Real

China knows that what happens in ‘Interstellar’ is a real problem on the Moon. And it has been proposed to solve it

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58.7 microseconds. That is the daily margin of error that separates a terrestrial clock from one on the Moon. This time lag It seems ridiculous, but it brings head to aerospace engineers for decades. The reason? That ‘sigh’ can be crucial in a mission, the difference between a perfect landing and a disaster. And while in the West we continue talking about the problems of Artemis missionin China they have found the solution for that time lag. It is called LTE440, and it is another example of the China’s methodical advance in the new space race. Microsecond piggy bank. If you have seen the movie ‘Interestellar’, looking for information about how time flies far from Earth, that you would come across the general relativity theory formulated by Albert Einstein. Simply put, the passage of time is relative, and the speed at which it passes depends on two factors: gravitational field intensity and orbital speed. The stronger the gravity, the slower time passes, and that is why it moves a little faster on the Moon than on Earth. The net result of that orbital effect is a slight advance in lunar clocks. One of between 56 and 58.7 microseconds per day, or 0.000058 seconds. It seems tiny and negligible, but in the end, the sum of 58 microseconds each day is there. 0.0017 seconds per month. 0.021 seconds per year. It is still little, but in terms of the space industry, it is unacceptable. LTE440. This synchronization between the lunar and terrestrial clocks has been one of the headaches of space engineering for years. In 2024, the International Astronomical Union, fixed that the Moon should have its own temporal reference. Meanwhile, time has passed and an answer has arrived: LTE440, or ‘Lunar Time Ephemeris‘. It is a software developed between the Purple Mountain observatory next to the University of Science and Technology of China. And it arrives to solve two of the historical problems in that lunar timing: Precision: Complex missions require total accuracy (not with a Casio, but with atomic clocks), and the solutions until now did not allow such precision. Complex calculations: Current solutions were not very accessible and engineers had to do laborious calculations and mathematical operations to solve jet lag. Absurd accuracy. It is estimated that the precision of LTE440 It will be less than 0.15 nanoseconds before 2050 and its accumulated errors will remain below 1/20,000,000 of a second even after a thousand years. But more important than this is that the research team has made obtaining the calculations as simple as doing a single operation. Thus, the LTE440 software will allow you to directly and easily compare lunar time with Earth time. opening doors. Okay, great, but… really that much for 56 microseconds? Having the current aspiration of creating a communication network and missions both with the Moon and interplanetary, one of the most logical applications is that of a global network of lunar clocks. Another is to allow extremely precise remote control missions to be carried out from Earth. China and Russia, for example, plan build an International Lunar Research Station looking to 2035, and LTE440 opens the door to more precise operations on the satellite ground. But also something more tangible and easy to understand: establishing a navigation system similar to GPS on the Moon. It is something that does not exist, but that seems crucial for future space missions. Because this is not about establishing colonies on the Moon, but about taking advantage of the satellite. For example, to investigate it, but also to get resources that can be used on Earth. And a system like LTE440 is an open door for the development of the navigation technologies necessary to bring these missions to fruition. The US looks closely. As we say, China has one eye on the Moon and space, and that is something that the United States is following with interest. China is taking giant steps and the United States has come to feel that it is being left behind. Artemis II is the American answera program full of problems and delaysbut it seems that it is already working. On the other hand, and as with the terrestrial situation, the United States considers that China’s advance in space is not a mere scientific question, but rather a threat to the country’s national security. They have reached aim that the Space Force will do “whatever it takes to achieve space superiority.” Therefore, LTE440 is, at the same time, a technological milestone, a great step for humanity in the new space race and a threat to those interests of the United States. Now, as we read in SCMPthe software is still in an early phase, so it has yet to be applied in real-time navigation solutions. Images | Tomruen In Xataka | Hubble continues to discover amazing things about the universe: a starless galaxy dominated by dark matter

Motorola returns to the most premium range with a real beast

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Motorola has announced news taking advantage of the CES fair in Las Vegas. We have already talked about Qira, your new AI platformbut there has also been room for new devices, among which the smartphone stands out. Motorola Signaturethe brand’s new high-end. Motorola Signature technical sheet motorola SIGNATURE SCREEN 6.8-inch AMOLED panel Super HD resolution (2,780 x 1,264 pixels) 450 dpi Refresh up to 165 Hz Peak brightness up to 6,200 nits Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 DIMENSIONS AND WEIGHT 162.1 x 76.4 x 6.99mm 186g PROCESSOR Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 RAM 16GB LPDDR5X STORAGE 512GB UFS 4.1 REAR CAMERA Main: 50 MP, f/1.6, OIS, Ultra Pixel 2.44 µm Ultra wide angle: 50 MP, f/2.0, 122º, Macro Telephoto lens: 50MP, OIS, 3x optical zoom, 100x superzoom FRONT CAMERA 50 MP, f/2.0, 1.2 µm Quad Pixel BATTERY 5,200 mAh Silicon-carbon 90W wired charging Wireless charging 50W 10W wireless reverse charging OPERATING SYSTEM Android 16 CONNECTIVITY 5G sub-6 Wi-Fi 7 Bluetooth 6 GPS, GLONASS, Galileo NFC Dual SIM (Nano SIM + eSIM) OTHERS On-screen fingerprint reader IP68/IP69 certification MIL-STD 810H Durability Dual stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos Aircraft grade aluminum frame PRICE 999 euros Ultra-slim design Motorola returns to the premium range with the Motorola Signature and, as we already saw with the Motorola Edge 70its design stands out for its thinness. It is less than 7 millimeters thick, but its screen measures 6.8 inches, making it a fairly large mobile phone and its weight reaches 186 grams. Speaking of screen, it is a 6.8 inch AMOLED with a peak brightness of 6,200 nits and a refresh rate that exceeds the usual ones, standing at 165Hz. Regarding resistance, the panel is covered by Gorilla Glass Victus 2 glass and the frame of the mobile phone is made of aircraft-grade aluminum, important in such a thin terminal. The back is finished with a texture that imitates linen and comes in olive green and black, but what stands out most is its camera module. Motorola is committed to a system of triple camera which combines main, ultra-wide angle and periscopic telephoto with 3x optical and digital zoom up to 100x, all of them with 50 megapixel sensors. For the front camera we have another 50 megapixel sensor. Performance and autonomy The Motorola Signature marks the brand’s return to the premium segment, something that is clear with its processor, a Snapdragon 8 Gen 5. It is accompanied by 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 512GB of UFS 4.1 storage. For the battery, Motorola is once again betting on the silicon-carbon how good results it gave us in the review of the Motorola Edge 70, but this time it is even bigger: 5,200 mAh. According to Motorola, the autonomy is 52 hours, with up to 28 hours of video playback. As for the software, it comes standard with Android 16 and comes with the Qira AI platform, that understands the context and works between the mobile phone, the tablet and the computer continuously. Versions and prices of the Motorola Signature The Motorola Signature comes to the market in olive green or black. Regarding the versions, in other markets there will be a 16GB RAM version, but in Spain we will only have the 12GB version with 512GB of storage. It will cost 999 euros and it can now be reserved on the Motorola website. Images | Motorola In Xataka | From the Motorola of before to the Motorola of now: the police and firefighters have turned it into a 60 billion company

how to use it to see which ones are activated in real time in Spain

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Let’s tell you how to use the V-16 beacon map with which you can see in real time all the ones that are activated in Spain. As of January 1, 2026, V-16 beacons They are mandatory in Spain, so that if we have an accident or breakdown we can activate them and so that the DGT signs on the roads notify the rest of the cars of our position. But you can also check the data sent by the beacons in real time with a map. It is not about DGT mapbut from a third party that uses public data from official sourcesalthough it does not seek to replace official traffic information warnings or assistants. It is also not a map linked to any specific brand of beacons, and shows all those that have been activated at any given time. It is, therefore, an information tool created by an individual. See activated beacons in real time To access the V-16 beacon map you have to enter the website Mapabalizasv16.es/#mapa. This will take you to a map of all of Spain, including the archipelagos, and you can navigate through it and zoom in to see specific areas of the country. On this map, you will be able to see currently active beacons and those that were recently activatedso that you can have a context of current problems and others that have been recent. Also, at the top you will have a button to update it at any time. When you click on one of the active beacon icons (the ones that are on) or the recent ones (their icon is off), it will open a window with event information. You will be able to see what time it was activated, the road, the direction and the province and municipality. Additionally, in the window that opens you will also have buttons to open the exact location in a map application, and you will have a share button to send the incident to someone. In Xataka Basics | V16 beacon without eSIM or connectivity: what the DGT says about them from 2026

“You can’t trust your eyes to know what’s real anymore.” Instagram CEO announces that the feed is dead

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That the Internet as we knew it no longer exists is not a surprise: it has been filled with search results generated by artificial intelligence and from ‘slop‘. The consequences are already visible: clicks have been reduced by halfwhich is catastrophic for the media. But not only the text is suffering from this barrage of AI that blurs everything: already We do not know how to distinguish if an image is real or notwe have gone from document our life on social networks to the era of influencer content favored by the algorithm to videos and images that are not real, but can pass as such. There are no longer four fingers that are worth it. Instagrammers, the feed is dead. And this is also going to take its toll on social networks. Adam Mosseri, CEO of Instagram, closed 2025 with a publication in the form of a presentation of 20 images where he reflected in depth on what is coming: “the era of infinite synthetic content”, the antithesis of a more personal Instagram that has been dead for years. For Mosseri, AI has turned the carefully maintained grid with its algorithm into something of the past: “Unless you are under 25 years old and use Instagram, you probably think of the app as a feed of square photos. The aesthetics are careful: a lot of makeup, skin softening, high-contrast photography, beautiful landscapes,” Mosseri’s sentence falls like a stone on this millennial, who still uses Instagram as a kind of photo album. “That feed is dead. People largely stopped sharing personal moments on the feed years ago.” Tap to go to the post In search of something real. Mosseri explains that now its users keep their contacts up to date on their personal lives with “improvised photos of unflattering shoes and poses” shared via DM. And this also affects content creators: the omnipresence of images made by AI is going to bring a change: goodbye to those pro-looking photographs in favor of a more real and improvised aesthetic: “Flattering images are cheap to produce and boring to consume. People want content that feels real.” In fact, the CEO of Instagram points to manufacturers, applicable to cameras and mobile phones, who he says are making a mistake by democratizing the ability to “look like a professional photographer from 2015.” Because RAW images with defects are still a sign of reality until AI is able to copy them. But what is real? The time has come to unlearn to believe what our eyes see, something we have been doing all our lives. Javier Lacort explained that our entire epistemology (ranging from court testimony to photo albums) is based on the fact that seeing is a way of knowing. If you see a tiger, there is a tiger. If you see a photo of a tiger, someone has been close to one. This no longer applies: the era of uncover organized fake news has made way for anyone with Nano Banana Pro can get such an absurdly realistic image with a basic prompt in just a few seconds. Now creating a deepfake is trivial. Adam Mosseri think equal. “For most of my life I was able to safely assume that photographs or videos were largely faithful captures of moments that actually happened. That’s clearly no longer the case, and it’s going to take years to adjust. We’re going to go from defaulting to assuming that what we see is real to starting from skepticism. To paying attention to who’s sharing something and why. This will be uncomfortable: we’re genetically predisposed to believe our eyes.” If you can’t beat them… The paradigm shift has already occurred, so now Instagram and other platforms have to adapt to this new reality: “we have to build the best creative tools. Label AI-generated content and verify authentic content. Show credibility signals about who is posting. Continue to improve the ranking of originality.” It is the apocalypse of what is a photo that we have been predicting for years. Focusing on Instagram, Mosseri talks about how “we like to complain about ‘AI junk content,’ but there is a lot of amazing content created with AI.” He doesn’t give concrete examples or talk about Meta tools to make this possible, but Meta has already added AI tools on Instagram and Facebook. Without going any further, his AI Studio allows you to create personalized chatbots to deal with your followers. New times, new identification measures. It is increasingly difficult to identify content in AI, so it proposes fingerprints and cryptographic signatures in cameras to identify real content, forgetting about labels or watermarks. In any case, it advocates greater transparency about who publishes on the platform and improve creativity so that its human users can compete with content made in AI. In Xataka | The future of the Internet is to be flooded with AI. And there are those who have already seen a business niche: content made by humans In Xataka | There is a generation working for free as a documentarian of their own life: they are not influencers but they act as if they were.

On the ByteDance mobile, Android is secondary. AI is the real operating system

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The Doubao AI smartphone, a Chinese mobile that we saw arrive a few weeks agois not another mobile phone with AI functions crammed in, but a serious attempt to turn AI into the device’s real operating system, one capable of relegating Android to mere infrastructure. ByteDance’s bet is clear: whoever controls the assistant that executes the tasks will be the one who controls the user. Although I don’t control the app store. That breaks with the model of the last seventeen years. Why is it important. The model has not changed since 2008: The operating system funnels the user into its ecosystem of applications. That app store is capital for 99% of users: without it, you wouldn’t see the value. And that store allows the platform to capture traffic, data and transactions. Doubao’s proposal wants to change the model towards one in which the user speaks and the AI ​​executes crossing applications without the user having to enter them. Chinese super applications become invisible infrastructure for the user. Doubao itself has been pointing in that direction for some time with other devices, like headphones. Between the lines. Those same super apps are not happy with this proposal, and in fact when Doubao simulates taps to complete tasks, WeChat or Alipay interpret it as an attack, so they block attempts and close sessions. WeChat has built its empire Regarding experience control and payments, Alipay has invested a lot of money in reaching total user retention. An AI that compares prices between rivals breaks its desired captivity. ByteDance has copied the Seres-Huawei model: ZTE provides the shell, ByteDance provides the brain. And that’s how you get operating system privileges. Doubao has permission for everything by default and Android becomes more like just another application, because the manufacturer and AI layer control everything. Yes, but. Accuracy is around 50% in complex tasks that involve several applications. It works in simple scenarios, it fails when the user requests something that requires coordinating three different applications. Traditional manufacturers such as Samsung, Xiaomi or Oppo cannot adopt a model like this because it would mean handing over control to a third party. The alternative path is to build a framework where AI can coordinate applications, but with those applications maintaining control through APIs. The money trail. ByteDance does not have the business model of selling mobile phones at mid-range prices. Its model is based on behavioral data, traffic to its services and commissions on transactions executed by AI. The smartphone is the gateway and AI is its big bet in which use TikTok as a springboard. And now what. This is not a battle between assistants but between models: The app-centric that has been operating for seventeen years. The AI-centric where applications tend to become invisible. ByteDance is betting on the second, which changes the entry point for the user. That entry point has been on the application icon for three decades. ByteDance believes it will be on the microphone tomorrow. Featured image | Doubao In Xataka | They have dismantled the latest Huawei phones and what they have found is bad news for the US: 57%

The real reason why Musk, Bezos and Pichai want to build data centers in space: bypass regulation

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The construction of data centers is proliferating so much that although the largest in the world They are in Kolos (Norway), in The Cidatel (United States) and China, you can find them now even in Botorritain the province of Zaragoza. The limit is the sky. Or well, not even that: because Silicon Valley has been put between eyebrows set up data centers in space. And the main big tech companies are making moves to achieve this. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt bought rocket company Relativity Space with that objective. Nvidia has supported the startup Starcloud in its project to launch the first NVIDIA H100 GPU into space a few weeks ago and Elon Musk has even condensed how he would do it in a tweet: “It will be enough to scale the Starlink V3 satellites, which have high-speed laser links.” He when Jeff Bezos slipped it in a prediction at the Italian Tech Week: We will see “giant training clusters” of AI in orbit in the next 10 to 20 years. The moon is a gift from the universe The next question would be “why?”. The reality is that there is no shortage of reasons. AI is a real energy guzzler and as demand does not stop growingspace offers a couple of differential advantages over Earth: almost unlimited energy and free cooling. On the one hand, in space we have a sun-synchronous orbit where solar panels receive energy almost continuously. On the other hand, you can install a radiator so large that the space functions as a kind of ‘infinite heat sink at -270°C’. The enormous amounts of water essential for cooling on Earth would not be needed. Let’s face it, today there are no plans to have data centers in space. But not too far away: University of Central Florida research professor and former NASA member Phil Metzger esteem that perhaps within a decade it could be economically viable. But its viability is so clear that it considers that taking AI servers into space are “the first real business case that will give way to many more“in the face of a future human migration beyond Earth. So for now, they try it on Earth. Consequence: that Donald Trump declare an energy emergency due to the enormous electricity demand expected for the coming years. As the power grid catches up (or tries to), AI companies have decided to move from a passive to a proactive position: Meta is going to become an electricity marketer. xAI by Elon Musk is using gas turbines as energy sources temporary. OpenAI is pushing to the United States government to lend a hand to electricity companies to add 100 gigawatts per year. That figure doesn’t say much, but it is astronomical: what OpenAI is asking for is that The United States built almost an entire Spain (around 145 GWh considering the 129 GW consolidated at the end of 2024 plus the solar and wind deployment of 2025) every year and a half in terms of infrastructure. AI is growing faster than electrical bureaucracy is advancing How could the Trump Administration help? With the eternal bureaucracy. Because on Earth they face great technical challenges, but they also face a legislative wall. To have more energy, the simplest and most immediate step is to build new power plants, but that means successfully going through the tangle of procedures that slow down the process. There is only one small problem: that in the United States depending on technology, it can take five to ten years… if you’re lucky. Interconnection to the grid alone can take six years, successfully overcoming an interconnection queue with more than 2,000 GW in projects who are already in line. Then, up to four years of federal and environmental permits to end in another couple of years for state and local licenses that must come to fruition. ‘Permit Stack’ they call it. And the journey does not end here: they must also avoid andthe citizen movementNot in my backyard‘ (not in my backyard, kind of like “yes, but not in my house”), which has already backed down the Battle Born Solar Project (Nevada), which was going to be the largest solar plant in the United States, or Danskammer gas station (New York), among others. This can delay the operation even further as rights of way must be negotiated with individual owners who may refuse, going through the courts again. The never ending story. To avoid processes NIMBY that last fifteen years or more, companies like OpenAI or Microsoft are buying plants that already exist, such as Three Mile Island, which is going to reopen only for Microsoftinstead of trying to build new ones from scratch. Amazon has also signed infrastructure that is already on the network like the Talen Energy Campus and it has partnered with Dominion Energy and X-energy to develop mini reactors (SMR). SMRs are also Google’s solution, in this case thanks to an agreement with Kairos Power. Everything is to avoid that tangle of ‘Permit stack’ procedures that in practice and according to estimates, makes it is faster to opt for the space route to build a power plant on the old, familiar Earth. At the end of the day for AI companies “The moon is a gift from the universe”, as already Jeff Bezos glimpsed. In Xataka | Musk has created the perfect circle: Tesla’s megabatteries power the AI ​​that will define its next cars In Xataka | Researchers have dismantled the batteries of Tesla and BYD. You already know which one performs better and is much cheaper. Cover | İsmail Enes Ayhan and NASA

Doomsday’ are indistinguishable from the real thing. In the end, Scorsese was right

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Last weekend, YouTube Screen Culture and KH Studio permanently closedchannels based in India and Georgia that accumulated more than 2 million subscribers and one billion views between them. They had been making AI-generated trailers so convincing they were indistinguishable from official promotional materials for months. The phenomenon has reached epidemic proportions with ‘Avengers: Doomsday’where the border between the authentic and the synthetic has become practically undetectable. What has happened? Marvel’s strategy of projecting four exclusive movie teasers ahead of ‘Avatar: Fire and Ashes’‘ (one each week, focusing on different characters) has created the perfect breeding ground for confusion. Without official online distribution, any user who wanted to see them had to rely on an ecosystem of leaks that, as Kotaku states, It’s been broken for years. And in the midst of this information void, generative AI had its day: images showing Doctor Doom began to emerge from under the stones. as “Stark clone”, clips supposedly filmed in theaters and deepfakes of a refinement that deceived the most expert eye. Increasingly sophisticated. A study published by Nature already in 2024 revealed that more than 53% of humans can be fooled by digitally altered videos, while recent academic research They talk about detection tools deepfakes They have difficulty identifying manipulations outside of their training data. With this breeding ground, it is normal that there are more and more fake trailers and images, immersed in a continuous generation of content of this type: on social networks, 71% of images are generated by AI. And it is estimated that they have been published since 2023 more than 10 billion pages generated by AI. Marvel pre-slop. The paradox of this situation is that Marvel did not need AI intervention to become synthetic content. It already was. When Martin Scorsese stated in 2019 that the Marvel films were not cinema but “theme parks” where the actors did “the best they could under those circumstances”, he was actually talking about the fact that the franchises had replaced the human with the algorithmic, which were engineering products devoid of the living component that defines cinema. The visionary thing about it: he did it before ChatGPT came into our lives. We all know how Marvel movies are made (and what first led to that image of fdepersonalized acting in mass-produced films; and second, to the famous “superhero fatigue”), and they fit perfectly with that idea of ​​”movies made by AI before AI”: effects artists changing entire third acts two months before the premieres, films shot on sets with huge green screens generating sequences where 99% of what we see is digitaldifferent proposals but with narrative decisions (especially in their final sections) completely interchangeable… The first mess. Let’s go back to ‘Spiderman: No Way Home‘ to analyze one of the most striking cases of information and misinformation of this type, with the direct precedent of generative AI: the deepfakes. For months they circulated supposedly leaked images of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield in Spider-Man suits. Garfield repeatedly denied involvementstating that the material was Photoshop. Then a YouTuber posted a video claiming to have created a deepfake of the leaked footage, only to later admit that his video was fake and the original video was real. In Corridor Crew They determined that it would be “the most sophisticated deepfake ever created” if it were fake. Sony applied copyright strikes against leaks, implicit confirmation of authenticity. Result: fans spent six months not knowing what was real, but they spread it anyway. Studies on different fandoms reveal that the search for belonging drives the spread of misinformation as much as that of legitimate information. More chaos: the algorithms optimize based on popularitymore than for the quality. And the metrics of engagement can be manipulated through behavior of a deceptive nature: bots, organized trolls, networks of fake accounts… A cocoa. The result: an attention market where manufacturing synthetic content about ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ generates more adhesion, diffusion and popularity than bothering to verify its authenticity. But AI did not create this problem: it only accelerated it until it became unsustainable. And we are not even talking about “serious” topics, linked to politics or society and where real interests already come into play to falsify the content, beyond the mere more or less hooligan fun of spreading a fake trailer. The closing of the house of fake trailers. The closure of Screen Culture and KH Studio by YouTube comes after a conflict that began when both channels in March were demonetized. To avoid this, they added tags such as “fan trailer”, “parody” or “concept trailer” to their titles and recovered monetization. But those warnings disappeared again, and they created 23 versions of fake ‘Fantastic Four’ trailers, some of them surpassing the official videos in search results. But there was an additional controversy: in the Deadline investigation On the subject, it was revealed that several studios, such as Warner and Sony, had secretly requested that YouTube have the advertising revenue from these AI videos bounce back to them, which leaves this not in the field of ethics, but of economic benefit. YouTube tolerated the proliferation of synthetic content for years, even allowing studios to monetize material that misled their own audiences, and only stopped when Disney, which owns Marvel, sent a cease and desist letter to Googleowner of YouTube. In Xataka | OpenAI and Disney have signed an agreement so you can generate AI videos of your favorite characters. It’s what Sora needed

When Spotify launched its first Wrapped, it didn’t know what it was creating: a real monster

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If companies have learned anything since the Internet has evolved into this strange algorithmic mass that sometimes escapes our control, it is that, if something creates a trend, it must be there. For a few days we can enjoy the latest Spotify Wrappedthe now classic annual review where we find data playfully designed to share on networks such as which artists we listen to the most on the platform or which songs have defined our year. And as it could not be otherwise, the networks are flooded with captures. So far everything is correct. But as happens with any content that becomes popular and people like it, alternatives arise. And that’s not bad. In fact, Spotify didn’t invent personalized annual reviews, but when we already see a pseudo-wrapped on platforms like WeTransfer (hey, good for them), the alarm bells are already ringing that perhaps we are slipping a little. And throughout these days I have found examples that are each more absurd. Spotify. Wrapped has become one of those excellent viral marketing strategies. Since its launch in 2016, Spotify has gotten millions of users to voluntarily share their listening data every December. The flood of screenshots that each user shares on social networks becomes a tool for creating FOMO that encourages another potential user to use Spotify, or even gives them reasons to stay on this platform. It has become more or less a cultural phenomenon, a tradition like Christmas itself. And of course, this has attracted other companies enough to want to replicate this effect at all costs. YouTube Recap Irresistible. As I said before, Spotify was not the first to make annual summaries, but it was the first to turn them into irresistibly shareable content. The key is in its design: very striking graphics, personalized statistics and a perfect format to share on your Instagram story. The hashtag #SpotifyWrapped becomes a global trending topic every year, generating organic advertising comparable to very few advertising campaigns. And the formula is repeated every year without few changes beyond the visual: take the data you already have about your users, wrap it in an attractive way and return it to share with other potential clients. PlayStation Wrap-Up A Wrapped for everything. Having an annual review of your platform or service has become mandatory for many companies, extending to all types of industries. In the field of entertainment and gaming, platforms such as YouTube, Apple Music, Amazon Music, PlayStation, Xbox, nintendo, Steam either Twitchamong many others, offer their own summaries. Curious not to see anything official that resembles it on Netflix and other streaming platforms, beyond some third-party tools, such as kapwingwhich allow you to import your own viewing data to see a similar overview. Twitch Recap cforced asses. Where the trend becomes truly interesting is in sectors where, a priori, an annual summary does not make much sense (or seen another way, cases ahead of their time). To Lidl (yes, the supermarket) has its annual review, where it tells you what you have bought the most through its app or how many times you have gone shopping. Lidl’s move is even nice, but there are cases that play a fine line. WeTransfer could perfectly fit in here. As a file transfer service I have no complaints (maybe one or two), but I would never have expected that a platform of this kind would also think of joining this type of marketing initiatives. And if we talk about forced cases, Securitas Direct. As is. The platform tells you through its My Verisure app data such as the number of times you have accessed and things like that. I can’t help but imagine someone anxiously awaiting their annual review of their alarm service to find out how many times they have been broken into this year. Jokes aside, here is already an area in which having a wrapped looks out of place. But if anyone finds these statistics useful, nothing to say about it. Courtesy of Jose Jacas More examples that embrace fashion. Duolingo even overtook Spotify this year by launching your Year in Reviewrevealing learning statistics, streaks and the dreaded error counter. Trakt, a website where users register series and movies what do you see, too has its own summaryalthough to see it you have to upgrade to their payment plan, so I’ve never seen it. WeTransfer Recap Platforms like Uber either LinkedIn They have also joined the bandwagon with their own versions. Even the New York Times has launched its “Year in Games” for Wordle, Connections and other games, showing statistics such as the average attempts in Wordle or the most correct categories in Connections. Viral logics. If something starts to gain traction on the internet, all brands want to be there, even if the connection with their business is forced. It is the fear of being left out of the conversation. The same FOMO effect that these tools achieve, in some way, also generates FOMO around companies that seek to enter this trend in any way. These annual reviews are no longer just a data analysis tool, but a format that brands try to appropriate to gain visibility and engagement. It works because we are very heavy on sharing content and we generate the occasional unpopular opinion in the process, even if it is your supermarket purchases. This is how we operate on the Internet. I can’t wait to see the Wrapped from my electric company to learn more about my consumption peaks or my bank account to see what nonsense I waste my money on. In Xataka | How to share Spotify Wrapped 2025 on Instagram, WhatsApp or other apps

The real deal about festivals isn’t the music, it’s that you can’t bring your own food in. But that’s over

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The sentence of Valencia Court against Madrid Salvaje It’s not just about snacks. It is an assault won by consumers in a larger war: that of maintaining cultural experiences without every moment being designed for the purchase and sale of services. A ray of hope in the battle between “leisure as a business” as opposed to “leisure as a social right” that defines our era in an increasingly clear way. The battle for free entertainment. The judgmentwhich comes after the lawsuit from FACUA-Consumers in Action, is the first judicial resolution in Spain which establishes the abusive nature of these prohibitions at music festivals. But its importance transcends the anecdotal, since what is at stake is not only the right to bring a sandwich to a concert, but something more structural: the battle to maintain cultural spaces that are not completely immersed in transactional dynamics. A chronology of victories. A series of rulings can be traced that serve as a preamble to this latest judicial decision and that have paved the way to reach this point. For example, in 2001the María Cristina multiplexes in Toledo lost a lawsuit that certified that prohibiting entry with external products was an “irrational restriction on the consumer’s ability to choose.” There was already talk of “tied sales”: indirectly imposing services that the client had not requested. In 2022 another milestone arrived: the law was enacted that requires all hospitality establishments to offer free tap water. Although the official justification was environmental (reducing single-use packaging), it also served as a basis for this issue of forced consumption. Since then, the fines have increased: Yelmo Cines, for example, was fined 30,001 euros by the Basque Consumer Institute for prohibiting food from abroad. Spanish legal doctrine already makes it clear: if the main activity is showing films or scheduling concerts, hospitality is accessory. Beyond the sandwich. What happens at festivals is a symptom of a deeper mutation: leisure is being colonized by logic that transforms the cultural experience into a financial asset. It is understood if we look at the case of Live Nation, owners of Ticketmaster. In 2024, US Attorney General Merrick Garland defined like this the business model: “Live Nation uses illegal anti-competitive conduct to exert monopolistic control over the live events industry at the expense of fans, artists, small promoters and venue operators.” That is: you control the 70% of the ticketing market in the United States60% of concert promotion, and exclusive contracts with 75% of the large venues (the numbers are comparable in other countries of the world). In this way, each business segment feeds and reinforces the others. Ticket revenue is used to tie artists into exclusive promotional contracts, allowing for long-term ticketing exclusives, with more commission income… and perpetuating itself ad infinitum. By controlling the entire distribution and business chain you earn more money. Parallel trends. This transformation of leisure does not come from nowhere. It is intertwined with a couple of trends that redefine current leisure. On the one hand, the shrinkflation cultural (untranslatable, but here it goes: shrinking inflation), reduce the size of the product while maintaining or even increasing the price. General admission prices to American festivals they rose 55% between 2014 and 2024. And it’s not just that it costs more: it’s that you receive less. What was once included (being able to bring your own food, access to free drinking water, reasonable personal space) is now sold as a “privilege” or outright prohibited. Furthermore, in 2006, Spirit Airlines introduced the “unbundling” model: a cheap ticket that only includes one seat. Luggage, seat selection and priority boarding became extras that, as in 2024 had generated billions of dollars in baggage and seat selection fees. In other words: the unbundling did not reduce the cost of flying, but rather fragmented the final price into multiple hidden charges. Because ultra-low-cost airlines operate with very tight margins in base notes, recovering profitability through peaks that represent up to 47% of income. Festivals follow the same recipe: tickets that barely cover fixed expenses, while the real margins come from drinks and food. And since now live performances are essential for the survival of the music industryit makes sense that all efforts are focused on making it profitable. A crucial moment. After decades of unstoppable advance in the commodification of every aspect of entertainment (from cinema to sports stadiums, passing through theme parks), this judicial ruling indicates that perhaps the pendulum is beginning to swing in the opposite direction, at least in certain details. Consumers may not have completely lost the battle for “leisure as leisure” to the relentless “leisure as business” model that has been theorized for decades (Joseph Pine and James Gilmore spoke in 1998 of“the experience economy” and, even further back, the German sociologists Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer once defined visionary “colonization of free time) Extirpating leisure from capitalism. In 1944, the political economist Karl Polanyi published ‘The Great Transformation’where he argued that land, work and money are essential elements of life that They should never have become commodities. When the market attempts to subordinate “the very substance of society to the laws of the market,” society reacts spontaneously to protect itself from its own disintegration. So this judicial resolution is about being able to enter the next MadCool with a sandwich, but also about something more. Header | James Jeremy Beckers in Unsplash

Ryanair thought it could build loyalty with a subscription service. Until you’ve remembered what your real business is

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“It has cost more money than it generates” With a brief note and the statements of Dara Brady, CMO of the company, Ryanair has confirmed the closure of Prime, the membership program that sought to retain its customers with advantages that have generated greater costs for the company than benefits. The subscription service of the company has not lasted even a year before its cancellation. Surgical. A test, some results eight months later and a decision: close Prime. Ryanair has confirmed that it is closing its subscription program just eight months after it was launched on the market in a decision that is as firm as it is clean. Subscribers will maintain their benefits but those who had not signed up until last Friday, the 28th, will now no longer be able to do so. They report on the company’s website that customers will maintain their benefits “of exclusive savings on flights and seats for the remaining 12 months of membership.” However, the company’s Prime program already has its days numbered. two million. It doesn’t seem like much for a company like Ryanair, but it speaks volumes about the rigorous cost control that the company manages. The statement includes the words of Dara Brady, CMO of Ryanair, who points out that the program has collected 4.4 million euros in subscriptions but that the benefits delivered are greater than six million euros. That is, in the eight months in which the service has been active, the company has lost less than 250,000 euros per month in the new program. Doesn’t seem like much for a company that has obtained 2,540 million euros in the first quarter of 2025. What did they offer? In its announcement last March, Ryanair offered the following benefits For your subscribers: Priority sale on selected flights Exclusive discounts for some flights Free seat selection for the member and one companion To access these benefits, the client had to pay 79 euros per year. According to the company’s accounts, seat selection alone already amortized the investment from three flights a year. With four flights made per year, we would be amortizing 26 euros on average. The subscription extended for a maximum of one year or 12 flights per year. In addition, I had travel insurance to cancel flights due to injuries or illnesses, the delay of other flights or theft of luggage. Of course, those over 70 years of age were excluded from sickness coverage. Unattractive. “With more than 207 million passengers this year, Ryanair will remain focused on offering the lowest fares in Europe to all our customers, and not just this group of 55,000 Prime members.” The closing of the press release published by the company is a clear confirmation of what happened. The most attractive thing that Prime offered was that the customer could choose (and save money) in the choice of seats but it did not even guarantee that two passengers (one being “non-Prime”) could travel together. It is an incentive that has not been attractive enough for a company where the customer looks for the cheapest way to travel and chooses to add services little by little, depending on how much money you are willing to pay. Nothing premium. Ryanair’s test has convinced the company that it has no room to delve into policies that bring it closer to premium or higher-cost companies. Many of the airlines with higher prices offer cards or loyalty services to keep their customers retained, but this way of acting has not caught on among the Irish company’s customers. The reasons are obvious. When someone chooses Ryanair it is because they expect the lowest possible price for a short flight. And you are willing to sacrifice by traveling with less luggage or accepting 100% digital boarding. You either take it or leave it. And Ryanair knows that the customer will leave it when the competition offers that same flight at a cheaper price. On the other hand, customers who are loyal to higher-cost companies obtain other advantages that do receive greater attention on flights of higher cost and time. For example, loyalty cards companies like Iberia They allow access to VIP lounges or priority boarding, secondary values ​​for those who aspire to travel through Europe at the lowest possible price. To this we must add that the high price paid for the ticket ends up subsidizing these companies for the economic effort they have to make to deliver the benefits to their customers. Photo | Markus Winkler In Xataka | Now we know why Ryanair charges its passengers for everything: it is the key to having a profit of 2,540 million euros

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