world

what is the plan of one of the most powerful studios in the world

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The 33% collapse in Ubisoft’s stock market after announcing in January 2026 the cancellation of six projects and the closure of several studios marks a turning point for one of the most emblematic publishers in the industry. With a valuation of 11,000 million euros in 2018, Its market value has fallen to just 606 millionwhile projecting operating losses of €1 billion for fiscal year 2026. Project massacre. The official list includes six games in development, including the remake of ‘Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time‘, a project that had gone through multiple studies and reboots. The leaks point to a greater drain: an ‘Assassin’s Creed’ set after the American Civil War was shelved due to political fears. They have also dropped a ‘Splinter Cell’ in early development, a sequel to ‘Star Wars Outlaws’ and the ‘Watch Dogs’ franchise, definitively buried after the failure of ‘Legion’. Added to these titles are seven delayed games. The most significant, according to industry speculation, would be ‘Assassin’s Creed IV: Resynced’, a remake of ‘Black Flag’ now scheduled for 2027. The financial impact amounts to 650 million euros in amortizations. How we got here. The last two years have been a string of setbacks for Ubi. ‘Skull and Bones’, after over a decade of development since 2013arrived in February 2024 with a cost between 200 and 850 million dollarswhich did not prevent a certainly lukewarm reception. Guillemot called it an “AAAA” game, but months later it barely had 400 simultaneous players on Steam. ‘Star Wars Outlaws’ sold less than a million copies40% below expectations. ‘XDefiant’, the shooter free-to-play, It was closed in December 2024 after only seven months on the market. Despite its 15 million players, it did not retain enough audience. The closure caused 277 layoffs. ‘Assassin’s Creed Shadows‘, the last game in the company’s quintessential saga, and still the main best-seller along with ‘Just Dance’, also had a complicated trajectory. suffered multiple delays since November 2024 and was involved in an unusual controversy for the franchise, around cultural inaccuracies and technical problems. And above all: more than 3,000 employees laid off from 2023a figure much more painful than any puncture in lists. Tencent had to inject $1.16 billion in 2025 to keep the company afloat. Debatable business decisions. Ubisoft has announced a strong commitment to “player-oriented” generative AIsuggesting that it will appear directly in the games. The measure has generated rejection in the community, increasingly sensitive to the use of AI for creative issues. As a cherry on top, Ubi has given the order to return to the office five days a week, which contrasts with trends in the sector and is another obstacle when it comes to retaining talent. Many employees consider these measures “hidden layoffs.” The houses. Ubi has reorganized its franchises into five “Creative Houses” with financial responsibility over specific genres, but has already raised doubts about its effectiveness. The appointment of Charlie Guillemot, son of the CEO, as co-CEO of Vantage Studios, the first of these houses, nepotism accusations reopen. From there they will be in charge of ‘Assassin’s Creed’, ‘Far Cry’ and ‘Rainbow Six Siege’. The second house will have ‘The Division’, ‘Ghost Recon’ and ‘Splinter Cell’. The third, ‘For Honor’, ‘The Crew’, ‘Riders Republic’, ‘Brawlhalla’ and ‘Skull & Bones’. The fourth, ‘Anno’, ‘Might & Magic’, ‘Rayman’, ‘Prince of Persia’ and ‘Beyond Good & Evil’. The fifth, ‘Just Dance’, ‘Idle Miner Tycoon’, ‘Ketchapp’, ‘Hungry Shark’, ‘Invincible: Guarding the Globe’, ‘Uno’ and the Hasbro games. The future for Ubisoft. The projects that have survived are few. ‘Assassin’s Creed’ has acquired existential overtones: it must work or the star franchise will be damaged. ‘The Division 3’ is the commitment to keep another important saga going. Four unannounced IPs are added, including ‘March of Giants’, acquired from Amazon, although all these massive cancellations have begun to raise doubts. Ubisoft has withdrawn its forecasts for 2026-2027recognizing that the situation is too volatile. Project cuts of an additional 200 million until March 2028, which implies more layoffs. Fixed costs should fall from 1,750 million in 2023 to 1,250 million in 2028. The results of February 2026 will determine if the plan is viable or if the company ends up absorbed by Tencent, fragmented or worse, on sale. The Guillemot family had considered purchase offers in 2024, and the deterioration means that option is back on the table. It only remains to be seen if Ubisoft, capable of creating iconic franchises, continues to retain some of what made it great. In Xataka | ‘Star Wars: Outlaws’ is one of Ubi’s most ambitious games, but some details keep it from a perfect ‘space GTA’

AI has already destroyed the world of programmers as we knew it. Now it’s the turn of the translators

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On November 8, 1519, an extraordinary meeting took place: Hernán Cortés met with Emperor Moctezuma II. Of course, neither one nor the other understood anything of what their interlocutor was saying: Hernán Cortés spoke Spanish and Moctezuma spoke Nahuatl, but that problem was solved thanks to two chain translators: Malinche translated from Nahuatl to Mayan, and Jerónimo de Aguilar went from Mayan to Spanish, and vice versa. History is full of legendary translations like that one, and in all of them, human beings depended on human translators to understand the other party. That has been changing with various technologies, but the one that is really about to change everything is AI. With AI we have found (and translated) In fact, translation technology has run parallel to technological evolution itself. From the translation based on rules of the second half of the 20th century we moved in the 90s to the automatic statistical translations which, for example, ended up using Google Translate. These systems looked for the “most likely” translation, not the “most correct” one. These statistical models improved with the phrase-based translationbut The final leap was made by DeepLwhich appeared in 2017 to change everything with the use of neural networks and neural machine translation. Google had also started to adopt that system in 2016, and it was clear what the path was. With the arrival of generative AI we have found ourselves with another potential leap in this field. There are, however, differences: these systems are based on large language models (LLM) that are then trained and tuned specifically for translationwhich a priori gives them an advantage when it comes to achieving more natural and versatile translations. The application of AI models to the field of translation seems to be following in the footsteps of what we have seen with programming. Developers have embraced this revolution and many of us have realized it thanks to the vibe coding that it is possible to program without knowing how to program. The same clearly occurs with these systems that enable us to know how to speak languages ​​that we don’t actually know how to speak. Machines do it for us, and they do it better and more immediately. The real-time translation is very fashionable and both Google and Meta—which has been warning for a long time— they are integrating it into their current or future glasses augmented reality. Apple, which does not usually launch things that are not mature, has just integrated it on your AirPods. The user experience may not perfect at the momentbut it is clear that this type of function is going to become more and more common, a commodity technological more. The transition And this transition that wants to turn access to quality translations into something “trivial” has been made evident these days with the launch of two platforms. The first, the ChatGPT Translatorwhich is surprising not because it is an obvious and simple use case for AI, but because it is a logical indiscriminate copy of the services that already work, Google Translate and DeepL. Being able to do the same with AI shows that that problem seems solved. The translation of Gemma 3 27B was already good. TranslateGemma’s is even better, even with smaller models and challenging language pairs. And if it didn’t seem like it enough, Google has just presented its new generative AI models specifically aimed at translation. It is about TranslateGemmaa family with versions 4B, 12B and 27B (the latter, logically, the most capable) that allow these tasks to be carried out locally, privately and without connection to the cloud. They support 55 language pairs and of course they are prepared for the most popular ones (English, Spanish, Chinese, French, Hindi), but their creators already indicate that they are training them with 500 additional language pairs for the future. We are therefore facing a moment in which learning a language will probably end up becoming something more vocational or aspirational than something that we really need on a daily basis. Human translators, like human programmers, will still have valuebut once again what is clear is that AI is going to make this type of capability more accessible than ever. In Xataka | Some of the emails you read may not say exactly what was written. A forgotten Gmail setting is to blame

This is the city that linked China with the Mediterranean that one day an earthquake hid from the world

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If there is a historical myth in archeology, it is finding the lost city of Atlantis. However, throughout history a few have been found: from that of Thonis-Heracleion in Egypt to the Greek of Pavlopetri passing through Port Royal in Jamaica. None are Atlantis (in fact, for numerous historians and scientists It’s more of a philosophical allegory of Plato than something real), but the last city that has just been found, far from typical places like the Atlantic, has quite a few similarities. Of course, it is in a lake in Kyrgyzstan. The lost city of Issyk-Kul. More specifically, it was in the northwestern waters of Lake Issyk-Kul that an international archaeological expedition organized by the Russian Geographical Society (RGS), the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) and the Institute of History, Archeology and Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic stumbled upon Toru-Aygyr, as reports the news of the SGR. For the investigation they used underwater drones and high-precision diving. The legends were true. Around the Issyk-Kul lake run several popular legends about its formation submerging a city that already existed, something that was historically reinforced by the local rumor that when the weather is good and the water is calm, remains of the city can be seen. Likewise, within the Catalan Atlas of the Mallorcan cartographer Cresques Abraham it is recorded on a map the existence of a monastery where were the remains of San Mateo. This lake has been one of the obsessions of the historian and archaeologist Vladimir Ploskikh, behind the aforementioned discovery. Satellite view from 1992. Wikimedia But what a lake. Issyk-Kul is a truly fascinating lake without having to resort to myths: its name in Russian and Kyrgyz is “hot lake” and it has merit being 1,609 meters high. The secret is How deep it is (average 270 meters, maximum 702 meters), it is slightly salty and subsoil geothermal activity. Is the second largest alpine lake in the worldonly surpassed by Titicaca and one of its peculiarities is its transparency: its visibility is such that it can be seen up to 20 meters deep in favorable conditions. The icing on the cake is that there is evidence that there the black plague began. Vilya Shoni,. Wikimedia A most advanced city. Finding a submerged city is not unusual, but among the peculiarities of Toru-Aygyr is that its ruins are in shallow waters and the good state of conservation of its constructions, with solid stone structures, clay bricks and even wooden beams. In addition, they reveal that it was an advanced infrastructure, with public buildings, brick homes and irrigation systems. More specifically, they identified remains from a medieval cemetery, large ceramic containers, pieces of a mill, an architectural element that points to the decoration of a building such as a mosque, a bath or a madrasa. After checking with archival materials, the team confirmed that they were looking at a city that handled silk, spices and metals in the transfer of these goods between China and the Mediterranean from the 2nd century BC to the mid-15th century. Stick with the final date, we’ll come back to it later. Elizaveta Romashkina. Russian Geographical Society. It is the missing link of the silk road. As concludes researcher at the Institute of History, Archeology and Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Kyrgyzstan and head of the Kyrgyz expedition, Valery Kolchenko: “The monument we are studying is a city or a large commercial agglomeration located on one of the key sections of the Silk Road.” During the investigation, they found a second site corresponding to a Muslim necropolis from the 13th–14th centuries that still preserves vestiges of traditional Islamic rituals, a third with remains of medieval ceramics, a large entire vessel (khum) and more burials. Finally, a fourth location located in the western part, of which remains of structures remain. The team’s idea is to return to continue analyzing everything, but for now the remains already say a lot about the relevance of the enclave, which Chinese historical sources record, such as explains the head of the expedition, Maksim Menshikov. Why did it sink? aka the Pompeii effect. The presence of large ceramic vessels and millstones in their original positions reveals that the city was abandoned abruptly, without subsequent looting. Kolchenko clears us of doubts: it was an earthquake. “At the beginning of the 15th century, as a result of a terrible earthquake, the city was submerged under the waters of the lake. According to our assessment, at the time of the disaster the inhabitants had already abandoned the settlement. The tragedy can be compared to the story of Pompeii, although it is much less known to the general public.” After the earthquake, he explains that the region’s population drastically changed how they lived, going from a prosperous medieval urban civilization to nomads. This large earthquake caused the lake’s water level to suddenly rise, swallowing the city. The water enveloped the city in mud and sand, protecting it from erosion and exposure to oxygen. It is not Atlantis nor does it need to be. It goes without saying that Toru-Aygyr is not the mythical Atlantis, but comparing it is inevitable due to the legends that surround it, the records that remain of its existence over the centuries in different civilizations and of course, the large amount of treasures found and its prosperity: there lived an advanced, rich and living city that disappeared one day under the waters. In Xataka | The Atlantic has a ‘Lost City’ with the key to life on other planets. Now it’s in danger In Xataka | Eastern Atlantis: this is the lost continent that united Greece and Anatolia 35 million years ago Cover | Mikhail Preobrazhenskiy and Elizaveta Romashkina from the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences

They are the largest product experiment in the world

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Tu Le, founder of Sino Auto Insightshe explained in the podcast High Capacity How what Toyota took 36 months or more to develop (from design to production), companies like BYD or XPeng complete in 12 or 16 months. Modular platforms, digital simulations, OTA updates… all of this has replaced classic industrial processes. And they test features that almost no Western manufacturer would dare to include. Why is it important. What Toyota took three years to develop (design, prototype, validate, produce…), companies like BYD or XPeng execute in just over a year. And without reducing quality. What they do is change the process: They use modular platforms that stretch without redesigning everything. Digital simulations instead of physical prototypes. And software updates that improve the car after purchasing it, as Tesla already marked the rest of the industry. It’s a real-time product experiment. If a feature is unused or buggy, they send an OTA update after a few days. If a model is not selling well, they update it in 12 months. It is the logic of consumer electronics applied to the car. In detail. Chinese cars incorporate features that in the West might seem absurd or reckless. BYD, for example, sells models with drones on the roof that can fly out following us. NIO installs chips whose performance is disabled for months until an update activates them, which serves to increase the value of the car over time instead of simply depreciating it. They are proposals that reflect that they understand a consumer much younger than the average Mercedes buyer in Europe, hyper-digitized and accustomed to everything responding instantly. BYD’s ultra-fast charging promises times “as fast as refueling gasoline”. XPeng and NIO assisted driving systems They already operate on long-distance trips with minimal driver intervention. The aforementioned Tu Le and his colleague Lei Xing drove from Beijing to Shenzhen using the XPeng system for 90% of the trip. They then repeated the route on a NIO using only battery swapping. Both experiences worked. Between the lines. The founders of these companies do not come from the automotive world. Li Xiang (Li Auto), Li Bin (NIO) and He Xiaopeng (XPeng) come from the world of the Internet and apps. When they decided to make cars, they didn’t start thinking about factories or supply chains. They thought about user experience, interface and functionality. Then they learned to manufacture from that. This change in the process explains a lot: a traditional manufacturer begins to optimize thinking about industrial efficiency, one born in technology optimizes for the user and then decides how to take that to production. The context. China sold 25 million vehicles in 2025. One in every two was electric or hybrid: more than 12 million units. In that mass market, any product experiment has instant and scale feedback. If something works, it is replicated within weeks. If it fails, it is corrected just as quickly. BYD went from 700,000 units six years ago to 4.6 million in 2025manufacturing its own chips and batteries. Vertical control that allows you to iterate faster than any competitor dependent on external suppliers. And now what? Volkswagen invested in XPeng and will launch vehicles based on its platform this year. Stellantis bought 19% of Leapmotor in 2023. Ford licensed battery technology from CATL in 2022. They are implicit recognitions that the Chinese experiment works and the West needs to learn from it. Renault directly went there Learn how to build a cheap electric car in a short time. The question is not whether Chinese cars are better, but whether the rest of the industry can adopt this model of accelerated development without breaking everything built over a century. In Xataka | The year of Chinese consolidation in Spain: MG, Omoda and BYD close a spectacular 2025 and are among the best sellers Featured image | XPeng

While half the world looks for an alternative to Taiwan, Jensen Huang is very clear about the harsh reality: there is no

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In the technological world, the United States AIthe China’s semiconductor breakthroughs and the robotics explosion They were protagonists during the last months. But if there is something essential for these industries to function, it is Taiwan. In semiconductors, Taiwan is the one who splits the cod, and its technological diamond is TSMC. And the CEO of NVIDIA is clear that it is not worth burning money looking for the new TSMC immediately. Because it’s something that will take decades to replicate. Resilience. TSMC is about to turn 40 years old and is the company that manufactures for the elephants of the semiconductor sector such as AMD, Apple, ARM, MediaTek, Qualcomm or NVIDIA itself, among many others. They are the ones that have the most advanced machines of the European ASMLthose that have refined their processes to the extreme and are used even by manufacturers that have their own factories, such as Intel or Texas Instruments. It is something that affects the user directly, proof of this is that a mobile chip manufactured by TSMC is not the same as almost the same one made by Samsung. And to these processes is added a brutal manufacturing capacity that has dominated the industry. And, of course, looking to bite into that pie, different countries have tried to find their own TSMC. However, Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, has commented that efforts to diversify production must be made from the angle of resilience, not replacement. You don’t have to burn money like crazy. In recent months, Europe and the United States have begun to add manufacturing capacity in the semiconductor segment. The problem is that you cannot build a competitive industry in a short time: experience is needed and failure is not allowed. That, in an industry that is evolving at a very rapid pace due to the needs for chips for feed the artificial intelligenceis not contemplated. That is why Huang believes that the market is becoming selective and if guarantees are needed to manufacture chips, the one who gives those guarantees is turned to. Huang has been giving interviews for a few days and touching on key topics. For example, pointing out that The breakup between the US and China makes no sense because China is a very powerful trading partner, but also ensuring that Taiwan, as much as certain countries may not like it, will be the axis in the development of advanced computing in the coming years. China and the US investing millions. SIA is the acronym for Semiconductor Industry Association. It is the organization that seeks to advance policies that help the growth of the manufacturing industry in the United States. In your report Last year, they targeted 100 projects in 28 states totaling more than half a trillion dollars of private investment to triple the capacity of American industry by 2032. amd wants to be one of the protagonists of this operationbut also an Intel that seeks to position itself as a key factory on American soil and that has received strong government support. China is not far behind. With the explosion of robotics and AI, companies like SMIC or Huawei are developing alternatives to American technology to fuel their computing needs. They are looking for something else: industrial autonomy, and for that the Government has been releasing a series of funds to become one of the biggest names in the sector. If a subsidy package was launched in 2024 $47.5 billiona few weeks ago, other of up to 70,000 million to support that industry. Rvalidates directly with the US CHIPS of 52,000 million and 43,000 European million. The objective in both cases is the same: allocate obscene amounts of money to areas such as design, equipment, manufacturing and materials, as well as energy solutions that allow chips to be manufactured, but also to feed the companies in each country’s ecosystem. In the case of China, furthermore, there is an urgency to achieve these objectives as it is not able to have the advanced ASML machines and NVIDIA chips, something that the United States, Europe and Taiwan do have. India more of the same. But this is not a question of two great poles. South Korea also seeks become one of the great players of semiconductors, and another country that is designing an ambitious strategy to attract investment in semiconductors is India. Over the last few months they have been approving a series of aid packages (the last in January of this year, of 4.6 billion dollars) to boost the manufacturing of electronic components in the country. Apart from investing in their first state-of-the-art semiconductor factory (an investment of 11 billion dollars is estimated to achieve this), they are launching other aid and tax advantages to attract companies such as Samsung, Foxconn (also Taiwanese) or Apple to their territory. The goal is not to be a country that assembles the final product, but rather to manufacture critical components and move up the industrial value chain. Taiwanese expansion. The “problem” for these countries, and a great advantage for TSMC, is that they all seem to be very far away. India wants to achieve a chip made in 28 nanometer lithography, which is something that TSMC surpassed generations ago. AND China is fighting over 7 and 5 nm. Meanwhile, TSMC has refined its 3nm process and, as we say, TSMC’s great asset is not only that they have the experience and technology, but the ability to manufacture the best chips for customers who need those terribly refined chips. But there’s more: if China, Europe, the United States and India are moving, TSMC itself is diversifying. Yes Europe aspires to manufacture 20% of the planet’s semiconductorsit will be thanks to the TSMC plant planned in Germany. And although the US hates that it is a foreign company the one who has the upper hand in this great technological – and monetary – adventure of AI, TSMC has already settled on US soil. In the end, each territory seeks its … Read more

Make the “most mysterious book in the world” with dice and cards. How we are understanding the Voynich manuscript without deciphering a single line

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Voynich is an old acquaintance of this house: for years, we have been tracking (and gutting) each of the attempts to decipher the “most mysterious manuscript in the world.” They have all been unsuccessful and that includes, of course, the attempts to some of the sharpest minds of history. Now, however, we have a new idea. And, despite not solving absolutely anything, it sounds very good. What is the Voynich manuscript? Let’s start at the beginning: Between 1404 and 1438someone somewhere started writing a book in a language or code that no one has been able to decipher. A book that, since its rediscovery in 1912, has baffled everyone and especially cryptographers. Overall, this is an extraordinarily strange piece (full of illustrations of rare or non-existent plants, astrological symbols, strange creatures and naked women) about which we know only a handful of things. We know, for example, that it is a natural language (or a code related to a natural language) because complies with Zipf’s Lawan empirical regularity that only occurs in natural languages ​​and that describes the frequency of appearance of words. Invented languages ​​(especially languages ​​invented in the 15th century) do not comply. We have known this since the 60s, but little else. And people are still trying to figure it out? Yes, absolutely yes. The Voynichians are a group of people who are extremely passionate (and ‘insistent’) about their manuscript and, in fact, have members in almost every social strata in the wide world. An example is today’s protagonist. A few weeks ago, the magazine Cryptology public a job of Michael A. Greshko in which a new and very interesting idea was proposed. Greshko is a renowned science journalist, he is an editor at Science and has worked for media such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, Nature, Scientific American and National Geographic. He is someone who is risking part of his prestige on this, come on. And what does he propose? Greshko has exposed something called “Naibbe cipher”. Basically, it is an encryption system that allows languages ​​such as Italian or Latin to be transformed into a pseudo-writing that preserves properties of ‘voynichés’ (the ‘language’ of the manuscript). Respect, for example, things like glyph frequencies or word lengths. All this, with plausible cryptographic tools for the 15th century. And that’s precisely what’s interesting: Greshko doesn’t try to “read” the book; It attempts to demonstrate that, at that time and starting from a common language, a text similar to that of the manuscript could be constructed. How to make your own Voynich at home. According to the work of Cryptologiathe Naibbe method does things like break words into blocks (splits ‘gatto’ into ‘g’, ‘at’ and ‘to’), uses random systems (like dice or card rolls), and generates a homophonic cipher (ciphers specially designed to “counter the main deciphering tool for monoalphabetic substitutions, frequency analysis”). So, have we solved the problem? Not even close. As I said, Greshko has not deciphered the manuscript. He has simply looked for ways in which that manuscript could have been produced. For years, artificial intelligence algorithms have failed in the translation of the Voynich and, as the author explains, this may be because they do not know very well what to look for. Systems like Naibbe draw constructive possibilities that expand the options among which we can search. And in that sense, yes: Voynich is still much smarter than us. Although we don’t know for how long. Image | Gunnar Klack In Xataka | No, no “artificial intelligence” has deciphered the Voynich manuscript

Microsoft continues to confuse the world with its obsession with Copilot. Almost no one is very clear if Office is alive or not

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“But then, does Office exist or not?” It is a question that seems trivial, but it is not so, and with good reason: the constant name and brand changes have meant that the Microsoft office suite is being the latest victim of his obsession with AI and with its avalanche of products with the Copilot surname. The usual Office is no longer what it was. The evolution of Office was relatively stable until 2020. The office suite, officially launched in 1990, made it possible to bring together all the office applications that Microsoft already had and that it would later expand. This is how we soon saw an Office that consisted of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook and even Access and other tools. Changes and more changes. Since then the suite has been undergoing paradigm shifts… and name changes: 2010: The Office 365 brand is introduced as a cloud version of the traditional office suite. The goal: compete with Google Docs 2013: After the launch of Office 2013, Microsoft begins to promote the Office 365 service as the main alternative to access office tools 2017: Microsoft presents a second evolution of these services, which this time were aimed at companies and which it named Microsoft 365. This platform combined Office 365 with volume licenses for Windows 10 Enterprise, as well as some additional solutions. 2020: Office 365 change your name to Microsoft 365 2022: Microsoft announces that the branding “Microsoft Office” would be abandoned in favor of the “Microsoft 365” brand. Even so, Microsoft continues to sell perpetual Microsoft Office licenses for local installations. The latest version Today it is Microsoft Office 2024. 2025:Microsoft rename the Microsoft 365 app to Microsoft 365 Copilot, referring to the “Office/Microsoft 365 Hub.” This application is actually like an aggregator of the different Microsoft office tools (Word, Excel, etc.). And Perplexity adds fuel to the fire. A few days ago those responsible for Perplexity published a tweet in which they seemed to indicate that Microsoft had changed the name from “Office” to “Microsoft 365 Copilot app.” In reality, what had been renamed, as they point out in Windows Latestis the “Office/Microsoft 365 Hub”, but this name change had already been announced a year ago, in January 2025, as we indicated. Perplexity also added that this decision had caused “400 million users to become “AI users” overnight.” Both the tweet and that statement were somewhat exaggerated, and did not help clarify a situation that is already confusing. Microsoft clarifies it. Microsoft officials have indicated in The Verge and other means that: “We have not made any recent changes to the names of our Office applications. Word, Excel and PowerPoint, the Office applications included in the Microsoft 365 productivity suite, remain unchanged In November 2022, we just renamed the Office hub app for web and mobile to the Microsoft 365 app. In January 2025, we updated it to the Microsoft 365 Copilot app to reflect its role in bringing the Copilot and Microsoft 365 productivity experiences together in one place.” More trouble with the Office.com website. Although Microsoft hasn’t just “killed” the Office brand, it doesn’t seem to want it to be used much either. In fact, if one goes to the office.com website What you see as soon as you load it is a message that says “We welcome you to the Microsoft 365 Copilot application”, or in other words, that “hub” or aggregator from which you can launch the different office tools in the Microsoft suite. It doesn’t seem like a lucky decision. like others in this line in recent times. How to destroy a recognizable and recognized brand. The truth is that Office was a brand recognized by users, but for years Microsoft has wanted to transform it into part of something bigger. The intention, we believe, was to try to make it clear that Microsoft 365 was more than traditional office tools, but the only thing that has been achieved With these changes it is adding more and more confusion. Office is still alive as a product and as a brand, but it has ended up being absorbed by these new brands and, of course, because of Microsoft’s obsession with AI and with Copilot. In Xataka | Thanks again, Microsoft, for letting us buy Office 2024 instead of putting up with another subscription

More and more car brands are fleeing from Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. And it makes all the sense in the world

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My Volkswagen Polo is 10 years old, has a screen where I can see car statistics and play the radio or Spotify and little else: if I want to enjoy a GPS navigator, I have to place my phone on a support on the grille and it will work. So yes, I get really excited when I drive my partner’s Kona, with a screen bigger than a tablet on which I can visit Xataka from the web browser, watch videos either play a game. Android Auto is wonderful, but if I connect my iPhone, using apps like Waze on CarPlay is also another story. For someone who has a stupid screen in their car and the intention of not renewing it in the next five years, Android Auto and Apple CarPlay sound like a heavenly melody in my ears. However, Google and Apple’s infotainment systems are taking a step back: there are manufacturers who decide to back off, so their new models are left out. And it doesn’t surprise me. Goodbye to Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. Last summer and despite the delays, Apple promised they would be happy with their Apple CarPlay Ultra budding until he got a brand slam: There are barely Aston Martin and Porsche left. Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Ford, Lincoln, Audi, Jaguar, Acura, Volvo, Honda, Renault, Infinity and Polestar got off the boat. In the fall, the leadership of General Motors explained in a The Verge podcast that it intended to remove both infotainment systems from its newer vehicles and replace them with its own Gemini-spiked system. Finally, German brands such as BMW, Mercedes-Benz, or Volkswagen they have joined to create an open source alternative called Safety Open Vehicle Core. S-Core, its abbreviation, is basically a base infrastructure with the essentials from which each manufacturer will build its adapted customization layer. It’s a matter of control. Android Auto and Apple CarPlay provide a unified and mainstream experience within the reach of the majority who have a smartphone and implementing them is not expensive. Although well, it is not so much because of the money they spend installing Android Auto and Apple CarPlay and more because of what they stop earning. Data collection and what you can do with it. It should be noted that with their respective infotainment systems, Apple collects information such as your position and how it varies over time, which allows you to know your speed, schedules, frequent routes… to give some simple examples. They also know what apps you use and when. An open door to the vein of subscriptions. In recent years we have already seen how large manufacturers launched a subscription model to release certain premium hardware functions: Volkswagen to unlock all the powerthe controversial BMW heated seats (then backed out), Mercedes and its improvements subscription accelerationor Polestar for offering similar performance packages. Having access to detailed information on usage habits would allow the establishment of a user profile and thus offer a more personalized experience in the form of a subscription. Materializing it will not be easy or fast. The GM news detailed that the measure would be implemented in the coming years and does not even imply a complete disengagement as long as it does not completely eliminate Google from the equation, since it implements Gemini, the Menlo Park company’s big bet. And Google’s AI is not exactly sparing in capturing information. Using an Android fork could also be an interesting option. S-Core- Eclipse Release Schedule The route of German companies does seem more viable. In fact, their preview schedule is available on HitHub and for now they are fulfilling it to the letter. Of course, one thing is that they are able to create a platform and another is the experience it offers. How cold it is outside of Android Auto and CarPlay. One of the great assets of Android Auto is the quantity and quality of compatible apps: Thinking about a platform without Google Maps, Waze or Spotify would feel like a huge step backwards. So later, they will have to get the companies behind them to bring their apps to these systems. And even if they did achieve it, then there are other hot potatoes such as updates to their frequency. Life without Android Auto or Apple CarPlay is an option and if you don’t tell Rivian or Tesla, but in the end it’s all about user experience. Don’t let it feel like taking a step back. Buying a car (especially if it is high-end) and finding a setback is not a dish of good taste. They don’t charge you a premium for unlocking functions or removing advertising either. The scenario of having to pay a monthly fee to access maps and extras when you have a solid and free alternative on the market sounds absurd. In any case, the winds of change are blowing on car screens. In Xataka | Android Auto is quietly preparing for us to drive with smart glasses. In Spain it won’t be easy In Xataka | This car was a pioneer with Android Automotive, but its users were crying out for Android Auto. Your wish has been granted

he left everything agreed after the Second World War

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Of all the possibilities that are being heard about “the Greenland thing”one, possibly the most plausible, is getting lost in the conversations. No money, no political pressure, not even the “military option”. If the United States wants something in the Arctic, it only has to turn to an old and little-known Cold War pact. There is no need to buy what you control. The Donald Trump’s obsession “buying” or even “taking” Greenland is actually based on a false premise, because for more than seven decades the United States has already had a freedom of military action extraordinary without the need for formal sovereignty, something that turns his recent threats more into a political gesture than a real strategic necessity, despite the fact that he justifies them in terms of national security and the presence of Chinese and Russian actors in the Arctic. The 1951 agreement. The core of this situation is in the defense agreement signed in 1951 between the United States and Denmark, which gives Washington the right to build, operate and maintain military bases throughout Greenland, deploy personnel and control air and maritime operations, a scope so wide that Danish experts recognize that, in practicethe United States can get almost anything it wants simply by asking for it, without resorting to annexations or impossible purchases. From WW2 to the Cold War. The origin of the agreement dates back to Nazi occupation of Denmark during World War II, when fear that Germany would use Greenland as a platform to America led to a defensive pact which allowed the United States to expel the Germans and build more than a dozen bases on the island. That presence that remained during the cold war through radars and early warning systems and which today focuses on strategic Pittufik Space Basekey to tracking missiles over the North Pole. Headquarters of the Schalburg Corps, a unit of the Danish SS, after 1943. The building occupied was the lodge of the Danish Order of Freemasons located on Blegdamsvej, Copenhagen. Why buying is impossible. Beyond the military, the idea of ​​buying Greenland collides with a clear political and legal reality: Denmark cannot sell it and the Greenlanders themselves, who today have the right to decide their future through referendumthey overwhelmingly reject any US takeovera position reaffirmed by his prime minister and backed by polls showing massive opposition to a Washington takeover. The 2004 amendment. The defense agreement was updated in 2004 to explicitly recognize Greenland as an equal part of the Kingdom of Denmark and force the United States to consult on any significant changes to its military operations, a requirement that, according to Danish analystsworks more as a diplomatic courtesy than as a real brake, since if Washington wanted to expand its presence it could do so immediately without violating the existing framework. Trump, Venezuela and escalation. The recent American coup in Venezuela and the capture of Nicolás Maduro seem to have emboldened Trump and his entourage, who talk about Greenland as if it were an inevitable lootprovoking an angry reaction in Copenhagen and Nuuk, where it is warned that any attempt at occupation rempire the international orderwhile European leaders remember that the legal framework already gives the United States everything it needs without resorting to threats. It’s all about minerals and the Arctic. It we counted yesterday. Beyond military geopolitics, Greenland attracts for its enormous reserves of critical minerals and, very importantly, for your key position in an increasingly navigable Arctic, although even here experts agree that the United States does not need to control the territory to access those resources. The reason is simple: Greenlanders are open to doing business with anyone… as long as their sovereignty and right to decide are respected. Image | Defense Visual Information Distribution Service In Xataka | The gold of the 21st century is not in Venezuela: China and Russia know it and that is why the US wants Greenland no matter what In Xataka | If the question is “what is the next country on the US list” the answer has been on the table for months

Alphabet has just overtaken Apple as the most valuable company in the world. The reason is in AI

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Alphabet closed Wednesday with a valuation of $3.88 billion, above Apple’s $3.84 billion. Your actions they have risen 2% while Apple’s have fallen 4% in five days. Why is it important. This advance reflects the financial consequences of two opposing strategies in the AI ​​race: Alphabet has bet big and Apple has hesitated. And the market is already punishing indecision. The contrast. Alphabet presented in November ironwoodits seventh generation of TPU chips as an alternative to NVIDIA, and in December it launched Gemini 3 with an excellent welcome. Meanwhile, Apple keeps postponing its “new Siri” until in a few months. The difference in development capacity and distribution speed is noticeable: Alphabet’s stock rose 65% in 2025, its best year since 2009. Apple’s barely grew 9%, below the 16.4% of the S&P 500. Between the lines. Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet, has been able to translate the high demand for AI infrastructure into gigantic contracts. On the October earnings call with analysts and investors said that Google Cloud had signed more deals over $1 billion in the first three quarters of 2025 than in 2023 and 2024 combined. Apple, on the other hand, remains caught in uncertainty over when and how it will integrate AI into its consumer products. The new Siri has become entrenched, left victims along the way and has positioned Apple as a company that was caught on the wrong foot by the rise of generative AI, without taking risks. Decisive moment. This reversal of positions marks the end of an era in which Apple dominated due to the inertia of the iPhone and the beginning of another in which anyone who does not have a clear and convincing AI strategy risks being left behind, no matter how iconic their logo may be. The market never pays for the past. In Xataka | In the midst of the RAM memory crisis, Samsung takes a leap with its HBM4 memory. It does not imply good news for the pocket Featured image | Rubaitul Azad

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