AT&T told the Federal Communications Commission that it has eliminated DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) policies and programs, complying with demands from Chairman Brendan Carr.

The FCC boss has refused to approve mergers and other large transactions involving companies that don’t agree to drop support for DEI. On Monday, AT&T filed a letter disowning its former DEI initiatives in the FCC docket for its $1 billion purchase of US Cellular spectrum licenses.

“We have closely followed the recent Executive Orders, Supreme Court rulings, and guidance issued by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and have adjusted our employment and business practices to ensure that they comply with all applicable laws and related requirements, including ending DEI-related policies as described below, not just in name but in substance,” AT&T’s letter to Carr said.

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China’s first attempt to land an orbital-class rocket may have ended in a fiery crash, but the company responsible for the mission had a lot to celebrate with the first flight of its new methane-fueled launcher.

LandSpace, a decade-old company based in Beijing, launched its new Zhuque-3 rocket for the first time at 11:02 pm EST Tuesday (04:02 UTC Wednesday), or just after noon local time at the Jiuquan launch site in northwestern China.

Powered by nine methane-fueled engines, the Zhuque-3 (Vermillion Bird-3) rocket climbed away from its launch pad with more than 1.7 million pounds of thrust. The 216-foot-tall (66-meter) launcher headed southeast, soaring through clear skies before releasing its first stage booster about two minutes into the flight.

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A sprawling infrastructure that has been bilking unsuspecting people through fraudulent gambling websites for 14 years is likely a dual operation run by a nation-state-sponsored group that is targeting government and private-industry organizations in the US and Europe, researchers said Wednesday.

Researchers have previously tracked smaller pieces of the enormous infrastructure. Last month, security firm Sucuri reported that the operation seeks out and compromises poorly configured websites running the WordPress CMS. Imperva in January said the attackers also scan for and exploit web apps built with the PHP programming language that have existing webshells or vulnerabilities. Once the weaknesses are exploited, the attackers install a GSocket, a backdoor that the attackers use to compromise servers and host gambling web content on them.

All of the gambling sites target Indonesian-speaking visitors. Because Indonesian law prohibits gambling, many people in that country are drawn to illicit services. Most of the 236,433 attacker-owned domains hosting the gambling sites are hosted on Cloudflare. Most of the 1,481 hijacked subdomains were hosted on Amazon Web Services, Azure, and GitHub.

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One of big surprise hits of 2019 was the delightful horror comedy Ready or Not , in which Samara Weaving’s blushing bride must play a deadly game of Hide and Seek on her wedding night. Searchlight Pictures just released the trailer for its sequel: Ready or Not 2: Here I Come .

(Spoilers for Ready or Not below.)

In Ready or Not , Grace (Weaving) falls in love with Alex Le Domas (Mark O’Brien), a member of a wealthy gaming dynasty. After a picture-perfect wedding on the family estate, Alex informs Grace that there’s just one more formality to be observed: At midnight, she has to draw a card from a mysterious box and play whatever game is named there.

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On Wednesday, three NASA astronomers released an analysis showing that several planned orbital telescopes would see their images criss-crossed by planned satellite constellations, such as a fully expanded Starlink and its competitors. While the impact of these constellations on ground-based has been widely considered, orbital hardware was thought to be relatively immune from their interference. But the planned expansion of constellations, coupled with some of the features of upcoming missions, will mean that at least one proposed observatory will see an average of nearly 100 satellite tracks in every exposure.

Making matters worse, some of the planned measures meant to minimize the impact on ground-based telescopes will make things worse for those in orbit.

Constellations vs. astronomy

Satellite constellations are a relatively new threat to astronomy; prior to the drop in launch costs driven by SpaceX’s reusable rockets, the largest constellations in orbit consisted of a few dozen satellites. But the rapid growth of the Starlink system caused problems for ground-based astronomy that are not easy to solve .

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It’s an incredible time to be a guitarist who doesn’t want to own a bunch of $2,000 amps and an expensive pedalboard of gear. Amp and pedal simulators, which have been around for decades, have in the last few years finally come into their own as nearly indistinguishable sonic replacements. Even John Mayer is now willing to ditch his beloved tube amps for digital models .

I certainly don’t have Mayer’s chops or gear budget, but I do love messing with this sort of tech and have purchased everything from NeuralDSP ‘s Archetypes series to Amplitube and Guitar Rig. Last week, as part of an early Black Friday sale, I even picked up two amp/effects suites from British developer Polychrome DSP— Nunchuck (Marshall amps) and Lumos (clean through mid-gain tones). They are both excellent.

Any reasonable person should be satisfied with this tech stack, which models gear that collectively costs as much as my house. After my Polychrome DSP purchases, I reminded myself that I was a reasonable person, and that I could therefore ignore any further amp sims that might tempt my wandering eye.

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The top drug regulator at the Food and Drug Administration, Richard Pazdur, has decided to retire from the agency just three weeks after taking the leading position, according to multiple media outlets.

Pazdur, an oncologist who has worked at the FDA since 1999, was seen as a stabilizing force for an agency that has been mired in turmoil during the second Trump administration. He took over the role of leading the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research on November 11, after the previous leader, George Tidmarsh, left the agency amid an investigation and a lawsuit regarding allegations that he used his position to exact petty revenge on a former business partner. In light of the scandal, one venture capital investor called the agency a “ clown show .” Drug industry groups, meanwhile, called the FDA erratic and unpredictable .

Pazdur’s selection was seen as a positive sign by agency insiders, drug industry representatives, and patient advocacy groups, according to reporting by The Washington Post .

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There’s a race in China among several companies vying to become the next to launch and land an orbital-class rocket, and the starting gun could go off as soon as tonight.

LandSpace, one of several maturing Chinese rocket startups, is about to launch the first flight of its medium-lift Zhuque-3 rocket. Liftoff could happen around 11 pm EST tonight (04:00 UTC Wednesday), or noon local time at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China.

Airspace warning notices advising pilots to steer clear of the rocket’s flight path suggest LandSpace has a launch window of about two hours. When it lifts off, the Zhuque-3 (Vermillion Bird-3) rocket will become the largest commercial launch vehicle ever flown in China. What’s more, LandSpace will become the first Chinese launch provider to attempt a landing of its first stage booster, using the same tried-and-true return method pioneered by SpaceX and, more recently, Blue Origin in the United States.

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The shoe is most certainly on the other foot. On Monday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reportedly declared a “code red” at the company to improve ChatGPT, delaying advertising plans and other products in the process,  The Information reported based on a leaked internal memo. The move follows Google’s release of its Gemini 3 model last month, which has outperformed ChatGPT on some industry benchmark tests and sparked high-profile praise on social media.

In the memo, Altman wrote, “We are at a critical time for ChatGPT.” The company will push back work on advertising integration, AI agents for health and shopping, and a personal assistant feature called Pulse . Altman encouraged temporary team transfers and established daily calls for employees responsible for enhancing the chatbot.

The directive creates an odd symmetry with events from December 2022, when Google management declared its own “code red” internal emergency after ChatGPT launched and rapidly gained in popularity. At the time, Google CEO Sundar Pichai reassigned teams across the company to develop AI prototypes and products to compete with OpenAI’s chatbot. Now, three years later, the AI industry is in a very different place.

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