reason

All viewers believe that the trailers spoil the movies too much. But there is a reason: fear of lawsuits

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The paradox of trailers: they serve to encourage the public to see upcoming releases, but more and more people decide to literally cover their eyes or start talking to their neighbor, because the feeling that the trailers reveal too much is widespread: plot twists, climatic scenes that should be a surprise. There is a more or less intuitive reason: the market is increasingly competitive and it is important to show the public what each film offers that the others do not. But there are more prosaic reasons why trailers reveal more and more about movies. The trailer as a marketing tool.For decades, trailers were considered pieces with their own narrative: small works that condensed the spirit of a film, not mere advertisements. That premise was shaken in December 2022, when a court ruling questioned the legal limits of film marketing. The case pitted Universal Pictures against two viewers who claimed to have been misled by the ‘Yesterday’ trailer. The ‘Yesterday’ case.Two viewers had rented the film after seeing the trailer, in which Ana de Armas appeared in an apparently relevant role; but in the film he had disappeared: his character had been completely eliminated after test screenings. The plaintiffs alleged that they would never have paid for the film if they had known that de Armas was not in it. In Xataka The AI ​​trailers for ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ are indistinguishable from the real thing. In the end, Scorsese was right Universal Pictures requested the case be dismissed, arguing that the trailer conveyed the film’s theme in three minutes, but the judge rejected this line of defense. Although trailers involve creativity and editorial decisions, these elements do not nullify their fundamentally commercial nature: they must be treated as advertisements, and the sample they show of the film must correspond to the final product. The judge specified that his resolution was limited to the presence or absence of interpreters, excluding subjective assessments of tone, quality or generic expectations, but set a precedent. It’s not the first. The friction between what the trailers promise and what the movies deliver has generated some attempted litigation. None went so far as to establish firm jurisprudence, but all illustrate a recurring tension between public expectations and studio marketing practices. {“videoId”:”x88pexn”,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”Yesterday Trailer”, “tag”:””, “duration”:”180″} Drive (2011).a spectator sued the distributor claiming that the trailer presented the film as an action film in the style of ‘Fast & Furious’, when in reality it was an atmospheric drama with few chases and a practically mute protagonist. The case dragged on for years without success for the plaintiff: the film did contain driving scenes, but the discrepancy lay in the tone and pacing, not in objective matters. Suicide Squad (2016).The trailers had highlighted Jared Leto as Joker, but his presence in the final cut turned out to be less than fifteen minutes. a scottish fan announced his intention to sue Warner Bros. for false advertising. Leto himself fueled the controversy by confirming that the deleted material It was so extensive. what would make for an independent film. The lawsuit was unsuccessful, but it highlighted the problem of trailers edited before final editing. Dune (2021).Zendaya featured prominently in promotional material: posters, trailers, and a press tour placed her on the same level as Timothée Chalamet. However, his screen time barely exceeded seven minutes of a total footage of 155and most of his appearances were dream sequences. There were no legal repercussions: Zendaya had previously warned that her presence was reduced and that she had only filmed for four days. {“videoId”:”x88q6ut”,”autoplay”:true,”title”:”Dune Trailer”, “tag”:””, “duration”:”208″} The Castaway case.Robert Zemeckis, with his usual ability to anticipate the rest of the industry, had already traveled this path years before. The trailer for ‘Castaway’ (2000) was criticized at the time because it revealed the eventual rescue of the protagonist. Zemeckis defended himself with an argument that is still valid in the industry, beyond the current legal precautions: market studies indicate that the public wants to know exactly what they are going to see before paying for a ticket. The problem of outsourcing.Trailer production rarely falls to the films’ creative teams. Studios hire specialized agencies (Buddha Jones, Trailer Park or Mark Woolen & Associates, only in Los Angeles) that work with raw material, often months before there is a final assembly. These agencies operate fromdailieseitherrushesthe raw footage that comes directly from filming. The process of creating a trailer can take up to a year, a calendar that forces you to work without knowing the final cut. The case of ‘Yesterday’ is a direct consequence of this dynamic. In Xataka Good series are a journey that no spoiler can ruin The pressure for difference.When a franchise accumulates multiple installments, marketing teams face an additional dilemma: how to convince the public that this film offers something different from the previous ones? The answer often involves revealing the differentiating element. The trailer for ‘Terminator: Genesis’ (2015) told that John Connor, traditionally the leader of the human resistance, had been turned into a machine, a twist that constituted the dramatic core of the film. Director Alan Taylor acknowledged that the decision responded to a complex calculation: how to signal to the public that this installment was not a mere repetition of the previous ones? A dilemma that promises to continue giving us headaches for a long time. In Xataka | Disney is looking for a successor to Bob Iger as CEO and has only one condition: that he does not look like Bob Iger’s previous successor as CEO (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news All viewers believe that the trailers spoil the movies too much. But there is a reason: fear of lawsuits was originally published in Xataka by John Tones .

Windows 95 had a little secret that made rebooting faster. The reason was in its more chaotic architecture

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If before Windows 95 If you used other operating systems, it’s hard not to remember the feeling of being faced with something completely new. That proposal introduced elements that we take for granted today, such as the Start menu, the taskbar or Plug and Play, and it did so at a time when starting a PC was almost a small ritual. But beneath that familiar interface a complex architecture was hidden, the result of the forced coexistence between DOS inheritances, 16-bit Windows and the first 32-bit layers. That design, as inelegant as it was effective, gave rise to unexpected behaviors that still surprise today. Few users knew that Windows 95 hid an alternative route to the classic reboot. It was enough to hold down the Shift key during the process started from the graphical interface for the system to display the warning “Windows is restarting”, instead of following the path of a cold restart, as described by Raymond Chen. The difference was not spectacular, but it was noticeable at a time when every minute of starting counted. That small gesture activated an internal mechanism designed to avoid, whenever possible, starting from scratch. The shortcut that did not restart completely Behind this behavior there was a precise technical decision. Chen details that Windows 95 used a flag called EW_RESTARTWINDOWS when invoking the old ExitWindows function, still 16-bit. With that instruction, the system did not order a cold restart of the computer, but rather something more limited: close Windows and restart it. The objective was to save steps, as long as the internal situation allowed it, although this optimization depended on everything fitting correctly. Once that alternative route was taken, the process followed a very specific sequence. The 16-bit Windows kernel was shut down first. The 32-bit virtual memory manager was then turned off and the processor returned to real mode, the most basic state of the system. At that point, control returned to win.com with a special signal asking for something very specific: restart Windows in protected mode without going through a full computer boot. With control back on win.com, the most fragile part of the process began. The program had to simulate a clean boot of Windows, as if it had just been run from scratch, which involved, in Chen’s words, resetting the command line options and returning some global variables to their original values. Although the work was largely clerical, it was especially complex because win.com It was written in assembly. There were no abstractions or modern conveniences. The decisive point was in memory. When win.com was executed, like any .com file, it received all available conventional memory. However, it freed up almost all memory beyond its own code so that Windows could load a large contiguous block when entering protected mode. If during the session a program reserved memory within the space that win.com had left free, the memory was fragmented. In that scenario, win.com could no longer recreate the original map it expected, and, Chen explains, it was forced to abandon the fast reset and fall into a hard reset. When everything fell into place, the process continued without turning back. win.com jumped directly to the code responsible for booting Windows in protected mode, recreating the virtual machine manager and llifting the 32-bit layers again. From there, the graphical interface loaded as usual and the user returned to the desktop. The difference was subtle but real: Windows hadn’t had to reboot the entire system to get to that point. This type of shortcut was only viable in a system built on cross-compatibilities. Windows 95 had to coexist with DOS software, 16-bit Windows programs and Win32 applications, and that mix forced us to accept inelegant but very practical solutions. The developers took advantage of this complexity to introduce hidden optimizations that could speed up restarts, although they could sometimes end in crashes. The obsession with saving memory led to very imaginative solutions. Chen explains that in assembler it was common to recycle code that was no longer going to be used as if it were free memory. On win.com, the first bytes of the entry point were reused as a global variableunder the premise that this code was only executed once. Since the quick restart did not return to that initial point, the system could allow that shortcut without affecting the process. That shortcut also showed its seams. Chen recalls that some users detected errors after performing several consecutive quick reboots, something that he was unable to consistently reproduce. Their hypothesis is that some driver wasn’t rebooting properly, leaving the system in a weird state, and that weirdness ended up taking its toll later. It’s no surprise that this type of behavior wasn’t presented as a documented feature, but it sums up the spirit of Windows 95 well: inventive, ambitious, and full of compromises. Images | Microsoft In Xataka | Schrödinger’s Office: at this point it is impossible to know if Microsoft keeps it alive or if everything is AI and Copilot

There is a word that has multiplied exaggeratedly in scientific articles for a reason: ChatGPT likes it

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That there are academic articles written by AI is something that has been proven beforethe question is how serious it is. To know the magnitude of this practice, a group of researchers has reviewed millions of paper abstracts published in PubMed and have found something interesting: there is a word that the AI ​​loves and the reason why it likes it so much is quite murky. Delve. Its translation is ‘go deeper’ and its use multiplied by 28 between 2022 and 2024, which coincidentally coincides with the boom of ChatGPT and language models. Other words such as ‘underscore’ or ‘showcasing’ are also cited, with a frequency increase of x13.8 and x10.7 respectively. None of them are a noun or a word related to the content, but rather have more to do with the style of writing and are very characteristic of the flowery language that LLMs usually use. flowery language. Does this mean that if we see one of these words in a paper it was written with AI? Not necessarily, but the increase is brutal. Researchers have compared the rise of ‘delve’ to other keywords, such as pandemic, which had a huge peak in 2020 and began to decline in 2021. The increase in the frequency of use of ‘delve’ is much more pronounced than all the others. It’s not coincidental. There is a stage in the process of creating a chatbot like ChatGPT that requires human intervention to fine-tune the responses; This is what is known as reinforcement learning from human feedback (for its acronym in English). RLHF). It turns out that most of the workers who are dedicated to this refining work are in African countries, such as Nigeria. guess where The use of these words in formal English is quite common. Exactly, in Nigeria. African style. ‘Delve’ is a fairly common word in business English in Africa, especially in Nigeria, and it is not the only one. There are also others like ‘leverage’, ‘explore’ or ‘tapestry’ that are more common in African English. According to 311institutealthough human feedback is very small compared to the enormous amounts of training data, it has a great impact since it is what defines the tone of the model when responding to us. Data labeling. It is a key step for training large language models and requires humans to be behind it. The problem is that the majority of workers who dedicate themselves to this are from impoverished countries such as Nigeria, Kenya or India, among others. In case the endless days and the ridiculous salaries were not enough, many times workers must review violent and very explicit imagesall without any type of psychological support. In Xataka | Being a porn moderator is not fun at all. He was exposed to “extreme, violent, graphic and sexually explicit content” Image | National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Unsplash

ASUS just killed its phone line for good reason. Goodbye to the Zenfone

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ASUS, the Taiwanese giant known for its computers, had been competing in the smartphone field for years. The Zenfone family is one of the ones that has convinced us the most at Xataka: phones with a ROM similar to that of the Google Pixel and top-of-the-line specifications. The proposal, solid on paper, has had low commercial success for years. And given the great opportunity in formats that AI allows, ASUS is clear: there will be no more Zenfone for a while. A harsh goodbye. ASUS has made a stoppage official in its smartphone division. It not only affects the Zenfone family, but also ROG Phone, its division of phones aimed at gamers. The company is now emptying its release calendar to leave a division whose future is uncertain. “ASUS will no longer launch new mobile phone models in the future.” Jonney Shih, president of ASUS. What’s wrong with my ASUS. If you have a company device, you will be covered. ASUS will maintain both guarantees and support for existing mobile phones, but there will be no room for new launches. And now what. The company’s strategy is clear: they are leaving the field of mobile phones to focus on new solutions and formats linked to artificial intelligence. The group’s revenue from its AI server business has doubled expected resultsand the robotics and smart glasses divisions will be the main beneficiaries of the death of Zenfone. Why is it important. ASUS’s strategy gives us a clue about where the industry wants to move in AI beyond the smartphone. The race in this field is being won by an unstoppable Gemini that has forced Apple to take its handand with Google distributing Android, competition beyond OpenAI does not seem possible. But in smart glasses Meta operates with its own technologies, Google has its proposals based on Gemini, and There is still room for participants who want to develop their own solutions. Even fiercer is the war in robotics, Why outside the smartphone. The mobile phone business represents a very small part of ASUS’ strategy. Their smartphones are niche products, and they never had it easy to conquer the general public. Abandoning a territory that is high in costs and difficult to obtain profits offers additional room for maneuver to invest in new product categories. Image | Xataka In Xataka | Artificial intelligence guide: main characteristics of the main AI models, points for and against, and comparison

We know that the Earth has been hit by 80,000 meteorites. For some reason, most end up in Antarctica

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If we look at the global statistics of finds of meteorites on our planet We may think that they are distributed homogeneously throughout the territory, but the reality is very different. Official data indicates that of the approximately 80,000 meteorites cataloged all over the world, more than 50,000 have been found in Antarctica… And this raises a big question: does Antarctica have something special about having so many meteorites? A contradiction. Although we talk about 60% of the meteorites that have been found on Earth come from Antarcticacollision theory tells us another. Specifically, physics, which tells us that meteorites fall randomly and uniformly throughout the planet, so Antarctica does not receive more impacts than the Sahara Desert or the Pacific Ocean. So… Why do we find so many meteorites on the frozen continent? The answer lies in a perfect combination of glaciologyvisual contrast and a natural “trap” that is now, ironically, being sabotaged by climate change. The conveyor belt theory. To understand why Antarctica is the great archive of the solar system, you have to understand how ice moves. And the secret is not in how the rocks fall, but in how the ice delivers them to humanity. To do this, we must go to glaciological models and studies from programs such as ANSMET, where they point out that Antarctica It is a real meteorite conveyor belt. The process. In this way, a meteorite when it falls inside the frozen continent buried deep in the ice sheet. Once here, the natural flow of the glaciers will push the ice that stores the rock inside from the center towards the coast. At certain points, the ice encounters barriers beneath the glaciers, such as hidden mountains that slow its flow and forces the ice to return to the surface. And this is where the famous katabatic winds come into play, which are truly fierce and dry with a force capable of eroding the upper layers of the ice from solid to gas. The result. It is what scientists call the ‘Meteorite Stranding Zone’ (MSZ) or blue ice areas. It is nothing more than the part of ice that has been worn away, but has not affected the rock it stored in any way. That is why over time, meteorites that fell thousands of years ago and traveled trapped in the depths of the ice now appear on the surface as if someone had put them there. A contrast trick. Logically, finding a meteorite among a pile of red ones can be somewhat complicated in our environment. But when we talk about a black rock on a white sheet like ice, the truth is that visually it is easy to find it. That is why this contrast is the best ally that meteorite searchers have. The preservation. But beyond the fact that finding a rock the size of a walnut in the middle of the jungle is a really complicated task, it must be taken into account that humid climates degrade the meteorite quickly. Something that does not happen in Antarctica, which is technically a polar desert. The dry environment it has acts like a real freezer which preserves the samples almost intact for millions of years. This allows scientists to recover not only the rock, but pristine information about the origins of the solar system. And that is why all these factors together make it more common to find more meteorites in this location than in others, and not because there is a predilection for falling here. An invisible threat. As pointed out a study published in Nature, we have a serious problem on the table: We are losing about 5,000 meteorites a year. Intuition would tell us that if the ice melts due to climate change, more rocks would emerge. But the opposite is true due to the thermal properties of the meteorites themselves. Being dark rocks (and many of them metallic with high thermal conductivity), they absorb solar radiation much more efficiently than the surrounding ice. Even at subzero temperatures, the rock heats up enough to melt the ice just below it. This causes the meteorite to sink and create a small pool of water that refreezes them, burying the rock out of sight of researchers or satellites. Thermal models suggest that this disproportionately affects iron meteorites, which are especially valuable for understanding planetary cores, causing us to have many more chondrite or rocky meteorites. Race against time. Humanity has so far managed to recover 23,000 meteorites, giving us a large cosmic library that allows us to better understand everything around us. The problem is that the clock is ticking, and the most important part of the archive is beginning to sink, so now the most important thing is to hurry up to get the most valuable meteorites for us. Images | Kamran Abdullayev henrique setim In Xataka | In 2011, a collector bought a meteorite in Morocco. It has turned out to be direct evidence of thermal water on Mars

There is a reason why Germany allows driving at 300 km/h and it is not history or politics: it is the asphalt

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If you like to step on the accelerator, you will have already seen firsthand that cornering at 100 km/h is better than at 130 km/h. I don’t need to remind you that the maximum speed allowed on state roads is 120 km/h. Although there are quite a few countries within the European Union with higher limits, Germany is the only state where there are sections without speed limit. 300 km/h without breaking a sweat. Obviously, this poses a danger to driving as cars such as a Porsche at 322 km/h. At these speeds, the risk of the car jumping or losing control is notable. But the “recipe” for manufacturing the German Autobahn has its particularities that allow it to offer enviable flatness and a road surface with high load capacity. And it can be found in the regulations and standards of the FGSV (Research Society for Highways and Transportation) and the BASt (German Federal Authority for Road Safety and Traffic). Blessed sandwich. While in Spain Flexible or semi-rigid pavement predominates with thicknesses of 40 to 60 centimeters. In Germany they use a standardized layer system called RStO 12 (Guidelines for the Standardization of Pavement Structures). That is, with a total thickness of between 70 and 90 centimeters with an antifreeze base composed of highly permeable gravel and sand so that water does not remain trapped (in case of freezing, it would generate large cracks as a result of expansion). About this, layers of gravel mixed with concrete or asphalt to provide sufficient rigidity to prevent collapse under the passage of heavy trucks. cwhen concrete and when asphalt. In the intermediate section the Germans use two materials, highlighting the concrete for those stretches of free speed and high truck traffic thanks to its rigidity and durability. In more detail: The 25 to 30 centimeter high-resistance concrete pavements longitudinally integrate plastic-coated steel bars. Thus, they allow some thermal expansion but do not allow them to move independently, causing steps. The transition between the concrete slabs is barely noticeable. Asphalt with stone matrix (S.M.A.), a combination with crushed stone and cellulose to offer extreme resistance to deformation and maximize the tire’s grip. The “superstructure” of German roads. Von Susan from Bielefeld, Deutschland – Straße, CC BY 2.0 Extreme plain for safety and by law. If you hit a speed bump at a certain speed, your car will go away. If you go 300 km/h in a sports car, the loss of aerodynamic load is such that it could be fatal. So Germany takes the plain very seriously by regulations: the maximum allowable deviation three millimeters in four meters. They achieve it with controlled pavers by global navigation and laser sensor systems. Auf wiedersehen, aquaplaning. Once the risk of steps, cracks and unevenness has been minimized, there remains another staunch enemy for speed: water on the asphalt. And they fight it in two ways. For starters, autobahns have a slope of at least 2.5% on the sides to evacuate the water as soon as possible. For concrete pavements, it is used waschbeton or washed concrete, a technique that brushes the surface to expose the aggregates, thus creating a rough, non-slip area that breaks up any water film that may form. In Xataka | Germany, Austria and Switzerland have plenty of roads. So they have started covering them with solar panels In Xataka | The Autobahn are the only roads in Europe without a speed limit. More and more Germans want to end them Cover | Wes Tindel and Nick Fewings

Ten years ago Beijing was an unbreathable city. Today its air quality is better than that of Madrid for a reason

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On December 8, 2015, schools were closed in Beijing. Construction stopped. Only a handful of cars could circulate on the streets. The atmosphere was unbreathable. We don’t say it, the city leaders said it at that time. As stated BBCit was the first time that the red alert due to contamination. In China, an action protocol with four levels had been launched to deal with this type of episode. That day marked a before and after. Just over a decade later, Beijing is one of the Chinese cities with the best air quality. The country still has a serious problem with pollution but the data show that the country’s capital has left those days of constant fog behind. And it has done so, in large part, by a huge investment in cleaning up transportation. Better air quality than Madrid That December 8, Beijing registered 291 micrograms per cubic meter of PM2.5ultrafine particles especially harmful to health. They are polluting emissions that can come from different sources but in whose production diesel engines intervene decisively. That’s why DGT environmental labeling that It is used in Spanish ZBEs discriminates (by age) between diesel vehicles and gasoline vehicles. Is 291 micrograms a lot? To get an idea, the WHO recommended At that time, it did not exceed 25 micrograms per cubic meter. Obviously, this pollution rate occurred on a specific day under specific circumstances, but the annual levels were so high that in 2013 they signed 89.5, as stated in Motorpassion. Last year, according to published data By the Beijing Municipal Ecology and Environment Bureau, the city signed 27 micrograms per cubic meter of PM 2.5. A fact that improves the air breathed in Madrid, “which did not exceed 31 micrograms of PM 2.5” on average, in the words of the Madrid officials. The decline is absolutely spectacular and is marked by profound changes in mobility, lowering the 30 microgram barrier for the first time in its history per cubic meter on the annual average. In addition, 311 days of 2025 were classified within the parameters that point to the best air quality. For this, Beijing launched a campaign against pollution which became especially relevant a little over a decade ago, although it already took its first steps with the 2008 Beijing Olympic Days. It was not until 2013 when the city took serious measures. More than a million coal-fired boilers in the city were replaced with boilers that run on gas or electricity. The city added more than 600,000 new energy vehicles (electric or plug-in hybrids that generally operate in completely electric mode). But, above all, 1.9 million cars that were considered too old and polluting were taken off the road. Low emission zones had a key effect in achieving this. Then, the 6NI mechanical (which was equivalent to our Euro 6) to let vehicles pass or not. Automobiles that, in addition, had to stay at home alternately (discriminating by license plate) when high pollution episodes were activated. The evolution of Beijing has been so spectacular in the last 10 years that it is common to see it as an example for those most polluted cities, like New Delhi, in India. Photo | zhang kaiyv and Quique Olivar In Xataka | Tire pollution is as serious as engine pollution. This company says it has found the solution

India. It will no longer be possible for another reason: Europe

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In recent years, cars are not the only thing that has risen in price disproportionately. The general escalation of prices has affected also to the world of motorcycles and, to try to contain even greater increases, in recent years the most common practice by large manufacturers has been to move part of their production to India to save costs. The EU has not been amused in the slightest. New tariffs. The month of January starts with new tariffs on motorcycles and scooters made in India. And not a single model manufactured outside European territory is spared. 8% tariff for models up to 250cc Tariff of 6% for larger cylinder capacities In a market with tight margins, a tariff of this amount will force large European manufacturers to completely rethink their strategy. Who is affected?. KTM, Triumph, BMW, Suzuki, Aprillia and mainly Royal Enfield will be the main affected after this measure by the European Union. KTM manufactures its small displacement motorcycles in India, such as the KTM 390 Duke and Adventure. BMW and its best-selling contender, the GS 450is manufactured together with TVS Motor, an Indian conglomerate. Aprillia manufactures together with Bajaj its 457. Triumph has been allied hand in hand with Bajaj for years to manufacture its stars of displacement 400. Why is it important. Given the increase in prices in recent years, manufacturers made a very clear bet: to commit to manufacturing medium-low displacement models in India. Seeing premium brands like Triumph or BMW launch 400 models that aspire to be bestsellers is a true reflection of the state of the sector. The key? Manage to sell competitive models between 5,000 and 6,000 euros, in a segment ideal for everyday use and occasional outings. The 6% tariff will shake this pricing strategy. Because now. Although the measure seems like an attack from Europe on external manufacturing, the context goes further. The EU has the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) to regulate the flow of exports from developing countries to Europe. But there is fine print: The EU requires certain minimum standards when manufacturing the product. It also requires that, if certain export volume thresholds are exceeded, preferential tariffs end. Although there is no official data on how many motorcycles manufacturers are exporting from India, the threshold has been exceeded, and with it tariffs are once again applied without any type of bonus. The great beneficiary. China is sweeping Spain with economical models and much more equipped than the rest of its competitors, and China will continue to sweep if tariffs negatively affect the main European manufacturers. With Zontes making its way as the third manufacturer in our country, the countdown to see a podium headed by motorcycles made in China. Image | bmw In Xataka | The 11 cheapest electric motorcycles with the most autonomy: the best quality-price options

The train is eating the plane in Spain for a very simple reason: airports exhaust us

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Although Renfe has given us some somewhat tortuous months in terms of its service, AVE delaysthe truth is that the train continues to be a very important means of transport in Spain, and there are many who prefer it to the plane. Factors like railway liberalization and the fierce price war Among the different railway operators they have also been especially favorable to this preference. According to Renfe data to which El País has had access82% of travelers choose the train over the plane. And this from an environmental point of view is good, since as the media reminds us, this represents an annual savings in emissions that reaches 512,926 tons of CO₂, equivalent to removing about 250,000 combustion cars from circulation for an entire year. Growth. The seven main routes, which connect Madrid with Barcelona, ​​Seville, Malaga, Valencia, Alicante, Galicia and Asturias, have experienced growth of up to 66% in the number of travelers in the last three years, according to the data provided by the railway operator. Numbers. Between September 2022 and August 2025, the Madrid-Barcelona corridor has gone from 7.5 to 8.9 million travelers. Madrid-Valencia rose from 4.4 to 5.3 million, while Madrid-Málaga jumped from 2.1 to 3.5 million, being the corridor with the most relative growth. According to account In the middle, these figures also include the users of Ouigo and Iryo, the private operators that have entered into competition after the liberalization of the sector. The three hour rule. “As soon as the train offers a competitive travel time of less than three hours, demand shifts massively to the railway instead of the plane,” explains Adrián Fernández, director of Sustainability and Energy Efficiency at Renfe, to El País. Fernández presents the case of Madrid-Barcelona, ​​since when the journey lasted seven hours, only 15% of the passengers chose the train; Now, with a two and a half hour trip, that proportion reaches 83%. Where do new travelers come from?. Just like collect In the middle, the International Union of Railways estimates that 50% of current high-speed users come from the plane, 20% abandon the car, and the remaining 30% correspond to induced trips, referring in the latter to trips that were not made before having the AVE. Savings Breakdown. The middle collect Renfe calculations based on European Commission methodologywhich state that the Madrid-Barcelona route avoids the emission of 185,856 tons of CO₂ per year. According to these data, Madrid-Seville saves 76,874 tons, and Madrid-Málaga reduces emissions by 72,121 tons. Adding the connections with Galicia, Valencia, Alicante and Asturias, the total amounts to 512,944 annual tons of CO₂. The equivalent in cars. To measure this figure, the Institute for Energy Diversification and Saving (IDAE) esteem that each car traveler emits 121 grams of CO₂ per kilometer, as points out The Country. Considering that a vehicle travels about 11,200 kilometers per year in Spain with an average occupancy of 1.5 people, the savings are equivalent to removing 252,325 cars circulating throughout the year. Challenges. Although the train is more sustainable, Cristina Arjona, Greenpeace mobility spokesperson, counted to El País that “to encourage its use even more it must also be the most competitive in price, since sometimes it is still more expensive than the plane.” “As high speed reaches new corridors, as soon as times are competitive, people decide to use the train en masse, with quotas of 80% and 90%,” account Fernandez in the middle. Now the challenge for operators is to extend this network to more territories and ensure that the offer of frequencies and prices remains attractive. In Xataka | Aragon finally solves the great bottleneck for its Pyrenean dream: joining Navarra and Catalonia by highway

It’s so cold in Europe that KLM has had to cancel more than 2,300 flights for one simple reason: antifreeze

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This 2026 has started off cold. In the Spanish state, the Temporary Francis It has made us spend the Three Kings’ night in snow, rain and cold and in the rest of Europe things have not been better. The mass of arctic air has spread across the continent and has been joined by the storm Gorettiwhich has caused the temperature in the Sierra Nevada to plummet to -17 degrees, part of France is on orange alert with power outages and mobility problems and in several countries in central Europe, heavy snowfall and the storm have caused chaos in transport, with flights and trains cancelled. One of the airlines affected is the Dutch KLM, which has seen cHow their planes are freezing at the airport from Amsterdam. Literally, because there is not enough antifreeze fluid to prevent it while the supplier that supplies that additive has run out of stock. Because just like cars that sleep on the street in the middle of winter, planes also freeze. Only with a vehicle it is enough to scratch the windows a little, start the engine with the heating on and in less than five minutes, it will be running. Too many days too cold Taking off with a frozen plane is not an option: ice affects the aerodynamic conditions of the aircraft, making takeoff and landing maneuvers especially dangerous. Furthermore, solving it is not so simple or immediate: there is a strict protocol which, although it may vary with each airline, is intended to ensure that the fuselage is free of contamination and there is no degradation of the aerodynamic or mechanical conditions. Within that protocol There is deicing on the ground: the plane must be sprayed with deicing liquid to remove ice or snow. Anti-icing is then used, another ice that prevents the plane from freezing again before takeoff and the ice or snow from falling off at that time. This operation is carried out every day in hundreds of airports around the world on thousands of planes. The problem is when for too many days it is too coldwhich results in having to use more defrosting fluid than usual. If there is no stock, that polar cold wave becomes dramatic in terms of cancellations. This is what has happened to KLM, which on January 2 announced that its operations at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport were going to suffer alterations. Almost a week later, they remained the same. Without going any further, Simple Flying with Flight Radar data echoes of the cancellation of 2,374 flights until January 7. To keep aircraft operational in this harsh winter, the Dutch airline is using 25 de-icing trucks continuously in Amsterdam, consuming approximately 85,000 liters per day of freezing point depressant fluids. Faced with the shortage, Reuters explains that KLM has already sent employees to its main supplier in Germany in search of more antifreeze stocks. KLM has warned that “Due to a combination of extreme weather conditions and delays in supply by the supplier, stocks are running out. This problem is currently spreading throughout Europe“. On January 8, logistics gave KLM a break in the form of the first supply of antifreeze of those more than 100,000 liters that are on their way to Schiphol. If this has happened in Amsterdam, how can it not happen in other cities further north like Helsinki? Well, paradoxically, it happens less: they are better prepared when it comes to considering needs and available stock. In Xataka | Vigo airport has enjoyed international flights for years. Until Ryanair declared war on Spain In Xataka | The triangles on the plane window are not for decoration: they are a quick way to check that the flight is going well Cover | David Syphers

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