Real

We thought that buying a yacht was a luxury. The real luxury that they don’t tell you is another: maintaining it

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Owning a yacht is synonymous with luxury and opulence. It is not for less. Superyachts like the koru by Jeff Bezos or the Leviathan by Gabe Newell, they had a purchase price of 500 million dollars; he launchpad by Mark Zuckerberg about 300 million dollars. However, although buying a yacht seems the most difficultwho has been in the sector for some time knows that this initial disbursement will not be the only one, it is only the first. The true luxury (and what is really expensive) is what comes after and is repeated every year: the maintenance of that yacht. There is an unwritten rule that has been circulating around moorings and ports for decades to prepare future buyers for what awaits them. It is called the “10% rule“, and refers to the annual maintenance cost that a yacht requires: 10% of its price, each year. The inhabitants of the Caribbean island of Antigua they learned it the hard way. The price of a yacht does not come on the label When someone is going to buy a boat, it is usual to take into account whether they can afford its purchase price. That’s the easy part. You look at the price and compare it to your checking account. If it fits the budget, honey on flakes. However, there is a cost that not always taken into account in which the owner of a yacht (or any boat in general) should reserve approximately the 10% of the purchase price to cover all expenses annual operation and maintenance. Yes, 10% of the price each year. A 500,000 euro yacht will generate annual costs of around 50,000 euros; If the value amounts to one million euros, the figure rises to 100,000 euros per year. That 10% includes practically everything necessary to keep the boat sailing and in perfect condition: routine maintenance, regular repairs, average fuelannual insurance, mooring fees and, in the case of larger superyachts, crew salaries. Boat insurance alone already represents between 1.5% and 2% of the value of the yacht per year, which in a 500,000 euro boat translates into between 7,500 and 10,000 euros per year in premiums alone. At this point, it should be noted that these premiums are also calculated based on the location of the mooring. A yacht moored in the Mediterranean does not pay the same insurance as in areas like Florida where hurricane warnings and tropical storms are the order of the day. As the ship ages, the numbers change The 10% rule is stated as a reference guide for the entire life of the yacht. That is, it is an average in which some years the maintenance cost will be well below that 10%, while in other years it will far exceed it. However, above or below, the cost always remains close to that 10%: As and as they point out from WS Yatch Brokersone of the decisive factors, for example, is that this 10% varies as the age of the boat advances. When the yacht is new, the manufacturer’s warranties are in force, the mechanical systems are working well and maintenance costs can remain around 2% of the purchase price for the first few years. That 2% corresponds to fixed expenses such as insurance, mooring, or basic deck maintenance. As the years go by, parts wear out, warranties expire, and breakdowns become more and more frequent. For boats between 5 and 15 years old, the recommended percentage rises to 10%, with bad years that can reach (and exceed) 15% of the purchase value. The reason is that, as the market value of the boat goes down, its maintenance costs go up, so any calculation based on a fixed percentage loses reliability. That is to say, a 15-year-old yacht that has cost 100,000 euros second-hand will not (or at least not always) have expenses of 10% since its engine and hull begin to need major repairs due to years of use. That is, what the buyer has saved on the purchase price must then be invested in repairs anyway. Hence the 10% rule is a reference average applied to the entire life of the yacht (with its ups and downs), not a rule written in stone. The size, the crew and the place where you moor Size also determines the maintenance budget proportionally. From 25 meters in length, the yacht can now require professional crewand that 10% falls short to cover the cost of maintenance. A captain’s salary alone starts at around $50,000 per year, and a full crew for a large yacht easily exceeds $200,000 per year. On megayachts, managers usually plan 10% for operating expenses (which are included in the 10% rule), plus an additional 10% for onboard personnel, their maintenance, etc., which places the real maintenance cost closer to 20% of the acquisition price. This percentage does not apply to those yachts that, due to size, only require the services of a captain during the high season, thus reducing their annual cost. He port where it is moored It also has a decisive influence on the calculation of annual fixed expenses. It does not cost the same to moor in a small fishing town on the Catalan coast as in Puerto Banús or in the port of Monaco. In Spain, the monthly mooring fee for a boat between 12 and 14 meters ranges between 450 and 575 euros per month (about 6,900 euros per year), but it skyrockets in large tourist ports. to put a practical examplemooring in Marina Ibiza, the main recreational port on the island, for a yacht of about 15 meters in length costs between 25,000 and 30,000 euros per year, while if you opt for other secondary ports on the island, the price is reduced by half to between 10,000 and 15,000 euros per year. According to estimates of Ocean Independencea company specializing in superyacht management, the annual routine maintenance of a superyacht, which includes hull cleaning, fuel, engine inspection and electronic systems, ranges between … Read more

The mission is to teach them to work in real life

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For a long time, the big conversation about artificial intelligence has revolved around models capable of summarizing, programming or generating images. But when we take that ambition to the physical world, everything changes. A robot does not learn to work just by reading instructions: it needs to observe, repeat, fail and accumulate data on real movements. That is why the next frontier of robotics is not only in manufacturing more agile bodies or more precise hands, but in building the entire system necessary to teach them to act outside the laboratory. This system is beginning to take shape in Fujian, where the province’s first large data collection factory has been launched in a test phase. According to CCTVthe facility is located in Area D of Fuzhou Software Park and has been created by Fujian Jufu Technology. There, almost 30 robots follow the instructions of different operators, described by Chinese sources as “teachers”, to practice tasks such as cleaning tables, sorting fruits and vegetables or disposing of parcel boxes. The mechanics of that “school” are relatively easy to imagine, but very demanding underneath. Operators wear virtual reality devices and operate controls to guide the robot during each exercise. When the operator raises his arm, the machine reproduces the gesture and, for example, grab a paper cup to place it on top of another. The important thing is not only that it completes the action, but that each movement, joint angle and clamp pressure is recorded by cameras and sensors. The school where robots learn with real data One of the least showy parts is also one of the most decisive. The tasks we see in the video, such as cleaning a table or picking up a glass, seem simple because we do them almost without thinking. For a humanoid, on the other hand, each gesture requires a specific sequence of physical decisions. Data collection engineer Jiao Shiwei explained to Fuzhou News that even the smallest movements need to be learned through data, and that each action must be designed according to the characteristics of the robot itself to find the most suitable trajectory. The key word here is “generalization.” That is, the ability to apply what has been learned when the environment is no longer identical to the training environment. Shiwei summed it up with two very basic actions: pick up a glass and clean a table. If the object, surface and stain do not change, the robot has it relatively easy. But in a house, a factory or a service space, almost nothing is repeated the same. Hence, data collection workers introduce variations in glasses, tablecloths and tables to expand the scope for learning. The bottom line is that robots are also entering their own race for data. In other areas of AI, much of the progress was based on digital material already available. In robotics, on the other hand, many of the examples must be generated from scratch, with real machines, real objects and movements repeated over and over again. Xinhua puts the problem in these terms: the bottleneck of humanoids is no longer concentrated only in the hardware, but in how to continue perfecting their “brain” through training in application scenarios. The industrial reading of the project helps to understand why these small tasks can end up becoming infrastructure. Chen Yishi, CEO of Jufu Technology, told Fuzhou News that these types of factories provide support for end-to-end models and implementation in vertical scenarios. The idea is that an AI robot does not function as a traditional machine limited to a fixed sequence, but as a guided system capable of make decisions on the body from real training. The company is also recent. Jufu Technology was founded in September 2025 and presents its activity as a combination of data factory and self-development. Its objective is not limited to accumulating examples of movement, but to create around that base a local ecosystem of algorithmic talent, data and collaboration with the industrial chain. Yishi, for his part, pointed out that its future products aim at industrial manufacturing, safety inspection, research and education, although sources present it as a roadmap, not as an already consolidated deployment. Images | Jufu Technology | Xinhua In Xataka | The ‘Chinese Netflix’ has designed a plan for AI to generate the majority of its content within five years. It sounds risky

China is launching giant buoys into the sea that are real “small” fortified data centers. Korea won’t like it

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Ocean observation is an essential activity to monitor climate change, navigation and the security of the planet, however 95% of internet data travels therethe sighting of ghost ships is the order of the day and we continue found new islands. Until now, the quintessential element for monitoring the sea has been floating sensors that everyone knows: buoys, a legacy of the analog world. In that calm calm China has invaded with its Sea Dragon (Hailong) series, a new generation of enormous buoys that mark a before and after in scale, design and functionality. Of course, they have nothing to do with that mooring that has reigned in naval engineering since the Second World War. The new Chinese buoy. The Hailong series are literally small disk-shaped fortified data stations. Although small is relative: its diameter is around six meters in diameter and as a structure it looks more like a small unmanned oil platform than conventional buoys. After completing the relevant tests at sea, it has already been integrated into the Yellow Sea observation network to continuously and real-time monitor the entire water column, according to the Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. When deploying the new buoy, technicians simultaneously removed an older buoy after 16 years of service. A deliberate symbolic gesture insofar as it is not a mere change of buoy: according to the Institute it is “the world’s first system with a single disc side anchor structure”, leaving behind the classic central mooring point that has dominated Western marine engineering since World War II. Why is it important. The problem with the design of classic buoys is mechanical and well known: when a buoy with a central mooring rotates due to currents and wind, the cables coil and generate structural and instrumentation failures. This new lateral disc anchorage solves the root problem because it uses another geometry, thus minimizing these errors, operating with more stability. That is, the importance lies in the continuity of the data. The second reason is strategic. The Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences I had already tried other synchronized observation systems capable of covering from 10 kilometers of atmosphere to 1 kilometer of depth underwater, withstanding winds of 60 m/s and waves of up to 20 meters, powered by various energy sources (wave, solar, wind, hybrid). This new buoy transfers these capabilities to especially sensitive waters. It is, in short, a buoy designed to be operational for the long term. Context. Since the 1940s, the world standard for buoys has been defined by US Navy designs, such as the NOMAD (Navy Oceanographic Meteorological Automatic Device) type. For the time, these devices complied thanks to their simplicity and ease of deployment, although due to their physics they are vulnerable to excessive swinging. If there is serious surf, precision measurements get dirty. Over the years this standard has met precisely because it complied, its maintenance is low and other alternatives present challenges to its deployment. But China, driven by its need to control the South China Sea and the Western Pacific, has chosen to redesign the platform from scratch. In fact, China and Korea have a fishing agreement in the Yellow Sea dating back to 2001 where permanent installations are expressly prohibited. So China has fulfilled it in its own way: since then it has deployed 13 buoys, two large aquaculture cages and a maintenance platform. Analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) qualify this strategy of “progressive sovereignty”. How they have done it. The development is led by the Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which has been testing real-time transmission mooring systems since 2016. The new buoy is, therefore, the result of a decade of development, not a technological leap that arrives overnight. The secret of its design is the topology: moving the anchor point from the geometric center of the disc to the side eliminates the twisting moment produced by the entanglement of cables in the classic design. Instead of a wave-riding hull, the body is designed with a narrow cross-section at the waterline and deep ballast, which noticeably reduces hydrodynamic forces. For energy management, photographs published by the South Korean navy last year show models with solar panels that, assisted by artificial intelligence for data management and instrument optimization. The result is a platform that shines for its autonomy and resilience, since it can operate continuously in adverse sea conditions without human intervention. Yes, but. From a technical and geopolitical point of view, this deployment has a double reading: China’s official description presents these buoys as tools for the study of climate change and tsunami warning, but inherently this infrastructure is dual: if it integrates sonar and can process data in real time, it can also function as a war and control tool. On the other hand, the deployment of these intelligent platforms in disputed waters has its drawback from the point of view of international maritime law since they are complex and almost permanent structures. In other words, it is like putting a pike there. In Xataka | The United States is launching giant spheres into the sea with one goal: to take advantage of one of the largest sources of renewable energy In Xataka | A buoy from Mallorca has revealed the meteorological problem that Spain faces: the Mediterranean Sea is on fire

We have just confirmed, to no one’s surprise, that Neanderthal dentists were real butchers

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Go to dentist or having maxillofacial surgeons for many people may be something that arose with our species and our great intellectsince we do not conceive that in prehistoric times our ancestors were worried about their teeth. But now we know that Neanderthals They had dentistsalthough logically with the techniques of the time. An evolution. Until now we knew that Neanderthals used small wooden sticks to get clean food scraps, something that, to be fair, some modern primates also do. However, a new find In the icy mountains of Siberia, what we thought we knew about prehistoric medicine has just been blown up. And it was not a simple instinct, since Neanderthals knew how to locate the source of acute pain and use stone tools to perform invasive dental interventions like those they can do to us today. Although logically we no longer have stone as a surgical material. Patient zero. The discovery that is the protagonist of this story has been named ‘Chagyrskaya 64’, and it is nothing more than a lower left second molar that belonged to an adult who inhabited the Chagyrskaya cave in the Altai massif in Russia. We even know that he belonged to a group that represented the most eastern known Neanderthal populations. Via: PLOS. Images of the tooth analyzed by the researchers. A tooth. At first glance, the tooth had a huge and unusual cavity in its upper part where it performs the chewing function. At first, archeology attributed this to the natural wear of the piece due to friction when chewing hard foods or simply from having received a blow. However, the edges of the cavity were smooth and rounded, so accidental breakage was completely ruled out. Furthermore, the pulp chamber, which is nothing more than the inner part of the tooth, was widened in a way that wear could not explain. What was happening. The answer to everything centers on the fact that the tooth had a severe cavity that someone tried to cure by force, removing the entire area of ​​the tooth that was in the ‘worst’ condition. And surely the pain that is felt with a cavity of considerable size that reaches the nerve area of ​​the tooth was the trigger for having to do this technique. Rustic dentistry. To prove that this hole was made on purpose, the research team used micro-computed tomography and extensive traceological analysis to see traces of use. Here what was seen is that the walls of the cavity had V-shaped stepped microgrooves, identical to those left by a perforator lithic, which was a sharp stone tool. And to confirm this, experts conducted experimental archaeology, replicating the drilling and rotation process on ‘modern’ human molars. And the brands matched perfectly. A conclusion. With all this information we can know that there was an individual who not only survived the brutal intervention in life, but also continued chewing with that tooth, as demonstrated by the subsequent polishing. It is true that they had no option to ‘cover’ that hole in the tooth as dentists do now after removing the cavity, but it did not prevent him from continuing with his normal life. A cognitive leap. Beyond the medical anecdote, the reality is that solving a cavity by excavating the infected tissue requires quite complex rational reasoning. Although we see it as easy now, identifying the source of the pain, conceiving the idea that it can be eliminated, selecting the tool for that task and executing precise rotary movements with the fingers is not easy. That is why this ability separates this behavior from mere animal instinct and shows that Neanderthals were more advanced than many of us had in mind. Images | Gerd Altmann wavebreakmedia_micro on Magnific In Xataka | A mixture of 4,000 kilometers: we have the first detailed map of the coexistence between Neanderthals and Sapiens

Looking like a real miura in the gym is of no use if you do something afterwards: stuff yourself with chips

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Something that is already quite internalized among society, precisely, is that abusing food ultra-processed is closely linked to obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular problems mainly due to the large presence of low quality fats. But although we think that this bad diet only translates into an increase in subcutaneous fat, medical technology has shown us that they are also filling our muscles with fat. A new study. This is precisely what a new study has pointed out. published in the magazine Radiology, which, Thanks to images obtained by magnetic resonance, researchers have discovered that the consumption of these products is related to an increase in intramuscular fat in the thighs. And it doesn’t matter how much we go to the gym for this. The evidence doesn’t lie. Much of nutritional studies are based on surveys and general measurements such as BMI or weight on the scale at certain times of the day. But here science has chosen to take an image to have completely objective data thanks to magnetic resonance imaging that objectively quantifies the internal composition of the muscle. The results. Here they could see that people who ate a higher proportion of ultra-processed foods had a significantly higher fraction of fat infiltrated into the thigh muscles. But most interesting of all is that, even after adjusting the results for total calorie intake, physical activity levels and other demographic variables. That is, it is not simply that people who eat ultra-processed foods eat more calories or exercise less, but there is something in the very nature of these foods, such as additives or the lack of fiber, which favors fat to be deposited directly between the muscle fibers. It’s clinical. This phenomenon of infiltration of adipose tissue into the muscle is clinically known as myosteatosis and, to visualize it, imagine the difference between a lean cut of meat and a marbled or fat-marbled steak. Why are we worried? Muscles are not only “motors” that allow us to move, but they are metabolically very active organs that are essential for regulating our blood glucose and even for the functioning of our brain. In this way, when fat infiltrates them, muscle quality plummets. And this is a big problem because logically we would begin to lose strength, sarcopenia would develop and there would be a risk of suffering a metabolic disease. Furthermore, in the context of this study, a poorer quality of the thigh muscles, especially the quadriceps, translates into greater overload of the knee joint and increases the chances of having knee osteoarthritis. There are nuances. As is usual, the researchers themselves point out that this is a cross-sectional analysis, so we do not have a “photograph” of the current moment and this means that there is no cause-effect relationship. That is, this study was done in older adults and people with previous illnesses, so these results cannot be generalized to the younger population and an independent study must be done with this sample to see exactly if a pizza from the supermarket can be too harmful. Images | senivpetro in Magnific In Xataka | Drinking coffee is not harmful, but for science there is a very clear limit that should not be exceeded

Tolkien was very clear about who played the real hero in ‘The Lord of the Rings’, and it was not any of the protagonists

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There is a question that the majority of the Tolkien fandom has not addressed with complete rigor, possibly because the answer seems obvious: who is the true hero of ‘The Lord of the Rings‘? It seems obvious. Frodo or Aragorn, right? One bears the Ring, another leads the armies. But Tolkien himself asked that question in life and in writing, and the answer is neither. By letter. In a letter dated April 16, 1956, and addressed to a reader named H. Cotton Minchin, Tolkien described Samwise Gamgee as more than just Frodo’s faithful companion. He described him as the reflection of the common English soldier (the privates and the batmenpersonal assistants to the officers, whom he met during the First World War, and whom he said he considered “far superior to myself”). The letter, whose existence was documented in detail by researcher John Garthis not the only one in which Tolkien talks about Sam. To the barricades. According to further investigations who have related the impact of the First World War to Middle-earth, the relationship between Frodo and Sam reproduces with remarkable fidelity the dynamic between an officer and his personal assistant in the British army of the time. You make the decisions; the other carries the equipment, cooks, stands guard and, if necessary, rescues. The name “Gamgee”, in fact, comes from a real Edwardian doctor, Sampson Gamgee, inventor of a surgical material used during the war. Tolkien always admitted that the men who impressed him most in war were not the officers, but the common soldiers. This is how he describes it: My “Samwise” is, in fact (as you point out), largely a reflection of the English soldier, grafted on the village boys of yesteryear, in the memory of the private soldiers and my assistants that I met in the war of 1914, and whom I considered far superior to myself. More missives. In the so-called Letter 131, addressed to the editor Milton Waldman and first published in ‘The Letters of JRR Tolkien’ in 1981, Tolkien goes further. There he calls Sam the “main hero” of the work. And he adds that the “rustic and simple” love between Sam and Rosie is not a decorative detail, but a structural element of the story: the tension between ordinary life and the great epic. An expanded edition of the letters published in 2023 reflects on the ideas about the moral architecture of its history, and clearly distinguished between those who carry the weight of the adventure and those who sustain it. Around with the Ring. The One Ring operates on ambitionoffers power to whoever wants it. Boromir falls. Saruman falls. Galadriel, one of the most powerful beings in Middle-earth, declines to touch him because she knows what it would do to him. Frodo fails to destroy it. Sam, on the other hand, wears the Ring for a brief period in the Towers of Cirith Ungol and returns it without hesitation, because what Sam really wants is not power, it is to return home. The hero. And his traditionally heroic moment comes with Shelob, the giant spider, the clearest turning point in Sam’s arc. When Frodo falls apparently dead, Sam takes Sting and Galadriel’s Flail and confronts a creature from which the Elves recoiled. He wins because there is no other option for him. And later, when Frodo can no longer walk, Sam literally carries him. At the end of the story, Sam returns to the Shire, marries Rosie, has children, and becomes mayor for seven consecutive terms. He gets the life he always wanted: heroism without ambition receives the fullest reward. This is how Tolkien himself defines it: I think the simple ‘rustic’ love of Sam and his Rosie (nowhere elaborated) is absolutely essential to the study of his (the main hero’s) character, and to the theme of the relationship between ordinary life (breathing, eating, working, procreating) and quests, sacrifice, causes and ‘longing for the Elves’, and pure beauty. In Xataka | A demographer has spent weeks solving a very important question: how many people lived in Tolkien’s Middle Earth

Spotify and Apple Music have a problem with AI-generated music. And the real musicians are paying for it

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Music generated by AI has flooded the large platforms of streaming without anyone having asked for it. Deezer says it detects 75,000 AI tracks uploaded every day, and the number is growing. Spotify has uploaded 75 million songs of that type in the last twelve months. And Apple Music recognizes that more than a third of everything that comes to it is “100% AI”. Why is it important. It is not only a quality problem for the catalog or the reputation of the platform, but also an economic problem. Spotify, Apple Music and most platforms operate with a proportional distribution model (pro-rata): each artist receives a percentage of the total pool royalties equivalent to your reproduction quota. The more AI songs that accumulate listeners (even if they are fraudulent, generated by bots) the more it dilutes what a real musician earns. Between the lines. Although more and more music of this type is uploaded, almost no one listens to it, at least on purpose (sometimes AI songs sneak into algorithmic discovery lists). The problem is not the demand, which does not exist, but the brutal and increasing amount that distorts the algorithms and erodes the income of real artists even though their songs are still the ones that people do want to hear. Someone is uploading music that no one asks for to collect money that they do not deserve because the listeners arrive via bots. And that is money that the real artist stops earning. The background. The most extreme case, at least documented so far, has been that of Michael Smith, an American businessman who between 2017 and 2024 generated more than 10 million dollars in royalties wearing Suno and other tools to create hundreds of thousands of songs and armies of bots to play them automatically. That was the first case of fraud streaming with AI criminally prosecuted in the United States. According to the accusation, it accumulated 660,000 views a day. One billion views and zero fans. Yes, but. The platforms are already facing this wave. Deezer has been the most aggressive: it has implemented AI automatic detection, excludes those songs from algorithmic recommendations and has demonetized 85% of its views. Bandcamp has outright banned AI-generated music. Apple Music has begun to roll out its ‘Transparency Tags‘ (optional for now), and Spotify has released a verification stamp ‘Verified by Spotify‘ to ensure there is a human behind every artist profile. The problem is that both Spotify and Apple have opted for voluntary systems: it is the labels and distributors who must declare whether they have used AI. Nobody who lives off fraud is going to do it. There is an important distinction: It is one thing for a musician to use AI as a tool within their creative process (to refine a lyric, generate a base, experiment with sounds…) and quite another for an entire song to come out of Suno or equivalent with a pair of prompts and without real human intervention. The platforms, at the moment, do not distinguish between one thing and another. And Spotify has also left a door open by noting that “the concept of artistic authenticity is complex and rapidly evolving,” which in practice means that AI artists could end up being verified one day. Featured image | Xataka In Xataka | Science has measured how music impacts us during exercise: choosing the right Spotify list is essential

Your real challenge is to make us change our habits.

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On May 18, Bizum will activate payment in physical stores via NFC: you bring your mobile phone close to the dataphone and that’s it, just like with Apple Pay or Google Pay. No PIN, no card and no cash. A platform with 31 million users in Spain takes the leap that makes it a direct competitor of Visa and Mastercard at the physical point of sale. The problem is that banks and businesses want to make that leap. The consumer, at the moment, has no compelling reason to move. Why it is important. For ten years, Bizum has only generated costs for banks, which have invested a lot of money in creating and maintaining it. The jump to physical commerce changes that equation: businesses will pay a commission for each transaction, as they already do with cards, but predictably lower as international intermediaries disappear. There is the business that Spanish banks have been waiting for for a decade. And businesses also win: they get paid instantly, compared to 24-48 hours for traditional card settlement. The user, on the other hand, pays exactly the same as before. Just with another environment. In detail. The gesture will be identical to today’s contactless card: you bring your mobile phone close to the dataphone and in seconds it is done. The user can do so from their bank’s app (which will incorporate the functionality) or from Bizum Paya new digital wallet available on Android and iOS that works similarly to Apple Pay or Google Pay. The difference compared to paying with a virtual card in the wallet is that money travels as an instant transfer from account to account. Some details: Businesses will not have to change their dataphone: it will be enough to update the terminal software. Bizum Pay will allow you to add a bank card as a backup method: if the payment fails, the system automatically changes without you having to swipe your mobile again. The big question. Why would someone who already pays without any hassle with their card, or with Apple Pay, or with Google Pay, change their habit? Inertia is the silent enemy of any new payment method. And in this case it is huge. The most logical answer is incentives: cashbackdiscounts in specific establishments, or any mechanism that makes the user feel that the change is worth it. The data of the ecommerce point in that direction: when Bizum eliminated the friction of entering card information in online stores, users quickly adopted it and today it is the second favorite payment method for buying online, with a share of 20-30% (which is not bad, but it is not something to write home about either). The equivalent in the physical world is yet to come. Yes, but. May 18 won’t be the big launch the date suggests. CaixaBank, Sabadell and Bankinter will go in the first wave, Santander will delay its incorporation to the fall. The massive deployment, including a campaign, is expected in September or October. And that Mercadona is already negotiating advantageous commissions before the service starts says a lot about where this battle is really going to be fought. Go deeper. What is at stake goes beyond Spain. Bizum is negotiating with equivalent platforms in Italy, Portugal and the Nordic countries to build a European payments system that could reach more than 130 million citizens. The business model established in Spanish stores this year will be the template on which this continental project is built. In Xataka | The Treasury has its eye on Bizum, Wallapop and Revolut. Don’t panic: it’s your update in the new digital economy Featured image | Xataka with Mockuuups Studio

Real Madrid, Premier League and the final of the Mutua Madrid Open. Everything in Movistar Plus+

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We have just started May, a month in which many sports competitions are decided. There we can include LaLiga, the Premier League or the Euroleague basketballjust to cite a few examples. If you like all this, you have a lot to see in Movistar Plus+: a platform that you can subscribe to regardless of which operator you are and what it costs 9.99 euros per month. Monthly subscription to Movistar Plus+ The price could vary. We earn commission from these links The last Clásico of the season can be seen on Movistar Plus+ Have you ever thought about trying this streaming platform? Any time is good, but if you like sports in general (and football in particular), now is a good time. Also, since it has no permanence, you can try it for a month and, if it doesn’t convince you, unsubscribe whenever you want. That’s also what your ‘Free Plan‘, although this is more limited in content. Now let’s go to the sports agenda (about premieres, we’ll talk a little further down). This weekend there are quite interesting things, especially on sunday: Espanyol-Real Madrid, Manchester United-Liverpool and the men’s final of the Mutua Madrid Open tennis. If that’s not enough, next week things are going to be intense with Bayern Munich-PSG and the Clásico. And movies? We have a huge catalog on the platform with several Oscar winners, such as ‘Sentimental Value‘ either ‘Weapons. Others will also arrive like ‘Gladiator 2‘ in the coming days, although we cannot lose sight of the Movistar Plus+ series. There are own productions on the platform that are very worthwhilelike the recently released ‘Yo siempre sometimes’ or others that have been around for longer but are hilarious, like ‘Poquita fe’. If you are planning to take a getaway these days, Movistar Plus+ could be very good for you. You can download whatever you want from the platform to watch it on the plane or train. In addition, it supports two simultaneous playbacks, so you can watch what you want wherever you are while someone at home continues enjoying the platform. Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images | Movistar Plus+ In Xataka | Movistar Plus+ for non-Movistar customers: what it is, how much it costs, channels, additional services and how to contract it In Xataka | Movistar Plus+ activates its Free Plan with complete programs and a lot of content, regardless of which operator you are

Wolves, bears and wild boars are dividing up the map of Spain and the real battle is between the rural world and the cities

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Wolves, bears, vultures, cormorants, wild boars, lynxes… When, a few months ago, Christian Gortázar, professor at the University of Castilla-La Mancha, was asked about Spanish wildlife, his words were tremendously accurate: “the problem is everywhere.” And dozens of species are being redistributed throughout traditional territory while rural and urban society confront each other over something extremely basic: what the hell nature is and what it is for. Why are we talking about this? Complaints from the agricultural sector about wildlife have been with us for years. However, in recent months (and spurred by the African swine fever crisis) the “mismanagement” framework has been gaining weight in public debate. But the truth is that the idea that “there are many animals and no one controls them” is not innocent. It is, in reality, a ‘discursive umbrella’: an idea-force that brings together very heterogeneous demands (the cuts from the future CAP, the fears derived from the Mercosur treatybureaucratic burdens, rising costs, rural identity, etc.). That is the main reason why the political debate does not fit with the scientific one, but not the only one. How to survive the end of the field. Talking about Spain being emptied today is almost obvious: 62% of Spanish municipalities has lost population since the nineties. In Castilla y León and Asturias that figure is around 85%. For the urban population it is only a sociological question, for the rural population it is an existential question. And in that context, the wolf has expanded to the southeast, the bear has doubled its area of ​​influence and the wild boar has sneaked into towns and neighborhoods (causing a complete economic and health earthquake). Regardless of the real effect of conservation measures on the rural world, it is easy for the feeling of general abandonment to curdle into an aversion to this way of seeing the countryside. A legitimate debate. From an ecological point of view, species recovery makes sense (as long as it is done properly). Degraded ecosystems lose the ability to adapt and become much more fragile: recovering species is the simplest and most cost-effective strategy. But we must not forget that these species return to a world completely different from the one they left and that the gaps they left are now occupied by “de facto powers” and realities historically established in the countryside and that still survive. And those powers They maintain that the ‘intervention’ of cities In their world it is counterproductive. The debate, as I say, is legitimate (and even healthy). And then? The real problem is not the discussion about whether the resources allocated to recovery measures would be better invested in other policies. The problem is that in the public debate the data and arguments are missing; and everything has become a partisan quagmire that is very difficult to manage. But the wildlife is still there. And the farmers too. In fact, all the actors who have taken us here are still there. The fundamental question is whether there is a future that can be understood as a solution. Image | Nancy Stapler In Xataka | Wolf hunting throughout Spain depended on a red button that changes its status. And Europe has decided to press it

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