decision

In 1997 Blockbuster decided that DVD would never replace VHS. With that decision he began to dig his grave

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In 1997, Warner Bros. proposed blockbuster an exclusivity agreement to rent DVDs. The deal replicated the model that was already practiced with the VHS format, which gave 60% of income to the video store chain. Blockbuster declined because they were confident that magnetic tape would maintain its dominance for years. Warner responded by drastically cutting the wholesale prices of its records and Walmart was quick to take advantage of the opening: In less than a decade, it overtook Blockbuster as Hollywood’s biggest moneymaker. The DVD arrives. In 1997, this format arrived promising better imaging, more durability, and interactive features (we were so young). But it had a giant before it: in 1988, after defeating Sony’s Betamax format, VHS already controlled 95% of the home video market. And a decade later, in 1997, it was an empire: VHS rentals generated $10 billion annually for movie studios, with Blockbuster pocketing about half of that revenue. VHS had reasons not to be afraid: DVD players were very expensive, between $300 and $500, and VHS devices were very accessible. And they were not wrong: DVD sales would not surpass those of VHS until 2003, six years after its commercial release. Warner’s proposal. Warren Lieberfarb, head of Warner Bros.’s home video division and one of the key figures in the development of the DVD format proposed to Blockbuster a deal that replicated the VHS model: exclusive rights to rent the company’s new DVD releases before they hit stores for sale to the public. Warner would receive 40% of the rental income from those records. John Antioco, CEO of Blockbuster, had just arrived at the company after passing through Taco Bell, and his decision could be key to the company’s future. The rejection. Blockbuster decided to reject the proposal because it believed that VHS would maintain its dominance for years. As we said above, a not unreasonable assumption. Furthermore, creating an inventory of DVD movies was an unnecessary expense under the profitable and peaceful reign of VHS. Some later format releases, before the advent of DVD, possibly made Blockbuster think it had done well: JVC’s D-VHS digital tape, which allowed high-definition recording, was a flop. But Blockbuster didn’t have two things: Hollywood support for DVD and the inevitable drop in player prices. The answer. Warner Bros. responded with a strategy that would transform home cinema: it drastically reduced wholesale prices for its DVDs, in order to compete directly with the rental industry. This allowed businesses to sell records at prices that made purchasing more attractive than renting. The North American giant Walmart detected the opportunity very quickly and began to sell DVDs below the cost price, and in this way, for example, they sold their discs for 15 or 20 dollars when renting a VHS cost between 3 and 5 dollars per day. The power of Walmart. Walmart’s network of stores had power in distribution, covering the entire country, that Blockbuster could not match. In addition, it had privileged deals with suppliers and, in general, a fund and resources that allowed it to absorb the losses from the DVDs. In this way, Walmart replaced Blockbuster as the studios’ main source of income in less than a decade. This led to redefining the balance of power in the industry: the most valuable distribution channel was no longer the video store, but became large commercial stores, where consumers no longer only bought movies. Blockbuster, free fall. As is well known, It was not Blockbuster’s last catastrophic decision: in 2000, when Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph, co-founders of Netflix, approached John Antioco about selling their DVD-by-mail rental service for 50 million dollarsthe executive declined the offer. A decade later Blockbuster declared bankruptcy in 2010 while Netflix reached a valuation of billions. They are not the last. The case has parallels with recent technological transitions where dominant companies have underestimated the speed of the public’s adoption of new formats: the physical media industry believed that Blu-ray would maintain its relevance against streaming. And it is also easy to draw lines that link current technology companies with the adoption of AI: who will be the next giant to fall? Header | Stu pendousmat In Xataka | VCR Virus: the anti-copy system of the VHS era that looked like something out of a B horror movie

NASA had been refusing to allow its astronauts to carry iPhones for decades. For Artemis II you have made a historic decision

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Jared Isaacman, NASA administrator, has announced an important change for astronauts: the crew will be allowed to carry their personal smartphones. The objective is simple, to allow both photographs and videos recorded during space missions to be shared. what has happened. The publication has been informal and outside the official NASA press page. Via X, Isaacman has revealed that the crew of Crew-12 and Artemis II you will be able to fly with “modern smartphones”. “NASA astronauts will soon fly with the latest smartphones, starting with Crew-12 and Artemis II. We are giving our crews the tools to capture special moments for their families and share inspiring images and videos with the world. Equally important, we are challenging legacy processes and enabling modern hardware for spaceflight on an accelerated timeline. This operational urgency will serve NASA well as we strive to achieve the highest value science and research in orbit and on the lunar surface. This is a small step in the right direction.” Without detailing models or limitations, it makes it quite clear that soon we will see more than one iPhone flying over a ship far from our planet. What was happening until now. Historically, NASA has only allowed Nikon cameras (a Japanese company with which it has had an agreement for more than a decade) to be brought on board. Initially with some of their DSLRs, and recently with the Nikon Z9, the latest generation mirrorless authorized for Artemis. Because. For decades, NASA has operated under an extremely strict security framework for any object boarding a manned spacecraft. The devices must not interfere with critical systems, their batteries have to meet very specific requirements to minimize the risk of fire, they cannot contain materials that can fragment in microgravity and they must pass certification processes associated with an exact hardware model. For the first time, the agency will allow the use of mobile phones on a manned mission certified by its own procedures, marking a significant shift in how NASA evaluates and accepts commercial technology on board. When. The departure of Artemis II, after some delayis scheduled for the month of March. After several dress rehearsals, NASA is not prepared to return to the Moon, because of old ghosts like the complexity of liquid hydrogen. It will not be the first time that a modern mobile phone travels to space, but it will be the first time that its use is authorized within a manned mission managed directly by NASA. Until now, mobile phones and tablets had flown on SpaceX missions under more flexible operating frameworks, serving as a background to evaluate their behavior during the mission. In Xataka | When the United States decided to go to the Moon, it did so no matter what the cost. And that included 60% of all its chips

The Prado has become a saturated tourist attraction. So you have made a decision: no more blockbusters

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The Prado Museum has decided to stop. After reaching its third consecutive visitor record in 2025 with 3.5 million people (a figure that many institutions would celebrate with champagne), its director Miguel Falomir has broken decades of obsession with numbers: “The museum does not need a single more visitor.” The Madrid art gallery announces a radical change for 2026: it eliminates the blockbuster exhibitions. What are blockbuster exhibitions? The large monographic exhibitions designed to attract masses, especially tourists, which now disappear from the Prado’s priorities. In their place, more specialized thematic proposals. The objective is no longer to grow, but to ensure that Going to the museum “isn’t like taking the subway during rush hour”in the words of Falomir during the presentation of the annual program. The measure makes the Prado a pioneer of a debate on cultural sustainability that has swept through Europe since the pandemic, when institutions like the Louvre had to impose capacity limits to prevent artistic contemplation from becoming survival from the tidal waves of tourists. The case of the Louvre. The French museum model leads the way in what not to do: with its nine million annual visitors it has become the best example of how success devours the cultural experience. The Prado’s 3.5 million seem modest in comparison, but Falomir remembers one detail: the Madrid museum is between eight and nine times smaller. That is, more visitor density per square meter. Since the pandemic. These changes have been brewing since 2022, when the museums reopened and were able to put into practice the capacity limits that they had been considering for years. Since then, the Louvre has maintained a limit of 30,000 daily visitors and a time slot system with mandatory advance reservation for certain rooms. But it is not the only one: the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence have adopted similar strategies. The Host Plan. The response of the Madrid museum It’s called Host Plana project that addresses the quality of the visit from several fronts. They will begin by optimizing the current more than 70,000 square meters, which in 2028 will grow with the Salón de Reinos: an additional 2,500 square meters. Among the concrete measures is the prohibition of photographs in the rooms, which has already been proven effective in improving flow. Added to this are adjustments in access management and limits on group size. But Falomir insists: “We have to think about what to do so that the public is not only interested in iconic works.” The director recognizes that the concentration on star pieces creates bottlenecks while other rooms remain empty. The visitor profile is revealing: 75.85% are foreigners. Falomir insists that “we are the museum that most nationals visit,” but they want more Spaniards. Other museums, such as the Louvre, have opted for more aggressive policies: raising the price of tickets for visitors from outside the EU. The programming strategy. Faced with a 2025 full of large monographic exhibitions (Veronese, Anton Raphael Mengs, Juan Muñoz) designed to attract masses, 2026 is committed to the complex and specialized. Proposals such as “In the manner of Italy. Spain and the Mediterranean Gothic (1320-1420)”, which Falomir readily acknowledges will not have the commercial appeal of its predecessors. It’s not a new idea. The New York Metropolitan has been alternating for years big names with risky academic exhibitions. The Tate Modern does the same. But the Prado goes one step further, and recognizes that this strategy responds to a goal of decongestion, not just curatorial criteria. The 2026 program includes “El Prado in feminine”, with three collector queens: Isabel de Farnese, Cristina of Sweden (400th anniversary) and, above all, Mariana of Austria, whose December exhibition will reconstruct the evolution of her image and power. Also arriving are “Rilke and Spanish art”, “Hans Baldung Grien” and “Prado. Siglo XXI”, an exhibition that looks at the museum itself and its transformation in this century. Everything fits with the emerging trend of the “slow museum”, a movement that proposes recovering slow contemplation in the face of accelerated consumption of art as if it were a tourist attraction. The programming strategy. Faced with a 2025 full of large monographic exhibitions dedicated to Veronese, Anton Raphael Mengs or Juan Muñoz, designed to attract large audiences, 2026 is committed to more complex and specialized thematic proposals. They are proposals such as “In the manner of Italy. Spain and the Mediterranean Gothic (1320-1420)”, which Falomir recognizes will not have the commercial appeal of its predecessors. There are models in this policy, such as the Metropolitan Museum in New York, which has practiced for years a mixed model that balances big names with riskier academic exhibitions. The Tate Modern in London operates in a similar way. Museum exhaustion. In recent years a term has emerged: “museum fatigue“Visiting a museum has become an obstacle course where contemplating Las Meninas or La Gioconda means making your way through a forest of arms with mobile phones. Falomir sums it up like this: “The big problem with large museums is that the visitor is sovereign.” No one controls whether someone will stay eight hours or five minutes, or which rooms they will visit. The result: impossible concentrations in certain areas while others remain empty. In Xataka | This museum has a guide who makes fun of visitors. The result: sold out tickets

China has made a decision regarding layoffs justified by AI: they will not be appropriate

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Artificial intelligence is already showing signs of being the most transformative element of the productive fabric since the Industrial Revolution, even more than the arrival of the Internet. This means that its arrival has a direct impact on million jobs that will no longer be necessary or will be changed by others of new creation. This transformation of the labor market will not be something that happens in a few years: AI is already reducing hiring of the youngest and is behind many layoffs. China, one of the main actors in the race for AI, has put a limit on AI: its use will not be a justified reason to fire employees. Limit on layoffs due to AI in China. In a publication The Commission for Arbitration of Labor and Personnel Disputes lays down case law on whether the adoption of AI by companies can be considered a justified reason for dismissing an employee. The decision has its origins in the case of a worker who had been collecting manual data for maps in a technology company since 2009. Last year, the company implemented a system that automated that same task using AI. As a result, the company eliminated his department and fired him for alleged drastic change in working conditions. The arbitration commission ruled that this dismissal was unfair because the deployment of AI is a voluntary business decision to gain competitiveness, and does not represent a justifiable reason under its labor regulations. Therefore, the company had to compensate the employee and was recommended to negotiate contracts or relocate the affected personnel to another position. Chinese labor law leaves no room for AI. In China, the law allows contracts to be terminated only if there is a major objective change that makes it impossible to continue developing that position, such as force majeure or public policy closures. That is, if the collection of this data had been prohibited by law, his dismissal without compensation would be justified, but not for applying business strategies aimed at improving the company’s productivity, such as deploying AI or purchasing new machinery. The arbitration court’s decision recognizes that these technological changes may “lead to adjustments in the employment structure,” but “do not present the characteristics of force majeure and unpredictability required by ‘objective circumstances’.” That is to say, it is legitimate for them to be applied, but companies must assume the payment of severance pay. collected in the Labor Contract Law of the People’s Republic of China, which establishes the payment of one month’s salary per year worked. Social responsibility of AI implementation. Chinese Arbitration Commission ruling recognizes that companies can deploy AI to improve your productivitybut forces them to “simultaneously assume the corresponding social responsibilities, achieving a harmonious balance between the application of technology and the protection of workers’ rights.” The ruling emphasizes that companies cannot let the weight of technological innovation fall on their employees, so, instead of firing them, they must offer training in the new technologies they implement or in new positions to balance technical progress with labor rights. AI claims thousands of jobs in the US. Labor legislation in the US has not been so protectionist with employment. According to a report from the consultant Challenger, Gray & Christmas AI has been the reason for the dismissal of 48,414 employees in 2025, with the technology sector being the most affected for this reason, with restructuring due to the integration of AI or by improve efficiency in its development. ​In the United States, most states (except Montanafor example) follow the doctrine of “at-will” employment, which allows tech companies to fire engineers or other employees for any non-illegal reason, including adopting AI to automate tasks. It is not necessary to justify with specific causes as in other countries, as long as there is no discrimination based on race, age or gender. Europe and Spain closer to China’s approach. In Europe, or more specifically in Spain, labor regulations do not contemplate the implementation of new technologies as a valid justification for the dismissal of workers, so they go associated with the payment of compensation for unfair dismissal or the legislation that regulates Employment Regulation Files (ERE) That does not mean that Europe (or Spain) is immune to the impact of AI. In fact, according to what was published for him Financial TimesEuropean banks could eliminate around 200,000 jobs by 2030 due to AI automation and branch closures, equivalent to 10% of the workforce of 35 large entities. In Xataka | We believed that AI was going to retire an entire generation of workers early. The opposite is happening Image | Unsplash (aboodi vesakaran, Arif Riyanto)

Jeff Bezos fired the CEO of Blue Origin two years ago. In retrospect, it was the best decision he could have made.

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The most surprising fact about Blue Origin is that it was founded before SpaceX. Obsessed with space since childhood, Jeff Bezos saw the potential the aerospace industry would have and began selling thousands of Amazon shares to build a rocket company. He founded Blue Origin in 2000, when his net worth was around $6.1 billion. Two years later, a young Elon Musk obsessed with the conquest of Mars invested $100 million (more than half of what he had from the sale of PayPal) in founding SpaceX. Who would suspect that the company that would end up revolutionizing the sector would be that of the eccentric South African businessman and not that of the CEO of Amazon, who multiplied his assets by 30. The sleeping giant The Blue Origin coat of arms For almost two decades, Blue Origin was the butt of jokes in the sector: a company financed with infinite funds that sold 15-minute suborbital trips to millionaires, but when it came time to reach orbit it only produced powerpoints and legal lawsuits to stop its opponents. Blue Origin was aware of its apparent slowness in the face of SpaceX, to the point of deliberately adopting it as its motto. The company’s coat of arms includes two turtles and a Latin phrase that Jeff Bezos has publicly defended with pride: Gradatim Ferociter“step by step, fiercely.” But although projects such as the powerful BE-4 engines and the reusable New Glenn rocket had been in development for years, the reality is that Blue Origin did not step on the accelerator until the end of 2023, when Bezos said enough and caused a CEO change that has been like night and day. The Dave Limp Effect The first stage of the New Glenn rocket returning to the factory A little context. By 2023, under the leadership of Bob Smith, Blue Origin had become a bottleneck for US national security. The new Vulcan rocket from ULA (the company that had a monopoly on government launches until the arrival of SpaceX) depended on Blue Origin’s BE-4 engines, which kept falling behind schedule. At the end of that year, Jeff Bezos made the decision to remove Bob Smith and entrust the company to the executive who had led Amazon’s devices division during the creation of Alexa or Kindle: Dave Limp. Today, the engine crisis is more than resolved. Blue Origin has celebrated the delivery of the 30th engine to ULA, which will allow its partner to meet its launch obligations for the Space Force. But it has not been the only thing that Dave Limp has managed to channel as the company’s new CEO. Under old management, Blue Origin operated with a crippling risk aversion. He sought perfection on the first try, which translated into eternal development cycles. Limp arrived with the Amazon system under its arm: Blue Origin went from being an R&D company to becoming a real rocket factory willing to take risks. The internal culture had already begun to improve when, in February 2025, Limp laid off 10% of the workforce. “We grew too fast and lost focus,” he explained. But the effect was immediate: Blue Origin has become a company that is agile in decision-making. Instead of having a single rocket that’s scary to break, they’re a real rocket factory. So when the New Glenn finally took off, crashing on the landing attempt, it was not a single prototype: there were other stages of the rocket already on the production line. From New Glenn to Super New Glenn New Glenn vs Saturn V vs New Glenn 9×4 If anyone had doubts about Limp’s management, the events of this last year have dispelled them. Blue Origin has successfully completed two orbital launches that have completely changed the narrative, and which have soon been overshadowed by the company’s roadmap. He maiden flight of the New Glenn It was a partial success. The rocket reached orbit (and there are few rockets that can say that on the first try), but the first stage disintegrated while trying to land. Far from stopping to investigate the failure for a year, Blue Origin analyzed the data, adjusted the software and moved forward with the second attempt, as SpaceX would have done. In November, the second New Glenn successfully launched NASA’s ESCAPADE mission, two probes that were placed at the L2 Lagrange point awaiting gravitational assistance to travel toward Mars. But even a Martian mission can take a backseat when, against all odds, the first stage of the rocket landed on the Jacklyn maritime platform in the Atlantic Ocean. Blue Origin is only the second company to achieve the propulsive landing of a rocket. For the first time, SpaceX has a real competitor capable of recovering orbital-class boosters. One that uses methane for cleaner and cheaper combustion, and that promises to carry up to 45 tons to low Earth orbit. Shortly after the launch, taking advantage of the momentum of success, Blue Origin announced an improved version of the BE-4 engine and a new variant of the rocket: the New Glenn 9×4, which instead of seven engines in the first stage and two in the second, carries nine and four. In addition to a larger 8.7 meter diameter canopy, to launch larger space stations, telescopes and satellites. What does this mean? That Blue Origin is going for the “Super Heavy” category, in which SpaceX competes with the Falcon Heavy and the gigantic Starship, still in development. This variant of the New Glenn will be able to carry 70 tons to low orbit, which with Starship’s permission surpasses almost everything else on the market and, most importantly, with an architecture that has already flown and landed. To conquer the orbit and the Moon With the New Glenn 9×4 scheduled for 2027, Jeff Bezos and Dave Limp’s attention is now focused on scaling the rocket’s manufacturing and reusability capacity to reach 24 launches per year between now and then. SpaceX continues to play in its own league with 160 launches … Read more

Faced with the threat of an “orbital Pearl Harbor”, Europe has made the same decision as the US: shield space

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The race to militarize space has accelerated to an extent unprecedented since the end of the Cold War. The reasons are several, but the main one is driven by the combination of explicit russian threatscovert sabotage and an international architecture incapable of containing the emergence of atomic weapons out of the atmosphere. The last one to join: Europe. The war in orbit. Moscow not only has reactivated its classic nuclear discourse, but has opened a second front in low Earth orbit through the development of anti-satellite systems equipped with nuclear warheads that openly violate the Outer Space Treaty. In this context, European and North American experts match in which the Kremlin is lowering the threshold for the use of tactical nuclear weapons both on Earth like in spacewhile experimenting with platforms capable of camouflaging orbital bombs designed to disable satellites essential for the economy, defense and communication. Thus, the very idea of ​​a “Space Pearl Harbor” (a nuclear explosion that destroyed thousands of satellites, blinded entire continents and turned low orbit into a radioactive dump for generations) has forced Europe to abandon the romantic vision of an exclusively civil space and enter a new strategic reality which combines deterrence, diplomacy and operational preparedness. The bet of the old continent. This turn has crystallized in a historic decision: For the first time, European Space Agency countries have approved funding a program designed explicitly for military functions. He ERS projectconceived as a “system of systems” equipped with surveillance capabilities, secure navigation, encrypted communications and Earth observation, marks Europe’s entry into the club of actors who recognize that their future security depends both on what happens on the ground and what happens hundreds of kilometers above it. The approved financing (1.2 billion euros with more to come) comes accompanied by an unprecedented political mandate that redefines the concept of “peaceful purposes” at a time when China multiplies its space capabilities and Russia turns orbit into a space hybrid pressure. The magnitude of the support, bordering 100% of what was requestedreflects an internal consensus: without its own capabilities, Europe would be a vulnerable spectator in a conflict that would be decided by the speed and resilience of its satellite constellations. The French and German response. On this new board, France and Germany have assumed a central role both for its industrial capacity and for its newly adopted conviction that the wars of the future will begin (or be decided) in space. Paris has invested 10 billion euros in its new Space Command, oriented to military operations in orbit, to shield satellites against kinetic attacks and to promote an interoperable architecture with NATO. Berlin, for its part, has announced an investment of 35 billion until 2030 to reinforce its own Space Command, develop guardian satellites and equip itself with advanced early warning systems. Both countries have publicly assumed that orbital infrastructure is so critical such as energy or digitaland that any Russian aggression could paralyze not only defense, but European civil society as a whole. National security is no longer decided solely on the eastern land border, but in a three-dimensional environment where the loss of a single satellite node can destabilize entire sectors. Nuclear beyond the atmosphere. Analysts agree that the most feared scenario is not a specific attack against specific satellites, but the detonation of a nuclear charge in orbitcapable of generating devastating electromagnetic pulses and cascading space junk that would render low orbit useless for decades. Historical precedents, such as try Starfish Prime that destroyed a third of existing satellites in the 1960s, serve as a warning of what it would mean to repeat a similar experiment today, with more than 10,000 active satellites. Such an explosion would kill astronauts, destroy global navigation infrastructure, fossilize the digital economy and cause a domino effect that could move the war from space to Earth. Although some experts hold While Moscow would only resort to such action in a scenario of terminal collapse, the mere existence of these capabilities forces Europe to prepare for a type of conflict that would break the traditional limits of deterrence. Political pressure and a new order. Fear of an orbital conflict has reactivated debates on nuclear disarmamentboth in the United States and in Europe, where legislators are promoting initiatives to revitalize multilateral negotiations that have been stagnant for decades. At the same time, ESA has achieved a record budget (22.1 billion euros) that not only finances its transition towards space security, but also promotes scientific and commercial programs, such as reusable rockets, Martian exploration or new astrobiological missions. This growth, supported by Germany, France, Italy and Spain, reflects the strategic convergence between defense, research and technological sovereignty. In the new scenario, Europe seeks not to be a secondary actor in the face of spatial duopolization between the United States and China, but to develop real autonomy that reduces dependence on private platforms like starlink or American systems such as the space interceptors of the Golden Dome. Militarize space. If you also want, the intersection between russian threatsAmerican technological advances and the European strategic awakening marks the beginning of a stage in which the Earth’s orbit is consolidated as the new global scenario military competition. What was once a scientific and commercial domain has become a space where the resilience of entire societies is decided. He ERS projectthe expansion of national space commands and the growing funding of dual capabilities make up a defense ecosystem that seeks to avoid a conflict that no one wants to imagine. And in that scenario, Europe seems to have understood that the only way to deter orbital escalation is to demonstrate that it has the same means to resist it, respond to it and recover. Image | RawPixelESA/Mlabspace In Xataka | The US wants to build an unprecedented anti-missile shield called “Golden Dome.” And SpaceX has the ideal technology In Xataka | Space solar never worked. A military escalation in orbit is making it a reality

Apple TV has decided to swim against the current of all streaming platforms with a singular decision: not to put ads

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The common note among all streaming platforms, beyond catalog details, seems to be in the search for profit by raising cheaper rates in exchange for advertising interruptions. Apple, however, seems determined to differentiate itself, which can undoubtedly bring benefits at an economic and image level. Which is exactly what would benefit you the most at this moment. No ads. Eddy Cue, senior vice president of Apple Services, has confirmed in an interview with Screen International that the company has no plans to launch an Apple TV subscription with ads. The refusal is not indefinite, but at this time that is Apple’s decision. Cue states that “we will not include them for now. It is not a forever negative, but at the moment there are no plans”, and it comes in a context where practically all of its large competitors are expanding their advertising strategies, with more and more rates with ads. Because. He streaming has entered into something we could call his “advertising era“But Apple wants to differentiate itself from there: it believes that if it can maintain a competitive price, consumers will value not having their content interrupted by ads. It is a position that connects directly with the brand’s DNA: control over the user experience, frictionless design, and a commitment to the perception of premium value even if the price is not the highest on the market. It is the same philosophy that applies with Apple Musicwhich has never competed with free, ad-supported versions. What is coming. Apple’s decision takes on its true dimension when you look at what is happening in the rest of the industry. One of the next trends that is going to reach us are ads that fire even if the content is paused. At the moment, in the United States it is Peacock that is experimenting with this way of displaying ads, as well as Netflix in some territories. Disney+ has also shown interest in incorporating it into its catalog. That is to say, what is coming for the more immediate future are increasingly invasive ads, in the style of YouTube or Spotify on their cheaper accounts, and which undoubtedly revalue decisions like Apple’s. Prices: competitive but quality. AppleTV It currently costs 9.99 euros per month in Spainwhile in the United States the price has reached $12.99. At first glance, it might seem expensive compared to competitors’ basic plans. But this is where Apple has executed an interesting positioning maneuver: it does not compete in the low end of the market, but instead offers premium features at an intermediate price. The key is that all content is available in 4K HDR quality with spatial audio, at no additional cost and without advertising interruptions. But also, there are no steps, no temptation to “improve” the plan. You pay a single fee and access the full experience. It’s a radically simple model in a market that has become increasingly (unnecessarily) complicated. Comparison with other services. Apple’s tactic is evident: for 9.99 euros, Apple TV offers an experience equivalent to competing premium planswhich cost between 13.99 and 19.99 euros. It is not the cheapest option on the market (that happens with the ad-supported plans of Disney+, €5.99, or Netflix, €6.99) but it offers superior features at an average price: accessible enough to not seem exclusive, premium enough to justify the quality. What Apple TV offers. If we stay with the numbers, Apple TV loses by a landslide: just 226 titles in its catalog, a microscopic figure compared to Netflix’s 5,720, Prime Video’s 5,354, Disney+’s 2,461 or even HBO Max’s 2,300. according to recent calculations. It only makes sense if the catalog is measured by the quality of the content. While Netflix and Prime Video invest millions in producing and acquiring piece-rate content, Apple TV focuses on fewer productions, but ones that convey exclusivity. Although Apple is far from having series with the impact of ‘Stranger Things’, its biggest hits (‘Separation’, ‘Silo’, ‘F1’), convey that feeling of “there is no filler” that compensates for the smaller amount. The decision to dispense with advertisements for the moment moves along the same lines: to provide the viewer with something that no one else does, an experience of enjoying the series without interruptions or noise. Even if you have to pay something more (and even though the platform accounts they are not at their best). In Xataka | If the question is “where to watch all sports on a single platform”, one company wants to have the answer: Apple

In the nineteenth century, Spain made the strange decision to build its ways in Iberian width. Now they will be a gift for Renfe in Galicia

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Renfe can breathe calm. The company has a huge business in the Galician corridor. The volume of travelers Between Madrid and Galicia he has shot to the point that airlines are retreating. Time savings since high speed arrives is such that many are choosing to pass to the train due to pure comfort or time flexibility. The Galician corridor is part of the next package of liberalization of the roads, next to the trains with destination Asturias, Cantabria, Cádiz and Huelva. It will not be, at least, until 2028 when the competition is palpable on the tracks because Adif is not complying with the deadlines planned. But Madrid-Galicia has another peculiarity. It is very likely that in 2028 we will see competition on their ways. To find the reason we have to travel to the nineteenth century. The particular Spanish railroad Each new technology arrives with a good rosary of standards of all kinds. It has happened with electric cars and passed with electricity itself. Also with measurement standards or, as in this case, train tracks. The railroad had started in the early nineteenth century. Although the steam machine was already born in the 18th century, it was not until 1804 when Richard Trevithick built A prototype in which the concept applied to transport. The steam locomotive was born. That one of those huge irons with wheels will pull a kind of drawers and could move the goods faster than they had done seemed like a great idea. So great that it soon caught and in 1830 the first train line was opened with passengers. They were the famous 50 kilometers that separated Liverpool from Manchester whose first trip headed George Stephensonwho was the ideologist of the construction of those first route. Those first trains circulated through some roads of 1,422 millimeters, 4 feet and 8 inches. Shortly after, those same ways widen half inch until reaching the famous 1,435 mm. Then they did not know but they had just adopted the “international width”, which is mounted in most trains in the world. Those measures also served to establish Two categories: narrow path (below those 1,435 mm) and wide via (above). The good results of the first trains made the railroad make the leap to continental Europe and the United States. But, like everything in this life, there were those who thought the system could be improved and that it was worth trying. That person was Isambard Kingdom Brunelan excellent British engineer who would create the Great Railroad of the West, joining London with the southwest, western England and much of Wales. Brunel thought that the higher the width of roads, faster speed could reach a train because the greater the stability achieved. Thus, it extended the track width up to 2,140 mm. Then a war of standards began that ended up resolving the Commission of Railroad Widths in favor of Stenphenson and its width of 1,435 mm. It was 1845. In Spain, at that time, we were engaged in the same fight. Railroad yes, but … how? That doubt was the one that set fire in the middle of the 19th century. Observing the good results that were being achieved outside our borders, the Government began to receive requests for the granting of licenses that allowed them to exploit the roads. Aware that it was necessary to harmonize the matter, they consulted a commission of engineers led by Juan Subercase, number one in the Corps of Engineers, acting president of the Advisory Board and director of the School of Engineers since 1837. He was helped Calixto Santa Cruz, number one of his promotion of 1839, and José Subercase, who in addition to his son was also the number one in his promotion the following year, 1840. Together they drafted the report 17.10.1844, on the Madrid Railroad to Cádiz, which recommended to reject a concession to build a railroad from Madrid to Cádiz. This concession was requested by the French engineer Juqueau Galbrun, which was certainly ironic over the years. Explains J. Moreno Fernández in a document in which the whole story of that controversial decision tells that none of the mentioned engineers had left the country and known firsthand how the railroads were abroad. That, perhaps, was one of the reasons why it was omitted that France had opted for international road width. And it is that Subercase was a firm defender of a width of six feet Castilians. The 1,672 millimeters that would end up receiving the name of “Iberian Width”. The defense is that a higher track width forced to use more powerful locomotives. In those days they thought they could increase vaporization with a wider boiler and that this was essential to, in a mountainous country like Spain, to have sufficient power to move the train. They also defended that a higher track width allowed a more stable step per curve but the truth is that time showed that neither one thing nor the other were key. The international width has been versed enough to be used in mountainous areas and the largest boilers in the trains had the problem of increasing the weight so the gain was diluted. In the government they thought that Subarcase motivations They were correct and they didn’t care that in the neighboring country they bet on a narrower track width. To import, they did not care that our other neighbor, Portugal, also promoted their railroads with the international width. In 1844, it was finally decided that the Spanish measure of the six Spanish feet was the one that should be protagonist for its orographic peculiarities. However, that did not condition the government that gave the approval to two routes built on that international width that was quickly imposing. Portugal pressed to have a railway exit to France that Spain ignored. And that created an urban legend that remains until today First in a line between Barcelona and Mataró, projected from the beginning with that exceptional width for the Spaniards … Read more

The irrational fear of changing jobs has a name and influences your decision making: sunk cost fallacy

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Often people They cling to jobs that they no longer satisfy them – or that, directly, They do not support-, but they resist leaving it moved by the fear of losing everything they have invested to get to where they are: time, effort or training. Although it may seem strange, this behavior responds to a psychological bias called sunk cost fallacy. This bias can delay decision making to leave a job and perpetuate itself in an unfavorable work situation that can even affect mental health .. What is the sunk cost fallacy? Psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem coined for the first time In 1972 the idea of ​​cognitive bias psychologists such as Daniel KahnemanNobel Prize in 2002, were based on the work of Tversky and Kahneman To demonstrate The profound influence of this bias on business and personal decision making, being relatively easy to be trapped in that immobility situation. Richard Thaler presented for the first time The practical concept of the fallacy of the sunk cost, concluding that people have a greater tendency to use a certain good or service when they have previously invested money in them. According Research From the University of Ohio (USA), the fallacy of the sunk cost refers to the trend that people have to continue an activity or remain in a certain situation because resources have already been invested in it, although these resources are unrecoverable and the logical decision would be to abandon it. In labor decision making, falling into the fallacy of the sunk cost – or of unrecoverable cost – implies postponing indefinitely the decision to change jobs Just because we do not want to “lose” what has cost us to reach the current position. The bias in important decisions This thought error causes people to stagnate in jobs that do not motivate them and are even restricting their professional potential, even when there are evidence of other more beneficial and rational options. The bias is based on a determining psychological factor such as loss aversion. For example, the personal feeling of responsibility for the resources already invested, or the fear to seem like a “wasteful” to others, can make someone stay years in a job that no longer provides satisfaction or professional growth. In Psychological researchit has been proven that the change of work is postponed, although the alternative is clearly better. This paralysis is produced by this aversion to the psychological loss that supposes that all the effort made in the past has fallen into a broken bag. Trapped in their own trap A study carried out by the researchers at the University of Kansas with more than 1,000 participants showed that, who fall into this fallacy, have greater symptoms of anxiety and postpone the search for professional help. Recent research From the Department of Psychology and Economics of the University of California in San Diego, they reflect that “the fact that you have dedicated unrecoverable resources to a project does not mean that you have to sink with the ship,” said their authors. The scientific evidence It reveals that, to avoid making irrational decisions, it is essential to identify this cognitive bias and learn to make decisions based on objective data and future possibilities, not in what has cost you to reach the point where you are. Recognizing the fallacy of the sunk cost is the first step to overcome it In labor decisions. If this awareness does not occur, there is a risk of continuing to invest resources, even more intensely, falling into a vicious circle that will be increasingly complicated to leave. Such and as they highlight From Asana, it is important not to get carried away by immobility and make decisions based on objective data and take an external perspective, not get carried away by fears and investments of the past. In Xataka | We thought to choose among more options would make us freer. The “choice paradox” says no Image | Unspash (Marco Kaufmann)

With war drums playing in Europe, Germany has made a radical decision: recovering the “mili”

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The Ukraine War and the elongated shadow of Putin have not only reactivated the debate on Military spending In NATO. He has also recovered a word closely linked to that discussion and that for decades has been taboo in much of Europe: ‘milli’. Germany has decided that it changes. Your government has launched The legislative machinery to recover military service, suspended in the country since 2011. will do so with a voluntary recruitment system, although it already warns that this could change if the army does not grow to the Desired rhythm. And the starting goal is ambitious. What happened? That Germany has moved to recover military service. Yesterday, Friedrich Merz’s government government approved the bill that will open the doors to a new volunteer mili with which the country aspires to strengthen its defense. He did it after months of debatein a context in which each even more countries from Europe its military services are rethink and with a staging loaded with intentions: the announcement was made after a cabinet meeting in the Ministry of Defense, something that did not happen for several decades. What do you want to do? At the moment implement a voluntary mili, although the Foreign Minister himself It has slipped That in a few years the government has not achieved its objectives will seek ways to achieve “a greater commitment.” What we will see in the short term is a Germany that reactivates the service with certain peculiarities: it will send a letter to all the men and women born from 2008 to respond whether they are interested or not to participate. In the same questionnaire questions about academic preparation and the state of physical form will be included. Among those who respond affirmatively, a group of volunteers will be chosen who must undergo a medical examination. If everything is correct they will participate in a military service of at least half a year, a extendable term that will also include financial compensation. Selected young people can choose which of the army branches want to acquire skills, which includes the bodies of the marine, armed, air force and specialized units in cyberspace. Are more details known? Yes. To begin with, the schedule that the government handles. The law must still receive the guarantee of Parliament, but Merz Trust in which the new mili can be released “immediately”, from 2026. It is also known that there will be A small difference Between men and women. Both will receive the questionnaire, but only they must cover it if they do not want to receive a fine. After that difference, Clarify The countrythere is a mixture of historical and legislative factors. Until 2011, the year in which Germany said goodbye to the mandatory military service, the only ones who participated were the men. The government never eliminated the service, only suspended it, and expand the obligation now to women would require modifying the Constitution, which would further complicate the process. Will it always be voluntary? The million dollar question. And it is not easy to answer it. At the moment the mili will return to German with a voluntary character, but Merz has left the door open To that change in the medium term: “If in the next one, two or three years the objectives are not met, we have created a mechanism in the law that will lead to greater commitment.” The change, of course, will demand that the Government and Parliament return to position themselves. The norm would therefore allow the recruitment approach to be reviewed without the need for the geopolitical context. The voluntary (or mandatory) character of the service has been the great disagreement point and the detail that has most tensioned the discussion between the different political forces. The conservatives advocate a mechanism that allows recruits to be captured in a more agile way in the event that the Government considers it necessary and Christianocial Union even goes further by demanding the return to the mandatory mili. In the opposite pole there are who argues than the Bundeswehr I would arouse greater interest if the working conditions it offers to the young Germans. Will you do something in that line? Yes. Conscious of the debate, Minister Boris Pistorius insisted Yesterday when the Executive is improving the conditions of the recruits. “In the future the salary will be 2,300 euros, a remarkable increase. There are no accommodation or medical insurance expenses. Therefore it is a package that considerably increases the attractiveness compared to the current situation.” In an attempt to make the more attractive offer for recruits, he insisted that “flexible training schedules” and the possibility of participating in courses will be offered. What the government has also decided is that From 2028 It will implement a mandatory medical examination for all young people between 18 and 25 years old, which will allow the country to know its “really available recruits” base. What is the goal? Reinforce the defense. Something that is better understood with figures. Right now the German army is made up of about 183,000 active men and women. What the government wants is to reach 260,000 at the beginning of the next decade, amount that NATO Consider adequate For the country. Another of Merz’s team is extend 200,000. To reach these figures will also involve a challenge for the German administration itself. “We all want to see that increase quickly, but there are a number of objective criteria that must be met. The two basics are the locations and instructors. If we do not have them we cannot call rows to 350,000 young people from Germany. We are missing barracks and instructors. That means that now everything has to grow again from below, an increase that is being promoted,” Merz recognized yesterday. Why now? By the European geopolitical context, marked by two major factors. The main one, the role of Russia and its relationship with Europe since the Kremlin decided to start the military occupation of Ukrainein 2022. The … Read more

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