Mobile Tech & Gadgets

best email providers made in europe

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Let’s tell you the best European alternatives to Outlook or Gmail. If you are looking for greater privacy and protection in your email, opting for a European provider subject to rigid European regulations is a good option, and we will tell you the top five. But you have to know that greater privacy and security has its price, because by not negotiating with your data or serving you advertising, many of these services are paid. Many are as cheap as one euro per month, but others try to offer you more services in exchange for a higher price. Proton Mail It is possibly the best known alternative. Based in Switzerland, it offers you end-to-end encryption as well as an open source product and a totally free basic email service. Yes, creating an account and using it on your mobile with its own app, or in the browser of any device is free. IMAP support for adding to other email clients is only available with Proton Mail Bridgewhich is a paid feature. But it also has payment plans that start in 3.99 euros per monthwith features such as creating aliases, such as alternative addresses to register on unreliable sites without giving your real email, and then deactivating them. In addition, it also offers a VPN, an office suite like Drive and cloud storage, as well as a password manager, calendar and everything so that you do not depend on other companies. Tuta Fewer additional services but more ethics. This is what Tuta, formerly known as Tutanota, offers, the German provider with end-to-end encryption that uses renewable energy to operate. It is also open source, although it does not have IMAP support, meaning you cannot add it to third-party email managers. Your basic email account is totally freealthough it also offers price plans that start at 3.60 euros per month, and that offer more storage, unlimited calendars and labels, 15 extra email addresses, or custom domains. mailbox This other German supplier It has a price of 1 euro per monthwithout free modality. Its focus is on privacy, being able to even make anonymous payments, and it offers a calendar, cloud storage, task manager and agenda service. It also gives you 3 different aliases to configure. Mailbox also has other plans with a higher price, and that offer more aliases, more storage, office automation service, alternative to Meet for meetings, etc. It is also compatible with IMAP, something that the previous alternatives do not have, allowing you to use your account in your favorite email manager. Post Posteo is another German provider that seeks simplicity above all else. The price of Your account is 1 euro per monthhas IMAP support, and its focus is on privacy and anonymity. In fact, it does not ask you for private information to register and you can pay with cryptocurrencies. It also runs on clean energy and you can add custom domains, aliases or more storage by paying a little more. Its web client has an outdated interface, but it is one of the best features if you are going to use it in the native or third-party email app on your mobile or computer. SmartMail This is the Startpage email service, which is possibly the best European alternative to Google. The bad news is that Its price is 6.99 euros per monthsomewhat less if you pay annually, although in exchange it offers unlimited aliases. It also has support for your own domain and has IMAP compatibility, in addition to the highest privacy standards. Therefore, it is the most expensive option, but also the most unlimited if you want to protect your privacy, especially by creating various aliases. In Xataka Basics | 61 European alternatives to Google, X, Gmail, Chrome, Maps, DropBox, Google Drive, WhatsApp and other popular services

What is Make, what workflows can you do by connecting applications with this platform and what is its price

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Let’s tell you what is Make.coma platform to configure workflows or workflows and create automation. These will allow you to chain actions between its thousands of supported applications, and even add actions of artificial intelligence to them. We are going to start by explaining to you what exactly this platform is, and then we will try to tell you in a summarized way what you will be able to do with it. In the end, we are going to summarize both what the free plan offers and the characteristics of its paid data. What is Make.com Make.com is a platform for creating automations visually. With it, you will be able connect applications and services with each other so that they work automatically without you having to do anything. This platform works creating a chain of stepsin which in each of them you can link a different application. There may also be steps from the same application or service. In these steps you will be able to configure interactions with what the previous steps do. You will also be able to make branches so that, depending on the result of a previous step, the sequence goes along one of the paths or through others. Make.com offers a visual interface in the form of a diagram, making the process of configuring automations (called scenarios in the app) simpler and more intuitive. Each module represents an action, which can be simple or based on an application that you link. The only negative part of this app is that its learning curve can be a little high, but it tries to help you with a suggestion system. When you have to fill out a field in a step, a window opens with suggestions for interactions that you can do with other applications that you have linked in previous steps. What you can do with Make The possibilities of what you can do with Make are so many that it’s easy to feel overwhelmed at first. You will be able to automate repetitive tasks such as copying data between platforms, automatically creating tasks or synchronizing databases. You can also manage emails and forms by automatically saving some data, sending automated responses or filtering emails. In general, you should know what you can do simple automations and even with AIlinking any artificial intelligence model after obtaining its API. And then, You can use all this so that the results interact with other applications or services, or sent to them for processing. For example, creating a Telegram bot that sends you a summary made by Gemini of each email that you receive. Interactions between platforms allow you to do many things. Can automate social media poststhat emails or writings that reach you are added to a spreadsheet or text files, that obtain the feed of different pages and make a summary of news, basically everything you can think of involving interactions between applications. Make.com integrates with more than 3,000 applications of all kinds. For some it is enough to link your account by logging in, but for others you may need tokens or access to an API. If you don’t even know where to start, you also have a template index. This index has a search engine where you can find templates by the name of the apps they contain or the name of the project, which is usually a description of what they offer. How much does Make.com cost? Make.com has one free account and several paid accountswhose payments basically depend on the amount of credits or tokens per month that they offer you. Tokens are like the internal currency, and each interaction will spend a series of them. Therefore, in the free account you will be able to have fewer projects and use them fewer times, but it is good to take your first steps. These are the rates you have with its price per month. You will also be able to pay annually, which will reduce the price by 15%. Free Rate: You have 1,000 credits per month, and a limit so that the activation intervals are at least 15 minutes. You can only have two scenarios active at a time. It’s free. Core Rate: You have 10,000 credits per month, with no limit on intervals or active scenarios. They offer you more control over activation, which can be minute by minute, and increase data transfer limits. You also access the Make API. It costs $10.59 a month. Pro Rate: You have 10,000 credits per month, with priority in the execution of your scenarios, custom variables and more AI and automation options. It costs $18.82 a month. Teams Rate: Like the previous one, but designed for teams. You will be able to configure several users and their roles, in addition to sharing and creating scenarios between everyone. It costs $34.12 per month. In each payment rate you can manually increase the number of creditsand depending on the quantity you choose the price will also increase proportionally. In Xataka Basics | The best AI agents that are faster and easier to use to do tasks for you without complications or long installations

is that we are surrendering to it

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As artificial intelligence becomes integrated into our lives, there is one question that is becoming more relevant. Is AI making us dumb? Maybe stupid is not the right word, but rather lazy, or at least that is the direction in which it points a recent study from the University of Pennsylvania. Cognitive surrender. It is what they have called the phenomenon that arises when we use AI “with minimal scrutiny, overriding intuition and deliberation.” The researchers carried out three experiments in which the participants had to answer cognitive reflection tests, in which the intuitive answer tends to be wrong and the deliberate one is correct (trick questions, wow). One group could only use their brains and the other had access to ChatGPT, although it was rigged to fail on purpose half of the time. The result was that when the AI ​​gave an incorrect answer, people copied it 80% of the time. And what’s worse: the security of the participants who had access to the AI ​​was superior despite accumulating incorrect answers. In other words, the participants endorsed the great confidence with which the AI ​​formulated its answers and stopped checking whether they were correct. A new system . The study takes as its starting point the system 1 and system 2 theory by Daniel Kahnemanin which system 1 is fast thinking or intuition and system 2 is slow thinking or deliberation. The problem with this theory, especially at the current time, is that it ignores the fact that we are increasingly delegating the cognitive process to generative AI. Therefore, the researchers propose adding a third system, which they have called “artificial cognition” and which refers to the thinking or reasoning that occurs outside our mind, that is, in AI. Give up or delegate. The study makes a distinction between cognitive surrender and cognitive download, that is, simply accepting what AI tells us is not the same as using it as a help tool. The first thing would be to use system 3 with a little of system 1 (intuition), while its use as a tool also implies the use of system 2 (deliberation or reasoning). Using AI to delegate certain tasks is comparable to using a calculator or searching for something on Google. In the experiment, 73% accepted the wrong answers (gave up) and 17% corrected her (delegated to her, but without blindly accepting what she said). Researchers warn that cognitive surrender can erode critical thinking and cause us to lose the habit of distrusting and checking things for ourselves. Cognitive debt. In June 2025 it went viral an MIT study called “Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulating Cognitive Debt by Using an AI Assistant When Writing an Essay.” In the experiment, they monitored the participants using encephalography while they performed the task. The results were that the group that used ChatGPT gave the worst results in brain activity and became lazier as the test progressed. AI doesn’t make us stupid. Over the years there have emerged many studies who sought to verify if the technology is diminishing our capabilitiesbut there are also others who they point to the complete opposite. Going back to the MIT study, it makes sense that there would be less brain activity if we are using a supportive tool (and one as powerful as AI). There will also be less activity if we use a calculator than if we do the operations by hand, but it does not necessarily mean that we are worse at mathematics. Of course, if we need the calculator to add 2+2, we have a problem there. The key is not whether using AI makes us stupid, but whether how we use itif we surrender to it or if we delegate to it. Image | Andrea Piacquadio, Pexels In Xataka | The US is obsessed with achieving General Artificial Intelligence before China. China couldn’t care less

Discord wanted to implement an age verification system. Until the world came crashing down on him

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Discord has backtracked on one of his most controversial plans of recent years. The messaging and voice platform, with more than 200 million active users, has slowed down your system of global age verification until the second half of 2026 after its initial announcement sparked a firestorm of criticism. When people have started leaving in droves and looking for other alternatives, the company has thought twice. Chaos. Discord announced a few weeks ago which would implement an age verification system to ensure that adult content only reached adult users. The idea was that all accounts would start with a “teen-appropriate” setting by default, unless they could prove they were of legal age. The problem: The communication was so horrible that a significant part of the community understood that the platform was going to ask everyone for facial scans and ID documents in order to continue using it. The result was chaos. Distrust. In October of last year, Discord confirmed that had suffered a security breach at one of its third-party providers. This exposed sensitive data, including photographs of identity documents, of approximately 70,000 users. That background was very fresh when the announcement of the new system came. Added to this was that among the partners who were being considered to implement the verification Person appeareda company with financial ties to Peter Thiel, co-founder of Palantir, a company known for its contracts with US government immigration and surveillance agencies. And of course, for many users, this combination was simply unacceptable. What Discord says was really going to happen. In a release Posted on Tuesday, Discord CTO Stanislav Vishnevskiy stated that more than 90% of users would never have needed to verify anything, because most do not access age-restricted content or modify default security settings. In addition, it ensures that the platform already has internal systems capable of determining the age of majority of many users automatically, analyzing signals such as the age of the account, whether it has a linked payment method or the type of servers to which it belongs. According to Vishnevskiy, this system does not read messages or analyze the content posted by users. Recognizing mistakes, with nuances. “The way this landed led many of you to believe we were demanding facial scans and document uploads from everyone,” Vishnevskiy wrote. “That’s not what’s happening, but the fact that so many people believe it tells us that we failed at the most basic thing: clearly explaining what we’re doing and why.” That said, it is worth remembering what points out the media PC Gamer, since Discord did not make any of these concessions until after the avalanche of criticism. What changes now? The platform promises several things before relaunching the system globally. Among them, adding more verification options, including means of payment, publishing detailed information on its website about each third-party provider and their data practices, and requiring that any company that offers facial age estimation do so entirely on the user’s device, without sending biometric data to any server. On Persona, Discord confirms that it ran a limited test with them in the UK in January and decided not to continue, precisely because it didn’t meet that last requirement. A global address. Discord is not new, and it is happening in a much broader context. The United Kingdom, Australia and Brazil already have legislation that requires platforms to verify the age of their users to access adult content. Europe and several US states they go in the same direction. Discord argues that by building its own system, it can demonstrate to regulators that it is possible to verify age without collecting identity data. In countries where there is already a legal obligation, the system will remain active regardless of the global delay. Cover image | Discord and own assembly In Xataka | “We will not flood our ecosystem with soulless AI garbage.” We already know what Asha Sharma wants to do as CEO of Microsoft Gaming

International law was written with humans who decide in mind. AI just broke that chain and no one knows who answers now

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Pete Hegseth’s threat to Dario Amodei has a subtext that goes far beyond the $200 million contract that the Pentagon can cancel: If the US military deploys AI-controlled autonomous weapons without the safeguards that Anthropic requiresyou will have removed the only firewall that has historically prevented an illegal order from being executed. Why is it importantand. The entire legal and ethical system of the US military rests on a principle that seems obvious but has important consequences: a soldier can and should disobey a manifestly illegal order. It is the mechanism that, in theory, prevents war crimes. A drone AI-controlled autonomous vehicle does not have that mechanism. You can’t refuse. You can’t hesitate. He cannot be tried in a court-martial. Between the lines. Amodei speaks of “autonomous weapons that fire without human intervention” to point out a legal vacuum. If an AI makes the decision to kill, who is responsible criminally? The programmer? The general who activated the system? The president who signed the order? International humanitarian law (including the Geneva Conventions) was written with human beings making decisions in mind. And now AI dissolves that chain of responsibility. The backdrop. The mass surveillance argument is also a bitter pill to swallow. The Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution protects citizens from warrantless searches and interventions. It works, among other reasons, because the State has never had the physical capacity to process everything that happens in public spaces. And in the same way, with AI that operational limit disappears: we move to millions of conversations recorded in real time, transcribed, classified and connected in just seconds. What was previously impossible due to lack of human resources becomes routine with a LLM. Constitutional protection until now has depended, in part, on the inefficiency of the State, its limitations. Yes, but. The Pentagon has an argument that cannot be ruled out: other democracies are also developing these capabilities, and China or Russia are not going to wait for the United States to resolve their ethical dilemmas. The practical question is whether having those unrestricted capabilities makes you safer or simply more dangerous to your own citizens. The big question. OpenAI and Google have accepted the Pentagon’s conditions“all legal uses” without specific exceptions, and xAI has just been cleared to operate on classified systems. Anthropic has been left alone in its position. And what is at stake now is not whether Claude survives as a military supplier or not, it is whether the AI ​​industry is going to set some limit on what it sells to the State, or whether that debate will be settled directly by Congress, the courts or, in the worst case, the first serious incident that no one could have foreseen. It seems like a matter of time. In Xataka | AI is already a battlefield: Anthropic has just accused DeepSeek and other Chinese companies of “distilling” Claude Featured image | Xataka

The Ministry of Consumer Affairs wants to prohibit them for children under 16 years of age

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For years, Spain (the West, in general) has had a problem with energy drinks. According to 2025 data, 38.4% of students from 14 to 18 years old declares having consumed them in the last 30 days. And so it shows in sales: last year 105 million liters were sold; which represents a growth of almost 39% in the last four years. And today, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs has just announced that wants to take action on the matter. As explained, it will prohibit the sale of energy drinks to children under 16 years of age and will impose an additional restriction for drinks with more than 32 mg of caffeine (per 100 ml) up to 18 years of age. Does it make sense? Is it a real problem? Will the ban help? What does the Ministry want to do? For a start, Consumption wants transfer to the legal level something that was already explicitly indicated in the recommendations of the Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition. Something that also already applies in specific environments and areas of the country. However, the regulation has details that will merit detailed analysis. For example, the threshold of 320 mg/L is striking in one context (the european) that sets notices starting at 150. Above all, because a gray area will be created for drinks labeled “high in caffeine” that can be sold to minors under 18. We will have to read the details of the rule to study its implications, but what does seem certain is that, with this step, Spain is going to enormously simplify one of the big problems that its regulation had on this issue: the disparity in minimum ages throughout the country. And that, we hope, will simplify its approach from social policies and public health. But what’s the problem with all this? The image of kids with huge 500 ml cans and bright colors has become ‘normal’ and the growth is enormous (in the United Kingdom, where we have longer series, the consumption of these products increased by 155% between 2006 and 2014). And how says the Spanish Food Safety Agency (AESAN), “the consumption of more than 60 milligrams of caffeine in adolescents aged 11 to 17 years (about 200 milliliters of energy drink with 32 mg of caffeine/100 ml) can cause sleep disturbances.” And this is just the beginning of the problems it can cause. “From 160 milligrams of caffeine (500 milliliters of an energy drink with 32 mg of caffeine/100 ml), (the consumption of these drinks) can cause general adverse health effects: psychological effects and behavioral alterations and cardiovascular disorders.” An invisible health problem. Because, as we know, lack of sleep is related to immunological problems, metabolic, cardiovascular, emotional and cognitive; with disorders such as diabetes or of the obesity. It leads us to be more tired and irritable, raises our stress levels and makes us take more risks and make more mistakes. None of this means that we are going to develop one of these diseases from consuming energy drinks, but it is clear that it puts us in a complicated situation. Above all, because it coincides with what we already know from other sources. “Energy drink consumption, even infrequent, was associated with several negative health indicators. Reporting of several health-compromising behaviors increased with frequency of energy drink consumption.” They are the conclusions by Maija Puupponen and her team at the University of Jyväskylä. And how explained Julio BasultoTo begin with, these drinks are correlated “with a significant increase in the likelihood of insomnia, nervousness, anxiety, depression, impulsivity, and poor academic performance, among others.” As if that were not enough, its frequent consumption can generate “hypertension, loss of bone density, osteoporosis, poor psychological, physical, educational and general well-being, among other consequences.” But the problem goes beyond health: it is cultural. And energy drinks have become a “prestigious” cultural practice among young people that is linked to an enormous amount of risk behavior. Nobody wants to compare it with tobacco, of course: but the truth is that many of the psychosocial mechanisms involved They have everything to do with tobacco. At some point there had to be a national debate about this and better sooner than later. Image | Diego Calabresa In Xataka | It’s not just sugar, hundreds of industries try to deceive us: we have a problem and it’s time to look for solutions

the price of being on TikTok or Instagram all day

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It’s quite a motherly phrase to hear that being in front of your phone all the time watching TikTok or playing the video game console has a very clear effect on the brain and that it ‘rots’. In English, this is something that is known as ‘brain rot’ and refers to this lightheadedness after several hours in front of screens, and science has now begun to take this concept as something very important and not like an internet meme. Its meaning. This concept related to the brain ‘rotting’ refers to the cognitive deterioration and mental exhaustion that people suffer, especially in adolescents and young adults, due to excessive exposure to low-quality online material. And although this started as a meme, it is today a neurocognitive syndrome confirmed by institutions like the American Psychological Association, where it has been seen that the brain is literally getting smaller. The dopamine trap. The design of short video platforms like TikTok it’s not accidentalbut it is created to retain the user’s attention so that they do not stop sliding the screen down. And it is something that is very well studied, since, as interaction on these social platforms increases, so does the brain’s need to receive a dopamine rush. It literally creates a dependency. Doomscrolling. This system in our brain, driven by dopamine, encourages a never-ending cycle of consumption, which has given rise to terms like ‘Doomscrolling‘ which is the compulsive action of scrolling through social media feeds focused on negative information or distressing. And this, rather than generating rejection, causes us to be in a state of hypervigilance linked to high levels of anxiety, stress and cognitive fatigue. There is also another concept quite important in the world of social networks such as ‘Zombie scrolling’, which consists of passively scrolling through social networks without any purpose or objective. In this way, this mentally absent consumption reduces the brain’s ability to maintain sustained attention. Brain effect. The act of constantly scrolling on the screen is something that has been widely studied today and points to measurable neurological consequences. What has been seen here is that the brain experience cognitive overload when you try to process the constant flow of fragmented information, with topics that are really disparate from one video to the next, making you not have time to process the first before starting to watch the second. Its consequences. Research published in Addictive Behaviors they point out that compulsive cell phone use reduces the volume of gray matter in key areas for empathy, memory and self-regulation. This means that literally the brain is reducing its size with the passage of time due to the fact of being like a zombie browsing TikTok all day. In addition to this, science has seen that addiction to short videos increases activity in reward and emotion regions, causing structural differences in the frontal cortex and increasing impulsivity. Something that adds to the memory impairmentfailures in long-term retention and also at a worse attention performance. How to avoid it. As alarming as this may seem, we must remember that we have brain neuroplasticity on our side to be able to reverse these effects. In this way, there are several strategies to mitigate the fact that the brain begins to be greatly affected by being on social networks for a large number of hours. One of the tips is undoubtedly to reduce the time we spend in front of the screen to reduce cognitive overload. Furthermore, stopping following accounts that provoke negative emotions and looking for environments that are positive or friendlier to avoid anxiety is something we should get used to in our daily lives. Images | Hoi An and Da Nang In Xataka | The science of “doomscrolling”: how technology hacked psychology so we can’t let go of our phones

Mercadona has become the great supermarket in Spain. Now it is becoming your big restaurant

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On Saturday, at the gym door, I heard a group of friends talking about going out to eat. The debate ended when one of them proposed going to Mercadona and buying some hamburgers in the section ‘Ready to Eat’. From then on the talk went from focusing on ‘where to buy’ to ‘where to eat’: in the supermarket itself, on the beach (advantages of living in Galicia) or in a house. It could be a simple anecdote, if it weren’t for the fact that that conversation between colleagues at the exit of a gym hides something else: Mercadona is becoming the great food supplier from Spain. And it is so to such an extent that it no longer only rivals the rest of the retailbut with the bars, whose pulse is doubling. A percentage: 19.7%. A few weeks ago the consulting firm Worldpanel by Numerator (formerly Kantar) published a report which helps to understand the enormous weight that Mercadona has achieved, not only in the retail homeland, but in the food sector in general: the Valencian chain accounts for a 19.7% share of value in food and beverage consumption. That means it receives almost 20% of what we spend on food and drink, both inside and outside the home. Company-Collective Value share in food and drink consumption Mercadona 19.7% Bar+Cafeteria+Terraces 11.2% Independent Restaurants 8.6% T. Carrefour 6% Lidl 5.1% Quick Service Restaurant 3.4% G. Eroski 3.1% DAY 2.8% consumption 2.7% Alcampo 2% ALDI 1.4% Full-Service Restaurant 0.9% Why is it important? Because that percentage shows that Mercadona already sells as much or more food than traditional hospitality, at least in terms of value. The Worldpanel by Numerator report shows that bars, cafes and terraces account for a value share in food and beverages of around 11.2% and independent restaurants another 8.6%. Together they add up to 19.8%. That last percentage surpasses Mercadona by only one tenth. The list is completed by Carrefour, which accounts for 6%, Lidl (5.1%), the concept of Quick Service Restaurant (3.4%), G. Eroski (3.1%), DIA (2.8%) and Consum (2.7%). A half surprise. That Mercadona accounts for 19.7% of what we Spaniards spend on food is striking, but in reality it is hardly surprising. The data is explained by two trends that seem to move in opposite directions. The first is that we eat more and more at home. According to The Economistspending on food outside the home fell 2.2% last year. Domestic consumption increased, however, by half a point, 0.6%. Mercadona has been able to anticipate this scenario and has been betting heavily on its ‘Ready to Eat’ section since 2018, a section in which it offers already prepared dishes, from starters to sandwiches, stews, paella, lentils, meatballs, pasta… In December the chain had implemented the service in more than 1,110 stores. Nothing surprising if you take into account that Juan Roig, the owner of the company, assures that kitchens will eventually disappear from homes. Expanding your footprint. Mercadona is not only gaining strength as a competitor to the traditional hospitality industry (a sector that faces its own internal challenges, such as the menu of the day crisis), it also does so within the sector of retail. The Valencian chain has been leading it for some time, but that has not prevented it from continuing to expand its domain. The Worldpanel report also reflects that in 2025 the company consolidated its position in food distribution, increasing its share in 0.6 percentage points until they monopolize 27% of the entire ‘pie’. Go for the baskets. Carrefour is followed in the ranking, with a share of 9%, although the French firm experienced a decline of 0.7 percentage points, Lidl (6.9%), Grupo Eroski (4.3%), Dia (3.8%), Consum (3.6%), Alcampo (2.8%) and Aldi (2%). One of the keys that has allowed Mercadona to reinforce its leadership is the increase in the so-called “large baskets”, that is, purchases of the week or month, which concentrate household spending on its shelves. In 2025, Roig’s company reached a 42% share in this type of operations, 0.9% more than in 2024. Another of its advantages is the white label push in the sector of retail and the growing weight of “short assortment chains”, those with a limited supply and very focused on prices. Images | Wikipedia and K8 (Unsplash) In Xataka | We knew that Mercadona was making gold from its suppliers. Now we know the million-dollar toll that this entails.

China has stormed in, aiming directly at its aircraft carriers

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In the Persian Gulf, where it transits near one fifth of world oil, every military movement It has a more than obvious global importance. A single Nimitz-class aircraft carrier costs more than $4 billion and can operate for half a century, while its embarked air wing is equivalent in power to the entire air force of many countries. Moles such as the USS Abraham Lincoln or the USS Gerald R. Ford concentrate thousands of crew and hundreds of aircraft, if you will too, decades of American naval supremacy. However, in that region accustomed to fragile balancesa technological change or a new alliance is enough to alter everything. A pulse that is no longer bilateral. The confrontation between Washington and Tehran can no longer be understood as a direct duel with Russia as the only strategic shadow support. The US naval buildup off the Iranian coast, led by the USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier battle groups, seemed to place the pressure in a classic framework maritime deterrent. However, the scenario has changed and in what way. Washington’s fight against Iran has entered another dimension. It is no longer just Russia supporting the Iranian regime with drones or point systems: China just entered squarely aiming directly at the American aircraft carriers, altering the psychological and operational balance of the crisis. The missile that changes the naval equation. I told it in Reuters exclusive. Iran is about to close the purchase of the Chinese CM-302a supersonic anti-ship cruise missile with a range close to 290 kilometers and designed to fly low and fast, reducing the reaction time of naval defenses. Marketed by the state corporation CASIC as “the best anti-ship missile in the world,” its mere integration into the Iranian arsenal increases the threat about surface units Americans deployed in the Gulf and the regional environment. Now it is not just a technical improvement in an arsenal weakened after the conflict with Israel, but a qualitative leap: for the first time in this crisis, the ability to sink or disable An American aircraft carrier ceases to be a remote hypothesis and becomes a tangible strategic variable. China enters the Gulf board. There is no doubt, the negotiations between Beijing and Tehran are not improvised. I counted the means they carry at least two years brewing in internal meetings, but accelerated after the twelve day war with Israel and have involved numerous trips by senior Iranian officials to China, including the deputy defense minister. In parallel, China has politically supported Iran against the reimposition of sanctions and has intensified its coordination with Moscow and Tehran in joint naval exercises. So much so, that the possible transfer of the CM-302 de facto challenges the embargo regime and symbolizes something deeper: the unprecedented will of Beijing to project power in a region historically dominated by the US Navy. The implicit message is quite clear: if Washington presses with its nuclear aircraft carriers, China responds with missiles capable of putting them at risk. Russia rebuilds Iranian defense from below. It we count a few days ago. As China aims for the sea, Russia strengthens the sky and the ground. The agreement to supply helicopters Mi-28NE attack and Verba portable systems It is part of a rearmament package aimed at rebuilding Iranian capabilities after the degradation suffered against Israel. The Mi-28, optimized for night and low-altitude operations, provide Iran with a modern tool to respond to ground incursions, special operations or amphibious movements in the Gulf. Integrated with drones and precision anti-tank missiles, expand threat density around strategic infrastructures and possible approach routes. They do not redefine the regional balance on their own, but they do thicken the defensive network that any CENTCOM planning must consider. From classical deterrence to multidimensional risk. In short, the United States deploy forces with the intention of deterring or preparing for prolonged attacks if nuclear negotiations fail. Iran, for its part, responds activating military agreements with his allies and rebuilding capabilities losses. What was previously a contained confrontation between Washington and Tehran, with Moscow as relevant partner but indirect, it is now transformed into a strategic triangle where China assumes an active and visible role. If you also want, the Gulf stops being just a regional scenario and becomes a point of friction between great powers. The presence supersonic missile Chinese forces that can directly threaten the symbols of American naval power introduce a new geometry of risk: because it is no longer just about resisting sanctions or negotiate nuclear limitsbut also to calculate how far a crisis can escalate in which the holy grail US military, its aircraft carriers, no longer seem untouchable. Image | US NAVY In Xataka | From space something very dangerous can be seen in Iran: the US cannot do what it did in Caracas if it does not want a massacre In Xataka | If the US attacks Iran with drones, it will find a surprise: Russia has shielded its sky with an explosive weapon, Verba

Germany wanted to see if working four days a week was efficient. 70% of companies think so

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The four-day work week started in Germany as an experiment to search for the maximum productivity of companies without having an impact on an exhausted workforce and without the ability to reconcile family life. Two years after the start of this test, the data confirms that for the companies that participated it was not a simple test, but rather it has materialized in a change in the way of working that many companies have decided to consolidate. Now the monitoring report prepared by researchers from the University of Münster together with the consulting firm 4 Day Week Global. It analyzes what happened after the pilot test that began in 2024 and what subsequent effects it has had. The main conclusion is that around 70% of the companies that participated in that test continue to apply some model of reduction of working hours a year later. A known formula and a varied sample. The original four-day week project in Germany was built around to the 100-80-100 model: 100% of salary, 80% of time and 100% of productivity. This model of reduction of working hours is the same one that was carried out in Valencia in 2023, Portugal either United Kingdom. In the initial phase, 45 companies from different sectors participated, dedicated to manufacturing, insurance, technology, media, commerce or education. Furthermore, to be as representative as possible of the German industrial fabric, companies of different sizes were chosen: from micro-businesses with 1 to 9 employees, to large companies with more than 250 employees. The first data already gave clues. Researchers have been collecting data from participating companies and their employees since day one. A few months after starting the test, the companies were delighted with the results, to the point that in preliminary results73% said they would not return to the traditional five-day week. The new report provides the perspective that time gives and whether that initial impetus has been consolidated. Two years after the start of the test, seven out of ten companies that participated in the test not only maintain the four-day workdaybut they have integrated it into their normal operation. More than four days: flexible reduction of working time. One of the most interesting findings from the monitoring is that the four-day workweek model has evolved and every organization has implemented it adapting it to your needs. Not all companies have opted for a Monday to Thursday work week. Around 22% of the participating companies have adapted the initial scheme towards more flexible formulas: reduction of annual hours, alternate weeks or internal adjustments according to workload. The report itself speaks less of a “four-day week” and more of “reduction of work time“. The label matters less than the redesign of the work day and the elimination of superfluous tasks, fewer unnecessary meetings and greater autonomy of the teams. No impact on profits or productivity. In business terms, the German test has been a success since, despite having maintained 80% of the initial day, there have been no drops in either the level of profits or in productivity or slightly improved with respect to the starting point. That is, they have managed to do the same thing in less time. What it did have a strong impact on was the well-being of employees, where 90% reported improvements in the balance between personal and professional life. As a result of this improvement, employees reported feeling less stress and greater commitment to the company. 38% of companies indicated that sick leave and absenteeism of their employees had been reduced, while 56% claimed to have detected no changes. Lights and shadows in the reduction of working hours. Progress was also observed in job satisfaction and in the perception of the company as an attractive place to work. The study indicates that 87% of companies detected improvements in talent retention. For their part, 75% claimed that their companies now had a greater capacity to attract talent in selection processes. This, in a scenario of labor shortagerepresents a competitive advantage. However, as happened in other tests of the four-day work week, not all companies have followed the same evolution. About 30% stopped applying the initial scheme or returned to the traditional five-day week. The main reasons were operational, difficulties in coordinate with your clientswork peaks that are difficult to absorb or inflexible internal structures. In Xataka | Employees in Spain clear up doubts: working fewer days is better than working fewer hours, according to a survey In Xataka | Spain already has its first municipality with a four-day work week. It is not in Madrid or Barcelona, ​​but in a corner of Cádiz Image | Unsplash (Gonzalo Leon Jasin, Josue Isai Ramos Figueroa)

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