companies

the 15,000 ninja companies that dominate key niches without anyone knowing them

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China not only manufactures giants such as Alibaba, Tencent or Tiktok. He has built meticulously An army of 14,600 “small giants” that dominate fundamental industrial sectors, but without making noise. Why is it important. While in the West we follow the track of BydXiaomi, Bytedance or Huaweithese specialized SMEs are those that control the pieces of the industrial puzzle. Sensors, aerospace components, specialized semiconductors: the niches where technological supremacy is really won or lost. The context. He “Little Giants” program He was born in 2015 as part of “Made in China 2025“Its objective: push highly specialized medium -sized companies to develop competitive advantages in specific sectors. A surgical model against the model of large state companies. There are 15,000 “small giants” with official certification. Almost 90% are in the manufacturing sector. More than 80% focus on emerging strategic industries such as integrated, robotic or aerospace circuits. And almost 5,000 work in AI AND CLEAN ENERGIES. That is happening. Each “little giant” receives state support to dominate a specific niche. Submarine cables, superconductor materials, quantum sensors, satellite systems … technologies that seem lower but vital for global supply chains. And for Chinese military development. Some examples: Leaderdrive: Specialized in precision harmonic reducing. Endovtec: Develop advanced endovascular devices. Phabuilder: Biotechnology to produce industrial materials. Acoinfo: Develop real -time industrial operating systems. Guizhou Anda: Battery materials, supplies Catl and Byd. WELION: solid state batteries of high energy density. JIASHIDA Robot: Domestic cleaning robots. It is no accident that The United States has already included many of these companies in their blacklist. They are the real threat: not the brands that anyone knows, but those that manufacture the components that make the world work. This “unique champions” strategy makes medium -sized companies practically monopolies into ultra -specialized sectors. Result: If you need a certain type of semiconductor or components, you have no alternative. And that company is subsidized, protected and backed by the Communist Party. Outstanding image | Acoinfo In Xataka | China has an ambitious plan to overcome the West in Technology. And he has already chosen his 18 companies to get it

We have been concerned about what companies with our data do. Brazil will allow money with them to win

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Brazil has just crossed a line that promises to change forever the relationship between its citizens and their personal digital information: digital wallets to moneture their data. Why is it important. The South American country has announced The first national program in the world which allows its citizens to own, manage and monetize their fingerprint. Brazil has decided to convert this information into economic assets for those who generate them instead of simply seeing how their citizens give data to technological ones. The initiative, administered by Dataprev – state technology company – in alliance with the Californian Drumwave, will create personal data savings accounts. Users may deposit the information generated by their daily activities and receive economic offers from companies interested in buying it. In detail. The system works like cookies of third partiesbut with a turn: instead of simply accept or reject, users can choose to make money. When they request a loan, for example, the contract data will be stored in their digital portfolio, and companies will be able to bid for them. “People don’t get anything from the data they share,” explains Brittany Kaiser, co -founder of Own Your Data Foundation and Drumwave advisor, according to the official statement. “Brazil has decided that its citizens must have property rights over their data.” The pilot starts with a small group of Brazilians who will use loan portfolios. After accepting an offer from a company, the payment is deposited in the portfolio and can be transferred immediately to a bank account. The context. This movement places Brazil ahead of the United States, where a similar initiative of the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, It was raised in 2019 But he never took off. If it is completely implemented, it will be the first public-private association that allows citizens-not to companies-to obtain a personal data market share. Yes, but. Some specialists in Brazilian data protection have expressed serious doubts. In a country where three out of ten people are functional illiteratesaccording to official data, there is a risk that vulnerable populations sell their data without understanding the consequences. “We will be asking for half of the country that you don’t know how Rest of World. “People in vulnerable situations will say yes, and that could be used against them.” The background. The Brazilian Congress works on a bill that would classify data as personal property, exceeding the current legislation that considers them an inalienable right. The new regulations would give people complete rights about their personal information, especially that generated “through the use and access of online platforms, applications, Marketplaceswebsites and connected devices “. And now what. If this is consolidated, Brazil will sit a precedent that other countries can follow. The proposal promises “a correction in the historical imbalance of the digital economy,” according to Rodrigo Assumpção, president of Datapre. The idea: transform personal data into assets for those who provide them. For companies such as Google, Meta or Amazon, accustomed to obtaining valuable data “simply” offering their platforms also for free, this proposal is an earthquake. For users it could be the first step towards a world where each clickeach search and each digital movement has a tangible market value. Outstanding image | Samuel Costa Melo and Campaign Creators in Unspash In Xataka | The AEPD already knows where the data of millions of freelancers who were on sale on the Internet have come from: the Chamber of Commerce

Four AI companies control how Half Mundo reasons. It is the greatest concentration of intellectual power in history

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While the public focus is concentrated in the possibility that the AI ​​will take our job ahead (Business Insider 21% of its template has just announced citing it as a cause, the CEO of Axios has published A text by the chungosAnthropic’s CEO has shouted “that comes the wolf” to justify that only they can save us), In the background something less visible is happening: We are giving our intellectual autonomy in favor of efficiency and comfort. It is not just that four companies –Openai, Google, Anthropic, Meta – are building the infrastructure with which millions of people resolve doubts and make decisions. They not only manage data: they also protect the way we link ideas. The Great Chinese of AI They are out of this equation for a simple reason: their still domestic approach without the international vocation of the Americans. Google (the search engine) was and is influential, but with it we have had to spin our own speech: Cotejar Fuentes, Weighing biases, assume contradictions. The generative AI instead serves a round response that It sounds coherent even when hallucin And that’s why he demands less surveillance. The result is that we are replacing the “internal process” with an external verdict covered with a technological aura that deter the replica. Whatever you say, Chatty. Delegate is too tempting. Save time and headaches. The problem is that we do not subcontract logistics, but criteria. We ask Chatgpt A professional strategy. TO Claude A curriculum. TO Gemini today’s interpretations. In doing so we accept without discussing the biases and empty of a trained model about texts that we will never see. It is an invisible assignment and, therefore, difficult to question. Never before so few hands had defined what questions can be asked and what answers sound reasonable. History has known infrastructure monopolies – electrity, internet, railways – but never one about reasoning patterns. Now another qualitatively appears: It operates on the symbolic plane, where narrative frames are defined through which we understand the world. Very subtle and very decisive. What previously implied a deliberation – read, contrast, imagine scenarios, weigh nuances – today becomes an instantaneous response, of definitive appearance. What to think about euthanasia? How to react to infidelity? What economic model is more fair? We no longer look for elements to think: we look for the correct answer The faster and more comfortable. And we accept as valid the one that sounds best, even if it ignores what does not fit in your narrative. Its effects will not be immediate, but predictable: a slow loss of variety in thought, of ideas out of the ordinary. Platforms have progressive consequences. Tiktok and Spotify, for example, They have made the songs last less and the chorus arrive before. What consequences will the LLMS within fifteen years? If we all consult models that converge towards average responses, intellectual eccentricity – culture rate for innovation – It will be increasingly weird. There is hardly a brake for AI, but perhaps at some point we have to decide how much reasoning we are willing to deliver before staying without it. Outstanding image | Xataka In Xataka | Deep Research is not just a new AI function. It is the beginning of the end of intellectual work as we know it

The great AI companies have declared a underground war to a pillar of education: human teachers

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We would all like to have a Keating Professor In our lives. One that made us get on the desks to see things from a different perspective and that he would teach us that the most important lesson he has for us is summarized in the words “Carpe Diem”. There are very few who approach that image, but all of them, bad or good, threatens them the same future as Other professions: Be replaced by an AI. Professor 24/7. The narrative of several AI companies is clear: the human teacher is a bottleneck. Each of them serves many students, their knowledge is limited and their finite availability. The AI, they assure those companies, proposes a remarkable alternative. Personalized professors 24/7 with infinite patience and access to all the knowledge of the world. There is a clear problem: that message devalues ​​the teacher’s function as a guide, mentor and catalyst for curiosity and reduces it to a mere transmitter of information. Continuous evaluations. Another of the pillars of the educational system – and one of the tasks that most consumes the teaching staff – is Student evaluation. The AI ​​promises to correct efficiently, massively and immediately, releasing the teacher for other tasks. But again in human evaluation there is much more than a mere correction of errors. The effort, the reasoning process, creativity, originality or even the personal context of the student are evaluated. Biases also pose a clear threat to these evaluations, in addition to promoting a model Based on the correct answer and not in the reflexive process. My school is OpenAi. So far schools, universities and other academic institutions are the guarantors of a theoretically coherent and quality curriculum. The approach of the companies of AI would be that of Become them In “Guardians of knowledge” deciding what is important to learn and how. The risk: lead to a fragmented education and dictated by the interests of the market, eroding the role of education as a pillar of society. Threat to humanities. The AI ​​also raises the irrelevance of memorization – it can already respond to all known knowledge – and bet on skills such as “Prompt Engineering“(know how to ask things to AI) or Technical subjects (Stem). That suggests a clear impact to matters of humanities and critical thinking that we do not apply directly. Fields such as philosophy, art or social skills, hardly quantifiable, would go to the background. The objective would not be as much to train and prepare workers for the technology industry. Goodbye to social investment. Companies that bet on that model have a clear objective: climb and be profitable. AI technology applied to education promises a lot of savings (less physical infrastructure, less teachers) and a highly scalable business. But also imposes a worrying revolution to one of the pillars of society. Bill Gates believes in the future of the teachers of AI. Among the experts who outline that idea is the figure of Bill Gates, co -founder of Microsoft. His commitment to the teachers of AI It was early: Chatgpt had been in the market for just five months when he said that “AIs will reach that capacity, to be as good tutors as any human being.” For him, this technology should also be a “leveling” for society. According to Gates “having access to a tutor is too expensive for most students, especially if that tutor adapts and remembers everything you have done and review your work.” Openai and Khan Academy have the same vision. A year ago the presentation of GPT-4O surprised among other things for that capacity offered by this AI model to talk directly to him. One of the OpenAI demos, carried out in collaboration with Khan Academyhe showed Sal Khan, his founder, contemplating how his son used the model to receive a geometry lesson. The interaction was impeccable and pointed to a future full of teachers of ia locked in our tablet, our mobile or our computer. Khan is of course interested, but it doesn’t hurt see your ted talk on “how AI could save (not destroy) education.” Schools converted into nurseries. Luis von ahn, Founder of Duolingothe poular application to learn languages, it also takes time turning towards the AI. A few days ago he participated in the podcast No priorsand there he commented how although there are very good teachers, “there are not many.” For him, education will change radically because “it is much more scalable to teach with which with teachers.” Even so pointed out That does not mean that teachers disappear: “You will continue to need people who take care of students”, but focused on a new role: “I don’t think schools disappear, because you need nurseries.” Image | Buena Vista Pictures In Xataka | Towards the end of duties: how chatgpt has been inserted in the center of the great debate on education

Japan’s commitment to lead the chips industry is held on these three companies

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For Japan, as for South Korea, Taiwan, China or the US, the semiconductor industry has a strategic character not only because of the deep beneficial impact it has on its economy, but also by the impulse that gives its technological capacity. This is the context in which the Japanese government announced in the middle of last November A public plan that will injected into companies that are dedicated to the design and manufacture of chips no less than 325,000 million dollars within ten years. In addition, it prepares additional 65,000 million that seek to support the activity of local companies. There is no doubt that it is a very strong and more ambitious bet even than those designed by the US, China or Europe. Only South Korea prepare an economic investment of a similar size. The first reactions of Japanese companies have not been waiting. “We are working with our clients to develop technologies that teach four generations in the future.” These words of Nobuto DoiVice President of Tokyo Electron, are a declaration of intentions. However, before moving forward in this article it is important that we briefly review where Japan comes from. At the end of the 80s this Asian country dominated the global industry of the integrated circuits with an indisputable forcefulness. Nec, Toshiba, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, Matsushita and other Japanese companies They monopolized in 1988 Nothing less than 50% of the chips industry. However, today none of these companies is positioned among the leaders of a sector dominated with iron fist by Taiwanese, American, Chinese, South Korean and German companies. Tokyo Electron: Japanese Asml This company is one of The pillars of the Japanese industry of integrated circuits. It is dedicated to the design and manufacture of lithography and waking -up equipment, so its machines often live together in the TSMC, Intel, Samsung, Micron Technology or SK Hynix plants, among other companies, with the teams of the Dutch company ASML or the American Apply materials. Its importance for Japan is such that it is currently one of the Japanese companies that are being backed by subsidies approved by the Japanese government. The new Tokyo Electron plant in Oshu will be intended for the manufacture of advanced team deposition equipment and logistics In fact, it is building several buildings in the prefecture of Miyagi that will presumably be completed in 2025. The most ambitious project that will address in these facilities will consist of the design and manufacture of some some WAFSMA TEACHING BY PLASMA Very advanced. They are precisely the machines that Nobuto Doi speaks in the statement that I have included in the second paragraph of this article. These equipment are involved in the definition of the pattern that will later be transferred to the wafer. The Japanese company Hitachi also has plasma wafering engraving machines, but the singing voice in this particular market has tokyo electron. Apparently the engineers of this last company are working side by side with their clients to develop solutions that, according to doi, four generations ahead will be positioned. However, its plan goes beyond the facilities of the Prefecture of Miyagi. And it is that Tokyo Electron is also building a new plant in Oshu, in the prefecture of Iwate, which will be intended for the manufacture of advanced wafering deposition equipment and logistics. We can be sure: Tokyo Electron is the Japanese Asml. Without it, the ambitious plan pergeted by the Japanese government for its semiconductor industry would not be viable. Rapidus Corporation: The spearhead of Japan The company that is destined to compete from you to you with TSMC, Intel or Samsung in the chip production market is Rapidus corporation. In fact, it has been expressly created to replace Japan at the forefront of integrated circuits. This is a very young company. It was founded on August 10, 2022 by the Japanese government with an initial capital of 7,346 million yen (just under 46 million euros) contributed by, and here comes the interesting, Sony, Toyota, Nec, Softbank, Kioxia, Denso, Nippon Telegraph and Mufg Bank. The initial capital invested in the constitution of this company is not very bulky, but there is no doubt that the companies that participate in it have an indisputable relevance in the sectors of technology, automotive and telecommunications. Rapidus is currently putting a circuit manufacturing plant integrated in northern Japan, in the city of Chitose (Hokkaido), in which it plans to produce 2 Nm semiconductor. The first prototypes of these chips are already readybut large -scale manufacturing will not arrive at best until 2027. Rapidus is making a chip manufacturing plant in northern Japan in which it plans to produce 2 Nm semiconductors What is causing the new Rapidus factory to monopolize the looks of the semiconductor sector is that, according to Atsuyoshi Koike, which is the president of the company, it will be completely automated. Its purpose is to resort to robots and artificial intelligence (AI) to tune an automated production line that will be specialized in the manufacture of 2 nm chips for AI applications. Its plan consists, in short, to produce integrated circuits faster, with a lower and more quality cost. To manufacture these semiconductors, equipment of extreme ultraviolet lithography (UVE) produced by the Dutch company ASML, and practically all manufacturing processes are automatic. However, the tests of test and validation, interconnection and packaging of the chips are still largely carried out manually in most manufacturing plants. According to Rapidus, its automation technology of all these processes will allow you to reduce the delivery time of your chips by 66% compared to the times they usually offer TSMC and Samsung. JSR Corporation: The photor resistance monopoly is in his hands There is a Japanese company that is indisputably leader in its specialty. It is little known outside the scope of the semiconductors, and yet it is one of the bastions of Japan. Is called JSR Corporation and specialized in the production of photorers. The photolithography equipment designing and produces ASML … Read more

Bitcoin has just achieved a new historical maximum of $ 110,000 because banking and companies have gone from hating him to love him

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Bitcoin broke the $ 111,000 barrier this Thursday and marked a new record. The difference is that while in other records the reasons had to do with external events, here the growth is mainly due to one thing: the interest of some institutions that for years reneged of this type of investment. 111,878 dollars. A few hours ago, as indicated in Coindesk, a Bitcoin worth 111,878 dollars, a figure never seen before and that seems to confirm that renewed optimism that investors have recovered for this cryptocurrency. A singular recovery. The tariffs announced by Trump affected not only the world bags, but also the cryptocurrencies, which fell significantly. It also happened with Bitcoin, but since they were announced Pauses and exemptionsBitcoin’s growth has been clear. On April 9, it was at $ 76,000, but since then its value has been increased more than 45%. Institutional love. The demand for this cryptocurrency not only comes from cryptoactive funds or traditional sale markets (exchanges): companies and institutions are now becoming large sources of investment and begin to treat BTC as a value reserve. And business. There are several companies that are betting hard on Bitcoin. In fact, some are turning cryptocurrencies into their true focus. The most extreme case is Strategy (formerly Microstrategy), which already has 576.230 bitcoins In his possession (about 63.8 billion dollars), more than 2.5% of all those in circulation. An absolute “whale” of this segment. The ETF work. The approval of the funds quoted in the stock market (ETF) based on Bitcoin has certainly changed the panorama in the United States. These mechanisms open the door for many more investors to enter this financial segment now that it is more “standard”. Analysts such as Jeff Mei, from the BTSE sale market, indicated that growth “will probably continue, especially as more companies go to public markets and ETFs.” JP Morgan will allow Bitcoin to buy. If there has been a denial of Bitcoin, that has been Jamie Dimon. The JPMorgan CEO has renegated for years and other cryptocurrencies, but this week announced that it would allow its customers to buy Bitcoin to the clients of the entity. Of course, he did it by reiterating his skepticism about these assets. In Spain the same is happening. Traditional banking was also reluctant to offer this type of investment, but little by little the entities are offering this possibility. The BBVA has been the last great exampleand the same goes for CaixaBank, which allows it although not proactively. And this may lead to another momenty moment. This striking growth of Bitcoin could have a renewed interest on the part of investors who do not want to lose the train. The Fomo effect (Fear of Missing Out, the “fear of lost it”) is powerful in the financial field, and analysts raise new increases by that upward trend. The evolution of other cryptocurrencies with great market capitalization (billion dollars) has been similar to that of Bitcoin. Even greater, in fact. Data: Coinmarketcap. The rest of the market accompanies. Bitcoin’s evolution is solid in recent weeks, but so is the recovery of other cryptocurrencies that had also fallen remarkably and now have recovered part of the lost. The difference here is Bitcoin is marking historical maximums, but others such as ETH, XRP, Solana or Dogecoin are still far from the values ​​they reached in the past. ETH, for example, reached $ 4,900: it is currently 2,645. In Xataka | A British did not let his album search with Bitcoins in the trash for years: now he considers buying the landfill

All AI companies promise that the AGI will arrive very soon. The problem is that chatgpt is not the way

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In December 2022 chatgpt He left us speechless to all. However, two and a half years later we have a problem: it does not seem that after all this time I can go to much more. It has improved, yes, but in the meantime we are moving away from the great promise of AI, which is none other than going beyond and that someone manages to reach what is known as the General Artificial Intelligence. And it seems clear that this path, that of Chatgpt, is not the good to get it. Promises, promises. A few months ago Sam Altman called the president of the United States, Donald Trump, and He said that the AGI would arrive before it ended its mandate. It is a message that has been repeating for months, although then spoke of “A few thousand days“Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, believes that It could arrive beforein 2026. Elon Musk – who promised that he would have a totally autonomous Tesla in 2016 – agreed and pointed at 2026 as the year we will have an AGI. All are hypeptimists for a simple reason. Money. Like Altman, all who defend the rise and development of AI and the imminent arrival of the AGI do so to raise more and more money for their companies. We know that developing, training and running models of ia costs true fortunes, but the progress in this field seems to be slowing down. Doubts with climbing. There are many who believe that the current strategy of climbing the models – give more GPUS and get more data to train them – no longer compensates as much as before. The latest versions of the great foundational models exceed their predecessors, yes, but not in a striking way. It’s as if we had touched the roof. This is not the way. And for months the voices of experts have begun to be heard making it clear that other solutions must be sought. Nick Frosst, a student at Geoffrey Hinton and founder of Cohere, is clear that current technology is not enough to reach an AGI. What the generative AI does is “predict the next most likely word”, but that is very different from the way humans think. Lecun believes that we will take a long time to achieve an AGI. Personalities respected in the world of AI such as Yann Lecun, head of the division of AI in the finish line, are clear. Models as chatgpt They will not be able to match human intelligence. Also ensures that achieving a human level AI It will take a long time: Nothing “a few thousand days” as Altman said. And Sutskever coincides. This openai co -founder, is also skeptical with the potential of the generative AI, which according to him It is barely improving. His new startup, Safe Superintelligence, aims to create a superintelligence with “nuclear” securityalthough at the moment there have been no details about the strategy they are following to achieve it. It is not of course the one that followed when it helped create chatgpt. A recent survey to an academic association of experts in this field They thought the same: Three quarters of those who responded do not believe that current methods serve to end up developing an AGI. The generative AI is not a miracle. As they point out In The New York Timeswhat chatbots like chatgpt or other developments in this field is to do one thing very well, “but they are not necessarily better than humans in others.” According to him there is a certain temptation to think of these chatbots as something magical, but “these systems are not a miracle. They are very impressive gadgets.” Chatgpt does not challenge what he knows. Thomas Wolf, co -founder and Chief Science officer of Hugging Face, is clear that the generative AI is very good, but is far from taking us to an AGI. What we have, he explained a few weeks ago, is like “a country full of people who tell us yes to everything.” Chatgpt does not challenge us, but he does not challenge what he knows either. “We need a system that is able to ask yourself things that nobody had thought Or that nobody had dared to ask, “he said. Many challenges ahead. Among the differences between AI and human intelligence is that the latter is linked to the physical world: part of our intelligence is to know when to turn the toast, for example. There are advances in robotics and sensors that can help solve such problems, but this is a good example of how there are still many challenges to overcome to achieve that general artificial intelligence that is supposed to match (or overcome) to human intelligence in all disciplines. And the Ias that reason? The generative AI companies have found a small respite with the modes of reasoning of their chatbots. Here we find a singular advance that allows AI to respond more precisely and detailed thanks to “thinking” their answers and following a process of “reasoning” that tries to imitate the human. However, this does not seem to take us to an AGI, and again these modes of reasoning are rather a way to try that the answers are something better and do not see “hallucinations” by the chatbots. In spite of everything, Chatgpt and its rivals continue to make mistakes in this and the rest of the ways. Odds. On the horizon some possibilities appear. The current approach based on neural networks accompanies the approach of symbolic systems (based on rules) that can help provide elements such as deductive reasoning or abstract knowledge management to current models. It also works on training of models with physically precise virtual environments and in the so -called systems of meta-learningwhich allow to train new neural networks quickly and with a limited data set. But companies need products to sell us. These approaches to the development of new research roads are there, but the problem … Read more

The companies of AI and their ‘Game of Thrones’, what would have happened if Apple had bought Tesla and much more in crossover

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Surely many of our readers will remember how Blackberry seemed to have everything in his hand in the world of messaging. He lost that and other wars, but what would have happened if it had been the one who bought WhatsApp Instead of Facebook? Is one of those great “What if?” that we raise with others even more striking such as that What if Apple had bought Tesla to launch its ICAR? Cupertino’s company ended up abandoned Your Project Titanbut of course that option seemed feasible. In the 1×08 episode of Crossover, presented as always by Carlos Santa Engracia and Jaume Lahoz, we speak in addition to a very special salseo: the one that is lived in artificial intelligence companies. All of them live immersed in a Wild Game of Thronesand The internal wars —It, hatred, some come, Others goothers They believe His own startups – they are our daily bread. And what we have left. Curiously, one of the companies that also has its own intrahistory in that area of ​​AI is Apple, which with its Apple Intelligence Users have not just conquered. They tell the US users, whom we have asked at street level interviews. The curious questions section to Carlos and Jaume returns to measure your technological wisdomand we close at full speed: with a report by Jaume in Monaco talking about the formula andwith 100% electric cars that go to every pill. On YouTube | Crossover

On Sunday, Barça-Madrid is played and there will be Laliga IPS blockages. Users have an easy solution, companies do not

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Next Sunday, at 4:15 p.m., Barcelona-Real Madrid will be played of the Spanish First Division of Spanish. Taking into account what we have lived in the last three months, It seems inevitable Let us live new indiscriminate blockages of IPS by LaLiga. This website is not accessible. Once again what seems clear is that They will pay fair for sinners With constant websites that we cannot access. The persecution of IPTV illegal retransmissions is making Companies entering 70,000 euros per month are 40,000. There is clear economic and reputational damage, but there is a clear dichotomy here: for users it is easy to avoid those blockages, but for those who have a website, not so much. Hello, VPN. Since IPS blockades began by LaLiga It was clear that the only effective solution to avoid them on the user’s side was to use A VPN service. Here The options are multiple and in all cases they usually allow to continue enjoying normal access to all services despite the blockages imposed by LaLiga. It is not a 100% infallible method, but it is certainly the safest to avoid these problems. Why this method works. These services allow the IP address provided by the operator to change to a different one that will also belong to the country you choose. If LaLiga does not apply blockages to those countries from which the connection or IP of that VPN server is simulated, it is not in the Spanish ISP lock list, we can normally access the content. And packages encryption. In addition, the VPN encrypt the connection between our device and the VPN server, which makes it greatly difficult for operators or other intermediaries to inspect the traffic content to try to make a selective blockade of certain transmissions. Companies have it much more complicated. VPN services are perfect for users to “jump” LaLiga IPS blockages, but companies affected by blockages do not have it so easy. The reason is that these companies do not depend on themselves, but often have hired Cloudflare services. This company optimizes access to companies’s websites and protects them from possible cyber attacks, but when LaLiga orders to block certain IPS, the operators execute that order and many of them belong to Cloudflare. And there is the problem. The condemnation of shared IPS. Cloudflare, like its competitors, make use of shared IPS To manage all its customers. The same IP is assigned to hundreds or thousands of domains, and then it is cloudflare who is responsible for redirect access to each of them. But if LaLiga and the operators They block an IPThey block access to all domains that share that IP, whether it is legitimate and if it is not. Those who are using Cloudflare and other CDNs affected such as Bunnycdn are therefore impacted: users find that access to those domains is suddenly cut. The remedy is worse than the disease. The only solution for companies is to deactivate the service provided by Cloudflare. That means that they are not affected by blockages, but implies important risks. Cloudflare, for example, avoid (or mitigate significantly) possible service denial attacks that “throw” websites. It also prevents bots from tracking the web can end up unpaid in charging times or in the consumption of server resources. Without the Cloudflare and the like service, the exhibition of the websites of any company in the face of attacks or overloads is remarkable. The remedy can become worse than the disease. New LaLiga Tactics. Those responsible for LaLiga have reinforced their offensive with a curious tactic: Reach agreements with Cloudflare competitors like Vercel, Akamai or CDN77. In LaLiga they promise that these services – which collaborate in the fight against broadcasts – will not affect third parties during blockages, but with that type of alliance there is a great sacrificed: the privacy of customers, which can no longer be shield in those services. Image | LaLiga In Xataka | “Every time there is football, the website falls”: the collateral effects of LaLiga blockages in thousands of users

Spain suffered a mass blackout. The distributed teleworking came immediately to save many companies

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Spain has lived an unprecedented fact in its history: A generalized blackout that affected the electricity supply of The entire Iberian Peninsulaincluding Portugal. As a collateral effect due to saturation, the mobile communications network He also collapsed. This made the normal development of The working day. So many companies ended up closing their doors. The blackout that Spain has suffered has been A very extreme casebut teleworking and, above all, distributed work has saved the furniture of those companies that did not have a staff structure based on workers resident in a single citycountry and even continent. While many companies They were forced at closing For not having electricity or Internet access, including those with remote employees, companies with remote workers distributed throughout the world demonstrated their resilience to any local incidence such as the one that left Spain in the dark. We have talked to two of those companies that could maintain their activity in Spain thanks to remote work distributed by different countries. Distributed work and global blackout templates One of the things that the proliferation of the Teleworking after the 2020 pandemicis that talent It no longer has borders And, thanks to technology, someone in Bali I could be teleworking For a Spanish company without any problem. Some digital native companies such as Eventbritea platform for the sale of tickets and events, broke with their centralized organization following the pandemic, and chose to redesign their structure in A decentralized model Based on small teams distributed throughout the world, but mainly in the US, India and Spain. Jaime ValloriVice President of Eventbrite engineering assured that Thanks to that decentralized structureEventbrite continued to function normally while the blackout lasted. “We organize in teams (Squads) that are responsible for the maintenance of the detail pages of certain events. On Monday, the Squads of Spain is not that they could not do the maintenance of those events, they could not even know if something happened because they could not access,” Vallori told us. Before such a scenariothe rest of the teams located outside Spain took over from their teammates. “We activate a protocol so that the teams we have in the United States and India, proactively monitoring those areas that we covered from Spain, but obviously, could not be covered by our team,” said Eventbrite Engineering head in Spain. Vallori stressed that the platform has an incident alert protocol that is automatically climbing to different equipment if it is not answered in a certain period of time. “Since we are geographically distributed, throughout that protocol there is people from different areas of the world Until you get up at all. Therefore, although we had not given us time to activate that checkup (of local events) proactively, in the end through the scaling, it would have reached someone who could access and resolve the incidence, “Vallorí explained. “Our customer service is also distributed between the United States and other countries,” says Vallori. Therefore, if someone with sufficient coverage In Spain I would like to be attended by the company’s customer service could have done so because it remained active despite the fact that the development team in Spain was not operational. Blablacar continued moving in the dark Víctor Méndez, Vice President of Engineering of Blablacar, already told us the Advantages of having a remote template distributed by different countries. Resilience to an event like the blackout that Spain has suffered is one that can add to its list. Florent BannwarthCountry Lead de Blablacar, lived in the first person the disconnection of your entire team of the company’s infrastructure. “He had time to see him come a little and notify France and other countries from which he was going to come to Spain. No one was going to be able to use the platform and we did not know when he was going to re -normalize. So from France they could organize and gave us support, “Bannwarth recalled. In addition to the shared car service, Blablacar also manages an international bus service, so it starts from France’s support was based on replacing the Spanish team in the management of those buses that came out of different parts of Spain. If not for them, This service would have stopped workingjust at the time when neither trains nor airplanes They operated normally. “The service worked without incident and had an important peak of activity, especially between Barcelona and cities in southern France such as Perpignan and Toulouse, many passengers. At the last minute the only thing that worked It was the bus“The head of the Blablacar team in Spain said. On the other hand, Blablacar’s distributed model allowed teams from other countries Maintain the operational platform in Spain so that it would not register incidents once the service was restored, avoiding delays in its implementation as it happened In the railway sector. “The next Tuesday was the day that the most reservations made in Blablacar in more than 15 years in Spain”, due to the need for urgent displacement of those who They had stayed halfway of his destinations because of the blackout. “Another advantage we had was that, part of the user service team that attends in Spanish, works from France and other countries,” although Spain’s staff of Spain was not operational, users who had coverage could solve their incidents normally. In Xataka | Companies that have eliminated teleworking are facing a big problem: they take longer to cover their vacancies Image | Unspash (Dmitry Grachyov)

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