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 [W]ith the right investments, countries can use DPI to bypass outdated and inefficient systems, immediately adopt cutting-edge digital solutions, and leapfrog traditional development trajectories — potentially accelerating their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.

Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares an op-ed written by Michael R. Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, UN Special Envoy on Climate Ambition and Solutions, and chair of the Defense Innovation Board: There are government boondoggles, and then there's NASA's Artemis program. More than a half century after Neil Armstrong's giant leap for mankind, Artemis was intended to land astronauts back on the moon. It has so far spent nearly $100 billion without anyone getting off the ground, yet its complexity and outrageous waste are still spiraling upward. The next US president should rethink the program in its entirety. As someone who greatly respects science and strongly supports space exploration, the more I have learned about Artemis, the more it has become apparent that it is a colossal waste of taxpayer money. [...]

A celestial irony is that none of this is necessary. A reusable SpaceX Starship will very likely be able to carry cargo and robots directly to the moon -- no SLS, Orion, Gateway, Block 1B or ML-2 required -- at a small fraction of the cost. Its successful landing of the Starship booster was a breakthrough that demonstrated how far beyond NASA it is moving. Meanwhile, NASA is canceling or postponing promising scientific programs -- including the Veritas mission to Venus; the Viper lunar rover; and the NEO Surveyor telescope, intended to scan the solar system for hazardous asteroids -- as Artemis consumes ever more of its budget. Taxpayers and Congress should be asking: What on Earth are we doing? And the next president should be held accountable for answers.

Netflix has begun raising prices in several countries, including Japan, parts of Europe, and Africa, as it seeks to sustain growth following its crackdown on password sharing. While its recent financial results show strong revenue growth, the company faces challenges in finding new subscribers and aims to boost future growth through advertising and fresh content. The BBC reports: In its latest results, Netflix announced that it had added 5.1 million subscribers between July and September - ahead of forecasts but the smallest gain in more than a year. The company is under pressure to show investors what will power growth in the years ahead, as its already massive reach makes finding new subscribers more difficult. The last time Netflix saw signs of slowdown, in 2022, it launched measures to stop password sharing and said it would offer a new streaming option with advertisements.

The crackdown unleashed a new wave of growth. The firm has added more than 45 million new members since last year and has 282 million subscribers globally. Analysts also expect advertisements to eventually become big business for Netflix. For now, however, Netflix has said it remains "early days" and warned it did not expect it to start driving growth until next year, despite many subscribers opting for the ad-supported plan. The plan, which is the company's least expensive option, accounted for 50% of new sign-ups in the places where it is offered in the most recent quarter, Netflix said. Even without a boost from advertising, Netflix said revenue in the July-September period was up 15% compared with the same period last year, to more than $9.8 billion. Profit also rose from $1.6 billion in the same period last year to $2.3 billion.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Byju Raveendran, the founder of the embattled edtech group Byju's, acknowledged on Thursday afternoon that he made mistakes, mistimed the market, overestimated growth potential and that his startup, once valued at $22 billion, is now effectively worth "zero."

Speaking to a group of journalists, Raveendran said the company's aggressive acquisition of more than two dozen startups to expand into new markets proved fatal when financing dried up in 2022. Byju's was planning to go public in early 2022 with several investment bankers giving the firm valuation as high as $50 billion, TechCrunch reported earlier.

He alleged that many of his more than 100 investors had urged him to pursue aggressive expansion into as many as 40 markets. But, he added, those very investors got cold feet when global markets tumbled following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, sending the venture capital market into a downward spiral.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: Apple today reminded developers that the EU trader requirement in the European Union is now being enforced. Developers who distribute apps in the EU will now need to share information that includes address, phone number, and email address on the EU App Store. Submitting updates for apps on the App Store in the European Union now requires trader information that's added via App Store Connect, with those details shared on each developer's App Store page. App updates can no longer be submitted without trader information, and starting on February 17, 2025, apps that do not have a trader status set will be removed from the App Store in the EU until trader status is provided and verified.

The Digital Services Act (DSA) in the European Union requires Apple to verify and display trader contact information for all "traders" who are distributing apps on the App Store in the European Union. Developers who make money from the App Store through either an upfront purchase price or through in-app purchases are considered traders, regardless of size. Contact information for each developer that is considered a trader will be publicly available, and there will undoubtedly be some developers that are unhappy with the requirement. Independent developers and small companies may not have dedicated business addresses and phone numbers to provide, and will likely be reluctant to provide their personal contact information. You can learn more about the requirements on Apple's website.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Robinhood launched its long-awaited desktop platform and added futures and index options trading features to its mobile app on Wednesday, as the fintech firm aims to take market share from traditional brokerages. The 11-year-old commission-free trading app, which became synonymous with mom-and-pop investors in 2021, is now seeking to mature into a full-fledged financial services provider and compete with established brokerages that serve institutional investors. The Menlo Park, California-based company said its desktop trading platform, dubbed "Robinhood Legend," will focus on active traders.

The platform, available at no additional cost, will offer advanced trading tools, real-time data, as well as custom and preset layouts. Meanwhile, the app will allow users to trade futures on the benchmark S&P 500 index, oil and bitcoin, among others. Customers can also trade index options. [...] Subscribers to Robinhood's premium Gold tier will be able to trade futures for as low as 50 cents per contract, while non-Gold users will need to pay a commission of 75 cents. You can tune in to the company's live product announcement on YouTube.

Apple's $3,499 Vision Pro is struggling to attract major software-makers to develop apps for the device, a challenge that threatens to slow the progress of the company's biggest new product in a decade. WSJ: New apps released on the Vision Pro every month have slowed since its launch in January. Some of the most successful virtual-reality software developers have so far opted not to build apps for the headset. Without enough killer apps, certain users have found the device less useful and are opting to sell it. "It's a chicken-or-egg problem," said Bertrand Nepveu, who previously worked on the Vision Pro at Apple and is now an investor in this area at Triptyq Capital.

Nepveu and app developers think Apple should fund app makers to give them an incentive to port over their existing apps from other headsets or to develop fresh content. This practice has become common in the industry, with headset leader Meta Platforms funding many developers and even buying several app makers. The social-media company is a formidable competitor to Apple, with a market share of all headsets reaching 74% in the second quarter this year, according to Counterpoint Research.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The big financial moments in life used to be marked with a flourish of a pen. Buying a house. A car. Breakfast. Not anymore. Visa, Mastercard, Discover and American Express dropped the requirement to sign for charges like restaurant checks in 2018. They don't look at our scribbles to verify identity or stop fraud. Taps, clicks and electronic signatures took over the heavy lifting for many everyday purchases -- and many contracts, loan applications and even Social Security forms. The John Hancock was written off as a relic useful mainly to inflate the value of sports memorabilia. But signatures didn't die.

We continue to be asked to sign with ink on paper or using fingers on touch screens at many restaurants, bars and other businesses. And people keep signing card receipts out of habit -- even when there is no blank space for it -- because it feels weird not to, payment networks and retail groups say. "Traditions have this odd way of sticking around," said Doug Kantor, general counsel of the National Association of Convenience Stores. Signatures had been used to verify identity and agree to financial terms for centuries. Banks kept records of customer signatures to check against, but the sheer number of transactions and advancements in technology eventually made that impractical.

By the 1980s, charges could be processed electronically. Signatures were still used in cases of fraud or stolen cards. Banks could call merchants and ask them to present a signed receipt. Yet given how easy signatures are to forge, they proved limited as a fraud prevention tool. Now there are more sophisticated ways to determine whether cards are stolen or misused, according to Mark Nelsen, global head of consumer payments at Visa.

Digital River has not paid numerous merchants since midsummer for software and digital products they sold through its MyCommerce platform. The Register: "After over 20 years of partnership with Digital River, Traction Software Ltd has been left feeling as though we've been 'rug pulled,'" Lee Midgley, managing director of Traction Software, told The Register. "For the past three months, we've experienced a complete halt in software sales revenue payments with no support, no direct contact, and only additional terms and conditions designed to delay resolution and extract more money from us.

"Astonishingly, Digital River continued to take sales from our loyal customers until we removed them from the order system. It now appears they have no intention of making payments and may be entering a liquidation process under a new CEO who has been involved in similar situations before."

The new CEO, Barry Kasoff, was first noted on the e-commerce biz website in August. Kasoff is also listed as the president of Realization Services, "a full-service strategic consulting firm specializing in turnaround management and value enhancement..." The privately-owned, Minnesota-based business appears to have laid off a significant number of employees, presumably the result of what its UK subsidiary describes as cost reduction initiatives implemented in late 2022.

Meta senior research Yann LeCun (also a professor at New York University) told the Wall Street Journal that worries about AI threatening humanity are "complete B.S." When a departing OpenAI researcher in May talked up the need to learn how to control ultra-intelligent AI, LeCun pounced. "It seems to me that before 'urgently figuring out how to control AI systems much smarter than us' we need to have the beginning of a hint of a design for a system smarter than a house cat," he replied on X. He likes the cat metaphor. Felines, after all, have a mental model of the physical world, persistent memory, some reasoning ability and a capacity for planning, he says. None of these qualities are present in today's "frontier" AIs, including those made by Meta itself.
LeCun shared a Turing Award with Geoffrey Hinton and Hoshua Bengio (who hopes LeCun is right, but adds "I don't think we should leave it to the competition between companies and the profit motive alone to protect the public and democracy. That is why I think we need governments involved.")

But LeCun still believes AI is a very powerful tool — even as Meta joins the quest for artificial general intelligence: Throughout our interview, he cites many examples of how AI has become enormously important at Meta, and has driven its scale and revenue to the point that it's now valued at around $1.5 trillion. AI is integral to everything from real-time translation to content moderation at Meta, which in addition to its Fundamental AI Research team, known as FAIR, has a product-focused AI group called GenAI that is pursuing ever-better versions of its large language models. "The impact on Meta has been really enormous," he says.

At the same time, he is convinced that today's AIs aren't, in any meaningful sense, intelligent — and that many others in the field, especially at AI startups, are ready to extrapolate its recent development in ways that he finds ridiculous... OpenAI's Sam Altman last month said we could have Artificial General Intelligence within "a few thousand days...." But creating an AI this capable could easily take decades, [LeCun] says — and today's dominant approach won't get us there.... His bet is that research on AIs that work in a fundamentally different way will set us on a path to human-level intelligence. These hypothetical future AIs could take many forms, but work being done at FAIR to digest video from the real world is among the projects that currently excite LeCun. The idea is to create models that learn in a way that's analogous to how a baby animal does, by building a world model from the visual information it takes in.
In contrast, today's AI models "are really just predicting the next word in a text, he says... And because of their enormous memory capacity, they can seem to be reasoning, when in fact they're merely regurgitating information they've already been trained on."

America's electric vehicle subsidies brought a 2-to-1 return on investment, according to a paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research. "That includes environmental benefits, but mostly reflects a shift of profits to the United States," reports the New York Times. "Before the climate law, tax credits were mainly used to buy foreign-made cars." "What the [subsidy legislation] did was swing the pendulum the other way, and heavily subsidized American carmakers," said Felix Tintelnot, an associate professor of economics at Duke University who was a co-author of the paper. Those benefits were undermined, however, by a loophole allowing dealers to apply the subsidy to leases of foreign-made electric vehicles. The provision sends profits to non-American companies, and since those foreign-made vehicles are on average heavier and less efficient, they impose more environmental and road-safety costs. Also, the researchers estimated that for every additional electric vehicle the new tax credits put on the road, about three other electric vehicle buyers would have made the purchases even without a $7,500 credit. That dilutes the effectiveness of the subsidies, which are forecast to cost as much as $390 billion through 2031.
The chief economist at Cox Automotive (which provided some of the data) tells the Times that "we could do better", but adds that the subsidies were "worth the money invested". But of course, that depends partly on how benefits were calculated: [U]ing the Environmental Protection Agency's "social cost of carbon" metric, they calculated the dollar cost of each model's lifetime carbon emissions from both manufacturing and driving. On average, emissions by gas-powered vehicles impose 57% greater costs than electric vehicles. The study then calculated harms from air pollution other than greenhouse gases — smog, for example. That's where electric vehicles start to perform relatively poorly, since generating the electricity for them still creates pollution. Those harms will probably fade as more wind and solar energy comes online, but they are significant. Finally, the authors added the road deaths associated with heavier cars. Batteries are heavy, so electric vehicles — especially the largest — are likelier to kill people in crashes.

Totaling these costs and then subtracting fiscal benefits through gas taxes and electricity bills, electric vehicles impose $16,003 in net harms, the authors said, while gas vehicles impose $19,239. But the range is wide, with the largest electric vehicles far outpacing many internal combustion cars.
By this methodology, a large electric pickup like the Rivian imposes three times the harms of a Prius, according to one of the study's co-authors (a Stanford professor of global environmental). And yet "we are subsidizing the Rivian and not the Prius..."

To avoid overloading local electric grids, Britain's most productive windfarm "is paid to turn off," reports the Guardian — and across the industry these so-called "constraint payments" amount to billions every year.

"Government officials are hoping to correct the clear inefficiencies in the market by overhauling the market itself." Greg Jackson, the founder of Octopus Energy, told the Guardian: "It's grotesque that energy costs are rising again this winter, whilst we literally pay windfarms these extortionate prices not to generate. Locational pricing would instead mean that local people got cheap power when it's windy. Scotland would have the cheapest power in Europe, instead of among the most expensive, and every region would be cheaper than today. Companies would invest in infrastructure where we need it — not where they get the highest subsidies."

The changes could catalyse an economic osmosis of high energy users — such as datacentres and factories — into areas of the country with low energy prices, creating new job opportunities beyond the south-east. It could also spur the development of new energy projects — particularly rooftop solar — across buildings in urban areas where energy demand is high. This rebalancing of the energy market could save the UK nearly £49bn in accumulated network costs by 2040, according to a study commissioned by the energy regulator from FTI Consulting.

But others fear the changes could come at a deeper cost to Britain's climate goals — and bill payers too. The clean energy companies preparing to spend billions on building new wind and solar farms are concerned that a redrawing of the market boundaries could radically change the economics of new renewable energy projects — which would ultimately raise the costs, which would be passed on to consumers, or see the projects scrapped altogether... With stiff competition in the international markets for investment in clean energy, Renewable UK [the industry's trade group] fears that companies and their investors will simply choose to build new clean energy projects elsewhere.
"The debate has driven deep rifts across the industry," the article concludes, "between modernisers who believe the new price signals would give rise to a new, rational market and those who fear the changes risk unravelling Britain's low-carbon agenda...

"The government is expected to make a decision on how to proceed in the coming months, but the fierce debate between warring factions of the energy industry is likely to continue for far longer."

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

The Wall Street Journal delves into the origin story of that teenaged Grand Theft Auto VI leaker. Arion Kurtaj, now 19 years old, is the most notorious name that has emerged from a sprawling set of online communities called the Com... Their youthful inventiveness and tenacity, as well as their status as minors that make prosecution more complicated, have made the Com especially dangerous, according to law-enforcement officials and cybersecurity investigators. Some kids, they say, are recruited from popular online spaces like Minecraft or Roblox.... [William McKeen, a supervisory special agent with the FBI's Cyber Division] said the average age of anyone arrested for a crime in the U.S. is 37, while the average age of someone arrested for cybercrime is 19. Cybersecurity investigators have found posts they say suggest Kurtaj has been involved in online attacks since he was 11.
"He had limited social skills and trouble developing relationships, records say — and ultimately looked for approval in the booming world of cybercrime..." [When Kurtaj was 14] he landed in a residential school serving children with severe emotional and behavioral needs. Kurtaj was physically assaulted by a staff member at his school who was later convicted as a result, according to a person familiar with the case. In early 2021, his mother brought him home and removed him from government care, court records say. He never returned to school. He was 16.

A month after his mother pulled him out of school, investigators say that Kurtaj was part of a hacking group called Recursion Team that broke into the videogame firm Electronic Arts and stole 780 gigabytes of data. When Electronic Arts refused to engage, they dumped the stolen data online. Within a week of that hack, investigators had identified Kurtaj and provided his name to the FBI. Later in that summer of 2021, according to court records, Kurtaj partnered with another teenager, known as ASyntax, and several Brazilian hackers, and started calling themselves Lapsus$. The group hacked into the British telecommunications giant BT in an effort to steal money using a technique called SIM swapping... The hacks weren't always for money. In late 2021, Lapsus$ hacked into a website operated by Brazil's Ministry of Health and deleted the country's database of Covid vaccinations, according to law enforcement...

If the Com has a social center, it's a website called Doxbin, where users publish personal details, such as home addresses and phone numbers, of their online rivals in an attempt to intimidate each other. Kurtaj bought Doxbin in November 2021 for $75,000, according to Chainalysis. But after a few months, the previous owners accused Kurtaj of mismanaging the site and pressured him to sell it back. He relented. Then in January 2022, cybersecurity investigators say, he doxxed the entire site, publishing a database that included usernames, passwords and email addresses that he'd downloaded when he was the owner. For cybersecurity experts, it was a gold mine. "It helped investigators piece together which crimes were done by who," said Allison Nixon, chief research officer at Unit 221B, an online investigations firm.

Doxbin's owners responded with a dox of Kurtaj and his family, including his home address and photos of him, investigators say — setting up the chain of events that would put Kurtaj in the Travelodge.
After two weeks of "protective custody" there — during which time he was supposed to be computer-free — Kurtaj "was arrested a third time and charged with hacking, fraud and blackmail. Authorities said that while at the Travelodge, he broke into Uber and taunted the company by posting a link to a photo of an erect penis on the company's internal Slack messaging system, then stole software and videos from Rockstar Games. Stolen clips had popped up in a Grand Theft Auto discussion forum from a user named teapotuberhacker and stirred a frenzy.

"As officers collected evidence, the teen stood by, emotionless, police say...."

"Kurtaj's lawyers and some experts on autism have said a potential lifetime of incarceration isn't appropriate for a teenager like Kurtaj..."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader SpzToid for sharing the article.

Thursday the Associated Press reported: One of the two companies that manufacture high-purity quartz used for making semiconductors and other high-tech products from mines in a western North Carolina community severely damaged by Hurricane Helene is operating again. Sibelco announced on Thursday that production has restarted at its mining and processing operations in Spruce Pine, located 50 miles (80 kilometers) northeast of Asheville. [Per Wikipedia, its pre-hurricane population was 2,175.] Production and shipments are progressively ramping up to full capacity, the company said in a news release.

"While the road to full recovery for our communities will be long, restarting our operations and resuming shipments to customers are important contributors to rebuilding the local economy," Sibelco CEO Hilmar Rode said... A Spruce Pine council member said recently that an estimated three-quarters of the town has a direct connection to the mines, whether through a job, a job that relies on the mines or a family member who works at the facilities.
An announcement last week from Sibelco attributed its resilience to their long-standing commitment to sustainability, "which includes measures to mitigate the impact of extreme weather events such as Hurricane Helene." Initial assessments indicated their operating facilities sustained only minor damage.

And "the company previously announced that all its employees are safe," Sibelco reaffirmed in its announcement Thursday: Sibelco, with support from its contractors, has been contributing to the local recovery efforts by clearing debris, repairing roads, providing road building materials to the North Carolina Department of Transportation, installing temporary power generators for emergency shelters and local businesses, and working with the town of Spruce Pine to restart water supply to residents.

Additionally, Sibelco has incorporated the Sibelco Spruce Pine Foundation to further support the community's recovery. The company previously announced that it is making an immediate $1 million donation as seed money for the foundation. Anyone interested in learning more or contributing to this initiative should contact the foundation by email or by visiting our website for additional information and donation opportunities.

"Boeing said Friday it will cull 10 percent of its workforce — roughly 17,000 jobs," reports the Washington Post, "as the aviation giant grapples with mounting losses and manufacturing disruptions amid a machinists strike that has dragged into a fifth week." Executives, managers and production employees will be affected by the cuts, chief executive Kelly Ortberg informed employees Friday in a memo. Boeing will also delay the launch of its 777X plane until 2026 due to ongoing challenges, Ortberg wrote... The layoffs add to the pain at Boeing, where a stalemate between the company's largest employee union dovetails with ongoing legal troubles and safety woes. The strike has halted production of some of the company's best-selling jets, further adding to its financial troubles. In the past five years, Boeing has lost more than $25 billion...

"Our business is in a difficult position, and it is hard to overstate the challenges we face together," Ortberg said in the memo. "The state of our business and our future recovery require tough actions...." Now at risk of a downgrade to its credit rating as its circumstances worsen, Boeing has taken other steps to reduce expenses, including imposing a hiring freeze and eliminating unnecessary travel.
"The strike by Boeing machinists is costing the company roughly $1 billion a month, according to estimates from S&P Global..."

U.S. officials are racing to understand the full scope of a China-linked hack of major U.S. broadband providers, as concerns mount from members of Congress that the breach could amount to a devastating counterintelligence failure. From a report: Federal authorities and cybersecurity investigators are probing the breaches of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies. A stealthy hacking group known as Salt Typhoon tied to Chinese intelligence is believed to be responsible. The compromises may have allowed hackers to access information from systems the federal government uses for court-authorized network wiretapping requests, The Wall Street Journal reported last week.

Among the concerns are that the hackers may have essentially been able to spy on the U.S. government's efforts to surveil Chinese threats, including the FBI's investigations. The House Select Committee on China sent letters Thursday asking the three companies to describe when they became aware of the breaches and what measures they are taking to protect their wiretap systems from attack. Spokespeople for AT&T, Lumen and Verizon declined to comment on the attack. A spokesman at the Chinese Embassy in Washington has denied that Beijing is responsible for the alleged breaches.

Combined with other Chinese cyber threats, news of the Salt Typhoon assault makes clear that "we face a cyber-adversary the likes of which we have never confronted before," Rep. John Moolenaar, the Republican chairman of the House Select Committee Committee on China, and Raja Krishnamoorthi, the panel's top Democrat, said in the letters. "The implications of any breach of this nature would be difficult to overstate," they said. Hackers still had access to some parts of U.S. broadband networks within the last week, and more companies were being notified that their networks had been breached, people familiar with the matter said. Investigators remain in the dark about precisely what the hackers were seeking to do, according to people familiar with the response.

Retailers across the U.S. are grappling with the aftermath of Redbox's bankruptcy, tasked with removing 24,000 abandoned DVD-dispensing machines. CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, and others are facing logistical challenges and potential safety hazards, according to WSJ. The 890-pound kiosks, often hardwired into stores' electrical systems, require specialized removal.

Further reading: Redbox App Axed, Dashing People's Hopes of Keeping Purchased Content.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is fighting misinformation on top of a major storm cleanup in Florida as Hurricane Milton rapidly intensifies just after Hurricane Helene rocked the state. From a report: FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell told reporters on a call Tuesday that misinformation around the storms is "absolutely the worst I have ever seen," according to Politico. FEMA posted a rumor response page about the hurricane, and though it's not the first time it's taken that kind of approach, Criswell said, "I anticipated some of this, but not to the extent that we're seeing."

FEMA's rumor response page includes fact-checks to claims made by former President Donald Trump, like that the agency will only provide $750 to disaster survivors. FEMA says that's just the amount provided quickly through "Serious Needs Assistance" for food and emergency supplies, but survivors could still be eligible for other types of funds, too. Other fact-checks include debunking the false claim that FEMA disaster response resources were diverted to border issues. FEMA says "Disaster Relief Fund money has not been diverted to other, non-disaster related efforts."