The day in tech.

On November 2, hackers disrupted French blood bank cold storage systems by raising temperatures to 230F from -22F. The French Ministry of Health confirmed the incident, noting alarms prevented safety issues. The attack targets third-party maintenance systems affecting 11 countries. While blood supplies remained safe, Credit Mutuel Arkea confirmed a cyberattack causing $133 million in fraudulent crypto transactions.

SpaceX selects Qualcomm on November 4, 2026, for its largest 5G deal to supply Starlink Mobile radios. Deployment across tens of thousands of sites begins in 2027 using Dragonwing platforms with 64T64R Massive MIMO technology to compete with AT&T and Verizon.

On November 4, 2026, OpenAI announced the acquisition of Pierre Computer Company to integrate its Code Storage and Trees libraries into Codex. The deal aims to expand Codex capabilities by integrating Pierre's distributed Git infrastructure supporting repositories up to 32 TB and at least 30 concurrent writes into the broader development workflow.

Israeli cybersecurity firm Sentra raised $150 million in a Series C round led by Capital One Ventures on Wednesday, bringing total capital to over $260 million. The company plans to hire 130 employees globally and expand its platform for controlling what artificial intelligence agents can reach inside corporate data stores.

OpenAI launches Images 2.6 update on Nov 4, 2026, enabling ChatGPT to generate animated GIFs from prompts or photos. Weekly image generation capacity rises to 4 billion, up from 3 billion in September, while users adjust animation speed between 0.5x and 2x.

Google bans Shenzhen maker Videostrong after discovering malware in 1.3 million Android TV boxes. TrendAI found 1,472,554 infected devices between June and October across 206 models. The malware evolved into a three-stage design in 2024, while Synthient listed 182 model names.

Security experts warn that White House staffers used residential proxy services to rent internet addresses. Layer3 Intel detected 236 proxy exits from the Executive Office of the President network between October 5 and November 3. One service, Infatica, links to a Russian founder whose firm previously compromised 2016 election systems in Arizona and Illinois.

Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa pledges to ban all data center approvals in Texas until the state legislature passes new laws. This decision halts the rapid expansion of server warehouses favored by big tech firms like Meta, Google, and Microsoft, creating uncertainty for projects worth tens of billions of dollars.

Democrats won governor offices in Texas and Georgia, delaying 41% of planned 2028 data center capacity. Elon Musk spent over $400 million supporting Republican candidates, but split state control limits immediate regulatory changes for agencies and zoning laws.

OpenAI released ChatGPT Images 2.6 on Wednesday, generating images 50% faster than the September Images 2.5 model. The update adds built-in looping GIF animation available worldwide across free and paid tiers. API pricing remains unchanged at $8 for image input and $30 for image output per million tokens. Google DeepMind SynthID watermark added to images.