Australia's intelligence head, Mike Burgess, has revealed that China-backed hackers are actively probing the country's critical infrastructure, with some already gaining access. These hacking groups, supported by the Chinese government, are positioning themselves for potential sabotage and espionage activities.

Burgess specifically mentioned Volt Typhoon, a hacking group attempting to infiltrate vital networks like power, water, and transportation systems. Successful breaches could lead to widespread outages and disruptions in essential services.

Another group, Salt Typhoon, known for targeting phone and internet companies to steal sensitive data, is also focused on Australia's telecoms infrastructure. This group has a history of hacking over 200 companies, including major US providers.

The warnings echo similar concerns raised by the U.S. government, highlighting the potential for economic and societal disruption due to these ongoing hacking campaigns. The situation underscores the need for heightened vigilance and cybersecurity measures to protect critical infrastructure.

Laurent Mekies, the new CEO of Oracle Red Bull Racing, emphasizes teamwork, efficiency, and a culture of continuous improvement. Mekies, who transitioned from an engineering background, focuses on eliminating friction in workflows to gain competitive advantages. He values the contributions of the entire team, highlighting their efforts in turning around the car's performance. Mekies also discusses the challenges of building their own power unit with Ford for 2026, emphasizing the high-risk, high-gain approach. Despite the risks, Mekies is optimistic about the team's ability to compete and improve, focusing on race-by-race performance and continuous lap time improvements.

Eternos, the legacy service founded by Robert LoCascio, has rebranded as Uare.ai and secured $10.3 million in seed funding. The company is shifting its focus from preserving memories for the deceased to creating personal AI models for professional and personal use.

Uare.ai's Human Life Model (HLM) captures an individual's unique values, life story, and decision-making traits using their data. The platform will allow individuals to train their HLMs by answering questions about their lives through text, voice, and video. Unlike general LLMs, Uare.ai's model will not fill gaps with unrelated information, ensuring accuracy and personalization.

The vision for Uare.ai is to empower creators and professionals by enabling them to use their digital replicas to generate content, handle customer interactions, and execute projects. Uare.ai plans to generate revenue through subscription fees or a share of income earned by customers using their digital twins.

Google's November Pixel Drop introduces several new features to enhance user experience. Key updates include:

• Notification Summaries: Similar to Apple Intelligence, Pixel 9 and later devices will receive notification summaries for longer chats, with a feature to silence low-priority notifications coming in December.
• Low-Power Maps Mode: A new mode for the Maps app darkens the screen and displays only essential navigation information, potentially saving up to four hours of battery life on Pixel 10 series phones.
• Enhanced Scam Detection: Expanding to the U.K., Ireland, India, Australia, and Canada, Pixel phones will now include a "Likely a scam" button in message notifications, building on existing spam detection features.
• AI-Powered Photo Editing: The Remix feature, powered by Gemini Nano, allows users to reimagine photos with prompts in the Messages app (available in select countries with RCS enabled). Google Photos also gains a "Help me edit" feature for AI-driven edits like removing sunglasses or opening eyes.
• Prioritized Notifications: Designate up to eight VIP contacts and receive prioritized notifications from them, along with crisis badges in the contacts widget if an incident occurs in their area.
• Call Notes Expansion: The call transcription feature, Call Notes, is now supported in Australia, Canada, the U.K., Ireland, and Japan.
• "Wicked: For Good" Theme Pack: A new theme pack with wallpapers, icons, system sounds, and GIFs based on the movie is available for Pixel 6 and later devices.

Threads is introducing new features specifically designed for podcasters, aiming to foster discussions around podcasts within the app.

Key updates include:

• Enhanced podcast link appearance in the feed with colorful backgrounds and thumbnails.
• Dedicated space on user profiles for podcasters to add podcast links.

Meta plans to roll out more features in the future to help users discover podcasts and connect podcasters with listeners.

Threads currently boasts over 400 million monthly active users and 150 million daily active users.

The focus is on enhancing discussions around podcasts, not podcast distribution itself.