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Predicting dementia seven years in advance seemed impossible. An AI with Spanish participation has just achieved it

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The diagnosis of the neurodegenerative diseases You face a problem at the time the diagnosis is made, since in many cases it is diagnosed when the symptoms are already evident and this makes the brain damage irreversible. But… What if we could peer into the future of the brain years before the disease shows its face? This is precisely what a Spanish team has done with a new biomarker. The study. The future of medicine involves making increasingly earlier diagnoses so that the success of treatments is much greater, and now in a recent published article in Science Report The door opens for this to be a reality in dementia. To get here, what the researchers propose, where have you participated Rubén Armañanzas, from the DATAI Institute of the University of Navarra, is the use of a test such as the electroencephalogram together with artificial intelligence to develop a biomarker capable of predicting the risk of dementia with up to seven years in advance. Your methodology. To understand the magnitude of this advance, we must look at the population on which the study was carried out, which are people with subjective cognitive impairment. These are patients who go to the doctor because they notice that their memory is failing, but when they undergo standard cognitive tests, the results are completely normal, so they cannot be given a clear diagnosis even though it seems that something is not right. Until now, medicine found a blind spot in this phase as there was no way to know if these ‘complaints’ in memory were the prelude to Alzheimer’s or simply confusion. But now, the study with 88 older adults with this situation has shown that the brain emits alarm signals long before psychological tests detected them. You just had to know how to ‘read’ them. A new method. Here the research has unified different metrics to be able to read these warning signs. The first thing of all is to use an electroencephalogram to measure brain activity, which is a cheap, quick and non-invasive test. From here, the BrainScope technology platform analyzes this data by looking for 14 specific features related to neuronal connectivity and brain wave behavior. Once these characteristics are ‘found’, an AI algorithm comes in that processes the patterns and determines whether the patient analyzed can progress towards mild cognitive impairment or dementia such as Alzheimer’s. And the results are spectacular, since it has demonstrated outstanding precision when separating patients who develop the disease from those who do not. The future. The great value of this biomarker is not only technological, but also clinical, since the most reliable current tests to predict pathologies such as Alzheimer’s require painful lumbar punctures or scans that are not cheap. A system based on EEG and AI could be easily integrated into primary care clinical protocols or routine neurological consultations as it does not have a very high cost and, above all, is not invasive. The important thing here is to detect neurodegeneration in the earliest phases in order to gain golden time so that new drugs can act at the beginning of the disease and gain years of quality of life. Images | Robina Weermeijer In Xataka | We have a new “theory of everything” to understand Alzheimer’s. Its key is in some small granules

Hollywood has been debating for years whether AI can replace real actors. With Val Kilmer the debate turns into practice

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A year after his death, Val Kilmer will appear in a fiction film without filming a single scene. ‘As Deep as the Grave’ uses generative AI to bring the actor to life with the explicit support of his family and respecting the rules of the actors’ union. It is the first documented case of a Hollywood star being digitally recreated on this scale and with this level of legitimacy. Perhaps in the future this film will be seen as the point at which there was no turning back. As deep as the grave. Val Kilmer died on April 1, 2025, at the age of 65, from pneumonia resulting from the throat cancer that he had been fighting since 2014. This week, almost a year later, the production company First Line Films has announced that the actor will return to the screens in a role that he was never able to film. The film, initially known as ‘Canyon of the Dead’, is a historical drama based on the true story of Ann and Earl Morris, early 20th century archaeologists who documented the culture of the Navajo people in Canyon de Chelly, Arizona. Kilmer was cast five years ago to play Father Fintan, a Native American Catholic priest and spiritualist. The role was designed around him: Kilmer identified with the character’s Native American heritage and with the story’s spiritual link to the American Southwest, where he made his home in New Mexico. “We were ready to film his part. Just, (Val Kilmer) was going through a very, very difficult medical time,” has counted director and screenwriter Coerte Voorhees. Go for AI. The production accumulated six years between filming and forced stops due to the pandemic. When the Voorhees brothers (Coerte directs, John produces) reviewed the material, they saw that Father Fintan’s scenes were essential to the story. Replacing the actor was a possible solution, but they did not have the budget to repeat the shoot. So they chose to generate it artificially. What makes this recreation technically unique is not only the use of images of the actor at different stages of his life, many contributed directly by his family, but the decision to use his real voice, deteriorated by the tracheotomy that Kilmer had to undergo during cancer treatment. Father Fintan suffers from tuberculosis in the fiction, which turns his altered voice into a character trait. The character generated by AI occupies, according to those responsible, a significant part of the final footage. Pioneer Kilmer. The curious thing is that Kilmer was one of the first actors to actively resort to AI to preserve his communication skills. In 2021, while working on the documentary ‘Val’, he collaborated with the startup Sonantic to reconstruct your voice from hours of archival recordings. The company had to develop new algorithms (the available material was ten times less than what they used in other projects) and generated more than 40 different models before selecting the most expressive. That work reached the general public in 2022, when Kilmer appeared in ‘Top Gun: Maverick’, in an appearance that was one of the most talked-about moments of the film. Seal of approval. What distinguishes ‘As Deep as the Grave’ is the consents that support it. The actor’s daughter, Mercedes Kilmer, states that “my father always looked at emerging technologies with optimism, as a tool to expand the possibilities of the story. This spirit is what we honor within this film.” The producers also assure that the film followed the SAG-AFTRA union guidelines and that the actor’s family receives financial compensation. The environment. This news comes amid constant updates on the topic of AI to generate prototypes of real actors or completely new virtual creatures. In recent months, the Xicoia company launched Tilly Norwooda character entirely generated by AI whom she presented as an actress, and which SAG-AFTRA unambiguously condemned, calling her a direct threat to the profession. Here, however, we have the posthumous realization of a job that the actor himself had accepted. But… what will happen when the technology is accessible to productions without family endorsement? How is compliance with SAG-AFTRA standards monitored in independent productions? Can a case like this normalize practices in less scrupulous hands? Header | Variety In Xataka | Seedance’s strategy was to copy first, go viral later and back away later. Until Hollywood said “enough”

We knew that mobile phones had an impact on children’s mental health. A study has defined the border: 16 years

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Today, we live in a time of great debate around Instagram, TikTok or X, wondering if they really negatively affect our minors, with several governments promoting the possibility of banning them, including Spanish. Now, a new study longitudinal has shed light on the true impact that using social networks can have on mental health, pointing to a much more complex scenario than we think. The study. It has been a team from the Miguel Hernández University that has decided to put the focus precisely on social networks at a time when research paints a very worrying picture. But in this case wanted to put the focus in the nuances that should really matter to us: age, gender and mental health status prior to entering the world of social networks. And its conclusions change the classical conception. It’s not how much, but how. Until recently, the most classic concept to measure danger was “screen time.” In this way, different reviews suggested that spending more hours in front of the cell phone was equivalent to having a worse well-being. But the UMH research goes a step further and focuses on how networks interfere with daily life, sleep or personal relationships. Here the most striking finding that the research team saw was that the impact of this problematic use on depressive symptoms has a very clear boundary: 16 years. But it fades. Although researchers have observed that increased depressive symptoms It is much more acute in those under 16 years of age, it has also been seen that around this age the effect diminishes. The reason that marks 16 years as a true frontier is precisely the greater capacity for emotional and cognitive self-regulation that adolescents have as they mature little by little. In this way, young people from the age of 16 become less vulnerable to the negative impacts of the digital environment, something pointed out by other external studies that already warned that early pre-adolescence is the true critical period of exposure to social networks as they are more sensitive. A gender gap. Another worrying point raised by science is how digital popularity affects depending on whether the teenager is a boy or a girl. And right now we live in the era of followers where anything is done to see how our accounts have more and more followers. And while it may seem like having more followers is a positive reinforcement for any teen, the data says otherwise. The researchers point out here that having a greater number of followers is associated with a greater number of depressive symptoms, and especially in girls. The reasons lie in the pressure to maintain a perfect image, the fear of being analyzed down to the last detail and, logically, the cybervictimization. A set of factors that act as a toxic cocktail towards mental health. In the boys. Here, having many followers has a neutral or even somewhat protective effect, operating as a status enhancer within a group of friends, for example. That is, the complete opposite of girls, marking a gender gap that has also been investigated by other third-party studies that already warned that the mental health of minors is much more susceptible to the dynamics of online validation. Previous vulnerability. Do social networks depress you or were teenagers already depressed? This is the question we can ask ourselves when addressing this complex issue, and science indicates that adolescents who already suffered from a previous vulnerability before using the networks are the most susceptible. In this way, if a young person already presents depressive symptoms, their evolution will be significantly worse if they develop problematic use of networks. In these cases, the screen becomes a true refuge that ends up worsening the original picture when exposed to a large number of people or by consuming negative content. What should we do? The great conclusion that can be drawn here is that We must protect preteens as they are the most vulnerable, and also give priority attention to girls because they suffer much greater aesthetic and validation pressure. This is where governments come in with the regulations that are already being put on the table to prevent these most vulnerable young people from being exposed to something that can be so harmful. Images | Johnny Cohen In Xataka | We say we are “depressed” beyond our means: where does the illness end and where does the illness begin?

Mercadona has been a threat to other supermarket and restaurant chains for years. Now it is for Starbucks

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Mercadona gained fame (and money) as a supermarket chain, but it has long since explore business avenues in sectors that go far beyond the retail traditional. The clearest movement was made in 2018, when it launched a section of cooked dishes and “ready to eat” (in fact the service is literally called that) that has grown at record speed. Today it is already offered in 1,110 stores and has allowed Juan Roig’s chain to become an unexpected rival for hoteliers, who have seen how the firm monopolizes almost 20% of the expense in food and drink, more than bars and restaurants. Now there is another sector with reasons to be on guard: coffee shops. What has happened? That Mercadona has just launched a new service in Euskadi. At the end of February The Mail revealed that the Valencian chain installed a freshly ground coffee machine ready to go in a supermarket in Bilbao. Said like this, it may seem like minor news, but it has more to it than it seems. To begin with, because it is the first Mercadona establishment to adopt this service in Basque lands. Second, because it demonstrates the speed with which the company is filling its supermarkets with ground coffee machines. Are you riding that many? It’s not so much that coffee makers are available in many stores as it is the speed at which they are expanding. Mercadona’s commitment to freshly ground coffee machines is very recent. People began to talk about her in March 2025when the company started its first tests in a handful of locations in the province of Valencia. “This is a laboratory,” the company then recognizedwho did not hide his desire to move the bet beyond Valencia. Its initial objective was that (if the idea worked) it would move to premises in the Community of Madrid after the summer. Now it is looking further, as demonstrated by its premiere in Bilbao. Is it really growing? Yes. At least if we take as reference the dossier of gastronomic services published by Mercadona itself on its website. It details that the company has continued to expand its network of coffee services, taking it to new cities. Not only that. For months Mercadona advertise the service with a specific section in which it states that it has black coffee, milk, coffee and cappuccinos. The cups can be consumed on the premises. The bet connects in part with Mercadona’s new store concept, the T9which seeks to adapt the premises to new consumer trends. Why is it important? Everything that revolves around Mercadona generates expectation. And it’s normal. Roig’s firm has managed to conquer a market share of about 30%which (beyond struggles within the retail) means that it is the chain that thousands of families trust when they need to fill their refrigerators. This growth has allowed it to become a heavyweight in the food sector, one that is no longer just viewed with suspicion by the rest of the supermarket chains. Its long shadow is also felt in the hospitality industry. Recently the consulting firm Worldpanel by Numerator published a report in which it states that Mercadona already has a value share in food and beverage consumption of 19.7%. What does that mean? That practically a fifth of everything we spend on food and drink ends up at Mercadona checkouts. The percentage is tremendous not only because of its reach. It is also the case when compared with other actors analyzed in the same study. The sum of bars, cafes and terraces is assigned a quota of around 11.2% and independent restaurants 8.6%. Conclusion: Mercadona is not only ending the idea of ​​cooking at home, it threatens to do the same with restaurants. Why is it important? Because regardless of how Mercadona is doing, its commitment reflects profound changes in the consumption habits of Spaniards. In fact, the chain’s success is largely explained by its aim when drawing up strategies. First, it opted for the short assortment model, filling its shelves with private label items. He then launched himself into the prepared food market, convinced that kitchens have the days counted. Now your new bet invites you to ask yourself another question: Will we continue going to cafes for a mid-morning coffee or will we have it at the supermarket? Images | Mercadona In Xataka | The war against Mercadona in Spanish retail is having a great beneficiary: the supermarket next to home

We have been looking for fire hydrants in photos for years to prove that we are not a robot. Turns out we were the robot after all

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It happens to us every day: we try to enter a website and suddenly a grid of poor quality photos requires us to identify all the traffic lights, buses or even fire hydrants even though in Spain, for example, they do not have the characteristic design that is applied in the US. When we solve these puzzles we are not only proving that we are not a robot: we are working for Google. Google slaves. In the early 2000s, bots were destroying the internet, but a young man named Luis von Ahn had a great idea to stop them. Believe CAPTCHAa system that forced us to identify distorted words to prove that we were human and thus be able to access the content. That system evolved and Google bought the idea and turned it into a perfect system for something we have barely noticed: working for it. From Google Maps to Waymo. Since then, Google has not stopped taking advantage of the system for two intertwined objectives. The first, effectively, protect us from bots. The second, also known but much juicier for the company, is to turn us all into information taggers. Internet users first recognized words and became a gigantic OCR system that was applied to Google Maps. Then, with images, we ended up helping Google’s image recognition systems improve significantly. That has served, among other things, to feed the Waymo autonomous driving systems. Statistical consensus. How does Google know that when we choose a fire hydrant or a bus we are responding correctly? It knows this through the so-called “statistical consensus.” Google usually presents images in pairs: one of them (the control image) has already been previously identified by thousands of people, while the other is an “orphan” image that its computer vision algorithms cannot decipher. If you guess the known one, Google assumes you are human and uses your answer about the unknown image to feed its database. We are the product. All of our readers were probably already very aware of this reality, but now a debate is beginning to activate about the ethics and ownership of digital work. It is something that we already saw with social networks, which were fed by our content, and that certainly also applies to Google: to what extent is it legal for a company to have a huge AI infrastructure thanks to the billions of hours of unpaid “microwork” of its users? Here the famous “If you don’t pay for the product, you are the product.“. It is true that these Google systems have protected us from bots and we have not paid for them “with money”… but with those micro-jobs that we have carried out when solving the puzzles of the reCAPTACHA systems. Is it possible to poison the algorithm? Here also doubts arise about the true reliability of the system. If a mass group of users decided to mislabel traffic lights or fire hydrants in an organized way, would a self-driving car make dangerous decisions in the real world? That risk seems reasonable, and considering that AI models are increasingly more capable in abstract reasoning and even overcoming captchasan attack by AI bots that did something like this poses a threat worrying. The invisible CAPTCHA. Google itself knows that visual CAPTCHAs are no longer so insurmountable for machines, so it has been moving its systems towards reCAPTCHA v3a invisible system that does not require you to look for buses, zebra crossings or fire hydrants that you will never see on a street in Malaga or Bilbao. Instead, this system opaquely analyzes your behavior in front of the PC: how you move the mouse, what cookies you have installed and how you navigate. Or what is the same: Google thinks it knows how a human behaves when you’re going to click on “I’m not a robot”… when we’ve been working like robots for years and solving those puzzles. a brilliant idea. What is clear is that CAPTCHA has been a brilliant idea with implications that not even Google could have anticipated. In fact, it has turned this tool into a way to feed its artificial intelligence systems with our help, without us practically knowing (or caring much). But you know: the next time a website asks you to identify fire hydrants before entering it, remember that you are not demonstrating your humanity. You’re signing on to the afternoon shift at one of the largest data factories on the planet. In Xataka | The US blocked its most advanced chips from China to stop its AI. The result: China makes tokens cheaper than anyone else

15 years later it is closer to expanding it

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The project to extend the C-5 between Móstoles and Navalcarnero had been paralyzed for more than a decade. However, the Ministry of Transport has recently offered news. And now is being studied the possibility of including Boadilla del Monte and Villaviciosa de Odón in an alternative branch. It would be the first time in history that both towns are connected by train. We tell you all the details. A history of half-finished works. Cercanías Madrid line C-5 is the most used of the entire network, with more than 72 million travelers annually, according to the Ministry of Transportation itself. Despite everything, the continuation of the line from Móstoles-El Soto to Navalcarnero It has been abandoned for fifteen years after the suspension of the works and the contractual problems that paralyzed them in 2019. The result was half-built viaducts and an outstanding debt with the affected municipalities. What has changed now. The Ministry of Transportation has put out to tender a new feasibility study to update that project and evaluate route alternatives. The novelty is that the analysis would not be limited only to Móstoles–Navalcarnero, as it would also will contemplate a branch towards Villaviciosa de Odón and Boadilla del Monte. According to assured The Villaviciosa City Council’s inclusion in the tour came after having negotiated it directly with the Ministry. In the statement they conveyed to the Ministry “the importance of Villaviciosa de Odón being part of the technical evaluations related to this railway connection, given its strategic position in the metropolitan southwest and lack of interurban transportation beyond the road connection through regular buses.” The study is currently in the award phase. Connected. Both Boadilla del Monte and Villaviciosa de Odón do not have a direct train connection between them. Both depend on the private car, the intercity bus and, in the case of Boadilla, the Light Metro. They are municipalities that have grown significantly both in population and economic activity, but are still tied to the saturation of the A-5, the M-50 and the M-501. For this reason, a Cercanías line would be really good for these municipalities. In fact, they would connect for the first time with Móstoles and the rest of the network. Expectations vs. reality. The town councils involved have received the news with enthusiasm and describe this step as a “first decisive step”, according to share the Madrid Secreto medium, because it is the first time that the branch appears in official documents. But both the councils and the Ministry itself warn that the road is long: first you have to complete the study, then finalize a project, then seek financing and, finally, execute the works. So there is still a long way to go. What’s for sure? Apart from this hypothetical branch, the great transformation of the C-5 You already have a roadmap and budget. The modernization plan includes 28 actions worth 1,350 million euros to expand platforms, build new lanes, renew signaling and build a new station in Móstoles-El Soto. The objective is to increase the capacity of the line by 60% and reduce the incidents that hundreds of thousands of travelers suffer daily. Cover image | Falk2 (Wikipedia) In Xataka | The southern entrance to the A5 underground is already 80% excavated, and there is a culprit that has speeded up the work: the soil

53% of Spaniards prefer to eat the tortilla undercooked. Salmonella has been waiting patiently for years to do so

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He 52.9% of Spaniards prefer the potato omelette is undercooked and is not a harmless preference. In Europe, the main cause of food outbreaks has a name and surname: Salmonella. But in Spain the situation is worse because, despite the strength of its poultry sector, it is not able to stably meet the European objective for Salmonella in layers. And that, added to hygienic conditions that are not usually met, turn that cultural preference into a ticking time bomb. When we change the law. Historically, this preference for low-set tortillas has been so strong that, in recent years, the regulations have become more flexible. Since 1991, every product that will not set completely the egg required what is called a heat-treated “egg product.” More changes. But, with the passage of time and improved controls, salmonellosis cases decreased. Between 2005 and 2009, the European Union saw the number of cases fall by half. And, in December 2022, a new decree allows you to work with fresh eggsas long as 63 degrees are reached for at least two seconds and consumed immediately. It is a very complex balance because the egg white curdles at that temperature: if the technique and work is done very rigorouslythe usual thing is that any undercooked tortilla has not met the regulatory requirements. And there, Salmonella appears. In 2024, Spain had 11,173 reported cases of salmonellosis. In principle, according to the ISCIII854 foodborne outbreaks were identified. It’s not a very common thing, really. Luckily. But the upward trend has not stopped growing since the pandemic and, therefore, the risk is always there. Up. In Spain more than in other places because, as I said, we have serious difficulties in maintaining the prevalence of Salmonella serotypes in laying hens below 2%. The country appears to have religiously met the standards between 2013 and 2018, but since then there have been years that have and years that have not. It is important to keep in mind that industrial chickens are vaccinated; but those for self-consumption, no. So? Is it dangerous to eat undercooked tortillas? As I said Miguel A. Lurueña“today the risk is much lower than decades ago; the main risk is poor handling.” AND matches Gemma del Caño“do it if you want” (if you meet all the conditions and are not a risk group), but be aware that the risk is never zero. Image | Iker Merodio In Xataka | “We all have a bacteriological bomb at home” and they are called a chopping board: this is how we can minimize all risks

More than 40 years ago we discovered a mysterious hexagon on Saturn. Today there is only one possible explanation

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If there is a planet within the Solar system as enigmatic as it is striking, it is Saturn. And not just because of their rings, probably caused by a collision of their moons. But it’s not the only thing that baffles the scientific community: if you look at Saturn’s north pole from space, you will discover a perfect geometric shape: a hexagon. 30,000 kilometers in diameter. To get the idea, two planets could fit inside it. Of that mysterious hexagon We know that it is there at least since 1981, when the Voyager 2 probe flew over the planet, leaving testimony of its existence. It is not that nature is not capable of making geometric shapes, but the hexagon is not exactly the most common. The latest and most solid hypothesis that attempts to elucidate what Saturn’s hexagon is to date was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offering a possible explanation: the internal dynamics of the planet’s atmosphere. The hypothesis. What the research team from Harvard’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences suggests is that the hexagon is not a surface structure, but rather is generated by rotating deep convection inside Saturn. The turbulence of the deep layers of its atmosphere generates vortices that push and bend a high-speed air current that surrounds the north pole, deforming it so much that it acquires its hexagonal shape. The hexagon is not the storm, it is the trace of what happens underneath. Qor why it’s important. Because we have been carrying around the mystery of the hexagon since 1981 and none of the previous theories fit as well as this one, capable of generating the hexagon from basic physics without artifice. Also, it answers a question: how far do Saturn’s winds reach? According to this model, to the bottom. On the other hand, if this explanation is correct, it changes the perception of how we understand the dynamics of giant planets, not just Saturn. Saturn hexagon with images from the Cassini probe. NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute context. Before this 2020 theory, there were two clear sides: The forced Rossby wave proposed that the hexagon was an atmospheric wave held in place by an anticyclone, visible south of the pole in Voyager 2 data. When the Cassini probe arrived at Saturn in 2004, there was no trace of that anticyclone. That of the surface jet suggested that the hexagon was a surface wind that, when it becomes unstable, undulates and adopts a polygon shape. The problem was that it needed a starting current. Furthermore, it places the phenomenon in superficial layers, which contradicts the gravitational data of Cassini’s Grand Finale whose gravitational data suggest that Saturn’s winds maintain their intensity up to 100,000 bars of pressure. In both cases, they all reproduced the hexagon if you already gave them a base wind, but none of them generated it from scratch. How have they done it. The methodology is quite abstract, but roughly what they did was simulate a slice of Saturn, spinning it and heating it from below and letting physics act. No winds or hexes in the initial setup. So much the code used in the simulation like the data They are openly available, so anyone can reproduce and verify the results. Yes, but. The hypothesis developed by the Harvard team may be the best so far, but the paper itself recognizes Some objections to take into account. Thus, the simulation polygon is faster than what happens in reality, something that could be solved with a more powerful simulation. The simulation polygon moves faster than what happens in reality, something the authors attribute to the computational power available. Furthermore, the simulation only tests specific conditions and for a relatively short time: no one has yet verified whether the result holds under different parameters or on longer time scales. In Xataka | We have just discovered a true cosmic anomaly: an “invisible” galaxy made up almost 100% of dark matter In Xataka | A new “solar system” has just been discovered. There’s just one problem: it shouldn’t exist. Cover | NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Years ago the series had more scenes. The platforms are cutting them without warning

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The seasons of the series streaming They are increasingly shorter, and not always by creative decision. Behind the cuts are skyrocketing production costs, subscriber retention strategies and, sometimes, decisions made from the accounting department and not from the writers’ table. The phenomenon is so broad that it also affects altered versions of classic series, eliminating scenes and changing soundtracks without warning. This episode is not how I remembered. You are reviewing a series that you already know and something goes wrong: a scene that you remembered clearly does not appear. Or the opening credits song sounds different. Or the final episode ends earlier than it should. It is not always a failure of your memory. Often, the version you see in front of you is not the same as the one you saw back in the day. This phenomenon has gained visibility in recent months thanks to users who document on social networks the differences between versions, and its scope is greater than it seems. The platforms of streaming They offer, in many cases and without realizing it, degraded or cut versions of series and movies. The reasons behind these decisions are multiple. Sustained contraction. Before entering into the phenomenon of cuts without notice, it is worth remembering some facts. According to the firm Parrot Analyticsthe average number of episodes per season on free-to-air television fell from 16.2 in 2018 to 11.8 in July 2024. On streaming platforms streamingwhich already started from shorter seasons, have also contracted: from 10.7 episodes on average in 2018 to 9.3 in the same period. Some studies talk that production companies and platforms are increasingly stingy when it comes to renewing or ordering series: they simply ask for fewer episodes. One last piece of information about this reduction: in 2025, the number of original series streaming fell by 11% year-on-year. Beyond those series that suffer, against the will of their creators, cuts in the number of their episodes (as it happened at the time with ‘The House of the Dragon’), there are cuts from series already broadcast. For example, the final episode of ‘Friday Night Lights’, which is now on Filmin (in its shortened version) had a duration of more than 60 minutes. When it moved to NBC for free-to-air broadcast, it was cut to less than 45 minutes to fit with advertising. Complete scenes are missing from this mutilated version. Here we can see a similar case with an episode of ‘The Bill Cosby Hour’ streaming. Music, another point of friction. The licensing rights for musical themes do not always extend to all platforms or expire after a period of time, which requires replacing original songs with others. When ‘The Wonder Years’ arrived on Netflix in 2011 after years of being blocked by rights issues, numerous songs had been replaced, including Joe Cocker’s iconic version of ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’ that opened each episode. In ‘Dawson Grows’, Paula Cole’s original tune was replaced in streaming by a Jann Arden song; The fan outcry was so intense that Cole ended up re-recording his own song. It is a common problem, which has meant that legendary series like ‘Luz de Luna’ or ‘Búscate la vida’ have spent years without being able to be seen, not even in domestic formats (in the case of Chris Peterson’s legendary series, we are still waiting). The war of the formats. We’ve already talked about itbut it is not bad to remember that the image format has been manipulated on countless occasions to adapt it to widescreen televisions. The case of ‘The Simpsons’ is perhaps the most popularsince many jokes with the original square format of the first seasons were lost. Also The case of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ is popular‘, which in its panoramic format and retouched colors makes the illusion of night scenes from the original series disappear and allows the filming crew and sets to be seen. A disaster that can only be solved by going to the first editions on DVD before their “remastering”. What to do to solve it. One more time: do not completely rule out the physical format. Until now we were certain (video game fans have been suffering from this for years) that fluctuations in catalogs, even of material that you have purchased and that is theoretically yours, can play tricks on you. We are now convinced that the fact that a film is in a catalog today streaming It does not assure us that it will be within a year: reasons as spurious as saving fees or storage space for platform owners can lead to the elimination of thousands of movies and series. The only way to preserve a movie or series without anyone modifying it, to make sure that no one is going to cut it because they think you are not prepared to pay enough attention to it, is to have your own copy. In physical or digital form, but in a safe place. Until recently, keeping our DVDs, our CDs with games, our cartridges and our vinyl, our records with backup copies was something for nostalgic and paranoid people. Now it is a matter of preserving what the platforms continue to mutilate. In Xataka | Generation Z has found the remedy to streaming subscription fatigue: buying DVDs again

India has been wanting to be the new China for years. The Iran war is putting it on a plate

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The iran war is demonstrating, once again, the fragility of globalization. Just look at this graph: Graphic: Xataka The price of a barrel of crude oil has rampaged because Iran is attacking refineries, the Strait of Hormuz through which 20% of the world’s crude oil passes It is abuzz and there is instability in the ‘oil well of the world’. Refineries are targetedbut also the new mine of the world economy: data centers. Iran has attacked data centers of Amazon in Saudi Arabia and Big Tech are setting their eyes on nearby countries where they can move. And what is very attentive is an India that has been pursuing an ambitious goal for years: to become the new China. They have been tempting big technology companies for years and with the narrative of being a safe and reliable country in which to manufacture. The war in Iran is now giving it another argument: kamikaze drones do not fall in its data centers. In short. Data centers have become critical infrastructure. They are from the moment you are investing in them. more than we invested to go to the Moonthe economy of some companies and countries is being linked to their success and, above all, they have been since the AI ​​fever has put the world of hardware in an alley. In war and love, anything goes (or so some apply), and this time we are seeing how they bomb schools, hotels and data centers. On March 1 and 2, Iran attacked with its drones two of the Amazon Web Services, or AWS, facilities in the United Arab Emirates and another center in Bahrain. This has forced the technology company to pause activity in those facilities, asking that companies that had services running on their servers migrate to those in other countries. Solutions. Latency plays a fundamental role in certain operations, so they must be servers that are relatively close to those that have been attacked. And that’s where they come into play both that Amazon has in India, specifically the one in Munbai and the one in Hyderabad. These are data centers from Amazon, yes, but the country has big plans to create an industrial fabric based on this type of infrastructure. At the beginning of last year we echoed a mega data center hard to believe. When most of the world’s large facilities remain below 1 GW of energy capacity, an Indian company wants to create a single data center with a capacity of 3 GW. If we return to the Amazon centers in northern Virginia, in the United States, we see that about 300 installations add up to a total of 2.5 GW. And now India wants one to only have 3 GW. And it wants to have it by 2027, a date as ambitious as its own dimensions. Rain of millions. It is estimated that such a facility would cost between 20,000 and 30,000 million dollars, but it is something that today’s India cares little about: they are burning money to attract industry and steal what they can from China. The country has been offering hundreds of millions of dollars to each technology company that wants to settle in its territory. It’s not just money. India is developingits market is growing and something important: young Chinese are increasingly more qualified and labor is getting more expensive. A cheaper workforce in India, added to government incentives, are two powerful arguments for some giants in the technology sector to move to the country. And, little by little, they are achieving it. Xiaomi, Motorola and even Huawei manufacture complete models of some of their lines in India. Asus, HTC, Samsung, Microsoft and LG have plants for some parts and Apple has taken the production of parts to India. old iPhone models. Another one is Micron, one of the main players in the memory segment. tempting everyone. The country wants more and it is gone sitting with representatives of heavyweights such as the aforementioned Apple… and Samsung. They want the South Koreans don’t just make a few piecesbut rather that they invest in artificial intelligence, hardware and in something that India is eagerly seeking: semiconductor research and development. Samsung is one of the world’s leading foundries and is investing millions outside of South Korea. India seeks to be part of that equation. To do this, they have something called PLI. This is a government initiative that encourages the production of a complete portfolio of products. That is to say: the more complete products a same brand manufactures in the country, the more incentives and economic advantages it receives. They also promise less economic friction with the West, although looking at the issue of tariffs and their ups and downs, it is something that can change from one day to the next. And it’s not all about pure and simple money: India is the most populous country on the planet and it is estimated that the average level of income will continue to rise over the next five years, which also “promise” a good national market for those products that companies manufacture on their soil. The Bangladesh Hi-Tech Park project And the result, with Hyundai being the only one with a significant presence and many open fields, buildings under construction… broken dreams. According to estimates, electronics manufacturing in India was a market of 115,000 million dollars and it is expected triple it by 2027. My colleague Laura already detailed that they were executing the technique of being a steamroller based on releasing billsalthough two things must be said. The first is that one of those objectives, the become the foundry of the worldit’s going to be complicated. TSMC is leading the conversation and is moving both on home soil -Taiwan- and in Europe and, above all, the United States. And what is truly worrying for the country is that, in this search for talent at all costs, it has invested a lot of money in the construction of technological cities that … Read more

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