Black Parrot (Slashdot reader #19,622) pointed out a historic anniversary this week:

On October 6, 1923, Edwin Hubble got a photo of Andromeda that showed that it contained a variable star, and therefore was an actual galaxy, ending the Great Debate over whether the universe consisted of anything beyond our own galaxy. Unless you’re more than 100 years old you grew up with a completely different understanding of the universe than anyone who lived before. Even Einstein did not know about it when he proposed the theory of general relativity. It was later in the decade before Hubble discovered that the universe is expanding.

A century later, the European Space Agency was announcing…

A very rare, strange burst of extraordinarily bright light in the universe just got even stranger â” thanks to the eagle-eye of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The phenomenon, called a Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transient (LFBOT), flashed onto the scene where it wasnâ(TM)t expected to be found, far away from any host galaxy. Only Hubble could pinpoint its location. The Hubble results suggest astronomers know even less about these objects than previously thought by ruling out some possible theories.

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Source: Slashdot – How Edwin Hubble Expanded the Universe 100 Years Ago

Long-time Slashdot reader alaskana writes: In late 2022 it was revealed that early samples of what was to be the “Pentium 5” processor, codenamed Tejas and Jayhawk were in development and made it as far as being released to board partners for evaluation. A few of these samples made it (of course) onto Ebay and then — not surprisingly — into the hands of a YouTuber. To be fair, tech site Anandtech arguably got the first scoop on this P4 successor way back in 2004, but that story seemingly never gained much traction at that time.

They wrote that Intel Prescott CPUs “could hit 5GHz+ but had huge power and temperature numbers, but Tejas was expected to clock higher than Prescott — with Intel chasing the huge 10GHz CPU clocks within 10 years between 2000 and 2011 — but it ended up not happening at all.”

In what was supposed to be a continuation of the “GHz is king” days of the early aughts, the Pentium 5 was in spirit a continuation of the “faster-is-better” philosophy of the P4 architecture, efficiency be damned. Speeds in excess of 7 GHz(!), and a pipeline upwards of 50 stages were rumored to be targeted by Intel, but reality (and physics) reared their ugly heads as always. WCCF Tech transcribed the remarks of Intel engineer Steve Fischer, who was involved with the project. “The thing had a pipeline depth of around 50 stages and an expected clock target at one point north of 7 GHz. I call the thing “the Death Star of processors” and half-jokingly reasoned that consumer acceptance of liquid-cooled chassis would not be a big deal.”

Intel kicked off Project Tejas in 2003, expected in 2004 and later pushed into 2005 after issues forced Intel to redesign the chip. Before the company could do that, the Tejas Project was shelved on May 7, 2004. In the end efficiency and parallelization was to be the rule of future CPU development, but the fact that Intel had (at least briefly) had planned on taking the P4 paradigm just a wee bit further with a true Pentium 5 is a fascinating look into the past of a future that never was to be for the venerable Pentium line.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Pentium 5 – a Rare Look Into the CPU That Could Have Been But Never Was

An anonymous reader shared
this report from the Associated Press:

A man accused of shooting down a law enforcement drone being used at a business near his Florida home could be sentenced to 10 years in federal prison…
Lake County sheriff’s deputies responded to a burglary at a 10-acre industrial property in July 2021 in Mount Dora, northwest of Orlando, according to a plea agreement. As deputies used a $29,000 drone in the outdoor search, gunfire from a neighboring residential property caused it to crash into a metal roof and catch fire, prosecutors said. Deputies went to the property and found Goney, who said he shot down the drone with a .22-caliber rifle because it had been “harassing” him, investigators said.

The man had 29 previous felony convictions — and federal law prohibits most convicted felons from possessing firearms and ammunition…

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Florida Man Could Get 10 Years For Shooting Down a Police Drone

An anonymous reader shared this report from Gizmodo:

Zoom is setting out to compete with Google and Microsoft by introducing Zoom Docs at its annual Zoomtopia 2023 event on Tuesday. Zoom Docs is the company’s own version of an AI-powered workspace that will provide users with AI capabilities to draft, edit, summarize, and include information from meeting discussions.

The company said in a press release that its new feature will be integrated into the meetings feature, and says it will make it “easy for teams and individuals to create, collaborate, manage projects, and stay organized.” It will also reportedly include the option to include tables, charts, and images in the Zoom Doc function, according to the press release…

Zoom’s press release calls it “a next-gen way of collaborating, built from the ground up with AI at its core,” with “traditional document capabilities, as well as wikis and drag-and-drop content blocks for tables, charts, and images”

Zoom Docs users can also leverage its AI-powered functionality to populate docs with content from Zoom Meetings to inform and jumpstart creation, generate content with Zoom AI Companion, summarize content quickly, easily search documents, and more. Zoom Docs is scheduled to be generally available in 2024.
Gizmodo notes that in March Microsoft added ChatGPT to its Suite 365 business software, and Google announced it was adding generative AI to Google Docs and Google Excel.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Zoom is Launching Its Own AI-Powered Google Docs Competitor

Since 2004 October has been designated “Cybersecurity Awareness Month” in America, “a collaborative effort between government and industry to enhance cybersecurity awareness, encourage actions by the public to reduce online risk and generate discussion on cyber threats on a national and global scale.”

That’s according to America’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (or CISA), the operational lead for federal cybersecurity and national coordinator for critical infrastructure security and resilience (specifically designed for collaboration and partnership). It’s why the NSA is publicizing the ten most common cybersecurity misconfigurations in large organizations.

But in addition, for consumers CISA is introducing a new program this year that “promotes behavioral change across the Nation, with a particular focus on how individuals, families and small to medium-sized businesses can Secure Our World by focusing on the four critical actions…” In a video the director of America’s cyberdefense agency calls them steps “that everyone can take to stay safe online.”

Use Strong Passwords, “meaning long, random, and unique to each account. And use a password manager to generate and to save them.”
Turn on Multi-Factor Authentication on All Accounts That Offer It. “You need more than a password on your most important accounts, like email, social media, and financial accounts.”
Recognize and Report Phishing. “Be cautious of unsolicited emails, texts, or calls asking you for personal information, and don’t click on links or open attachments from unknown sources.
Update Your Software. “In fact, enable automatic updates on your software, so the latest security patches just keep your devices continuously up-to-date.”

The video ends by noting CISA is asking tech companies and software developers to create products that are “secure by design.”

“And let’s secure our families by ensuring that our loved ones know what to look for and how to stay safe online.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – For ‘Cybersecurity Awareness Month’ America’s Cybersecurity Agency Shares Four Online Safety Tips

Slashdot reader TranquilVoid writes: To better understand the battles between native and invasive ants, scientists at Australia’s national science agency have turned to Microsoft’s classic computer game to model ant warfare.

Across Australia, 50 different species of invasive ants have established themselves, including electric ants, fire ants and yellow crazy ants, with hundreds of millions of dollars spent attempting to eradicate them.

“Ants are one of the few groups of animal species in which warfare resembles human warfare, in terms of scale and mortality,” researcher Samuel Lymbery said. The research found small armies of strong soldiers did better in complex terrain-based battlefields and large armies of weaker soldiers fared better in simple open battlefields. In the ant world, a simple battlefield would be a footpath or park while a complex battlefield would be bushland with undergrowth and woody debris.

Dr Lymbery said his work could help develop new approaches to habitat management, like adding undergrowth or more environmental complexity back into urbanised environments, to tip the competitive balance back in favour of native ants.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Australian Scientists Use ‘Age of Empires’ To Simulate Ant Warfare

An announcement from MIT News:

One promising approach to treating Type 1 diabetes is implanting pancreatic islet cells that can produce insulin when needed, which can free patients from giving themselves frequent insulin injections. However, one major obstacle to this approach is that once the cells are implanted, they eventually run out of oxygen and stop producing insulin.

To overcome that hurdle, MIT engineers have designed a new implantable device that not only carries hundreds of thousands of insulin-producing islet cells, but also has its own on-board oxygen factory, which generates oxygen by splitting water vapor found in the body. The researchers showed that when implanted into diabetic mice, this device could keep the mice’s blood glucose levels stable for at least a month. The researchers now hope to create a larger version of the device, about the size of a stick of chewing gum, that could eventually be tested in people with Type 1 diabetes.

“You can think of this as a living medical device that is made from human cells that secrete insulin, along with an electronic life support-system,” says Daniel Anderson, a professor in MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering, a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, and the senior author of the study.

While the researchers’ main focus is on diabetes treatment, they say that this kind of device could also be adapted to treat other diseases that require repeated delivery of therapeutic proteins.
Thanks to Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – MIT Creates an Implantable Device That Produces Insulin