Weekend Reads: 8 November 2026

This week’s reads cover a radio station run largely by AI, a senior exit at Binance and a cheaper way to buy hard drive storage. Further afield, we look at US politics and tech, and at a wearable that tracks sun exposure.

Local

Liechtenstein swaps its public broadcaster for AI radio

NOS reports that Liechtenstein has replaced its public broadcaster with a cheaper station that uses artificial intelligence. On Radio Vaterland, AI writes the news bulletins entirely and cloned voices of the station’s editors read them out. Each bulletin opens by saying the voice is AI-generated, and no human chooses the music either. For anyone wondering how far AI could reach into European public media, the station is a concrete early example.

Source: NOS Tech

Binance’s finance chief is leaving after a record crypto theft

Binance, the cryptocurrency exchange, said on Saturday that its chief financial officer, Kaiser Ng, will leave the company. The announcement comes after the largest crypto theft on record, in which cryptocurrency worth billions of euros was stolen at the end of October. If you hold crypto through a major exchange, watch how the platform responds in the coming weeks.

Source: NU.nl Tech

Hard drives cost more, so taking them out of external cases pays off again

Tweakers says hard drive prices have risen sharply, which makes “shucking” worth doing again. Shucking means buying an external drive and removing the disk from its case to use inside a computer or home server. According to the guide, you can save more than 100 euros per drive this way, which matters if you are building or expanding home storage.

Source: Tweakers

A foreign astronaut will visit China’s space station for the first time

The China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) says a foreign astronaut will travel to the Chinese space station for the first time. The astronaut is a specialist from Pakistan who will join the Shenzhou-24 crew. Until now only Chinese astronauts have been to the station, so this is the first time China has opened it to another country.

Source: NU.nl Tech

Also in Europe

What the US midterms could mean for Musk and data centres

On its Equity podcast, TechCrunch discussed what the results of the US midterm elections mean for the tech industry, and suggested that Elon Musk and data centre projects face a harder road. American policy on data centres often shapes how global tech companies plan their investments, Europe included.

Source: TechCrunch

A wearable that tracks UV exposure

A reviewer at The Verge tried the Gem, a necklace that tracks UV exposure. In Los Angeles, with temperatures in the 90s Fahrenheit, they sat under a patio umbrella with a fan nearby and still felt exhausted and dizzy half an hour later. The experience changed how they think about sunlight as a health issue, not only a matter of how their skin looks.

Source: The Verge

Weekend Reads is a curated weekend digest: we summarise and link, the reporting belongs to the publications named. Something wrong or missing? Tell us.