Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) reported today that they used OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra language model to raise a small, open source Qwen model’s math score roughly sixfold by directly editing its weights — the numerical parameters that govern its behavior. Rikiya Takehi, Jayden Teoh, Alex Zhang and Omar Khattab described their work in a research blog post published November 2. They call the approach “weight-space programming” and tested Astra’s ability to interpret and alter networks without using conventional training procedures to generate the edits.

In the strongest language-model example, Astra’s intervention raised Qwen3.5-0.8B’s MATH-500 score from 7.9% to 48.1% while touching approximately 0.016% of its weights. The improvement came primarily from correcting repetitive reasoning—a distinction that shaped both the technical findings and the debate over their implications. Their experiments explored a broader possibility: AI systems that inspect, repair and construct other neural networks by working directly on their internal machinery.

Videostrong Technology is a hardware manufacturer based in Shenzhen, China. It builds Android devices, including home TV boxes and projectors. According to Google, Videostrong deliberately embedded the XCPE backdoor in device firmware and sold access to criminal affiliates, allowing them to install additional malware modules on devices shipped to unsuspecting customers. When buyers connected these devices to their home networks, the preinstalled backdoor allowed operators to create proxy networks and hide malicious traffic using the customers’ internet connections without their knowledge.

The firmware’s pre-installed management agent purported to be a standard remote-management client, according to TrendAI. It pulled updates from a GitHub page, and connected to a Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) server that gave the operator full remote control of each box, allowing them to install and remove apps, change settings, and push updates to the infected devices. Between June 3 and October 1, TrendAI documented more than 3.8 million distinct home and mobile IP addresses connected to the operation.

The coalition also disrupted the command-and-control domains used to manage the affiliate modules. “Because these affiliates each have diversified distribution channels for their modules beyond XCPE, we assess that taking down their C2 domains will sever access to at least 10 million additional compromised devices,” according to GTIG. Google said it had since cut ties with Videostrong, and banned the OEM from making devices with preloaded Google apps.

China’s lunar landings will involve a lunar-orbit rendezvous similar to what NASA did in the 1960s and early 1970s with the Apollo program. However, lacking a rocket as powerful as the Saturn V vehicle, the crew and lunar lander will launch separately to the Moon. According to slides shared on social media, the current plan involves:

- An uncrewed test of the Long March 10A rocket (a single-stick variant, with no boosters) and the Mengzhou spacecraft to low-Earth orbit. Target: early 2027
- An uncrewed test of the larger Long March 10 rocket (a core stage with two boosters) and the Lanyue lunar lander, including descent/ascent from Moon’s surface. Target: 2028
- A concurrent launch of two Long March 10 rockets, one carrying uncrewed Mengzhou and the other the Lanyue vehicle; they will dock in lunar orbit. Target: 2029
- Dual launch of Long March 10 rockets, this time with crew on the Mengzhou spacecraft, leading to crewed landing mission. Target: “Before 2030”

The public release of this new information provides a timeline for gauging China’s technical progress in its efforts to land humans on the Moon before 2030 and beat NASA and the United States back to the lunar surface. Notably, the plan (for now, at least) omits a mission similar to Apollo 8 or Artemis II, which involved a crew flying out to the Moon and either entering orbit or passing close by before returning to Earth. The Mengzhou vehicle should still get a workout closer to Earth with humans on board as part of missions carrying astronauts to Tiangong, China’s space station in low-Earth orbit.

The world’s leading EV maker is showing no signs of slowing down. BYD sold 490,168 new energy vehicles (NEVs) in October, up 11% from the prior year and the company’s highest monthly total in 2026. BYD’s battery electric vehicles drove the growth, with a record 305,743 units sold, up 37% year over year and marking the first time its EV sales have crossed the 300,000 mark. To put that into perspective, just over 262,500 EVs were sold in the US in the entire third quarter combined, according to Kelley Blue Book estimates.

The teenage plaintiffs, identified in court documents as S.J. and K.D.B., had alleged in the suit that Snapchat was designed to be addictive and that using the platform from a young age contributed to their mental health issues. “We are glad to reach resolution for our clients,” Mark Lanier, founder of The Lanier Law Firm and lead counsel for the plaintiffs, said in a statement to CBS News. “We believe this jury would have found the companies’ conduct reprehensible.”

Snap was the last social media company named in the lawsuit to settle the case, which was set for opening arguments this week. Meta resolved claims last week, while Alphabet and TikTok, the other defendants, each also resolved the allegations. Terms of the Snap settlement were undisclosed […].

Recently, reports emerged that LG TVs are sniffing around your local network, and even listening to your local environment, even when the TV is purportedly “off.” Some of those voice commands were then stored in plain text and uploaded to the internet. LG’s response? To deny everything. […] That latter point is central to a new study out of Northeastern that conducted 5,943 experiments across twelve commercial “smart” TV devices. The researchers found that most smart TVs utilize automatic content recognition (ACR), a technology that captures audio or video snapshots of viewed content and then monetizes that data to help build personalized profiles of viewers.

TV makers insist that users are supposed to be able to opt out, but the choice simply doesn’t work across a large segment of TVs. Companies like Vizio simply ignored the consumer requests entirely more often than not: “We find that the advertised ACR opt-out fully suppresses ACR-attributable traffic on only four operating systems; on Samsung Tizen traffic consistent with ACR activity persists in more than 60% of evaluated scenarios, and on Vizio SmartCast a content correlated endpoint hosted on Amazon Kinesis continues to receive traffic in 100% of opted-out scenarios.”

[…] The researchers say since they can’t see the precise scope of what’s being collected due to encryption, they’re unsure whether Vizio is technically violating its FTC agreement (not that we have a current FTC that would care if they were): “The opt-out setting has no observable effect on traffic sent to this endpoint; however, we cannot inspect the payload due to encryption so we cannot confirm whether this violates the FTC settlement.” Results of whether opting out of ACR tracking actually stopped ACR tracking were all over the map. Roku, for example, ignores opt-out requests when users are watching Roku’s own channels. None of the smart TV vendors track Netflix viewing for fear of violating agreements with the streaming giant. Samsung’s opt out function was more likely to actually work when a user was watching antenna broadcasts.

On two Smart TV platforms, personal viewing data collected by ACR remains unencrypted, despite years of bad press and scandal on the subject. Many appear to be violating the law, but because U.S. regulatory oversight has been gutted, they see no meaningful accountability. That includes smart TV OS’ like VIDAA, which is most prominently found on Hisense and Toshiba smart TVs: “VIDAA OS sends ACR data to servers run by Unruly over MQTT without encryption, so anyone on the network path between the TV and those servers can read it. Each message carries a Client ID, a permanent identifier for the TV that can’t be reset, along with the time zone, the app name, the input (antenna, HDMI), the antenna channel and an audio fingerprint.”

According to the report, HomeView Ultra will feature a larger 9-inch touchscreen mounted on a robotic arm. This arm can automatically turn the screen toward the user. With a camera and several sensors, this smart home hub is said to be “fully aware” of its surroundings and capable of acting autonomously. This autonomy ranges from turning on the lights when someone enters the room to shooing a cat away when it jumps onto a table. These sensors are also intended to prevent the arm from hitting nearby objects with the display.

Apple is reportedly currently planning to announce this smart home hub in 2027 for around $1,000, but according to The Information, its launch could be delayed until 2028. The reason is allegedly the software, which has not yet been finalized, while the hardware is said to be ready for market already.

According to Washington Post’s sources, the deal could look like SpaceX acquiring Boost Mobile outright or gaining access to its cell network, which is leased from AT&T and T-Mobile. There could be a major hitch with the deal though, since SpaceX’s potential mobile service would need the green light from those major mobile carriers, according to the report. The Washington Post also reported that major cell companies, which include AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon, have already turned down Musk down for access to its cell networks in order to launch a separate SpaceX service.

Data centers are deeply unpopular. But what if we called them something else? Axios reports that OpenAI is preparing a “PR blitz” for after the midterm elections on Tuesday, as Democrats seem likely to win back the House of Representatives, and possibly the Senate, too. The company’s chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane told Axios that the midterms will be “a bit of a movie trailer for what you’re going to see in 2028,” when he expects AI to be “the issue” in the presidential election.

So OpenAI is to influence the AI debate moving forward, with Lehane discussing several proposals, including the development of AI “speed limits”; finding ways to help people see AI as empowering them in their daily lives; pushing the U.S. to take a role in developing global standards; and yes — rebranding data centers as “AI compute campuses.” Lehane also described the conversation around data centers (a debate that has pushed Amazon and Microsoft to say they will no longer use NDAs in their negotiations with local governments) as “good and healthy.” “Communities should hold companies responsible and accountable so they really and truly get a transformative benefit from these projects,” he said.

According to a complaint (PDF) filed by the companies that run New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, and the Orlando Sentinel, Brave Software has monetized its index of scraped websites by, in part, providing AI companies with paid access to “real-time online content from the Brave Index.” The AI companies then use that index to train their models, access content to “respond to specific user queries,” or both. Brave has allegedly provided “stolen copyrighted content” to “many” AI companies including Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, and Cohere. Brave also promotes “hundreds of top publishers” as being accessible through its “Paywall blocker” feature in its browser.

“Brave has never asked for the Publishers’ permission to access their websites, much less to copy the material and provide it to users or other AI companies,” the complaint says. “On the contrary, as noted above, Brave allows its users to bypass the Publishers’ paywalls without their consent, and has taken other steps that prevent the Publishers from blocking Brave’s access to the Publishers’ websites. Brave has never compensated the Publishers for the unlawful use, copying, and distribution of the Publishers’ copyrighted content.”

Outlook users have been left with the most homework. Switching to the new Canadian time zones won’t automatically update existing calendar entries, meaning that meetings scheduled after November 1 are potentially an hour out of whack. Microsoft advises users to change their Outlook calendar time zone, then update upcoming events and meetings to use it. For meetings involving other people, only the organizer can make the change.

Recurring meetings come with an additional treat: changing the time zone resets any previously moved occurrences, which then have to be recreated. Anyone with a calendar full of recurring meetings may wish to put the kettle on first. Microsoft is working on an Exchange Online PowerShell cmdlet to remediate non-recurring meetings, but according to its guidance, that’s not due until later this week. A fix for recurring meetings remains “in development,” with an ETA yet to be confirmed.

Things get stranger with Power Automate and Fabric, where Microsoft’s temporary fix involves pretending you’re somewhere else entirely. Depending on the product and province, that could mean Saskatchewan, Arizona or, for Manitobans, Bogota. Because apparently time zones weren’t confusing enough already. SharePoint On-Prem customers, meanwhile, have to wait until November 10 for the correct time zones to arrive, while Power Pages users could see server-formatted dates appear an hour out until a service fix lands. Microsoft’s current milestone for that is December 12.

Through the acquisition, Marvell said it can combine electrical and optical technologies to meet accelerating and shifting AI connectivity demands across regions and systems. Companies are increasingly relying on optical connections to piece together chips used to run and train large language models. Lumentum shareholders will receive 4.5 Marvell shares for each Lumentum share under the agreement. The deal is expected to close during the first half of 2028. Marvell’s takeover marks one of the most significant bets on AI in 2026 and comes despite recent concerns over the long-term sustainability of infrastructure spending.

Supermarket chains in Sweden, Belgium and Luxembourg have said the temperatures of their refrigerators and freezers in dozens of stores rose overnight, prompting fears of a cyber-attack similar to one that caused millions of euros of food losses in France. Sweden’s Coop chain told the daily Aftonbladet on Monday that six of its stores had been affected, while ICA said it was “aware that a limited number of stores were affected by an incident overnight which impacted their refrigeration and freezer systems”.

The Dutch retailer Ahold Delhaize, which last month reported a cybersecurity incident to police in the Netherlands, said an “IT incident” had hit fridges and freezers in dozens of its supermarkets in Belgium and Luxembourg. A company spokesperson, Sarah De Meester, said the supermarket chain had established that temperatures in the cooling systems had increased, adding that the incident was being investigated. Belgium’s Le Soir newspaper reported that dozens of stores and supermarkets were affected, including five Spar outlets, multiple Shop & Go convenience stores attached to Q8 service stations, and a number of smaller Proxy Delhaize minimarkets.

Back in 2024, when the spectre of AI-‘created’ video games was still in its infancy, indie platform itch.io decided that the best it could do to combat this growing threat was, like Valve has done with Steam, institute a voluntary ‘AI’ filter when adding new projects to the site. By November 2026, as itch buckles under the weight of new AI-generated ‘games’ pouring onto the site, that filter is proving about as robust as a wet paper bag.... Shopfronts are being deluged by this shit, and it’s making it a terrible user experience for customers.

And while in Valve’s case there’s a compelling case for stronger human moderation of the store, I’m not sure that’s a viable option for a relatively tiny, community-run platform like itch… [A]t time of writing I visited the latest releases section and there was still a huge number of clearly AI-generated titles (or titles making extensive use of AI in their visual assets) which made no use of itch’s voluntary tag system.

The issue here isn’t that these games are making money—itch themselves say in a reply that while the number of projects listed has doubled, “the number of downloads and purchases has not"—it’s that an inability to combat this surge makes the site worse for every single person using it. It gets harder to find real games, for example, and it also makes the shopfront look like a clearance rack.

According to WWBT 12 On Your Side, Richmond, Virginia, police didn’t have a license plate number for the suspect’s car, making it impossible to search Flock’s records for that plate. Flock cameras collect more than just license plate information, so police searched for a make, model, color, and approximate model year. Based on this extremely vague description, police zeroed in on Crump’s 2012 Hyundai Elantra. Around 2 a.m. they started looking through the windows with flashlights to see what was in plain sight, which isn’t technically a “search” — at least, not one that would require a warrant… [Crump was asleep, but left her home to speak to the police officers to tell them they had the wrong car. But they didn’t believe her.]

Other body cam footage shows an officer expressing doubt that Crump’s car is the right one, since child seats and other items inside seem inconsistent with a shooting. Another officer replies, “Don’t be surprised if they would have set that up like that.” Instead of believing the evidence, or Crump, or interviewing witnesses who could have corroborated her story, police called Seibert’s Towing to impound the car…

[Later] Police identified a similar-looking car that seemed to be actually connected to the shooting, and released Crump’s Elantra. Nobody actually told Crump this until four days later. Seibert’s told Moneywise that police didn’t actually release the car until then. Either way, they didn’t tell her that Seibert’s had ripped the front bumper off during the towing process — leaving the car undrivable — until she arrived to pick it up. Seibert’s took responsibility for causing the cosmetic damage, and was willing to cover the $2,212.30 bill to paint and replace the bumper cover, fog lights, and wheel liners. Then Crump asked for a full mechanical inspection, which revealed damaged tie rods and ball joints, jacking the bill beyond $6,000. Seibert’s says it didn’t cause this damage. Regardless of how it occurred, Seibert’s insurer and Crump agree that her Hyundai is now a total loss due to the cost of the repairs it needs. It had been drivable, if mechanically worn, before police ordered it towed, damaging it for nothing more than a case of mistaken identity.