In focus
Apple Intelligence opens for testing in mainland China: Siri can call on Qwen, but complex tasks still send users back to the app
In the early hours of November 4, Apple released the first developer preview of iOS 27.3 for iPhones, opening testing of ‘Apple Intelligence & Siri’ on mainland-China models. Under the official plan, it is due to launch with the stable release in December. In hands-on testing, holding the side button to summon Siri brought up a glowing border, while double-tapping the bar at the bottom allowed users to type questions. It could handle simple commands but still stumbled over slightly more involved questions. For complex tasks such as planning a four-day trip to Jiuzhaigou, a system pop-up asked whether to call on Qwen. After the user agreed and logged in, an answer arrived in about seven or eight seconds, but the travel guide was light on information; the tester thought asking directly in the Qwen app worked better. Writing Tools, photo cleanup and AirPods live translation also became available. Content generated by Qwen and the results of queries are synced to the Qwen app. The beta still has stability problems, including crashes and incomplete indexing.
iG eliminates TES 3–1, returning to the S16 semifinals after seven years
On November 4, the first day of the S16 quarterfinals, iG beat TES 3–1 to reach the semifinals. The description on Baidu’s trending list said iG’s jungler Wei set the early-game pace and that the team showed better cohesion and execution. TES actively tried to change things in the elimination game, but its overall coordination problems remained unresolved, and individual performances could not make up for the gaps in tempo. This marked iG’s first return to the last four in seven years, and related topics quickly gained traction across multiple platforms. Another thread of discussion concerned bot-lane player JiaQi: a Zhihu question said he had joined TES in late November last year, left for iG after JackeyLove returned in late March this year, and now helped his team defeat his former club.
iPhone Weather app widely shows −32°C; Apple apologizes, saying a system-port fault has been fixed
In the early hours of November 4, many iPhone users opened the built-in Weather app to find temperatures of −28°C, −31°C and −32°C forecast for November 13, the following Friday. Beijing, Shanghai, Qingdao, Henan and other places were all shown as ‘flash-freezing,’ sending the topic ‘iPhone Weather temperature differences next Friday’ onto trending lists. Forecasts from the National Meteorological Center put temperatures in most of those places in the teens Celsius that Friday; the claimed −32°C was not accurate. A specialist suggested that this was most likely a software back-end error that had incorrectly redirected or matched the data to other parts of the world. After meteorological authorities confirmed a data error and refuted the claims, Apple customer service apologized, saying an initial investigation pointed to a system-port problem and that an emergency fix had been completed.
The veteran traditional Chinese medicine doctor who had a hundred prescriptions engraved on her tombstone
Yuan Shufang of Xiping, Zhumadian, Henan, began practicing medicine at 16 and continued for more than 80 years. Shortly before her death in 2006, she compiled the private formulas she had found effective over her career and gave them to her son, Wang Taisheng, instructing him to engrave them on her tombstone after her death for later generations to consult. According to reports, the formulas were engraved together with detailed dosages, breaking with the folk traditional Chinese medicine convention of ‘passing on the formula but not the dosage.’ Her tombstone bears 100 prescriptions, and many people have traveled thousands of li to copy them. She also wrote works including Clinical Experience in Treating Osteomyelitis and Clinical Experience in Treating Intractable Epilepsy.
Afternoon surge: STAR 50 jumps 9.92% in a day as turnover on the two exchanges returns above 2 trillion yuan
Shortly after afternoon trading opened on November 4, the major A-share indexes surged, with the Shanghai Composite quickly turning positive. At the close, the Shanghai Composite was up 2.16%, the Shenzhen Component 4.22%, the ChiNext Index 6.40% and the STAR 50 Index 9.92%. Combined turnover on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges was about 2.05 trillion yuan, up 334.3 billion yuan from the previous trading day; more than 4,600 stocks rose across the market. Semiconductors led the gains: memory chips, advanced packaging and third-generation semiconductors rebounded sharply in the afternoon. Communications equipment and precious metals were also among the strongest performers, while telecommunications, oil and gas, baijiu, coal, banking and insurance sectors fell. As for the reason for the rebound, some reports cited news that Democrats might regain control of Congress and inflows into broad-market ETFs. These were market explanations relayed by the media, however, not confirmed causal links. Discussion of ‘the reasons for the explosive rebound’ also appeared on social platforms, as market sentiment visibly improved.
News in brief
Apple unveils its first touchscreen MacBook Pro: mainland-China prices start at 22,999 yuan; 14-inch model weighs 1.38 kg
Apple unveiled its first touchscreen MacBook Pro, available in 14- and 16-inch sizes, with a tandem OLED display and M5 Pro or M5 Max chips. Mainland-China prices start at 22,999 yuan for the 14-inch model and 27,999 yuan for the 16-inch model, 3,000 yuan more than the currently available mini-LED versions with the same configuration. The 14-inch model weighs 1.38 kg. According to GeekPark, touch input is primarily designed to complement the keyboard and trackpad for brief actions such as scrolling and zooming.
iOS 27.3 beta expands Siri’s capabilities with Traditional Chinese support and actions in 15 apps
Apple released the first developer beta of iOS 27.3 on November 4. Siri AI added four languages, including Traditional Chinese, bringing the total supported to 10. It can also perform more complex tasks, such as organizing files and scheduling messages, in 15 apps including Calendar, Files, Mail, Messages and Safari. Other reports said Apple had opened Siri ‘App Skills’ to third-party developers, allowing multiple apps to be linked together for multistep tasks. These capabilities remain in testing, and their coverage has yet to be verified.
Ding Junhui completes 6–5 comeback in deciding frame, joining Zhao Xintong in International Championship quarterfinals
Trending-list information collected on November 4 showed that the quarterfinal field for snooker’s International Championship had been decided: Ding Junhui came from behind to beat Maguire 6–5 in a deciding frame, while Zhao Xintong also reached the last eight. A NetEase creator-platform article also mentioned Fan Zhengyi advancing and another player losing disappointingly; the details of those results remain to be verified.
Tsinghua team: a thousand networked AI agents spontaneously split into opposing camps after interacting
A Tsinghua University team, working with several other institutions, published a study in Nature Communications that built a networked system of 1,000 large-language-model agents. The agents could independently choose whom to communicate with and update their views. After fewer than 10 rounds of interaction, the shares holding neutral views fell from 40% to 22.5%, 0.4% and 5.1%, respectively, with clear opposing camps forming on two topics. The phenomenon appeared in all five models tested: GPT-3.5, GPT-4o, ChatGLM, Llama-3 and DeepSeek-V3.
MIT experiment lets Astra directly edit Qwen weights, lifting math score from 7.9% to 48.1%
An MIT CSAIL team reported an experiment in which GPT-6 Astra directly analyzed and modified the weights of Qwen3.5-0.8B. Changing only about 0.016% of the parameters, without gradient-based training, raised its MATH-500 score from 7.9% to 48.1%. The team called this ‘weight-space programming.’ Critics also suggested that the improvement might have come from fixing the model’s existing problem of repetitive reasoning.
JD announces five-year plan to purchase 3 million robots, 1 million autonomous vehicles and 100,000 drones
At the robotics and embodied intelligence forum of the 2026 World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit, Cao Peng, chairman of JD Group’s technology committee, said JD had launched its ‘JD Physical AI Acceleration Plan.’ Over the next five years, it will purchase 3 million robots, 1 million autonomous vehicles and 100,000 drones to build an intelligent supply-chain network. JD Logistics will handle the robot purchases.
Fuel surcharges on domestic flights to rise from November 5
From November 5, fuel surcharges on domestic flights will rise to 80 yuan per adult passenger for flight segments of 800 kilometers or less, and 140 yuan for segments longer than 800 kilometers—up 30 yuan and 50 yuan, respectively. Infants are exempt. Children, disabled revolutionary servicemen and others buying tickets at 50% of the standard adult fare will pay corresponding surcharges of 40 yuan and 70 yuan.
National Disease Control and Prevention Administration and other authorities confirm Sichuan has eliminated schistosomiasis
The National Disease Control and Prevention Administration, together with several other authorities, issued a notice confirming that Sichuan Province has achieved schistosomiasis elimination status. Sichuan was once among the provinces most severely affected by the disease, with transmission extending to 63 counties, county-level cities and districts across 11 prefecture-level cities and autonomous prefectures. More than 13 million people were at risk, and historical cumulative cases totaled 1,275,700, including more than 30,000 advanced cases.
At a glance
China’s second domestically built large cruise ship, Adora Flora City, is scheduled for delivery at Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding on November 6. Construction began in August 2022. Reports said its delivery would mark the transition from a first-of-its-kind vessel to series production of domestically built large cruise ships.
According to GeekPark, Seres announced AITO’s full entry into the European market.
Apple released its fiscal 2026 fourth-quarter results, reporting revenue of $114.477 billion and net profit of $30.711 billion for the quarter, both up 12% year on year.
Bambu Lab unveiled its flagship H3C 3D printer, featuring nine independent print heads and purge-free material changes in as little as six seconds. The standard package costs 16,499 yuan, or as little as 13,999 yuan after the national subsidy.
Phantom Blade Zero’s official team said sales across all platforms exceeded 4 million copies within 72 hours of release. Its first optimization patch went live on November 4.
Bethesda Game Studios head Todd Howard confirmed in a 40th-anniversary celebration video that The Elder Scrolls VI’s subtitle is ‘Sentinel.’
Digital preloads for GTA VI will open on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S on November 10. Depending on the device, the files will require up to 212 GB of storage space.
Media reports said Nvidia was considering testing polytetrafluoroethylene, or Teflon, in next-generation NVLink switch boards or orthogonal midplanes to reduce high-speed signal loss. Circuit boards using the material remain at the sample stage, with relatively low manufacturing yields.
Binance released preliminary investigation findings on November 4, saying that since September, attackers had used fake recruitment and ‘CEO’ interviews to lure employees into downloading malicious code. They also planted software through a tampered-with Homebrew installer, gradually gaining access to hot wallets.
The national consumer-confidence platform developed by the State Administration for Market Regulation launched on November 3. Its first batch includes more than 10,000 consumer-confidence units and 100 consumer-confidence clusters. Consumers can scan a QR code to find nearby businesses participating in the initiative.
QS released its Asia University Rankings 2027 on November 3, covering 1,722 universities across 26 higher-education systems. The University of Hong Kong retained the top spot, Peking University remained second, and Tsinghua University rose to third.
Terms in context
‘I’ve drawn a prison around myself, Li Na’ sparks a ‘self-made prison’ writing meme
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On the variety show Hou Hui You Qi, Xu Fei’s remark to Li Na, ‘I’ve drawn a prison around myself, Li Na,’ went viral, with internet users building on it to create a ‘self-made prison’ writing meme. Clips related to the show, including ‘the deeper you dig, the more details you find’ and ‘she was unhappy with all three of the 2005 Super Girl top finishers,’ were also being discussed.
‘Drawing a prison around yourself’: from Xu Fei’s on-air confession to a sentence-making meme
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The expression ‘drawing a prison around yourself’ originally refers to setting boundaries for yourself and becoming trapped within them. It recently went viral after Xu Fei told Li Na on the show Hou Hui You Qi, ‘I’ve drawn a prison around myself, Li Na.’ Internet users turned the phrase into a writing meme, and ‘What does drawing a prison around yourself mean?’ also became a trending search on Douyin.
Hongguo reaches 430 million deduplicated users in September, surpassing Doubao according to third-party report
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QuestMobile’s 2026 China Mobile Internet Autumn Report put Hongguo Free Short Drama’s total deduplicated user count at 430 million in September 2026, ahead of Doubao’s 419 million, making it the second-largest app within Douyin Group after Douyin itself. That ranking is based on a third party’s measurement methodology.
Zhang Xue Motorcycles’ campus-recruitment salaries spark debate
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At a campus recruitment presentation at Chongqing University, Zhang Xue Motorcycles offered annual salaries of 120,000–150,000 yuan for R&D roles and 100,000–120,000 yuan for non-R&D roles, which some students considered low. In a video response on November 3, founder Zhang Xue said the choice goes both ways and that he could not be forced to raise new graduates’ pay to 200,000 yuan.
Super El Niño: already the strongest on record in October
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At a November 3 press conference, the China Meteorological Administration said a super El Niño event had formed in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific in September 2026 and had become the strongest since monitoring records began by October. It is expected to peak in late autumn or early winter and have a significant impact on China. The administration also forecast generally above-normal temperatures this winter.
‘Prefrontal-cortex-friendly partner’ becomes a new social label
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The ‘prefrontal-cortex-friendly’ personality label has recently spread across social media and become popular in friendship and dating circles. Experts explained that the prefrontal cortex is only the physiological foundation supporting cognitive control, not a brain structure that determines personality. Labels of this kind mainly refer to relationships with clear interactions and less mental strain.
FDE: monthly salaries as high as 80,000 yuan, yet some cannot land projects
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FDE, or forward-deployed engineer, refers to a multidisciplinary engineer based at a client’s site who turns AI capabilities into usable systems. According to 36Kr, some major companies advertised monthly salaries of 20,000–80,000 yuan for FDE roles. The same article also said independent FDEs sometimes struggled to secure projects, while projects for small and midsize businesses paid relatively little. Lenovo and the China Electronics Standardization Institute said they had jointly launched the industry’s first FDE certification.