traditional

“The most traditional or old businesses are the ones that have it the most complicated”

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It was to come into force on January 1, 2026. Verifactu, the new billing system of the Tax Agency. Companies, freelancers, billing software… everyone had been preparing for months, but The Government postponed it at the last minute for a political issue and added even more chaos to a regulation that from the beginning has been marked by confusion. To learn more about the whole Verifactu mess we spoke with José Rodríguez, product manager at held and in charge of leading the Verifactu project within the company. The wolf is coming. As we said, when there were just weeks left for its entry into force, the Government announced that Verifactu was postponed for one year, until January 1, 2027. In reality, it is the second postponement of the regulations, but it was the most striking due to the short notice that was given. José Rodríguez believes that this has meant that the regulations are no longer taken seriously, a the wolf is coming that never ends up materializing: “It was a delay that happened fifteen days before it was effective and I believe this gives little credibility and little weight to the regulations.” Ignorance. The postponements have contributed to a deep lack of knowledge about Verifactu. According to a survey carried out by Holded, 27% of business owners admit to being unfamiliar with the regulations and 22% believe that they will come into force in 2026. There is another fact that has contributed to this confusion and that is that tax communications are not exactly intuitive. “The Tax Agency is very technical, which is correct, but sometimes I understand that for a person who is not so technical or who does not understand the subject much, needs it to be explained in a simpler way,” says Rodríguez. Precisely, the part of explaining it is the work that software and consulting companies have been doing since the regulations were known. “A lot has been delegated to software to evangelize companies and the self-employed,” he confesses. Adapt to Verifactu. Although there is still half a year left for its final entry into force, billing software is already required to comply with one of the requirements of the anti-fraud law of which Verifactu is a part and that is that, when creating an invoice, it is blocked and the essential data can no longer be modified. According to Rodríguez, this is the first point of friction: “This has brought to light a lot of billing flows that were not really complying with the regulations.” Many of these flows, he explains, were practices established by habit rather than conscious errors: “There were clients who created negative invoices when in reality a rectification was required, or businesses that directly edited an invoice already issued.” Anyone who already uses certified invoicing software will not notice anything when Verifactu comes into force, since the other part is simply its telematic sending to the Tax Agency that is done automatically. However, those who make invoices by hand will notice it more. According to Rodríguez, “The most traditional or older businesses are the ones that have it the most complicated because it is a double learning process. Not only Verifactu, but also the anti-fraud law,” but he adds that “those who already have some contact with technology, I think they are quite safe in that sense.” The electronic invoice mess. In parallel, another regulation is advancing, the Crea y Crece law, which regulates electronic invoices and aims to exchange invoices between client and supplier in a digital format. They are two different laws that regulate different aspects of the same bill; one, its sending in real time to the Treasury; the other, its format when circulating between companies. José Rodríguez tells us that this has caused even more confusion and, in fact, is the most recurring doubt among businessmen: “there are two regulations that affect the invoice, they are regulated in two different laws, and people do not understand why.” Although it is something that many professionals claim, The Tax Agency refused to unify both systems because they have different objectives: the electronic invoice is to control payment terms between suppliers and Verifactu serves to prevent fraud. Who is affected by Verifactu? The obligation covers practically all companies and self-employed workers in Spain, with two territorial exceptions and one size exception. Businesses located in the Basque Country, which has its own equivalent system called Ticket BAI, and Navarra, which is also implementing its own, are left out. Nor does it affect large companies that invoice more than 6 million euros annually, since they are subject to another control mechanism of the Tax Agency, the Immediate Supply of Information. There has been much talk about the exemption to the self-employed who make simple invoicesthat is, those that do not include any automation or macro. However, José confesses that not even he himself is entirely clear about this exemption: “There are many gray areas. What do you define as automation, is it a formula, a function…? If you have a sum, are you already in a sanction regime? It is not clear to me.” How to prepare. If they do not postpone it again, which at this point no one completely trusts, Verifactu comes into force on January 1, 2027 for companies and July 1, 2027 for self-employed workers. His recommendation for those entrepreneurs or self-employed people who have not done anything yet is that “If you use invoicing software, make sure that it already complies with the anti-fraud law so as not to have problems. If you do not use it, I would tell you that by consulting an invoicing software, it should be working by January 1st” and he adds that “There are a lot of software that have free trial periods, I would consult that.” It is not advisable to relax because you bill little: “The change can be very large, even if you bill very little per month,” he warns, because what changes is not the … Read more

Europe has an expiration date for traditional air conditioners and is already considering alternatives: air without refrigerants

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While half of Europe fights the heat with a fan and air conditioning, in France, some businesses They have experienced real avalanches of buyers desperate to get their hands on a device before it runs out, according to they collect in Wired. Turning on these devices in half of Europe is precisely the type of situation that the European Union prefers to avoid for reasons of security. energy efficiency and consumption. However, a group of scientists and companies were already working on air conditioners that completely dispense with refrigerant gases. The first prototypes are already leaving the laboratory to be tested in real buildings. Air conditioners without refrigerants. Several research teams, most based in Europe, have developed cooling systems based on materials that change temperature by subjecting them to an external force (whether pressure, electric current or magnetic fields), instead of resorting to the traditional cycle of compression and expansion of gases. This technology is known as solid-state cooling and, according to the researchers themselves, it could completely change the way we cool our homes. Why does it matter? Conventional air conditioning works basically the same as it did a century ago, that is, a refrigerant gas circulates between a liquid and gaseous state to extract heat from a room and expel it outside. The problem is that many of these gases are extremely polluting. Fluorinated gases, the most common, can have a warming potential thousands of times greater than CO2 if they escape into the atmosphere, which is why the European Union approved in 2024 a regulation to progressively eliminate them. “In the next few years, air conditioners and heat pumps that use these gases will not even be able to be sold here,” explained to Wired Fabian Voswinkel, energy efficiency analyst at the International Energy Agency (IEA). The alternatives are not perfect either, as propane is highly flammable and ammonia is toxic. In detail. One of the most advanced projects is led by Paul Motzki, a professor at Saarland University in Germany, at the head of an EU-funded consortium working with a nickel-titanium alloy. According to they collect In the middle, by stretching and releasing this metal, it recovers its original shape by absorbing heat from the environment, a phenomenon known as the elastocaloric effect. Just like account Motzki told Wired, the system could cool rooms by between 5 and 10 degrees and do so more efficiently than current equipment. The team, which collaborates with the Irish company Exergyn, is already testing a prototype in the laboratory and hopes to install it in new buildings in the coming years. If confirmed, Motzki himself describes it as a technology that “could represent a disruption, even a paradigm shift,” due to how different it is from current systems. It is not the only path that is being explored. And just as stand out In the middle, the New York company Mimic Systems tests a heat pump based on semiconductors that moves heat using electric current, with a prototype installed in a Vancouver apartment. The German firm Magnotherm, a startup that was born from the Technical University of Darmstadt, uses magnetic fields and will test its system this year in a German supermarket chain before making the leap to domestic air conditioning. And in the United Kingdom, Barocal, born from the University of Cambridge itself, is experimenting with flexible plastic crystals that release heat when compressed and decompressed. In this case, the startup has recently raised $10 million in an initial round of financing, as highlighted in TechCrunch. Between the lines. None of this is yet ready for the mass market. Lindsay Rasmussen, who works with startups like Mimic Systems and Magnotherm at climate accelerator Third Derivative, recognize that these technologies are “promising, but unproven on a large scale.” Its takeoff, he adds, will depend on whether large air conditioning manufacturers (giants like Daikin or Samsung, which already closely monitor this type of advance) decide to adopt them and produce them in volume. unbearable heat. All this happens because Europe it’s warming up faster than any other continent, and countries with traditionally mild summers are beginning to suffer increasingly intense heat waves. A study by Nicole Miranda, a researcher at the University of Oxford, point because countries such as the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway or Finland could soon experience much more demand for cooling than in any other country if global warming reaches 2 degrees compared to the pre-industrial era. Still, just about 20% of European households has air conditioning (4% in the case of the United Kingdom), very far from 90% in the United States, according to IEA data. Miranda herself warns that the solution is not to buy inefficient portable devices en masse, but to offer “efficient, equitable and intelligent” refrigeration. And now what. Both Miranda and Voswinkel defend what they call a “hierarchy of cooling”, that is, first preventing buildings from overheating through trees, shade, reflective materials or natural ventilation, and only then resorting to active air conditioning, prioritizing spaces such as schools, hospitals or residences. As an example of this planning, Voswinkel cites the case of pariswhich expanded its district heating network to also distribute cold water from the Seine River through underground pipes and thus cool public buildings, ahead of the 2024 Olympic Games. Cover image | Dmitrii E. and Antonio Vallejo In Xataka | Carlos Llull, air conditioning technician: “Leaving the air conditioning on all night can cost around one euro in electricity”

In a display of technical superiority, France has just invented traditional white towns. We, however, have forgotten about them

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At this time of year, in the hardware stores of the French Midi, it is impossible to find a very specific product: ‘blanc de Meudon’, a classic cleaning product in French drugstores since the 18th century and which in Spain would be equivalent to traditional crushed chalk. And no, it’s not that they have a sudden fever to have everything clean and spotless. As we said in Magnetis that in the middle of a heat wave, with maximum temperatures above 40 degrees and blackouts in much of the country, thousands of French people discovered that they could mix this powder with water and paint their windows with it. With the milky glass, the light reflects and the houses could shave a few degrees off the country’s struggle with climate change. In a matter of days, in fact, it has gone viral. And does it work? Of course it works. Chalk is calcium carbonate, a pigment that barely absorbs light and therefore reflects almost all solar radiation. It’s the same logic Purdue ultrawhite paints or the whitewashed towns that dot the Mediterranean. These are things that seem basic to us, but that no one thinks seriously about until the thermometer goes completely crazy. Luckily, ‘blanc de Meudon’ is widely used in the country. The other option would have been to pay attention to the Loughborough University and start spreading yogurt on the outside of the windows. According to the researchers’ calculations, with the “lactic approach” the temperature of the houses dropped by 0.6 degrees on average (and up to 3.5 on sunny days). A lot of laughter, but they still found a different approach, right? No. The data is clear: “complete shielding” with blinds, curtains or even aluminum foil lowers the internal temperature by 5 to 6 degrees, almost double that of yogurt or chalk. For this reason, images of Paris with thermal blankets on the windows have also gone viral. However, this is only the most striking curiosity. If I bring up the French fever for painting the windows, it is because there is something more interesting hanging from that problem: that, little by little, we are forgetting that architecture is something that has to adapt to the place where it is. All cities are the same city. For years, walking through the center of a European city has been a very curious experience. It doesn’t matter if it’s Paris, Lisbon, London, Prague or Berlin, they all look more and more alike. They are mimicking. They are losing their local peculiarities to repeat over and over again the same franchises or international stores: Primark, Zara, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Ale Hop or Calzedonia… But it doesn’t just happen in the centers, of course: experts have been wondering for years why all new constructions look the same regardless of which part of the country (or the world) hosts these new buildings. In Spain, specifically, ‘zebras’ have become a huge problem. A decade ago there was a very interesting debate about how the doctors’ series had promoted a whole series of practices that were dangerous for health professionals and patients. Things like wearing a stethoscope around your neck or not wearing anything below your elbows are simple rules that the cultural image of TV doctors eroded (and caused problems). With architecture and urbanization the same thing happens. A pending reflection. Often, when we decide to conserve our architectural heritage, we choose to protect unique buildings. And it makes sense, mind you. The problem is that, along the way, we forget about techniques, structures and decisions that are, in reality, profound adaptations to the climate in which we find ourselves. That Mediterranean towns are white is not a whim, nor is it a whim that their houses have the structure they have. It is true that some of these characteristics are due to technological limitations of the time in which they were built, but not all. And that is the heart of the problem: if we do not start thinking about our urban heritage as a tool, we will find ourselves in a few years painting the windows white. And, in short, we will not have searched for it by hand. Image | Anthony DELANOIX / Veronika Hradilová In Xataka | Beyond gazpacho and salmorejo: Spain’s hidden summer dishes that are crying out to become popular

traditional physical stores

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Because here we are not big on getting crazy, but the truth is that we have had a month of dramatic movements in the industry whose real scope, frankly, is impossible to gauge for now. The news of ‘GTA VI‘ about its price and format, the unflattering business movements of Xbox and, now, an unexpected announcement from Sony. Well, we lied. There is a consequence of all this that is easy to gauge: it is going to be difficult for traditional video game stores to get out of this crisis, if they manage to do so. What Sony has announced. The production of physical Blu-Ray discs of all the new games that come out on their consoles will be discontinued from January 2028. Sony speaks of a “natural direction” to adapt to consumer trends, and that “the overall preference for digital media significantly exceeds physical discs” adding that this decision “will allow us to align more closely with the way in which the majority of our community prefers to access and play games today.” There are analysts who read the announcement as a guarantee that PS6 It will not arrive before 2028, and when it does, Its base version will do without a disk reader. In any case, it is obvious that Sony has crunched the numbers and made the most beneficial decision for its accounts, but… is it beneficial for the industry as a whole? And for businesses that make a living from software? What Rockstar tells. A GameStop employee summarized the ‘GTA VI’ pre-order day on Reddit with a single figure: they had gotten five reservations. And they expected five hundred. Because Sony’s announcement comes just a few days after Rockstar confirmed that the physical edition of ‘GTA VI’ will not include a disc, It will only consist of a box with a download code. Not even the title that is going to sell the most units (figuratively) in years has a physical disc: a perfect prologue for what Sony has announced, which we can define without fear of exaggeration as the death of the physical format in video games. It was seen coming. Capcom and PlayStation have been advancing this Sony decision with their financial balances for five years. 93% of Capcom’s video game sales during its last fiscal year they were digitalcompared to 90% the previous year and 75% in 2022. PlayStation went from 19% of digital sales in fiscal year 2015 to 78% on average in 2025, with a quarterly record of 85%. In Spain, the physical market closed 2024 with a turnover 18.11% lower than the previous year, while digital games rose 19.75%. They are not the only ones. In its financial report at the end of fiscal year 2026, Nintendo spoke of digital sales of games on its platforms adding 25% more than the previous yearreaching 54.6% of total software sales. In the case of Xbox, there is also data: 66% of Xbox Series X|S sold in the United States during 2025 were units without a disc reader The problem with physical stores. GameStop closed 590 stores in the United States during fiscal year 2024 and has added more than 400 additional closures by early 2026. In Spain and other European countries, GAME gradually dismantled its business of exchanging and selling second-hand consoles already in 2024, while GameStop reinforced the sale of collectibles and merchandising. In fact, in its annual report for fiscal year 2025, Gamestop said that software revenue had fallen 27.5% and hardware and accessories by 12.3%, while the sale of collectibles had grown by 47.7%. That is to say, the store no longer lives by selling and reselling games, but rather by everything it has found as best it could to replace them. Video game stores are going to become (those that last) stores of objects related to video games… with the exception of the games themselves. Goodbye to second hand. Record production to end in January 2028 strikes down the second handa secondary market that indirectly benefited console manufacturers and whose real scope is impossible to gauge at the moment (the question is: will consoles sell as much if we cannot pay more affordable prices for used games?) We went, in any case, with digital, to paying for a renewable license, not for a game. The true validity of what we possess is more in doubt than ever: ask the users of ‘The Crew‘ when Ubisoft closed its servers, and more recently (just a couple of days ago, with Sony again as the protagonist!) to StudioCanal content buyers who PlayStation Store will withdraw from its users’ libraries starting in September. In Xataka | SSD prices are so crazy that a 2TB drive for the PS5 costs more than the PS5 itself

the traditional solution of a town in Navarra to the most dangerous problem of seeing an eclipse

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Who has not been guided by the rooms on New Year’s Eve so as not to screw up with the beginning of the 12 grapes? Without a doubt, those sounds that precede the chimes of 12 midnight are an ideal resource to fully enjoy the last night of the year. This summer, in the Navarrese town of Lerín they will have something similar to follow the solar eclipse of August 12. It is a ringing that has been designed for the occasion by the Navarra Bell Ringers Association and that, without a doubt, will make the observation of this phenomenon much more special. And also safe. A new touch for a unique phenomenon. The town of Lerín celebrates each year some days of astrotourism and scientific tourism, known as Lerín Earth Star. This year, as it could not be otherwise, they have been planned to coincide with the eclipse. For this reason, the astrophysicist and scientific disseminator Javier Armentia contacted the Association of Bell Ringers of Navarra to find out if they have a specific ringing to announce this type of events. The objective, according to explained At the press conference in which this curious invention was announced, it was “to unite tradition and astronomy in a way never seen before.” Since they did not have such a ring, they did not hesitate to look among their members for someone willing to design it. The person in charge, finally, was Rosarina Caballín. A simple touch with several interventions. The touch designed by Caballín is simple, with a ringing that becomes more intense as the climax approaches. It is designed to indicate the beginning and end of the partial and total phase of the eclipse. Bells for security. The decision to notify the start of the partial and total phase is not only symbolic, it also seeks the safety of those attending. While the eclipse is partial, if you look at the Sun it is absolutely essential to use approved protective glasses. Even if there is only 1% of light it can be enough to damage the eyes. On the other hand, during totality, when the Sun is completely covered, you can look at it without glasses. But the ending can be difficult to discern. As soon as the first rays appear again, the glasses should already be on. Therefore, warning through chimes is a genius. Ringing bells. This ringing will be carried out through two bells that have been acquired by the Association for this special moment. They do not belong to any building, but will be installed on a scaffolding approved for the occasion. The use of bells in history. We are used to associating bells with religious issues. In the Catholic religion, for example, it is quite common for them to be used to notify the start of masses, both those that take place regularly and those that are extraordinary for any reason. However, historically bells have been used for many other purposes. They have been used to warn of fires, neighborhood assemblies or even the passage of livestock. Some of these touches have their own tradition. It is the case of touch try cloudwhich was used to warn of the arrival of a storm and which in some places in Spain was even accompanied by a verse: “Hold on, hold on, God can do more than you.” It is not strange that Navarra has wanted to recover this type of traditions and unite them with the astronomical phenomenon of the year. An event that in the north of Spainperhaps it could also be considered the most important of the decade. Image | Unsplash/NASA In Xataka | The trio of eclipses that await Spain on the horizon: an unprecedented and historic chain between 2026 and 2028

The Kings League was born in 2023 to put an end to traditional football. Three years later he declared an ERE

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Gerard Piqué built a soccer league for the Twitch generation, and three years later he has cut 50% of his team, closed his leagues in France and Germany with no return date at the moment, and paralyzed the Spanish competition for six months. and the internet numbers and engagement on the internet they were not badbut that wasn’t the problem. The problem is that real football has other places where it reigns without rival. What has happened? Kings League workers published yesterday a statement in which they dismantled the version that the company had leaked to the press two days before starting the ERE negotiations. The company had spoken of a 30% cut in the workforce and the real figure, according to those affected themselves, is 41 layoffs out of 83 workers: almost 50%. At the same time, the French and German leagues are paralyzed with no expected return date, and the Spanish league stops its activity for six months to, in the words of the organization, “prepare the product for the future.” Kings League CEO Djamel Agaoua, incorporated in 2025, admits in the corporate statement that “money has been burned.” The simultaneous expansion to Brazil, Germany, Italy and the MENA region, managed from the offices in Spain, was economically unaffordable. Story of an ambition. The Kings League started on January 1, 2023 with digital audience figures that scared LaLiga. The first day reached an average of 300,000 people watching the matches between the league channel and the streamers on Twitch. They achieved a peak of 800,000 viewers only on the league’s main channel, data similar to the average of all LaLiga matches the previous season. Comparisons were published everywhere: it seemed that Piqué had found the crack in traditional football. Streamer world. Streamers like Ibai Llanos, TheGrefg or Guarnizo were presidents of the teams, and that turned each game into an extension of the entertainment that their communities already consumed. The format had gamified rules, random penalties, special cards. It was soccer 7, but designed for those who have been playing ‘FIFA’ for ten years. The numbers trick. However, Twitch’s numbers don’t exactly measure sustained following. In 2024 the drop compared to the first figures was evident: the decrease was 54% compared to the first months of the competition, with an average of 192,000 spectators at the beginning of that season. That year’s final reached only 258,000 people on average with a peak of 425,000. In the first months of 2023, the same competition had accumulated more than two million viewers at its maximum peak, adding the official channel plus those of each streamer-president. By then, the Kings League had bought into its own narrative, and oversupply compounded the problem. The first split, the second split, the Queens League, the Prince Cup, the Kings Cup, the Queen’s Cup and the Kingdom Cup suffocated the product, and each new tournament diluted attention rather than focused it. One round. In February 2026, with audiences already declining, the Kings League closed an investment round for 53 million euros. The round was led by the American fund Alignment Growth, with the stated objective of expanding the competition globally, with the United States as a goal. With this operation, the Kings League accumulated more than 160 million dollars in total financing since its launch. Four months later the ERE has arrived, and the workers are pointing in that direction: the company has just raised 63 million euros and the savings that justifies dismissing almost half of the workforce is just over two million. A martyrdom The workers’ statement also describes the work culture that prevailed in the company: three years of seven-day weeks, averages of ten hours a day, and overtime systematically above the legal limit of 80 hours per year established by the Workers’ Statute, in most cases without financial compensation or rest. On June 8, the CEO congratulated the entire team on the success of the Queens League final and two days later, the ERE was in the media. Had he left? The question, then, is whether the Kings League has ever had the possibility of competing with football. We have a precedent in American football: in 2001, Vince McMahon and NBC they launched the XFL with the aim of becoming the entertaining alternative to the NFL, with fewer penalties and a format with elements of reality show. The first broadcast achieved 54 million viewers, but by the following week the audience had fallen by 50%, with a continuous decline until the closure after a single season. Apparently, viewers were not interested in a hybrid between sport and wrestling spectacle. Unbeatable football. Spanish football has fans in third regional teams that fill stands with 800 people every weekend. This link does not arise from the product being entertaining, but rather from the fact that it is part of the local identity and, in many cases, family or territorial traditions. A child who grows up watching Rayo Vallecano or Villarreal with his father does not give the same identification value to a streamer. Even though he has a million followers. Football accumulates emotional capital for decades and the Kings League had to build it from scratch. And now? There are some pending issues: the Kings World Cup Clubs in Italy will be held in July 2026, and we will try to move forward with those who are still in the company. Piqué, in turn, publicly tested after the Queens League final the possibility of compressing the entire competition into a format of a few days. That is, a possible solution is to lower the ambition. Maybe it would have been a good exit idea. In Xataka | The Kings League has debuted on traditional television. It has had less audience than a La 2 documentary

Barcelona wants to say goodbye to traditional asphalt and thinks it knows how: with olives

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Neither transport nor heating: there is something in cities that generates an enormous amount of carbon dioxide and that usually goes unnoticed. Cities as a whole are responsible for between 67% and 72% of global CO₂ emissions in 2020, according to the IPCCand within them there is a culprit that almost no one points out: the asphalt. Manufacturing traditional asphalt is a process that uses a lot of energy and requires petroleum derivatives (bitumen), aggregates and calcareous filler, a combo with a high carbon footprint. Barcelona has decided attack the problem replacing these materials with agricultural waste that normally goes to the trash. For example, the olive pit. Asphalt made of olives. It is called Biochar and allows reduce 75% of the final carbon dioxide emissions associated with the manufacture of asphalt. As? Using charcoal obtained from olive pits and pine remains to replace the calcareous filler of the conventional asphalt mixture. In addition, initial tests have recorded improvements against water, fewer cracks and better response to temperature changes. Biochar is not something new, in fact it has been used for soils for decades, but its application for urban pavements is. Developed by the company Carboliva together with ELSAN, AMSA and the UPC, it is the winning solution of the urban challenge “The street section of the 21st century”, promoted by Barcelona City Council together with BIT Habitat and the Barcelona Provincial Council. The other selected proposal is RePavimenta and it goes another way: it uses recycled construction components in the aggregates, promising to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions of the process by half. Biochar, made from olive pits and pine remains. Carboliva Why is it important. Because the construction and infrastructure sector represents approximately 13% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to IPCC data. On the other hand, the budget allocation for urban pavement maintenance is one of the largest precisely due to its deterioration, so reducing emissions by 75% implies a gesture with an enormous impact and even more so doing it with a material that on paper withstands use better. That one of the raw materials is the olive makes it more relevant, since the Spanish state is a world power: Spain is the largest producer of olive oil in the world, with more than 1.42 million tons in the 24/25 campaign, according to the International Olive Council. This means that there is a huge amount of olive pits available. That is, the waste of one becomes raw material for the other: a kind of symbiosis in a circular economy. Context. Global warming on the one hand (which has a special impact in the cities and their asphalt) and European regulatory pressure are accelerating municipalities to reconsider their construction materials. The European Directive on Energy Efficiency in Buildings and the Construction Products Regulation that the EU is updating require environmental product declarations, which penalizes materials with a high carbon footprint and rewards alternatives such as biochar. In the call there were six proposals that had to present new solutions on the market and it is not the first time: already in 2022 Barcelona launched a call to renew the traditional Barcelona panot. How are they going to do it?. The deadlines for R&D&i and prototypes will be open until September of this year. Afterwards, pilot tests will begin in real works in Barcelona with the help of BIMSA and there will be a subsequent 12-month follow-up to check resistance, duration and possibility of extension. The winning projects will receive 90,000 euros, which according to Barcelona City Council covers around 80% of the total cost of design, testing and monitoring. The first streets with this asphalt will begin to be installed in 2027. Yes, but. The results in the laboratory are tremendously promising, but tests are one thing and reality in real conditions is another, with the dynamic load of traffic, urban pollutants, the climate or clearly improvable maintenance. In fact, already there are studies on the use of biochar in bituminous mixtures that show different results depending on variables depending on the typethe pyrolysis temperature or the substitution percentage. A relevant question if substitution materializes is what the biochar supply chain will look like at scale in terms of quantities and costs. The European Environment Agency warns that innovations based on biowaste face logistical challenges due to geographical dispersion and limited supplies. In Xataka | Spanish roads have a problem in 2026: repairing a kilometer of asphalt is more expensive than ever In Xataka | We invented asphalt for a simple reason: at the beginning of the 20th century, European roads were a dust hell. Cover | Logan Armstrong and John Cameron

The MacBook Neo has made traditional Windows laptops look ridiculous. This is great news for users.

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He MacBook Neo showed the way. Mid-range laptops seemed stuck in the past, with an unattractive price/performance ratio. The feeling was that once you were buying a laptop, it was better to invest 1,000 euros or more to be able to work and play comfortably. That seems to be finally changing, because we are seeing a lot of movement in the world of Windows laptops. Asleep on our laurels. Apple’s new model showed that there could be alternatives and caught manufacturers on the wrong foot. Everyone seemed comfortable with it. status quobut he MacBook Neo woke them up from slumberand soon we will see a deployment of modest but functional equipment. Above all, because three of the semiconductor majors already have their SoCs ready or almost ready to compete with the Apple A18 Pro of the MacBook Neo. Qualcomm Snapdragon C. The first alternative is this chip with ARM architecture that just announced by Qualcomm and according to the firm, it will allow equipment to be offered with starting prices of $300. It is very likely that these proposals are too limited (and have no more than 4 GB of RAM), but also that there are versions with higher configurations. The Snapdragon C promises remarkable efficiency, and Qualcomm is an old acquaintance of Windows for ARM equipment. Intel Wildcat Lake. In April we saw how Intel showed its great commitment to conquer this new era of mid-range laptops. I did it with his family Wildcat Lake in which, for example, the new Intel Core 3 304 are integrated. The fundamental advantage of these chips is that of using the traditional x86-64 architecture, which until now has proven to be the best option for Windows computers due to its completely native support for the OS and its applications. Nvidia waits its turn. A lot has been spoken how the duopoly of Intel and AMD on Windows computers could have an expiration date. Qualcomm has not managed to erode that reality, but who may have an important asset is Nvidia, which is preparing the launch of its Arm chips. There has been talk for months that there will be not one, but two based on the GP10 chip which Nvidia jointly developed with MediaTek. The names that are mentioned in the leaks are N1 and N1X, and although the details are unknown, the expectations are notable and already start to leak also Lenovo models that will integrate the N1X. But Windows on ARM has never caught on. The doubts with Qualcomm and Nvidia’s proposals are not due to them, but rather to Microsoft and its Windows operating system. Its version for ARM chips has been available for years, but the teams that have taken advantage of these chips were limited by some software conflicts. I’d better stay with Intel and AMD. There are hardly any problems in that sense anymore, but the promise of the efficiency of ARM chips was not so striking when the prices of such equipment were high. In the end, it was more worthwhile for most users to bet on “traditional” chips from Intel and AMD, and Qualcomm’s proposals—the only ones that appeared on the market—never quite conquered the general public, not even when Copilot+ PCs appeared. Windows 11, by the way, He didn’t make it easy either. with your list of requirements. Specs don’t matter (that much). We already saw yesterday how the specifications of the Wilcat Lake chips are superior to those of the Apple A18 Pro of the MacBook Neobut that doesn’t mean much. Above all, because the MacBook Neo have proven to be laptops that offer a fantastic user experience, but at the moment computers with Intel chips have not been analyzed and their performance is unknown. These same doubts affect future devices with Qualcomm or Nvidia chips: they will have to demonstrate that the user experience is as good (or better) than that of the MacBook Neo, or else these manufacturers (and Microsoft) will have a serious problem. It’s good news. Whatever happens, Apple’s move has caused manufacturers to finally move and develop solutions to try to compete with the surprising team from Cupertino. If the MacBook Neo had not been launched, we would probably still be stuck in the mid-range Windows laptop segment, but this is going to liven things up and revive competition between manufacturers. We all win. In Xataka | “We arrived too soon, but we were right”: The MacBook Neo is everything Microsoft dreamed of with the disastrous Windows 8

We have been banishing the humble traditional salt shaker from the table for years. Now we have realized that it is a mistake

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For decades, problems such as goiter, hypothyroidism, and childhood cognitive deficits linked to a lack of iodine in the body seemed to be a thing of the past in developed countries. All this was a success of the advances that were seen in public health from the 20th century onwards by targeting the need to add iodine to salt of table that we all consume. But now in many countries there is a significant deficiency in iodine that can lead to the appearance of serious diseases. The culprits. Ironically, new health and wellness trends, as we are seeing a huge boom in non-iodized “gourmet” salts that seem very cool, but they do not have the iodine that is supplemented to classic salt and that we need in our diet. The map of a deficit. According to data from the WHO itself in Europe and the Iodine Global Network, mild iodine deficiency persists and is spreading in countries where it was believed to be an eradicated problem. To give us an idea, in the UK Recent data suggest that women of childbearing age have gone from having sufficient levels to being classified as having mild deficiency. If we continue investigating, in Australia the problem has been reappearing for years despite fortification attempts, while in the United States, recent reviews published indicate that the deficit is growing again despite the historical iodization of salt, linked to new dietary patterns. The ‘gourmet’ culprit. Historically, common table salt has been our primary vehicle for consuming dietary iodine. But in recent years we have seen a trend appear for this product, such as Himalayan pink saltflaked sea salt or kosher salt. The problem with these options, in addition to being much more expensive, is that they are perceived as very healthy alternatives. The problem is that they are almost never iodized, and that is why their increasing consumption in order to improve health is ultimately causing the opposite. There is more. In addition to the salt problem, it must also be kept in mind that in many countries cow’s milk has traditionally been the main source of iodine in the diet due to livestock supplementation and milking disinfectants. But its consumption is falling radically. This is in addition to a general transition towards vegan or flexitarian diets that has increased the consumption of vegetable drinks that, although they are reinforced with calcium or vitamin B12, are not fortified with this iodine. Its consequences. That there is an iodine deficiency is not nonsense, since iodine is the fundamental fuel of the thyroid gland and is vital for neurological development, and that is why the European Food Safety Authority establishes that an adult needs 150 micrograms of iodine per day, a figure that rises to 200 µg in pregnant women. If we focus on pregnant women, having a deficit can have fatal consequences with problems in fetal cognitive development or even drops in IQ. The cases. An analysis published in 2019 estimates that there are currently 81.4 million cases of deficiency in women of reproductive age and, although since 1990 the global prevalence has decreased enormously thanks to universal iodization, the problem now presents a dichotomy: it affects regions with a low human development index such as sub-Saharan Africa due to lack of resources, and rich countries due to modern dietary decisions. The solution. Here the WHO demands that prevention policies be reinforced through specific legislation, promoting universal iodization of all salts, both those for direct consumption and those used in processed foods and bakery. In addition, the need to require or encourage vegetable drinks to be systematically fortified with iodine is pointed out, matching the nutritional profile of cow’s milk. In this way, we return to the original idea of ​​introducing iodine into common table salt, so now it is time to supplement the new foods that appear on the market. Images | Jonathan Cooper Melissa DiRocco In Xataka | If you fall asleep in less than five minutes, you don’t have a “superpower”: it’s a warning signal from your brain

We stopped watching traditional television because of advertising, but YouTube is willing to recover it with unstoppable ads

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A few days ago, YouTube users in smart TVs They began to notice something that many thought they had left behind forever: unskippable 90-second ads in the middle of forty-minute videos. YouTube had promised in March that non-skippables would be 30 seconds long, but the limit has tripled in a matter of weeks. You see the ads. On March 2, YouTube released a statement announcing the global arrival of 30-second non-skippable ads for those watching the platform on connected TVs. More people than ever are using YouTube in the living room, and advertisers want formats that look like traditional television. Only five weeks later, things began to change: this April 7, several users began to publish on the r/YouTube subreddit 90-second ad screenshots, triple the advertised maximum, which could not be omitted in any way. Some media They collected part of the reactions of the spectators, which ranged from fury to inevitable resignation. YouTube’s response. The platform assured that those 90-second ads were not intentional and that it was “investigating” what had happened. The same source published a survey in January in which 87% of more than 8,600 people questioned claimed to have received non-skippable ads lasting more than 30 seconds, and almost a third said they had seen them exceed two minutes. Paradoxically, in 2017 YouTube removed 30-second non-skippable ads considering them precisely “a relic of traditional television.” The accounts come out. YouTube generated 40.4 billion dollars in advertising revenue in 2025. A figure that exceeds the combined sum of Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, which together earned 37.8 billion. The same firm went so far as to declare YouTube “the new king of all media” by estimate its total income at around 62,000 million a year. And it’s not just a matter of raw money: according to NielsenYouTube took over 12.7% of all television viewing time in the US in December 2025, compared to 9% for Netflix. The gap between the two has widened in recent months. More people watch YouTube on TVs than any other screen, and the AI ​​system Google uses to decide which ad format to show (including bumpers 6-second spots, 15-second spots, and the new 30-second non-skippable ones) now have data to decide when a viewer is comfortable enough to tolerate a long ad break. And if you don’t want ads… Anyone who wants to avoid ads has a way out: YouTube Premium, at 13.99 euros per month. There is no middle option, no setting that allows you to opt for shorter or less frequent ads. According to Google itselfthere is no setting to turn off the 30-second format without a paid subscription. The thing is that not even Premium is what it used to be: some service levels include certain types of ads. It is the same pattern that the greats followed streamers: Netflix launched its tier with advertising in 2022; Disney+ followed suit shortly after. “Pay more to see fewer ads” is no longer a promise of digital platforms, it is their business model. What differentiates YouTube from other streaming platforms is that it is not a paid service that has added a free tier with advertising; It is a free platform that has built an advertising business of such magnitude that it can now afford to behave as if it were traditional television. The 90-second ads are another test for Google to discover how far the user’s tolerance can go before they change services or agree to pay. In Xataka | YouTube knows it has a problem with AI “slop” for kids. It turns out that the main culprit is YouTube

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