Tech Express | November 5, 2026: Switch 2 Sales Plunge 41% as Memory Costs Bite

1. 任天堂 Switch 2 季度销量暴跌 41%，内存涨价推高售价

Source: CNBC

Nintendo said on Nov. 5 that it sold 2.67 million Switch 2 units in the three months ended Sept. 30, down 41% from a year earlier and below the 3.82 million sold in the prior quarter. During that quarter, Nintendo raised Switch 2 prices in the U.S., Canada and Japan.

Memory, a core console component, remains in short supply with huge demand, driving an unprecedented price surge. Nintendo nonetheless kept its forecast of 16.5 million Switch 2 units for the fiscal year ending March 2027.

Kantan Games CEO Serkan Toto told CNBC that the Ocarina of Time remake, released Thursday, is Nintendo's only real blockbuster this fiscal year, and that it is "not enough to make investors happy, especially after the device is now as expensive as it is."

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2. OpenAI：AI 流水线 30 小时生成 948 个 Linux 提权漏洞利用

Source: The Hacker News

OpenAI on Nov. 4 detailed an agentic pipeline that used an upcoming cyber-focused model to dynamically reproduce 1,724 Linux kernel vulnerabilities in 30 hours and generate 948 working local privilege-escalation (LPE) exploits, at $1,213,430 in API credits — about $1,279 per exploit.

The company said the pipeline analyzed 2,308 candidate kernel findings and also produced proofs of concept for 291 information-leak flaws. It builds on 24 LPE exploits found by GPT-5.5-Cyber in June 2026; to OpenAI's knowledge, the agents used at least 10 previously unknown Linux exploitation techniques.

Google Threat Intelligence Group data cited in the report shows monthly vulnerability disclosures rising from 5,045 in January 2026 to 10,740 in August, with high-risk flaws up 167%, from 131 to 350. The U.K. National Cyber Security Centre said in a Nov. 3 assessment that widely available AI cyber tools have "almost certainly" driven a significant rise in zero-day discoveries.

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3. ChatGPT 上线 GIF 生成，Images 2.6 同步发布

Source: The Verge

ChatGPT can now create animated GIFs from a text prompt or an uploaded photo, and users can change playback speed, edit individual frames and share the result. The feature rolls out alongside OpenAI's new Images 2.6 model.

Before the update, ChatGPT could not produce a GIF in one step. OpenAI's example shows the chatbot turning "can you make a gif of a cat dancing?" into a finished animation. Images 2.6 also speeds up image generation; OpenAI says users now create more than 4 billion images a week across ChatGPT and its API, up from 3 billion in September.

The model is rolling out to all ChatGPT and Codex users on web, desktop and mobile, while the API gains GPT-Image-2.6 Flare and Sunburst.

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4. 辛顿警告：今明两年或出现「切尔诺贝利级」AI 事故

Source: 驱动之家

Geoffrey Hinton, the Nobel laureate known as a godfather of AI, told The Guardian that a Chernobyl-scale accident in AI could happen this year or next. He compared this summer's incident in which an OpenAI agent breached Hugging Face to the Three Mile Island accident — a warning sign rather than the disaster itself.

In Hinton's telling, AI's Chernobyl is not a machine rebellion but hackers using AI to attack critical infrastructure, with the most typical outcomes being prolonged large-scale blackouts or a week-long paralysis of the global financial system.

He singled out OpenAI's Sam Altman, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, saying they understand the underlying risks but have not given them enough weight amid commercial competition. His prescriptions: mandatory safety testing for frontier models, independent third-party evaluation and unified international AI safety standards. Hinton said he is not anti-AI, but sees the coming decade as the window in which humanity proves it can control the technology.

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5. 中国 AI 企业订购 600 万颗英伟达芯片，四个月仅能拿到 1%

Source: 联合早报

Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance and other Chinese AI and cloud companies have ordered about 6 million Nvidia RTX Pro 5500 chips, Bloomberg reported — roughly $70 billion at more than $11,000 each. Under confirmed delivery schedules, they will receive only 1% of that total over the next four months.

Major Chinese AI firms expect thousands of chips by the end of this year and tens of thousands around February, the report said. Large cloud providers expect about 700,000 units cumulatively by the end of next year, though final shipments could shift with production adjustments.

Washington bars Nvidia from selling its most advanced chips to China; the RTX Pro 5500 sits below that threshold but is among the most powerful AI chips available there. With global capacity tight, Nvidia is prioritizing U.S. customers such as OpenAI and Anthropic, pushing Chinese cloud providers toward domestic inference chips from Huawei, Cambricon and Alibaba's T-Head.

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6. 任天堂卡带 ROM 芯片主要供应商退出该业务

Source: Ars Technica

Chipmaker Macronix said in its third-quarter earnings report that its ROM chip production "has reached its end" and that it will "gradually decouple from the game industry," Ars Technica reported. Analyst David Gibson notes that Macronix is Nintendo's "main memory chip maker" for physical game cartridges.

ROM output has fallen 39% over the past year and now accounts for just 5% of Macronix's business, crowded out by more lucrative NOR and NAND memory and eMMC. Its 12-inch wafer capacity is stuck at 25,000 units a month, and $1.2 billion in planned new capacity will take a year or more to come online.

Nintendo said last month that it has no plans to abandon cartridges, but turning to suppliers such as Rohm and Lapis Semiconductor could raise production costs — and potentially the prices publishers charge for physical games. Digital software accounted for 61.5% of Nintendo's business in the second calendar quarter of 2026.

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7. 小米澎湃 OS 4 开启全球推送，分三批覆盖小米/红米/POCO

Source: 驱动之家

Xiaomi published its global HyperOS 4 upgrade plan on Nov. 5, with the first wave already rolling out, a second batch due in mid-November and a third through December, covering flagship and mid-range phones and tablets from Xiaomi, REDMI and POCO.

The first wave includes the Xiaomi 17 Ultra, Xiaomi 17, 17T Pro and 17T, plus the REDMI Note 15 and REDMI 17 series, POCO F8 Ultra, POCO F8 Pro and POCO X8 Pro Max. Xiaomi cautioned that timing may vary by region, carrier, model and development progress, and that list order does not reflect the actual OTA order.

HyperOS 4 upgrades AI, cross-device collaboration and smoothness, integrating Super Xiao Ai 2.0 and Xiaomi's in-house MiMo model, with an Expert Mode and the new Inspiration Orb interaction. The interface debuts a translucent "soft light glass" material and opens up home-screen customization.

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8. NASA Swift 太空望远镜坠回地球，延寿救援失败

Source: Space.com

NASA's Swift space telescope reentered Earth's atmosphere uncontrolled on Nov. 4. Satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell, citing U.S. Space Force data, put reentry at 7:39 a.m. EST (1239 GMT) over northern Sumatra. NASA had predicted most of the minibus-sized, 1,450-kilogram observatory would burn up, with odds of 1 in 2,100 that debris would injure anyone.

Launched in November 2004 on a two-year primary mission, Swift worked for more than 20 years, ending science operations on Oct. 20. It observed more than 2,000 gamma-ray bursts and 1,400 supernovas, and was renamed the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory in 2018 after its first principal investigator.

NASA awarded Katalyst Space a $30 million contract in September 2025 to send a robotic spacecraft to boost Swift's orbit. The LINK servicer launched July 3 aiming for an August capture, but propulsion and reaction-wheel problems scuttled the rendezvous.

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9. 华为腾讯等 20 家机构发布 AI 智能体自律公约

Source: 联合早报

The China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), together with Huawei, Tencent, Alibaba, Ant Group, Douyin and 16 other institutions, released a self-discipline convention on AI agents on Nov. 4 at the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, pledging to guard against unauthorized actions, privacy leaks and runaway behavior.

The pact sets out eight measures covering trust systems, interconnection infrastructure, interoperability, security, governance and user rights. On security, it calls for risk assessment, runtime monitoring, behavior controls and circuit-breaker mechanisms to prevent failures caused by technical flaws or outside attacks.

It also stresses users' right to be informed, to choose and to retain final control over important matters, and seeks protection for minors and the elderly against data misuse, over-accommodation and cognitive manipulation. The signatories further aim to lower barriers between different vendors' agents through common standards, open interfaces and clear authorization and liability rules.

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10. IDC：中国折叠屏手机出货量同比下滑 32.7%

Source: 观察者网

China's smartphone shipments fell 15.2% year on year in the third quarter of 2026, while the share of devices priced above $600 rose to 30.2% from 23.1%, according to an IDC report. Foldables moved the other way: 1.77 million units, down 32.7% and the fourth consecutive quarterly decline.

Rising memory prices are pushing foldable prices up. Huawei's MateXT2 tri-fold starts at 19,999 yuan, 2,000 more than 2025's MateXTs; Apple's first foldable, the iPhone Duo, starts at 15,999 yuan; and Samsung's W27 with China Telecom, launched in late October, starts at 18,999 yuan, also 2,000 higher than its predecessor.

TrendForce expects Apple to ship about 5 million foldables this year, or 24.8% of the global market, while total foldable shipments grow just 0.5%; excluding Apple, Android brands are forecast to fall more than 20%. IDC argues that innovation in the traditional foldable form is yielding diminishing returns and struggling to drive upgrades.

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