The Palisades Nuclear Plant in Michigan has won a $1.5 billion conditional federal loan to reopen after being closed for decommissioning in 2022. Canary Media reports: If the loan is granted (subject to Holtec meeting closing conditions) and the 800-megawatt reactor located on Lake Michigan is repowered, it would be the first nuclear plant in the U.S. to reopen after being closed for decommissioning. Surprisingly, it would be just the second or third reactor to restart in the history of global civil nuclear power, according to Mycle Schneider, lead author of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2023, in an interview with Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Holtec purchased Palisades a month after it shut down with plans to mothball the site, but plans changed. Now the firm, which specializes in nuclear waste management and decommissioning (as opposed to rebuilding and operating nuclear plants), intends to revive the plant instead. Holtec plans to get the power plant restarted by the end of 2025, a breathtakingly aspirational target given nuclear's history of missing construction and cost targets. The Palisades plant was closed by utility Entergy in May 2022 due to financial issues after operating for more than a half-century. And while the plant had a strong operational performance record in recent years, it also has a sobering history of shutdowns due to failures of critical equipment, as well as broken fuel rods and fuel-spill incidents. The site was shut down for the final time a few days ahead of schedule due to concerns about the reliability of a key piece of equipment.

When it was operating at its peak, the plant provided more than 600 high-paying jobs, many unionized. If restarted, the plant could drive up to $363 million in regional economic impact, according to Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat. That's why Whitmer and a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers back resurrecting the retired reactor. Local business owners and residents are "largely supportive" of the plan as well, according to local news site MLive. The state's 2024 budget devotes $150 million to the project. Still, the revival of the dormant Palisades faces its share of headwinds.

According to Bloomberg, the U.S. and U.K. are investigating more than $20 billion worth of USDT transactions that have passed through Garantex, a Russia-based crypto exchange. Milk Road reports: If confirmed, the $20 billion in transactions would represent one of the most significant breaches of the sanctions imposed on Russia since the conflict began. However, the sources cautioned that the inquiries are ongoing and that it is too early to draw conclusions given the complexity of crypto transactions. They also noted that there was no immediate suggestion of wrongdoing by Tether.

Key points:

- The transactions under scrutiny were conducted using Tether (USDT).
- The US and UK sanctioned Garantex on suspicion of facilitating financial crimes and illicit transactions in Russia.
- The $20 billion USDT transactions would represent one of the biggest breaches of sanctions imposed on Russia since the start of the war.
- Tether froze assets of entities on the U.S. sanctions list.

Michael Larabel reports via Phoronix: Given the recent change by Redis to adopt dual source-available licensing for all their releases moving forward (Redis Source Available License v2 and Server Side Public License v1), the Linux Foundation announced today their fork of Redis. The Linux Foundation went public today with their intent to fork Valkey as an open-source alternative to the Redis in-memory store. Due to the Redis licensing changes, Valkey is forking from Redis 7.2.4 and will maintain a BSD 3-clause license. Google, AWS, Oracle, and others are helping form this new Valkey project.

The Linux Foundation press release shares: "To continue improving on this important technology and allow for unfettered distribution of the project, the community created Valkey, an open source high performance key-value store. Valkey supports the Linux, macOS, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and FreeBSD platforms. In addition, the community will continue working on its existing roadmap including new features such as a more reliable slot migration, dramatic scalability and stability improvements to the clustering system, multi-threaded performance improvements, triggers, new commands, vector search support, and more. Industry participants, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, Oracle, Ericsson, and Snap Inc. are supporting Valkey. They are focused on making contributions that support the long-term health and viability of the project so that everyone can benefit from it."

An anonymous reader shares a report: New York City announced a new permitting system for companies interested in testing autonomous vehicles on its roads, including a requirement that a human safety driver sit behind the steering wheel at all times. As cities like San Francisco continue to grapple with the problems posed by fully driverless for-hire vehicles, New York City is trying to get ahead of the problem by outlining what it calls "a rigorous permitting program" that it claims will ensure applicants are "ready to test their technology in the country's most challenging urban environment safely and proficiently."

"This technology is coming whether we like it or not," Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement to The Verge, "so we're going to make sure that we get it right." The requirements would exclude companies without previous autonomous vehicle testing experience in other cities. Applicants would need to submit information from previous tests, including details on any crashes that occurred and how often safety drivers have to take control of the vehicle (also known in California as "disengagements"). And in what is sure to be the most controversial provision, fully driverless vehicles won't be permitted to test on the city's public roads; only vehicles with safety drivers will be allowed.

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, writing for ComputerWorld: Essentially, all software is built using open source. By Synopsys' count, 96% of all codebases contain open-source software. Lately, though, there's been a very disturbing trend. A company will make its program using open source, make millions from it, and then -- and only then -- switch licenses, leaving their contributors, customers, and partners in the lurch as they try to grab billions. I'm sick of it. The latest IT melodrama baddie is Redis. Its program, which goes by the same name, is an extremely popular in-memory database. (Unless you're a developer, chances are you've never heard of it.) One recent valuation shows Redis to be worth about $2 billion -- even without an AI play! That, anyone can understand.

What did it do? To quote Redis: "Beginning today, all future versions of Redis will be released with source-available licenses. Starting with Redis 7.4, Redis will be dual-licensed under the Redis Source Available License (RSALv2) and Server Side Public License (SSPLv1). Consequently, Redis will no longer be distributed under the three-clause Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD)." For those of you who aren't open-source licensing experts, this means developers can no longer use Redis' code. Sure, they can look at it, but they can't export, borrow from, or touch it.

Redis pulled this same kind of trick in 2018 with some of its subsidiary code. Now it's done so with the company's crown jewels. Redis is far from the only company to make such a move. Last year, HashiCorp dumped its main program Terraform's Mozilla Public License (MPL) for the Business Source License (BSL) 1.1. Here, the name of the new license game is to prevent anyone from competing with Terraform. Would it surprise you to learn that not long after this, HashiCorp started shopping itself around for a buyer? Before this latest round of license changes, MongoDB and Elastic made similar shifts. Again, you might never have heard of these companies or their programs, but each is worth, at a minimum, hundreds of millions of dollars. And, while you might not know it, if your company uses cloud services behind the scenes, chances are you're using one or more of their programs,

Crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced Thursday to 25 years [non-paywalled link] in prison for a massive fraud that unraveled with the collapse of FTX, once one of the world's most popular platforms for exchanging digital currency. From a report: Bankman-Fried, 32, was convicted in November of fraud and conspiracy -- a dramatic fall from a crest of success. U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan imposed the sentence in the same Manhattan courtroom where, four months ago, Bankman-Fried testified that his intention had been to revolutionize the emerging cryptocurrency market with his innovative and altruistic ideas, not to steal.

Kaplan said the sentence reflected "that there is a risk that this man will be in position to do something very bad in the future. And it's not a trivial risk at all." He added that it was "for the purpose of disabling him to the extent that can appropriately be done for a significant period of time." Prior to sentencing, Bankman-Fried had said, "My useful life is probably over. It's been over for a while now, from before my arrest."

According to a new study published in the journal Nature, timekeepers may have to consider subtracting a second from our clocks around 2029 because the planet is rotating faster than it used to. The Associated Press reports: "This is an unprecedented situation and a big deal," said study lead author Duncan Agnew, a geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. "It's not a huge change in the Earth's rotation that's going to lead to some catastrophe or anything, but it is something notable. It's yet another indication that we're in a very unusual time." Ice melting at both of Earth's poles has been counteracting the planet's burst of speed and is likely to have delayed this global second of reckoning by about three years, Agnew said.

"We are headed toward a negative leap second," said Dennis McCarthy, retired director of time for the U.S. Naval Observatory who wasn't part of the study. "It's a matter of when." It's a complicated situation that involves, physics, global power politics, climate change, technology and two types of time. [...] McCarthy said the trend toward needing a negative leap second is clear, but he thinks it's more to do with the Earth becoming more round from geologic shifts from the end of the last ice age.

Three other outside scientists said Agnew's study makes sense, calling his evidence compelling. But Levine doesn't think a negative leap second will really be needed. He said the overall slowing trend from tides has been around for centuries and continues, but the shorter trends in Earth's core come and go. "This is not a process where the past is a good prediction of the future," Levine said. "Anyone who makes a long-term prediction on the future is on very, very shaky ground."

Neil Irwin reports via Axios: The dearth of productivity growth over the last couple of decades has held back incomes in the U.S. and other rich countries, according to a report out Wednesday from the McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of the global consultancy. Productivity growth has been weak in the U.S. and Western Europe since the 2008 global financial crisis, but things looked better among many emerging markets. The McKinsey report finds that global labor productivity growth was 2.3% a year from 1997 to 2022, a rapid rate that has increased incomes and quality of life in large parts of the world. China and India account for the largest portion of that surge -- half of overall global productivity improvement, with other emerging markets accounting for another 25%, led by Central and Eastern Europe and emerging Asian economies.

In the U.S., the report finds that the decline in capital investment following the 2008 financial crisis has resulted in a $4,500 lower per-capita GDP in 2022 than it would have if pre-crisis trends had continued. Rapid advances in manufacturing technology, especially for electronics, petered out in the same time period, subtracting another $5,000 from per-capita GDP. "Digitization was much discussed as the main candidate to rev up productivity again, but its impact failed to spread beyond" the tech sector, the authors write. The authors are optimistic that a confluence of factors will make the years ahead different.

The rise in global interest rates and inflation are evidence of stronger global demand. Many countries are experiencing labor shortages that may incentivize more productivity-enhancing investment. And artificial intelligence and related technologies create big opportunities. "Inflationary pressure and rising interest rates could be signs that we are leaving behind secular stagnation and entering an era of higher demand and investment," the report finds. "In corporate boardrooms around the world right now, there's a tremendous amount of conversation associated with [generative] AI, and I think there's a broad acknowledgment that this could very much transform productivity at the company level," Olivia White, a McKinsey senior partner and co-author of the report, tells Axios. "Another thing that's happening right now is the conversation about labor. Labor markets in all advanced economies, and the U.S. is really sort of top of the heap, are very, very tight right now. So there's a lot of conversation around what do we do to make the people that we have as productive as they can be?"

Poland has fined Amazon close to $8 million for misleading consumers about the conclusion of sales contracts on its online marketplace. The sanction "also calls out the e-commerce giant for deceptive design elements which may inject a false sense of urgency into the purchasing process and mislead shoppers about elements like product availability and delivery dates," reports TechCrunch. From the report: The country's consumer and competition watchdog, the UOKiK, has been looking into complaints about Amazon's sales practices since September 2021, following complaints from shoppers, including some who did not receive their purchases. The authority opened a formal investigation into Amazon's practices in February 2023. Wednesday's sanction is the conclusion of that probe. The UOKiK found consumers who ordered products on Amazon could have their purchases subsequently cancelled by the tech giant as it does not treat the moment of purchase as the conclusion of a sales contract, despite sending consumers confirmation of their order -- even after consumers have paid for the product. For Amazon, the conclusion of a sales contract only occurs once it has sent information about the actual shipment. [...]

Its enforcement also calls out Amazon for using deceptive design to encourage shoppers to click buy by presenting misleading information about product availability and delivery windows -- such as by listing how many items were in stock to be purchased and providing a countdown clock to order an item in order to get it on a particular delivery date. Its investigation found Amazon does not always meet these deadlines for orders, nor ship products immediately as they may be out of stock despite claims to the contrary shown to consumers. "Amazon treats the data it provides on availability and shipping date as indicative but the way it is presented does not indicate this," the UOKiK noted, adding: "Consumers can only find out about this in the terms of sale on the platform."

While Amazon does offer a delivery guarantee -- offering a refund if items do not ship within the stated time -- the authority found it failed to provide consumers with information about the rules of this service before placing an order. It only offers details at the order summary stage. And then only "if the consumer decides to read the subsequent links specifying delivery details." Shoppers who did not follow the link to read more may not have been aware of their right to apply for and receive a refund from Amazon if there is a delay in shipment. It also found the e-commerce giant failed to provide information about the "Delivery Guarantee" in the purchase confirmation sent to shoppers. Amazon said it will appeal the fine. The company also writes: "Fast and reliable delivery across a wide selection of products is a top priority for us, and Amazon.pl has millions of items available with fast and free Prime delivery. Since launching Amazon.pl in 2021, we have continuously invested and worked hard to provide customers with a clear, reliable delivery promise at check out, and while the vast majority of our deliveries arrive on time, customers can contact us in the rare event that they experience a delay or order cancellation, and we will make it right.

Over the last year, we have collaborated with the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK), and proposed multiple voluntary amendments to continue to improve the customer experience on Amazon.pl. We strictly follow legal standards in all countries where we operate and we strongly disagree with the assessment and penalty issued by the UOKiK. We will appeal this decision."

The U.S. State Department has offered up to $10 million for information on the "Blackcat" ransomware gang who hit the UnitedHealth Group's tech unit and snarled insurance payments across America. From a report: "The ALPHV Blackcat ransomware-as-a-service group compromised computer networks of critical infrastructure sectors in the United States and worldwide," the department said in a statement announcing the reward offer.

UnitedHealth said last week it was beginning to clear a medical claims backlog of more than $14 billion as it brought its services back online following the cyberattack, which caused wide-ranging disruption starting in late February. UnitedHealth's tech unit, Change Healthcare, plays a critical role in processing payments from insurance companies to practitioners, and the outage caused by the cyberattack has in some cases left patients and doctors out of pocket. The toll on the community health centers that serve more than 30 million poor and uninsured patients has been especially harsh.

The amount of hydropower generated in the Western US last year was the lowest it's been in more than two decades -- and 2024 isn't looking much better. From a report: Hydropower generation in the region fell by 11 percent during the 2022-2023 water year compared to the year prior, according to preliminary data from the Energy Information Administration's Electricity Data Browser -- its lowest point since 2001. That includes states west of the Dakotas and Texas, where 60 percent of the nation's hydropower was generated. These also happen to be the states -- including California, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico -- that climate change is increasingly sucking dry. And in a reversal of fortunes, typically wetter states in the Northeast -- normally powerhouses for hydropower generation -- were the hardest hit. You can blame extreme heat and drought for the drop in hydropower last year. This creates a vicious cycle: drought reduces the amount of clean energy available from hydroelectric dams. To avoid energy shortfalls, utilities wind up relying on fossil fuels to make up the difference. That leads to more of the greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change, which makes droughts worse.

A British court has ruled that Julian Assange can't be extradited to the United States on espionage charges unless U.S. authorities guarantee he won't get the death penalty, giving the WikiLeaks founder a partial victory in his long legal battle over the site's publication of classified American documents. From a report: Two High Court judges said they would grant Assange a new appeal unless U.S. authorities give further assurances within three weeks about what will happen to him. The ruling means the legal saga, which has dragged on for more than a decade, will continue -- and Assange will remain inside London's high-security Belmarsh Prison, where he has spent the last five years. Judges Victoria Sharp and Jeremy Johnson said the U.S. must guarantee that Assange, who is Australian, "is afforded the same First Amendment protections as a United States citizen, and that the death penalty is not imposed."

Two of the world's largest credit card networks, Visa and Mastercard, as well as the banks that issue cards with them, have agreed to settle a decadeslong antitrust case brought upon by merchants. From a report: The settlement is set to lower swipe fees merchants pay when customers make purchases using their Visa or Mastercard by $30 billion over five years, according to a press release announcing the settlement Tuesday morning. The settlement, which only applies to US merchants, is the result of a lawsuit filed in 2005. However, nothing is considered finalized until it receives approval from the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Even then, the case can also be appealed in what could be a lengthy battle.

Typically, swipe fees cost merchants 2% of the total transaction a customer makes -- but can be as much as 4% for some premium rewards cards, according to the National Retail Federation. The settlement would lower those fees by at least 0.04 percentage point for a minimum of three years. Additionally, the settlement would require Visa and Mastercard to maintain the swipe fee rates that existed as of December 31, 2023 for five years.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: It's sanctions central at the US Treasury this week as a further 15 are slapped on organizations and individuals in Russia. The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated 13 organizations and two individuals -- all concerning financial services organizations, including cryptocurrency exchanges that offered services to already-sanctioned dark web marketplaces in Russia, and those who helped run them. Five of the 13 freshly designated entities were also controlled by individuals who were already sanctioned. The latest round of trade restrictions were placed on those who are believed to have helped evade existing US sanctions.

"Many of the individuals and entities designated today facilitated transactions or offered other services that helped OFAC-designated entities evade sanctions," an OFAC statement read. "These designations build upon OFAC's February 23, 2024 action to target companies servicing Russia's core financial infrastructure and curtail Russia's use of the international financial system to further its war against Ukraine." They follow the initial seven sanctions announced on Monday, all relating to Chinese nationals and members of Beijing's APT31 offensive cyber outfit.

BrianFagioli shares a report from BetaNews: Canonical, the company behind the popular Ubuntu operating system, has announced a significant extension to the support lifecycle of its long-term support (LTS) releases. The new paid Legacy Support add-on for Ubuntu Pro subscribers will now provide security maintenance and support for an impressive 12 years, extending the previous 10-year commitment. This enhancement is available starting with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and will benefit both enterprises and individual users who rely on the stability and security of Ubuntu for their critical systems. By default, Ubuntu LTS releases receive five years of standard security maintenance. However, with Ubuntu Pro, this is expanded to 10 years for both the main and universe repositories, offering access to a broader range of secure open-source software.

The Legacy Support add-on further extends this period by an additional two years, ensuring that organizations can maintain their systems with the latest security patches and support services without the immediate need to upgrade to a newer OS version. This is particularly beneficial for large, established production systems where transitioning to a new OS can be a complex and risky endeavor due to the potential need to update the entire software stack. The extended support includes continuous vulnerability management for critical, high, and medium Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) across all software packages shipped with Ubuntu. Canonical's security team actively backports crucial fixes to all supported Ubuntu LTS releases, providing peace of mind to users and enterprises. In addition to security maintenance, the Legacy Support add-on also offers phone and ticket support, enhancing Canonical's commitment to assisting customers with troubleshooting, break fixes, bug fixes, and guidance.

Earlier today, the U.S. and U.K. accused hackers linked to the Chinese state of being behind "malicious" cyber campaigns targeting political figures. The U.K. government also blamed China for a 2021 cyberattack that compromised the personal information of millions of U.K. voters. In response, PBS reports that the U.S. and British government announced sanctions against a company and two people linked to the Chinese government. From the report: Officials said those sanctioned are responsible for a hack that may have gained access to information on tens of millions of U.K. voters held by the Electoral Commission, as well as for cyberespionage targeting lawmakers who have been outspoken about the China threat. The Foreign Office said the hack of the election registers "has not had an impact on electoral processes, has not affected the rights or access to the democratic process of any individual, nor has it affected electoral registration." The Electoral Commission said in August that it identified a breach of its system in October 2022, though it added that "hostile actors" had first been able to access its servers since 2021. At the time, the watchdog said the data included the names and addresses of registered voters. But it said that much of the information was already in the public domain.

In Washington, the Treasury Department said it sanctioned Wuhan Xiaoruizhi Science and Technology Company Ltd., which it calls a Chinese Ministry of State Security front company that has "served as cover for multiple malicious cyberoperations." It named two Chinese nationals, Zhao Guangzong and Ni Gaobin, affiliated with the Wuhan company, for cyberoperations that targeted U.S. critical infrastructure sectors, "directly endangering U.S. national security." Separately, British cybersecurity officials said that Chinese government-affiliated hackers "conducted reconnaissance activity" against British parliamentarians who are critical of Beijing in 2021. They said no parliamentary accounts were successfully compromised.

Three lawmakers, including former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith, told reporters Monday they have been "subjected to harassment, impersonation and attempted hacking from China for some time." Duncan Smith said in one example, hackers impersonating him used fake email addresses to write to his contacts. The politicians are members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, an international pressure group focused on countering Beijing's growing influence and calling out alleged rights abuses by the Chinese government.

The U.K. government has blamed China for a 2021 cyberattack that compromised the personal information of millions of U.K. voters. From a report: In a statement to lawmakers in Parliament on Monday, U.K. deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden attributed the 2021 data breach at the Electoral Commission to hackers working for the Chinese government. Dowden told lawmakers that the U.K. government "will not hesitate to take swift and robust actions wherever the Chinese government threatens the United Kingdom's interests."

It's the first time the United Kingdom has attributed the breach since the cyberattack was first disclosed in 2023. The Electoral Commission, which maintains copies of the U.K. register of citizens eligible to vote, said at the time hackers took the names and addresses of an estimated 40 million U.K. citizens, including those who were registered to vote between 2014 and 2022 and overseas voters. The data breach began as early as 2021 but wasn't detected until a year later. In a statement Monday, the U.K. National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said it is "highly likely" that the Chinese hackers accessed and exfiltrated emails and data from the electoral register during the hack.

Boeing announced a major leadership overhaul Monday, with CEO Dave Calhoun set to step down at the end of 2024 amid mounting pressure from airlines and regulators over quality and manufacturing issues. Chairman Larry Kellner will also resign and depart the board at Boeing's annual meeting in May, the company said. He will be replaced as chair by Steve Mollenkopf, a Boeing director since 2020. Stan Deal, president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, is leaving the company effective immediately. Stephanie Pope, who recently became Boeing's Chief Operating Officer after leading Boeing Global Services, will take over Deal's role.

The shakeup comes as the aerospace giant faces increasing scrutiny following a series of production flaws and a recent incident involving a nearly new Boeing 737 Max 9, where a door plug blew out minutes into an Alaska Airlines flight on Jan. 5. Airlines and regulators have been calling for significant changes at Boeing to address these issues and restore confidence in the company's products. The leadership changes appear to be a response to these growing concerns.

An excerpt from a letter the CEO wrote to employees, also on Monday: As you all know, the Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 accident was a watershed moment for Boeing. We must continue to respond to this accident with humility and complete transparency. We also must inculcate a total commitment to safety and quality at every level of our company.

The eyes of the world are on us, and I know we will come through this moment a better company, building on all the learnings we accumulated as we worked together to rebuild Boeing over the last number of years.

The Los Angeles Times checks in on America's largest dam-removal project, which they say is now "revealing a stark landscape that had been underwater for generations."

"A thick layer of muddy sediment covers the sloping ground, where workers have been scattering seeds and leaving meandering trails of footprints. In the cracked mud, seeds are sprouting and tiny green shoots are appearing." With water passing freely through tunnels in three dams, the Klamath River has returned to its ancient channel and is flowing unhindered for the first time in more than a century through miles of waterlogged lands. Using explosives and machinery, crews began blasting and tearing into the concrete of one of the three dams earlier this month... The emptying of the reservoirs, which began in January, is estimated to have released as much as 2.3 million tons of sediment into the river, abruptly worsening its water quality and killing nonnative perch, bluegill and bass that had been introduced in the reservoirs for fishing. Downstream from the dams, the river's banks are littered with dead fish. But tribal leaders, biologists and environmentalists say that this was part of the plan, and that the river will soon be hospitable for salmon to once again swim upstream to spawn... [The dams] blocked salmon from reaching vital habitat and degraded the river's water quality, contributing to toxic algae blooms in the reservoirs and disease outbreaks that killed fish...

Workers have been drilling holes in the top of the Copco No. 1 Dam, placing dynamite and setting off blasts, then using machinery to chip away fractured concrete. The dam, which has been in place since 1918, is scheduled to be fully removed by the end of August. The smaller Copco No. 2 Dam was torn down last year as the project began. Two earthen dams, the Iron Gate and the John C. Boyle, remain to be dismantled starting in May. If the project goes as planned, the three dams will be gone sometime this fall, reestablishing a free-flowing stretch of river and enabling Chinook and coho salmon to swim upstream and spawn along about 400 miles of the Klamath and its tributaries. Meanwhile, teams of scientists and workers are focusing on restoring the landscape and natural vegetation on about 2,200 acres of denuded reservoir-bottom lands...

River restoration advocates are optimistic. They say undamming the Klamath will demonstrate the potential for restoring free-flowing rivers elsewhere in California, and point to initial plans to remove two dams on the Eel River as another promising opportunity.

The Baffler says a new publishing house launched earlier this month "brings Silicon Valley-style startup disruption to the business of books."

Authors Equity has "a tiny core staff, offloading its labor to a network of freelancers," and like a handful of other publishers "is upending the way that authors get paid, eschewing advances and offering a higher percentage of profits instead." It is worth watching because its team includes several of the most important publishing people of the twenty-first century. And if it works, it will offer a model for tightening the connection between book culture and capitalism, a leap forward for the forces of efficiency and the fantasies of frictionless markets, ushering in a world where literature succeeds if and only if it sells....

Authors Equity's website presents its vision in strikingly neoliberal corporatespeak. The company has four Core Principles: Aligned Incentives; Bespoke Teams; Flexibility and Transparency; and Long-Term Collaboration. What do they mean by these MBA keywords? Aligned Incentives is explained in the language of human capital: "Our profit-share model rewards authors who want to bet on themselves." Authors, that is, take on more of the financial risk of publication. At a traditional publishing house, advances provide authors with guaranteed cash early in the process that they can use to live off while writing. With Authors Equity, nothing is guaranteed and nothing given ahead of time; an author's pay depends on their book's profits.

In an added twist, "Profit participation is also an option for key members of the book team, so we're in a position to win together." Typically, only an author's agent's income is directly tied to an author's financial success, but at Authors Equity, others could have a stake. This has huge consequences for the logic of literary production. If an editor, for example, receives a salary and not a cut of their books' profits, their incentives are less immediately about profit, offering more wiggle room for aesthetic value. The more the people working on books participate in their profits, the more, structurally, profit-seeking will shape what books look like.

"Bespoke Teams" is a euphemism for gigification. With a tiny initial staff of six, Authors Equity uses freelance workers to make books, unlike traditional publishers, which have many employees in many departments... Their fourth Core Principle — Long-Term Collaboration — addresses widespread frustration with a systemic problem in traditional publishing: the fetishization of debut authors who receive decent or better advances, fail to earn out, and then struggle to have a career. It's a real problem and one where authors' interests and capitalist rationalization are, as it were, aligned. Authors Equity sees that everyone might profit when an author can build a readership and develop their skill.
The article concludes with this prediction. "It's not impossible that we'll look back in twenty years and see its founding as auguring the beginning of the startup age in publishing."

Food for thought... Pulp-fiction mystery writer Mickey Spillane once said, "I'm a writer, not an author. The difference is, a writer makes money."