dropped to $150, and in a single year AI has plummeted to $0.50. The work is done, but the economic transaction disappears from the data. New production that remains hidden: On the other side are the jobs that were not done because they were too expensive, but that AI has made so cheap that they can now be done. The example that Semianalysis provides are the bibliographic reviews whose price was up to $2,000 and that made them a very exclusive service. Now with AI you can do one of these reviews on all types of projects. The problem is that the economic trace is non-existent, except for the use of tokens or payment of subscriptions. Why it is important. The thesis of the analysis is that we are not facing a bubble, but that we are not measuring well the return that AI is producing and that is a problem that goes far beyond a simple statistical debate. Macroeconomic data is the metric by which investors detect real growth, central banks adjust interest rates, and companies decide whether to hire or automate. Making decisions of this caliber based on inaccurate data can have serious consequences. The difficulty of measuring it. Services and intellectual labor are much more complicated to measure than physical goods. It is very easy for a furniture factory to measure whether new machinery allows it to manufacture more chairs in less time. AI is helping to do tasks such as programming, writing documents, summarizing them or creating briefings and the way we measure it is the tokens consumed. The problem is that consuming more tokens can result in enormous benefits for the company, but they can also produce bad code and bad summaries. The value is in the production, in the output, not in what we spend to get to it. Precedents. Something similar happened during the computer boom in the 80s and 90s. At this time, macroeconomic data were not capable of detecting what the computer revolution was bringing. The solution did not arrive until 2013, when R&D and investment in intellectual property were included in GDP accounting. The result was that 3.6 trillion dollars were added retroactively, showing that in the year 2000 alone it represented 30% of the GDP. The other precedent is the so-called care economy, in reference to all the domestic and care work carried out mainly by women without receiving remuneration. The International Labor Organization estimated in 2018 that 16.4 billion hours of unpaid care work were performed, which would be equivalent to 11 trillion dollars or 9% of global GDP. Yes, but. That it is necessary to update our measuring tape does not detract from the fact that investment in AI infrastructure is truly dizzying. In 2025, big tech companies will invest $410 billion in AI and in 2026 the plan is to exceed the 650 billion dollars. The chief economist of Golman Sachs said that the contribution of all this crazy investment to US GDP was “basically zero.” In this sense, it is as risky to say that we are facing a bubble about to burst due to excess spending, as it is to assume that there is immense invisible wealth justifying every dollar invested. Image | Xataka with Gemini In Xataka | “The biggest mistake of all time”: Bill Gates let slip 400 billion when Microsoft didn’t buy Android

That Iran shot down a US F-15 was something unusual. The problem is that they have opened the missile… and everything points to China

by

In 1960, when an American U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet UnionWashington initially believed it was facing a military problem. He ended up discovering that the incident had diplomatic consequences much larger and blew up a summit between the two superpowers. Because sometimes a single downed plane reveals a story much bigger than the battle in which it fell. The takedown that changed the conversation. He downing of an F-15E on Iran last month was, in itself, an extraordinary event. It had been decades since a United States fighter had been shot down by enemy fire, and the rescue movie operation later, with one of the crew hiding for two days in the Zagros Mountains, underlined the seriousness of the episode. However, as investigations continue, the incident is shifting from being a story about Iranian military capabilities to something else: a story about China. According to cited sources by NBC News the suspicion that the plane was hit by a portable anti-aircraft missile (MANPADS) of Chinese manufacture has shifted the focus from the battlefield to a much more uncomfortable question for Washington: to what extent Beijing is helping to sustain Tehran’s military capacity. More important than the missile. From a military point of view, a portable anti-aircraft missile is not a revolutionary weapon. Its appeal lies precisely on the contrary: It is relatively cheap, easy to deploy, and capable of threatening even extremely sophisticated platforms if circumstances are favorable. Hence, what has aroused American interest is not so much the type of weapon used as its possible origin. If suspicions are correct, the shootdown would demonstrate that Chinese technology has ended up participatingdirectly or indirectly, in one of the more symbolic hits suffered by American aviation in years. From that perspective, the discussion then stops revolving around how Iran managed to shoot down an F-15 and begins to focus on what role played China to make it possible. The shadow of broader support. Because suspicions are not limited to the missile. US sources also suggest that China may have provided Iran with radar systems capable of detecting stealth aircraft and access to space capabilities that would facilitate the location of targets. So far none of these accusations have been conclusively proven publicly and Beijing categorically rejects them, but together they paint an image that is worrying in Washington: that of a technological support network which, without involving direct military involvement, could significantly increase Iran’s ability to challenge the United States and its allies. In this context, the downed F-15 becomes tangible proof of a broader phenomenon that US officials have been denouncing for some time. The contradiction of American diplomacy. The situation is especially delicate because the United States simultaneously needs to contain Iran and keep channels open with China. Beijing is the main buyer of the iranian oil and one of the few actors with enough influence to put economic pressure on Tehran. During negotiations to reach a ceasefire, the Trump administration sought precisely that collaboration. But every new accusation on Chinese missiles, radars or satellites used by Iran complicates that balance. Washington thus finds itself in an uncomfortable position: it needs China to contribute to stabilizing the region while accusing it of providing tools that strengthen one of its main adversaries in the Middle East. The real message. That’s why the downing of the F-15 It has a relevance that goes far beyond the loss of a plane. What is at stake is not only the effectiveness of Iranian defenses, but the American perception that more and more regional conflicts are connected to global strategic competition. against China. The investigation on the missile seeks to determine how the fighter fell, but also who was behind the technology that made it possible. In a sense, Washington has opened up the missile to examine it piece by piece, and in doing so has discovered that the biggest questions no longer point solely to Tehran. They aim more and more towards Beijingwhere the United States believes is a growing part of the economic, technological and military infrastructure that allows its rivals to challenge its power in different corners of the world. Image | U.S. Force In Xataka | The US has copied its very cheap drone swarms from Iran and Russia. The problem is what Starlink asks for connecting them In Xataka | The war in the East has reached an unexpected agreement: one where the US does not discuss Iran’s missiles, bombs or uranium

Nvidia has just launched its missile against Intel AMD’s dominance in PCs and laptops. There is a problem: it is a slightly obsolete missile

by

In October 2025 Nvidia launched its DGX Sparka unique workstation that the company called “the world’s smallest AI supercomputer.” that machine It was actually announced in January.but it took a while to reach the market. When it finally did, it became an interesting alternative but somewhat limited in scope. That is just what the new Nvidia RTX Spark family, which will arrive, wants to change both in the form of laptops as desktop computers, and that it will do so with a fundamental difference: Windows for ARM. Hello, Windows for ARM. The golden DGX Spark were Linux-based workstations, which targeted them at a smaller audience, but with the RTX Spark, Nvidia wanted to make the big leap to the general public. These devices are based on Windows 11 for ARM, and will take advantage of all hardware and software capabilities so that this technological solution is no longer only aimed at AI enthusiasts. Of course, that will continue to be one of the segments it will target, but these systems can also be used for both creative and gaming environments. In Xataka We wanted an ideal PC to be able to experiment with local AI models. The Framework Desktop is the answer to our prayers Approximate performance: an RTX 5070. Those responsible for NVIDIA have not yet given too many specific details about what we can expect from this platform in terms of performance, but they have indicated that the performance of the GPU It is close to that of an RTX 5070 (portable version), although the exact numbers depend on the specific application or game: in some it will be a little better, in others a little worse and in others exactly the same. Yes, they have indicated that the promise is to obtain 100 FPS in 1440p gaming as reference data. Same chip, different operating system. Hardware technical specifications They are identical to those of the DGX Spark. The main data are the following: NVIDIA Grace Blackwell Architecture CPU: up to 20 Grace cores GPU: Developed in collaboration with MediaTek, up to 6,144 CUDA cores, 1 PFLOP of AI performance Unified memory: up to 128 GB LPDDR5X at 273 GB/s with NVLink at 600 GB/s But compared to the DGX Spark, we insist, the fundamental difference is that instead of using a specific Nvidia Linux distribution for these machines, here we can take advantage of Windows 11 for ARM. When AI controls your computer. During the presentation of this platform, those responsible for Nvidia talked about the absolute rise of AI agents and how this will mark a paradigm shift in the way we use our PCs and laptops. Before we did it with a mouse and keyboard, but they see a near future in which control is taken by those AI agents, with whom we will interact in a quite different way. The example is the already famous OpenClaw and Hermeswhich with the appropriate permissions can run all kinds of tasks and applications on the computer to autonomously do things for us. Six laptops initially. The Nvidia RTX Spark platform will initially be available in six devices from six different manufacturers that will rely on this technological solution from launch. ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft and MSI will have their equipment ready this fall, although at the moment there are no specific specifications or prices announced. It is possible that during Computex we will learn more details about these devices. What can we expect in autonomy. At the moment no specific data has been given about the efficiency of these devices, but Nvidia spoke of a battery life “for the whole day.” They highlight the efficiency of the GPU and in fact indicate that GPU performance will be virtually the same whether the laptop is plugged in or not. Obviously in intensive tasks and demanding games that battery will drain much more quickly. In Xataka Goodbye to the duopoly of Intel and AMD in Windows: the arrival of NVIDIA processors is imminent and brings 8 laptops under its arm The doubt of Windows for ARM. The commitment to Microsoft’s operating system is striking, but Nvidia believes that now the system is much more mature, and that both emulation and hardware support It’s much better than in the past thanks to the work that Microsoft and Nvidia have done in the months and years leading up to this launch. They talk about a “first-class experience” for the operating system, and even commented that they have worked with the developers of anti-cheat systems in video games so that this is not a problem on these computers. And also desktop computers. When Nvidia announced its DGX Spark, then similar desktop computers appeared in format that also offered that same platform. The same thing will happen with RTX Spark, and although there was hardly any data here, Nvidia did indicate that these devices will appear in the fall from Acer, Asus, Dell, Gigabyte, HP, MSI and Lenovo. {“videoId”:”x7ztphf”,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”How to know the components of your PC (RAM, Graphics, CPU…) and the state they are in”, “tag”:”webedia-prod”, “duration”:”387″} Many unknowns and certain obsolescence. There are many doubts surrounding these devices in terms of performance or price, but there is another fundamental problem: when these laptops and desktop PCs appear starting in the fall, they will do so with chips that have been on the market for a year and therefore in a certain sense are already somewhat obsolete. Competing with the Desktop Framework. The memory bandwidth is not exceptional, and for example the Framework Desktop presented in August 2025 already offered a similar configuration in that section, with up to 128 GB of LPDDR5x memory at 256 GB/s. It will be interesting to see how the RTX Spark machines perform against alternatives like this (which makes use of a “traditional” x86 Windows 11 operating system) and whether Nvidia’s ARM chip can really make a difference in an ultra-competitive market. In Xataka |The demand for AI memories is suffocating mobile manufacturers. The largest … Read more

Festivals turned food trucks into a money-printing machine. Now they have a problem: Ozempic

by

During the marathon days of the past Coachellaone of the most important music festivals in the world where, paradoxically, music is the least important thing, an image caused a certain sensation on social networks: the total absence of lines at the food stalls. To the plethora of content generated by the festival, a showcase for social networks where only the show by Niece Carpenter and the revival by Justin Bieber caught some attention strictly musically, we had to add the “get ready with me” on Instagram and the usual parade of looks themed, generally quite unsuitable for the Californian desert. In the background a silent revolution was brewing. Because within this hyperaesthetic ecosystem there was a shadow. In the videos of many influencers and tiktokers We were able to observe a scene repeated day after day: non-existent queues to get food (even when it’s free), facing crowded lines to buy sunglasses or other accessories. For many, the reason was obvious: Ozempic. We can interpret it from irony or, on the contrary, as a clear cultural symptom that is deeper and difficult to ignore. Because, if something seems evident, it is that, in a festival where consuming aesthetics is much more important than consuming food, the Ozempic era has found its best showcase. Less hunger = less business Anyone who’s been to a festival, especially in recent times, knows what it’s like. Until recently we went with our eyes closed and our wallets open, assuming that, in addition to the increasing price of admission, we had to pay absurd amounts for a cold burger or a pad thai stale at Michelin star price. We got into the game and no one was surprised by the exorbitant prices, those 20 euros on average per plate were part of the ritual of the festival experience; but something has started to change at Coachella. To get an idea of ​​the importance of this change: the economic volume of its gastronomic industry covers more than 100 positions. Ozempic and derivatives are completely redefining the cultural codes of the last decade. Starting from the basis that each person does with their body what they consider, it is true that we were already noticing in red carpets and derivatives that curves are beginning to go out of fashion; with bloody examples because they are carried out by former standard-bearers of the movement curvy. Actresses and artists like Rebel Wilson, Barbie Ferreira either Meghan Trainor show a change in their figure that advances from photocall in photocall. Little by little this permeates society; and also leaves a side effect that someone may consider unexpected. It is not only transforming bodies but also habits and, among them, our relationship with food in spaces of mass leisure. This change in the psychological relationship that we establish with food and the hunger-suppressing effect means that this character is eliminated from the equation. hedonist and impulsive. If the desire for food ceases to exist, the key turn occurs. For years festivals were governed by a simple rule: the economic margin is not so much in the entrance, but rather in everything that happens inside. In this mechanism, food is a key element with these inflated prices, encouraging impulsive decisions in marathon days that invite consumption. This is where Ozempic has broken the model at Coachella, fully attacking that impulse. In this showcase where it seems that eating is “annoying,” a drug that controls hunger is not useful, but rather more than consistent with the environment. And yes, Coachella may not be the Cruilla or the Arenal Soundbut on a large scale what is at stake is not only what the companies can bill food trucks. What is relevant is something deeper: in an environment where excess was part of the festival attraction, a model is now beginning to prevail where control, especially of the body and image, redefines spaces designed for the opposite. Ozempic and the end of hunger The impact of this medication is such that we are no longer talking about a health phenomenon, but rather a cultural phenomenon. What began as a diabetes medication, later converted into a weight loss solution, is no longer the beauty secret of the celebrities. The pharmacological equivalent of “drinking a lot of water and sleeping eight hours” has spread with universal consumption, and with this it not only transforms bodies with their corresponding physical consequencesalso behaviors. What began as a resource for the elite is now heading towards a more affordable distribution and on a large scale. Because we are not talking about a diet, but about something much more radical, deactivating one of the most basic impulses of human behavior on a large scale, and the data begins to reflect that change. At a global level, about 46 million of people already use these medications. In the United States, the number of people without diabetes who start treatment with these drugs has grown more than 700% in just four years. Today, around 12% of adults use them, with annual growth close to 30%. This impact does not remain only in the body and, if we transfer it to the context at hand, we see that it is directly reflected in consumption; These users spend 31% less on food and drink, especially on everything associated with whim and impulse (snacks, chocolate, etc.). In Spain the trend points in the same direction, approximately 6% of households are already consumers of these treatments, thus representing an expense of 5.4 billion euros annually in food and beverages. And, again, the most relevant thing is not what you spend, but on what: this hedonistic consumption falls and basic and functional products increase. With these numbers it is logical that the conversation of “surely he has lost weight thanks to Ozempic” does not die, but it is no longer limited to celebrities like Oprah, Kelly Clarkson or the native Ibai Llanos. The same statement now slips and extends to much closer environments such as the office, the … Read more

Europe is preparing four measures to become independent from United States technology. The problem is that he doesn’t know how

by

The European Union has been ruminating for some time that depending on third parties to manage its data, its chips and its digital infrastructure is a risk that it can no longer afford, so next Wednesday, June 3, it will put on the table a package of measures to achieve its technological sovereignty (or at least, to depend less on countries like the United States or China) whose draft they have already had access to. Financial Times either Political. The sovereignty package is so ambitious that it aims to mark a before and after at the level of the RGPD and it is not something general and intangible: there are four specific measures so that vulnerabilities such as that of Nexperia don’t happen again. But the dependence on the United States is just as worrying, as the slam of the Netherlands on the purchase of Solvinity. Two concrete examples from two different countries for the same problem: European critical infrastructure is in the hands of others. The EU package of measures. Next Wednesday, technology commissioner Henna Virkkunen will present the review of two laws known as the Chips Act and the Cloud and AI Development Actin addition to an open source software strategy and a roadmap for the digitalization of the energy sector. More specifically: The cloud, tested. Audits and stress tests to discover vulnerabilities and thus anticipate a possible US blackout. Chips Act 2. The Commission imposes the power to, in an emergency, cancel semiconductor supply contracts in the event of a shortage, fine companies that hide information about their supply chain and act as a central buyer for the 27 member states, as it did with vaccines during COVID. Open source as an alternative way. The EU wants to promote European free software companies, will encourage collaboration between states and create an instrument to maintain indigenous solutions against US proprietary software. A lot of financing: 200 billion euros are needed to expand data center capacity until 2036 and another 20 billion to execute digitalization and AI plans in the energy sector. Where from? Fundamentally, attracting private investment. Why is it important. Because Europe does not manage its own data or control the core of its critical industry and this has clear and direct consequences. The old continent has already seen the wolf’s ears. A good example is the cloud: three American companies occupy 70% of the European market, according to Sinergy datacompared to a pyrrhic 15% made in Europe. These are hospitals, public administration, defense of all of Europe operating on servers where Washington rules. In terms of chips, it has already experienced it with Nexperia: the Dutch government took control of the company to prevent China from destroying it and Beijing responded by cutting off the supply of chips, which resulted in a shortage of processors and even stops in an industry as essential for the old continent as the automobile. Context. This package of measures comes with clear bases: the recommendations of the Mario Draghi’s competitiveness report of 2024 and the Competitiveness Compass of the EU and in reality it is not more bureaucracy, but a way of simplifying everything to see the objective more clearly. In fact, a year ago the European Parliament defined what he understood as technological sovereignty: “the ability to build capacity, resilience and security by reducing strategic dependencies, avoiding dependence on foreign actors and single suppliers, and safeguarding critical technologies and infrastructure.” Regarding the chip manufacturing industry, a paradigm shift is observed: we have gone from the practical “just in time” to streamline inventories seeking efficiency and low cost to manufacturing “just in case”, something that is already contemplated by both the European chip law and its American counterpart. Europe’s problem is that it arrives late and with a tiny manufacturing muscle. Yes, but. The European record invites us to take this ambitious plan with caution. The different projects to manufacture chips in the old continent have progressed unevenly, the funds from the original law were dispersed among different state projects without a common industrial strategy (for example, Germany negotiated with Intel and France with STMicroelectronics) and the reality today is that chip manufacturing conditions in Europe continue to be worse than in China, South Korea or the United States. That Europe legislates and each state goes to war on its own also applies to the cloud: the government of each state has the power to decide what to do after the relevant audits. The new package of measures starts from the same point and runs the same risks of fragmentation. On the other hand, there is the economic issue: public financing may be dispersed, but private financing for data centers is not yet assured. And finally there is a big underlying problem: Europe has laws, but it lacks a powerful and complete industrial ecosystem to achieve technological sovereignty. In Xataka | Europe has proposed to become technologically independent from the US: And it has started with the most difficult thing: chips In Xataka | Europe is moving from words to action in its “independence” from Microsoft and Google. First step: critical data Cover | Intel and Carl Gruner

Telecinco has just bought the rights to ‘El Rosco’ from ‘Pasapalabra’. The only problem is that ‘Pasapalabra’ is from Antena 3

by

Among many other things that have happened in recent years with ‘Pasapalabra’, Mediaset paid a fine of 73 million euros for broadcasting the program without having the rights, lost the program in 2019 and has been watching for six agonizing years how Antena 3 turned it into the most watched contest in Spain. Now, Telecinco announces that it has El Rosco back. The only thing missing is everything else. Back to Mediaset. This Wednesday, Mediaset España confirmed in a very brief press release (consisting, in fact, of a single sentence, which could be interpreted as that Telecinco is not yet completely clear about its plans), that it is preparing “a new program that will include El Rosco as the final and main element.” we already knew that the Supreme Court had forced Antena 3 to withdraw that test from ‘Pasapalabra’, and abundant rumors were already circulating that approximately a year and a half ago Telecinco had closed the agreement to recover the test, conditional on the courts ruling in favor of the Dutch company MC&F, owner of the rights. High hierarchies. To get an idea of ​​how coveted the Rosco is, you only have to keep one thing in mind: the new agreement between Mediaset and MC&F was negotiated directly by Alessandro SalemCEO of the audiovisual group. What Mediaset has acquired is the license to use El Rosco: the circle of letters, the dynamic of “passing the word”, the repetition of unanswered questions and the final stopwatch. What it has not acquired is ‘Pasapalabra’ in its entirety: the full format of the contest belongs to ITV, which maintains its current contract with Antena 3. That is, the new Telecinco program cannot be called ‘Pasapalabra’ nor replicate the tests prior to Rosco. The importance of Rosco. All these shenanigans to acquire a test and not a program, without a doubt, put a question on the table: what is the true drawing power of Rosco alone if it does not have the previous forty minutes that generate tension and familiarize us with the contestants. That is the task that Mediaset now has before it: to build a program of prior tests that firmly support the star challenge. The fine. Telecinco does not come to this acquisition of Rosco with the joy of teenage boyfriends. The Provincial Court of Madrid sentenced Mediaset to pay 73.2 million euros to ITV for broadcasting ‘Pasapalabra’ without authorization between 2012 and 2019. The figure was increased considerably over the initial calculation of 44.3 million because the court estimated that the advertising revenue generated had been higher than those calculated in the first instance. Furthermore, the resolution recognized the “carryover effect”: the indirect benefit that the contest brought to the news and to the prime time later, which increased the main compensation by another 233,134 euros for that specific concept. Delicate moment. The Rosco announcement comes at the worst time in Telecinco’s recent history. The channel closed 2025 with a 9.5% annual quotathe worst record in its history for the fourth consecutive year. December 2025 marked an 8.4% share, the worst month in the regular season of his entire career. January 2026 was even more brutal: 8.5% and its worst start to the yearbelow the aggregate of the autonomous chains. The chain has been chaining minimums since July 2025, and they have taken brutal cost cutting measures such as merge the set of Informativos Telecinco and Noticias Cuatro. How Rosco affects audiences. ‘Pasapalabra’ is the most watched daily program on Spanish television for the sixth consecutive year, with an average share of 18.3% in the 2024/2025 season and a maximum of 21.1% in June 2025. But above all, El Rosco is the mechanism that keeps the viewer glued to Antena 3 until the nightly news. And whoever reaches the news program goes to ‘El Hormiguero’. Telecinco does not have anything comparable in that segment, but El Rosco as the driving force of a new contest would be a good way to fight Antena 3 at the time of day when the largest audience drags towards the final stretch of the day. Meanwhile, Antena 3 can continue broadcasting the already recorded episodes of ‘Pasapalabra’ that include El Rosco, until they receive official notification. Hectic times are coming in the afternoons of traditional television. In Xataka | Four years of historic audience lows: Telecinco is looking for oxygen this summer and its idea is to recycle presenters and formats

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.