National grid operators in Spain and Portugal confirm that a massive electrical blackout has hit the Iberian Peninsula today, starting just a couple of minutes after 12:30 pm Central European Summer Time (10:30 am UTC, or about 6:30 am US Eastern Daylight Time). The outage appears to have resulted in near-total loss of electricity in Spain, Portugal, the Principality of Andorra, and at least some portions of southwest France.

The impacts are widespread and pervasive; in major cities like Madrid, trains are not running, airports are unable to operate, and businesses and schools have closed. Citizens are still able to use cellular networks to communicate so far (most cell towers and network operations centers have battery or generator backup systems).

Electrical demand curve from Red Eléctrica site showing the outage. Credit: Red Eléctrica

Bloomberg energy reporter Akshat Rathi posted on Bluesky that Spanish grid operator Red Electrica claims the outage is due to "grid oscillation," a phenomenon that occurs when the system is unable to suppress oscillations that normally happen as sources and load enter and leave the system. Rathi quotes Bloomberg cybersecurity reporter Ryan Gallagher, noting that a cyber attack has been ruled out, and the fault is likely technical:

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Andrew Cunningham and Lee Hutchinson have spent decades of their lives with Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson's Wheel of Time books, and they previously brought that knowledge to bear as they recapped each first season episode and second season episode of Amazon's WoT TV series. Now we're back in the saddle for season 3—along with insights, jokes, and the occasional wild theory.

These recaps won't cover every element of every episode, but they will contain major spoilers for the show and the book series. We'll do our best to not spoil major future events from the books, but there's always the danger that something might slip out. If you want to stay completely unspoiled and haven't read the books, these recaps aren't for you.

New episodes of The Wheel of Time season three will be posted for Amazon Prime subscribers every Thursday. This write-up covers the season three finale, "He Who Comes With the Dawn," which was released on April 17.

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Andrew Cunningham and Lee Hutchinson have spent decades of their lives with Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson's Wheel of Time books, and they previously brought that knowledge to bear as they recapped each first season episode and second season episode of Amazon's WoT TV series. Now we're back in the saddle for season 3—along with insights, jokes, and the occasional wild theory.

These recaps won't cover every element of every episode, but they will contain major spoilers for the show and the book series. We'll do our best to not spoil major future events from the books, but there's always the danger that something might slip out. If you want to stay completely unspoiled and haven't read the books, these recaps aren't for you.

New episodes of The Wheel of Time season 3 will be posted for Amazon Prime subscribers every Thursday. This write-up covers episode seven, "Goldeneyes," which was released on April 10.

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© Prime/Amazon MGM Studios

Andrew Cunningham and Lee Hutchinson have spent decades of their lives with Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson's Wheel of Time books, and they previously brought that knowledge to bear as they recapped each first season episode and second season episode of Amazon's WoT TV series. Now we're back in the saddle for season 3—along with insights, jokes, and the occasional wild theory.

These recaps won't cover every element of every episode, but they will contain major spoilers for the show and the book series. We'll do our best to not spoil major future events from the books, but there's always the danger that something might slip out. If you want to stay completely unspoiled and haven't read the books, these recaps aren't for you.

New episodes of The Wheel of Time season 3 will be posted for Amazon Prime subscribers every Thursday. This write-up covers episode six, "The Shadow in the Night," which was released on April 3.

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© Prime/Amazon MGM Studios

Andrew Cunningham and Lee Hutchinson have spent decades of their lives with Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson's Wheel of Time books, and they previously brought that knowledge to bear as they recapped each first season episode and second season episode of Amazon's WoT TV series. Now we're back in the saddle for season 3—along with insights, jokes, and the occasional wild theory.

These recaps won't cover every element of every episode, but they will contain major spoilers for the show and the book series. We'll do our best to not spoil major future events from the books, but there's always the danger that something might slip out. If you want to stay completely unspoiled and haven't read the books, these recaps aren't for you.

New episodes of The Wheel of Time season three will be posted for Amazon Prime subscribers every Thursday. This write-up covers episode five, "Tel'Aran'Rhiod," which was released on March 27.

Read full article

Comments

© Prime/Amazon MGM Studios

Andrew Cunningham and Lee Hutchinson have spent decades of their lives with Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson's Wheel of Time books, and they previously brought that knowledge to bear as they recapped each first season episode and second season episode of Amazon's WoT TV series. Now we're back in the saddle for season 3—along with insights, jokes, and the occasional wild theory.

These recaps won't cover every element of every episode, but they will contain major spoilers for the show and the book series. We'll do our best to not spoil major future events from the books, but there's always the danger that something might slip out. If you want to stay completely unspoiled and haven't read the books, these recaps aren't for you.

New episodes of The Wheel of Time season three will be posted for Amazon Prime subscribers every Thursday. This write-up covers episode four, "The Road to the Spear," which was released on March 20.

Read full article

Comments

© Prime/Amazon MGM Studios

Andrew Cunningham and Lee Hutchinson have spent decades of their lives with Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson's Wheel of Time books, and they previously brought that knowledge to bear as they recapped each first season episode and second season episode of Amazon's WoT TV series. Now we're back in the saddle for season three—along with insights, jokes, and the occasional wild theory.

These recaps won't cover every element of every episode, but they will contain major spoilers for the show and the book series. We'll do our best to not spoil major future events from the books, but there's always the danger that something might slip out. If you want to stay completely unspoiled and haven't read the books, these recaps aren't for you.

New episodes of The Wheel of Time season three will be posted for Amazon Prime subscribers every Thursday. This write-up covers the entire three-episode season premiere, which was released on March 13.

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We’re an audiobook family at House Hutchinson, and at any given moment my wife or I are probably listening to one while puttering around. We've collected a bit over 300 of the things—mostly titles from web sources (including Amazon's Audible) and from older physical "books on tape" (most of which are actually on CDs). I don't mind doing the extra legwork of getting everything into files and then dragging-n-dropping those files into the Books app on my Mac, but my wife prefers to simply use Audible's app to play things directly—it's (sometimes) quick, it's (generally) easy, and it (occasionally) works.

But a while back, the Audible app stopped working for her. Tapping the app's "Library" button would just show a spinning loading icon, forever. All the usual troubleshooting (logging in and out in various ways, removing and reinstalling the app, other familiar rituals) yielded no results; some searching around on Google and DuckDuckGo led me to nothing except a lot of other people having the same problem and a whole lot of silence from Audible and Amazon.

So, having put in the effort to do things the "right" way and having that way fail, I changed tacks and fixed the problem, permanently, with Audiobookshelf.

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In a media briefing held Monday, the South Korean Personal Information Protection Commission indicated that it had paused new downloads within the country of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek's mobile app. The restriction took effect on Saturday and doesn't affect South Korean users who already have the app installed on their devices. The DeepSeek service also remains accessible in South Korea via the web.

Per Reuters, PIPC explained that representatives from DeepSeek acknowledged the company had "partially neglected" some of its obligations under South Korea's data protection laws, which provide South Koreans some of the strictest privacy protections globally.

PIPC investigation division director Nam Seok is quoted by the Associated Press as saying DeepSeek "lacked transparency about third-party data transfers and potentially collected excessive personal information." DeepSeek reportedly has dispatched a representative to South Korea to work through any issues and bring the app into compliance.

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