AI maths by the hundred, Airtel's roaming catch, and a fake reset button
OpenAI's 372-result maths dump and the humans racing it, Airtel's free roaming that comes with a price hike, Chrome reading pages aloud in Hindi, TikTok's alleged placebo safety button, and a two-minute browser clean-up.
- Long Press · Daily Five9 Oct 202601 / 05
commentary372 AI math results, and one MIT team racing the machine
OpenAI has put 372 AI-generated math results on GitHub and, by its own account, nearly every one came from a single prompt to one agent. The more human story is in Quanta Magazine: an MIT team that had worked on a related problem for seven years posted a 95-page draft within days of hearing an AI might get there first. Lean can confirm a proof is logically sound. It can't tell anyone which of the 372 are worth a mathematician's year.
The problem
Maths moves on peer review, which is slow on purpose. A lab that can produce hundreds of claimed results in one go breaks that pace, and nobody has a process for reading them all.
What changed
Per The Decoder, OpenAI published 372 results from an internal model in its openai/math repo this week, each averaging about three hours of ChatGPT Pro Thinking compute, many with Lean formalisations. Among them is a claimed proof of the Unique Games Conjecture, which Subhash Khot posed in 2002. Quanta reports Dor Minzer's MIT group rushed out their own 95-page result on a related 4-to-1 games problem after rumours spread in September.
The catch
None of this has been independently reviewed yet. Princeton's Mark Braverman put it well: math by press release is not that healthy for math.
What it means for you
If you see headlines saying AI 'solved' famous problems this month, read them as claims waiting for checks. The useful signal will come from mathematicians citing these results months from now, not from the launch-day count.
- Long Press · Daily Five9 Oct 202602 / 05
newsAirtel's free roaming comes with a Rs 50 postpaid hike
Airtel announced free international roaming on all its postpaid plans this week, and in the same breath raised postpaid prices by Rs 50, so plans now start at Rs 499. The free part is one trip per SIM per year with 5GB, 60 minutes and 25 SMS for five days. If you travel once a year it pays for itself. If you don't, it's a price hike with a nice name.
The problem
Indian roaming packs have always been expensive enough that most people just buy a local SIM or an eSIM abroad. Airtel needs postpaid users to feel they get more for a higher bill.
What changed
Per the Airtel press release, all six new postpaid plans, from Rs 499 for one user up to Rs 1,799 for a family of five, include one free international trip per SIM per year, effective October 8. The pack carries 5GB data, 60 minutes of calls, 25 outgoing SMS and free incoming SMS for five days, activated when you choose. Business Standard reports the plans went up by Rs 50 at the same time.
The catch
Five days and 5GB covers a short trip, not a two-week holiday, and the Rs 50 extra is charged every month whether you travel or not.
What it means for you
Do the maths on your own year: one short foreign trip makes this worthwhile. Zero trips means about Rs 600 a year for nothing, and that's worth a look at Jio or Vi postpaid before you upgrade.
- Long Press · Daily Five9 Oct 202603 / 05
tipMake Chrome on Android read any article aloud
Chrome on Android will read web pages out loud. Open an article, tap the three-dot menu, then Listen to this page. It keeps playing with the screen locked, the speed and voice are adjustable, and standard playback works in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Bengali and Malayalam, which most people don't realise.
The problem
Everyone has a pile of saved articles they'll never read, and the time they do have, a commute or a walk, is time when reading isn't possible.
What changed
Per Google's Chrome Help page, the More menu on Android has a Listen to this page option with play, pause, skip, speed control and a choice of voices, plus an optional highlight-and-auto-scroll mode. An AI playback mode that turns a page into a podcast-style chat also exists, but it needs Chrome set to English.
The catch
It needs the 'Make searches and browsing better' setting on, and some sites simply don't offer it.
What it means for you
Try it on the next long piece you were going to save for later. If the default voice grates, tap Options and change it before you give up on the feature.
SourcesGoogle Chrome Help ↗
- Long Press · Daily Five9 Oct 202604 / 05
hot takeTikTok's alleged placebo reset button, and why yours may be one too
Unsealed filings in New York's lawsuit allege TikTok tested a placebo version of Algo Refresh, its reset-your-feed tool, in 2023: users tapped it, believed it worked, and kept seeing the same videos. TikTok says the suit misrepresents the feature. I don't think this is a TikTok-only problem. Every app with a reset button is asking you to take its word for it.
The problem
Reset and 'not interested' buttons are sold as the user's way to take back control of an algorithm. Nobody outside the company can check whether they do anything.
What changed
According to The Next Web, New York Attorney General Letitia James's amended complaint says some users in 2023 tests got a non-working version of Algo Refresh, and that the tests tracked time spent and ad sales. A product manager on TikTok's wellbeing team objected internally that a placebo group conflicted with the feature's purpose.
The catch
These are allegations in a lawsuit, and TikTok calls this routine product testing. A/B tests are normal; what's unusual is testing a safety control against a fake one without telling anyone.
What it means for you
Treat reset buttons on Instagram, YouTube and the rest as a nudge, not a guarantee. The controls that verifiably work are the blunt ones: unfollowing, muting words, and closing the app.
SourcesThe Next Web ↗
- Long Press · Daily Five9 Oct 202605 / 05
tip16 fake wallet extensions, and the two-minute browser clean-up
Socket found 16 Firefox extensions posing as Rabby and OKX crypto wallets that copied recovery phrases during wallet import and sent them to attackers. All were pulled by October 5. You don't need crypto for the lesson to apply: open your extensions page and remove anything you didn't knowingly install or haven't used in a month.
The problem
Browser extensions can read a lot of what you do on the web, and most people install a few, forget them, and never look again.
What changed
Per The Hacker News, the 16 extensions cloned wallet tools and utilities, intercepted seed phrases and private keys at import, and sent them to attacker-controlled Cloudflare Workers. Mozilla had removed all of them by October 5.
The catch
Removing an extension doesn't undo what it already took. If you typed a real recovery phrase into one of these, that wallet should be treated as compromised.
What it means for you
Type chrome://extensions in Chrome or about:addons in Firefox and prune the list tonight. Anything with access to 'all sites' that you can't justify should go.
SourcesThe Hacker News ↗