making

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

Polymarket and company have sophisticated gambling addiction to the point of making it indistinguishable from “investing”

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Prediction markets are no longer a niche of the Internet and datanerds to become the new obsession of Wall Street and Silicon Valley. Platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi are receiving multi-billion dollar valuations by repackaging traditional bets as sophisticated financial instruments. The image that defines the moment occurred recently in Manhattan, according to Bloomberg: the patriarch of the New York Stock Exchange (70 years old, impeccable suit) closing a multimillion-dollar deal with the founder of Polymarket (27 years old, t-shirt and plastic bottle). That meeting sealed the fate of the sector: betting is no longer a game, it is finance. Why is it important. We are facing a radical cultural and regulatory change. By redefining bets as “event contracts”, these platforms try to circumvent gambling legislation (which in Spain would control Consumption) to sneak into the traditional financial system, with the support of giants such as the owners of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The panoramic. Kalshi is already worth $10 billion and Polymarket is looking for $12 billion. They are not beach bars, as we said, the owner of the NYSE has invested there. The hockey league (NHL) and Donald Trump’s media company are already signing deals. It is the traditional financial system embracing chance. It is, above all, legitimation. Semantic reengineering. Polymarket’s true success is not technological, it is linguistic. They have eliminated the stigma of the gambler by changing the dictionary: It’s not a bet. It’s an “investment.” It is not a betting house. It’s a “exchange of contracts”. You are not a gambler. you are a trader which analyzes “market sentiment.” An example of the absurdity of some cases: people betting by Elon Musk entering the race to be president of the United States, oblivious to the fact that Musk was born in South Africa and therefore cannot become president, since the US Constitution vetoes the presidency to foreigners. That is to say: all those bets are money thrown away from minute one. How it works. Instead of betting 50 euros on Trump winning, you buy a “share” of that result that is worth 1 dollar if you are right. This allows the same person who would win or lose money at roulette to now win or lose it in an app with stock market charts. Although the savings fly the same, the user feels smarter and less guilty: he believes that he is operating in something more similar to the IBEX, not in a casino. What’s coming. There is a civil war brewing. The old guard of the game (the owners of traditional casinos) see this as unfair competition. Jay Snowden, CEO of Penn Entertainment (a casino and sports betting company), has already warned: This is a direct threat to your industry. Prediction markets and games of chance overlap. In conclusion. Polymarket has managed to sophisticate gambling addiction for a generation that believes itself too smart to play games of chance. They have created the perfect casino for those who despise casinos, allowing them to risk savings under the illusion of doing financial analysis. In Xataka | Five years ago he worked from his bathroom on the brink of ruin. Today he runs a company valued at 8 billion Featured image | Hush Naidoo Jade PhotographyMockuuups Studio

In 1982 Seiko created a watch for making calls and watching television. His only problem was arriving too early

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History is full of devices that were ahead of their time. I am not referring to literary or cinematographic machines like the tablet by Kubrick or the multiple predictions from Verne, but to other devices that were put on sale decades ago and now we realize that they are very similar to some of the latest gadgets on the market. One of these inventions was Seiko TV Watch. In its day this rarity was considered and recognized as the smallest television in the worldand even made appearances in some movies, but today no one can miss its striking resemblance to current smart watches, and in a way we could say that we are facing a distant relative. The history of this device began in 1972, but the first step was not taken by Seiko but by another North American company called Hamilton. They were the creators of Press P1the first digital wrist watch in history. The Japanese they acquired to Americans, and they embarked on their own path into the digital age by launching their first watch of this type in 1973. At that time it was said that society was moving towards a revolution in visual information, and to join it with its new range of watches the japanese company started to work on the research and development of liquid crystal panels (LCD) with active matrix that were capable of reproducing moving images. Over the following years, these efforts helped their watches become increasingly smaller and thinner, with higher component density and more energy efficient. They were also implementing new functions such as stopwatches and calculators. After three years of development and hundreds of millions of yen invested, the summer of 1982 Seiko advertisement in Tokyo a new watch. It was about TV Watchthe first to finally allow us to watch television on our wrist. This was Seiko’s TV Watch A watch that you can watch television on. Today this concept seems simple, but back then being able to carry it out was a little more complicated. The TV Watch was made up of three different elements that had to be connected together for it to work. The result was a science fiction product, yes, but a little uncomfortable to wear. On the one hand we had the clock, but we had to connect it to a radio and television receiver the size of a walkman. We also needed headphones, and these also had to be connected to the signal receiver. And how could you carry so much cable with you in a fairly comfortable way? Well, very simple, pay attention to this drawing that appeared in your manual. As you can see, the trick was to put the receiver cable under the sleeve to connect it to the watch. But in case we didn’t want to complicate our lives, the TV Watch also had a function to listen only to the audio of television broadcasts. The watch itself had dimensions of 40 x 49 x 10 millimeters and a weight of 80 grams, and all its magic was concentrated in its innovative 1.2-inch white and blue LCD screen with a resolution of 32k pixels and 10 shades of gray. I also had a second smallest screen in which we could see the time, set the alarm and use the stopwatch as with any other digital watch. During the presentation of the device, its creators had to give certain explanations about how they had achieved such ingenuity. They said their new panels controlled the molecular arrangement of liquid crystal within an electric field, and that this made it possible to create miniature images with very low power consumption. Especially when compared to the cathode ray tubes of conventional televisions. The receiver measured 74.5 x 125 x 19 millimeters and weighed 140 grams. This made it too big to carry in a back pocket, but perfect for the inside jacket pocket. Its battery consisted of two AA batteries that gave it a range of five hours, and it tuned both FM radio and television on VHF & UHF channels. What could have been and was not The TV Watch arrived on the Japanese market in December 1982 with a single DXA001 model that cost 108,000 yen, although a second, cheaper DXA002 model was later released. The difference between the two was that the second included a hearing aid instead of headphones, and its price dropped to 98,000 yen. In exchange, these two models today would be worth around 600 and 500 euros respectively. The presentation of the device managed to generate a lot of interest, and the watch made front pages of newspapers and headlines on television. It was considered an innovative product for allowing us access a large amount of information in real timeand it attracted so much attention that a year later it also ended up reaching the US market. Errr, okay? During its launch in Japan, Seiko managed to sell 2,200 units, and the president of the company’s North American subsidiary said that the reception from the American media had been so good that he believed he could sell all the ones they manufactured. This optimism translated into the production of between 15,000 and 20,000 units ready for export. But not everyone saw the TV Watch as an invention destined to revolutionize the market. In fact, it is known that at Sony they came to say that their laboratories had the capacity to develop a similar product, but that They didn’t think there was a big enough market. for this type of devices. In the end it turns out that they were right, and the watch did not end up becoming a successful product. In the TV Watch curriculum we find several dates indicated. In 1982 he won the Nikkei Award for Superior Quality Products and Services, and a year later he made an appearance in Octopussythe new James Bond movie. The watch culminated its career in 1984 by entering the Guinness Book of Records as … Read more

There are people making all kinds of theories to know the price of the Steam Machine. And no one is very optimistic

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The Valve’s Steam Machine has been received as a manna for the somewhat disastrous hardware landscape of the industry, with Switch 2 turned into a completely isolated system and aimed at its circle of consumers and Sony and Microsoft giving the impression of being somewhat lost in a scenario that is little or nothing exciting. In these comes Valve, which has already turned the concept of the portable PC upside down with its Steam Deckand now proposes a consolidated PC, completely oriented to work with Steam and ready to steal space from traditional consoles. Of course, there is a question that no one dares to answer completely: and the price? There are more and more theories. Not at losses. Valve has discarded compete in price with traditional consoles. The company confirmed that its new Steam Machine, scheduled for early 2026, will not follow the subsidized pricing model that characterizes PlayStation and Xbox. This means, as explained by one of the engineers responsible for the design of the machine, Pierre-Loup Griffais, that the device will align with “what would be expected from the current PC market”, explicitly rejecting the idea of ​​selling at a loss to expand market share and be more attractive to the general public. Frustrated expectations. The gaming community did its calculations: one of the most widespread bets said that Valve would take advantage of its 30% commission for each game sold on Steam to offer affordable hardware. These illusions have had to be qualified: youtuber Linus Sebastian revealed on his WAN Show that when he was in a meeting with Valve itself and suggested a price of $500, “no one confirmed anything, but the energy in the room completely changed.” That is, the youtuber thinks that Valve’s intentions point to a higher price. The current projections They place the Steam Machine between $750 and $900, very far from the $549 for the standard PlayStation 5 or the $599 for the Xbox Series X. Even the base model, cheaper and with 512GB, could exceed $600. Disappointing precedents. The original Steam Machines, launched in November 2015 after two years of delay, They barely reached 400,000 units sold throughout its commercial existence. The concept shipwrecked for multiple reasons: SteamOS ran on Linux, drastically limiting the catalog of compatible games; the product lacked a defined identity (it was, at the same time, too rigid for PC users and excessively complex for console consumers); and the proliferation of manufacturers led to a chaotic range of prices, from $499 to $1,500. In 2018, Valve quietly deleted any mention of the product from its store. How the subsidized price works… Yes, Valve has already said that it will not apply. But an approach is useful to understand what options Valve has on the table. The console industry traditionally operates through a model of hardware sold at a loss, which is recovered through the console business ecosystem. For exampleMicrosoft sold the Xbox 360 with a deficit of $125 per unit, while Sony absorbed losses of $240 to $300 with each PlayStation 3. The economic recovery It is obtained later, from commissions usually of 30% on each game sold, from subscription services and from official accessories. Microsoft publicly acknowledged in 2021 that each Xbox was still trading at a loss. The component crisis. But there is another reason to expect a high price for the Steam Machine, and that is that the rise of artificial intelligence has unleashed an unprecedented crisis in the memory market. There is data which speak of year-on-year increases of 171.8% in DRAM prices. Samsung and SK Hynix satisfy only 70% of orders, prioritizing HBM memories for AI data centers. AND are predicted serious shortfalls in DRAM, NAND Flash and hard drives during 2026, in a crisis which can last until 2029. The conspiracy of prices. The combination of unsubsidized hardware and expensive components puts the Steam Machine in an ambiguous position. Valve now has unthinkable advantages in 2015yes: in-house manufacturing, SteamOS refined thanks to the commercial success of Steam Deck, and a much broader compatible library. However, some analysts They warn that success will depend largely on the final price. Without the possibility of competing economically with traditional consoles, the device could remain half-hearted in commercial terms.

Satya Nadella made the world love Microsoft again. AI is making people hate it again

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Microsoft wants to turn Windows into an “agent operating system”. That was one of the great advertisements of the Ingnite conferences that were held these days. The proposal involves filling Windows with AI agents so that they are part of the user experience and do things for us. The intention is good. The result is not. what’s happening. Windows celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2025 (and Microsoft, its 50), and it does so with a total commitment to AI that it now wants to transfer to its Windows operating system. At the Microsoft Ignite event, various new features were presented that were precisely aimed at integrating AI agents into the system from the taskbar, but also at supporting the Model Context Protocol, the de facto standard for connecting AI agents with third-party services and applications. The movement is reasonable. Microsoft’s decision is strategically impeccable. AI is everywhere, and what the company intends is for it to be an integral part of its operating system. And by the way, of course, don’t leave its ecosystem to take advantage of it. The intention is good, but Microsoft’s problem is different. You are being tiresome. It is often the case that companies that try to promote their services do so in a particularly tiresome way. Microsoft is certainly known for this, and you only have to remember how it made numerous attempts to force us to upgrade to Windows 10. Then they came similar attempts with the new versions of Windows 11. With AI, it has already shot itself in the foot from time to time, and the best example is Microsoft Recalla striking option that by its design initial ended up being delayed and now it has been completely relegated to the background. Well I install LinuxPavan Davuluri, president of the Windows and devices division, was talking about this integration of AI in Windows a few days ago, but his tweet ended up provoking a string of criticism. One of the first answers indicated that Windows “is evolving into a product that brings people to the Mac and Linux.” Or for that matter, bring back Windows 7. Others went further and they asked that the Windows 7 operating system would return with its “clean user interface, icons, unified control panel, no junk apps, no ads, just a pure, performing operating system.” Microsoft is growing dwarfs. Davuluri ended up closing comments two days later, but yes responded to a tweet from the well-known software engineer Gergely Orosz, who criticized Windows’ erratic strategy and also Microsoft’s commitment to developers. In his response he indicated that “we know that we must continue working on the user experience, both in day-to-day usability and system dialogues inconsistent with the experiences of advanced users.” Be careful with promoting what doesn’t work. The problem with Copilot is that it still has a clearly worse reputation than other AI models despite being entirely based on ChatGPT. At Microsoft they know itbut still They are hiring influencers to promote Copilot to younger consumers. Nadella started well… The arrival of Satya Nadella to Microsoft it was a breath of fresh air. The company was on its way to becoming the new IBMbut its surprising renewal and spirit of openness —GitHub purchaserenovated love for linux— joined the success of reinforcing Azure and turning its cloud platform into a money making machine. threw great projects and thus regained some of the love (and luster) that he had lost in recent years with Ballmer at the helm. …but things are going wrong. However, this (understandable) obsession with AI is contaminating that entire trajectory a bit, and this is evident in the comments and criticisms of users, who do not seem interested in Windows being full of AI even though that could be interesting in the long run. The practical advantages at the moment do not seem to be notable, and forcing them is never a good idea. And in case Nadella reads us, we propose an idea. Let users decide. It’s as simple as that: Microsoft forces things too much by forcing users to accept these system changes without further ado and offering them as options that are activated by default. Users usually don’t like things being changed for the better, and what Microsoft should do is make everything opt-in (and not opt-out). That is to say: offer these options disabled by default, and let the users decide to activate them. If they are really worth it, it is very likely that these options will end up going viral on their own and people will simply enable them. In Xataka | The unexpected return of Windows 7: it reaches almost 10% of the market when Microsoft prepares to retire Windows 10

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