The cost of cleaning up the U.K.'s largest nuclear site, "is expected to spiral to £136 billion" (about $176 billion), according to the Guardian, creating tension with the country's public-spending watchdog.

Projects to fix the state-owned buildings with hazardous and radioactive material "are running years late and over budget," the Guardian notes, with the National Audit Office suggesting spending at the Sellafield site has risen to more than £2.7 billion a year ($3.49 billion). Europe's most hazardous industrial site has previously been described by a former UK secretary of state as a "bottomless pit of hell, money and despair". The Guardian's Nuclear Leaks investigation in late 2023 revealed a string of cybersecurity problems at the site, as well as issues with its safety and workplace culture. The National Audit Office found that Sellafield was making slower-than-hoped progress on making the site safe and that three of its most hazardous storage sites pose an "intolerable risk".

The site is a sprawling collection of buildings, many never designed to hold nuclear waste long-term, now in various states of disrepair. It stores and treats decades of nuclear waste from atomic power generation and weapons programmes, has taken waste from countries including Italy and Sweden, and is the world's largest store of plutonium.

Sellafield is forecast to cost £136bn to decommission, which is £21.4bn or 18.8% higher than was forecast in 2019. Its buildings are expected to be finally torn down by 2125 and its nuclear waste buried deep underground at an undecided English location. The underground project's completion date has been delayed from 2040 to the 2050s at the earliest, meaning Sellafield will need to build more stores and manage waste for longer. Each decade of delay costs Sellafield between £500m and £760m, the National Audit Office said.

Meanwhile, the government hopes to ramp up nuclear power generation, which will create more waste.
"Plans to clean up three of its worst ponds — which contain hazardous nuclear sludge that must be painstakingly removed — are running six to 13 years later than forecast when the National Audit Office last drew up a report, in 2018... "

"One pond, the Magnox swarf storage silo, is leaking 2,100 litres of contaminated water each day, the NAO found. The pond was due to be emptied by 2046 but this has slipped to 2059."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the news.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Ahead of the debut of Apple's private AI cloud next week, dubbed Private Cloud Compute, the technology giant says it will pay security researchers up to $1 million to find vulnerabilities that can compromise the security of its private AI cloud. In a post on Apple's security blog, the company said it would pay up to the maximum $1 million bounty to anyone who reports exploits capable of remotely running malicious code on its Private Cloud Compute servers. Apple said it would also award researchers up to $250,000 for privately reporting exploits capable of extracting users' sensitive information or the prompts that customers submit to the company's private cloud.

Apple said it would "consider any security issue that has a significant impact" outside of a published category, including up to $150,000 for exploits capable of accessing sensitive user information from a privileged network position. "We award maximum amounts for vulnerabilities that compromise user data and inference request data outside the [private cloud compute] trust boundary," Apple said. You can learn more about Apple's Private Cloud Computer service in their blog post. Its source code and documentation is available here.

The top U.S. consumer finance watchdog warned businesses about potential legal problems they could face from using new technology such as artificial intelligence or algorithmic scores to snoop on and evaluate their employees. From a report: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday said "invasive" new tools to monitor workers are governed by a law designed to ensure fairness in credit reporting, giving employees specific rights. Employees have the right to consent to the collection of personal information, to receive detailed information and to dispute inaccurate information, the CFPB said in the newly released guidance.

"Workers shouldn't be subject to unchecked surveillance or have their careers determined by opaque third-party reports without basic protections," CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said. More companies are leaning on AI and other powerful tools throughout the employment process, using software that can, for example, interview candidates and surveillance tools that can look for unsafe behavior. Americans have expressed concerns about Big Brother-style surveillance while they are on the job.

PayPal will begin sharing detailed customer purchase data, including clothing sizes and shopping preferences, with retailers for targeted advertising starting November 27, the payments company announced in a recent privacy update. The initiative affects PayPal's 391 million active consumer accounts worldwide. While customers can opt out through the app's settings, the GAO reports such opt-out rates typically remain below 7% across financial services.

Seven Spirals writes: A working paper [PDF], published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, studies the employment effects of a guaranteed income by providing $1,000 per month to 1,000 low-income participants for three years, compared to a control group receiving $50 per month. The results show a decrease in labor market participation by 2 percentage points and a reduction of 1.3-1.4 hours in weekly work hours. Most of the additional free time was spent on leisure, and there were no significant improvements in job quality or human capital investments. Overall, the guaranteed income led to a moderate reduction in labor supply without other substantial productive benefits.

Ireland's data-protection watchdog fined LinkedIn 310 million euros ($334.3 million), saying the Microsoft-owned career platform's personal-data processing breached strict European Union data-privacy and security legislation. From a report: The Irish Data Protection Commission in 2018 launched a probe into LinkedIn's processing of users' personal data for behavioral analysis and targeted advertising after its French equivalent flagged a complaint it received from a non-profit organization. Irish officials raised concerns on the lawfulness, fairness and transparency of the practice, saying Thursday that LinkedIn was in breach of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation.

"The lawfulness of processing is a fundamental aspect of data protection law and the processing of personal data without an appropriate legal basis is a clear and serious violation of a data subjects' fundamental right to data protection," said Graham Doyle, deputy commissioner at the Irish Data Protection Commission. In their decision, Irish officials said LinkedIn wasn't sufficiently informing users when seeking their consent to process third-party data for behavioral analysis and targeted advertising and ordered the platform to bring its processing into compliance.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from SecurityWeek.com: White hat hackers taking part in the Pwn2Own Ireland 2024 contest organized by Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) have earned half a million dollars on the first day of the event, for exploits targeting NAS devices, cameras, printers and smart speakers. The highest single reward, $100,000, was earned by Sina Kheirkhah of Summoning Team, who chained a total of nine vulnerabilities for an attack that went from a QNAP QHora-322 router to a TrueNAS Mini X storage device. Another exploit chain involving the QNAP QHora-322 and TrueNAS Mini X products was demonstrated by Viettel Cyber Security, but this team earned only $50,000.

A significant reward was also earned by Jack Dates of RET2 Systems, who received $60,000 for hacking a Sonos Era 300 smart speaker. QNAP TS-464 and Synology DiskStation DS1823XS+ NAS device exploits earned $40,000 each for two different teams. Participants also successfully demonstrated exploits against the Lorex 2K WiFi, Ubiquity AI Bullet, and Synology TC500 cameras, and HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP 3301fdw and Canon imageCLASS MF656Cdw printers. These attempts earned the hackers between $11,000 and $30,000. According to ZDI, a total of $516,250 was paid out on the first day of Pwn2Own Ireland for over 50 unique vulnerabilities.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: It's been just a week since US telecom regulators announced a formal inquiry into broadband data caps, and the docket is filling up with comments from users who say they shouldn't have to pay overage charges for using their Internet service. The docket has about 190 comments so far, nearly all from individual broadband customers.

Federal Communications Commission dockets are usually populated with filings from telecom companies, advocacy groups, and other organizations, but some attract comments from individual users of telecom services. The data cap docket probably won't break any records given that the FCC has fielded many millions of comments on net neutrality, but it currently tops the agency's list of most active proceedings based on the number of filings in the past 30 days. "Data caps, especially by providers in markets with no competition, are nothing more than an arbitrary money grab by greedy corporations. They limit and stifle innovation, cause undue stress, and are unnecessary," wrote Lucas Landreth.

"Data caps are as outmoded as long distance telephone fees," wrote Joseph Wilkicki. "At every turn, telecommunications companies seek to extract more revenue from customers for a service that has rapidly become essential to modern life." Pointing to taxpayer subsidies provided to ISPs, Wilkicki wrote that large telecoms "have sought every opportunity to take those funds and not provide the expected broadband rollout that we paid for."

In response to Trump-appointed FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington's coffee refill analogy, internet users "Jonathan Mnemonic" and James Carter wrote, "Coffee is not, in fact, internet service." They added: "Cafes are not able to abuse monopolistic practices based on infrastructural strangleholds. To briefly set aside the niceties: the analogy is absurd, and it is borderline offensive to the discerning layperson."

If you want to sign up for a subscription to Hulu or Disney+, don't bother taking out your iPhone. Disney is now telling would-be customers to pay for subscriptions on Disney's own site, instead of on Apple's App Store -- though people who've already started paying for either service via Apple can keep doing that. From a report: The two companies are still working together on some projects. But the App Store split does represent a rift between two longtime partners, so it's definitely worth noting.

Disney's rationale is clear here: When customers sign up for Disney subscription services via Apple, Apple takes up to 15% of the monthly fees those services generate. And Disney CEO Bob Iger has made it clear that he doesn't want to pay that anymore. "We have to look at the way we're distributing," Iger said at an investor conference in May. "Unlike Netflix, we distribute largely through third-party app stores. There's obviously an advantage to that to some extent, but there's a cost to that, too. And we're looking at that."

Applications to MBA programs jumped 12% in 2024, with full-time programs surging 32% to decade-high levels, WSJ is reporting, citing the Graduate Management Admission Council's latest survey. Top-tier U.S. schools reported significant gains, with Columbia Business School seeing a 27% rise and Harvard Business School applications climbing 21%. So what's behind the surge? The story adds: Today, the U.S. job market is strong, and unemployment remains low. But lower wage positions in retail and dining, as well as healthcare and government, have fueled much of the labor market's growth over the past two years.

A white-collar job market downturn that began with tech workers in 2022 has spread to other sectors. Major employers including Goldman Sachs, Lyft, Microsoft and PricewaterhouseCoopers have laid off a combined tens of thousands of workers this year. Hiring for roles that usually require a bachelor's degree dropped below 2019 levels in recent months, according to payroll provider ADP. That slump has been steeper for 20-somethings, who are running into a bottleneck on the lower rungs of the corporate ladder as more established professionals stay put.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: When Canadian developer Peter Todd found out that a new HBO documentary, Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery, was set to identify him as Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, he was mostly just pissed. "This was clearly going to be a circus," Todd told WIRED in an email. The identity of the person -- or people -- who created Bitcoin has been the subject of speculation since December 2010, when they disappeared from public view. The mystery has proved all the more irresistible for the trove of bitcoin Satoshi is widely believed to have controlled, suspected to be worth many billions of dollars today. When the documentary was released on October 8, Todd joined a long line of alleged Satoshis.

Documentary maker Cullen Hoback, who in a previous film claimed to have identified the individual behind QAnon, laid out his theory to Todd on camera. The confrontation would become the climactic scene of the documentary. But Todd nonetheless claims he didn't see it coming; he alleges he was left with the impression the film was about the history of Bitcoin, not the identity of its creator. Since the documentary aired, Todd has repeatedly and categorically denied that he created Bitcoin: "For the record, I am not Satoshi," he alleges. "I think Cullen made the Satoshi accusation for marketing. He needed a way to get attention for his film."

For his part, Hoback remains confident in his conclusions. The various denials and deflections from Todd, he claims, are part of a grand and layered misdirection. "While of course we can't outright say he is Satoshi, I think that we make a very strong case," says Hoback. Whatever the truth, Todd will now bear the burden of having been unmasked as Satoshi. He has gone into hiding. [...] Todd expects that "continued harassment by crazy people" will become the indefinite status quo. But he says the potential personal safety implications are his chief concern -- and the reason he has gone into hiding. "Obviously, falsely claiming that ordinary people of ordinary wealth are extraordinarily rich exposes them to threats like robbery and kidnapping," says Todd. "Not only is the question dumb, it's dangerous. Satoshi obviously didn't want to be found, for good reasons, and no one should help people trying to find Satoshi." "I think the idea that it puts their life [at risk] is a little overblown," says Hoback. "This person is potentially on track to become the wealthiest on Earth."

"If countries are considering adopting this in their treasuries or making it legal tender, the idea that there's potentially this anonymous figure out there who controls one twentieth of the total supply of digital gold is pretty important."

A federal rule banning fake online reviews is now in effect. The Federal Trade Commission issued the rule in August banning the sale or purchase of online reviews. The rule, which went into effect Monday, allows the agency to seek civil penalties against those who knowingly violate it. AP: "Fake reviews not only waste people's time and money, but also pollute the marketplace and divert business away from honest competitors," FTC Chair Lina Khan said about the rule in August. She added that the rule will "protect Americans from getting cheated, put businesses that unlawfully game the system on notice, and promote markets that are fair, honest, and competitive."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: 37Signals is not a company that makes its policy or management decisions quietly. The productivity software company was an avowedly Mac-centric shop until Apple's move to kill home screen web apps (or Progressive Web Apps, or PWAs) led the firm and its very-public-facing co-founder, David Heinemeier Hansson, to declare a "Return to Windows," followed by a stew of Windows/Mac/Linux. The company waged a public battle with Apple over its App Store subscription policies, and the resulting outcry helped nudge Apple a bit. 37Signals has maintained an active blog for years, its co-founders and employees have written numerous business advice books, and its blog and social media posts regularly hit the front pages of Hacker News.

So when 37Signals decided to pull its seven cloud-based apps off Amazon Web Services in the fall of 2022, it didn't do so quietly or without details. Back then, Hansson described his firm as paying "an at times almost absurd premium" for defense against "wild swings or towering peaks in usage." In early 2023, Hansson wrote that 37Signals expected to save $7 million over five years by buying more than $600,000 worth of Dell server gear and hosting its own apps.

Late last week, Hansson had an update: it's more like $10 million (and, he told the BBC, more like $800,000 in gear). By squeezing more hardware into existing racks and power allowances, estimating seven years' life for that hardware, and eventually transferring its 10 petabytes of S3 storage into a dual-DC Pure Storage flash array, 37Signals expects to save money, run faster, and have more storage available. "The motto of the 2010s and early 2020s -- all-cloud, everything, all the time -- seems to finally have peaked," Hansson writes. "And thank heavens for that!" He adds the caveat that companies with "enormous fluctuations in load," and those in early or uncertain stages, still have a place in the cloud.

Intel and Boeing, once exemplars of American manufacturing prowess, now face existential crises. Their market values have plummeted, jeopardizing not just shareholder wealth but national security. The U.S. is losing its edge in manufacturing high-tech products, crucial in its geopolitical contest with China, a story on WSJ argues.

Unlike past manufacturing declines, Intel and Boeing's woes stem from internal missteps, prioritizing financial performance over engineering excellence. Their potential demise threatens America's semiconductor and commercial aircraft industries, with far-reaching consequences for the nation's technological ecosystem. While government intervention is controversial, national security concerns may necessitate support. WSJ adds: So, much as national leaders would like to ignore these companies' woes, they can't. National security dictates the U.S. maintain some know-how in making aircraft and semiconductors.

Certainly other countries feel that way: European governments heavily subsidized Airbus. China is pursuing dominance in key technologies regardless of the cost. Its so-called Big Fund has sunk roughly $100 billion into semiconductors while aid to Comac had reached $72 billion in 2020, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"Until Comac succeeds in gaining significant global market share, it will continue to run big losses and be bailed out by the Chinese government," said Atkinson, whose organization gets support from Boeing.

Both political parties have bought into the idea that manufacturing is special and thus deserving of public support. That raises the question: which manufacturing, and what kind of support?

The goal of manufacturing strategy shouldn't be just producing jobs but great, world-beating products. [...]

Though Sam Altman once called OpenAI's partnership with Microsoft "the best bromance in tech," now "ties between the companies have started to fray" reports the New York Times — citing interviews with 19 people "familiar with the relationship". [Alternate URL here.]

Among other things, Satya Nadella "has said privately that Altman's firing in November shocked and concerned him, according to five people with knowledge of his comments. Since then, Microsoft has started to hedge its bet on OpenAI," and reconsidered new investments beyond its initial $13 billion — even as OpenAI expects to lose $5 billion this year That tension demonstrates a key challenge for AI startups: They are dependent on the world's tech giants for money and computing power because those big companies control the massive cloud computing systems the small outfits need to develop AI... Over the past year, OpenAI has been trying to renegotiate the deal to help it secure more computing power and reduce crushing expenses while Microsoft executives have grown concerned that their AI work is too dependent on OpenAI... [I]n March, Microsoft paid at least $650 million to hire most of the staff from Inflection, an OpenAI competitor...

In June, Microsoft agreed to an exception in [OpenAI's] contract, six people with knowledge of the change said. That allowed OpenAI to sign a roughly $10 billion computing deal with Oracle for additional computing resources, according to two people familiar with the deal. Oracle is providing computers packed with chips suited to building AI, while Microsoft provides the software that drives the hardware... While it was looking for computer power alternatives, OpenAI also raced to broaden its investors, according to two people familiar with the company's plan. Part of the plan was to secure strategic investments from organizations that could bolster OpenAI's prospects in ways beyond throwing around money. Those organizations included Apple, chipmaker Nvidia, and MGX, a tech investment firm controlled by the United Arab Emirates... Earlier this month, OpenAI closed a $6.6 billion funding round led by Thrive Capital, with additional participation from Nvidia, MGX and others. Apple did not invest, but Microsoft also participated in the funding round.

OpenAI expected to spend at least $5.4 billion in computing costs through the end of 2024, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times. That amount was expected to skyrocket over the next five years as OpenAI expanded, soaring to an estimated $37.5 billion in annual computing costs by 2029, the documents showed... Still, OpenAI employees complain that Microsoft is not providing enough computing power, according to three people familiar with the relationship. And some have complained that if another company beat it to the creation of AI that matches the human brain, Microsoft will be to blame because it hasn't given OpenAI the computing power it needs, according to two people familiar with the complaints.

Oddly, that could be the key to getting out from under its contract with Microsoft. The contract contains a clause that says that if OpenAI builds artificial general intelligence, or AGI — roughly speaking, a machine that matches the power of the human brain — Microsoft loses access to OpenAI's technologies.

"Several of Europe's biggest carmakers unveiled low-cost electric vehicles at the Paris Motor Show this week," reports CNBC. The automakers are "seeking to jump-start a demand slump and recapture some of the market share now held by Chinese brands." "It feels like Europe is fighting back," Julia Poliscanova, senior director for vehicles and e-mobility supply chains at the Transport & Environment campaign group, told CNBC at the Paris Motor Show. "There are so many new models on show, and what is really great is that there are a lot of launches that are more affordable. So, Citroen, Peugeot [and] Renault, they are all showing some smaller affordable models," Poliscanova said. "This is exactly what we need for the mass market, for people to buy those vehicles more, and this is also where the competition from the Chinese is also the hardest," she added...

"The storytelling is that people have cooled off on EVs and there is no consumer demand, [but] this is really not true," Transport & Environment's Poliscanova said. "This year in Europe, we did not have affordable models, so people are not buying those overpriced premium vehicles. However, as soon as vehicles come in the right price range next year ... people will flock to buy them." Poliscanova said the launch of several low-cost EVs means electric car sales could account for up to a 24% market share next year, up from 14% this year. Chinese-made EVs typically cost less than half the prices seen in Europe and the U.S. last year, according to figures published by data firm JATO, underscoring the challenge for Western automakers to keep pace with Beijing...

Pere Brugal, president and managing director of GM Europe, said that the challenges facing Europe's auto industry should be seen as a transitional phase — and not evidence of a crisis. "The adoption of new technologies and new behaviors is never a linear growth story, but the end is full-electric [vehicles]," Brugal told CNBC at the Paris Motor Show.
Meanwhile, GM's CEO "says it will start making money on battery-powered models by the end of the year — becoming the only U.S. automaker aside from Tesla to achieve that feat," reports the New York Times (adding that sales are increasing "and the company just introduced a model that sells for less than $30,000 after a federal tax credit.")

And GM "is still committed to doing away with combustion engine cars in the United States by 2035."

"A technology pioneered by Benjamin Franklin is being revived to build more efficient electric motors," reports the Wall Street Journal, "an effort in its nascent stage that has the potential to be massive." A handful of scientists and engineers — armed with materials and techniques unimaginable in the 1700s — are creating modern versions of Franklin's "electrostatic motor," that are on the cusp of commercialization... Franklin's "electrostatic motor" uses alternating positive and negative charges — the same kind that make your socks stick together after they come out of the dryer — to spin an axle, and doesn't rely on a flow of current like conventional electric motors. Every few years, an eager Ph.D. student or engineer rediscovers this historical curiosity. But other than applications in tiny pumps and actuators etched on microchips, where this technology has been in use for decades, their work hasn't made it out of the lab.

Electrostatic motors have several potentially huge advantages over regular motors. They are up to 80% more efficient than conventional motors after all the dependencies of regular electric motors are added in. They could also allow new kinds of control and precision in robots, where they could function more like our muscles. And they don't use rare-earth elements because they don't have permanent magnets, and require as little as 5% as much copper as a conventional motor. Both materials have become increasingly scarce and expensive over the past decade, and supply chains for them are dominated by China.
"It's reminiscent of the early 1990s, when Sony began to produce and sell the first rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, a breakthrough that's now ubiquitous..." according to the article. "These motors could lead to more efficient air-conditioning systems, factories, logistics hubs and data centers, and — since they can double as generators — better ways of generating renewable energy. They might even show up in tiny surveillance drones."

And the article points out that C-Motive Technologies, a 16-person startup in Wisconsin, is already "reaching out to companies, hoping to get their motors out into the real world." ("So far, FedEx and Rockwell Automation, the century-old supplier of automation to factories, are among those testing their motors.") C-Motive's founders discovered that a number of technologies had matured enough that, when combined, could yield electrostatic motors competitive with conventional ones. These enabling technologies include super fast-switching power electronics — like those in modern electric vehicles — that can toggle elements of the motor between states of positive and negative charge very quickly... Dogged exploration of combinations of various readily available industrial organic fluids led to a proprietary mix that can both multiply the strength of the electric field and insulate the motor's spinning parts from each other — all without adding too much friction — says C-Motive Chief Executive Matt Maroon.

It connects people, data, and money, Bill Gates wrote this week on his personal blog. But digital public infrastructure is also "revolutionizing the way entire nations serve their people, respond to crises, and grow their economies" — and the Gates Foundation sees it "as an important part of our efforts to help save lives and fight poverty in poor countries." Digital public infrastructure [or "DPI"]: digital ID systems that securely prove who you are, payment systems that move money instantly and cheaply, and data exchange platforms that allow different services to work together seamlessly... [W]ith the right investments, countries can use DPI to bypass outdated and inefficient systems, immediately adopt cutting-edge digital solutions, and leapfrog traditional development trajectories — potentially accelerating their progress by more than a decade. Countries without extensive branch banking can move straight to mobile banking, reaching far more people at a fraction of the cost. Similarly, digital ID systems can provide legal identity to millions who previously lacked official documentation, giving them access to a wide range of services — from buying a SIM card to opening a bank account to receiving social benefits like pensions.

I've heard concerns about DPI — here's how I think about them. Many people worry digital systems are a tool for government surveillance. But properly designed DPI includes safeguards against misuse and even enhances privacy... These systems also reduce the need for physical document copies that can be lost or stolen, and even create audit trails that make it easier to detect and prevent unauthorized access. The goal is to empower people, not restrict them. Then there's the fear that DPI will disenfranchise vulnerable populations like rural communities, the elderly, or those with limited digital literacy. But when it's properly designed and thoughtfully implemented, DPI actually increases inclusion — like in India, where millions of previously unbanked people now have access to financial services, and where biometric exceptions or assisted enrollment exist for people with physical disabilities or no fixed address.

Meanwhile, countries can use open-source tools — like MOSIP for digital identity and Mojaloop for payments — to build DPI that fosters competition and promotes innovation locally. By providing a common digital framework, they allow smaller companies and start-ups to build services without requiring them to create the underlying systems from scratch. Even more important, they empower countries to seek out services that address their own unique needs and challenges without forcing them to rely on proprietary systems.
"Digital public infrastructure is key to making progress on many of the issues we work on at the Gates Foundation," Bill writes, "including protecting children from preventable diseases, strengthening healthcare systems, improving the lives and livelihoods of farmers, and empowering women to control their financial futures.

"That's why we're so committed to DPI — and why we've committed $200 million over five years to supporting DPI initiatives around the world... The future is digital. Let's make sure it's a future that benefits everyone."

The Miami Herald reports: Cuba's electrical grid shut down again early Saturday, leaving the island without electricity after authorities tried but failed to restore power following an earlier nationwide blackout on Friday. The island's Electric Union reported a second "total outage" at 6:15 a.m., just hours after officials reported they had restored power in a few "microsystems" all over the island... The country has been going through its worst economic crisis since the fall of the Soviet Union, and the government lacks money to buy oil in the international market to meet domestic demand.

Cubans irked by the daily blackouts defied the country's Draconian laws punishing criticism of the government and left several comments in official news outlets calling for government officials to resign. The second outage will likely exacerbate public frustration as food begins to spoil because of the lack of refrigeration.
Two hours ago, Reuters reported that Cuba's government "said on Saturday it had made some progress in gradually re-establishing electrical service across the island, including to hospitals and parts of the capital Havana..."

"Most of Cuba's 10 million people, however, remained without electricity on Saturday afternoon." Traffic lights were dark at intersections throughout Havana, and most commerce was halted...

Cuban officials have said even if the immediate grid collapse is resolved, the electricity crisis will continue. Cuba produces little of its own crude oil, and fuel deliveries to the island have dropped significantly this year, as Venezuela, Russia and Mexico, once important suppliers, have reduced their exports to Cuba.
Mexico experienced a historic drop in production, according to the New York Times, while Venezuela is selling its oil to foreign companies to ease its own economic crisis: The experts had warned for years: Cuba's power grid was on the verge of collapse, relying on plants nearly a half-century old and importing fuel that the cash strapped Communist government could barely afford... Cuban economists and foreign analysts blamed the crisis on several factors: the government's failure to tackle the island's aging infrastructure; the decline in fuel supplies from Venezuela, Mexico and Russia; and a lack of capital investment in badly needed renewable systems, such as wind and solar.

Jorge Piñon, a Cuban-born energy expert at the University of Texas at Austin, highlighted that Cuba's electricity grid relies on eight very large power plants that are close to 50 years old. "They have not received any operational maintenance much less capital maintenance in the last 12 to 15 years," he said, adding that they have a lifetime of only 25-30 years. "So, number one, it's a structural problem, they are breaking down all the time and that has a domino effect," he said. Compounding the problems, Cuba burns crude oil as a fuel for its plants. Experts said Cuba's own crude oil production is very heavy in sulfur and metals that can impair the thermoelectric combustion process. "So they have to be constantly repairing them, and they're repairing them with Band-Aids," said Mr. Piñon...

"If they can't turn these plants back on there is a concern that this could turn into another mass exodus," said Ricardo Herrero, the director of the Cuba Study Group in Washington. "They are really short on options," he added.

"The foundation behind the Gnome desktop environment is having to go through some serious belt-tightening..." writes Linux Magazine.

From an October 7th announcement by The Gnome Foundation: Our plan for the previous financial year was to operate a break-even budget. We raised less than expected last year, due to a very challenging fundraising environment for nonprofits, on top of internal changes such as the departure of our previous Executive Director, Holly Million. The Foundation has a reserves policy which requires us to keep a certain amount of money in the bank account, to preserve core operations in the event of interruptions to our income. In order to meet our reserves policy, this year's budget had to reduce our expenditure to below expected income, and generate a small surplus to reinstate the Foundation's financial reserves to the necessary level...

We're asking for your support in several ways:

- Look out for opportunities to volunteer your time and skills in areas where we've had to reduce staff involvement.

- Share ideas on how to organize and improve our activities in this new context.

- Consider making donations to support the GNOME Foundation's core priorities, if you're able...

Through these difficult decisions, the GNOME Foundation is able to meet its reserves policy, ensuring sufficient funds for the coming year. Our budget for the new financial year is realistic and supports four full time staff, who are able to support key operations like finance, infrastructure and events. We are additionally contracting a number of other individuals on a short term or part time basis, to help with fund raising, websites and delivering on our project commitments.

We are going to be looking to the GNOME community to help with the areas that are most affected by our reduced staffing. If you would like to help GNOME with its events, marketing, or fundraising, we would love to hear from you.
In their new budget, "expenses have been greatly reduced," according to an October 10 update: We are also very relieved to be able to provide a surplus budget for the first time in many years, and doing so while still being able to support the community: events, infrastructure, internships, travel funding, and meeting our commitment to donors for work done in some parts of the stack, e.g.: Flathub, parental controls and GNOME Software.