Senate Democrats today opposed President Trump’s nominee for an open Federal Communications Commission seat, and criticized Republicans for moving to confirm a new commissioner during the period before Democrats take control of Congress in January 2027. Democrats also plan to use their majority next year to launch probes of FCC Chairman Brendan Carr.

“After the American people last week overwhelmingly rejected the MAGA agenda, there is no justification for this committee to advance partisan nominees during the lame-duck period,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said today at the Commerce Committee’s nomination hearing for Danielle Thumann Severs, Trump’s pick to fill an empty commissioner’s seat.

Thumann Severs, an attorney and senior counsel to Carr, faced questions from Democrats about whether she supports Carr’s attacks on TV broadcasters.

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Grok Build, the vibe-coding agent from SpaceXSI, is leaking data—some of it proprietary business information and other sensitive secrets—from thousands of its users, including the very same Elon Musk-owned company that offers the platform, new research shows.

The information is revealed through links allowing Grok Build users to share their apps with others. Grok takes steps to randomize the URLs so only people who know the exact URL can access the data stored there. A design decision by developers of the platform, however, completely torpedoes that objective and makes it possible for anyone to enumerate thousands of live Grok Build projects. Except in rare cases, clicking those links opens the app and reveals all data associated with it.

You had one job

Research from security firm Claroc shows that the exposed data includes things like internal business plans, ad proposals, medical exam results, galley checklists from a celebrity cruise line, and employee names and ID numbers. Ironically, some of the sensitive data comes from two-dozen apps built by SpaceXSI (the name of the now-merged SpaceX and xAI) itself. A small sampling of the documents revealed in the SpaceXSI apps—Claroc found 24 of them—include an onboarding plan, marked confidential, for a new member of SpaceXSI’s enterprise sales team, a sales territory map of 594 accounts, internal system addresses for sales team tools, and advertising proposals.

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Our modern world runs on math, from social media algorithms, package delivery, and weather prediction to medical imaging and machine learning. The rise of computers helped fuel its dominance, enabling us to work with increasingly large numbers that would otherwise be beyond the capacity of our finite human brains. But with the rise of large language models, AI chatbots, and, soon, quantum computing, so-called “big math” is beginning to outstrip its creators entirely. What that means, and how we might adapt, is the focus of a new book, Big Math: The Hidden Codes That Run Our World, by applied mathematicians Steven Strogatz and Alex Townsend.

Strogatz is perhaps best known in his field for his co-authorship of a seminal 1998 paper with Duncan Watts on the collective dynamics of small-world networks. He has also studied chaos theory as applied to physics, the geometry of supercoiled DNA, and the biological collective oscillators, such as swarms of synchronously flashing fireflies and crickets that chirp in unison. In 2005, Strogatz extended his study of synchronicity to the crowds that caused the wobbling of London’s Millennium Bridge.

An award-winning communicator, Strogatz wrote three series of columns on mathematics for The New York Times in 2010, 2012, and 2025 and hosted a podcast for Quanta magazine from 2020–2021. He has written four popular books: Sync (2003), The Calculus of Friendship (2009), The Joy of X (2012), and the New York Times bestseller Infinite Powers (2019).

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New York is launching a state-backed AI safety research center at Binghamton University that will independently study and test AI systems, develop safety and security techniques, and train researchers in responsible AI. “While the federal government fails to act, New York is leading the way on AI safety and holding big tech accountable,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said. “The stakes are too high to simply take AI companies at their word.” Politico reports: The center — which is funded by a $30 million gift from Bloomberg co-founder Tom Secunda and a $25 million research investment from SUNY and New York state — is set to launch before New York’s major AI safety law, the RAISE Act, comes into effect on Jan. 1. That will require submissions of detailed safety frameworks from AI companies operating in New York State, which Hochul’s office hopes will be scrutinized by researchers at the new center.

“AI is opening up questions that scientists could not tackle before,” said Secunda, who also serves as the board chair of Empire AI, a $500 million public-private partnership. “With Empire AI and researchers across New York, the Center can test systems independently and give public officials evidence they can use.”

Over 80 leading scientists and researchers on AI systems from across New York state will contribute to the effort, which will be run by the New York Center for AI Responsibility and Research at Binghamton University, according to details shared by Hochul’s office. The initiative will be led by Jeannette Wing, the executive vice president for research at Columbia University, and Greg Morrisett, the vice provost of Cornell Tech.

“We need new techniques that can be applied to this new kind of system with swarms of autonomous agents acting independently and without control. How can you first detect that they’re going to do harm, and how can you prevent them from doing harm?” said Wing. “The beauty of what’s being proposed is that this state is committing resources to really light this up.”

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Meta is starting to sell 3D films too.

A software update will tell users if they’re affected and direct them to Meta’s customer support for a full replacement.

As AI-generated content takes over the internet, will human beings still be able to connect online with other humans in a meaningful way?

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Anthropic announced new workplace features on Tuesday, including Claude Meetings, which brings Claude into video calls to begin working on tasks while participants are still talking. The company also unveiled Claude Whiteboards and Claude Sheets. The launch of Anthropic’s new productivity-focused features comes just a few weeks after OpenAI unveiled a series of workplace tools that allow users to collaborate with ChatGPT to do things like visualize company information and create presentations, as both companies compete to turn their products into office suites of sorts to take on Microsoft and Google. Meta is also joining the competition with its Muse AI agent, which can build mini-apps on the fly to help users complete specific tasks. Here’s a summary of each of the offerings Anthropic announced today:

Claude Meetings: Allows Claude to join video calls as a visible participant, take notes, answer questions, retrieve information from connected apps, and create plans, timelines, and action items in real time. Available in beta for Team and Enterprise plans, initially supporting Google Meet.

Claude Whiteboards: A collaborative visual workspace where teams can brainstorm with Claude, organize ideas into timelines and plans, and turn their work into documents or slide decks. It also integrates with Claude Meetings to build whiteboards during conversations.

Claude Sheets: Lets teams create and collaboratively edit spreadsheets with Claude, including budgets and trackers with multiple tabs, formulas, formatting, and dropdown menus. Claude can make changes directly in cells while explaining its edits.

Anthropic also announced the general availability of Claude Data (formerly Claude Dashboards) that connects Claude to business systems like CRMs and data warehouses. “Users can ask questions, and Claude responds with dashboards, written data stories, or narrated videos,” reports TechCrunch. Additionally, the company announced new interactive connectors that let users open Claude and work within third-party apps like Adobe, Atlassian, and HubSpot.

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If you’ve seen an uptick in security updates as of late, you’re not alone. AI models have become very good at finding new security vulnerabilities throughout 2026. Researchers and hackers alike are increasingly relying on these models in their individual pursuits: Hackers want to find these flaws to exploit them, while researchers want to block hackers from doing so. Microsoft’s latest Patch Tuesday update included more than 1,400 patches; meanwhile, Apple’s latest security update fixed two iMessage flaws that let both bad actors and innocent parties alike access texts they shouldn’t.

Whether you use a Mac or a PC, you probably browse the web with Chrome, or a Chromium-based browser. As it happens, Google’s web browsing platform is the latest to receive an important security update—but it’s far from the first important Chrome update of the year.

Google just patched its eighth actively exploited Chrome flaw of 2026

As reported by The Hacker News, Google released a new update for Chrome on Monday that patches nine security flaws. While all vulnerabilities are important to patch, one in particular is more serious than the rest: CVE-2026-125350, a use-after-free bug in Chrome’s XML component.

Use-after-free vulnerabilities happen when the system frees up a memory location, but a program tries to access it anyway. It’s a glitch in programming, but it offers bad actors an opportunity to break into your system. At worst, it allows arbitrary code execution, or, in other words, gives hackers the ability to run their own code in the app or system.

That’s bad enough on the surface, but, unfortunately, Google confirmed that CVE-2026-125350 has an active exploit in the wild. The company is keeping other details close to the vest, but it’s dangerous nonetheless. At least someone, somewhere, has used this flaw against a target, which puts all Chrome users (as well as users of Chromium-based browsers) at risk.

What’s more, this isn’t Chrome’s first active exploit of the year—this is its eighth. The company is playing catch-up with hackers looking to target users of its browser, which makes sense, seeing as Chrome is by far the world’s most popular browser.

How to patch this latest Chrome flaw

If you’re using Chrome on your computer, you’ll want to update it as soon as possible. Make sure you’re running at least versions 157.0.8103.50/.51 on Mac or PC, or 157.0.8103.50 on Linux. To check, click the three dots in the top-right corner of your Chrome window, then go to More > Help > About Google Chrome.

Other Chromium-based browsers may not have the update yet, but they are affected by this flaw. If you use browsers like Microsoft Edge, Opera, or Brave, keep an eye on your updates to install any of the latest patches.

Google has announced a “super network” upgrade for its Fi cell service. For the past few years, Google Fi has operated exclusively on the T-Mobile network, but now it’s adding support for a second 5G network. Oddly, Google refuses to say which one.

Google’s MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) launched in 2015 as Project Fi with support for both T-Mobile and Sprint service. The service initially only worked on Google’s Nexus phones, which would switch between networks based on signal strength. After T-Mobile absorbed Sprint, Fi switched to being a single-network service in the US while continuing to hop between networks for international travel.

With the super network, Google Fi is again a dual-carrier service stateside. Phones connected to Fi will be able to hop between T-Mobile 5G and a different 5G network to provide the best possible connectivity. Google’s blog post announcing the change conspicuously doesn’t mention either network, saying only that it supports “two of America’s best 5G cellular networks.”

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Google’s Pixel phones get an update every month, but most are just security patches and bug fixes. The bigger changes are bundled into quarterly Pixel Drops, and one is rolling out today. The update brings a few new things, and many of the Gemini features previously exclusive to the latest Pixel phones will also expand to Google’s Pixel 10 lineup.

The Pixel 11 was Google’s first foray into “Gemini Intelligence” branding, something we’ll see a lot more of going forward. Some of the features under that heading were limited to Google’s newest phones (and in some cases, Samsung’s phones). The November Pixel Drop will expand these AI features to the Pixel 10 lineup, but importantly, that doesn’t include the budget-oriented Pixel 10a.

For starters, the Pixel 10 series will get the improved personalized suggestions (previously known as Magic Cue) that debuted on the Pixel 11. This enables things like sending grocery lists to Google Keep from other apps and generating summaries from the context menu. Rambler, Google’s AI-assisted voice input system, is also coming to the 2025 phones. Likewise, Gemini app automation will roll out on Pixel 10 with this update. This feature is still limited to select apps in rideshare, food delivery, travel, and a few other categories.

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Tubi users can now create and share playlists of movies and shows available on the streaming service.

Tubi is a free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) service that has both live channels and on-demand content.

Today, the Fox-owned company announced “Mixtapes” as a way for users to make watchlists from Tubi’s “nearly 400,000 movies and TV episodes,” Tubi’s announcement said, adding:

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SpaceX has unveiled the Starlink Mini 2, equipping the company’s smallest satellite internet terminal with a removable 71Wh battery and Wi-Fi 6. Preorders are opening to select U.S. customers for $999, which also includes a year of Roam Unlimited service. Shipments are expected to begin in mid-December. InterestingEngineering reports: The removable battery represents the biggest functional upgrade over the original Starlink Mini. Previously, users needed an external power source to operate the satellite terminal. That meant carrying additional equipment for camping trips, remote work, or extended journeys. Mini 2 addresses that limitation with a detachable 71 Wh battery pack. It weighs approximately 1.08 pounds (490 grams) and delivers up to 4.5 hours of connectivity. Owners can replace it with another charged battery when necessary.

The battery also features LED indicators and its own USB-C charging port. SpaceX supports 60-watt USB-C Power Delivery charging for the pack. The retail kit includes a compatible 60-watt wall adapter and a three-meter USB-C cable. Users can also power the terminal through USB-C without relying on its battery. A physical power button replaces the original model’s simpler plug-and-play arrangement.

[…] SpaceX has also upgraded the wireless hardware from Wi-Fi 5 to Wi-Fi 6. The integrated router supports coverage across approximately 1,800 square feet (167 square meters). An IP67 rating provides additional protection against dust and water. Other hardware details include a foldable kickstand and a standard 1/4-inch-20 tripod mounting thread. The terminal also offers a 55-degree field of view for satellite acquisition.

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Over 60,000 runners crossed the finish line at the New York City Marathon last week. When you think of the elites fighting for a spot on the podium, you might expect to see only the priciest, most feature-packed GPS watches money can buy—historically, this meant the most premium Garmin Forerunners. Looking at the wrists of this year’s New York City Marathon podium finishers, though,  you’ll see that Garmin—the name most recreational runners reach for by default—was far from the only brand on the course.

Here are the watches I’ve been able to confirm among the top NYC Marathon finishers:

• Men’s winner, Andreas Almgren: Coros Pace 4 (sponsored)

• Men’s runner-up, Yemaneberhan Crippa: Amazfit Cheetah 2 Pro (sponsored)

• Women’s runner-up, Jessica McClain: Garmin Forerunner 570 (sponsored)

• Women’s third place, Hellen Obiri: Coros Pace 4 (sponsored)

• Nonbinary winner, Ryan Montgomery: Suunto Race 3S (almost certainly sponsored, since this watch was released last month)

An important disclaimer: I haven’t spoken with any of these athletes. What follows is my opinion, based on what I know running watches offer the people who wear them.

Is Garmin still the king?

“Garmin” has long been the default answer to “what running watch should I buy?” It earned that spot with reliable GPS, excellent software, and a huge ecosystem. And on this podium, it’s represented by a Forerunner 570—a great watch, but at a price tag most runners would struggle to justify. 

Of course, sponsorships muddy the water, since athletes wear what their sponsors put on their wrists. But that’s exactly the point: Other brands are investing in elite runners because they believe their products can stand next to Garmin’s, and it looks like they’re making the right bet.

It’s fair to ask whether Garmin’s grip is loosening. The company has increasingly pushed toward the fanciest watches with the most features at higher and higher price points. The Forerunner 570 starts north of $500. Meanwhile, COROS, Amazfit, and others are proving that a perfectly solid, competitive watch doesn’t need to cost that much. Is Garmin still the best running watch overall? For ecosystem, polish, and depth of features, it’s still a strong contender. But “best” no longer means “the only serious option,” and the gap between Garmin and the field is narrower than it has been in years. Sponsored or not, seeing two Coros Pace 4s and an Amazfit Cheetah 2 Pro among the top finishers is worth noting.

What I look for in a solid running watch

You don’t need an expensive watch to be elite—just look at the cheap running watches worn by the men who broke the sub-two-hour barrier at the London Marathon this past spring. Training load scores, recovery metrics, maps, music, and smart notifications are nice, but they’re extras. If you’re shopping for a watch, spend your money on the basics being done right, and don’t feel pressured to pay for features you’ll never use. Everything besides your time and pace is icing on the cake.

Whichever brand you choose, focus on these basics in your running watch:

• Reliable pace and distance

• Accurate heart rate sensor

• A screen you can read at a glance

• Easy, dependable buttons

• Battery that outlasts your race

• Comfort

The New York City Marathon podium shows a running-watch market that’s a bit more competitive and intriguing than the era of “just buy a Garmin” suggests. Garmin is still excellent, but now we’re seeing proof that Coros, Amazfit, and Suunto are all making watches good enough for the fastest humans on the planet. If they can trust those watches on their biggest days, the rest of us can probably trust them with our Saturday long runs.

Nintendo is hiring a digital archivist to help ensure the company’s historical records are “preserved for future generations.” The 12-month position is tasked with designing and implementing a “structured framework for organizing technical records, engineering documentation, source materials, and institutional knowledge related to legacy systems and platforms.” Polygon reports: In the past, Nintendo has drawn criticism from the preservation community. In 2022, the Video Game History Foundation publicly criticized the company for announcing it would be closing the Wii U and 3DS eShops. The foundation released a statement saying that Nintendo’s decision was “actively destructive to video game history.” The statement also pointed out that Nintendo is part of the Entertainment Software Association, which funds lobbying that prevents a number of preservation efforts.

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