It’s time to play “find the falling Chinese rocket” once again

Enlarge / Rendering of the Chinese Tianhe core module of the Tiangong space station. (credit: Getty Images) On Monday, China’s space program successfully launched another large piece of its space station. The 23-ton Mengtian module will provide pressurized volume for scientific experiments and is the final large living area to be added to the Tiangong…

Just in time for Halloween, the sun looks like a jack-o’lantern

Just look at that grin. NASA / SDO It looks like many things to many people. The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from the classic 80s movie “Ghostbusters.” A ScrubDaddy sponge. An emoji. And a jack-o’lantern, just in time for Halloween. Last week, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured an image of the sun’s surface in an apparent smile. “Today, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory…

Pinecone vector database can now handle hybrid keyword-semantic search

When Pinecone announced a vector database at the beginning of last year, it was building something that was specifically designed for machine learning and aimed at data scientists. The idea was that you could query this data in a format that machines understand, making it much faster. Originally this involved semantic searches where users could…

These Microsoft servers are helping fuel massive DDoS attacks

More than 12,000 poorly configured Microsoft servers have been discovered being abused to conduct impressively potent distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Cybersecurity researchers from Black Lotus Labs uncovered a total of 12,142 servers sporting Microsoft domain controllers hosting the company’s Active Directory services that were being used by multiple malware variants to magnify the…

Elon Musk denied reports that he’s speeding up Twitter layoffs to avoid paying out hefty stock grants to workers

Elon Musk speaking at the ONS 2022 oil and gas conference in Norway. Reuters Elon Musk said reports he’s speeding up layoffs to avoid paying out stock grants are false. Musk is set to lay off workers before Tuesday, when they’re scheduled to receive stock grants, per the NYT. Media reports suggest that Musk may…