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They learned cinema on YouTube, they have raised 300 million with their films and they have achieved something: defeating Star Wars

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Three horror movies. Budgets ranging from a ridiculous million dollars for one to ten million for another. Directors of 26, 34 and 20 years old trained on YouTube, not in schools for children of. So far in 2026, those three films have grossed more than $300 million in the North American market. Franchise cinema is not dead, of course, and we are going to prove it this year with the premiere of ‘Doomsday‘ (although, for once, surprises are no longer ruled out). But there are issues that seem to be changing in another sense. The ‘Backrooms’ explosion. Last weekend,’Backrooms‘ (directed by 20-year-old Kane Parsons) collection 81.4 million dollars in North America and 118 million worldwide in its first weekend (and it does not arrive in countries like Spain until the end of June), with a budget of only ten million. It is the biggest premiere in the history of A24surpassing the previous record held by ‘Civil War‘by Alex Garland. Parsons also becomes the youngest director to top the US domestic box office, taking that record from Josh Trank, who was 27 years old when ‘Chronicle’ topped the charts in 2012. Unstoppable obsession. At the same time, ‘Obsession’ (by Curry Barker, 26 years old) added 26.4 million in its third weekend, 54% more than the previous week, starting from a budget of one million dollars. Its domestic total already exceeds 104 million. Meanwhile, ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu‘, with a budget of 165 million, fell 69% compared to its opening week and was third on the list of box office receipts that week. We will see ‘Obsession’ this weekend in Spain. The precedent. January had already given the first sign. ‘Iron Lung’ (written, directed, starring and self-distributed by Mark Fischbach, Markiplier on YouTube, 34 years old), debuted with 17.8 million domestic dollars and reached 52 million at the global box office from a budget of three. Fischbach didn’t even go through a study: he self-financed and distributed the film himselfpocketing half of the world gross. Young audience. It is obvious where these collections come from: 86% of the opening audience for ‘Backrooms’ was under 35 years old, and 44% under 21. ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’, not to get away from Disney’s setback with a financially similar debut the previous week, had a share of those under 25 years of age of 27%, although on paper, it should have attracted more viewers of that age (which corroborates that at this point ‘Star Wars’ is entirely a franchise for kids over forty.) These directors who came from YouTube did not summon a new audience, but rather the one they already brought from the internet. Warner Bros. Motion Pictures co-head Michael De Luca summed it up in a conference in which said that these directors “They are in dialogue with their audience from the first moment.” By the time movies like these hit theaters, he added, “they’ve already had a billion screenings.” Three directors, a common pattern. In 2022, Kane Parsons uploaded a nine-minute short film to YouTube titled ‘The Backrooms (Found Footage)’shot from his bedroom with the help of the 3D graphics software Blender. Over the next few years, episodes of the series They accumulated more than 197 million views. Curry Barker, on the other hand, came from the sketch comedy channel ‘That’s a Bad Idea’ which currently has over 700 million cumulative views across platforms. In 2024 he filmed ‘Milk & Serial’, a found footage horror with $800 budget, almost all of it spent on the camera. He spent a year trying to get mainstream distribution without success. He uploaded it for free to YouTube and accumulated 1.6 million views. Mark Fischbach, for his part, has been on YouTube since 2012. He had experimented with the film format in two of his own productions for YouTube (‘A Heist with Markiplier’ and ‘In Space with Markiplier’) before adapting ‘Iron Lung’, David Szymanski’s indie horror video game published in 2022. Why the terror. American terror has exceeded 800 million dollars worldwide so far this year, and these three films directed by YouTube creators account for a third of that figure. But… why this devotion to the genre, which goes hand in hand with the good state of health that enjoy in recent years? Horror operates well with low budgets, and the young audience that grew up with creepypasta and found footages on YouTube has a particular relationship with that aesthetic space. Testing ground. The video clips of the nineties were the laboratory where authors such as David Fincher or Michel Gondry developed their visual grammar before jumping into cinema. Now, YouTube serves as a testing ground for the new generation of filmmakers. That’s why studios and agents now scour YouTube for new names. Now what. Barker has already filmed his next film, a horror comedy titled ‘Anything but Ghosts’, and A24 has hired him for a remake of ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’. Parsons wants to expand the ‘Backrooms’ universe, possibly in television format. Fischbach, for his part, has already made it clear that he would like to collaborate with a large studio on future projects, without giving up creative control. It is possibly the one with the most traditional discovery profile in the underground and jump to the big leagues. For now, ‘Backrooms’ could end its box office career between $140 and $160 million in the United States alone, which would make the film one of the biggest hits of the year. Not bad for an idea that started as just another meme on 4chan. In Xataka | Cinema can only survive by competing in the “experience” market. That’s why Madrid already has its 70 mm projector

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

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

Anthropic has not raised the price of Claude. He has invented something better: token inflation

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“Don’t worry, it costs the same.” That was Anthropic’s message to announce the launch of its new AI model, Claude Opus 4.7. In that statement they made it clear that “the price remains the same as Opus 4.6: $5 per million entry tokens and $25 per million exit tokens“There was, however, fine print, because the model is better but to achieve it it reasons more, and that means one thing: more tokens. And the more tokens you consume, the more the AI ​​bill goes up. Anthropic already warned. It should be noted that in that official announcement Anthropic did not hide the facts. In one of the paragraphs he clearly explained how Opus 4.7 “thinks more” and that has a direct impact on token consumption (we highlight the difference in bold): “Opus 4.7 is a direct update to Opus 4.6, but there are two changes worth keeping in mind as they affect the use of tokens. First, Opus 4.7 uses an updated tokenizer that improves the model’s processing of text. This means that the same input can generate more tokens (approximately 1.0 to 1.35 times moredepending on the type of content). Second, Opus 4.7 performs deeper analysis at higher effort levels, especially in the later phases of agent scenarios. “This improves its reliability on complex problems, but also means generating more output tokens.” Or what is the same: when it responds, Opus 4.7 uses significantly more tokens than its predecessor, and that is important because the output tokens are much more expensive than the input ones. In the specific case of Opus 4.7, five times more expensive ($5 versus $25). What is a tokenizer and why does it matter?. Large language models (LLMs) do not process text directly, but rather convert it into units called tokenswhich are fragments of words, symbols or characters. The tokenizer is the mechanism that makes that conversion. Anthropic has decided to update the tokenizer in Opus 4.7, arguing that its new system improves how text is processed. The direct consequence: the prompt that previously generated 1,000 tokens now generates up to 1,350. And since it is billed per token, the effective cost rises even though the price per token has remained the same. Confirmed by third parties. Simon Willison, a well-known analyst and popularizer in this field, created a tool to measure the difference in token consumption with the Claude Opus 4.6 and 4.7 API. He took the official Opus 4.7 ‘system prompt’ and ran it through both models: With Opus 4.6 it generated 5,039 output tokens With Opus 4.7 it generated 7,335 output tokens This represents a growth of 1.46x tokens between Opus 4.6 and Opus 4.7, even greater than that indicated by Anthropic (1.35x). For images the difference is even more extreme since the token consumption is up to 3.01x. There is an important clarification here, because there is support for images of up to 3.75 Mpixels and that higher resolution causes consumption to increase significantly. Bill Chambers, another X user, published another tool called Tokenomics that also allows you to compare token consumption between both models with any prompt. The aggregate ranking of all users who have tried this tool shows that the average increase is 38.6%, very much in line with what Anthropic points out. And also think more. As we said, this new model applies two changes in its way of acting. The first is the aforementioned tokenizer: the same input is converted into more input tokens. The second is the fact that the model now “thinks more” before responding, which means more token consumption. Opus 4.7 arrives with a new “effort” level called xhigh, located between high and max. Anthropic has decided that now the default effort will be precisely xhigh for all plans, so both mechanisms contribute to this higher token consumption. As Anthropic itself indicates, “Opus 4.7 thinks more about high effort levels, particularly in later turns in agentic settings. This improves its reliability on difficult problems, but it does mean that it produces more output tokens.” Criticisms on networks. The reaction of users has been clear and there are various examples on networks such as X or Reddit in which said users criticize the changes. On Reddit a thread titled ‘Opus 4.7 is a serious regression, not an improvement‘It already has 3,200 votes and 800 comments that sum up that this new model ignores instructions, hallucinates and lies, It’s “dumber”has become too complacent or even lazyand “talks too much”, which also contributes to the cost of each consultation. Many complain that their Pro and Max paid limits are running out faster than before due to these changes. Some users claim that Opus 4.7 is the first sign that Anthropic may has gone too fast for the first time when launching a new model. Anthropic reacts. Criticism about the cost and behavior of the model has made those responsible for Anthropic try to clarify things. Borys Cherny retweeted a message from the company in which was spoken how the “/usage” parameter in Claude Code allowed us to show what kind of things our API or usage plan is spent on. This same engineer, who is the person most responsible for the development of the aforementioned Claude Code, also indicated that since his new model now uses more tokens, in Anthropic they had increased the fees of use of the models, although without giving specific details. The pattern that repeats. For weeks now the user community he complained about what noticed a “regression” in the behavior of Opus 4.6. Although it is impossible to verify or validate it, there were many users who complained on networks about how the performance of the model had gotten worse in your tests. Now they have just launched a model that promises to be better than the previous one, but that ends up costing more to use if you are not careful. Both events draw a pattern: that Anthropic is increasing its revenue without announcing price increases as such. What users … Read more

Renfe, Iryo and Ouigo raised prices wildly in 2025. Now they are suffering the foreseeable consequences

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Demand on trains has fallen. We could think that it is the direct consequence of railway chaos that has set in in the first months of 2026. But no. The last quarter of 2025 already anticipated turbulent times for high speed. And between October and December 2025, prices skyrocketed and demand fell. Now it is the operators who have to walk a tightrope. What has happened? That demand for high-speed trains has fallen significantly in recent months. According to data from Trainlinetrain ticket price comparator, the demand for these trips plummeted 30% after the accident in Adamuz (Córdoba) in the middle of last January. The data could indicate a distrust among travelers as a result, but not everything is explained by the possible fear that those who travel by train may have. And the volume of travelers at the end of 2025 had already fallen. It is something we know now with the publication of the latest report from the CNMCwho collects market movements with a quarter delay or so. Madrid-Barcelona. The consequences in this report are clear, the volume of travelers fell between October and December 2025 in the Madrid-Barcelona corridor, where prices have settled and there is a smaller difference between companies. According to the CNMC, the main data are the following: Decrease in travelers of 13% compared to October-December 2024. Fall of the companies with the most expensive prices: -19% Renfe (95.58 euros) and -13.9% Iryo (76.89 euros). Rise of Ouigo (+12.8%) which has the cheapest prices (61.42 euros). The recorded data shows a brutal increase in prices. Renfe has been left without AVLO to fight for the floor price, which has triggered its average ticket but Ouigo and Iryo also multiplied the price of the average bill. In fact, the following increases were recorded compared to the previous year: Renfe: +40.2% Iryo: +69.0% Ouigo: +40.9% (Much) more expensive, less travel. The increase in prices in Madrid-Barcelona explains several trends: This broker is the least sensitive to price variations. Although the volume of passengers has been reduced, the increase in price has been much greater, so it is to be assumed that there are many travelers who continued to use it as round-trip transportation during the day for similar situations. The operators have finally had to raise prices to stop making losses. This has meant a reduction in passengers on Renfe (which, as we said, You no longer have AVLO service) and Iryo. Ouigo has grown by 12.9% but its places offered have also grown by 16.1%. In the rest of the corridors, only the Valencian has had a substantial price increase (+22.3%) and it has not suffered. Madrid-Seville (-1.9%), Madrid-Málaga (-5%) or Madrid-Alicante (+6.6%) have remained at similar prices. None of these corridors have lost travelers. What can we expect? A drastic drop in the volume of travelers. That is what we expect from the next CNMC report in which the results for January, February and March 2026 will be noted. There are many reasons that explain the result we expect. To begin with, the railway chaos that Spanish roads have become since the fateful Adamuz accident: The most affected. We already know that demand for trains has to fall irremediably given the cuts and speed restrictions that were recorded in the following days, but we must bear in mind that passenger confidence has been eroded since the accident. And not only because of a lack of trust in security, the problem is delays and inconsistency in arrival times. According to ABC65% of the trains arrived late last February. But it is that The Madrid-Barcelona corridor has been the most affected since clients relied on their Swiss punctuality for business trips. That has been diluted in recent weeks, with speed restrictions that are now permanent and road works. This has triggered air travelers, skyrocketing the price the same to the point that Iberia capped the prices of the Air Bridge at 99 euros. It remains to be seen if the companies’ alternative has been to lower prices. We will know that when the next CNMC report arrives and we can have a complete picture of how the market behaved and how operators dealt with these inconveniences when they were already rubbing their hands to raise prices. Photo | Alan Grant In Xataka | 150 years ago, Spain made a unique decision in the world. Ouigo and Iryo believe that Renfe is using it against them

The French AI startup profiting from geopolitical chaos just raised $830 million. For European data centers

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The French startup Mistral has raised 830 million dollars and it has done so with one objective: to create AI data centers in Europe that will be based on NVIDIA chips and technological solutions. That’s good news, but it also has a disturbing side. Merci, Monsieur Trump. There is a geopolitical irony in the rise of Mistral. The French AI startup has become a reference in Europe, but it has done so not so much because of its models or technology (that too) but because of Donald Trump. Since the American president returned to power and began to destroy the era of globalization, the demand for “sovereign” European alternatives to the large US technology platforms has skyrocketed. Governments and companies that previously turned to Microsoft, Amazon or Google without thinking are now trying to look for options that free them from those dependencies. Mistral is precisely the clear alternative in terms of AI. 830 million to have its own infrastructure. The round that Mistral has raised is not venture capital, but debt financing granted mainly by French banks such as Bpifrance, BNP Paribas, HSBC and MUFG. It is an interesting aspect and shows that the company no longer needs to convince investors, but rather finance the infrastructure necessary to scale its business. Those $830 million are destined for its future European data centers, starting with its facilities in Bruyères-le-Châtel, near Paris. Said center will house 13,800 GB300 chips from NVIDIA and will begin operating before the end of June. Debt, not equity. There is an important difference between the venture capital rounds that have financed Mistral until now and this new round of debt. Venture capital is not returned: investors bet on a stake in the company and get paid if the company grows and is sold or goes public. The debt is repaid, and it is with interest, regardless of how the business is going. That Mistral has opted for this mechanism suggests that it is optimistic about the future, but it also represents added pressure for the company, which will not be able to afford consecutive quarters of losses. Betting with other people’s money has its problems, but doing so with borrowed money also has important problems. The success of the 13,800 chips. May that French data center get 13,800 GB300 chipsthe most advanced from NVIDIA, is not a minor detail. These AI accelerators are on the waiting list of many companies, and here Mistral competes with hyperscalers like Microsoft, Google or xAI that buy tens of thousands of units and have priority agreements. That this European startup has managed to secure that amount seems to demonstrate that it has negotiating capacity or a special relationship with NVIDIA and its CEO, Jensen Huang. European AI ecosystem. Mistral is little by little becoming the perfect European ecosystem for companies that want not to be exposed to dependencies on North American partners. Having everything under European control is what more and more governments are looking for in Europe, and here we are facing an effort that wants to offer that certain independence… which of course is anything but complete. Be that as it may, Mistral has become the great European seller of sovereignty as a product. But. Mistral expects to achieve 200 MW of computing capacity by the end of 2027, including a €1.2 billion facility in Sweden with 23 MW that will begin operating next year. These are decent numbers in a European Union that has barely raised its head in this segment, but they are very far from those in China and especially the United States. OpenAI and its partners have agreements worth several hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure, and while here we move in megawatt capacities, there we talk about gigawatts. The distance is still enormous. And the dependency still exists. The paradox that no one seems to want to allude to is important: the European “sovereign” infrastructure that Mistral is building depends entirely on chips designed by an American company and manufactured in Taiwan. If for any reason Washington decides to make Europe a banned region for its technology and prohibits the export of GB300 chips, Mistral’s expansion would be paralyzed. The quest for digital sovereignty is interesting, but the reality is that Europe will continue to depend on US technology and Taiwan’s manufacturing capacity to an even greater extent than the US o China depend on its rival. The old continent has activated some measures for mitigate the problembut that will not prevent it from continuing to exist in the long term. Paris, European capital of AI. The French startup has turned France into one of the great European references in AI. Mistral was valued at $12 billion after raising $1.7 billion in financing led by ASML. In addition, they expect to exceed 1,000 million in annual recurring revenue. This company is now joined by the recently launched startup Yann LeCun: Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs (AMI Labs) has already managed to raise more than 1 billion dollars and will also be based in Paris. Another detail should be highlighted: Bpifrance, the French public investment bank, is leading the round. That is significant, because that means that the one supporting this initiative is the French state. In Xataka | Mistral does not generate hype, it is a discreet AI, it does not boost the shares of any company, but it already makes more money than Grok

Netflix has slowly raised prices and already costs more than much pay TV

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Netflix price rises again. For now, only in the United States, although movements like this tend to be the canary in the mine of increases: very possibly, we will soon experience a similar one in Europe. It is the second increase in less than two years for a platform with more than 325 million subscribers in the world, in a sector where escalating prices has become the norm. The new prices. The standard plan with ads, the cheapest, goes from $7.99 to $8.99 per month. The ad-free standard goes up two dollars, from 17.99 to 19.99. The premium (four simultaneous screens, 4K, no ads) scales from $24.99 to $26.99 per month. The cost of adding an extra member also increases: one dollar more in all cases, that is, it remains at $6.99 for the plan with ads and 9.99 for the variants without advertising. The average increase is around 11% and the new prices will be applied in the next billing cycle, after notifying subscribers by email. To understand the proportion of the accumulation, it is worth looking back. The standard plan without ads was $15.49 before January 2025 and $11.99 until October 2023. In less than three years, that same plan has gone from just over twelve dollars to twenty. 22,000 million profit. Netflix does not raise prices because it needs to. In 2025 it generated $45.2 billion in revenue and a gross profit of almost 22,000 million, with an operating margin of 29.5%, the highest in its history. Net profit for the year was 11,000 million, and free cash flow reached 9,500 million, compared to 6,900 million in 2024. For 2026, it projects an operating margin of 31.5%. Netflix is ​​not a struggling company looking to plug holes. The increase does not respond to financial pressure but to just the opposite: the company has detected that it can charge more because it knows that the majority of its subscribers are not going to leave. The analyst firm TD Cowen calls him pricing power (pricing power), which is the technical way of saying that the customer is trapped enough to take the hit. According to their estimates, the average revenue per subscriber in the US and Canada will grow 6% in 2026 due to this adjustment alone. Shared accounts no. Added to all this is the ban on account sharing, applied globally since May 2023. Far from causing the flight of subscribers that many anticipated, the measure worked: since then Netflix has added tens of millions of new subscribers. What seemed like a risk was actually a monetization lever. Each household that previously took advantage of a third-party account had to choose: pay or do without the service. And the majority paid. Ads go up. The rise in the cheapest tier (from $7.99 to $8.99) is perhaps the most revealing move. This plan has existed since 2022, designed as a safety net for those who could not or did not want to pay more. It has worked: it accumulates more than 190 million monthly active users and represents 55% of new registrations in markets with advertising enabled, according to Netflix itself. That is, it is the plan that captures the most price-sensitive users, but the truth is that there is no longer a comfortable position within the Netflix ecosystem that is protected from increases. Especially this plan: The platform’s advertising revenue exceeded $1.5 billion in 2025, multiplying by 2.5 compared to the previous year. The goal for 2026 is to double that figure to nearly 3 billion. In this context, charging an extra dollar to 190 million people means optimizing to the maximum a source of income that already works perfectly. And in Spain? The increase currently affects only the US. In Spain, current prices They are the result of the last revision applied in October 2025: 6.99 euros for the plan with ads, 13.99 for the standard without advertising and 19.99 for the premium. In January 2025, when Netflix went up in the US, Canada and Portugal, Spain was left out. But it will end up arriving: Netflix has been in Spain for eleven years and in each cycle of between twelve and eighteen months it has revised upwards some of its plans, usually with increases of one or two euros. As I said: everything according to plan. In Xataka | You’ve rewatched an episode of your favorite series and you feel like it’s missing scenes. You’re not paranoid: they are being removed

The scientist who made the AI ​​we know today possible has just raised 1 billion. His new goal is to teach him to see space

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Fei-Fei Li, known as the godmother of AIjust closed a $1 billion round for World Labs, his startup dedicated to teaching machines to understand the world in three dimensions. Behind this bet are large companies such as NVIDIA, AMD, Autodesk or the Andreessen Horowitz fund, among others. Li, like other important figures in the field of AI, believes that world models are the way to go, instead of the AGI. Who you are and why what you do matters. Li is one of the people who made it possible for the Generative AI as we know it today existed. He was part of the team that developed ImageNet, a database of millions of images that allowed computers to learn to recognize objects in photos. That academic work was the trigger for the leap towards deep learning that gave rise to everything that came after: from voice assistants to generative models of text and images. Now, from Stanford University, where he directs the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, and from World Labs, the startup he founded in 2024, Li points to what he considers the next big unsolved problem in AI: that machines understand the physical world, not just text or flat images. The problem you want to solve. The great language models like GPT either Claude They are extraordinarily good at processing text. But the real world is not text, or at least it is not only text: it is three-dimensional, it has physics, it has geometry, it has objects that move and relate to each other. “If AI is to be truly useful, it must understand worlds, not just words,” counted Li in his statement. That is what so-called spatial intelligence, the central focus of World Labs, pursues. Unlike working with two-dimensional data, the models the startup works on are designed to perceive, generate and interact with three-dimensional environments. The idea is that an AI with spatial intelligence can reason about how things work in space, where an object is, how it moves, what will happen if it is pushed, how it fits into a larger environment, etc. What already exists and what is coming. In November of last year released Marbleits first commercial product. It is a model that generates editable and downloadable 3D environments from text, images, videos or panoramas. The user can create a virtual world, modify it, expand it and export it in different formats. The startup positions it mainly for video games, visual effects and virtual reality, or sectors with a huge demand for 3D content in which there are few tools to put them into operation. With this new round of financing, the focus also expands to robotics. And in this field, spatial intelligence is especially critical, since a robot that understands the space around it can plan actions before executing them, process different ways of completing a task or adapt to changing environments without needing to be reprogrammed for each situation. Autodesk has put 200 million at your table. It really makes perfect sense. It is the company that makes the design software used by architects, engineers, animation studios and manufacturers around the world. Your business is, by definition, thinking in three dimensions. And if Li’s models can generate and reason about 3D environments, Autodesk tools can also benefit from what the startup aims to offer. Daron Green, chief scientist at Autodesk, explained to TechCrunch that the collaboration between both companies will initially focus on entertainment and audiovisual production. The idea is that design workflows can be combined with AI-generated worlds. In this way, a user designs an object in Autodesk and places it in an environment created by World Labs, or the other way around. “You might anticipate that we will consume their models or that they will consume ours in different contexts,” Green said. You are not alone in this race. World Labs is not the only commitment to world models. Google DeepMind works on your family of Genie modelscapable of generating and simulating 3D environments. Yann LeCun, who was chief AI scientist at Meta, just founded AMI Labs with the same approach. Startups like Decart and Odyssey They also move in this spacealthough with products still in the demo or research phase. However, there are differences in their respective approaches. LeCun, for example, defends that to build true world models a completely new AI architecture will be needednot generative. Li, from World Labs, is committed to advancing with current generative models and improving from there. Cover image | World Labs and Andria Lo In Xataka | We’d love to tell you that ‘Her’ hasn’t come true and there aren’t people dating an AI, but we can’t.

In full train development in Europe, they have raised a ‘subway’ to unite capitals that is a fantasy. Literally

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Traditionally, the train was the Interior mobility dorsal spine In Europe. The development of the infrastructure allowed population movements for decades and, although the low-cost flights They have made a large part of the cake, there are European movements for recovering trains. An example is the NOX Night Trainbut another is the Starline project, a high speed ‘subway’ network that connects the main European capitals. Appeals everything that Europe is looking for: interconnection, transport of goods and sustainability. And it sounds too good to be true. Precisely, there is the problem. Starline. 21st Europe It is a Danish group architect of the Starline project. In his web They claim that Starline is not a matter of convenience, but a strategic need for current Europe. It is a high -speed train that will link the main European cities thanks to machines capable of traveling at 400 km/h (superior to that of the bird, for example) connecting, in principle, 39 destinations. To achieve these speeds, the idea is to minimize the closed curves and slopes as much as possible, achieving a great average speed that shortens the times between destinations. In the proposed map we can see that they have used a system of segments such as the one we can find In the subwayas well as stations that allow connections with other lines. The train. The idea is the most attractive, being able to go from Madrid to Istanbul without getting out of the train, or arriving Helsinki transforded in Vienna. As much as they reach 400 km/h, the journeys would be long and, for this, they have thought of wide -seat cars, quieter areas, others open for teleworking or for families with young children and cafeteria. They also propose that there is no seat division based on the classic hierarchy of airlines. And the reason why design should be blue is to distinguish trains and turn them into an icon, such as Red London Buses or the yellow yotk taxis. In addition, they would be connected and travelers could see the train status in real time at all times. Stations? Cultural centers. That experience for the passenger would start directly at the station. Instead of being a mere point of passage, what 21st Europe proposes is that they are public spaces with their own identity. If they advocate infrastructure with the trains, with the stations advocate places designed by the most reputed architects and designers of the different countries, creating buildings that are identity of each of the countries where there is space for stores and restaurants, but also for museums, concert halls, conferences or sports venues. Going directly to a concert or a match of whatever is directly from station to station is a great idea. Goods. Positive points are not limited to travelers. From the group, they detail that rail transport is four times more efficient than classical road transport in Europe, but only 18% of the goods move by train. Thus, they consider that the system could be used as way to transport goods in high speed Without resorting to the truck, the plane or the ship, implementing cargo and unloading hubs directly at the stations and strengthening Europe with a large new commercial network. China’s example. Placing the stations outside the large urban centers, it is achieved that they remain accessible, but avoiding the disturbance of traffic that exists in the central stations of the large European capitals. In addition, they consider that they would be an economic engine for those cities, and all thanks to the data that come from China. The Asian giant has gone expanding its high -speed rail network In record time and, from 21st Europe, they claim that cities with connections to that network experienced an increase of more than 14% in GDP and that each new line connected to the total contributed with an additional 7.2% to that growth of urban GDP. Now, China’s investment has been (and is being) huge, and has the big problem of Periodic maintenance cost. Sustainability, the great asset. In it Ride of decarbonizationthere are countries that are looking for replace short distance flights with the trainand Starline enters perfectly in such proposals. It is estimated that, in Europe, the commercial flight sector represents 4% of the total Greenhouse Emissions and about 14% of transport emissions. The calculation is that European flights contaminate five times more by passenger/kilometer than the train, and that is where Starline points. They detail that it must be independent at the energy level, betting on renewable sources that integrate solar, wind storage and batteries in their stations and operational infrastructure. With all this in mind, they estimate that short -journey flights could be replaced by a high -speed rail, reducing 95%emissions. In Spain, The bird is winning the game to the plane. You have to wait sitting. The 21st Europe project does not leave a stick without touching and it seems that it has no fissure. Everything is positive and sounds great, but there is a problem. Well, two. The first, regardless of complication when governments and companies agree to offer a unified service, is financing. The Danish group points out that the network must be financed through a combination of EU infrastructure budgets, financing of the European Investment Bank and long -term EU bonds. In addition, the governments of each country should co -finance their regional stations and connections, and all this maintaining a lower ticket price than the short -journey flights. The second big problem, and the key in this matter, is that this is an idea thrown into the wind. 21st Europe is something known as a ‘Think Tank‘, a group of experts who design visionary projects on the future of the continent. They have other proposals as an infrastructure of public parks called ‘Continent of Play‘, but basically that is, a project, an idea to initiate a conversation in the political spheres, but without the capacity for what they propose is launched. We will see … Read more

A few months ago Ryanair raised her salary to her employees in Spain. Now he is claiming that they return it

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Collective bargaining is a delicate issue in which it is not always easy to satisfy all the parties involved and stay within the legislation. The last example is the negotiation of the I Collective Agreement for Ryanair cabin crew, which brought salary increases Immediate to these workers, but that resulted in their cancellation by the National Court. According to The published by El Confidencial, Now Ryanair asks his workers to return those increases. However, such and as they denounce From the air-sectors union, the airline has imposed a condition for workers not to have to return these salary ups: join CCOO. The beginning of the mess: a unilateral collective agreement. In October 2022, the Irish airline and the CCOO union signed the I Collective Agreement for cabin crew. As collected The economistThe agreement contemplated regular annual salary increases for three years until April 2025 for these employees, as well as a change in the fixed and variable remuneration structure. The problem is that, according to the Air-Sector-Sector union, which represents 22.9% of the Ryanair template, the agreement was prepared at a negotiating table that left out the representatives of much of the staff. That caused the union to present an appeal for nullity that the National Court has confirmed canceling The validity of the agreement signed. Ryanair applied an unsigned agreement. The regulations establish that all collective agreements They must register in the General Directorate of Labor before starting to be applied. Since the use union presented an appeal for nullity before justice, the General Directorate of Labor did not process the agreement until justice was pronounced in this regard. However, and despite not having fulfilled that regulatory process, Ryanair applied the salary increases agreed in the agreement that signed unilaterally with CCOO from October 2024. Now, given the recognition of nullity of the National Court, Ryanair claims to his cabin crew members of the return of between 1,000 and 4,000 euros that, according to the case, according to the case, according to the case, according to the case, according to the case, according to the case of salary increase. According to the representatives of air-sectors “the agreement” The agreement was signed without prior consultation to the workfor Ryanair’s claim. According to sources mentioned by The confidentialand confirmed For the air user, the airline is sending letters to its cabin crew claiming the immediate return of the salary increase that was paid between October 2024 and April 2025. In its letter, the company offers to recognize the debt and claims to be “willing to offer you a payment plan in 12 monthly installments, with deductions that will begin on the payroll of June”. The amount varies according to each case, but moves between 1,000 euros and more than 4,000 euros per employee, for undue salary increases. If you join CCOO there is no debt. Another alternative proposed by the Irish company to solve the problem is to join the CCOO union, automatically cond by this salary “debt”. “To minimize the impact of the annulment of the collective agreement by use, this agreement is applicable to CCOO affiliates,” they point out from use. In a statement signed by Lisa McCormack, Ryanair Human Resources Director, to which It has had access The confidentialthe person in charge indicated that: “If any worker is not affiliated with CCOO since the previous limited agreement ended and the collective agreement was annulled, but wishes to take advantage of this limited field agreement, you must directly contact CCOO. We have agreed with CCOO that those who are afraid can now maintain their current working conditions (…) This limited range agreement is the only feasible way to protect your salary.” The company has chosen its union. In its statement, air-user, it qualifies as a “harassment and demolition to which Ryanair is subjecting to the cabin crew non-affiliates to CCOO to affil Organic Law on Freedom“ Raquel Bautista, head of Use-Ryanair, pointed out that the condition of “forgiving” the alleged debt to CCOO affiliates is “a master play they want to use to erase Ryanair’s union map after years of sentences won, and only stay with their trust union.” Neither CCOO nor Ryanair have responded to Xataka’s information requests on this subject, but we will update this article if they do. In Xataka | The great secret of Ryanair’s success is that he does not earn money to fly: he does so squeezing you in everything else Image | Ryanair

The blackout in Spain raised the possibility of a cyber attack. The EU rules out

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He General blackout throughout Spain has caused great uncertainty about the potential causes of this “Energy zero”. One of those that are considered is that of a possible cyber attack, and agencies such as the National or Incibe Cryptological Center are investigating that option, they point out in the SER or In the country. In the last decade there has only been a great case of this type. The EU discards cyber attack. As media point out Like the worldTeresa Ribera, executive vice president for the clean, fair and competitive transition, has indicated that “there is nothing that allows us to affirm that there is some kind of boycott or cyber attack.” In his appearance before the media, Pedro Sánchez stressed that the causes of the incident are not yet known and does not rule out any option. Few outstanding cases. On December 23, 2016, the Ivano-Frankivsk region, in southwest Ukraine, He suffered a blackout as a consequence of a coordinated cyber attack that affected three of the main Ukrainian electricity companies in the region. The problem affected tens of thousands of people for a period between three and six hours. The following year a more sophisticated cyber attack caused a blackout again that affected kyiv residents, also in Ukraine. The country has been affected by blackouts after the Russian invasion after the attacks of Sandworm, a cybercrime unit associated with Russian intelligence, indicated in Tarlogic. But having them, there are. In November 2023, a series of coordinated cyber attacks affected the Denmark Energy Sectoralthough there were no blackouts but data theft. Tarlogic experts highlighted how these types of problems have increased. None, yes, has affected an almost complete country, as would have happened in this case. Usual suspects. In June 2019 A great blackout It affected 48 million people in Argentina and Uruguay. At that time there were suspicions of a potential cyberraade as the cause of the problems, but the Argentine government Indian that the cut was due to a failure in one of the transport systems from one of its hydroelectric plants in Yacryátá. It is therefore relatively frequent to associate such an event with a potential cybersecurity problem. And then, Stuxnet. What we know is how eeuu and Israel created Stuxnet malware In the second half of the 2000s. This malware managed to damage Iran’s critical infrastructures, specifically Its nuclear power plants And that showed that certain cyber attacks can be directed to critical infrastructure. The possibility is there. As they pointed out in 2019 in El Confidencial, Spain in fact already tried to prepare for this type of event. Experts like Rubén Santamarta They had warned of that risk already in 2011. During the blackout the National Cryptological Center (CNI) has indicated that the blackout could be a consequence of a cyber attack, According to the reason. Spain usually receives threats of this type. The National Center for Infrastructure and Cybersecurity Protection (CNPIC), under the Ministry of Interior, indicated in El Confidencial In 2019 that there were already “attempts at illicit accesses to this type of infrastructure.” From the country They pointed out a few months ago how Spain receives about 40,000 daily threats of diverse type. One more option, but just that. There are no data that can point to a cyber attack and therefore although the possibility is there, there is no confirmation. The blackout is exceptional and extraordinary, as indicated by Red Electrica and Spanish, which of course is also investigating what the origin of the problem has been. Image | Markus Spiske In Xataka | Another prequel of the ‘great blackout’: the solar storm that shook the world the 660 AC today would have very serious consequences

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