OpenAI has fired three researchers for allegedly mishandling information, including work which involved an external organisation analysing AI models. “Our investigation confirmed that these individuals mishandled sensitive information outside established company procedures, violating our policies and breaking the trust essential to our work,” a spokesperson told the BBC. The ChatGPT-maker did not name the sacked workers, but at least two of them were involved in safety research at the firm.The firings come as the debate over AI safety and the risks the technology may pose to humanity intensified in recent months. BBC 

Astronauts on board a SpaceX flight, including the first black woman to lead a crew to orbit, has arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) after setting a US speed record.  The spacecraft launched on an eight-hour express from Cape Canaveral on Thursday morning local time, making it the quickest flight of any US entity, including . The ISS’s convenient location when the astronauts launched enabled the fast transit. commander Jessica Watkins, a geologist who worked with NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity a decade ago, made history by becoming the first black female commander to lead a crew to orbit. Sky News 

Google on Wednesday said it would withhold its most powerful artificial intelligence model from the public for now, releasing Gemini 4 Argon only to a vetted group of cybersecurity experts to avoid misuse by hackers. “Safely releasing frontier capabilities at this level requires a phased approach,” wrote Koray Kavukcuoglu, Google’s chief AI architect, in a blog post announcing the model. Google said it was voluntarily giving the US government early access to the model and would gather feedback from testers before making it widely available. The Guardian

Virgin Media O2 (VMO2)’s £2bn takeover of a broadband rival risks pushing up prices, the watchdog has ruled. In provisional findings published on Friday, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said a deal by Virgin Media O2’s parent companies to take control of could lead to a “substantial lessening of competition” in the wholesale market. The watchdog found that the deal would effectively limit competition to two providers: Virgin Media O2 and BT’s Openreach. Telegraph 

Google announced a new process of sideloading apps on Android back in spring this year, and Android users had mixed feelings about it, to say the least. Google argues that the new rules prevent scammers from pressuring people into installing malicious apps, and four countries are now getting the changes.

Every phone running Android 7 or later in Brazil, Thailand, Singapore and Indonesia now requires users to enable the option in Developer Options, authenticate, restart the device and wait 24 hours before being able to sideload unregistered apps. GSM Arena 

Yes, Amazon has an all-new line of 13th-generation Kindle ereaders. Sure, they’re marginally lighter and thinner than ever, with scant display upgrades, newly smooth, flush faces, and some with stamped aluminum unibodies that come in brilliant and quite trendy colors. But can we talk about buttons? Or, rather, one very specific one, the power/sleep button? Every once in a while, a tech company makes me feel seen, or at least heard. I’ve been complaining for years about the placement of the Amazon Kindle e-reader’s power/sleep button. Tech Radar

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