work

“microshifting” is hacking work to give us back control of the clock

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Before his son wakes up, John D. Connolly has already been working for an hour. He has breakfast with his family, works four hours before eating with his wife, resumes at four in the afternoon and returns to the computer when the child is in bed. On weekends, when necessary. Connolly, 46, founded the financial advisory firm Bifrost Advisors and spent more than two decades working regular hours before accepting that this wasn’t how he thought best. “I could spend six hours looking at the screen without more gas, but I had to stay two and a half more hours,” explained to wall Street Journal. Now he doesn’t work less. He works when his mind is there. Jen Meegan, editor-in-chief of creative agency Sheer Havoc, starts her day before her teens order breakfast. Read emails, review ideas from the previous day. He takes them to school, does the shopping, comes back and works in concentrated blocks of a few hours. It ends late at night. “Sometimes the most important work happens during the break,” told the agency AP News“because you’re not sitting staring at the screen with no ideas.” Connolly and Meegan practice what has begun to be called microshifting: Fragment the workday into short, non-linear blocks, adapted to moments of greatest energy or the demands of real life. It’s not a passing productivity fad. It’s the next frontier of workplace flexibility, and the debate is already underway. What exactly is microshifting? The most precise definition has been coined by the company that popularized the term. Owl Labs, video conferencing technology company, describes it in its 2025 report as “structured flexibility with short, non-linear blocks of work tailored to each person’s energy, responsibilities or productivity patterns.” In practice, these blocks usually last between 45 and 90 minutes, separated by personal, family or rest time. The distinction with teleworking and the hybrid model is fundamental. Teleworking changed where you work; microshifting changes the when. It is, in the words of researcher Jonathan Westover, “the next evolution in work design, beyond remote and hybrid models,” according to his article published in the Human Capital Leadership Review. It is not, however, a completely new concept. It is related to techniques such as timeboxing or the Pomodoro method, although with a fundamental difference: it does not respond to an external timer, but to the vital rhythm of each person. As he describes it with some irony The Guardian, “an extreme form of hybrid working” and remember that, in the past, this was simply called “taking liberties.” The difference now is that there is data, there are companies that promote it and there is a name. Why now? He microshifting It has a specific origin: the 2020 pandemic. Mandatory closures forcibly broke the traditional schedule. Millions of workers learned, without looking for it, that they could do their jobs in unconventional hours. When the mandates came back to the office, many did not want to give up that autonomy. The paradox of the current moment is striking. While the microshifting grows as desired, physical presence in the office also silently increases. The Owl Labs report named the phenomenon as hybrid creep: 34% of hybrid workers go to the office four days a week, up from 23% in 2023, without there having been a formal mandate. Employees are being called back out of inertia, and in response, they are claiming control over when. Data suggests this is already happening: 59% of employees schedule personal appointments during work hours and 82% prefer meetings to end before four in the afternoon. The most powerful driver is also care: 72% of caregivers are interested in microshifting, compared to 28% of those who do not have that responsibility. Theresa Robertson of Maryland practiced it for 25 years to care for her chronically ill husband. “It was the only way to have a life and earn a salary,” told to CNBC. The next battle according to Fortuneit is no longer where you work, but when. Work-life balance has overtaken salary as the top priority for office workers globally. The new perspective of the experts Academia and business management, traditionally conservative, are beginning to validate this intuition. Mark Pacitti, founder of Woozle Research, not only defends that five hours of work deep are more valuable than eight of diminishing returns; has measured it. At his firm, he invested in tracking tools to track when his researchers were performing best and discovered that the last few hours of an eight-hour shift were inefficient. Reduced shift length and output increase. Today he promotes it as a competitive advantage in a sector, that of financial research, where the burnout It’s epidemic. This approach is supported by cognitive science. Professor Anita Williams Woolley, of Carnegie Mellon University, explains that when trying to solve difficult problemsthe mind can only push for so long; Microshifting, well managed, prevents burnout. However, voices like that of Professor Kevin Rockmann of George Mason University, they ask for caution: “The whole point of microshifting is to take care of yourself. That’s not a bad thing, but it shifts the emphasis from the individual to relationships.” Aytekin Tank, CEO of Jotform, adds thatalthough microbreaks boost creativity, they require clear rules so as not to cannibalize deep work. “To do cognitively demanding work you need an environment where your brain can focus on a single task without interruptions,” he warns. It is a delicate balance: flexibility, yes, but with precise communication so as not to break the team’s coordination. Lights and shadows: the risk of the infinite journey He microshifting It has a dark side. The first is the feeling of being “always connected.” Isabelle Young, political organizer who organizes his work like this to manage a chronic illness, she admits bluntly: “Work is never over, so you’re never really disconnected.” Labor experts warn that schedule autonomy can become a hidden expectation: employees who stretch their day to fourteen or sixteen hours to be available in different time zones. Cali Williams Yost, flexible … Read more

His new fun is 92 hours of work

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In Silicon Valley, the new generation of young entrepreneurs has left behind the parties in which rivers of alcohol flowed. The example they follow is that of the big names of Silicon Valley, such as Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Sam Altman or Brian Johnsonwho prioritize their business projects ahead of their own social life. The phenomenon is not isolated, and more and more young entrepreneurs share the same mentality: “Why go to a bar if I can be creating a company?” summarizes Emily Yuan, a young founder of Silicon Valley, in an interview for The Wall Street Journal. The data doesn’t lie: alcohol consumption among young people of generation Z is shrinking, and in the realm of Silicon Valley startup incubators, not drinking alcohol is increasingly the norm rather than the exception. The new habits of Silicon Valley. The daily routine of those who aspire to success in Silicon Valley is marked by working hours that go beyond the usual. According to what was published by The Wall Street JournalMarty Kausas, 28 years old and founder of the startup Pyloncommented in a LinkedIn post that he chained several weeks in a row of 92 hours of work and that he canceled his vacation because the stress of work prevented him from taking a few days to rest. However, in another postthe young entrepreneur ruled out the application of a “996 culture” for his employees in his company, in reference to the new exported trend from Asiain which we work from nine in the morning to nine in the afternoon and six days a week. What is fun? The main paradigm shift shown by this group of very young technological entrepreneurs is to define what is fun. In their case, and as both Marty Kausas and Emily Yuan detailed, what they consider fun is not spending time with friends having a few beers. “Our motivation for starting a company was fun and adventure. But what is fun for us is quite different from what is fun for others.” That concept, together with the anti-alcohol messages that some influential figures in Silicon Valley are giving, such as Sam Altman, who has fully expressed against alcohol consumptionor Mark Zuckerberg who, unlike their cowsonly drinks beer on rare special occasions and what is necessary to take the photo. In general, for the “technobros“In Silicon Valley, alcohol and parties no longer fit into the concept of fun. Sobriety in the tech era. The data suggests that there is a certain tendency for generation Z to reduce alcohol consumption all over the world. The data A 2022 study already pointed to the beginning of a drop in alcohol consumption of 4.5% annually since 2011, and it has been stabilizing since then. According to a report of 2024 from the Ministry of Health, the average consumption of each adult in Europe went from 12 liters per year in 2000 to 9.5 liters in 2019, and if we focus on wine, the only alcoholic beverage that Jeff Bezos drinks at special celebrationsthe data points because its average consumption per adult has fallen from 14.2 liters in 1990 to 10 liters in 2017. In 2025, these official data They were consolidated, confirming the tendency of younger people not to consume alcohol in their leisure time. In the “new gambling dens” they talk about financing This decrease in alcohol consumption has been associated with a cultural change in the social activities of these new entrepreneurs. Meetings between colleagues, once animated by toasts and drinks, are now meetings in saunas, motivational talks or gym routines in search of professional connections. Miranda Nover, co-founder of a fitness startup called Fort, said in an interview for Business Insider that the image of an ascetic existence is very important for young entrepreneurs. “You’re trying to convey: We do this six days a week in the office, we work until 9 p.m., we don’t drink, we don’t party, we don’t do any of that.” The entrepreneurs of the future are “healthy.” Unlike what happened with previous generations of millionaire founders, such as Henry Ford or Aristotle Onassis, in which alcohol flowed in abundance at all their parties. Now, alcohol consumption is no longer the central axis and a philosophy closer to the postulates of the millionaire has been adopted. Brian Johnsonto focus all energy on productivity. At the San Francisco AI events, alcohol is absent. According to Michelle Fang, 26 years old and organizer of events for these precocious founders of Silicon Valley, among the reasons why the entrepreneurial quarry parties are not only for a change in the concept of leisure and health: “many AI-related events do not serve alcohol, not least because it is out of fashion among the San Francisco public. Many founders are not old enough to drink.” A version of this article was published in October 2025 In Xataka | Alcohol is no longer cool: the “Sober Curious” movement is turning teetotalers into a trend Image | Unsplash (Nguyen Hiệp)

They work surprisingly well… until the Internet fails

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A few weeks ago I traveled to China to attend the Beijing Auto Show. If the three or four trips I have made to China have taught me anything, it is that there nobody, practically nobody, speaks English. Communicating is therefore a combination of hand signs, signals and three or four loose words. That, or use a translator like Google Translate, which has several problems: The live interpretation function requires an Internet connection, something that in China, for whatever reason, is not always available. You can download the languages ​​and write to translate, but only they understand you. Your interlocutor is still unable to communicate. You have to be with your phone in your hand all the time, something that is not always possible, comfortable or viable. Then it dawned on me. The last time I went (not here, but the previous one) I noticed that in all the stores I had entered they had a little gadget from a local brand called iFlyTek that translated in real time. And I thought, what if I try one of their devices in China? And that’s what I did. I took with me the iFlyTek AI Translation AirBudsheadphones with real-time interpretation, to try them out. And very well, until the connection stopped working. Now I understand everything iFlyTek AI Translation AirBuds | Image: Xataka The headphones are of the type clip in semi-open formatthat is, they hook to our ear from behind to leave the ear more or less free and bring the microphones closer to our mouth. Because no, they are not headphones for listening to music (which we can do, mind you, but it is not the best experience by any means), but for making calls and talking to people. And there they deliver beautifully. It’s curious. Almost all the headphones I have tried tend to bend their knees when making calls. The music is very enjoyable, but the calls are a bit meh. These are the complete opposite. I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone to listen to music, but I have never tried headphones that pick up my voice better. and the voice of our interlocutor (we will return to this later). The key to these headphones is that they translate and interpret in real time. Already I tried some from another brand years ago and the experience was mixed, but with these I was frankly surprised. They connect to an app called Bavvo which, as we will see later, I had to test in beta version, but in this case it worked correctly. I hope you have wide pockets | Image: Xataka The headphones pick up voice very, very well, even in distant and busy environments. In the middle of the BYD hall they were doing a demo with a frozen car and the presenter not only spoke Chinese, but she did it at a somewhat low volume. Added to the hustle and bustle of the hall, it sounded average. Well even there, The headphones were capable of picking up your voice, translating it and interpreting it to Spanish directly in my ear. The translation takes a while to start, but when it starts it doesn’t stop. The problem is that, by default, the voice is a little slow. I ended up setting it to x1.2, because at x1 I felt like I was falling behind in the conversation. The voice is a bit-quite robotic and makes it not overly pleasant to listen to for a long period of time, but that’s better than… not understanding anything. Then the connection stopped working and I was left without Internet. For much eSIM with VPN or a lot paid VPN Whatever you wear, the reality is that connectivity in China is a real pain and can fail. When I lost the Internet I was left without simultaneous interpretation. Luckily, it was shortly before I left the event, so it served me well enough. iFlyTek AI Translation AirBuds | Image: Xataka When I got home, and with a proper connection, I tried them again and, indeed, it is another movie. If in China they knew how to measure up whenever there was a connection, the question was whether they would be able to help me in one of the most tedious tasks you can do in this, our work as tech journalists: attending a conference in Chinese without subtitles or translation. Like the Xiaomi 17 Ultra, for example. Well yes, the answer is that they fulfill their mission with great solvency. By having a nearby audio source in a quiet place, the headphones pick up voice beautifully and translate well. I didn’t watch the entire conference, but the time I watched it I was able to follow it without the slightest problem. It has its things, because Chinese can be very poetic sometimes and the translation is sometimes too literal, but otherwise I must admit that I have no complaints. When the connection is good, the translation performance is very good If we talk about a conference in English, French or German, three quarters of the same. The interpretation is good and more than enough to follow the thread of a presentation or a talk. I did the exercise of following this TED talk in German without watching the video or activating subtitles, as if it were a podcast and, although the robotic voice that speaks in my ear in Spanish becomes heavy, I have been able to follow it without problem. iFlyTek AI Translation AirBuds | Image: Xataka It’s also possible to give a headset to another person and translate in real time between headsets, which is fine if the other person is trustworthy, but for me personally, It makes me a little sick. It is true that the headphones do not go into the ear and well, okay, but sharing headphones is, for me, like sharing a toothbrush: just because you can, doesn’t mean you have to do it, and even less so with someone you probably don’t … Read more

more work is being done to remake what AI does

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When AI began to demonstrate that it could be competent at writing code, an entire industry shook. Software engineers seemed like one of those jobs that was going to be quickly eclipsed by the arrival of AI, but It turns out that in the end it was the other way around. The employees are still there, the CEOs of companies that are very optimistic about the future of AI say that, precisely, more engineers will be needed in software that never and AI is compressing work that takes hours to just seconds. But there is a problem: this is not translating into shorter days, quite the opposite. And all of this is due to a management problem that forces workers to jump between projects haphazardly. A management problem, not a technology problem In a recent articleBusiness Insider exposes how AI has transformed the routine of six workers at technology companies such as Amazon. In the interview, They detailed that using AI is saving them a lot of time And the most interesting thing: they quantify that work saved. According to their statements, the use of AI to summarize meetings, review code, automate reports that they have to do frequently and write documents has allowed them to save a day of work each week, which is said to be early. Does that mean they have an extra day of rest a week? Obviously… no. In fact, some work more hours than before. In these statements, one of the Amazon employees stated that this time saved is not to have a couple of coffees watching videos to clear the mind, but rather automatically redirects to other projects. Another of the engineers commented that building these automation systems is adding more work hours to his week, since it is also You have to review those processes constantly. The BI article is very limited because the sources are scarce, but a Boston Consulting Group report called Global AI in which 12,000 employees of leading technology companies were interviewed states that 42% saved the equivalent of one day of work per week, but 66% said they have no idea what to do with that “recovered” time. Not rest, of course, but go to other projects for which they do not have any type of management. It’s as if I had to do three articles a day and then, since I have time to do them with the AI, I start editing a video to help the video department because… well, because I have time and I have to do something. Global AI is not the only company with a larger sample. Another study in which interviewed survey of 3,200 business leaders found that 85% of employees They save between one and seven hours of work a week thanks to new tools, but almost 40% of that recovered time is immediately lost in reviewing, correcting and partially or totally redoing those results generated by AI. It doesn’t make any kind of sense. “Please don’t use AI just for the sake of it” – Dave Treadwell, Senior Vice President at Amazon, to his team Technology companies are already pointing out that there is a huge management problem. Faced with the unbridled optimism of some and the “we have to use it just because, because now we are an AI company” (Goal, for example, creating competitions to see who uses it the most), there is the other side of the coin. There are already bosses who are pointing that managers continue to be obsessed with the workforce instead of rethinking workflows, as well as voices that suggest that AI not be used just for the sake of using it. As you can see, there are many studies that point out that, indeed, AI is saving time in certain jobs, but all that time is wasted because no one has instructions on what to do with it. In The Next Web They did some research on this and the conclusion was the same: a tool that is capable of saving an employee an hour is only as useful as the company’s ability to do something with that hour. And, according to the article, “the evidence so far indicates that most are not doing so.” In fact, this same week, another 404 report in which they detailed how Google’s own engineers who write the AI ​​code they laugh at Google’s AI He stressed that there is a disconnection between work policies and the need to push the development of AI. “We are finding that AI has relieved the pressure and bottleneck in code generation,” said one employee, “but everything else has become a bottleneck: build times, testing, the delays in human review, the comparatively slow infrastructure, and the version comparison system.” In Xataka | “The winners of the AI ​​race will be the electricians or plumbers”: Jensen Huang is clear about where we are headed

One company tested the four-day work week. Now their workers think that the best thing is to work seven days

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Although in Spain Congress overthrew the proposal for the reduction of working hoursthe debate in Europe is more alive than ever and many countries are reconsidering their working day model with alternatives such as four day work week. Lumena small SEO services consultancy based in Cardiff, tested the four-day work week with outstanding results. However, its CEO considered that the idea could still be improved, so he decided to go one step further and test a model even more flexible: work seven days a week. From the four-day week to the 32-hour week. As Aled Nelmes, CEO of Lumen, told on your LinkedIn profilethe company had changed its four-day workday to a 32-hour workday. The difference may be negligible, implicit in this change is the elimination of an important barrier: the company will not impose whether its employees have to do those 32 hours in a certain number of days or at a certain time. It will be the employees themselves who decide when to work. According to its CEO, in 2023, Lumen implemented the four day work week. The results exceeded all expectations: staff turnover fell to zero, productivity increased, and employees felt more rested and engaged. According to Nelmes, “our workers reported being happier, having better health and being more productive.” According to a study published in the magazine Nature Human Behaviorscience agrees with the CEO. But the model could be improved. Seven days to complete your day. “The idea of ​​the 32-hour week is to go further in the flexibility that the four-day week offered us,” explained Nelmes. In the system proposed by Lumen, the only condition is that employees comply with their projects and objectives, managing their time with total autonomy. Nelmes clarified in statements to The Confidential that “what I require is a lot of self-discipline, the ability to concentrate, self-regulation, initiative and independence.” The company looks for workers capable of directing their own time and offering the best of themselves. “I think we micromanage our workers’ daily lives too much, we assume what kind of day they should have to be productive. My argument is that this is not the case, we do not know, and we need to delegate that decision to each individual,” the young manager highlighted to El Confidencial. The exception: meetings and training. According to what was published for him Financial Timesthe only exception to Lumen’s total flexibility is the time the company spends on team meetings in which mandatory projects and training are defined. Overall, the CEO assures that they do not exceed three hours per week. This guarantees team connection and coordination without sacrificing individual autonomy. For everything else, each of the employees distributes their work week with total work flexibility and no check-in or check-out times. Results and surprises. During the three months that this new flexibility model lasted, Nelmes observed that, in reality, employees did not make major changes to their schedules. The majority maintained routines similar to conventional ones, adapting only small details to enjoy personal activities. “People like to have routines and structure, so many… still prefer to move within a standard schedule,” the CEO explained to The Confidential. Flexibility had been limited to adapting their work schedule to certain personal activities (playing sports, medical appointments, etc.) or to coincide with your children’s schedulesand then recover that time at another time of the week. According to Nelmes, the most extreme case is that of one of his employees, who took advantage of this flexibility to adjust her days of rest during the week according to the weather or her personal needs. Then, I worked on Sunday, because that was the time when found greater concentration and fewer interruptions. Flexibility with clear values ​​and limits. As has counted the CEO, this model does not imply total disconnection from the company. Lumen takes great care in selecting its equipment to ensure that everyone shares commitment values and responsibility. “We wouldn’t hire someone who only wanted to work 16 hours in two days,” Nelmes says. In fact, the manager assures that they have had to let go of people who did not adapt to this level of freedom and demand. The goal is to allow employees to have enough flexibility in their workday to fulfill themselves as people and take care of their familieswhich also helps them save on daycare, cleaning or extracurricular activities. According to Nelmes, “if you let your employees be good parents, they will also be good employees.” The company especially seeks to attract fathers and mothers, convinced that flexibility improves both productivity and quality of life. An adaptable model, but not for everyone. Although the manager assures that the results obtained by his staff have been positive, he recognizes that this model is not viable or for all companies nor for all sectors. Consulting companies, banks, law firms or marketing companies can benefit from this approach as they allow the flexibility of teleworking to be combined with organization by objectives. However, it recognizes that it is an option that is difficult to implement in sectors such as the manufacturing industry, construction, hospitality or tourismwhere physical presence and fixed hours are inherent to the nature of the work. In any case, the results were so satisfactory that Lumen adopted this model permanently. A version of this article was published in June 2025 In Xataka | Spain already has its first municipality with a four-day work week. It is not in Madrid or Barcelona, ​​but in a corner of Cádiz In Xataka | Three Spanish companies tell us how they fared after implementing a work utopia: the four-day week Image | Lumen

removing magnets from the fridge saves exactly zero euros on your bill, although there are other things that do work

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The magnetic decorations that decorate refrigerators in many homes have been the subject of a curious urban legendthat they make our appliance consume more. “Everything in this myth is false,” Endesa pointed out one of the last times the rumor resurfaced. Refrigerator magnets do not have an impact on the electrical consumption of these appliances since the magnetic fields of the magnets that we place in our refrigerators are very weak. So much so that “they don’t even go through the refrigerator door,” the electric company continues to explain on the company blog. And it is that some of the magnets we place on our refrigerator barely have the strength to keep themselves in place, but nor the most powerful magnets in this range they could do it. We would need a very powerful magnet, outside the range of refrigerator magnets to affect its operation. “Only (would consumption increase) if the magnets on your refrigerator were electromagnets” answered a forum user Physics Forums back in 2012 when another user raised this question. Endesa has not been the only company that has spoken out in recent years about this urban legend. When we asked LGthey told us that it was a “myth”: “fridge magnets have no effect on consumption, shelf life or food. The magnets located on the outside of the refrigerator do not influence the operation or the internal cooling capacity of the appliance.” In that same line he answered us another manufacturer, Bosch, which assured that the magnets were not going to affect the operation at all beyond causing scratches on the surface or, if someone feels especially inspired and fills the door with magnets, they could affect the useful life of the door hinge if its weight increases a lot. In any case, they were very emphatic about it: it will never affect the electrical consumption of the appliance. How to save with the refrigerator. The refrigerators can assume the largest source of energy consumption behind heating and hot water and can account for almost a fifth of electricity consumption. They must be plugged in and running all day, which limits possible strategies to save on expenses, although some exist. The option that most reduces electricity consumption is one that may not be available to everyone: obtaining a more efficient refrigerator. We may not have yet paid off the one we have or we may not yet have the budget to change it, but opting for more efficient models will imply less long-term savings. Other ways to save are well known: keeping the door open as little as possible or not putting hot food in it are well-known tricks. Maintain seal from the refrigerator, yes, it goes a little further. To achieve this we must always make sure that there are no foods that could make it difficult to close and that the sealing elements (the rubber) are in good condition. Where we place the refrigerator can also affect its performance. Embedding it, placing it in sunlight, or near a heat source such as a radiator or oven can cause it to require more energy to keep its interior cool. Finally, we must keep the freezer frost free as far as possible. The frost works as an insulator (as if we had an igloo inside the freezer. This causes the freezer to require more energy to cool the products inside. In the midst of a unique energy crisis in almost half a century, saving electricity has become an obsession for some and a necessity for many. That is why it is important focus on those strategies that do allow us to save energy and money. Image | Giulia Hetherington A version of this topic was originally published in 2023. Unfortunately for science, it is still fully valid in 2026…

Emilia Clarke talks about her work in Marvel, Star Wars and Terminator: “it should never have happened”

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In one recent interviewEmilia Clarke reviewed her post-‘Game of Thrones’ career with unusual frankness. About ‘Secret Invasion’ he said: “I don’t think anyone liked the series.” On ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’: “The viewers were not happy either.” On ‘Terminator: Genisys’: “It should never have happened.” He adds: “But they were jobs I said yes to. I joined franchises that were already big and established. That’s why I don’t take it personally.” It is difficult to find a better summary of how the big franchise business works in Hollywood. Some collections. Let’s see if Clarke’s feeling that they were failures is accompanied by data. ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’ cost between 275 and 300 million dollars and raised 393 million worldwide. According to is calculatedDisney lost about $77 million on the film, making it Star Wars’ first commercial failure. ‘Secret Invasion’ had a production cost of 211.6 million dollars, a figure known thanks to the transparency demands of the UK tax incentive program, where it was filmed. More than ‘Barbie’ or ‘Oppenheimer’ cost that same year. Viewership figures on Disney+ in its first five days were the second lowest of any MCU production, only above ‘Ms. Marvel’. Critical reception was equally poor. Regarding ‘Terminator: Genesis’, 155 million budget, collection insufficient to justify sequels that had already been announced, and weak reviews. It’s not the first. In 2021, with the MCU still dominating the box office, Anthony Hopkins summarized his experience in the ‘Thor’ trilogy, between 2011 and 2017: “They put armor on me and gave me a beard. Sit on the throne, shout a little. If you’re sitting in front of a green screen, it’s acting in front of nothing.” Chris Hemsworth came to similar conclusions: recognized that in ‘Thor: Love and Thunder‘ “I got stuck improvising and clowning around, and became a parody of myself.” This time, critics and the public accompanied him in doubts. Hemsworth has described the dynamic that he calls “the curse of the superhero,” which is simply that “you get pigeonholed.” But at the same time he rejects the attitude of actors like Clarke, who criticize Marvel when their projects don’t work: “They are successful movies: put me in one. Mine doesn’t work? Well, I attack them all.” What Clarke is really saying. The heart of Clarke’s complaint is that major franchises operate as hiring machines that offer global visibility and financial rewards that few independent productions match. In return, the actor’s creative control over the result is minimal. Clarke said in the same interview that in ‘Game of Thrones’ she received the scripts and did “everything in my power to understand and empathize with the decisions.” This was not the case in later franchises. Not just Marvel. The pattern is not exclusive to a single franchise. When actress Jamie Lee Curtis rejected in 2022 participate in Marvel projects, he did so with the same type of argument as Hopkins: “they will stick stitches in my body and force me to perform in some warehouse.” What does seem to be clear and Clarke demonstrates is that when there is a commercial failure, actors seem to feel freer to point out the obvious shortcomings of a system in which they are just more meat for the content grinder. In Xataka | I have detected the exact moment in which things at Marvel began to fail and that culminated in ‘Captain America’

what Elon Musk asks for it to work

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The scene took place relatively recently, when several Ukrainian naval drones were left temporarily unusable during an operation in the Black Sea following connectivity problems linked to Starlink. The episode left an uncomfortable conclusion For many Western strategists: some of the most modern weapons on the planet depend on a private network controlled by a single company. The “cheap” war that began to be expensive. The United States has been pursuing an obsessive idea for years: replacing part of its very expensive precision missiles with a copy of the Iranian and Russian weapon par excellence: swarms of kamikaze drones that are much cheaper, mass-produced and capable of saturating enemy defenses. He LUCAS drone was born precisely for that. Each unit costs just a fraction of a Tomahawk and can be launched in large quantities against distant targets. On paper it seemed like the perfect formula for modern warfare. The problem appeared when those drones began to used massively against Iran and Washington discovered something uncomfortable: the weapon does not depend only on the explosive or the fuselage, but of the satellite connection that guides her. And that connection has an owner. SpaceX then decided that the Pentagon was paying too little to use Starlink and Starshield in real combat operations. Elon Musk controls a critical piece. The dispute that has been revealed in Reuters exclusive reveals the extent to which the US military has become dependent on SpaceX. LUCAS drones use Starshield terminals to communicate, coordinate attacks and operate over enormous distances. Without that space network, much of the system’s advanced capabilities simply disappear. The Pentagon argued that drones only used the connection for minutes or hours and that paying $25,000 per terminal was absurd for a relatively cheap kamikaze device. SpaceX responded that actual military use was more like a premium aeronautical service than a conventional land connection. The result was surreal: the cost of connectivity almost doubled the operating price of some drones designed precisely to be cheap. The paradox of autonomous war. The case exposes a huge contradiction in the current military revolution. Armies want cheap, massive autonomous weapons, but those platforms increasingly depend on extremely complex and concentrated infrastructures in few private hands. New American drone swarms need to transmit data, share targets, coordinate and receive orders in real time over thousands of miles. This requires the use of gigantic orbital networks capable of maintaining permanent global coverage. Today no company offers anything comparable to Starlink. SpaceX controls more than 60% of all operational satellites on the planet and has become in a critical layer of Western military communications. The Pentagon is beginning to discover that the true strategic advantage is not just in making cheap drones, but in who owns the sky that connects those machines. Ukraine and danger. The Ukrainian War I had been warning for a long time about this problem. Starlink became there an essential element for Ukrainian and Russian operations, and also a constant source of political and military tensions. At times, restrictions imposed by SpaceX affected specific operations and made clear something uncomfortable for Washington: a private company could alter the operation of military systems in the middle of a war. Now the scenario is repeated with Iran, but in an even more delicate way because the Pentagon itself directly negotiate rates while developing weapons that depend entirely on that orbital infrastructure. Even US naval tests they were paralyzed previously following global Starlink blackouts that left maritime drones floating offline. The new military industry. They remembered on TWZ that, for decades, American military power depended mainly on classic defense giants such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing or Raytheon. SpaceX has completely changed that balance. The company not only launches rockets or manufactures satellites, it controls global communication networksorbital infrastructures, data systems and technologies that are beginning to be essential for autonomous warfare. This gives it an unprecedented position of strength vis-à-vis the US government. Unlike traditional contractors, SpaceX also has a huge independent commercial business and does not depend exclusively on the Pentagon. In fact, some analysts already describe the situation crudely: the United States has SpaceX “by the throat” because there is no comparable alternative today capable of offering similar global coverage at reasonable costs. War happens through space. The important thing is possibly that the discussion has only just begun. The LUCAS drones They are just an initial piece of a much deeper military transformation where autonomous swarms, orbital systems and artificial intelligence networks will function as a single connected ecosystem. The Pentagon wants future drones to be able to cooperate with each other, automatically adapt to combat and attack targets with minimal human supervision. But the more sophisticated those systems become, the more they will depend of permanent connections high capacity. And that makes the space the authentic center of gravity of modern warfare. The great irony is that the United States designed cheap drones to avoid spending millions on each missile and has ended up discovering that the most important strategic cost may not be in the weapon, but who gets paid for keeping her connected. Image | CENTCOM, Official SpaceX Photos In Xataka | The US has remembered what it did in World War II and has presented LUCAS: a copy of the most lethal Russian weapon In Xataka | Iran has been manufacturing the most effective and destructive kamikaze drones in the world for years. The US has plagiarized them to bomb him

As Silicon Valley perpetuates its workday, the four-day work week has found an unexpected ally: OpenAI

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While in the mecca of the technology industry celebrates the “996” model (from nine in the morning to nine at night, six days a week) as a mantra to not to be left behind In the AI ​​race, the creator of ChatGPT stands out by proposing just the opposite: reducing working hours with a four day work week. OpenAI just published your report ‘Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age: Ideas to Keep People First‘. In it, the company suggests that AI can be the perfect excuse for us to work fewer hours a week without losing a cent of our salary. The idea is not just an academic conjecture, but proposes a package of labor policies designed for the age of AI. Four-day days without touching the salary. One of the most surprising sections of the report refers to “efficiency dividends.” With them, OpenAI proposes that governments, companies and unions promote pilot tests of 32-hour days or four days of work per week without salary reduction, as has been established tested successfully in different countries around the world. The stated objective is to maintain the same levels of production and service, taking advantage of the automation options provided by AI and then making the leap to a model of permanent reduced working hours or cumulative vacation days for employees. The striking thing about the proposal is not its content itself, something that has already been implemented with success in some companiesthe key is who proposes the change. Instead of a union or a workplace welfare study, the idea comes from the company itself that is accelerating the transformation of the labor market around the world. Not just reduction in working hours: better pensions and care. OpenAI presents this measure as a way to redistribute part of the productivity benefits extra generated by AI, so that profits are not concentrated only in the shareholders or in the big technology companies, but that the entire population participates in this advance. The four-day week is just one of the most striking measures, but the report goes much further. OpenAI suggests that companies that profit from AI also increase their contributions to their employees’ pension plans (not just those of their managers as a bonus), and that they cover more of their employees’ healthcare expenses. He also proposes what he calls “benefit bonuses“, direct bonuses linked to improved productivity and subsidies for the care of minors and the elderly. If robots work, let them quote. The document recognizes that AI automation can lead to the massive displacement of jobs and further concentrate wealth in a very small number of large companies. That is why it calls for more robust social protection networks. Curiously, OpenAI’s postulate coincides with the statements made a few weeks ago did Bill Gatesarguing that if AI was to reduce dependence on human labor, taxation should shift from wages and contributions to capital gains and corporate profits. The document introduces the idea of ​​”taxes on automated work”, linked to jobs previously done by people who would be replaced by robots. In Xataka | The war in Iran has achieved something that no government has achieved: giving reasons to bring back teleworking Image | Unsplash (Nathan Kuczmarski)

Benicio del Toro and James Cameron have been obsessed with adapting a “cursed” work for decades: ‘Prometheus’

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In March 2011, Guillermo del Toro resigned. He sent an email to his team announcing that the project to which they had dedicated years of work was definitively cancelled. Behind them were more than three hundred pieces of conceptual art, a script they had worked on for almost a decade, James Cameron as producer and Tom Cruise as star. The novel that inspired it, a classic of literary horror, is still waiting to be adapted ninety years after its original publication. Foundational text. HP Lovecraft He published ‘At the Mountains of Madness’ in 1936 in installments in the magazine ‘Weird Tales’. The story follows a team of researchers who travel to Antarctica and discover, within a colossal mountain system, the remains of a civilization that predated humanity. Its builders, known as “the Ancients” are organisms whose existence makes it clear that humanity does not occupy any special place in the universe, as happens in so many other stories by the author. It is a scheme that laid the foundations (after multiple experiments in the form of stories) of the cosmic horrorand its influence on cinema is obvious in movies like ‘Alien’ or ‘The Thing’. Marked at eleven years old. Guillermo del Toro discovered the short novel as a child in Mexico and it became an obsession that stayed with him for decades. In 2002 he began working on an adaptation with Matthew Robbins, screenwriter and frequent collaborator of the director on projects such as ‘Mimic’ or ‘Pinocchio’. They completed a script but difficulties began when they tried to finance it: Warner Bros. rejected the project, and Del Toro chained films while the project returned again and again to the drawer: ‘Hellboy’, ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’, ‘The Hobbit’… Ready. In 2010 the project took a little more shape, for the first time in its eventful career. James Cameron, fresh off the success of ‘Avatar‘, came in as a producer and Tom Cruise began talks to play the protagonist. The film would be shot in native 3D and distributed by Universal. In 2011, Del Toro was hurriedly working on a new version of the script to shoot that summer, but before that, in March, Universal archived the project. The reason was, mainly, the exorbitant budget of 150 million for a horror film for adults in which Del Toro did not want to reduce the violence. Curiously, Universal next financed ‘Pacific Rim’, which cost $190 million but, yes, had much less exaggerated violence. The coup de grace: ‘Prometheus’. In April 2012, del Toro published in the forums of their official website a text that related ‘At the Mountains of Madness’ with ‘Prometheus’, the feature film by Ridley Scott. According to the director, they had an identical premise, very similar scenes and an absolutely parallel final revelation. That is: explorers of unknown places discover an ancient alien civilization and realize something devastating about their own origins. More attempts. Despite the disappointment of ‘Prometheus’, Del Toro did not completely abandon the project. When he joined Legendary Pictures, he considered the possibility of making a PG-13 film, that is, with less violence. When he later signed a contract with Netflix in 2020, he submitted the project to the platform, but it was not accepted. In November 2022posted on Instagram 25 seconds of CGI footage prepared by Industrial Light & Magic for the 2011 version. The clip showed the Ancients in spectacular fidelity to Lovecraft’s description. Later would recognize than a feature film stop motion could be a viable format for the project. At the end of 2025, del Toro released ‘Frankenstein’ on Netflix, another project he had been wanting to do for decades. The film was a success in the awards season (nominated for nine Oscars and won three), with audiences and critics. Perhaps it is also, without us knowing it, an open door for one of the most deservedly legendary projects of modern fantasy cinema. In Xataka | HP Lovecraft wrote 75,000 letters in his entire life. And they give a definitive insight into all its secrets

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