force

Ukraine has turned Russia into a fearsome air force

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In 1991, during the Gulf War, the United States discovered something uncomfortable: despite its total air superiority, it could not prevent Iraq from continuing to launch scud missiles from mobile platforms that appeared and disappeared in the desert. That frustration left a clear lesson For military strategists: in modern warfare, it is not enough to dominate the air, you must constantly adapt to an enemy that also learns. From questioned strength to real threat. During the first stages of the invasion of Ukraine, Russian aviation was perceived like a disappointment unable to achieve air superiority, which led many Western analysts to perhaps hastily underestimate it. However, with the passage of time, that vision has started to change disturbingly, especially in Europe, where aviation security experts have focused on something that is no longer an intuition: that the conflict has not weakened Russia, but rather the has forced to learn. Accumulated experience, system improvements and tactical adaptation have transformed a force that seemed limited into a much more dangerous and credible actor than it was before 2022. War as a laboratory. They remembered on Insider that, far from collapsing, Russian aviation has used Ukraine as a real training environment where pilots and crews have gained experience in high-intensity combat. Although it has lost aircraft, it has retained a large part of its qualified personnel and has compensated for those losses with sustained production of new aircraft, which has allowed it to maintain and even expand its fleet. This process has corrected one of its greatest historical weaknesses, the lack of flight hours, turning its pilots into more prepared fighters for complex scenarios. More reach, less risk. One of the most significant changes has been the evolution of his attack capacitywhich now increasingly relies on long-range weapons and systems that allow you to hit without directly exposing yourself. We are talking about advanced missiles, gliding bombs and remote attacks that have reduced the need to penetrate defended airspace, greatly complicating the enemy response. This way of fighting has not only proven to be effective in Ukraine, but also poses a worrying scenario. for future conflictswhere control of the air no longer depends solely on physically dominating it. Constant pressure from the air. They counted on ukrainian media that, in parallel, Russia has intensified its air campaign with massive and increasingly sophisticated use of drones and missiles, launching thousands of devices and perfecting saturation tactics to overwhelm defenses. Coordinated attacks, changes in flight patterns and the combination of different types of weapons have made it possible to maintain continuous pressure on infrastructure and the civilian population, generating not only material but also psychological wear. This strategy turns air into space permanent threatwhere the defense can never relax. A more complex threat. If you will, the result is a Russian air force that, although it still has structural limitations and does not match NATO in a direct confrontation, has become much scariest and most difficult to counteract. The combination of strengthened air defense, better coordination between systems and a more adaptive doctrine presents a scenario for its enemies in which achieving air superiority will be much more expensive and risky. In other words, a paradox has developed and is beginning to take hold, one where Ukraine has not only resisted Russian aviation, but, by forcing it to evolve, has contributed to turning it into a more sophisticated and persistent threat to the European military balance. Image | Alan Wilsonparfaits In Xataka | If fog was deadly in Ukraine’s winter, spring is offering Russia a key advantage: greenery In Xataka | Ukraine is close to what no one has achieved in a war: shooting down missiles for less than a million dollars

The Earth was going to force us to “erase” a second from our clocks in 2026. Climate change has changed everything

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For decades, the world’s metrologists have had to occasionally add a “leap second” to our clocks on Earth, since traditionally the tendency was for our planet to begin to slow down due to tidal friction caused by the Moon, making our days last a breath longer than the theoretical 86,400 seconds that science has always told us. but this trend has changedand now the Earth has started spinning faster. The consequence. Yes, when our planet was starting to slow down, I had to add one more second to our daily lives; When the opposite effect occurs, what should be done is to delete a second so that Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) does not become desynchronized from astronomical time. Something that will not be noticed, logically, but that has great importance in the causes that have led to this situation. Because? The answer to this temporal enigma was published in Nature where science calculated that the massive melting of ice in Greenland and Antarctica has postponed the need for a second negative from 2026 to 2029, due to what is known as the ‘skater effect’ since an ice skater who turns on himself and wants to brake, extends his arms; If you want to speed up, you shrink them against your body. Now, if we take this concept to our own planet, we can see that when the ice at the poles melts, the entire mass of water flows and is redistributed around the equator as if it were ‘opening its arms’, moving mass away from its central axis of rotation. In this way, the law of conservation of angular momentum tells us that this phenomenon causes a slowdown in movement. Then we can affirm that the thaw has counteracted and surpassed the acceleration of the Earth’s core that we had previously detected. Your confirmation. What in 2024 was protection, today is backed by real-time mediations, and this means that if we go to the official data From the IERS, its most recent bulletins show us that the length of the day shows new positive values, so the acceleration has stopped and the Earth slows down slightly again. If we look at the literature, this fits perfectly with research published in recent years, where it is seen that between 2000 and 2020 the days have lengthened at a rate of 1.33 milliseconds per century due to melting ice. And among the reasons they give, the authors are categorical in stating that the redistribution of masses due to climate change currently dominates the Earth’s rotation, even surpassing the historical effect of lunar friction. It’s a race. Adding or subtracting seconds from our watches is not forever, since the International Bureau of Weights and Measures has already made the decision to definitively eliminate this practice starting in 2025. The reason? Current digital infrastructure, such as telecommunications networks, is at risk of collapsing every time time is manipulated. Images | POT In Xataka | A third of Spain will be completely dark for a minute or two: the astronomical event of the century is approaching

It is not necessary to shoot down US fighters, it is enough to force them to take off

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In World War II, the Soviet Union produced more than 100,000 tanksmany of them technically inferior to the Germans, but enough to tip the balance of the conflict. Because sometimes in war, the deciding factor is not sophistication, but how many times you can repeat the same move. Win by forcing take off. The conflict with Iran has exposed an American paradox, another onemost uncomfortable: the largest military power in the world can destroy targets with unprecedented precision and speed, but it has enormous difficulties to support the defense against much simpler and cheaper threats. Because instead of trying to shoot down fighters or directly confront American air superiority, Iran has adopted a different logic, one much closer (or exactly the same) as which Ukraine has perfected in his war: overwhelm the system enemy. Each drone launched does not seek to impact so much as to force a response, to activate radars, to take off fighters, to, in short, consume resources. The key, therefore, is not the individual damage, but the accumulated wear and tear to which it is subjected. The mathematics of combat. It’s as simple as a matter of numbers. The core of this strategy is purely economic. Drones that cost tens of thousands of dollars require the use of million interceptors or to keep in the air airplanes whose operating cost per hour already far exceeds the value of the objective they pursue. The result is an exchange deeply unequal in financial terms, where each defense is a small major economic defeat. The image is crystal clear, because using elite technology to counter low-cost threats is equivalent to spending high-end resources on problems that, first, do not justify it, and second, they create an unsustainable dynamic in the long term, even for an army with the most monstrous budget like that of the Pentagon. The Ukrainian mirror. As we said before, the model does not emerge from nothing, but from experience accumulated in Ukrainewhere the mass production of cheap drones has completely changed the battlefield. There, the quantity has proven to have an own value in the face of technological quality, with thousands of drones operating daily and forcing the adversary to disperse its defense. In addition, constant evolution (with software improvements every few weeks) has turned these systems into increasingly useful tools. more autonomous and difficult to counteract, especially in environments where GPS or traditional communications stop working. A preparation error. It we have counted on other occasions. For years, Western defenses were designed with high-end threats such as ballistic missiles in mind, leaving simpler systems in the background. The result is that drones, smaller, slower and more difficult to detect, have found an unexpected crack. Radars need specific adjustments, fighters have difficulty intercepting them due to their speed and flight profile, and the available solutions are totally inefficient. in terms of cost. In this context, resorting to advanced fighters or missiles does not seem like a structural solution, but more of a patch which aggravates the problem. War of attrition underway. In summary, and although it is impossible to ignore the US budget for stretch a war, Iran has so far not needed to win in the traditional sense to alter the balance of the conflict. A simple one was enough calculation exerciseone based on maintaining the pace while forcing the United States and its allies to continue responding, to consume inventories, to stress their logistics and make a hole in your budget. It is a war that, for the moment, is not decided on the classic battlefield, but on the ability to sustain the effort. And in that field, mathematics plays a decisive role: If each response costs more than the attack, the final result depends not on who has better weapons, but on who can afford to continue using them for longer. The “Ukrainian mathematics” applied in Iran. Image | RawPixel In Xataka | We wonder if it is safe to fly now that there are more drones than Ryanair planes: the answer is an Ockham’s razor In Xataka | The weapon to liberate Hormuz has fled 6,000 km from the war. And that just means the US is preparing for what comes next.

What did Immanuel Kant mean when he argued that patience is not “a force of resistance, but rather one that hopes to make suffering satisfactory?”

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“Patience has generally been considered a virtue, but it has been very difficult to explain why,” said Paul Davies a couple of years ago. And he is right. Not only because we human beings have paid little attention to it, but because patience has something that makes it difficult to understand. After all, patience is too much like passivity, doing nothing, enduring whatever is thrown at us. What can have positive Be patient if the entire modern world has been built around autonomy, personal will and self-determination? Luckily, we have Immanuel Kant to get us out of trouble. An equivocal virtue. As soon as we stop to think about patience, we realize that it has no content of its own: it is always patience “for” something. And, of course, it is difficult to maintain that something is good in itself if it is little more than a psychological ability… Is patience for evil also a virtue? And Kant’s response is… admit it. For him, patience only acquires moral status if we complement it with something else; but staying there would be a mistake. We speak of “the ability to hold oneself in a position that does not offer immediate gratification without this absence of gratification being experienced as suffering”. The Kantian virtuous is not someone who suffers from duty, he is someone who develops sufficient moral strength so that this wait becomes a positive experience. That is, he is someone who is patient in the full sense: he is not someone who resists instinct, he is someone who actively experiences that wait. What the hell does all this mean? Basically, for Kant, although being patient only makes moral sense in virtue of something; If our logic is to “be patient” to obtain a result, everything is wrong. We will have fallen into the trap: if we look for it, we have already lost it. Although formulating it this way would horrify the Konigsberg philosopher, his vision of patience is very similar to the idea of ​​enjoying the process for its own sake. In more Kantian terms, we could talk about ‘moral satisfaction’: “an indirect enjoyment of the inner freedom that arises from the consciousness of mastery over one’s own inclinations.” And can this be trained? In several of his worksthe philosopher addresses the question of whether this ‘moral strength‘What we call patience can be trained. And his answer is yes; although, to tell the truth, in an unusual way. Because it is not about doing self-control exercises, nor conditioning yourself to inhibit specific stimuli. For Kant, what is really important is to train ‘moral attention’: focusing on seeing how our inclinations affect how we see things and the evaluations we make about them; glimpse what is best. Over time, patience will come alone. The most interesting image has to do with ‘writing’: fluency is not achieved by seeking fluency, it is achieved by writing a lot. Image | Xataka In Xataka | 2,000 years ago Epicurus had already understood the secret of pleasure: “Nothing is enough for those who have enough is little.”

Thousands of CEOs admit that nothing is changing (yet). The productivity paradox of the 80s resurfaces with force

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AI will make us more productive, the studies said and AI advocates. It is a discourse that is already well known and seemed reasonable: models allow us to automate routine tasks and use that time on other productive things, right? Well, the truth is, (at the moment) no. And what is happening is curiously the same thing that happened 40 years ago. The productivity paradox. In 1987 the economist and Nobel Prize winner Robert Solow realized of a singular paradox in the so-called “information age”. The transistors, microprocessors, and integrated circuits discovered in the 1960s were supposed to revolutionize businesses and dramatically increase productivity. What happened was just the opposite. Productivity growth did not accelerate, but rather slowed down: between 1948 and 1973 it was 2.9%, but since 1973 that growth was only 1.1%. So much chip for nothing? It seemed that way, at least those first few years. History repeats itself: AI is of little use. As they point out in Fortunethat paradox has resurfaced just now that we are suffering exactly the same thing with AI. A new study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) reveals a striking conclusion after surveying no less than 6,000 CEOs, CFOs and other managers from several countries: they see very little impact of AI on their real operations. AI is not changing anything. Although two-thirds of the managers surveyed indicated that they used AI in their processes, this use was very limited: about 1.5 hours per week. 25% of participants indicated that they did not use AI at all at work. Nearly 90% of the companies that participated highlighted that AI has not influenced their hiring or productivity in the last three years. But they are optimistic. The use of AI by these executives appears to be very limited at the moment, but those same companies are still waiting for a substantial impact. In fact, they expect productivity to increase by 1.4% in the next three years. Another paradox: these first years AI was supposed to cut hiring by 0.7%, but respondents revealed a 0.5% increase in those hiring. The data confirm that at the moment, little. The truth is that the vaunted AI revolution has still not become a reality, at least in terms of productivity and economic return. Economist Torsten Slok recently indicated that “AI is everywhere except in macroeconomic data: you don’t see it in employment, productivity or inflation data.” His thesis: the impact of AI is currently almost zero. In fact, except in the case of technology’s “Magnificent Seven,” there are no signs of profit margins or revenue expectations. But these revolutions take time. The revolution that semiconductors brought us took a while to crystallize, but it ended up doing so: in the 1990s and 2000s were produced productivity improvements such as an increase of 1.5% between 1995 and 2005. There are experts who they point because in fact this change in trend has already begun to occur: in the US, GDP in the fourth quarter grew by 3.7% despite the fact that there were job cuts. That points to an increase in productivity. Slok also pointed to this possibility, and theorized that the impact could end up having a “J” shape, first slowing down and then exploding. Let them tell the steam engine. Previous industrial revolutions, such as the one that produced the steam engine or, even more importantly, electricity, took their time. The initial delay disappeared over the course of subsequent decades because these technologies needed time to spread to the rest of the productive sectors. Excessive optimism does not help, of course, and at the moment what is reasonable seems to lie somewhere in between: neither “AI is useless” nor “AI will do everything for us.” Perhaps the only thing AI needs—in addition to improving—is for us to give time to time. It is not in vain that many describe it as “the new electricity.” Image | The Standing Desk In Xataka | Until now “software was eating the world.” Now AI is eating software

Elon Musk and Sam Altman predicted that AI will force the establishment of a universal basic income. The United Kingdom is already considering it

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The main economic organizations in the world they don’t agree in their forecasts about what the real impact of the arrival of AI will be in the economic and labor sphere. A report The World Economic Forum estimated that AI will create 170 million new jobs. The problem is that until that happens, it will destroy about 92 million jobs. The US Senate consider that some 100 million jobs could be destroyed. Elon Musk and Sam Altman have repeated on several occasions that, to minimize this impact on society, it will be necessary to implement a universal basic income. In the United Kingdom, the government is debating measures to protect workers with the same idea. Millionaires ask for a basic income. Some of the top AI millionaires, such as Elon Musk, have predicted that universal basic income will be a reality in a future dominated by AI. While it is true that Musk’s vision is based on a vision more optimistic about the future in which “work will be optional” and it will not be necessary to save for retirement, the millionaire does not deny that universal income will be a necessary instrument to achieve it. Along the same lines, although with a more realistic vision, the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, has funded studies on the effects of universal basic income in a scenario of job destruction and how this income helps recipients return to work train for new jobs. Companies do not need human labor. In one your blog postDario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, warned that AI will have an “unusually painful” impact on the labor market. “AI is not a substitute for specific human jobs, but rather a general job substitute for humans,” the manager wrote. For this reason, this mechanism is increasingly seen as a transition instrument that allows employees laid off due to the arrival of AI to retrain to re-enter the labor market. A systematic review of the Department of Economics of the University of Huelva on more than 50 empirical casespoint out that universal basic income improves spending on basic needs without participants stopping looking for work, so it will be a way for employees to train for new jobs. jobs created by AI. The UK Government is debating it. In an interview for Financial TimesJason Stockwood, UK Investment Minister, has revealed that within the Government “it is definitely being talked about.” The minister noted that “without a doubt, we are going to have to think very carefully about how to smooth the process of disembarking those industries that disappear, through some type of UBI and some type of lifelong learning mechanism so that people can retrain.” According to published BloombergMorgan Stanley declared a net job loss of 8% in the UK in the last 12 months due to AI, the highest among large economies. Which explains the concern of the British executive to begin evaluating formulas that cushion this impact. A lifeline to keep them afloat. Unlike Musk’s “optimistic” vision, British representatives do not see the arrival of AI as a liberating element that makes work optional, but as a problem that will temporarily leave millions of workers who will need help unemployed. So declared it Sadiq Khan, mayor of London, concerned about the high rate of “white collar” unemployment that can cause the arrival of AI in a city like London. Liz Kendall, Secretary of Technology of the United Kingdom, spoke along the same lines, assuring that, although it is true that more jobs will be created than will be lost, there will be a transition period in which AI will be “a weapon of mass destruction of jobs. We will not leave people and communities to fend for themselves,” collected Guardian. The million-dollar question: who finances that income? It is easy to predict that universal basic income would be a solution for those who do not have a job to return to because AI has automated it. However, something more complicated will be determining who will finance that basic income. Bill Gates already gave some clues almost a decade agoensuring that they should be their own companies that use robots in their processes those that pay for that subsidy “if a robot replaces the work of a human, that robot must pay taxes like a human.” Ioana Marinescu, economist and associate professor of public policy at the University of Pennsylvania consider that taxing technology companies could slow down their implementation at the local level, so that this transformation process it would be more progressive increasing that transition period that would give time to the labor market to adapt. In Xataka | AI and its impact on the labor market: how the perception of its arrival varies by country, explained in a graph Image | Unsplash (Alexander Gray, enrico bet)

force the United States out of its comfort zone

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If today we were asked which country is leading the race for artificial intelligence, the most immediate answer would probably still be the United States. And it wouldn’t be an occurrence. For decades, the country has set the pace for technological innovation and a good part of the digital tools that we use daily come from their large companies. However, that leadership is no longer as incontestable as it once was. The board begins to move and there is an actor who is closing distances at a speed that is difficult to ignore. That actor is China. The question is no longer whether China competes, but how it got here. How a country identified for years as the world’s factory, associated with mass production and cheap labor, has become a benchmark for innovation and technological vanguard. In a new video from Xataka’s YouTube channelour colleague Francisco Franconi analyzes this process in detail and puts figures, context and nuances to a phenomenon that we are seeing develop almost in real time and that can alter the balance of power in the global technology sector. China is no longer just the world’s factory: it is building its own path in AI “China should be years behind the United States in the development of AIs. It is a fact, since between 85 and 95% of the global market of chips used in this sector belong to Nvidia,” explains Franconi. The data is key, but it does not explain everything. The race for artificial intelligence is not only played in the field of semiconductors. There are other structural factors that are equally determining, and one of them is energy. The video delves into the enormous energy gap that separates both countries and why this aspect is crucial to understanding Chinese progress. As Franconi points out, energy “is necessary to build chip factories, supercomputers and processing centers. Without it there is no industrial growth.” To contextualize this statement, the analysis uses data from the International Energy Agency that helps to measure the real scope of this advantage and its direct impact on industrial and technological development. Another of the axes of the video is resilience. Specifically, China’s ability to adapt and continue moving forward despite the sanctions and restrictions imposed by the different US administrations. Franconi focuses on the repeated limitations that affect NVIDIA, but also examines the case of Huawei and the role that startups such as deepseek in this new scenario. Talent appears as another of the fundamental pillars of this career. “A relevant fact is that China has a greater number of graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, but the most shocking fact is that 50% of the world’s AI researchers are of Chinese origin“says Franconi. A figure that helps understand why the Asian country is gaining weight so quickly in development and research in artificial intelligence. The video also covers the current ecosystem of language models competing in the market and offers a clear snapshot of the position that China and the United States occupy in this technological race. An analysis that leads to our colleague’s conclusions about where this global pulse is heading and what implications it may have in the medium and long term. You can see now the full video on the Xataka YouTube channel. And, of course, we invite you to leave your comments both there and on this article. Images | Xataka In Xataka | Huawei is coming back. And not everyone is prepared for what is coming

Congress will force Renfe to return the money for delays of 15 minutes. Renfe’s response: we’ll see

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Last year, Renfe expanded the strict criteria for returning money to its customers in case of delay. The measure came with controversy since these criteria had been applied since 1992 when the first AVE was launched. Almost 25 years later, the company relaxed these criteria to the point that two million passengers lost their money last year. Now, Congress forces Renfe to return to its previous criteria. But Renfe is not up to the task. When and how much money does Renfe return? Right now, to receive a partial payment for our ticket, the delay on the Spanish high-speed Renfe has to exceed 60 minutes. From 2024the company does not give half the money if the delay does not exceed one hour. In the event that we aspire to receive a full refund of the ticket, it will not arrive until we exceed 90 minutes. What has changed? Yesterday, November 13, The Congress of Deputies approved the Sustainable Mobility Law. It included an amendment from the Popular Party that returned the compensation that Renfe has to apply to those prior to the 2024 change. That is: Delays of more than 15 minutes: payment of 50% of the ticket Delays of more than 30 minutes: 100% payment of the ticket The change is substantial because this summer, four out of every 10 Renfe high-speed trains have arrived late. However, with the changes applied from 2024 they have been left without a refund around two million passengers. We’ll see. This is what the Ministry of Transport seems to say. And in statements to EFEsources from said ministry have described the amendment (which has been supported by Vox, Junts, ERC, Podemos and BNG) as “a demagogic operation and a toast to the populist sun.” Not only that, since The World They already state that Transport assures that they will look for “the legal formula to maintain the current system.” That is, the customer does not receive any refund for their ticket until after 60 minutes of delay. And that the total amount is not delivered until after 90 minutes. In the media they also report that Transport sources have indicated that the decision “only wants to penalize Renfe, a Spanish and public company, and not competing companies.” such as Ouigo and Iryo”, while highlighting that Renfe is a “public company that is fundamental to the structure of Spain”. In addition, Óscar Puente himself, Minister of Transport, has questioned the amendment. “Let’s see how it goes,” they say in The World who has responded about the new obligation. At a disadvantage? What Transport maintains is that the amendment promoted by the Popular Party puts Renfe at a clear disadvantage compared to Ouigo and Iryo. What the Government alludes to is that the reimbursement conditions by these companies are less favorable for the client, allowing them a competitive advantage. Ouigo compensates in the following cases: Delay of more than 30 minutes and less than 60 minutes: 50% refund of the ticket in a non-refundable purchase voucher. Delay of more than 60 minutes and less than 90 minutes: 50% refund of the ticket in a refundable purchase voucher. Delay of more than 90 minutes: 100% refund of the ticket in a refundable purchase voucher. Iryo partially or totally refunds the money in the following situations: Delay of more than 30 minutes and less than 60 minutes: refund of 50% of the ticket in purchase voucher or cash. Delay of more than 90 minutes: 100% refund of the ticket in purchase voucher or cash. Competence. What the Ministry of Transport points out is that this puts them at a disadvantage compared to the competition because Renfe adapted its compensation criteria to formulas similar or equal to those offered by its competition. However, the amendment introduced in the Sustainable Mobility Law only toughens the criteria for Renfe. It must be taken into account that the company has been around for more than a year experiencing a punctuality crisis. Although the Government points out that its punctuality is among the best in Europe, criticism has surfaced because trains that do not arrive on time have multiplied. Of course, when sharing roads with Ouigo and Iryo, it may be the case that a road blockade due to a breakdown of the latter ends up causing a delay in times when Renfe does have to return 100% of the ticket and its rivals will only deliver half of it. Photo | Carlos Teixador Cadenas in Wikimedia and Congress of Deputies In Xataka | If the summer has taught us anything, it is that Spain does not need more trains. You just need them to work.

Yes, next year I am going to carry the V-16 beacon because they force me to. It doesn’t even occur to me to throw away the triangles

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January 1, 2026 we will say goodbye to the triangles. Or maybe I would have to say that “we should say goodbye to triangles.” Because that is what the DGT wants. Traffic has decided that in just over two months, the V-16 beacon will be the one that signals breakdowns or accidents that occur on the road. And by the way, it prohibits the use of triangles. And I will say that, when I need them, I will continue using them. It’s not a tantrum. It is not a question of simple rebellion because I have to spend 30, 40 or 50 euros on a new accessory for my car. It is as simple a question as deciding what is best for my safety, that of my passengers and that of my car. A good (but improvable) idea I am not one of those who rant about the V-16 light for the simple fact that the DGT forces us to spend money on a new accessory for our car. I think it has its good parts but I also think it has some things that could be very improved. And, above all, I don’t understand why both devices cannot be combined. According to the DGT, we are experiencing a kind of epidemic of abuses when it comes to put emergency triangles in our country. Well, there are reasons to be skeptical. Between the years 2018 and 2022 (that is, a period that includes before and during the COVID-19 pandemic), an annual average of between 18 and 26 people died in accidents “after getting off the vehicle” on high-capacity roads, as reflected in the document itself which explains why the regulations and technical requirements of this connected V-16 beacon are changed. The DGT highlights the year 2019, the year in which 58 pedestrians lost their lives on high-capacity roads, of which 18 people were run over “after getting off the vehicle” by a particular group. In those five years, there were 108 pedestrian deaths on our roads that can be classified in that particular group. According to data collected by Statista8,615 people died on our roads between 2018 and 2022. That is, 1.25% of those killed on Spanish roads died from a collision under these circumstances. But the most problematic thing about the matter is that these very particular circumstances do not reflect the abuses that occurred while a person placed a triangle. Are you looking for that number? The DGT does not offer it. It talks about accidents on high-capacity roads but does not pay attention to the number of accidents when putting the triangles. That is, the organization is putting a patch on a problem for which we do not have clear or verifiable data. Yet, I break a spear for of the connected V-16 beacon. It seems like a good idea to have a system in the car that warns of an obstacle on the road and that can be installed on the roof of our car without having to get out of the vehicle. And all this despite the fact that it is already mandatory to start the car flashing. It also doesn’t seem like a bad idea to me that the beacon connects with the DGT in its platform 3.0 and so from Traffic they can give notice through the road panels that there is an obstacle on the road. Of course, notifying the emergency services is the responsibility of the driver and passengers. It would be appreciated if, since there is connectivity with DGT 3.0, Traffic would study fluid communication with these emergency services. Not to mention that in all new cars sold there is already the function eCall to sound the first alarm. I will continue wearing the triangles That said, I will continue to carry emergency triangles in my car. And I threaten to use them! (Insert image of Abraham Simpson yelling at the clouds here) No jokes. I have already seen the V-16 beacon in operation connected to the DGT in operation and I am sorry to say that its visibility level during the day and in good light tends to zero. I fully agree with what A few days ago José Lagunar expressedroad safety expert Auto FMin the article in which we asked three voices to give us their opinion. In broad daylight, the differences between setting the DGT V-16 beacon and activating the car’s flashing are: none. In fact, it should give us a clue about this that Netun Solutions, the creators of the invention and the first beacon approved by the DGT, are already selling us “more powerful” lights than the minimum required by Traffic. Will I put the beacon on the roof of my car? Well yes, because it is of no use to me to buy it and carry it in the glove compartment. Furthermore, the connection with DGT 3.0 to alert by the lights is welcome. But I will also put the triangles. With great care and with all the caution in the world but I consider that it improves visibility in case of breakdown. And we’re talking about a highway in broad daylight. But, What happens on a secondary road with a sharp curve? And with a pronounced change in gradient? Not putting emergency triangles in those situations, especially during the day where the light beam from the V-16 beacon is diluted, seems at least dangerous to me. In those cases, it is essential for me to place the emergency triangles. I am firmly in favor of the fact that both systems can coexist. The connected V-16 light doesn’t seem like a bad invention to me. At night, for example, the visibility of the triangles improves and even in a secondary vehicle in the above conditions it is likely to alert the rest of the vehicles sooner than the triangles. But if you use a battery, you are only forced to run it for 30 minutes. What happens if I am left stranded with … Read more

They cannot force you to work on weekends even if your contract says “Monday to Sunday”

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The Supreme Court has brought order to an area where many companies moved with ambiguity: the possibility of changing the working day at their convenience, by far that indicates it in the employment contract. In a recent ruling, the Supreme Court has unified its criteria and it is no longer enough for the contract to say that you can work “from Monday to Sunday” as a justification for change the work dayyou must negotiate it with employees before applying the change. What exactly has the Supreme Court defined?. The judgment responds to the request for unification of criteria requested by the CGT union in the face of previous contradictory rulings. The origin is a collective conflict raised by the unions after a company decided extend your day Monday through Sunday to serve the needs of its business clients. For more than five years, the staff of that company had worked only from Monday to Friday, so the unions understood that the change in hours represented a substantial modification of working conditions and, therefore, should be subject to negotiation, as established in the Article 41 of the Workers’ Statute. The Supreme Court agrees with the unions and annuls that decision, indicating that, although the contract allowed working “Monday to Sunday”, the change required a formal procedure. In the words of the ruling, “if workers have been providing services from Monday to Friday since 2017 and in 2022 the company informs them that they have to start doing so from Monday to Sunday, this represents a substantial modification of working conditions.” Why is it important. The Supreme Court makes it clear that the regular consolidated working day It cannot be altered unilaterally by the company. The court admits that the contract included the possibility of working from Monday to Sunday, but emphasizes that the practice sustained for years has more legal weight than the generic clause. That is to say, if from the beginning the day was configured from Monday to Sunday, that practice is consolidated, and any substantial change that is applied must be negotiated. According to the ruling, “the company could not decide unilaterally, and without following the procedure of article 41 ET, to start providing services from Monday to Sunday when since 2017 it had been providing services from Monday to Friday.” What it means for workers. The Supreme Court ruling strengthens the position of employees and gives them more tools against non-negotiated shift changes. If a staff has been working a specific schedule for years, that practice becomes part of their contract, even if it is not explicitly written. In practical terms, this means that workers can challenge any substantial alteration to their working hours or schedules if they have not been previously negotiated. This new ruling restores the staff to their previous schedule and declares the business decision void, urging them to negotiate the change in accordance with the provisions of article 41 of the Workers’ Statute. What changes for companies. With its unification of criteria, the Supreme Court places limits on the unilateral modification of the conditions and organization of work by companies, forcing them to reach agreements with employees as long as these changes are substantial and have a justification. The court points out that the company could have easily started the negotiation “claiming that the client company required the services to be provided from Monday to Sunday”, which in the court’s opinion is a more than justified reason, and not directly impose it. In Xataka | It seemed obvious, but the Supreme Court had to remind them: Ryanair cannot elect a union, the employees choose it Image | Flickr (Chris Arnold), Unsplash (Eduardo Alexandre)

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