No lesser authority than the MIT Technology Review says that the Emacs editor has turned 50 years old. But then, it is biased — Emacs was invented in MIT's AI lab.

Simson Garfinkel's article is simply called EMACS turns 50, but the sub-heading explains why it matters more:

"How the MIT AI Lab's text editor gave birth to the free software movement."

There are multiple timelines and accounts of the origins of Emacs, and it is not a single monolithic application. The name is an abbreviation for "Editing MACroS", and the original editor for which this set of macros was developed was TECO - "Text Editor and COrrector," written by Dan Murphy in 1962. Murphy died earlier this year at the age of 83.

The inimitable Jamie Zawinski has an encyclopedic Emacs Timeline - as he mentions at the start, his interest being that he long ago maintained a fork of GNU Emacs, originally called Lucid Emacs. It's still around, under its later name XEmacs. There are a lot of forks and re-implementations of Emacs out there, and we are not going to go into all of them, or this article would become a book - one only interesting to programmer-archeologists (to use a term coined by the late great Vernor Vinge).

As for who originally wrote those Editing Macros, though, another history has quotations from several of the people involved: On the Origin of Emacs in 1976. (Note - some of the quotes still contain the | symbols that marked quoted text.)

This credits Lisp boffin Guy L. Steele Jr with the original work in 1975, but in it, Steele says:

"RMS is responsible for the names 'E' and 'EMACS'. RMS still deserves 99% or 99.9% or 99.99% or 99.999% of the credit for taking a package of TECO macros and turning it into the most powerful editor on the planet."

RMS is of course Richard Stallman, and the page also quotes some emails from RMS on October 23 and 31, 1976. Mind you, just a few years after the event, in a 1981 talk now preserved on the GNU website, Stallman said, "I began the development of EMACS in 1974 with an improvement to TECO". Like all the best FOSS, even in its very early stages, it was a collaborative effort - but around late October 1976 is when RMS took over the bulk of the development.

Of the many forks of Emacs over its half a century of development, some are still just about hanging on in there. When we looked up the link for XEmacs, we were surprised to see that there was a new release: XEmacs 21.5.37 "lettuce" appeared just last month. And even the forks have forks: in this case, SXEmacs, last updated in 2020.

Most of the changes in XEmacs and SXEmacs eventually made their way back upstream to GNU Emacs, which is still in active development, although as The Register reported in 2008, RMS is no longer the primary maintainer. GNU Emacs 31.1 appeared in August.

Cards on the metaphorical table: this vulture is not an Emacs user. We have tried. A major influence was one of the Reg FOSS desk's favorite writers, Neal Stephenson, who in 1999 published an essay called In the Beginning… Was the Command Line. (It was later republished as a rather short book, but the text is still online.) In it, he says:

"In the GNU/Linux world there are two major text editing programs: the minimalist vi (known in some implementations as elvis) and the maximalist emacs. I use emacs, which might be thought of as a thermonuclear word processor. It was created by Richard Stallman; enough said. It is written in Lisp, which is the only computer language that is beautiful. It is colossal, and yet it only edits straight ASCII text files, which is to say, no fonts, no boldface, no underlining. In other words, the engineer-hours that, in the case of Microsoft Word, were devoted to features like mail merge, and the ability to embed feature-length motion pictures in corporate memoranda, were, in the case of emacs, focused with maniacal intensity on the deceptively simple-seeming problem of editing text. If you are a professional writer-i.e., if someone else is getting paid to worry about how your words are formatted and printed-emacs outshines all other editing software in approximately the same way that the noonday sun does the stars."

Emacs is 50-plus-year-old software, and it shows. This is a huge and complicated program: decades ago, the joke was that EMACS stood for "Eight Megs And Constantly Swapping". It is not an easy program to learn. Despite lavish documentation and a built-in tutorial, this is software so old that its terminology predates microprocessors and the personal computer.

Its exhaustive manual is 804 pages long, and to pick some trivial examples, its terms for parts of the screen use "frame" to mean what's now called a window, and "window" to mean what's now called a pane. In the section on Keys, it discusses the Control and Meta keys. That's a slight snag: you don't have a Meta key, and neither do the authors of Emacs. It was a key on the now almost legendarily rare Space Cadet Keyboard, of which the Deskthority keyboard wiki says:

"It is known as the holy grail of keyboards."

You can buy a modern replica, the Keymacs keyboard. They are hand-made in the Czech Republic, and depending on exactly what model and specifications you want, they cost from €2,998 for the Lispsaver up to €6,878 for the A624N Space Cadet.

In other words, you can have a keyboard with a real Meta key if you want, but it is going to cost you.

One of the problems with these historical terms, unfamiliar to anyone who wasn't already programming in the 1970s, is that meanings drift. In the context of Emacs, "Meta" means Alt, or Opt on Macs. However, KDE also uses the Meta key - but what the KDE documentation calls "Meta" is the Windows key - or Command on Macs. Like most Linux folks, the GNOME documentation calls it the Super key.

Names are important. They matter. Who's right, the Emacs folks or the KDE folks? Well, neither: nobody has Meta keys any more. We have Ctrl, Alt, and Cmd/Super/Windows.

There have been valiant efforts to modernize Emacs and bring it into line with modern UI and terminology. This vulture tried to learn Aquamacs, which modernized Emacs with a native macOS UI, but sadly it's no longer maintained.

Another, which we enjoyed trying, is ErgoEmacs, which changes the key bindings and rearranges the UI into something much more like the IBM Common User Access arrangement, as used in Windows and most Linux desktops. However, it never really caught on and you need to know your way around Emacs to install it and configure it for your regional keyboard layout.

So complex is it to configure Emacs that there are multiple pre-configured distributions of Emacs, such as Doom Emacs, or the minimalist Emacs Solo. We wish someone did a "CUA-Macs" config, with ErgoEmacs integrated and able to pick up your existing keyboard config.

Come to that, the Gershwin Desktop project that we mentioned along with GhostBSD last year is in active development, and it's based around GNUstep. Maybe its developers could pick up Aquamacs, and adapt it to GNUstep.

There is a long history of such Emacs facelifts. One instance is Borland's Sprint word-processor, one of the selling points of which was that it could emulate the user interfaces of most of the leading MS-DOS word-processors of its day (just before they all converged on IBM CUA). Before Borland acquired it, Sprint was called The Final Word, developed by musical equipment makers Mark of the Unicorn. FinalWord was based on an Emacs clone called MINCE.

Another well-known Emacs distribution is Spacemacs, which adapts Emacs to have a more Vi-like user interface.

Vi is the other seminal Unix text editor, as the Stephenson quote above mentions. As this article on Origins and the Evolution of Vi & Vim notes, it too dates back to 1976. Indeed, that's the reason we chose the year in this story: Tilde, a text editor that doesn't work like it's 1976. One feature of Tilde we enjoy is that it supports use of the mouse even on the Linux console - which is the headline new feature of GNU Emacs 31.1.

Vi is very much alive and well today. GNU Emacs is based on the original source code, but Vi mainly survives as re-implementations. The recreation Stephenson mentions, Elvis, lives on today in the form of nvi.

However, by far the best known is Vim, maintained by Bram Moolenaar until his death in 2023. In the grand FOSS forking tradition, it too has forks, including Neovim, as used in Omarchy, and more recently, the AI-free Vim Classic - a new project led by Drew DeVault, who just launched the similarly LLM-free AlpineBSD. ®

Imperial ambitions are ever-shifting under President Donald Trump. Greenland, Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba are oftentimes spoken about as one continuous train of complete victories and soon-to-be-complete-victories. With the midterms fast approaching, and the date for an apparent telegraphed return to the Iran war on its heels, talk of easily overthrowing regimes has returned, if it ever truly left.

At a rally in Florida last Friday, Trump laid out his grand vision, which he promised would come to pass once the Islamic Republic is neutralized as a threat to the world: "We're going to come back from Iran. Those beautiful ships will pass Cuba. We'll have one of them stop about 50 yards off the coast. They'll raise up their hands, and then we're going to send Marco Rubio in to finish up the deal."

Related Rubio's Paranoid Cuba Report Designed to "Justify a Military Attack on Cuba," Says Democratic Rep.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the descendant of Cuban immigrants who left under President Fulgencio Batista (though Rubio later tried to claim his parents fled Castro, who came to power three years later), has long put overthrowing the Communist government in Havana at the top of his agenda, with the hope of replicating the relative ease of kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January. Rubio turned some heads last Friday when he publicly posted on X that those seeking "to create positive change in Cuba" could "seize this opportunity to create the change you desire through a discrete [sic] partnership with the CIA."

The post was widely met with bewilderment (Bloomberg's White House correspondent wrote: "Checked like four times that this was real"), but U.S. officials and members of Congress also shared the post, elevating the public call for collaboration. Recruiting in public might come across as strange and out of character to a public that imagines the CIA recruiting secret agents and informants through clandestine channels or hidden websites, as the agency had done to try and recruit agents inside Iran under Bush and Obama.

But public appeals of this kind are not wholly new. Under the Biden administration, the CIA recruited collaborators inside Russia via a public Telegram channel, as well as publishing videos on social media hoping to recruit Chinese, Iranian, and North Korean assets.

This kind of overt recruitment stems from the difficulties Western intelligence agencies face against adversaries who have built sophisticated surveillance networks of their own. A CIA official told ABC News in May 2025, "in today's world of [universal technical surveillance], we can't recruit sources the same way that we did 20 years ago, probably the same way you did 10 years ago." This has not only affected intelligence operations targeting Beijing, but also Tehran and Havana, where both the U.S. and Israel's lack of on-the-ground connections and limited official presence has led the CIA and the Mossad to try to recruit willing informants online.

While these limitations may govern the particulars of this strategy, those in power in their respective countries may not see it as evidence of constraints, but instead as evidence of the power of their new strategy: boasting about their national power, rather than keeping it behind closed doors where it supposedly remains useless. After all, what is the use of a deterrent if nobody knows it was you?

The scale of these public appeals, despite having started under Biden, has exploded under the second Trump term, but these moves were arguably preceded by Benjamin Netanyahu's efforts to bring the Mossad's operations much more into the public sphere. The Israeli prime minister's bragging about numerous cyberattacks targeting Iran's nuclear program in the late 2010s began to precipitate a shift in public discussion of the Mossad's work, with many Netanyahu allies, like then-Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, praising the fact that Iran could now "know it is exposed and that Israel can reach anywhere in the Islamic Republic." A former deputy director of the Mossad said after the unveiling of Iran's stolen nuclear archive that Netanyahu's move "goes against our nature," and that "the prime minister insisted on publicizing this."

Netanyahu's pick in 2021 for the director of the Mossad, David Barnea, has been credited with institutionalizing that change, shifting the secretive intelligence agency's operations toward appealing to larger masses, and reportedly concerning Mossad veterans who were shocked by the publicizing of agents inside Iran. Casting Israel as a superpower capable of exerting its power anywhere has become a popular refrain under Netanyahu. In an interview with "60 Minutes," one Mossad officer said of the 2024 pager attacks in Lebanon, which injured more than 2,000 people, that "they are walking proof of our superiority all around the Middle East," with another officer saying the operation's complexity and success demonstrated "the world is our stage."

Related The Mossad Suffers a Crushing Defeat Entirely of Its Own Making

The U.S. has also gotten in the habit of flexing its superpower status under Trump, declaring the nation's intent to conquer places like Greenland and Canada, to steal the natural resources of Venezuela and Iran to fill American coffers, and to openly and unabashedly place the Western Hemisphere under a Washingtonian protectorate known as the "Donroe Doctrine." Rubio declared in Greece in early October, speaking in terms of civilizational battle against the backdrop of the Acropolis, that "we choose the unapologetic pursuit of national power."

Openly siccing the CIA on foreign adversaries and ICE on domestic ones has been part of that strategy of embracing imperial fervor at home and abroad. Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater and a private security contractor who remains influential in Trump world, said he was "jealous" of the pager attacks and publicly urged the CIA to take a lesson from the Mossad, saying "we should be getting those kinds of results."

While both countries have openly sought deep intelligence penetration in adversarial nations, there are limitations to the power of clandestine and overt operations, even by superpowers and wannabes. While the CIA asserted its power in May by openly having its director meet with Cuban officials in Havana to demand "fundamental changes" in return for relief from economic strangulation, the agency's history of attempts to overthrow the Communist Cuban government are as storied as they are unsuccessful. Earlier hopes for Iran to be as quick and as clean as taking control of Venezuela's government were dashed early on in the conflict, with the war that was supposed to only take a few weeks now all but certain to extend past the midterm elections for another devastating round.

Even if the war with Iran ends so easily that American ships are able to go through Cuba on the way back ready for more, both outside analysts and even internal U.S. intelligence assessments do not see as easy a way to overthrow the Communist state. The New York Times reported in August that American intelligence sources indicate it could be a situation closer to Iran, where even if Raúl Castro (who has held no official position in the country since 2021) were captured, "few pragmatic officials" are likely to take power in his stead.

While Cuba's military lacks the kind of advanced equipment Iran has, and shows of readiness (like with Venezuela) are no indication of a country's actual willingness to fight a protracted campaign, Cuba's military structure is similar to Iran's in that it is based on decentralization and redundancies in leadership. In addition, Cuba has a political power structure that, also similar to Iran, is not actually based around a single individual, despite popular claims to the contrary.

Related The Incredible Shrinking Superpower

Despite Trump's constant bluster about the miracle of being able to take out Maduro without a single American death, the brazenness of that operation, and the openness with which the negotiations with Iran have been deceptive, appear to have had lessons for the Cuban leadership. President Miguel Díaz-Canel said in June: "All these elements create a lot of distrust in the Cuban people when it comes to conducting any type of negotiation. We continue to express our willingness for dialogue, but it has to be a dialogue between equals, without pressure and with respect for our sovereignty." American officials have yet to internalize that sentiment. Discussing Cuba in March, Trump joyfully mused: "Whether I free it, take it, I think, I could do anything I want with it." At the time, he was saying similar things about Iran.

The post The CIA Is Resorting to an Open Casting Call for Would-Be Cuban Assets appeared first on The Intercept.

Yamaha have officially announced that they will not be participating in the Qatar round of MotoGP. Citing an internal corporate travel ban to the region, the Japanese manufacturer has stated it has not seen sufficient reason to go against that policy and travel to Qatar. Yamaha state they are aware of the assessments of the MotoGP Group and the Qatari authorities, but have decided to follow corporate policy.

In response, the MotoGP Group issued a statement regretting Yamaha's decision, reiterating their belief that the assurances provided by Qatar are sufficient to allow the event to go ahead. MotoGP Group also reminded Yamaha of their contractual obligations to both MotoGP and IRTA, as set out in section 1.11.3 of the regulations, which states that each team is obliged to compete in all events, unless they have special dispensation from MotoGP Group/IRTA to skip an event. Obviously, MotoGP Group have not issued such dispensation.

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Openreach has issued a stark reminder to customers that the legacy phone network is being officially switched off on January 31, and says the deadline will not be postponed.

The infrastructure arm of BT Group, Britain's biggest telecoms biz, circulated the warning this week in a letter to comms providers that use its network to deliver their services.

It informs them that any customers still on legacy public switched telephone network (PSTN) connections are at risk of disruption when these are retired at the end of January, 2027.

The switch-off could affect businesses and consumers alike. Beyond the plain old telephone, systems that rely on PSTN connectivity include point-of-sale terminals, fire and security alarms, and personal care alarms for elderly and vulnerable people.

The move is part of a wider government scheme to get the UK onto all-digital high-speed networks running on fiber-optic infrastructure, and the legacy phone service - with its dependency on copper cabling - was standing in the way.

Many households have now ditched landline handsets and instead use only mobile phones, yet for those who still want a landline, the changeover means plugging the phone into the back of a broadband router to access a Digital Voice service.

Openreach has been planning this move for the best part of a decade. It has already pushed back the deadline at least once, after the government asked telecoms providers not to force vulnerable customers who use phone-network systems such as TeleCare to switch until fixes are in place.

Nevertheless, public awareness seems low that analog phone services will soon be disconnected. "Openreach and all providers need to coordinate a much more cohesive campaign that reaches customers directly," said telecoms analyst Paolo Pescatore at PP Foresight.

"TV, billboards and newspaper advertising should reinforce a consistent message, supported by targeted letters, calls and door-to-door support for older and vulnerable people who need extra help," he told The Register.

"Customers need to understand what is changing, what action to take, and who will help them. Providers must take responsibility for ensuring people remain safely connected, especially those who rely on their landline or a care alarm."

Caroline Abrahams, charity director at Age UK, agreed.

"With only three months to go, the digital landline switchover is entering a critical final phase. Most people have moved over without major problems, but nobody who relies on their landline or TeleCare should be left behind," she told us.

"Anyone with concerns should contact their provider, but the responsibility cannot rest with customers alone. Providers must not give up on people who have not responded. They need to keep trying to reach them and offer practical, individual support, recognizing that some may be unwell, living with dementia, worried about scams or without anyone nearby to help."

Openreach has a webpage with information regarding the switch-off. This advises consumers to call their service provider as soon as possible to ensure service is not interrupted.

The company previously told The Register that customers without a fiber connection will likely be switched to SOTAP for Analog (Single Order Transitional Access Product), where equipment is installed in the local telephone exchange to allow them to continue to use their old phone line as before.

Openreach has warned that commercial customers delaying migration risk significant disruption and unnecessary costs - leaving it until the last minute could make it harder to secure the requisite engineering support before the deadline hits.

"Businesses and organizations that delay action are making things harder for themselves," said James Lilley, Openreach Director of All-IP.

"The straightforward migrations have largely been completed. What's left are the complex connections that underpin critical operations, requiring careful planning, supplier coordination, and thorough testing. We are urging businesses to act now, audit their remaining analog services, and work with their communications provider on a migration plan today."

Earlier this year, the firm tried to drive home the message by announcing it was stepping up its charges to service providers and companies still operating legacy business lines, who will by now be paying double the rental cost compared to last year. ®

Marc Marquez won the MotoGP World Championship race Sunday at Petronas Sepang International Circuit, in Malaysia. Riding his Ducati Lenovo Team Desmosedici GP26 on Michelin control tires, the Spaniard won the 20-lap race by 4.172 seconds.

The win extended his lead in the MotoGP World Championship point standings to 44.

Pedro Acosta was the runner-up on his Red Bull KTM Factory Racing RC16.

Alex Marquez placed third on his BK8 Gresini Racing Ducati Desmosedici GP26.

Ai Ogura crossed the finish line fourth on his SuperFile Trackhouse Aprilia RS-GP26.

Enea Bastianini took fifth on his Red Bull KTM Tech3 RC16.

Marc Marquez leads the championship with 399 points, 44 ahead of Jorge Martin who has 355 points. Marco Bezzecchi is third with 332 points.

More, from a press release issued by MotoGP:

Masterclass: Marc Marquez marches to Malaysia victory to earn 2026 match point. The #93, in the absence of Martin, inflicts maximum championship damage to take a giant stride towards the title as Acosta and Alex Marquez complete the Sepang rostrum.

We are watching a master at work. 80 MotoGP victories. A third at the PETRONAS Grand Prix of Malaysia. And now, staring down the barrel of a first match point at the Lusail International Circuit next weekend. Marc Marquez (Ducati Lenovo Team), by a dominant 4.1s, marched to a seventh win of 2026 to take one giant leap towards sticking another plaque on the famous Tower of Champions.

It's now a healthy 44-point lead the seven-time MotoGP King has over injured rival Jorge Martin (Aprilia Racing) ahead of the Qatar Grand Prix, and a 67-point advantage over the #89's teammate Marco Bezzecchi after the Italian finished P6 in Malaysia. Joining the reigning World Champion on the Sepang rostrum was second-place Pedro Acosta (Red Bull KTM Factory Racing), the KTM star completing a brilliant weekend at the office, and polesitter Alex Marquez (BK8 Gresini Racing MotoGP). 

THE START: MM93 GETS THE HOLESHOT

Nailing the start was your championship leader Marc Marquez, who gobbled up the holeshot ahead of Alex Marquez. Biting back at Turn 4 was the latter, though, but the blue corner in the Marquez scrap ran wide to allow the red corner to keep hold of the lead.

It was a right old fight for P3 on the opening lap between the rapid-starting Enea Bastianini (Red Bull KTM Tech3), Ai Ogura (SuperFile Trackhouse MotoGP Team) and Acosta, and after a sluggish start, it was the Tissot Sprint winner who climbed back into P3 by the end of the lap. Bezzecchi, meanwhile, was soon fourth after the Italian muscled his way past Ogura at Turn 14 on Lap 2.

ACOSTA SHADOWS THE MARQUEZ'S

A fastest lap of the Grand Prix saw Acosta quickly reel in the Marquez brothers. With tyre wear crucial, the Grand Prix then settled down in the early exchanges as Marc Marquez led Alex Marquez by 0.5s, with Acosta lingering just under fourth tenths away from the Gresini star. Bezzecchi was a further seven tenths adrift in fourth, while Ogura lapped the same distance behind his Aprilia stablemate.

MotoGP standings after Sepang:

• Read more about 2026 MotoGP Championship Standings After Round 19, Sepang, Malaysia
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Results and summary of the MotoGP race at Sepang:

• Read more about 2026 Sepang MotoGP Race Result: Hot Stuff
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David Alonso won the FIM Moto2 World Championship race Sunday at Petronas Sepang International Circuit, in Malaysia. Riding his CFMOTO RCB Aspar Team Kalex on Pirelli control tires, the Colombian rider won the 17-lap race by 1.932 seconds.

His teammate, Daniel Holgado was the runner-up. 

Angel Piqueras was third on his QJMOTOR - MSI Kalex.

Izan Guevara finished fourth on his BLU CRU Pramac Yamaha Boscoscuro.

Championship point leader Manuel Gonzalez took fifth on his LIQUI MOLY Dynavolt Intact GP Kalex.

American Joe Roberts finished Sunday's race 18th on his OnlyFans American Racing Team Kalex.

Manuel Gonzalez leads the championship with 276.5 points, 3.5 ahead of Izan Guevara who has 273 points. Ivan Ortola is third with 199.5 points.

The post Moto2: World Championship Race Results From Sepang appeared first on Roadracing World Magazine | Motorcycle Riding, Racing & Tech News.

Maximo Quiles won the FIM Moto3 World Championship race Sunday at Petronas Sepang International Circuit, in Malaysia. Using his Pirelli-shod CFMOTO Gaviota Aspar Team KTM, the Spaniard won the 15-lap race by 3.734 seconds.

Veda Pratama was the runner-up on his Honda Team Asia machine.

Red Bull KTM Ajo's Alvaro Carpe was third, 4.184 seconds behind race winner Quiles.

Home hero Hakim Danish crossed the finish line fourth on his AEON Credit - MT Helmets - MSI KTM.

David Almansa got fifth on his Liqui Moly Dynavolt Intact GP KTM.

Maximo Quiles leads the championship with 376 points, 148 ahead of David Almansa who has 228 points. Brian Uriarte is third with 205 points.

More, from a press release issued by MotoGP:

Quiles takes 11th win of 2026, Danish denied home podium in fourth. A commanding victory for the World Champion but the big battle for the home crowd was for a podium. 

A first win as World Champion for Maximo Quiles (CFMOTO Gaviota Aspar Team) as the #28 sealed the deal for an 11th victory of 2026. However, the big story was behind as the home crowd cheered on their hero Hakim Danish (AEON Credit - MT Helmets - MSI) who was in the podium battle throughout. Despite his best efforts that went all the way to the last corner, he had to settle for fourth behind Veda Pratama (Honda Team Asia) and Alvaro Carpe (Red Bill KTM Ajo). David Almansa's (Liqui Moly Dynavolt Intact GP) P5 sees him extend his gap in P2 in the standings over the chasing pack.

Starting from pole, Quiles snatched the holeshot down to Turn 1 ahead of Carpe and a fast-starting Almansa, who was soon into P2 at Turn 2. He didn't waste any time hitting the front, leading by Turn 4 from P4 on the grid. Further back, Jesus Rios' (Rivacold Snipers Team) GP was done with a crash at Turn 2; he remounted and was OK. At the front, it was Almansa led the first lap whilst home star Danish was P4. On Lap 2, he took advantage of Carpe and Quiles' battling and stormed into P2, sending the home crowd into a frenzy. Behind, Pratama was close in P5 whilst Brian Uriarte (Red Bull KTM Ajo), third in the standings, was battling further back in the pack, aiming to crack the top ten.

At Turn 9 on Lap 3, Matteo Bertelle's (LEVELUP-MTA) GP ended with a crash whereas at the front, the top five were all covered by half a second with the pack closing up. Two laps later and a change in the lead as Quiles took over at the front from Almansa at the final corner. On Lap 7, Carpe started battling with Almansa, allowing Quiles to break free and Danish to come through at the final corner for third; the #22 was back to fifth soon enough with Pratama in P4 and then third when he cleared the Malaysian. More crashes came; on Lap 8 for Scott Ogden (CIP GreenPower) at Turn 1 and then at Turn 15 for Rico Salmela (Red Bull KTM Tech3). Ogden then crashed at the same corner two laps later, ending the Brit's GP.

With four to go, Danish pounced on Pratama at Turn 1 to move up into second place whilst Almansa was likewise back in the hunt and dispatched of Pratama; it all changed again a lap later though as the Indonesia and the Spaniard battled hard and pushed home-hero Danish back to fourth. The battle was very much for P2 though as Quiles was three seconds up the road and cruising to victory 11 of the year.

Onto the last lap and Danish got his elbows out to briefly go P2, although he soon found himself back in fifth and with work to do to try and get a home podium. Danish was strong to take fourth from Almansa, pushing him out at Turn 5 and leaving the #22 in P5. He was then into third by Turn 11, getting ahead of Carpe but the #83 retaliated at Turn 14. Throwing everything at it in a last-ditch attempt, Danish went for P3 at the final corner but went wide, allowing Carpe to come back through and break Malaysian hearts.

Quiles made it an 11th win of the year ahead of Pratama, Carpe, Malaysia's Danish and Almansa - the latter of which extends his lead over third in the standings to 23 with two GPs to go. Joel Esteban (LEVELUP-MTA) rode a solid GP to P6 ahead of Adrian Fernandez (Leopard Racing), David Muñoz (Liqui Moly Dynavolt Intact GP), Uriarte (Red Bull KTM Ajo) and Eddie O'Shea (Gryd Racing) who rounded out the top ten. Elsewhere, first career points for Zen Mitani (Honda Team Asia) in P13 whilst a difficult weekend for Valentin Perrone (Red Bull KTM Tech3) gave him a point in P15.
Next time out, we're under the lights at Lusail for the Grand Prix of Qatar! Don't miss out!

Moto3 Grand Prix results from Sepang

The post Moto3: World Championship Race Results From Sepang appeared first on Roadracing World Magazine | Motorcycle Riding, Racing & Tech News.

We have an energy crisis. Many people struggle to heat their homes, and all of us pay more for it than we would like. Wouldn't it be great if we had a means of getting more heat out of the energy we buy? There is a simple answer. We could. But this is a classic case of a complex policy issue. We know where we want to get to, but a series of interlocking problems are preventing us getting there. Probably we should have started somewhere else, and certainly we should have started sooner.

Heat pumps are a much more efficient way of heating houses than oil or gas, and they are much better for the environment. So, the government has been providing subsidies to encourage people to switch. But take-up has been slow in the UK, with heat pumps accounting for less than 5% of all heating installations, and in Norfolk and Suffolk, less than 1% of new homes are heated in this way.

It is a classic political dilemma. What clearly makes sense in the long term runs up against short-term priorities, and government's difficulty in planning strategically. So, what are the blockages?

Most people don't understand heat pumps. Little has been done to explain the benefits, and heat pumps can sound too good to be true. Yet we all have this technology in our kitchens. In our refrigerators, a pump compresses and expands refrigerant gas to extract heat from the inside, and release it outside. A heat pump uses the same technology in reverse, cooling the outside air to heat water for radiators. And this is hardly new. More than half of homes in Norway are heated in this way.  

Britain famously has a poorly insulated housing stock. Heat pumps are more efficient running at lower temperatures. As a result they work best running continuously at a steady temperature, rather than being switched on and off as we often do with gas. This means they are more efficient in a well-insulated house. In some older houses radiators may need replacing. So, there is sometimes work to be done and money to spend before installing a heat pump.

Heat pumps run on electricity. We are all connected, and we have seen a huge expansion of renewable energy supplies. But our outdated grid infrastructure is struggling. At times we have to shut down generators because the grid cannot cope. So, if everyone is to switch from gas to electricity, we need massive investment in the grid, and we really needed it a decade ago. And of course, people don't like new pylon lines.

Heat pumps are technically complex. Installers require qualifications in electrics as well as plumbing. There are currently only 30,000 qualified heat pump engineers. By contrast, gas and oil boilers are technically simple, and there are 130,000 registered Gas Safe registered engineers available to install and maintain them.

Furthermore, our education system is not good at developing the STEM skills which would provide the foundation for training these fitters. And British employers are notoriously reluctant to recruit apprentices and to pay to upgrade the skills of existing workers. Only around 6,000 a year are being trained, at a cost of up to £5,000 a time.

More heat pumps mean more firms to install and maintain them. But setting up a new business, or growing an existing one, is risky in a new industry. You need capital for equipment and you need to recruit and perhaps to train staff. But an unexpected shift in government policy, like cutting subsidies, can kill demand for your services overnight. If an installer's business fails, their customers may have difficulty finding anyone to maintain the heat pump.

Heat pumps can be more expensive because they are imported. The government wants to revive British manufacturing, but British firms face an uphill struggle against international competition in this field. While most gas boilers are made in the UK, less than a third of heat pumps are. The leading firms, Vaillant and Daikin, manufacture in Germany and Japan and account for around 40% of the market.

All heating systems involve an input of energy, but at the point of use, burning fossil fuels (gas or oil) is inherently less efficient than using electricity to drive a pump. While a typical air source heat pump can convert one unit of energy into around three units of heat, the most efficient gas and oil boilers can never even reach one unit.

So, if the price of a unit of energy was the same for all sources, heat pumps would be much cheaper to run. But that is not how the market works.

Renewable electricity is very cheap to produce, but is not always sufficient to meet demand. So, the grid must call up gas-fired power stations to make up the shortfall. The price the grid must pay for electricity is set by an auction process, where all generators are paid the price offered by the most expensive one needed to meet the last part of demand. Since this is usually gas, it is the worldwide gas price which most often sets the market price for electricity.

And this artificially high price of electricity can cancel out the efficiency savings of heat pumps.

This is a classic 'wicked' problem. By switching to heat pumps, we could all save money, and help save the planet. But until the cost of electricity can be made comparable with gas, the savings from switching to heat pumps will be modest. Even if electricity were cheaper, the grid would still need substantial investment to cope with the increased demand. People need confidence that there will be firms available to maintain their systems. Firms need confidence that there is going to be an ongoing market for installation and maintenance. Workers need confidence that there will be well-paid jobs if they undertake the training involved.

Unless the government can give people confidence that it will maintain consistent long-term policies to address these problems, the transition to heat pumps will remain slow. Take-up will mostly be by people with sufficient capital to cover the costs, strongly committed to reducing their carbon footprint, or well-informed about the government subsidies.

So, as so often, the poorest are the ones who would have most to gain, but are least likely to see it happen.

Stephen McNair lives in rural north Norfolk in a fairly large very old house with limited insulation. He replaced his oil boiler with a heat pump in 2021.

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The post The great heat pump paradox: more heat, less progress first appeared on East Anglia Bylines.

Moto2 standings after Sepang:

• Read more about 2026 Moto2 Championship Standings After Round 19, Sepang, Malaysia
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Results and summary of the Moto2 race at Sepang:

• Read more about 2026 Sepang Moto2 Race Result: Teammate Wars With a Rookie Cameo
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Getting older and losing your autonomy is even harder without family around. You need to consider both the practical and emotional issues involved

My wife and I are in our late 70s, and have been married for more than 40 years. We didn't have kids and were rather traumatised after failed IVF.

My wife is Asian and has no UK-based family. I do, but they are not close geographically, nor are they people who would be able to give any support if needed. Friends are of a similar age and so have their own issues to deal with. My wife and I have always been a self-reliant unit, and we're both reasonably healthy, but I'm increasingly aware that there will soon come a time when help is needed.

Moto3 standings after Sepang:

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Relying on technology can make us forgetful, but there are some simple ways to sharpen your recall. Memory experts describe the tricks and habits that can help

Memory can worsen as we age, but it is often possible to do something about it. Here, memory experts share their advice on how to improve your power of recall.

Marc Marquez was fastest in the MotoGP warmup session Sunday morning at Petronas Sepang International Circuit, in Malaysia. Riding his Lenovo Team Ducati Desmosedici GP26 on Michelin control tires, the Spaniard led the 20-rider field with a time of 1:58.902 around the 3.44-mile (5.54 km) circuit.

Alex Marquez was second-best with a 1:59.388 on his BK8 Gresini Racing Ducati Desmosedici GP26, and Pedro Acosta jumped up the order to third with a time of 1:59.405 on his Red Bull KTM Factory Racing RC16.

Ai Ogura, riding his SuperFile Trackhouse Aprilia RS-GP26 finished fourth with a time of 1:59.571 and Johann Zarco got fifth on his Castrol Honda LCR RC213V with a lap time of 1:59.630.

The full-length MotoGP race is scheduled to start at 3:00 p.m. Local Time.

The post MotoGP: M. Marquez Leads Warm Up In Malaysia appeared first on Roadracing World Magazine | Motorcycle Riding, Racing & Tech News.

Results:

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We are overjoyed to announce that - after many months of work and thanks to you - copies of Sarah Ainslie's WOMEN AT WORK are now available and we are sending them out.

CLICK HERE TO BUY A SIGNED COPY FOR £20

Sarah Ainslie will be giving an illustrated lecture, showing her pictures and telling the stories behind her WOMEN AT WORK project at this year's Bloomsbury Jamboree on Saturday 14th November at the Art Workers' Guild, 6 Queen Sq, London WC1N 3AT.

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WOMEN AT WORK celebrates the women whose work shapes the fabric of our lives, sustaining communities with their labour, warmth & fellowship

SARAH AINSLIE documents the contribution of female labour in exuberant photographs that capture the passion and struggle of the working life, forming a panoramic survey of social change over four decades.

"My pictures are a testament to the indomitable spirit of women whose work is often unrecognised, whether in factories, working from home or caring for the vulnerable - tradeswomen, community organisers, garment workers, faith leaders, artists, firefighters, shopkeepers, transport workers, cleaners and NHS staff, women who are catering, and many more who sustain and bind together communities with their warmth, labour and fellowship."

Sarah Ainslie

THANK YOU Carol Addis, Liz Aitken, The Alcove Library, Fatima Ali, Monica Allen, Deborah Andrews, Geraldine Anslow, Alice Audsley, Elizabeth Aumeer, Kate Bacon, Stephen Ball, Betsy Barker, Graham Barker, Sarah Bates, Roxy Beaujolais, Niamh Bermingham, Millie Bird, Catherine Burd, Karolina Brodnicka, Jill Browne, Yvonne Cheyney, Karen Chung, Jackie Connor, Esther Conway, Wendy Cook, Sarah Correia, Clarice Corell, Valerie Cottle, Mary Dalton, Rachel Darnley-Smith, Rosie Dastgir, Jill Day, Lucinda De Jasay, Luke Dixon, James Douglas, Josephine Eglin, Marion Elliot, Rachel Ferriman, Linda Florio, Jillian Foley, Lisa Forkas, Gillian Forrester, Nancy Franklin, Emma Grace, Carol Grantham, Judy Greenway, Karen Greenwood, Polly Grylls, Stephen Guy, Keith Hagan, Jayne Hamilton, Mark Hamsher, Siri Hansen, Julia Harrison, David Heath, Carolyn Hirst, David Hoffman, Anne Holland, Melissa Horn, Emma Howard Boyd, Susan Hoyal, Robin Huffman, Richard Humm, Diana Fawcett, Lisa Ferguson, Doreen Fletcher, Jane James, Annie Johns, Andrew Jones, Barbara Jones, Rachel Jowitt, Tom Kavanagh, Hilda Kean, Michael Keating, Colette Khan, Mark King, Lin Lee, Martin Ling, Pauline Lord, John Patrick Lowe, Jaime Rory Lucy, Sarah Ludford, Alison Lynch, Mirela Mardare, Anabel Marsh, Sarah Mason, Frances Mayhew, Jill Mead, Julia Meadows, Carolyn Meunier, Jennifer Michael, Susan Miles, Janet Mohler, Stephen Moran, Annie Moreton, Robert Moye, Lee Murphy, Jeremy Musson, Ros Niblett, Krissie Nicolson, Thomas Nowacki, Sarah Nuttall, Frances Oakley, Janet O'Brien, Vivienne Palmer, Peter Parker, Tanya Peixoto, Pamela Percy, Fiona Pettitt, Caroline Pick, Alison Pilkington, Jeffrey Press, Elizabeth Prochaska, Tony Quinn, Alice Rawsthorn, Caz Richards, Ruth Richardson, Madeleine Ruggi, Anne Sally, Sir Charles Saumarez Smith, Tim Sayer, Christine Sibley, Marie Sleigh, Robert Small, Annie Sparks, Henrietta M Startup, Carrie Supple, Gilane Tawadros, Pen Thompson, Sophie Thompson, Jane Trethewey, Olivia Horsfall Turner, Sukhin Tye, Roel Van Der List, Nicola Von Velsen, Elizabeth Walker, Arabella Warner, Nicky Webb, Lianne Weidmann, Patricia Wenz, Gilda Williams, Jane Williamson, Jill Wilson, Sarah Winman, Jenny Wiseman, Robert Zeigler and many others who choose to be anonymous.

This Week in 2016

• Dumb & Dumber Claims About Last Week's Internet Attack (SOPA?!? Really?)
• Shake Up At The Copyright Office A Possible Preview To Fight Over Copyright Reform
• The Reason The Copyright Office Misrepresented Copyright Law To The FCC: Hollywood Told It To
• Facebook's Arbitrary Offensiveness Police Take Down Informational Video About Breast Cancer Screening
• As Expected, FCC Passes Modest Privacy Rules For Broadband Providers, ISPs Act Like World Has Ended
• MPAA: EFF Just Jealous It Doesn't Control Copyright Office Like Hollywood Does

This Week in 2011

• Universal Uses Copyright To Censor Bad Lip Reading Parody; Why Not Embrace It?
• The Many Killers Of The Film Industry: Volume One
• The Many Killers Of The Film Industry: Volume 2 - A Disaster Called Television
• The Many Killers Of The Film Industry Vol. 3: Post-Ellipsis And Beyond Television
• House Trying To Rush Through Its Version Of PROTECT IP; Tech Industry Asks Why?
• PROTECT IP Renamed E-PARASITES Act; Would Create The Great Firewall Of America

This Week in 2006

• Copy Protected Music Ghettos Are Holding Back The Industry
• Network Neutrality Debate: It's All Relative
• Newspaper Pretends It Can Block Fair Use And Threaten Those Who Say It Can't
• MPAA Helps New York City Down The Path Of Pointless Legislation
• Using Trademark Law To Stop Free Speech
• RIAA Still Not Allowed To Get Free Access To Scour Your Hard Drive