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It's time to set up your holiday streaming campaign
Are you ready to reach holiday shoppers on CTV? For many streamers, the season is already underway.
Last year, according to Roku internal data, holiday content searches on Roku saw an 86% increase during October. And in November, those searches rise an average of 39% weekly. This surging holiday spirit is mirrored by consumer activity, as about half of Roku streamers shopped Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals in 2025.
Meeting those shoppers is easier than you might think. Begin with the seasonal outcome you hope to drive: awareness, online sales, leads, store visits, or another measurable goal. From there, define your audience, upload your creative, set the budget and campaign dates, and establish measurement before launching. You can even create a shoppable ad unit that lets streamers buy with a click of their remote.
Our holiday playbook offers a month-by-month guide to reaching shoppers during this all-important time of year.
First-time spenders get a $5,000 match on the first $5,000 spent with code BEEHIIV5K. Terms apply.
Beginners in AI
Good morning and thank you for joining us again!
OpenAI says its AI found 948 ways an attacker could take over a Linux computer, all in one run, and wrote a candidate fix for every one. Linux runs most web servers and sits inside every Android phone, so this is AI work that protects you even though you'll never see it. Today you'll see what it found, what still needs a person, and a prompt that builds you a simple plan for updating your own gadgets. As always, every story here is human picked and edited.
THE FRONT PAGE
OpenAI's AI Found 948 Ways to Take Over Linux, and Wrote a Fix for Each
TLDR: OpenAI says one run of its AI bug hunter found 948 working ways to seize control of a Linux computer and drafted a patch for each, for about $1.2 million in computing.
The Story:
In mid-October, OpenAI pointed an unreleased cyber model at the Linux kernel, the core code inside most web servers and every Android phone. It flagged 2,308 possible bugs, reproduced 1,724 of them, and confirmed 948 "privilege escalation" holes, the kind that let someone with an ordinary account take full control of the machine. Each one came with a candidate fix.
The run cost about $1.2 million, or roughly $1,280 per flaw. OpenAI puts what bug bounty programs would have paid for the same set at $18.9 million to $66.3 million. Engineers at the security firm Trail of Bits sign off on findings before they reach Linux maintainers, Startup Fortune reports. Rivals are doing similar work: on November 3, the Xen Project credited Anthropic's Claude with finding two critical flaws in its virtualization software.
Its Significance:
Bug bounties pay thousands per find because these holes are hard to spot. If AI can surface hundreds at a time, defenders get a head start, though attackers with similar tools could too. A fix on paper still isn't a fix on your device. None of the 948 counts as solved until Linux maintainers accept the patch and the update reaches you, which is why hitting "update" matters more every month.
JOIN THE COMMUNITY
Learn AI With Us, Free
Most people try AI once, get a so-so answer, and quit. Our free 14-day challenge gets you past that point, one short lesson a day.
Week one, AI starts working for you. It drafts a real email for you, flags which messages in your inbox need a reply, and turns messy notes into next steps. You also learn to catch its mistakes. By day 7 you have a weekly AI routine you'll actually keep.
Week two, you build something of your own. You find a skill people will pay for and turn it into an offer, with a one-page pitch, a short video and your first client emails, all drafted with AI and ready to test. Day 14 hands you a 30-day plan.
10 to 15 minutes a day. No tech background needed. There's even a cinematography course coming out soon.
QUICK TAKES
The story: ChatGPT can now turn a sentence or an uploaded photo into an animated GIF, then let you change the speed, check single frames and share it, Decrypt reports. It runs on Images 2.6, a new image model OpenAI hasn't formally announced, and most accounts don't have it yet.
Your takeaway: Watch for it in ChatGPT's image tool over the next few weeks. Decrypt's own test produced still frames but no animation, so expect a few misfires early on.
The story: Anthropic reportedly signed its first content licensing deal, with the Associated Press, just before Tuesday's midterms, according to Adweek. Claude's answers about the vote then carried results "provided by and attributed to the Associated Press." Financial terms weren't disclosed.
Your takeaway: When you ask any chatbot about breaking news, look for a named source. An answer that says where its facts came from is one you can double-check.
The story: Google's AI tools will be off by default on K-12 student accounts, but a school that wants no AI at all must also switch off Google Search, because from early 2027 every student version of Search includes AI. Google says Search and AI are "deeply integrated"; NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani and former FTC chair Lina Khan say it's using its search dominance to push AI into classrooms.
Your takeaway: If you're a parent, ask your school which setting it picks. If Gemini does get switched on, our beginner's guide to Gemini covers its privacy settings and the separate versions for kids and teens.
TOOLS ON OUR RADAR
🔄 UniGetUI Free and Open Source: Updates many Windows apps at once from one window, so fixes like today's lead reach your PC.
📖 Readest Free and Open Source: An e-book reader for EPUB and PDF that syncs highlights and progress across phone and computer.
📡 Briar Free and Open Source: An Android messenger that still works over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi when the internet goes down.
🖌️ Photopea Free: A Photoshop lookalike that runs in your browser and opens PSD files, nothing to install.
✂️ Opus Clip Freemium: Turns a long video into short captioned clips, with 60 free credits a month and a watermark.
📇 Attio Freemium: A clean, simple CRM for tracking contacts and deals, free for up to 3 people.
⏱️ Clockify Freemium: Tracks the hours you spend on each project, free for up to 5 users.
TRENDING
Voters in at Least 29 Communities Backed Limits on AI Data Centers. In Tuesday's elections, all 10 Ohio measures backed by the group Conserve Ohio passed, and nearly 80% of voters in Joliet Township, Illinois, rejected a measure supporting the projects. Power bills, water and noise drove the votes, though some measures are only advisory.
The Top US Bank Regulator Wrote Its First AI Playbook. The OCC's 22-page examiner guide ranks fully autonomous payment agents as the riskiest AI a bank can run. It's nonbinding, but it suggests transaction limits, human sign-off and emergency shutoffs.
AI Agents Now Help Run SETI's Alien-Hunting Telescope. At the Allen Telescope Array in California, AI agents steer the dishes and sort radio signals as they arrive, cutting some weeks-long jobs to hours, the team says. They also caught a pulsar in the Crab Nebula in real time. Still no aliens after 66 years of looking.
Pangram Says Its New Detector Spots AI Images 99.96% of the Time. That score comes from the company's own test of 1,200 fake images from 12 generators, not an outside check. Its Chrome extension now flags suspected AI pictures on shopping and rental sites as you browse.
Netflix's New AI Tab Picks Shows by Your Mood. On supported TVs in the US, tap Discover, choose something like "scare me" or "quick watches," and narrow it from there. Netflix calls it a test kitchen, so features may come and go.
TRY THIS PROMPT (copy and paste into Claude, Grok, ChatGPT, or Gemini)
🔧 Patch Day Planner: Turn your pile of gadgets into a short, ordered update plan
Build a single-file HTML app called Patch Day Planner in vanilla HTML, CSS and JavaScript. No API key needed.
I list my devices and apps (like "iPhone 15, Windows laptop, Chrome, Netgear router, Ring doorbell"), then pick how much time I have and my comfort level.
The app calls the Anthropic Messages API with the web_search tool to find each maker's official update steps, then orders everything so the items that protect the rest come first: router, phone and computer systems, browser. It must never invent version numbers, bug names or menu paths, and should say "steps not confirmed" when it can't find an official page.
Show a numbered card for each item with a priority tag, one line on why it matters, short steps, an auto-update tip and a link to the official page, plus a "next time" list if I run out of time. Style: near-black background, mint and coral accents, Space Grotesk and Newsreader fonts.What this does: List the gadgets and apps you use and how much time you have. The app finds each maker's official update steps and puts them in order, starting with the things that guard everything else, like your router and phone. It won't make up steps it can't confirm, and anything you don't get to lands on a "next time" list. After today's lead, it's an easy way to make sure the fixes reach you.
WHERE WE STAND(based on today’s news)
✅ AI Can Now: Find hundreds of serious security holes in one run and draft a fix for each, as OpenAI's Linux pipeline did.
❌ Still Can't: Ship those fixes on its own. People at Trail of Bits and the Linux project still review each one before it reaches your device.
✅ AI Can Now: Turn a sentence or a photo into an animated GIF inside ChatGPT.
❌ Still Can't: Do it reliably for everyone yet. Most accounts don't have it, and Decrypt's test returned frames with no animation.
FROM THE WEB
RECOMMENDED LISTENING/READING/WATCHING
📚 The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll - Book
In 1986, an astronomer running computers at a Berkeley lab chased down a 75-cent accounting error and found a hacker selling secrets to the KGB. Stoll's true story is the original bug hunt, done by hand with printouts, patience and a lot of late nights. Read it next to today's lead to see how much of that detective work AI can now do at scale, and how much still comes down to a person who notices something odd.
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Thank you for reading. We’re all beginners in something. With that in mind, your questions and feedback are always welcome and I read every single email!
-James
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