Microsoft Teams will soon let administrators tweak the list of file extensions commonly associated with malware and security threats to meet their company’s security requirements.

This will come as an update to Weaponizable File Protection, a built-in Teams messaging safety feature that scans conversations and blocks chat or channel messages with dangerous, high-risk file attachments.

As detailed in a new Microsoft 365 roadmap entry, the feature is currently in development and will start rolling out in November 2026.

“Microsoft Teams is expanding admin controls for Weaponizable File Protection. Administrators will be able to customize which file types are blocked in Teams to align with their organization’s security requirements or continue using the Microsoft-recommended default list,” Microsoft says.

“This added flexibility helps organizations tailor file protection policies while maintaining a secure collaboration environment.” 

When it reaches general availability, it will be available across Android, desktop, iOS, macOS, and web platforms for standard multi-tenant cloud environments worldwide.

Right now, according to Microsoft’s support website, admins can’t change the list of blocked file types.

More Teams security improvements

Starting in December, admins can also block external users via the Defender portal to thwart cybercrime gangs(including ransomware groups) attempting to abuse Teams in social engineering attacks targeting victims’ employees.

Earlier this month, it said that Teams will get a new security feature designed to provide additional protection against phishing and fraud attempts by blurring QR codes sent by external senders.

This week, Microsoft also announced that, starting in November, it will let users report suspicious guest invitations directly from Teams to help their organization’s security teams identify and block phishing attempts and other attacks through guest invitations.

More recently, Microsoft has begun rolling out a new Teams meeting protection policy that lets admins automatically block all identified external bots from joining meetings.

Join Mikko Hyppönen and security leaders from the NFL, CHANEL, and Atlassian for a two-hour digital summit on what AI-speed attacks change, what defenders should stop doing, and how to validate, decide, fix, and re-validate at machine speed.

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Red Bull staged Max vs 100 on Wednesday, September 16, 2026, as the largest go-kart race ever run, lining 101 identical karts on a purpose-built layout at Silverstone designed by race director David Terrien. Max Verstappen started 101st with a simple brief: catch and pass every driver ahead of him inside 30 laps or 75 minutes. Once the rear of his kart drew level with the front of another, that driver was out for good. The 100 people in front of him were athletes, content creators, streamers, journalists, and fans, most of whom had seen the track only in Tuesday practice plus one qualifying lap. Dutch Formula One journalist Jacky Martens took pole. YouTuber Zac Alsop and Red Bull Ford Powertrains technician Lewis Osler sat near the front with him.

Lights went out, mayhem ensued, and the field abruptly collapsed in on itself. Karts collided with each other’s bumpers, pointed in the incorrect direction, and stacked up at the first hairpin. Later, Verstappen claimed that he had no idea what was going on and informed the radio commentator that it was complete carnage. Despite this, he had passed over 10 drivers by the time he reached the start-finish line, and he continued to thread his way through the pack while others lost their confidence. By the completion of lap one, he was in 37th place, while sixty-three drivers had yet to complete a lap. When asked, he gave the number over the radio and stated it wasn’t a bad start. Yellow flags appeared briefly, freezing the rest of the pack.

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He’d bounced in the seat before the start, giving the kart an additional amount of roll as he launched off the line, and then braked a fraction of a second before everyone else to make way for the inevitable spinning. Open radios picked up the remainder of the pack reacting as he approached, and one driver begged him not to pass, while others were terrified, and he warned at least one of them he was coming for them. By lap five, the majority of the grid had gone. By lap six, he was inside the top 10, and by lap ten, he was in fourth place, gaining nearly three seconds each lap on the leaders while passing every 21 seconds. His quickest lap was 2:20.673, more than two and a half seconds faster than Martens’ 2:23.327.

Martens, Alsop, and Osler had created a 12-second lead, and the race director saw fit to allow them an extra fast-lap shortcut with time remaining on the clock. On lap 12, they used it together before abandoning caution and concentrated on defending rather than racing. Verstappen managed to past Alsop and Osler in a single circuit on lap 13 before carving up Martens to secure the victory. Overall, it only took him 14 laps. 35 minutes. There were 21 laps and 40 minutes remaining. As he raised the flag, he described the afternoon as simply magnificent, before joking that it was his first win of the year, so he’d accept it. He also stated that it was one of his favorite days in a kart, the type of session that reminded him of how he used to race before getting into Formula One all those years ago.

Martens finished second, with Osler, a mechanic from Verstappen’s own powertrain group, coming in third. Alsop finished fourth, followed by off-road racer Pol Tarrés in fifth, Paky TWC, RDJavi, photographer Larry Chen, mountain biker Bernard Kerr, and actor Neo Yau. A four-time world champion started last in a 101-kart field designed for this type of turmoil and finished in less than half the time. That was the most surprising part, but thankfully it was a good one.
[Source]

To cast a streaming app to a Smart TV, make sure the phone and TV or receiver support the same casting technology, connect them to the same Wi-Fi network, open the streaming app, tap its Cast or AirPlay control, and select the TV. If the TV does not appear, check receiver support, app compatibility, local-network permissions, and network isolation before assuming the television is faulty.

First, Check Which Casting Method Your TV Supports

“Casting” is often used as a catch-all term, but Smart TVs can support several different wireless display methods. The correct procedure depends on which technology your source device, streaming app, and television share.

Google Cast is the app-based casting system used by supported Chromecast devices, Google TV Streamer, and TVs with Google Cast. Google’s current Google Cast instructions say a supported mobile device can cast from a Cast-enabled app to a compatible receiver when both devices are on the same Wi-Fi network.

AirPlay is Apple’s wireless streaming system. Apple says an iPhone can stream supported video or audio to Apple TV 4K or an AirPlay 2-compatible Smart TV, and the normal setup requires both devices to be on the same Wi-Fi network. Apple’s current AirPlay guidance also separates direct media streaming from full-screen mirroring.

Screen mirroring copies the source device’s screen to the television. Samsung distinguishes Smart View mirroring from app-native casting, while Amazon uses Miracast for screen mirroring on compatible Fire TV devices. These methods are useful in some cases, but they should not be treated as identical to Google Cast or direct AirPlay media streaming.

A television can support more than one of these methods. An iPhone, for example, may cast from a Google Cast-enabled iOS app to a Cast receiver while using AirPlay with a different compatible television.

What You Need Before Casting

Two devices can both have internet access and still be unable to discover one another. Some guest, hotel, or segmented Wi-Fi networks isolate devices from each other, which can prevent local casting even though websites and streaming services still load normally.

How to AirPlay a Streaming App From iPhone or iPad

Use AirPlay when your source device is an iPhone or iPad and the receiver is Apple TV 4K or an AirPlay 2-compatible Smart TV. AirPlay can stream supported media directly or mirror the entire Apple-device screen, but those are separate functions.

1. Connect the iPhone or iPad and the AirPlay-compatible receiver to the same Wi-Fi network.
2. Open the supported streaming app or media you want to play.
3. Tap the AirPlay control. Apple notes that some apps place AirPlay behind another control such as Share.
4. Select the Apple TV 4K or AirPlay 2-compatible Smart TV.
5. Enter the AirPlay code shown on the television if prompted.
6. Use the controls on the iPhone or iPad to manage playback.
7. To stop streaming, open the AirPlay control again and return playback to the source device.

If you instead open Control Center and choose Screen Mirroring, the TV duplicates the device screen rather than using the same direct-media streaming workflow. Apple documents streaming and mirroring as separate operations.

LG’s current guidance also confirms that supported webOS televisions can receive AirPlay and that the iPhone and TV should be on the same Wi-Fi network. LG’s AirPlay instructions also show that AirPlay may need to be enabled in the television settings.

How to Cast From Chrome on a Computer

Chrome can send a browser tab or the computer screen to a compatible Google Cast receiver. This can help when a streaming service is available through a website rather than a mobile app.

1. Connect the computer and Cast receiver to the same Wi-Fi network.
2. Open an updated version of Google Chrome.
3. Open the website or tab you want to display.
4. Open Chrome’s menu and choose Cast, save, and share, then Cast.
5. Select the receiver.
6. If necessary, open Sources and choose whether to cast the current tab or the entire screen.
7. Use Chrome’s Cast control to stop the session when finished.

Google notes that a website with native Google Cast support can behave differently from generic browser-tab casting. Some web content and plug-ins also do not work through Chrome’s generic casting path. Google’s current Chrome casting instructions document both tab and full-screen casting.

Casting vs Screen Mirroring: Which One Should You Use?

Use app-native casting when the streaming service supports it. In a normal Google Cast session, the phone or computer acts mainly as the controller while the Cast receiver handles playback.

Screen mirroring works differently. The television displays what is happening on the source device itself, so navigation and other on-screen activity can also appear on the TV.

Samsung’s current guidance distinguishes the two approaches: casting sends supported media while the phone acts as a controller, whereas Smart View mirrors the Galaxy-device screen. Samsung’s screen-sharing guidance also notes that Smart View availability and settings vary by device.

AirPlay can perform both roles. Apple provides a direct media-streaming route to supported receivers and a separate Screen Mirroring option for duplicating the device display.

Amazon’s Fire TV mirroring is model-dependent. Amazon says Miracast screen mirroring works only on compatible Fire TV devices, and if Enable Display Mirroring does not appear under Display & Sounds, the Fire TV does not support that method. Amazon’s Fire TV mirroring instructions document that limitation.

Do not assume screen mirroring is a universal fallback for every streaming app. Services can behave differently with mirroring, so the app’s own Cast or AirPlay control is usually the better-supported route when available.

How to Know the Cast Worked

Why Your TV Does Not Appear When You Try to Cast

Discovery problems usually come from network, receiver, app, or permission issues rather than from the video itself.

What If Your TV Does Not Support Google Cast or AirPlay?

If the TV lacks the receiver technology your app needs, you can use the television’s native streaming app, add a compatible external streaming device, connect a computer through HDMI, or use another wireless method that both the service and hardware officially support.

For Google Cast, Google TV Streamer is Google’s current dedicated streaming hardware. Google ended Chromecast production in 2024, although supported existing Chromecast devices remain usable. Google’s Chromecast history announcement documents that transition.

If your television lacks the receiver you need, compare a Smart TV app, Chromecast or Google Cast, and a streaming stick by compatibility, control method, and upgrade path before adding hardware.

A separate streaming device can be more practical than trying to force an unsupported wireless protocol onto the television. It also avoids treating screen mirroring as the only fallback when the streaming service provides a better-supported native app or external-device route.

Bottom Line

Start by identifying which receiver technology your television supports. Use the streaming app’s native Google Cast or AirPlay control where available, keep the sender and receiver on the same local network, and verify that playback moves to the TV.

If the television never appears, check receiver compatibility, app support, Local Network permissions, AirPlay settings, and network isolation before adding new hardware. Screen mirroring can be useful, but it is a different method and should not be treated as a universal substitute for app-native casting.

As baking and pastry instructors at Musselman High School in West Virginia, Rachel Nauman and Allison McClintock understand how nutrition affects learning.

“I remember being young and hungry, and I couldn’t imagine going out the whole day without eating,” Nauman says. At her school, that’s not an issue. Thanks to the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) program, schools and districts in low-income areas can serve students breakfast and lunch at no cost without requiring household applications. But things are changing nationwide.

Federal cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) under the 2025 congressional budget resolution (H.R. 1) have been shrinking the pool of families automatically certified for free school meals over the past year. Starting Oct. 1, states will be responsible for 75% of SNAP administrative cost, up from the current 50%. 

These changes to families’ SNAP status’ and state budgets can threaten districts’ CEP eligibility. In non-CEP schools, families that previously qualified for free lunch will have to reapply. That worries Nauman.

“Sometimes parents aren’t there, or are too proud to fill out the paperwork,” she says. The shift in free lunch policies has forced schools to navigate the administrative logistics.

The Impact of Program Changes

The cuts in H.R. 1 mean fewer families are “directly certified” for free meals — the automatic process where schools don’t need paperwork since the state knows the family receives SNAP. This is already having an impact. 

“We are just beginning to hear concerns from members about drops in direct certification,” says Diane Pratt-Heavner, a spokesperson for the School Nutrition Association.

In place of direct certification, families are filling out applications, and that is going to complicate things. At Leonardtown Middle School in St. Mary’s County, Maryland, Principal Deborah Dennie says the paperwork is onerous.

“There’s a parent letter, that’s the front, and the back gives the federal income eligibility guidelines,” she says. Then there are four pages of instructions, and only then do parents get to the application, with its multiple sections and numbered subsections.

“The families who qualify for these things, they don’t want to spend the time to go through all of this paperwork,” Dennie says. That could mean kids who need a free lunch aren’t going to get one.

CEP eligibility is based on Identified Student Percentage (ISP) — the share of kids directly certified through SNAP and other programs. Cuts to SNAP risk shrinking ISP, which could mean schools’ reimbursement rate drops so low that CEP becomes financially unfeasible.

That concerns Sommer Purvis, the child nutrition director at Livingston Parish Public Schools in Louisiana, where kids get free lunch through CEP. From 2021-2024, direct certification percentages in the district increased. For the past two years, the percentage has dropped, putting CEP at risk.

“We have started to be very proactive with monitoring those numbers to see where we are, how they’re changing,” Purvis says. “We want to make sure that we’re prepared.”

How Schools Are Responding

With all these changes to free lunch, school leaders are getting proactive, and teachers are getting prepared. In West Virginia, nearly 183,000 students may be at risk of losing CEP. If it looks like that might really happen, McClintock thinks teachers will step up.

“Teachers are always going to support a free and reduced lunch,” she says. “They’re going to talk to their legislators. They’re going to talk to board members to make sure that is heard loud and clear. There’s going to be a lot of grassroots movement.”

Purvis is already preparing for the worst. If CEP collapses, she wants to be ready to help parents through the paperwork of individual applications. 

“We are monitoring our lists and trying to make sure that we are capturing as many of those students as we can,” she says. Loss of CEP would be “a fundamental change for families.”

Purvis has already laid the groundwork, knowing the current situation might arise. “We’re very transparent each year,” she says. That means telling parents: “The paperwork is not required, but that is a year-to-year decision and things can change.”

Meanwhile, after 10 years with CEP, the district needs to start asking questions internally, says Purvis. 

“How would schools handle those applications? Because after 10 years, a majority of our cafeteria managers have never processed applications,” she notes. “A majority of our principals have not had to deal with meal collection and meal debt.”

With that in mind, Purvis is already being “very honest and transparent with those individuals about what might be coming,” she says. She’s also looking at what training would be needed. She’s making lists of which principals and cafeteria managers may need a refresher or an introduction to the free lunch process, and hoping the state’s department of education will help foot the bill if training is needed.

At Leonardtown Middle, meanwhile, Dennie is thinking about the role that teachers will play. If paperwork becomes a hurdle for families, classroom educators will likely be the canary in the coal mine. “My teachers tend to have their ears to the ground and if they hear something, then they bring it to our attention,” she says. 

A student’s father came in to see a teacher recently, and Dennie suspected he was dealing with financial distress. Dennie gave the teacher a heads-up, “and lo and behold, when she spoke to him, that was indeed the problem,” she says. “We ended up doing something as a school for the family.”

Teachers will need to be even more attuned to such situations going forward. Families may not apply for free lunch “either because of pride, or because of the packet itself and how cumbersome it can be,” Dennie says.

A Proactive Approach

At Bartlett Academy, an alternative high school in Oklahoma that serves many students experiencing poverty and homelessness, Principal Amy Sanders is betting that a proactive approach will help her team weather the coming storm.

The district never went to automatic certification, and instead has always had families fill out applications for free lunch, whether or not the family thought it was needed. “That way we have an accurate count every year,” she says.

The application is part of the school’s orientation packet, along with standards for discipline, behavior, dress code and so on. This way, applying for free lunch becomes … ordinary.

“We have a lot of Native Americans [families], and there’s a pride about not letting everybody know your business,” Sanders observes. “We’ve tried to make it where this isn’t ‘everybody knows your business.’ This is just routine.”

Dennie is also trying to be proactive. She has lists of students who got free lunch or incurred food debt last year, and makes sure they all get applications to take home. When parents come for an open house, the application is right there on the table for them to pick up and fill out later. And she includes information about free lunch in her weekly newsletter, all year long.

“We let them know that it’s there,” she says. “We want to make sure that everybody gets what they need.”

Dennie notes that teachers and administrators alike have to tread a fine line here. In the past she’s encouraged kids to apply for free lunch, but as a result, one parent reported her to the board. “He said I have no right to talk to his kid,” she recalls. “So I make them aware, but at some point, I have to back off.”

Factorial Energy has signed a joint development agreement with Japan’s Mitsui Kinzoku for solid electrolytes, the latest in a run of partnerships its chief executive says are necessary because no single company can bring all-solid-state batteries to market. ProLogium, which is building Europe’s solid-state gigafactory at Dunkirk, is already mass-producing all-solid-state cells in Taiwan.

Factorial Energy has signed a joint development agreement with Japan’s Mitsui Kinzoku to industrialise its all-solid-state platform, the latest in a run of partnerships, InsideEVs reported. “Battery innovation can’t be done by one single company,” chief executive Siyu Huang said. The company listed on Nasdaq in June.

That is an unusual thing for a battery startup to say out loud.

The coalition splits the problem up. Posco Future M handles anodes and cathodes, Korea’s Phil Energy covers manufacturing tools, and Factorial is exploring how to scale with SK On. Factorial says it holds foundational intellectual property for all-solid electrolytes.

Two of its partners are European.

It has joint development agreements with Volkswagen’s PowerCo battery division and with Hyundai, and Mercedes ran a modified EQS 1,200km on its cells in September 2025. Huang said the company is “very well settled for both North American and European volumes“. Mercedes is a backer as well as a test partner, and Stellantis supplied the Dodge demonstrator.

None of it is in a production car yet.

The semi-solid FEST cell is rated up to 375 watt-hours per kilogram and sits in prototype Mercedes and Dodge vehicles. The all-solid Solstice targets 450 Wh/kg, roughly double a current lithium-ion cell, and uses a sulfide electrolyte Mitsui makes at a dedicated plant in Saitama. Karma Automotive is due to be the first to ship, in 2028.

The all-solid half is further off than the announcements suggest.

It is also not unclaimed territory. ProLogium is already mass-producing all-solid-state cells at 381 Wh/kg in Taiwan, about 6,000 packs a year, and broke ground on its French gigafactory in February.

Dunkirk is still a building site.

It is due to start at 0.8 GWh in 2028 and reach 12 GWh by 2032, subsidised by France and sited beside the Gravelines nuclear plant. It is also Taiwanese-owned, which is what a European solid-state champion looks like after Northvolt. The continent’s own champion did not get there.

The other view is that none of this reaches cars soon.

LG Energy Solution’s North America president said last month that the technology will arrive in phones “probably a decade“ before it reaches electric cars, because large formats are where companies struggle. Factorial’s answer is to stop trying to do it alone.