Four stories from this week: a broken link at a radiology clinic, a brain that mixes memories into what it sees, a ban nobody announced and a promise made only out loud. The source link sits under each story.
In Matera, changing the last number of a link showed you another patient's medical report
The report arrived by email as a link. Anyone who edited the number at the end of the address saw another patient's PDF, with no password: name, surname, tax code, address and medical history. The Italian data protection authority fined the Centro Radiologico Madonna della Bruna in Matera 16,000 euros (decision no. 764 of 7 October) and MedStore Srl of Saronno, which runs the platform, 12,000 euros (no. 754). The news came out in the authority's newsletter on 12 November. It started with a patient who found their own report still online after more than 30 days. Reports from previous years were still on the portal, well past the 45-day limit in the Italian guidelines on online medical reports. Any clinic that sends reports by link should try changing a number in the address and ask its supplier after how many days the files are actually deleted.
Source: Garante privacy, newsletter of 12 November 2026 →
After brain surgery, a man sees his cat's eyes on people's faces
Some mornings Luna, a grey tabby, is the first face Karl sees. From then on, for hours, people's faces carry her enlarged pupils, almond-shaped eyes and stripes. Karl is 28. Two years ago surgeons removed part of his right temporal lobe to treat an arteriovenous malformation. That area is key for recognising faces. The case was described in the journal Cortex by Brad Duchaine's group at Dartmouth, with Antônio Mello Guarini and neuropsychologist Jennifer Nosker of Brigham and Women's Hospital. It also works the other way: if he sees a person first, that person's eyes show up on other people and on Luna. The lab has heard from more than 250 people with distorted faces, and some had been given antipsychotics for what was a visual problem. For neurologists and psychiatrists it is a useful reminder: when a patient says faces change shape, check visual perception before reaching for a psychiatric diagnosis.
People using AI to unlock their own smart TVs are getting their accounts suspended
One user was studying the software of Samsung TVs with OpenAI's Codex and had the account banned for "cyber abuse". 404 Media reported it on 10 November. In recent months many people had used Claude Code and Codex to take apart the software of devices they own: removing ads from smart TVs, turning a baby monitor into an assistant, reviving gadgets their makers had abandoned. Now several users say Claude refuses to decompile code and OpenAI sends warnings or restricts accounts. An OpenAI engineer, Tarun Gogineni, wrote that the blocks are "mostly accidental" and are being fixed. Meanwhile the decomp.wtf project has shut down. Security researchers and people who repair old hardware with these tools should expect a legitimate request to cost them their account, and many are moving to open models that run locally.
Nvidia said in public that tracking chips was hard. In private, it told a congressman it could be done
"Yeah, of course we can do this": according to Illinois Representative Bill Foster, that was how Nvidia's engineers replied when he asked whether AI chips could report where they are. Foster told MIT Technology Review on 12 November, the same day Jensen Huang resigned as CEO. Foster is a cosponsor of the Chip Security Act, introduced in May 2025 to stop GPUs from being smuggled into China. One option in the bill has the chip send a signal with its location when it comes online. In March the Semiconductor Industry Association, which counts Nvidia as a member, called these measures "potentially infeasible". Nvidia put nothing in writing and did not answer the magazine's questions. If the bill passes, high-end GPUs exported from the United States may have to declare where they are, including those that end up in European data centres.
Source: MIT Technology Review →
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