Mobile Tech & Gadgets

Mercadona is growing more than ever and still has the capacity to grow more. The game is played in the north

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He who leads always leads, even if he does not always lead the same way. It sounds like a tacky tongue twister, I know; but that phrase sums up well the place that Mercadona occupies in the national distribution sector. We have been repeating for years that the Valencian chain is the one that takes largest portion of the “pie” of the sector, with a business quota 27% at the state level, but that reality is not equally forceful throughout Spain. For example, in Levante its footprint skyrockets to almost 34% while in the northwest it remains at 18.2%, only three points above its most direct competitor in that region, Eroski. What does that mean? That there is a part of Spain in which the company has ample room for growth. And in a way the Duero marks it. The general photo. Whether or not you are satisfied with your commercial offer or corporate strategythere is something that cannot be denied: Mercadona has known how to play its cards well. The company led by Juan Roig has managed to gain a share in its sector that is close to 30%. And that the distribution is not un simple business in Spain, where the super regional and ultra low-cost. NielsenIQ estimates that by the end of 2025 that footprint was 29.5%0.3% more than in 2024. Worldpanel by Numerator lowers it slightly until it is in 27%. In any case, the reading is the same: the Valencian company clearly dominates, comfortably ahead of its most direct competitors, Carrefour and Lidl. It has even made a more than respectable place for itself in the portuguese marketwhere it has carved out a 7% distribution share in just a decade. Paying attention to the map. The above will surprise few. What is striking is that just revealed Expansion based on data from Worldpanel by Numerator: Mercadona may be the sector leader in value share, but that dominance is not equally solid throughout Spain. Its great fiefdom is in what the consultancy calls ‘Levante’, an area made up of the Valencian Community, Murcia and Albacete. There its share reaches 33.6%. Not only is it the highest percentage in the entire Spanish geography and it is seven percentage points above the chain’s national share. It also doubles the mark of its main competitor, Consum, which remains at 16.8%. The ‘photo’ It is completed by Carrefour, with 7.9% of the pie, Lidl (5.2%) and Family Cash (2.9%). Are there more cases? Of course. The other region in which Mercadona has gained the largest share in value is the Canary Islands, with 31.9%, ten points above the next chain on the list, Dinosol (21.1%). In the ‘South’ territory (Andalusia and Badajoz) the firm’s footprint also exceeds 30% (31.5%). The results of Mercadona are equally strong in the ‘Central’ region (Madrid, Cáceres and part of Castilla-La Mancha, Castilla y León and Aragón), where it reaches 27.5%, and ‘Northwest’ (Catalonia and the rest of Aragón), with 26.2%. In all cases the same photograph is repeated, replicated in the areas of Madrid and Barcelona: Mercadona far surpasses its main territorial rival. The northern redoubt. The really interesting thing is, however, in the northern Atlantic and Cantabrian seas. The Worldpanel data by Numerator They show that Mercadona is still a leader there, but in a much less emphatic way. First because its quota is much lower than that held in Levante or the Canary Islands. Second, because it does not maintain much of an advantage over its competitors. The most revealing case is the ‘North-Central’ (Cantabria, Navarra, Palencia, Burgos, La Rioja and the Basque Country), a territory in which Mercadona’s footprint is 19.1%. It is enough to be dominant, but it is only one percentage point behind Eroski (18.1%). In third place is Carrefour (9.8%). It is a scenario similar to what we find in Galicia, Asturias and León, what the consultancy calls ‘Northwest’. Mercadona registers its lowest share in that region, 18.22%. Second place is once again occupied by Eroski (15.1%), followed by Gadisa (10.1%), Carrefour (6.8%) and Alimerka (5.8%). Click on the image to go to the tweet. Why is it important? Beyond the fact that these percentages help us better understand how the company is distributed and how it has managed to dominate the market at a national level, the regional results from Worldpanel by Numerator leave an interesting reading about Mercadona: its future largely passes through the north of the peninsula, where it has greater room for growth. When we decide where to make the purchase, we not only evaluate the prices and variety of the assortment, we also take into account factors such as proximity or more subjective values ​​such as taste or loyalty to a brand. Together they form a ‘barrier’ that determines how far a company’s share can go. At the moment Mercadona has managed to extend its footprint nationwide to 27%. It is not unreasonable to think that even has not hit the ceilingbut the fact that in the northwest area it is only 18.2% and in the Cantabrian Sea it is around 19% suggests that in those territories the margin for growth is much broader and clearer. Not everything is advantages. No, of course. The data published by Expansion They also reveal that the leadership of the Valencian chain is much weaker in the northwest and the area made up of the Basque Country, Navarra, La Rioja and the north of Castilla y León, where it is only one point ahead of its regional rival, Eroski. This makes it easier for them to be overtaken and to see their position threatened. After all, Mercadona has not been established throughout the country for the same amount of time. In Vigo, without going any further, I only had two stores in mid-2013. And that is a city of almost 300,000 inhabitants, the largest in the entire northwest of the peninsula. If it wants to establish itself, Roig’s company will have to erode the share of … Read more

What did Nietzsche mean by “we contradict an opinion when in reality what we find unpleasant is the tone”

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I’m not sure how to write this so as not to be unpleasant, but Nietzsche was right. Yeah, he had a weird mustachehe was loaded with opium and loved to take long walks in the Alps; but he was right. At least when it comes to one of his most apparently innocuous, but most radical ideas: that it often doesn’t matter if someone is right or wrong, that we make the decision to agree with them beforehand, that what matters most to us is the tone, the forms. The rest, although it doesn’t hurt to admit it, doesn’t matter. 150 years after Nietzsche, cognitive science has proven him right. What did Nietzsche mean…? In 1878, in the midst of a break with Wagner and Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche published ‘Human, too human‘. It was his first book of aphorisms and in it he abandons romantic aesthetics and sets out to find a new way of observing the world. In that book, the Austrian philosopher makes a complete x-ray of the psychological junk of human beings. “Opinions are born from passions,” he says in aphorism 637. “Convictions are more dangerous enemies of the truth than lies,” he writes in 483. But the one that interests us is 303. Where Nietzsche discovered confirmation bias. “Often, we contradict an opinion when in reality what we find unpleasant is only the tone in which it was expressed,” says that aphorism. And that sounds a lot like what modern cognitive science calls ‘confirmation bias‘: the tendency to search for, interpret and remember information in such a way that pre-existing beliefs, expectations or hypotheses are reinforced. First we form an idea from the tone of the person speaking to us and then we justify it. Simple, clean and perfectly confirmed by the evidence. Ultimately, what Nietzsche did is anticipate many of the ideas that Kahneman and Tversky They earned him the Nobel Prize. But that matters little, what matters is what we can learn. And, under that sullen and savage reputation, Nietzsche has a lot of useful ideas. This intuition, without going any further, has a direct and everyday application: when someone addresses us with a tone that we perceive as aggressive, condescending or arrogant, our brain activates defense mechanisms that prevent us from rationally processing the content. We do not evaluate what they tell us, we evaluate how they tell us. Reactanceconfirmation bias and post-hoc rationalization: the perfect combo to act automatically without paying attention to reasons or consequences. In the same way, Nietzschenian reflection helps us think about how we address others. And that is worth it. Image | Xataka In Xataka | “A place of joy with pain”: the phrase that summarizes the Aztec philosophy to be happier in this life

that in addition to cars, Ford and Cadillac manufacture missiles

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In 1942, the Willow Run Factory in Michigan, operated by Ford Motor Company, managed to assemble a B-24 bomber every 63 minutes, something unthinkable for an industry that until recently produced cars in series. That feat turned a civilian assembly line on a capable machine to sustain a war on a global scale. Now the drums of war are beating again in car factories around the planet. An economy that returns to war mode. The United States is beginning to recover an industrial logic that seemed buried since the mid-20th century: converting its civilian muscle into a direct extension of the military effort. He had exclusive the wall street journal that there are already Pentagon conversations with giants such as Ford Motor Company and General Motors that reflect more than just an increase in production, pointing to a transformation of the role of the industry in a context where conflicts in Ukraine and Iran are draining arsenals at an unexpected rate. The underlying idea is simple but powerful, and already we had seen in Germany in recent months: if wars consume faster than the traditional military industry can replenish, the board must be expanded and civilian manufacturers brought back. From cars to missiles. The Pentagon is not only looking for specific contracts, but the ability to redirect factories, engineers and logistics chains towards the production of ammunition, anti-drone systems or tactical vehicles. This movement implies that companies used to manufacturing cars or heavy machinery can become direct support of the war effort, something that breaks with decades of specialization in a handful of defense contractors. In practice, it is a recognition that modern warfare (especially that based on drones and high-consumption ammunition) requires industrial volumes that are more reminiscent of a war economy than the limited conflicts of recent decades. The precedent. The historical reference is inevitable: during World War II, the Detroit automobile factories stopped producing cars to make bombersaircraft engines and large-scale military vehicles. That total conversion transformed American industry in a war machine capable of supporting multiple fronts simultaneously. Today, although the context is different, the logic underlying current conversations is the same: take advantage of the scale, efficiency and flexibility of civilian industry to cover military needs that exceed the capacity of the specialized sector. Korea, Vietnam and the law that made it possible. After the Second World War, Washington did not completely abandon this capacity for industrial mobilization, but rather institutionalized it with the Defense Production Law 1950, a legal framework that allows the government to prioritize and direct production toward military needs. During the Korean War, companies such as Ford Motor Company created specific divisions for defense contracts, while General Motors and other companies adapted their lines to manufacture military vehicles, engines and supplies. This model was activated again in later conflicts such as Vietnam, although in a more partial way, consolidating a tool that allows the civil industry to be reactivated in moments of strategic pressure without reaching the total mobilization of the 1940s. A system that falls short. The background of this turn is an uncomfortable reality that could already be find in Iran: the US defense industrial base, as designed today, it’s not enough to sustain prolonged, high-intensity wars while supplying allies. The massive transfer of weapons to Ukraine since 2022 and the additional wear and tear derived from the conflict with Iran have highlighted this limitation. For this reason, the Pentagon proposes expand production beyond the usual contractors, directly asking large manufacturers what capacity they can contribute and what obstacles they encounter in integrating into that effort. The return to a logic of total war. If you like, without explicitly declaring it, Washington is recovering an idea that seemed typical of another era: that, at certain moments, the entire economy can become part of the front. From that perspective, it is not yet a total conversion as in the Second World War, but it is a change of mentality that brings civil industry to military effort much more directly. In that sense, current wars are not only redefining the battlefield, but also the role of factories, which are once again placed at the center of strategy as if history were slowly turning backwards. First it was Volkswagen in Germanyand now it’s your turn to Cadillac in the United States. Image | Picryl, Dave Parker In Xataka | Not only has the US just lost the “eye” that Hormuz watched, its nuclear aircraft carrier is in Africa for fear of being shot down In Xataka | The US did not make ends meet in Iran by launching thousands of missiles a month. So let’s move on to plan B: humans.

A streamer shared out-of-print movies. Now Enrique Cerezo wants him to go to prison for two years and pay 870,000 euros

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In October 2021, five riot police equipped with shields, tactical shotguns and a battering ram burst into the home of a YouTuber from Burgos known as “El Feo”. They were not looking for weapons, drugs or criminals who had committed blood crimes, but hard drives with movies. Films out of circulation, that no one offered almost anywhere on the Internet and whose exploitation rights remained in legal limbo until that moment. David against Goliath. With that assault, the judicial process begins, which culminated on April 9 with the trial in Burgos against El Feo, the nickname of the person responsible for the YouTube channel. The Cursed and the now closed Zoowoman website. The private prosecution, headed by EGEDA (the entity for managing the rights of audiovisual producers that Enrique Cerezo has chaired since 1998), requests two and a half years in prison and compensation that the parties estimate between 850,000 and 870,000 euros. No profit motive. Zoowoman was a platform without advertising, subscription or any type of business model. Its purpose was to rescue and make available to the public out-of-print audiovisual works, films whose production companies had disappeared or that had erratic or zero commercial distribution. Zoowoman functioned as a collective repository of links: the community’s own users shared access to films hosted on external servers such as MEGA or archive.org, without the files residing on the web. Sister website. La Filmoteca Maldita, the associated YouTube channel that is currently still active, functions as an archive of essays that provide historical context and cultural readings of genre and cult cinema. It includes nearly 4,000 film analyzes (according to data provided by El Feo’s defense), which is pertinent when approaching its intentions as a cultural disseminator, rather than as a mere exploiter. Several of these videos, as well as the often unfindable films that resided in Zoowoman, have been used as teaching material in universities such as UNAM, the University of Buenos Aires or the University of Medellín, as Feo himself states in a video where he explains his case. The legal argument. The prosecution cannot claim direct profit from El Feo because Zoowoman did not generate income, so it relies on the reform of the Penal Code of 2015which expanded the definition of piracy to include “indirect economic benefit.” Under this interpretation, offering free movies can be considered a “hook” to attract followers to the main channel and reinforce the reputation of the creator and generate income through other means, which would constitute criminally relevant profit even if there is no money involved. The police investigation estimated the alleged indirect profit obtained in this way at around 12,000 euros. The defendant defended himself by explaining that this amount is equivalent to his total income as streamer during its first four years of activity, and that the messages that the agents interpreted as codes from a piracy network were donations from its community (“for your birthday”, “so that you can have a drink”), consistent with the crowdfunding model of any independent creator. In January 2025, before the trial was to take place, the prosecution tried to reach an agreement: if he pleaded guilty and paid 100,000 euros, the sentence would be reduced to one year in prison. El Feo rejected him. Who sues? Enrique Cerezo, apart from presiding over the plaintiff entity, is the owner of Video Mercury Films, the distributor that controls between 70 and 80% of all Spanish cinema, with a catalog of more than 7,000 titles. He is also the president of Atlético de Madrid and the promoter of FlixOléthe platform streaming launched in 2020 with the intention of disseminating Spanish cinema from all eras, much of it out of print or not seen for decades. The complaint that ended the 2021 raid occurred shortly after the launch of FlixOlé, whose catalog largely coincided with that distributed by Zoowoman. The logic, described by the accused himself, is that Zoowoman offered for free what the new platform charged in a subscription. Cerezo has not made public statements about the case. EGEDA acts as a private prosecutor on behalf of the producers whose rights it manages, which includes films in the Video Mercury catalogue. This is not the first time that EGEDA has embarked on complaints of this type: in 2017 it denounced WebTV device distributors and in 2022, to 17 websites that they spread content without permissionamong which was Zoowoman. Beyond the trial. If the thesis of indirect profit prospers, any free cultural dissemination channel that builds an audience could potentially be prosecuted under the same legal umbrella. There are international precedents that point in the same direction. In the United States, the case of Hachette against Internet Archive, resolved in 2024 with a defeat of the digital archive, demonstrated that courts tend to prioritize the rights of the owner over arguments of cultural access, even when the model is non-profit. The legal question. Spain has a regime for orphan works (transposed from a European directive in 2014 and developed by Royal Decree in 2016) but its use is reserved exclusively for public cultural institutions such as museums, libraries or film libraries. An individual or an independent digital creator cannot rely on it, which leaves precisely the type of initiative that Zoowoman represents without legal coverage and which is called into question from the very moment Cerezo creates FlixOlé so that these films are no longer inaccessible. Image | House of America In Xataka | AI has been built by plundering the content of the Internet. Now there are people who want to charge for allowing it

They have put the 21 most popular AI chatbots to perform differential diagnosis. They fail more than a fair shotgun

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‘House‘It’s a series that I love. I don’t care about the intrastories in the slightest, but the process of differential diagnosis – despite all the movie stuff – drives me crazy. This ability to rule out diseases that could explain the same symptoms to arrive at the most probable diagnosis seems like witchcraft to me. Well: they have put the 21 Most Popular AI Chatbots to make that differential diagnosis and the result is clear. It fails more than a fairground shotgun. In short. He Mass General Brigham It is not an ‘anyone’. It is a non-profit network of American doctors and hospitals, including two of the most prestigious medical teaching institutions in the country. From January to December 2025, a group of researchers from the institution they put 21 AI chatbots such as Claude 4.5 Opus, DeepSeek, Gemini 3.0 Pro, GPT-5 or Grok 4 to evaluate dozens of clinical cases with the aim of establishing their level of success in an early diagnosis. The information is extremely basic, but it is also what professionals have when making this differential diagnosis and the ultimate intention is to evaluate the clinical reasoning capacity of the latest generation language models to see if they can be a clinical ally. The answer is no. While models optimized for reasoning achieved much higher scores than simpler ones like Gemini 1.5 Flash, the bottom line is that LLMs are still limited for this task. The exam. Each of the models was given 29 clinical cases that represent more than 16,200 responses in total. The result is that these newer versions of the most powerful chatbots they couldn’t produce an adequate differential diagnosis in about 80% of cases when they only had basic information about the patient. The problem is that age, sex and symptoms is very vague information, yes, but it is one that human professionals who have to make this differential diagnosis ‘play’ with for the first time. Little by little, as they do other tests and obtain more information, they refine the result, but it is that first ‘discard’ treatment that often makes the difference. “We want to help separate the hype from the reality of these tools as they are applied to healthcare” another movie. And, precisely, as the LLM They were given more data, the performance and results were more robust. When the chatbot has more and more information such as physical analysis data, laboratory results and diagnostic images, things change and AI reaches the final diagnosis in more than 90% of cases. But of course, to reach that stage they must have almost all the clinical data, which further shows the gap with impotence when performing an initial filtering. Don’t trust Google ChatGPT. The researchers are clear that “these models are very good at identifying a final diagnosis when the data is complete, but they have difficulties at the beginning of an open case,” which leads them to emphasize that they should not be trusted at home. The AI ​​industry is pushing your product in the medical circuit, but the study points out that “despite continuous improvements, commercial LLMs are not ready for clinical implementation without supervision.” They state that a human is needed in the operation and “very close supervision” to be able to scale the use of an LLM in the healthcare field. And there they are always talking about professional use, but more and more cases are seen of people who previously treated themselves by trusting Google and who Now they do it trusting what ChatGPT tells them. In the study they emphasize that “hallucinations remain” in these latest generation models, also showing concerns about the safety and integrity of patients. About El Salvador. In any case, it is evident that, in the end, Medical AI is another helper, a tooland here what has been tested is a “common” chatbot that knows everything, but is not specialized in anything. In medicine, as in other industries, the use of AI can help with tasks such as eliminating possibilities or organizing thousands of data, but a chatbot is not yet a good companion in this differential diagnosis because it simply cannot be trusted. Those who are going to have to trust AI for any type of treatment are Salvadorans. El Salvador has been a pioneer country when it comes to adopting new technologies, and the president, Nayib Bukele, has just embarked on another experiment: $500 million to leave healthcare in the hands of Gemini. The population will have access to the app Dr.SV who will work as a family doctor. As detailed in The Countrythis AI will know the symptoms and will assign calls with doctors who will make the diagnosis. The AI ​​will monitor for consultations and chronic diseases and the goal is for it to take care of cancer patients in the future. According to Bukele, they are creating the best health system in the world, something curious considering that they laid off more than 7,700 health system employees during 2025. For the sake of Salvadorans, let’s hope that This new experiment does not end like Bitcoin City. In Xataka | Privacy is dying since ChatGPT arrived. Now our obsession is for AI to know us as best as possible

The oceans are smoking and the bad news is that that phrase is starting to stop being a metaphor

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Global sea surface temperature is once again approaching 2024 records, Arctic ice marks its historic winter minimum and the average temperature is 1.43 degrees above pre-industrial levels. What’s more, the Earth’s energy imbalance has reached its highest level in 65 years. And all of this without El Niño being active. So I have to correct myself: what is happening is not that the sea is smoking. That’s a huge understatement. What happens is that the oceans have gone up a notch and we are completely caught out of the game. What is happening? According to Copernicus dataIn March, the global average temperature was 13.94 degrees. That is 0.53 above the 1991-2020 average and 1.48 above the pre-industrial temperature. It’s not the warmest March on record, but it’s close. In contrast, February 2026 was one of the three coldest in the last 14 years. And it’s curious because, anyway, we are in ENSO-Neutral conditions. The 2024 record was reached with El Niño pumping heat from the Pacific; Now we are in the most absolute normality. That does have experts from half the world worried. And the sea? In the sea things are more complicated because the surface temperature is very close to lrecord ace of 2024. Furthermore, it is not a question of a specific rebound: it is the result of a sustained rise throughout the entire month of March. There are specific areas (subtropical and northeastern North Atlantic, North and South Pacific) that are already at record values; The big question is what will happen at the end of the year and, above all, at the beginning of the year when El Niño is at its highest peak of intensity. Well, but this doesn’t affect us much, right? It depends on what we mean by ‘affect’, of course. What there is no doubt is that, despite the fact that temperatures are rising around the world, the Mediterranean has become the great laboratory for all detected and undetected climate risks. After all, Mare Nostrum heats up to 20% faster than the global average. And that has clear and direct consequences for water: from the mass extinction of vertebrates to the decline of grasslands to an enormous mortality of fish. Is a sea dying little by little; a sea that drags us with it: because the heat of the Mediterranean injects more water vapor and fuels extreme precipitation phenomena. The DANA of Valencia It’s a reminder of all this.. That is, the scenario is known. What remains is to see what we do to prepare for it. Images | BenBaso | Xataka In Xataka | Something strange has happened in the stratospheric polar vortex. And it is a hint of the winter that awaits Spain

We thought we were 8 billion people on the entire planet. Until some researchers started crunching the numbers

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In November 2022, the UN celebrated that we were now 8 billion humans on Earth. They are estimates, of course, but beyond the figure, the really interesting thing is that in 2023 we do not reach the replacement rate and that humanity will reach its peak at the end of the century to, inevitably, start to fall. But… to what extent can we trust these accounts? It is something that has been on the table for some time and, according to a study of 2025, we have made a mistake in counting. So much so that we have left several hundred million people behind. Can we trust the numbers? “Calculating the number of people on the planet is an inexact science.” That was demographer Jakub Bijak’s comment to BBC in mid-2024, just when the World Population Prospects study. Something scientific is something exact, but the researcher also commented that the only thing you can be sure of when predicting population figures is the lack of certainty. That, be careful, does not mean that demographers take figures out of thin air. “It is a difficult thing based on our experience, knowledge and every piece of information we have access to,” said Toshiko Kanera, an expert in demographic forecasts. Demographers draw on the data and trends of each country since 1950, but… what if it had not been counted correctly? We are missing millions. In a 2025 study published in Natureresearchers at Aalto University in Finland show how the data sets handled by demographers “profoundly and systematically” underestimate population figures around the world. The serious thing is that we would be talking about hundreds of millions more people living on Earth. Example of the tools that demographers use in their analysis. Each one corresponds to a different bias Rural areas. Josias Láng-Ritter is one of the researchers in charge of the study and points to the accounts carried out in a specific segment: that of rural population. “For the first time, our study provides evidence that a significant proportion of the rural population could be missing from global population data sets,” he notes. As we say, we are not talking about a few million, but billions. “Depending on the data set used, rural populations have been underestimated between 53% and 84% in the period studied. The results are notable, since these data sets have been used in thousands of studies and have widely supported decision making, but their accuracy has not been systematically evaluated,” comments the researcher. The map shows the location of the 307 rural areas analyzed in the study. The populations reported in the graph were found to be underestimated by between 53% and 84% | Aalto University Biases. Attempts to review this data are not new, but previous research has focused on specific countries or urban areas. Researchers from Aalto University wanted to give a more global picture by comparing the five most used population data sets worldwide. They have used maps that divide the planet into high-resolution grids and have taken something very specific as a reference: resettlement figures from more than 300 rural dam projects in 35 countries. Why this bias of the dams? Because when a dam is builtthe population that lives in the area that will be flooded is relocated and accurate resettlement data is usually available. Comparing that population data from 1975 to 2010, the researchers found that the 2010 maps were more accurate, but still left out between 32% and 77% of the rural population. Between 2015 and 2020 the data sets were updated, but demographers continue to believe that underestimation of the rural population continues to exist and is a problem that persists in all regions of the world. Consequences. And we are talking about a problem whose resolution is complex. According to the researchers, no matter how much the data is reviewed, it is a structural problem. Governments do not have the resources to collect accurate data in these rural regions, there is a huge discrepancy between the real population and that reported on the population maps used to carry out demographic studies and that influences decision making. Average percentage of rural population underestimated (red and orange) and overestimated (blue) | Aalto University And it’s important. Current estimates place 43% of the 8.2 billion inhabitants of the world in rural areas -about 3,526 million people- and if we take into account that it is a percentage that has been underestimated between 53% and 84%, we are not talking about a small population, precisely. And it is essential to know exactly how many we are for a simple reason: the redistribution of resources. No data. The lack of accurate demographic records can affect political decision-making. Ritter gives the example of social decisions. “In many countries, there may not be enough data available at the national level, so they rely on global population maps to support their decisions: Do we need a paved road or a hospital? How much medicine is needed in a specific area? How many people could be affected by natural disasters like earthquakes or floods?” he says. Doing quick math, in the best scenario – that of 53% deviation in the rural population – we would be talking about 1,869 million people who would not have been counted. In the worst case, in that of the 84% not registered, we would talk about 2,962 million people. In the Nature study, they give the example of Paraguay, which in the 2012 census may have left out a quarter of the population. Reviewing the methods. In the team’s analysis, there are countries that fare better than others. They point to Finland as an example of reliable data, even in rural regions, because they began keeping digital records of the population 30 years ago. However, in countries where this thorough digital registration has taken longer to be implemented due to crises of any kind, the differences between the real population and the estimated one can be significant. “To provide rural communities … Read more

China has almost closed the AI ​​gap with the United States. And he has done it with all the sticks in the wheels

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It is difficult to go into detail about the number of dances in which the United States and China are immersed at the moment. The technological war is the umbrella under which the trade warthe attempt of military conflict in the South China Seathe robot racethat of the energy and that of artificial intelligence. Everything is related to each other and, although the United States has exercised an aggressive technological blockadeStanford University is clear that it has not been of much use. And they are clear that the AI ​​gap between the powers is “practically closed.” The report. When a new model or version of AI is presented, those responsible show graphs and tables in which they comment on how good their product is. It is something that always has to be taken with a grain of salt because the idea is to make your product look good – it would be necessary to do more – and, for this reason, an external analysis is needed to show us the complete photo. In this sense, the annual report from Stanford University (in its ninth edition) is one of the best thermometers for taking temperature in the state of AI. One of the conclusions of study is that the Chinese models are very close to the American ones. If at the beginning of the AI ​​boom those from the US set the tone with an abysmal difference, at the beginning of 2025 the distance was greatly reduced to the point that DeepSeek-R1 equaled the best American models on several occasions. Since then, the absolute top model is that of Anthropic, but currently only with a 2.7% advantage over the best Chinese model. Different approaches. In fact, in the graph with this specific analysis you can see how the distance between the two is closed as the performance of the Chinese models increases exponentially in a very short time. And something that the study highlights is that, although the United States continues to lead the battle because it is the one that produces the most top-level AI models and with the most important patents, China leads in volume of both models and production of those patents. Also in other sectors, such as AI in robotics, for example. sticks in the wheels. And the most notable thing is that China has achieved this evolution without having the best tools. As a result of the technological and trade war, it is known that the United States has done everything in its power to prevent cutting-edge technology will reach the hands of the Chinese industry. For years they prohibited American companies (which are the ones that control the AI leader like NVIDIA or AMD) sold their higher-end platforms to Chinese companies, but also They shorted the European ASML and the South Korean Samsung and SK Hynix. Because the US has the aforementioned NVIDIA and Intel, but ASML is the one that manufactures the most advanced machines for making chips, Samsung is one of the world’s leading foundries and leader in high bandwidth memory along with SK Hynix and then there is the Taiwanese TSMC as the largest foundry on the market. Although the US has more recently shaken hands with China in this regard, there are still restrictions on Chinese companies accessing the latest technology. Counterproductive. However, through innovation, government support and a little bit of smuggling, gray market and reverse engineering, companies like SMIC -the Chinese foundry- or Huawei They have managed to develop their advanced equipment and chips. The US has tried to put all the pieces in the wheels of the Chinese industry, but as some reputable voices in the chip sector have pointed out, this has only served for China to directly and advances its technological sovereignty program. That is to say, the vetoes that had such a hard impact at the beginning have served to light the flame of technological development. Huawei is the best example of this, since was ostracized five years ago and recently showed that not only has he recovered, but he has returned in better shape than ever, even becoming one of the main drivers of AI for Chinese industry. Approach. Something that the Stanford AI study also highlights is how the two countries are approaching this segment of AI. And we talk about money, of course. While private investment in AI in the United States reached almost $286 billion, in Europe The investment was almost 21,000 million and in China it was only 12,400 million. This is tricky, since it involves private financing (and this year among just a handful of American companies 650,000 million dollars will be melted) and the state support from the Chinese government should not be underestimated, but beyond investment, American companies have focused on creating the most powerful models regardless of the price while the Chinese approach is to make a Cheap AI to be almost transparent to the user. The goal in both cases is mass adoption, but here the cheaper the product and better integrated into everyday platformsbetter. Taiwan. There are other adjacent topics. For example, China has the energy for the AI ​​erabut The US has the data centers. According to the report, there are more than 5,400 data centers in the American country, which is more than ten times the amount that any other country has, but all this with a curious counterpoint: it is a Taiwanese company that manufactures almost all of its artificial intelligence chips: TSMC. The company is expanding with foundries in the US, but although a conflict that will break those relationships is not in sight, it is evident that depending on a foreign country is not the best strategy for technological independence. That is why they are injecting a lot of money so that Intel be the great foundry, but the reality is that it is still very far from TSMC and, although the US is making attempts with native companies such as Applied Materials, the main partners continue to … Read more

that talent has to pay to work

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Japan needs foreign workers. The really need and urgently. But its hiring system for foreigners experiences a curious paradox: the country needs these foreigners, but charges them a fortune and places innumerable obstacles for them to go to work. Well, to be exact, it’s not actually the government that charges them to work, but a network of intermediary agencies in recruitment who take a good commission before the worker even sets foot on Japanese soil. According to the second edition of the survey on foreign workers in Japan85% of foreign workers who arrive in Japan do so through some type of intermediary. The majority pays a bill for this service that can exceed 6,000 euros. Import workers due to low birth rate. According to the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfarethe number of foreign workers in the country reached 2.57 million at the end of 2025, 11.7% more than the previous year, and the thirteenth all-time record consecutive. That is, in 2025, that figure was almost three times higher than that recorded a decade earlier. The manufacturing industry accounts for 24.7% of the total foreign employees, followed by the services sector with 15.2% and wholesale and retail trade with 13.3%. By city, Tokyo, Aichi and Osaka host more than 43% of all these workers. These data show that there are entire sectors that cannot fill the majority of their vacancies with local workers and need this foreign workforce to fill them. They pay to go to work in Japan. According to the data collected According to the Japanese Ministry of Labor, the vast majority of these workers arrive through a recruitment agency at origin that charges them a fee of between 200,000 and 400,000 yen (the equivalent of between 1,200 and 2,400 euros), while 13.2% of foreigners paid up to 6,000 euros just to have the opportunity to go to work in Japan. Of the 10.9% of workers who reported having had labor disputes in Japan, 18.6% indicated that the cost of agencies was excessive, and 14.9% admitted not having known who to turn to when difficulties arose. Meanwhile, 69% of companies cited labor shortages as the main reason for hiring foreign staff, up from 64.8% a year earlier. The end of the system that allowed it. Much of this friction has its origin in how the Japanese immigration system itself was designed. For more than thirty years, the Technical Internship Program (TITP), launched in 1993 with the stated objective of training workers from developing countries. In practicethis program functioned as a way to obtain cheap labor that, once in the country, had very little capacity for maneuver, denouncing marathon days, salary failures and the impossibility of freely changing sectors or jobs. In June 2024, the Japanese Parliament approved its replacement by the system Ikusei Shuro Seidowith entry into force scheduled for June 2027. For the first time, the Japanese government officially recognizes that the goal of the new program It is to train and retain foreign labor to cover the talent shortage, something that the previous regulations did not allow. Unlike the TITP, the new model does allow changing companies within the same sector under certain conditions, and sets a limit on commissions from recruitment agencies equivalent to two months of the worker’s salary. More visas, more sectors, more talent. The Japanese government has opened new entry ways to foreign labor. In March 2024, the Specific Skilled Worker (SSW) visa program incorporated new sectors in which foreigners can work, raising to 17 the total number of sectors covered. Those who arrive with a university degree can benefit from the J-Find visaaimed at graduates from the top 100 universities in the world. This visa allows you to reside up to two years in Japan to look for work or prepare a business project without having to have an employer to guarantee your arrival. Unlike the SSW or the TITP, the J-Find is a commitment that goes beyond filling vacant positions, and what it seeks is to compete for highly qualified talent at a global level and encourage the creation of startups and innovation projects in Japan. Companies also have their share of the problem. In addition to demographic pressurethe companies themselves have spent years unable to fill vacancies with local workers. According to the MHLW survey30% of the establishments declared having difficulties and “linguistic and cultural barriers” with their employees, and “complexity of the procedures to manage their residency status.” That is to say, not only is it a complex bureaucracy for workers, but Japanese companies are also having problems with this hiring system. The reforms underway aim to correct the most problematic points of the system, from agency abuses to the rigidity that tied workers to a single employer. The reforms will not be completed until 2027, so until that time comes, the paradox that Japan is experiencing still the same: a country that urgently needs foreign workers, in which those same workers have to pay a high sum to be able to work. In Xataka | Japan is being the canary in the mine of the labor market in Spain: reversible retirement is the proof Image | Unsplash (Il Vagabiondo)

In which communities it can be done and how to do it in the 2026 declaration

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We are going to explain how and where you can deduct your gym fee in your 2025 Income, which is what we do in 2026 to account for the last fiscal year. You can now request and submit your draft online and from the mobilebut before doing so pay attention to this. We have already explained to you the most important boxes to which you have to pay attention in your declaration, but there are also others that should be looked at in case you can scratch any deductions. And the deductions for what you pay when you go to the gym are an example. Being able to deduct your gym fee in your income tax return It depends on the autonomous community in which you live.. But before we start listing them all, we are going to tell you other general requirements that you need to know. Requirements in addition to the community where you live In order to correctly deduct your gym fee without you ending up receiving a request from the Treasury for having done wrong, you must meet the following requirements: Invoices with complete data: A ticket from the gym reception is not enough, to be able to deduct the gym you need a complete invoice with all your information, such as your ID, full name, and the tax information of the sports center. The quotas must also appear correctly. Traceable payments: It is not advisable to make installment payments in cash. In fact, in some communities they are left out of the deduction. It is best to make payments traceable by the Treasury, using methods such as debit or credit cards, bank transfers, Bizum or direct debit receipts. Purpose of the expense: The deductions usually cover gym fees, but sometimes also directed activities and classes that you can teach within a gym, although this depends on each community. What is not included is the purchase of sports equipment. Deductions for each autonomous community Community Deduction Annual limit Key requirements Valencian Community 30% (up to 100% depending on age/disability) €150 Income less than €32,000 (individual) or €48,000 (joint). Up to 100% deduction for people over 75 years of age. Rioja 30% (up to 100% depending on age/disability) €300 The expense must be made in entities registered in the La Rioja Sports Registry. Andalusia 15% €100 No income limit. Includes gym, club and federation fees. Murcia Region 30% (100% over 65) €150 Income less than €31,000 (individual) or €43,000 (joint). We start with this table where we summarize the autonomous communities where you will be able to deduct gym fees, as well as the deduction and the annual limit that you can deduct. This way, you will have everything clear at a glance. Gym deduction in the Valencian Community In the Valencian Community it is established a deduction of 30% of your fees related to expenses associated with practicing sports and healthy activities. The gym fee comes into this term. This deduction has a maximum limit of 150 euros per year in all cases. The deduction can be 50% if you are over 65 years old or have a disability greater than 33%, or 100% if you are over 75 years old or have a disability greater than 65%. It is also necessary that the sum of boxes 0500 and 0510 does not exceed 32,000 euros in individual taxation, or 48,000 euros in joint taxation. For the deduction, you must write the amount in box 1960 of your income tax return. You will have to indicate the gym’s NIF, a piece of information that will appear on the invoice, and the total amount you have paid throughout 2025. Gym deduction in La Rioja In La Rioja it is established a deduction of 30% of your fees related to the heading “to promote physical exercise and sports practice.” The gym fee comes into this term. The deduction can be 100% of the contribution if you are over 65 years old or have a disability greater than 33%. This deduction has a maximum limit of 300 euros per year In all cases, double that in the Valencia Community. Nor are economic requirements establishedso the deduction is for everyone. Gym deduction in Andalusia In Andalusia it is established a deduction of 15% of your fees membership or membership in gyms, sports centers, clubs and federations. It is the lowest percentage of the four communities, it allows you Also include the expenses of your spouse or common-law partner and those of your children or ascendants that give the right to the family minimum, as long as you have been the one who has paid those fees. This deduction has a maximum limit of 100 euros per year per taxpayer and does not require any minimum or maximum income requirement, so it is available to all tax residents in Andalusia regardless of their income. As in the rest of the communities, it is essential keep invoices of payments to the gym. Gym deduction in Murcia In the Region of Murcia it is established a deduction of 30% of your fees in expenses related to physical exercise and sports practice. In addition to the gym fee, it covers qualified personal trainers, yoga or Pilates classes, and sports federation fees. The deduction increases to 100% if you are over 65 years old. This deduction has a maximum limit of 150 euros per year. It has an income limit, since the sum of your general tax base and savings cannot exceed the 25,000 euros in individual taxation or the 40,000 euros in joint taxation. It is also essential to keep invoices for payments to the gym. In Xataka Basics | Income Guide 2025: calendar, previous steps and how to prepare for the 2026 declaration

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