Tech companies are painting data centers with gray coatings on top of gray concrete and steel to resist fire, rust and static electricity. That has made data centers a fast-growing market for paint makers.
The Cyprus Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Keve) announced on Wednesday that existing businesses can apply for funding of up to €100,000 per project under a new €1.5 million grant schemeaimed at accelerating the development and commercialisation of innovative cybersecurity products and services.
The programme was announced by the Office of the Commissioner of Communications’ Digital Security Authority (DSA), acting as Cyprus’ designated National Cybersecurity Coordination Centre (NCC-CY), in cooperation with the Research and Innovation Foundation (RIF).
The scheme aims to help existing enterprises rapidly develop and bring competitive cybersecurity solutions to market, with funding available for innovative software, hardware and educational material.
The educational component covers material designed for critical infrastructure operators, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and students.
The total budget stands at €1.5 million, with individual projects eligible for grants of up to €100,000.
The call for proposals was launched on October 9, with applications due by December 8, 2026.
The scheme is co-funded by the Republic of Cyprus and the European Union’s Digital Europe Programme under the European project N4CY2, titled “Advancing the NCC-CY – The Next Chapter of the National Cybersecurity Coordination Centre of Cyprus”.
Interested businesses can find details of the funding conditions and submit proposals through the RIF’s IRIS platform.
Applicants can locate the relevant funding call by visiting the platform’s calls for proposals section.
The NCC-CY and RIF will hold an online information webinar on October 26 to explain the scheme and provide further details to prospective applicants.
Keve encouraged eligible enterprises to review the scheme’s provisions and consider applying for funding to support the development and market introduction of cybersecurity innovations.
Last week, New York state summoned me to jury duty.
I went, of course. It's the law, and my duty.
A jury may protect the innocent from government abuse. Ordinary citizens, not officials, decide if you are guilty.
But doing our patriotic duty shouldn't mean surrendering hours of our lives to bureaucratic indifference. Serving justice is important. Sitting around doing nothing isn't.
During my 50 years consumer reporting, I've watched greedy capitalists constantly make improvements and find better ways to do things. They use computers, adjust hours, reduce wait times.
If they don't, we consumers quickly switch to competitors who will.
But government bureaucracies—courts, the DMV, the passport office—have no competitors. So they don't try very hard.
Government is force.
My summons arrived on paper, in the mail.
Most businesses now communicate with customers instantly, by text or email. Airlines send boarding passes to our phones. Doctors text reminders. Restaurants send notifications when our table is ready.
But government sends paper.
We summoned jurors meekly arrive at the courthouse and wait. And wait.
I'm old; it's important I hydrate. At least government provides a water cooler and a drinking fountain. Oh, damn, neither works.
We sit another hour.
Eventually, a bored clerk drones through long instructions on how fill out a form. Printed instructions would be better—a video would be much better. But this is government, and government bureaucracies have little incentive to innovate.
Finally, clerks choose 80 of us to be considered for a criminal trial. "Wait in the hall," we're told.
We wait.
Then they tell us, "Go across the street to another building, and wait there."
We go.
After an hour, we're admitted into a courtroom, where another bureaucrat tells us, "Come back Monday."
Monday! This was the Thursday before. Imagine an airline telling 80 passengers, "Welcome to the airport. Your flight is in five days. Come back then."
No airline would survive doing that.
But courts don't have competition.
When court finally starts, a stenographer types away, recording what people say. Computers today transcribe speech instantly, accurately, at almost no cost. But New York taxpayers still pay someone to type every word.
Amazon experiments with faster delivery. Supermarkets install self-checkout machines. Banks let us deposit checks just by photographing them with our phones.
Capitalism protects your time while bureaucrats waste it.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman explained why by pointing out there are four ways to spend money:
No. 1: Spend your money on yourself. Then you're very careful about both cost and quality.
No. 2: Spend your own money on someone else. You're careful about the cost, but don't care as much about the quality.
No. 3: Spend someone else's money on yourself. You care less about cost, but still care about quality.
No. 4: Spend someone else's money on someone else. You don't care about cost OR quality.
That's what government does.
Some court workers work hard, and many want to help people. But they're stuck in a system where saving people's time brings them no rewards.
In my case, 80 prospective jurors sat around for at least six hours, just waiting—that's 12 40-hour work weeks lost. Some had to hire babysitters, reschedule doctor's appointments, tell their bosses they'll try to make up the work at night. Some lost income. Some missed opportunities.
For just one case. Multiply that by thousands of cases: countless hours of human progress vanish.
Why not stagger arrival times? Let jurors wait at home until needed? Use text messages to call people in?
Because innovation takes effort. So courts don't bother.
They act as if wasting our time is free. It's not.
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