Apologies all for the delayed announcement but 1.8.1 is official.
The timing worked out poorly with this one. This was partially due to issues with the Windows buildbots, as @nilshg noted, and also partially because I didn’t sufficiently coordinate with Kristoffer over the final pieces, which is why the website update preceded the announcement by a noticeable margin. There are a number of pieces in the release process (that @dilumaluthge did a fantastic job outlining) where delays can happen and in this case you can blame me and the Windows operating system.