LEGO's BrickLink marketplace is back online after a week-long outage caused by what the company described as a "cyber incident," during which an unauthorized third party accessed some user data. Details about exactly what data was accessed remain unclear. The site went offline on November 5 and remained unavailable until November 12, preventing users from buying or selling LEGO sets and parts during the busy holiday shopping season. According to Brick Fanatics, LEGO initially described the outage as "necessary work" before confirming that the platform had suffered a security incident.

In an email to users, LEGO acknowledged that "some of the information associated with your account was accessed and disclosed by an unauthorized party," including potentially usernames and IP addresses. However, the company insisted that "your password, postal address, and financial information were not disclosed." Those assurances have since come under scrutiny following reports of convincing phishing emails containing detailed personal and purchase information.

The outage also dealt a significant blow to independent sellers who rely on BrickLink for income. Simon Webster, who operates stores on both BrickLink and rival marketplace Brick Owl, reported that his overall sales revenue fell 52% over a four-day period, even as sales through Brick Owl rose 79%. "Their comms are amateur at the best of times, but surely they should be able to send an email to let sellers and buyers alike know what is happening and what they're doing to rectify it," Webster said. "But no, we're all left in the dark."

The incident has renewed concerns about BrickLink's aging infrastructure. Founded in 2000 and acquired by LEGO in 2019, the marketplace reportedly runs on a complex collection of interconnected systems that makes modernization difficult. The Brick Fanatics report questions whether the 25-year-old platform remains fit for purpose and whether prolonged outages and security concerns could push sellers toward competing marketplaces like Brick Owl.

U.S. authorities have seized or restrained more than $1.2 billion in cryptocurrency stolen during Binance's $6 billion October hack, which the FBI attributes to North Korean military-linked hackers known as "TraderTraitor." The DOJ also said it disrupted infrastructure behind the "FaceStealer" deepfake scam, blamed for stealing more than $400 million in cryptocurrency. CNBC reports: Collective efforts between the U.S. government and private sector have resulted in more than $2.7 billion of that amount being frozen. [...] The DOJ said it was taking coordinated action against what it called the North Korean government's "schemes to fund its regime through the massive theft of cryptocurrency." That includes "the court-authorized seizure and restraint of more than $1.2 billion worth of cryptocurrency recently stolen from Binance," it said. DOJ units, law enforcement partners and virtual asset service providers have been working to intercept the stolen assets. But efforts to track and freeze the assets are ongoing, as TraderTraitor actors continue to launder them through various cryptocurrency channels.

Authorities have also seized cloud-based infrastructure used in a massive identity impersonation scam known as "FaceStealer," which has seen more than $400 million worth of cryptocurrency stolen over 18 months, the DOJ said. The scheme sees hackers set up fake video meetings using stolen accounts and recordings of people known to the target by using AI-generated deepfakes. The hackers then say a technical problem requires a fix, install malware on a computer and take over the victim's communications, steal their cryptocurrency and target their contacts -- sometimes months or more than a year after the initial compromise.

Mozilla is shutting down Solo, its AI-powered website builder and hosting service, on November 30. A notice on the Soloist.ai homepage reads: "We've made the difficult decision to close Solo. We have appreciated all of your support building and growing this product, and the feedback we've received from all of you. Solo will cease operations on Nov 30, 2026." The Register reports: Mozilla launched Solo in December 2023 as a "Mozilla Innovation Project," aimed at helping sole traders to build themselves a webpage for their services. Some 54,000 people used its LLM to build pages, and relied on Mozilla to host them -- complete with custom domain names. Users now have just over two weeks left to find a new home for their pages, although Mozilla says it first notified them on October 1. According to the support FAQ, users can download a ZIP containing an HTML export, contact form and newsletter submissions, and a CSV linking to their images. The images themselves must be downloaded separately. Domains purchased through Solo Domains must also be moved to Name.com, with Mozilla handling the transfer after users create an account and supply its code.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A global outage taking down a wide range of Microsoft 365 services remains ongoing Friday morning. The outage started midday Thursday, impacting users of Microsoft email, cloud, and AI services. Microsoft has documented the full list of services impacted by the error, while moving early Friday morning to protect customers around the world from losing emails during the extended disruptions. "Recovery actions are ongoing," the Microsoft 365 Status account confirmed on X. "To help preserve delayed mail during this event, we've extended email timeout to 48 hours."

Similar to recent world-shaking outages of widely used tech like Amazon Web Services and CrowdStrike, the Microsoft disruption looks like "one of the biggest outages of all time," Ciaran Martin, the former head of the UK's National Cyber Security Centre, told NBC News. Possibly even "worse," he suggested.

Businesses, hospitals, police departments, and schools were among those scrambling to work around the outage. In Japan, it disrupted government IT infrastructure, according to deputy chief cabinet secretary Masanao Ozaki. NBC's report documented various harms, noting that "few public bodies were immune from the outage." In some cases, doctors couldn't send patients "important" updates on medication changes or follow-up care. The financial sector suffered, too, with people blocked from making bank transfers since they couldn't receive verification codes.

Justice systems were also hobbled. The Supreme Court in the Philippines saw its legal work derailed, NBC reported. And one US sheriff's office in Colorado reported that the outage made it difficult for people to post bond for prisoners' immediate release. It's unclear how many users were affected, but Microsoft estimated in January that the total number of paid Microsoft 365 commercial subscriptions exceeded 450 million. Microsoft's most recent updates confirmed that it's seeing "broader improvements in North America, sustained improvements across much of Europe, and encouraging recovery signals in Asia Pacific."

"Some users may still experience intermittent access issues or delayed email delivery as mitigation continues across remaining affected infrastructure," Microsoft said. "Our focus remains on stabilizing recovered infrastructure, completing mitigation in remaining impacted areas, and reducing delayed email queues and backlogs while we validate service consistency across connection methods."

OpenAI has launched ChatGPT Wallet, a feature that lets its Dots AI agents help users choose products and complete purchases on their behalf. TechCrunch reports: The option will initially be available to a limited number of U.S. ChatGPT Pro subscribers, ages 18 and up, with a U.S.-issued Visa, Mastercard, or American Express. OpenAI says that users are fully in control of the purchases, as they're able to review the items, the total, and the payment card that will be used to complete the transaction before the checkout occurs. In addition, users will approve the purchases directly with a security check like Face ID or a fingerprint, which creates a record of their transaction. [...] The company notes that customers who shop via their dots will still be able to earn their credit card rewards and be able to take advantage of protections that typically come with cards, like being able to dispute transactions.

A coalition of online safety and consumer advocacy groups has sued five of the world's leading artificial intelligence companies, asking a California judge to halt the development and deployment of new AI models until the companies can address what the plaintiffs describe as potentially "catastrophic" risks. The lawsuit alleges the companies are violating California unfair competition law by endangering public health and computer systems, arguing that increasingly autonomous AI could ultimately escape human control. The Associated Press reports: The filing, first reported on by The Associated Press, asks a judge to stop Anthropic, Google, Meta, OpenAI and SpaceXSI from developing or deploying new AI models, pointing to documented examples of cyberattacks and other harmful actions by AI systems and the companies' own alarming acknowledgments that their technology has the potential to someday destroy humanity. "No other industry is allowed to treat its own development of unsafe products -- much less ones that could kill us all -- as inevitable," reads the complaint from the Irreplaceable Education Fund, Public Citizen, Heat Initiative and the Alliance for Secure AI. "Plaintiffs bring this suit to stop Defendants from continuing their unlawful path to disaster."

[...] The plaintiffs, all nonprofits, allege that the companies named in the lawsuit have violated a California unfair competition law by endangering public health and interfering with the use of property such as computer systems. They claim they've had to divert resources away from other planned work to address the acute harms threatened by each of the companies' advancing AI models. They also warn that the companies' goals of creating AI systems that are broadly as smart as humans and can increasingly manage tasks and learn things autonomously could result in a permanent loss of control of the technology and heighten existential risks to humanity.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Some Nvidia employees are calling for Jensen Huang's return even after his multiple reported extramarital affairs and abrupt resignation, according to internal correspondence reviewed by WIRED. An internal "suggestion box" post submitted before Huang's resignation by a longtime engineer at Nvidia urged the company's board to take employee sentiment into consideration prior to taking any action. The submission has attracted more than 1,600 comments since then, with several asking board members to find a way to bring back Huang.

"If you believe in the mission, bring back THE boss," wrote one anonymous commenter. "We are all humans and can make mistakes. Jensen did so many good things and he needs a second chance," wrote another. One employee went as far as sending a companywide email demanding transparency into Huang's exit. "I stand by Jensen," the staffer wrote. "Not because I believe any person is infallible, but because I refuse to believe that standing for fairness must mean standing at a distance from someone whose leadership has meant so much to us."

[...] It's been business as usual inside the company throughout this week, but Huang's resignation left many employees stunned. In the hours after, about two dozen employees posted on LinkedIn in support of Huang, with one describing their faith in his leadership as unwavering. Over the same period, WIRED couldn't identify any posts from Nvidia employees in support of his resignation. One employee who has been at Nvidia for a couple of years and wasn't authorized to speak publicly says they perceive the desire for Huang's reinstatement as widespread. They worry the company will eventually suffer without its founder at the helm and say that the board must bring him back. "Nvidia is Nvidia because of Jensen," the employee tells WIRED.

Many employees had expected a board investigation to conclude before any big changes would occur. For instance, the suggestion-box post called on the board to share its findings with employees and formally solicit their sentiment "about Jensen's continuing as our CEO." Instead, Huang left just as the inquiry had begun. Staffers are seeking to better understand why. "If America fails the man who helped build its future," the employee in the companywide email stated, "then this world does not deserve Jensen Huang."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Parents and teachers across the US are criticizing Google's announcement that schools choosing to block AI tools could also lose access to Google Search. Google announced last week a range of new AI tools for schools and classrooms, alongside options allowing teachers and administrators to restrict their use. The company said schools should have control over whether students use AI in the classroom, but that schools that choose to block Google's AI tools will also lose access to its search engine. [...] Parents and teachers across the country raised concerns to the Guardian about AI's potential to weaken students' critical-thinking skills and the growing influence of big tech in education. Some called on schools to consider alternative search engines, while others argued that students should be taught how to use AI responsibly rather than prevented from accessing it altogether.

Jen Atay, a 51-year-old teacher in Hawaii, lambasted Google's approach, saying: "When the software is free, you are the product, and it is inappropriate for Google to test or develop AI with minors. This should not be allowed at all." A 44-year-old father of two boys in Amissville, Virginia, said he worries that "AI will weaken people's ability to think critically. I use AI in my work, but it would not be effective if I did not have well over a decade of experience under my belt. Even the best models are often flat-out wrong in their responses." [...] Others questioned why schools should depend on Google at all. An 84-year-old retiree and mother in Maryland, said: "Google decided to follow the evil path to riches. When they started, they were great. Today they are simply evil money grubbers Schools should tell Google to go pound sand and simply have kids use DuckDuckGo or one of the other search engines There is nothing Google offers that is not available from some other source." [...]

Not everyone believes blocking AI is the answer. Some argued that schools should focus on teaching students how to use the technology responsibly. A 67-year-old emerging technology teacher in Texas said: "I do not blame Google. AI is not going away. I've been very frustrated this year trying to teach AI literacy with AI blocked. Schools need to teach how to properly use AI, not block it." A California resident echoed that view, arguing that schools could use Google's AI tools to teach students to question the information they receive. "Google Search has existed since the 90s and it's crazy of them to completely remove it instead of just removing Gemini. That being said, I would like to see schools actually permit the use of Gemini and use it as an opportunity to show students how its sources aren't always valid and you can't trust everything an AI tells you," they said.

The FAA is expanding its $875 million AI-powered SMART system to all 22 U.S. air traffic control centers across the country. Since being implemented over Washington, DC, on September 21, the system has helped reroute 180 flights, saving an average of 10 minutes and nearly 80 gallons of fuel per flight. Ars Technica reports: The FAA fact sheet describes SMART as a cloud-based system that combines information about "weather patterns, flight paths, traffic flow and controller staffing metrics" to predict air traffic patterns. It is designed to make scheduling recommendations, identify optimal flight routes, and determine the best order of arrivals for aircraft. However, a human team of FAA specialists based in DC is ultimately responsible for validating the SMART system recommendations before passing them along to air traffic control facilities across the country, according to the agency. Furthermore, the AI-powered SMART system "cannot be used to replace the critical role air traffic controllers play or take over control of an aircraft," the FAA clarified in the September 21 announcement about the initial deployment. Local air traffic controllers can decide whether or not to accept the SMART system recommendations.

[...] Following the initial deployment in airspace above DC, the FAA expanded the SMART system's coverage to air route traffic control centers in Atlanta along with Jacksonville and Miami in Florida, according to The Dallas Morning News. The FAA also shared an example with The Dallas Morning News about how SMART recommended a shorter and faster route for a cargo flight arriving at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, although the newspaper noted that the agency did not identify the flight involved and has not provided information about how SMART may have assisted passenger flight traffic.

The European Space Agency has released the largest dataset yet from its Euclid space telescope, containing 1.7 petabytes of observations covering more than 900 million galaxies. "The data unveiled on Thursday covered a survey of the sky equal to about 9,500 times the size of the moon as viewed from Earth," reports Reuters. "The mission's goal is to complete the "largest-ever three-dimensional atlas of the cosmos, spanning more than a third of the sky, in 2031." From the report: "It marks a major milestone for ESA's Euclid mission and for everyone involved," said astrophysicist Valeria Pettorino, ESA's Euclid project scientist. Euclid, launched from Florida in 2023, is gathering data on how the universe has expanded and how its structure has formed over time while amassing information about the nature of dark energy and dark matter and the role of gravity on large scales.

"Euclid will not just take images of galaxies in the sky, in two dimensions, but will also measure their distance, the third dimension. This will tell us where galaxies are in space and time, across 10 billion years, and in all directions beyond our galactic plane," Pettorino said. "Galaxies cluster along filaments, surrounded by empty space, and form a network that we call the cosmic web. Euclid will reconstruct the cosmic web and how it has grown over time. This is important because the exact configuration of the cosmic web, how many clusters or voids are there, how fast it changed, depend on the properties of dark energy and dark matter," Pettorino said.

[...] Previous Euclid data releases covered only a few days of observations. The newly released dataset includes more than a year of data and still spans only 14% of the total sky area Euclid is due to survey in visible and near-infrared light over six years. This data release will be completed next year with the first results on dark energy and dark matter.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Hill: Elon Musk's SpaceX plans to invest more than $74 billion into building two data centers in Texas and Arizona, the company announced Thursday, marketing them as projects that will boost local communities amid backlash surrounding such facilities. "These investments will expand local tax bases, generate substantial new revenue for schools and public services, and create economic opportunities that extend far beyond the facilities themselves," the company said in a release. SpaceX said it will put more than $24 billion into a new project in Texas's Rio Grande Valley, expanding the company's headquarters in Starbase -- a coastal town the tech giant established in 2025 in a previously unincorporated area of Cameron County. In Arizona, SpaceX will invest around $50 billion in Cochise County, a rural area east of Tucson bordering Mexico and New Mexico.

SpaceX pledged the new projects will be created cooperatively with the surrounding communities and will be environmentally conscious. The company said the project in Texas would generate its own power and invest $220 million to expand the water supply in nearby Brownsville. While in Arizona, it vowed to work with local electric cooperatives and "potentially" reduce electric bills, saying the site would use dry cooling without water consumption. "They require strong partnerships with local communities, responsible environmental stewardship, and stable, competitive policies that give companies the confidence to make long-term investments," the company said in a release. Both sites promise hundreds of permanent jobs even once construction is complete.

Whoop has launched Humans, a social network built into its fitness app where every account is a real person with a "verified heartbeat." The wearable company claims its platform is "entirely human," unlike other social media platforms that are "saturated with artificial intelligence, automated accounts and bots, and manufactured content." The Verge reports: Starting Thursday, Whoop members can share their data from its wearables on the app's new Whoop Humans social network. Users can make their metrics, activities, and achievements visible to other Whoop wearers, post Story-like "Moments" with photos and captions, and add comments and reactions on other members' posts. [...]

In the Community tab in Whoop's app, users can scroll through Moments from people they're following, like tapping through your Stories feed on Instagram but with your friends' fitness tracker data. In one of Whoop's examples, swiping up on a user's Moments post with a photo from their run shows a map with their route and details like their pace and distance. The Community tab also shows cards for people in your "community" with their sleep, recovery, and strain scores.

Whoop says users choose which activities, achievements, and metrics they want to share on Humans, including Recovery, Strain, Sleep, HRV, and resting heart rate. Any activities marked as sensitive aren't shared by default. There's also an option to keep Moments posts private and a "Stealth Mode" for temporarily hiding health and performance data without changing your sharing settings.

Nintendo has issued four DMCA takedown notices targeting two Nintendo Switch emulators, Yuzu and Citron Neo, along with mod chip firmware such as Picofly, SX Core and HWFLY. As a result, 144 repositories containing firmware used to circumvent the console's copy protections have been removed by GitHub and replaced by a DMCA takedown notice. IGN reports: GitHub has posted Nintendo's November 6 DMCA notice, which says, "The Nintendo Switch console and video games contain technological protection measures ('TPMs') that permit the Nintendo Switch console to interact only with legitimate Nintendo video game files. This process protects Nintendo's copyright-protected video games, (...) by preventing users from playing pirated copies of Nintendo's video games on the Nintendo Switch console and by preventing users from unlawfully copying and playing Nintendo's video games on unauthorized devices."

However, while this takedown has effectively wiped out a ton of repositories with mod chip firmware, it seems like it's still being hosted elsewhere on the site, according to TorrentFreak. It's possible, though, that Nintendo isn't finished yet; back in 2024, Nintendo effectively took down 8,500 copies of Yuzu by issuing a takedown that targeted 12 different mirrors of the emulator. This particular takedown also comes a few days after emulators were able to run the remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on PC, so this could be a sign that Nintendo is winding up its lawyers to crack down on emulation once again.

Reuters reports that former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had an intimate relationship with a third woman (source paywalled; alternative source ), an unnamed Nvidia employee. The revelation follows reports of two other extramarital affairs: one with Nvidia VP Kimberly Powell and another with Alice Huang, whom U.S. intelligence reportedly suspects of being a Chinese spy. The latter relationship has also prompted a shareholder lawsuit alleging Nvidia misled investors about its ties to a company suspected of circumventing U.S. chip export restrictions. Jensen Huang has since resigned as Nvidia's CEO and stepped down from its board on Thursday. CFO Colette Kress has been appointed interim CEO while the company searches for a permanent successor.

Singapore says U.S. authorities provided limited assistance in its investigation of Megaspeed, the company run by Alice Huang, the Chinese businesswoman whom U.S. intelligence suspects is a Chinese spy and whose relationship with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has drawn scrutiny. According to Singapore, authorities held Alice Huang's passport from June 2025 until February while investigating "potential false declarations," but ultimately released her with a "stern warning" and barred her from re-entering the country. The New York Times reports: The statement raises new questions about the response of the Trump administration to the case and why the U.S. government did not more forcefully intervene. According to the timeline in the statement, Singaporean authorities had been holding Ms. Huang's passport well after President Trump was briefed last fall about her relationship with Nvidia's chief executive and the belief that she was a Chinese intelligence asset. The New York Times has reported that Taiwan began monitoring Ms. Huang in 2024 at the guidance of the U.S. government.

In its statement, Singapore said that it had sought information from an American server maker and close Nvidia business partner, Supermicro, but that the company had provided "limited cooperation." Supermicro, a firm that packages Nvidia's A.I. chips onto servers that can be used in data centers, has been at the center of a number of chip smuggling investigations across the globe. Supermicro was a supplier to Megaspeed, a company incorporated in Singapore and run by Ms. Huang, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

Singapore said in the statement its authorities raised Supermicro's "limited cooperation" with the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation in July 2025 and "requested their assistance in securing the company's cooperation." "Despite these repeated requests, Singapore has to date received limited information or assistance in respect of the company," the statement said.