making

We thought that AI was going to take our position. The reality is that it is making us work more and rest less

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The most pessimistic vision of the future of AI predicted that the automation of processes would mean the elimination of many jobs. The most optimistic assure that AI will not replace employees, but rather will enhance your skills making them more productive, which will translate into shorter days. A analysis of Harvard Business Reviewbased on eight months of observation at a US technology company with about 200 employees, reveals something very different: AI is making employees take on more tasks, but also make them work longer days. Do more with AI. The study observed that the use of AI in the company It did not simplify the work, but rather expanded it. The researchers observed that employees, product managers, and designers began using AI on their own initiative, even though the company did not force them to do so. What it did do was provide business subscriptions to those who decided to use it in their work. This use made employees begin to tackle more and more tasks, not only within the scope of their position, but, for example, employees from the sales department asked AI for help. to program a tool to help them in their task. Employees argued that, with the help of AI, they had immediate response to their ideas and projects, which allowed them to accomplish more tasks. The end of breaks. The help of AI and the elimination of friction in starting new tasks motivated employees to take on more and more tasks, increasing their daily workload. The most curious thing is that the researchers discovered that this additional motivation also implied that employees gave up their natural rest times. The increase in workload, even voluntarily, increased their levels of cognitive fatigue and exhaustion, influencing their decision-making capacity. By not having to stop and reflect in front of a blank page of a report or simply go to a colleague’s desk for help with a question, employees endured greater mental strain. This progressive exhaustion had an impact on worsening of work quality and in personnel turnover due to burnout. Fast pace and multitasking. He productivity increase The initial advantage that AI provided made it possible for employees to have several open fronts. The researchers detected that employees assigned a task to the AI ​​(or even several tasks in parallel processes) and, while obtaining a result, started a new task. This practice caused a state of perpetual multitasking, with frequent interruptions and “juggling” between different ideas and open projects, which contributed to exhausting employees’ cognitive capacity a little more. More work for you, more work for others. Daring to take on tasks that did not correspond to them, in turn caused a supervision overload for the departments to which it did correspond. For example, if someone in the sales department created code to streamline the analysis of their sales data, that would require the engineering department to review that code to make sure it was correct. that is correct and safeincreasing your workload with unplanned projects. Blurred boundaries between work and life. One of the most notable consequences is how AI acts as an always-available “co-pilot,” removing barriers between work and personal hours. The employees who participated in the analysis ended up extending their work hours on their own initiative, reviewing ideas or polishing the work they had started with AI at home. As its authors point out, “organizations could see this voluntary expansion of work as a clear victory. After all, if workers do it on their own initiative, why would that be a bad thing?” However, this apparent initial advantage for companies can mask a long-term problem “Overwork can impair judgment, increase the likelihood of errors, and make it difficult for organizations to distinguish between true productivity gains and unsustainable intensity,” the researchers note. The report ‘Barometer of AI in the world of work’ prepared by PwC, corroborates that in companies with a high implementation of AI, productivity increases between 20 and 30% on average, but it is only maintained at these levels if it is accompanied by ethical governance and redistribution of efforts. Without these adjustments, the promise of efficiency becomes a trap of greater individual effort that ends up burning out employees with heavier workloads and longer hours. In Xataka | “The world is in danger”: Anthropic’s security manager leaves the company to write poetry Image | Unsplash (Christina @wocintechchat.com)

Anthropic has taken Apple’s strategy against Microsoft to the Super Bowl: making using the rival look ridiculous

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Anthropic has opened the Super Bowl by attacking OpenAI with ads that show virtual therapists advertising dating apps and personal trainers selling boosts for short people. The message: “Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude“(“The ads are reaching the AI. But not Claude.”) Sam Altman has responded in X calling them “dishonest” and accusing them of “doublespeak“, “double speech” in Spanish, although a better adapted translation could be “deceptive language” or simply “hypocrisy.” It seems like a minor skirmish, two rivals fighting over an advertisement. But under that hood is a billion-dollar question: What kind of business will AI be when it’s established? The history of the Internet is summarized in two great models: One free supported by advertising: Google, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok… regardless of whether they have premium versions. Other direct payment by subscription: Netflix, DAZN, Disney+, Apple Music, PSN… The first aims to maximize the audience, the second aims to maximize the revenue per user. The AI ​​is right now deciding which of the two paths it takes. In Xataka AI is breaking one of the oldest economic paradigms in history: that cheap equals "bad" OpenAI has already chosen and is starting to test putting ads on free ChatGPT accounts. Altman justifies it with the classic argument of democratization: “More Texans use free ChatGPT than the total number of people using Claude in the United States.” In other words: they want to reach those billions of people who are not going to pay 20 dollars a month. And for that you need advertising. Anthropic chooses the opposite. “Anthropic offers an expensive product to rich people,” Altman reproaches him. In a way, it is true: Claude is betting above all on contracts with companies and premium subscriptions of 20, 100 and 200 dollars per month. Their model depends on the AI ​​being valuable enough for you to pay for it. And so that you look from time to time to the higher plan with the temptation to go up one more step. Without advertising, without sponsored links and without responses being influenced by advertisers. The difference is not only business, it is product. An AI with advertising has different incentives than one without it. What happens when you ask the assistant what car to buy you and there is a manufacturer paying to appear in their answers? What about medical, financial, legal advice? OpenAI has promised that “ads do not influence responses.” That’s what he said in minute 0. But that promise will be increasingly difficult to sustain as monetization pressure increases. {“videoId”:”x9u4ml2″,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”Does Gemini 3 surpass ChatGPT? This is Google’s new AI”, “tag”:”Webedia-prod”, “duration”:”156″} Anthropic has its own problem: If it only reaches those who can afford to pay, AI becomes a tool of the elites. A technology that promises to democratize knowledge ends up reproducing the class divisions that already exist. We saw this coming with the arrival of $200 plans to access the AI ​​elite. A gap that creates another gap, The parallel with the history of the Internet is inevitable. Free social networks caught (almost) all of us in the 1910s, but in return they built advertising surveillance machines optimized for the engagementnot for anyone’s well-being. Payment services are cleaner, but also more exclusive. So AI is now at that bifurcation point: OpenAI is committed to being the YouTube of AI: free for everyone, supported by ads and with premium versions for those who want to pay. Anthropic wants to be the Netflix: better experience and free of ads, but only for those who pay. It is true that it maintains a free plan, but its limits are a continuous invitation to check out or leave. And now it’s up for grabs What kind of relationship with those machines that know more and more about us and from which we ask more and more?. Whether they will be services that serve us or whether they will be platforms that monetize us. In Xataka | The AI ​​of 2026 brings an uncomfortable truth: the most useful will be the one that watches us the most Featured image | Anthropic (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news Anthropic has taken Apple’s strategy against Microsoft to the Super Bowl: making using the rival look ridiculous was originally published in Xataka by Javier Lacort .

Spain is stopping making its potato tortillas at home. And that is why the Mercadona supplier is growing by 20%

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After decades of debate Spain hasn’t decided yet Whether or not the tortilla should contain onion, what thousands and thousands of Spaniards do seem to be clear about is that the ideal is for someone else to cook it. More and more people prefer to go from peeling potatoes, heating oil and making their own tortillas to buying them directly at the supermarket. And so is making gold to one of Mercadona’s allied companies, a Navarrese firm which in 2025 increased its turnover by 20% to reach almost 200 million euros and this year it hopes to make another growth spurt to reach 230. It is the financial data of a company in the food sector, but it also tells us a lot about the market and our consumer habits. Sincebollists V.S. concebollistas. It is not easy to classify the Spanish population into tight compartments, but there is something that does not fail: the majority of 49.4 million of people who live in this country can be defined as sincebollists either concebollistas depending on whether you prefer the potato omelette (one of the great emblems of the native cuisine) with or without onion. The curious thing is that both seem to increasingly opt to abandon the stove and buy ready-made tortillas. At least that’s what they suggest. the latest data from Grupo Elaborados Naturales, Mercadona supplier and one of the largest tortilla manufacturers in the country. One figure: 197 million. The company presume that since its founding in 2006, it has managed to achieve “a dizzying pace” of growth of between 15 and 40% annually. 2025 has not been an exception. His last balance shows that last year it had a turnover of 197 million, 20% more than the previous year. This year it hopes to maintain that pace with another growth of 16.7% that will allow it to reach a turnover of around 230 million. As? Basically with your offer of refrigerated and frozen tortillas, although in the HORECA channel (the professional hospitality industry) also works with processed potatoes and vegetables. 2026, big. To achieve this growth, the company has redoubled its industrial muscle. The firm has dedicated approximately 40 million euros to strengthening its facilities, expanding its factory in Funes (Navarra) by 20,000 square meters and equipping itself with 12 new lines which will allow it to double the production capacity in that plant: from 300,000 units per day to 600,000. The company assures that it will also generate hundreds of jobs. In total, the company has three factories: Funes, dedicated to the production of tortillas; that of Corella (Navarra), which combines the manufacture of tortillas with prepared refrigerated potato-based dishes; and Aguilar del Río Alhama (La Rioja), where 150 people work dedicated to cooking migas and ‘fifth range’ foods (ready to eat) with vegetables. Apart from the national market, the company exports to a dozen and a half countries. The (long) shadow of Mercadona. Beyond its production capacity, there is one fact about the company that draws attention: its weight in the sector. Elaborados Naturales has reached a market share in the ‘potato tortillas’ category of 56% in large national distribution. This enormous footprint is better understood when knowing a key fact about the Navarrese company: its alliance with Mercadona. The firm is a supplier to the Juan Roig chain, which has in turn expanded throughout the sector until it has gained a market share of between 25 and 30%a percentage that has been reinforced thanks to its good rhythm of growth. More than just a business balance sheet. The balance sheet of Elaborados Naturales is nothing more than that: the balance sheet of a company in the food industry. If it is interesting to read beyond the company’s offices, it is because it connects with other underlying trends that are clearly identifiable in both the industry and Spanish society. For example, the growing demand of prepared foods. The latest data from the Ministry of Agriculture and Food (MITECO) they talk to us of an increase in the consumption of prepared dishes of around 6% while that of fish, fruits and vegetables declines. Much of it Of that demand is also satisfied in supermarkets. Rain of millions. A good example is Mercadona, which has seen how its line of ready-to-eat dishes has been taking over a growing gap in that business niche. Its success (also supported by white label) is in turn boosting its extensive ecosystem of suppliers, including Elaborados. In fact, the tortilla manufacturer is just one of the many companies that have seen their turnover grow by close to 20% in recent years driven largely by the commercial expansion of the Valencian chain. Images | Kent Wang (Flickr) and Natural Prepared In Xataka | Years ago Mercadona decided to conquer the market with its white brands. And that is making gold for some companies

A simple gadget is making a species evolve live and direct: hummingbirds

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During the late 1820s, Rene Lesson visited many times the ornithological collection of François Victor Masséna. Every morning, he crossed the doors of the Parisian palace of the Dukes of Rivoli and immersed himself in the more than 12,000 species they had accumulated there. Some say he fell in love there. Sometimes, just before immersing himself in work, he would come across a very young woman Anna d’EsslingMasséna’s wife. Lesson, who was well aware of his social situation, never said anything; but in his papers he described Anna as “a woman of exceptional beauty, elegance and education.” I imagine that, for this reason, when he discovered the amethyst-headed hummingbird among the Duke’s specimens, he thought of her. I imagine that, for this reason, Lesson named it after him. What I can’t imagine is what the French ornithologist would think if we told him that we were “evolving” the hummingbird he gave to Anna until we changed it forever. But that’s how it is. The evolution live and direct. I came to this story (and Global Change Biology study which supports it) thanks to a bluit by Carlos Cabido. It is, as the evolutionary ecologist says, “another case of rapid evolution that has generated observable adaptive changes in a very short period.” The “smoking gun.” But let’s start at the beginning: researchers at the University of California Berkeley analyzed the population expansion and the morphological changes in the beaks of hummingbirds in relation to a very specific device: the feeders that, since the 1930s, have been used on the west coast of the United States. These are simple sugar water dispensers, but (always according to researchers) they have caused a series of very striking changes. What changes? On a regional and temporal scale, “the density/use of feeders appears as the best predictor of population expansion”; well above other variables analyzed. This means that the installation of these dispensers is the key to the expansion of hummingbirds. Linked to that, researchers they observed significant changes in the morphology of the beak: it has become longer (to better access the feeder) and sharper (in a context where territoriality is becoming more important because it is linked to a very concentrated resource). And all this in a couple of decades. That is, in about ten generations. Why is it important? Above all, because it is one more example that a cheap, massive and standardized device (if it creates a new food environment) can reconfigure body structures and behavioral repertoires. And, beyond all that, because it shows that, if environmental change is intense and sustained, natural selection works like a shot. However, all that glitters is not a hummingbird. In fact, Anna’s hummingbird is almost an exception. As far as we know, countless hummingbird species They are suffering (and big time) the changes linked to the Anthropocene: although the Anna is growing, its first cousins ​​are in clear decline. And yes, it is our fault. Yeah this study shows that we have great power to change nature, the overview reminds us that “with great power comes great responsibility.” Image | Robert Bottman In Xataka | The domestication of cats remains a mystery. But we are closer to knowing where and why it happened

the suppliers you are making gold

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If there is a recipe to succeed in the retailMercadona seems to have found her. In 2024, Juan Roig’s company invoiced more than 38.8 billion euros and increased its net profit by 37%. That’s not new. What is curious is to what extent this push is making gold to the company’s main suppliers. In recent months we have seen invest millionaire sums to expand its facilities and boast an EBIDTA (earnings before taxes) that grows at double digitbut an overall image was missing. At last we have it. An “industrial cluster”. Mercadona is not just any supermarket chain. And it is not for several reasons. The main one is that it is the one that Spanish families go to most. Your market share (at least in terms of value) around 30%significantly above other rivals established in the sector such as Carrefour or Lidl. There are those who even gives you a weight elderly. The other reason why Mercadona stands out is its strategy, based on a formula in which the “short assortment”the commitment to ready-made dishes and the white label. The success of the Valencian chain can hardly be understood without brands such as Hacendado, Deliplus or Bosque Verde, which finished a large part of its shelves. The suppliers that help sustain this offer are so relevant that Mercadona itself speaks of a “industrial cluster”. One question: How much do they earn? Recently Five Days An interesting question was asked: do we know how they evolve the income from Mercadona, but… And what about its suppliers? How are its “specialist suppliers”, the firms that allow the chain to offer a catalog dominated by its own brands, doing? It is an interesting question because between both, Mercadona and suppliers, suppliers and Mercadona, such a close relationship has been created that many of the supply companies generate more than 50% of their business through the Valencian firm. That is to say, Mercadona is not only its main client but 50, 60, 70 or even (in some cases) more than 80% of its cash depends on it. To clear up doubts Five Days consulted the 2024 financial reports deposited in the Commercial Registry by Mercadona’s 20 main suppliers. They are only a small part of the more than 2,000 “specialist suppliers and inter-suppliers” of the chain, but the weight they have in their offer is fundamental. The catalog of products that are marketed under banners such as Hacendado, Bosque Verde or Deliplus is largely indebted to them. A percentage: 20%. The Commercial Registry leaves something curious to say: in 2024 the sales figure of Mercadona’s 20 largest suppliers exceeded 12,000 million euros, 18% more than in 2022. Not only that. Its aggregate profits also grew by 5% to exceed 360 million. During the same period, Mercadona saw its turnover soar by 25%, a percentage that can be explained by price increases, but also by the opening of premisesthe increase in sales and your business share. Going down to detail. Of course, not all of them have grown at the same pace nor do they manage the same levels of income from product sales. At the top are Casa Tarradellas, Incarlopsa, J García Carrión and Covap, with turnover that has exceeded 1,000 million euros. The four also saw their sales grow between 2022 and 2024 at a rate of between 12 and 29%. The list continues (at least in terms of net turnover) Profand, Importaco, Jealsa, Entrepinares, Virto, Cerealto, Schreiber Foods, Delisano, Huevos Guillén, RNB Cosmticos, Alacant, SPB, Laboratorios Maverick and Hijos de Juan Pujante. The list is closed by Arrocería Pons, which registered 135 million euros. “Very significant part”. The reports deposited by those twenty signatures in the Commercial Registry are interesting for another reason. Many not only report high volumes of income and an increase in billing in recent years (between 2022 and 2024). It is also made clear that a considerable part of these companies depend largely on Mercadona. Not all of them provide the data, but among those that do, there are firms that recognize that 53, 69, 73, 85 or 94% of their sales are linked to the Valencian chain. Others do not go into detail, but slip that “a significant part” or “most” of their turnover comes from their relationship with Mercadona. Surprise (half). These are interesting percentages because of what they tell us about Mercadona’s expansion and the effects it has within its business ecosystem, but the truth is that few will be surprised. A few months ago Familia Martínez, a strategic supplier of Mercadona specialized especially in prepared food, it was news for your decision to invest 150 million of euros to reinforce its facilities. That gave a first clue about the business that is heating up in the heat of the expansion of the Roig chain. Images | Mercadona Via | Five Days In Xataka | Three chains are devouring the supermarket business in Spain year after year: Mercadona, Lidl and Aldi

Movistar Plus+ was making a comeback after four years of losing customers. Telefónica has decided to cut its workforce

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Telefónica has set 119 final departures in Movistar Plus+part of the ERE that will eliminate 4,554 positions in Spain. It is a reduction compared to the more than 200 losses initially planned, but it comes at the worst moment: when the platform was finally adding clients again. Why is it important. Movistar Plus+ has 3.75 million (the most recent data is from September 30) , the best data since 2018 after years of collapse. It lost almost 650,000 clients between 2019 and 2023, hit rock bottom, and was already beginning to recover. Now Telefónica is cutting muscle just when it needed to step on the accelerator. The paradox. The company bet a lot of money buying Canal+ and launching its own productions to compete with Netflix and Prime Video. When the numbers improve, he reduces the workforce. The inevitable question: how are you going to keep up with global giants with fewer people and a tighter budget? Yes, but. Subscriber growth does not guarantee profitability. Telefónica has reoriented Movistar Plus+ towards a more flexible and cheaper offer, unrelated to convergent packages. That adds customers but compresses margins. And competing in streaming without a global scale is very expensive. The unequal context. Netflix already has more than 300 million subscribers in the world. Prime Video exceeds 200 million. Disney+ around 120 million. Movistar Plus+ has 3.75 million in Spain, at the end of the third quarter of 2025. The difference in scale is brutal and translates directly into budget for content, technology and distribution. What works. Football continues to be the lifeline. LaLiga and the Champions League keep many subscribers hooked who, without that content, perhaps would not have stayed for so long. But a platform cannot be built only on sports rights that also increase in price every cycle, as we saw a few days ago. What deserves more luck. Movistar Plus+’s own series and documentaries have objective quality. ‘Poison‘, ‘The Messiah‘, ‘The Plague‘, ‘riot police‘, ‘The Pioneer‘ either ‘Rapa‘ demonstrate the ability to find powerful stories with local cultural sensitivity. Netflix and Prime also produce Spanish content, but Movistar Plus+ has built its own catalog that transcends obvious trends and connects with the public in another way. The problem is not the quality of the content. Quality is sometimes not enough when you compete against infinite budgets and recommendation algorithms fine-tuned with data from hundreds of millions of users. The big question. What will become of Movistar Plus+ if it continues to contract? It was beginning to regain ground, but doing so with 119 fewer people makes it difficult to maintain the pace. Without the investment capacity to match the Netflix-Amazon-Disney triumvirate, the room for maneuver narrows every quarter. The background. This ERE is not an isolated case. Telefónica has been thinning its workforce for years while it pivots towards infrastructure and gets rid of unprofitable Latin American subsidiaries. Marc Murtra, president for one year, has renovated its entire dome. The 2024 one cost 1,300 million and took 3,421 positions. This new adjustment will be more expensive and deeper. Between the lines. The unions have ended up accepting forced dismissals in minority companies such as Movistar Plus+, despite having set it as an initial red line. The pressure from the workforce to guarantee early retirements in other subsidiaries has weighed more than maintaining positions. UGT and CCOO have appealed to “common sense” and “responsibility”common euphemisms to justify a capitulation. In Xataka | Telefónica is preparing a tough ERE, but for many veterans it will be like a prize Featured image | Xataka with Mockuuups Studio

For many people, making an appointment with the SEPE is hell. So there are already “managers” charging 99 euros to sneak you in

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Where you see something as unremarkable as an appointment with the SEPE, there are those who see something quite different: easy money. A juicy business that is cooked between networks, chats and platforms on-line of advertisements and that skirts the law to reach clients desperate to deal with the State. Its dynamics are very simple: managers appointments take advantage of the weaknesses of public administrations and their reservation systems to monopolize (free) appointments and then sell them. What do you urgently need to be attended to at the SEPE to process the unemployment benefit but there is no way to reserve an appointment on the official website? Do you need a procedure in Immigration? No problem. Pay and have an appointment tomorrow. five seconds. That’s how long it takes to find advertisements of people who offer to find and book appointments to carry out procedures at the SEPE. All (of course) in exchange for a payment that can range from 10 to 30 or even 100 euros. Your business it’s not entirely newjust as it is not the situation which they take advantage of: a cocktail of factors in which the staff cuts in the administration, failures in computer systems and the mischief of people willing to get rich by flouting the law and marketing a public service: prior appointments for citizens who need to make urgent arrangements, such as requesting unemployment benefits or presenting documents at the Immigration Office. “There were no appointments”. A few days ago elDiario.es published an article which gives an idea of ​​to what extent this has become chronic. illegal marketing of SEPE appointments, at least in part of Spain. The newspaper recounts the case of a 35-year-old woman, Sofía, who after losing her job did the most logical thing: go on the Public Employment Service website to request unemployment benefits. No luck. He did not find available appointments to go to the agency’s offices. Neither in Lleida (its province) nor in nearby areas. He tried it the next day with identical results. And on the other, and again on the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh day. Always without success. In total, he spent ten days in front of the computer, pressing the F5 key every so often in the hope of finding a free space. “It’s an abuse”. “I would have been willing to drive hours if necessary. But there was nothing at all,” confesses desperately Sofía, who saw how the deadline was consumed 15 business days that was available to request unemployment without losing benefit time. In the end she managed to get treated, but not thanks to a stroke of luck. She got the appointment through a friend’s contact, a stranger who, in exchange for 45 euros, scheduled an appointment for her in 48 hours. Maybe 45 euros seems like a lot of money for a free public service, but she herself recognizes There are those who charge up to 99 euros. “It’s an abuse.” How is it possible? For several factors. To start with the tensions in the administration. a few months ago The Country denounced the difficulties that citizens in Spain are having in getting appointments in the offices of the old INEM, especially those distributed along the Mediterranean coast, the islands and Madrid and Barcelona, ​​a phenomenon that is explained by the thinning of the workforce, the workload and failures of those they have already warned the unions. “Between 2022 and 2024 we have had 1,412 retirements. In 2025 we have lost 725 people,” laments in elDiario.es Manuel Galdeano, from the CSIF. From UGT they recognize that a service that should be provided by 12,000 personnel must be content with 7,300, which in their opinion translates into a work overload for the SEPE staff, but also a decrease in service to citizens. Taking advantage of the system. The other key that explains the ease with which people like the one who helped Sofía get appointments when the SEPE seems collapsed must be sought in the bowels of the system. Those who market with shifts They have their “tricks”such as bots and resources that allow them to automate searches and collect dozens of appointments daily. Then they just have to advertise their services on networks and chats and wait for vulnerable citizens to knock on their door. When that happens and they ‘hunt’ a desperate user, the managers appointments only have to cancel one of the many reservations they have made and request that space again, in seconds, with the personal data (name and surname, ID, postal code…) that the client has previously provided them. In exchange they charge 10, 20, 30, 40 or more euros via Bizum. In some cases almost 100 are required. Easy, simple… Ethical? Communication is online and clients are recruited through call centers, WhatsApp groups, social networks and advertising websites. In some case the managers dating sites advertise as companies and, assures elDiariothere are those who even try to appear more authoritative by using images of professional organizations without any permission. Their business relies mainly on the anxiety of users who need to contact the administration. Also in ignorance. The SEPE website allows, for example, to carry out a pre-application unemployment benefit that prevents users from losing days of unemployment even if it takes more than two weeks to get an in-person appointment. Is it something new? No. And perhaps that is the most curious thing. A quick search in the newspaper archive arrives to verify that the marketing with prior appointments with the administration It is not a new practice. In fact in 2020 the SEPE has already denounced before the Provincial Prosecutor’s Office of Barcelona the resale of appointments to resolve procedures in its offices, a practice that USO had warned about shortly before. Nor is it something that exclusively affects Employment. The same illicit business affects immigration services, a practice reported by officials and that has even led to police operations with dozens of arrested. In the case of the SEPE, … Read more

Europe has been warning for years that firing in Spain is a bargain. Now Congress is making a move with the “restorative dismissal”

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Unfair dismissal in Spain is a bargain for companies. At least that is what the European Committee of Social Rights (CEDS), dependent on the Council of Europe, has been telling Spain for years. Throughout this time, the Government has turned a deaf ear to the recommendations from Brussels. However, an unexpected turn caused by the mistake of a representative of the Popular Party During a vote in Congress, a Non-Law Proposal (PNL) by Sumar was allowed to prosper, which urges the Government to present a bill to reform the laws that prevent the application of the restorative dismissal that Europe has actively and passively requested. Europe has been warning since 2021. When Spain ratified in 2021 the European Social Charterassumed the commitment to harmonize its labor legislation with its principles. Since then, the European Committee of Social Rights (CEDS), an advisory body of the Council of Europe, has reiterated that the Spanish system, based on a fixed calculation of 33 days per year worked and a maximum of 24 months, does not meet the criteria of said commitment. The problem is that the European Social Charter is a set of guidelines, but it is not binding, and the CEDS is a consultative body, so it cannot demand legislative modifications from Spain. Its resolutions are recommendations, valuable from a legal and political point of view, but without executive force. This lack of obligation has allowed Spain to postpone reforms that would change the way compensation is calculated for employees for unfair dismissal. The cornerstone: article 24. The point of greatest friction to undertake the reforms is found in article 24 of the European Social Charter. It requires “the right of workers dismissed without valid reason (unfair dismissal) to adequate compensation or other appropriate relief.” This means ensuring that compensations to employees for unfair dismissal must be “appropriate and dissuasive”. Something that, as a general rule, does not occur in the system of fixed compensation that is currently applied in all judicial processes for unfair dismissal. This time the request has not come from Europe. Despite having dictated different resolutions and requestsnothing has changed in Europe’s position, nor has it gained power to force Spain to implement the legislative changes. However, what has changed is internal politics. In September, a Non-Law Proposition promoted by Sumar managed to get ahead thanks to the voting error of a PP deputy, repeating the scene that in 2022 allowed approve the labor reform. This NLP does not modify the law itself, but it does urge the Government to begin the legislative process to adapt the regulations to the European framework. This implies the opening of a social dialogue table with unions and employers and, subsequently, the preparation of a bill that must return to Congress to be voted on. The reform of the regulations to legislate unfair dismissals, therefore, is still a long way off, but for the first time the Executive is obliged to put it on the table. “Restorative dismissal” is not a type of dismissal. Among all the CEDS recommendations, none has generated as much debate as the so-called restorative dismissal. The name can lead to confusion: it is not a new category of dismissal as the disciplinarynull or inadmissible, but refers to a proposal to transform How compensation is calculated when a dismissal is declared unfair. Europe considers that the current Spanish system is too predictable and, in many cases, insufficient. The result is that companies can treat unfair dismissal as a more or less easy cost to assume and choose which employees or how many to dismiss based on the cost of the operation. Restorative dismissal causes this calculation to vary from one employee to another and is under the sole discretion of a judge, which would prevent companies from calculating in advance the final cost of the dismissal. What is restorative dismissal?. As its name indicates, restorative dismissal is a model that seeks to individualize the severance payment to the specific damage it causes to the dismissed employee, instead of an automatic calculation based in days per year worked. Judges could assess specific factors in each case, taking into account factors such as the age and social situation of the worker, the real probability of re-entering the labor market, the economic and personal impact of the dismissal, or the size, solvency, or economic capacity of the dismissing company. Based on these factors, for example, a 60-year-old worker with children and a 24-year-old single worker who were fired by the same company in similar positions would obtain different compensation because, statistically, the older one would have less likely to return to the labor market than the young person. Europe understands that this flexibility is essential to repair the real damage of dismissal and to act as a preventive mechanism. Deterrence, protection and less business calculation. The objective of restorative dismissal is not only to better compensate the worker based on the impact caused, but also to discourage the appeal of unfair dismissal and that, if companies really have economic problems that justify dismissals, they do so through dismissals for objective reasons. If the cost is no longer predictable, the company loses the ability to make profitability calculations. This protection measure especially affects precarious groups who, due to their low salary or short seniority, are very cheap to fire: young people, women and precarious workers. Furthermore, Europe insists that the reinstatement after dismissal inadmissible should no longer be optional for the company as it is currently, and should become a real possibility imposed by the court when it is appropriate. Restoration, in this sense, is not only economic, but also labor-related. Justice has its hands tied. Despite Europe’s insistence, the Spanish courts have rejected impose compensation higher than the current scale included in the article 56 of the Workers’ Statute. The reason was not a lack of judicial will, but the absence of a legal framework that would allow additional compensation to be established without generating legal uncertainty. In Xataka | … Read more

Football has become the anchor of operator subscriptions. And LaLiga is making more money than ever

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It is not necessary to consult reports to understand that, for many, life has become more expensive faster than salaries. Many of us check this when making a purchase, looking for a home or renewing insurance. Even so, there are few consumer decisions that endure as much as football. Not only do we continue to see it, but it is more present than ever in the television packages, in the bars, on the platforms and in the subscriptions we take out. This prominence is not only reflected in the way we consume it, but also in how it is valued as a product. LaLiga, the organization that manages professional competitions in Spain, has awarded the domestic audiovisual rights for the new cyclewhich will cover from 2027/28 to 2031/32. The result marks a historical maximum: 6,135 million euros, 9% more than the previous cycle. Telefónica and DAZN will repeat as partners, ensuring the broadcast and exploitation of the content for five more seasons. Where do the 6,135 million come from? The record figure is not explained only by households, but by the diversification of the product. The residential block represents 5,250 million euros, but the segment HORECAwhich includes bars, public premises and hospitality establishments, is close to 650 million. LaLiga Hypermotionwhich is the Second Division and takes its name from the Hypermotion technology used in soccer video games, contributes about 175 million. Added to this are more than 60 million in open rights and summaries. Football is no longer sold in a single format. Football as an anchor for subscriptions. For streaming operators and platforms, football has become the product capable of sustaining their business models. It’s no longer just about gaining users, as PwC warns and Simon-Kucher Consultingbecause the market is beginning to show clear signs of saturation, but of obtaining more income from each subscriber. And there football is decisive. Telefónica, with Movistar Plus+, and DAZN have opted to maintain the rights because it allows them to maintain customers, justify prices and build packages that cannot be understood without this content. That football continues to be part of our social life is reflected in the figure for the HORECA segment: close to 650 million euros, compared to 500 million in the previous cycle. The bars and restaurants that hire the service not only offer the content, they offer a place to experience it in company. LaLiga knows that the value is not only in the broadcast, but in the environment that accompanies it. Second division, HYPERMOTION brand and added value. With Hypermotion, LaLiga has turned its Second Division into an audiovisual product with its own entity. Not only does the name change: the way of presenting and exploiting it changes. This block, as we say, will contribute around 175 million euros, 40% more than in the previous cycle. The crusade against illegal emissions. Part of the increase in value is explained byLaLiga’s crusade against illegal broadcasts. The organization has intensified control over platforms that distributed content without authorization, with legal actions that have generated debate, like the case of Cloudflare. Javier Tebas defends that this strategy It has allowed “increasing the number of operators’ users” and reinforcing confidence in the product. It has not been without controversy, but LaLiga maintains that it has had a real impact on the market. The agreement not only brings income, but also time. LaLiga points out that a five-year cycle offers clubs and operators sufficient margin to plan, renew contracts, invest in technology and reinforce the audiovisual structure. By bringing forward the trend and detaching it from the new UEFA framework, the competition avoided the negative effects that other European leagues have faced. The message we want to convey is stability, legal security and continuity of the model. What does all this mean? This model has a direct link with consumer habits. Increasingly, platforms are designing their packages thinking about who is willing to pay more for certain content, and football fits into that category. It doesn’t just attract users, it retains them and gives them reasons to stay. This behavior explains why football maintains its central position in the catalog and why companies consider it a strategic piece. Images | LaLiga In Xataka | The NFL was going to place the Bernabéu in the center of the United States. Americans have not been impressed

We already know who to thank for Google making AirDrop also work with Android phones: the European Union

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A few days ago Google gave a surprise and announced that it had managed to make its system Quick Share was compatible with AirDrop. Suddenly it was possible to wirelessly transfer data and content from a Pixel 10 to an iPhone or iPad and vice versa. What Google did not do is tell how it did it, but in reality the credit was not its own, but rather the European Union’s. what has happened. Google has updated the feature Quick Share of Android to support AiDrop. That makes it possible to share files directly over an end-to-end Wi-Fi connection. Any Apple device with AirDrop enabled will appear in the list of nearby devices when you try to share content with Quick Share, and the same will happen in reverse in the AirDrop menu. It is the Android-iOS interoperability (and we will see if also with macOS) that we have all dreamed of for a long time, and that is now finally a reality. First the Pixel 10, then the others. At the moment only the Google Pixel 10 They support this option, but it is more than likely that it will reach the entire range of Android devices. Google confirmed in The Verge that Apple had not been involved in this development in any way, but in reality it was. The thing is that his role was not voluntary. How AirDrop works. This feature makes use of Bluetooth to allow devices to detect each other, and then an end-to-end Wi-Fi connection takes care of the data transmission. The crucial detail is that Apple developed a proprietary protocol called Apple Wireless Direct Link (AWDL) to facilitate that connection between devices. And since it was proprietary, no one else could use it and AirDrop was a fantastic option that was only available for devices in this ecosystem. Very Apple everything. This is where the EU comes in.. At the beginning of the year the European Union decided that Apple had to adopt interoperable wireless standards and was to do so starting with iOS 26. No one paid much attention to the impact the announcement would have on AirDrop, but cloud services company Ditto took care of glimpse the future and explained how “the EU has killed AWDL.” Which is effectively what happened: Apple was forced to abandon its proprietary protocol in favor of interoperable alternatives. Hello Wi-Fi Aware. The new regulations forced Apple to add support for the Wi-Fi Alliance’s Wi-Fi Aware standard and replace AWDL. The curious thing is that Wi-Fi Aware was developed with the support of Apple, but here the operable implementation was the one that was forced to be used on devices from the Cupertino firm. This reminds us of USB-C. This reminds us of what happened previously with the Lightning port, which was essentially a proprietary version of the USB-C standard. When the EU forced to use this connector on mobile phones and other devices Apple had to ditch the Lightning port. That has made charging adapters interoperable, and the same is now true for AirDrop. A promising future. Wi-Fi Aware has been added to both iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 (but it does not seem to be integrated into macOS 26), and therefore mobile phones from the iPhone 12 will be compatible with this option. For its part, Android has been supporting this standard since Android 8.0, which makes the vast majority of devices candidates to take advantage of this interoperability with Apple devices. What’s not clear is whether it will be possible to use QuickShare with AirDrop directly on Macs, but there are alternatives in that case: myself I have NearDrop installed on my Mac mini M4 and I can share files from my Pixel 8 Pro without problems with Apple equipment. In Xataka | Notifications with ads from some of the apps we use the most are hijacking our phones. And there’s not much to do

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