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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

US Hails New Milestone in Development of Hypersonic Weapons:

In the US drive to acquire an operational hypersonic weapon, after the Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon (HCSW) programme was canceled in February due to budget issues, Lockheed Martin had been pushing ahead with the AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW), with its first captive-carry test held in June 2019.

The US Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have completed successful captive-carry tests of two hypersonic weapon variants designed by Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, the organizations announced in a press release on 1 September.

A captive-carry flight test is when missiles remained attached to a test aircraft for the duration of the flight. The method offers an opportunity to accumulate data about how the design, as well as the aircraft carrying it, will perform subsequent free-flight tests.

[...] Both companies, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, have designed the scramjet-powered hypersonic missiles as part of the Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) program run by the Air Force and DARPA, writes Defense News.

"Completing the captive carry series of tests demonstrates both HAWC designs are ready for free flight," said Andrew Knoedler, DARPA's HAWC program manager, making no mention of the location of the tests or the aircraft used.

The success of the recent tests put the US Air Force one step closer to achieving a long-cherished goal of fielding a hypersonic cruise missile.

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Phoenix666 writes:

China working to double nuclear warheads:

China is expected to at least double the number of its nuclear warheads over the next 10 years - from an estimated figure in the low 200s it has now - and is nearing the ability to launch nuclear attacks by land, air and sea, a capacity known as a triad, the Pentagon has revealed.

The annual report to Congress on China's military marks the first time it has put a number to China's nuclear warheads. The Federation of American Scientists has estimated that China has about 320.

The Pentagon said the growth projection was based on factors including Beijing having enough material to double its nuclear weapons stockpile without new fissile material production.

Begun, the Second Nuclear Arms Race has?

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Phoenix666 writes:

Walmart+ takes aim at Amazon Prime, launches September 15:

Although it's arriving several months later than expected, Walmart's answer to Amazon Prime is finally scheduled to launch in two weeks, on September 15. Like Prime, Walmart+ offers unlimited free delivery, with some products available same-day in many markets.

Walmart+ looks cheaper than Amazon Prime at first blush—the annual prices for the services are $119 and $98, respectively—but the difference may be less relevant to each company's bottom line than it looks. Both services also offer a monthly plan, and there's effectively no cost difference there. When paid monthly, Prime and Plus are only four cents apart, at $12.99 and $12.95 per month, respectively.

Although Amazon is the incumbent in any online shopping competition, Walmart does have some advantages. Where Amazon needed to build massive distribution centers from the ground up, Walmart only needed to leverage small-scale deliveries from the distribution centers and stores it already has. Walmart can also offer some products that Amazon generally can't—you'll be able to shop online for local, fresh groceries with Walmart+, as well as get membership-based discounts on gasoline at many of Walmart's brick-and-mortar locations.

It is unknown whether Walmart will require online shoppers to wear masks.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

Canada Post says dog attacks on mail carriers have increased during pandemic:

We have seen an increase this year of incidents across the country," the Crown corporation said in an email to CTVNews.ca.

According to Canada Post, around 41 per cent of households in Canada have dogs. Postal service workers come into contact with pets when they drop off mail, and with everyone at home during the pandemic, the chances of them coming face-to-face with a dog is even greater than usual.

[...] Canada Post is asking homeowners not to open their doors during mail delivery, as this not only can make physical distancing harder, but can allow a dog to rush outside at an unsuspecting mail carrier. They are reminding the public to wait until a postal service worker has left to go pick up the mail or packages left on the doorstep.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for RandomFactor:

Can the moon be a person? As lunar mining looms, a change of perspective could protect Earth's ancient companion:

Everyone is planning to return to the moon. At least 10 missions by half a dozen nations are scheduled before the end of 2021, and that's only the beginning.

Even though there are international treaties governing outer space, ambiguity remains about how individuals, nations and corporations can use lunar resources.

In all of this, the moon is seen as an inert object with no value in its own right.

But should we treat this celestial object, which has been part of the culture of every hominin for millions of years, as just another resource?

[...] As a thought experiment in how we might regulate lunar exploitation, some have asked whether the moon should be granted legal personhood, which would give it the right to enter into contracts, own property, and sue other persons.

Legal personhood is already extended to many non-human entities: certain rivers, deities in some parts of India, and corporations worldwide. Environmental features can't speak for themselves, so trustees are appointed to act on their behalf, as is the case for the Whanganui River in New Zealand. One proposal is to apply the New Zealand model to the moon.

[...] Can we support the legal concept of personhood for the moon with actual features of personhood?

Journal Reference:
Eytan Tepper, Christopher Whitehead. Moon, Inc.: The New Zealand Model of Granting Legal Personality to Natural Resources Applied to Space, New Space (DOI: 10.1089/space.2018.0025)

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

Parents more likely than non-parents to turn to alcohol during pandemic, survey finds:

The study, conducted by York University psychology researchers, surveyed Canadians early on in the pandemic and found that the use of alcohol as a coping strategy was highest among parents with young children, in addition to individuals experiencing greater depression and more social disconnection.

[...] Researchers surveyed 320 Canadians who drink alcohol within one month of the initiation of the COVID-19 emergency response using an online crowdsourcing platform. The average age of participants was 32 years old.

[...] The study also found that income loss was associated with increased alcohol consumption early in the pandemic, whereas living alone was associated with increased "solitary drinking behaviour."

[...] York University assistant professor and co-author of the study Jeffrey Wardell said the new research points to the importance of addressing coping-related alcohol use due to COVID-19 but added that more research is needed.

"Using alcohol to cope with distress is a clearly established risk factor for alcohol use disorder," Wardell said in the release. "This is concerning because these alcohol problems could worsen over time, suggesting it may be important to help these individuals find more positive coping strategies rather than using alcohol to cope."

Journal Reference:
Jeffrey D. Wardell, Tyler Kempe, Karli K. Rapinda, et al. Drinking to Cope During COVID‐19 Pandemic: The Role of External and Internal Factors in Coping Motive Pathways to Alcohol Use, Solitary Drinking, and Alcohol Problems, Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research (DOI: 10.1111/acer.14425)

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Tesla will cash in on surging stock price with $5 billion stock sale:

Tesla will sell up to $5 billion in new shares, the company announced in a Tuesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company didn't give any specific timeline for completing the stock sale.

The announcement comes one day after Tesla completed a five-for-one stock split that sent Tesla's stock soaring. When Tesla announced the split on August 11, Tesla's stock was worth less than $1,400. Investors reacted enthusiastically, pushing the stock up 60 percent to over $2,200 over the following three weeks.

Since the split took effect on Monday, the stock has surged even higher and is now worth $480—$2,400 in pre-split terms.

The stock's high price means that Tesla can raise a lot of cash by issuing a comparatively small number of shares. Tesla announced its last fundraising round of $2 billion in February when the stock was worth less than $800—$160 in post-split terms. With the stock now at roughly triple that value, Tesla will likely be able to raise $5 billion while giving up a smaller share of the company to new shareholders.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

The confusing but cute 3 wheel Solo EV is finally in production:

It's taken years, but it's finally happening: the Solo, the adorable three-wheeled electric vehicle from Electra Meccanica, is entering production.

As Electrive points out, news of the Solo first surfaced about four years ago, and deliveries were supposed to commence two years ago, but nothing happened — until now.

According to an announcement from Electra Meccanica, the company that designs and makes the Solo, the car is today entering production. It will be produced under contract by manufacturing partner and investor, Zongshen Industrial Group, in Chongqing, China.

[...] As you might expect given its name, the Solo is a one-person electric vehicle that's targeting itself hard at individual city commuters.

It has 100 miles (161 km) of range and a top speed of 80 mph (129 km/h), which is more than you'll ever need in the confines of a crowded city. It's all powered by a 17.3 kWh battery that feeds electricity to a 82 bhp motor that drives the single rear wheel.

[...] It's quirky, different, and it's way smaller than a car, which makes it great for use in cities where space is at a premium and conventional cars aren't getting any smaller. I'm not sure it really makes sense, but we'll get to that.

Electra Meccanica has said it wants to produce 75,000 of these, which seems ambitious, especially given that it didn't meet its previous delivery date.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Empirical evidence that nice people don't always finish last:

Think your boss is a jerk? Wonder why the management of your organization consists of sociopaths? Some academic researchers suspect you're not alone, and they start their new paper with the statement, "We suffer no shortage of jerks in power." And they go on to ask the obvious question raised by this fact: "Does being a jerk help people attain power?"

To find out, the researchers set up a very long-term experiment. After administering personality surveys to undergrad and MBA students, they waited over a decade to follow up and find out which personality types had accrued power in the world of employment. The results suggest that jerks don't necessarily get ahead at work; instead, some of the consequences of being unpleasant offset the benefits that it might otherwise provide.

[...] The good news here is that, as the researchers put it, "individuals who were more selfish, combative, and deceitful did not, subsequently, attain higher power." So, nice people do not necessarily finish last. But, at the same time, nobody seems to be held back by displaying that list of behaviors on the job.

Journal Reference:
Cameron Anderson, Daron L. Sharps, Christopher J. Soto, et al. People with disagreeable personalities (selfish, combative, and manipulative) do not have an advantage in pursuing power at work [$], Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2005088117)

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takyon writes:

Trump administration forces Facebook and Google to drop Hong Kong cable

Google and Facebook have withdrawn plans to build an undersea cable between the United States and Hong Kong after the Trump administration raised national security concerns about the proposal. On Thursday, the companies submitted a revised plan that bypasses Hong Kong but includes links to Taiwan and the Philippines that were part of the original proposal.

One of the original project's partners, Hong Kong company Pacific Light Data Communication, has been dropped.

Federal law requires a license from the Federal Communications Commission to build an undersea cable connecting the United States with a foreign country. When Google and Facebook submitted their application for an undersea cable connecting the US to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Philippines, a committee of federal agencies led by the Justice Department recommended against approving the connection to Hong Kong, citing the "current national security environment."

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

This 'Gamer Grandma' Has More Than 900,000 'Grandkids':

Shirley Curry, 84, has cultivated a following on YouTube with her charming videos of journeys through The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

[...] Shirley Curry has clocked thousands of hours of gameplay since the 1990s. She's been a gamer longer than many of today's top competitors have been alive. Still, when people rave about her charming walk-throughs of the blockbuster role-playing game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, she feels their praise is out of place.

[...] She joined YouTube in 2011 to watch some of her favorite gaming channels and uploaded her first Skyrim video in 2015. That clip, in which she does battle with a giant spider, hit 2.1 million views. "Petition for Grandma Shirley to be classified as a national treasure," one of the top comments reads.

Now, Ms. Curry is a fixture in the global gamer-influencer world. Alongside her hundreds of thousands of YouTube subscribers, she has 75,000 followers on Twitter and an additional 7,000 on Instagram. Bethesda, the studio behind the Elder Scrolls franchise, has promised to include her as a character in the forthcoming sequel to Skyrim.

"Everyone at the studio knows who she is. I wanted to do it right. That meant not only capturing her likeness, but also her skin detail and facial expressions," said Rick Vicens, a senior artist at Bethesda. "When we spoke about the process and what it would take, Shirley was completely on board. I'm excited for everyone, and most importantly Shirley, to see the final result."

[...] Ms. Curry said she makes decent money from her YouTube channel, enough at least that she can afford to travel on the gamer convention circuit, where she has met some of her die-hard fans. Those tours have been sidelined during the pandemic, but Ms. Curry said that her daily routines haven't changed much in 2020. ("I get my coffee, I sit down at my computer, turn both my screens on, and go through my emails, comments and Twitter," she said.)

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takyon writes:

Nvidia has announced its latest generation of gaming-oriented GPUs, based on the "Ampere" microarchitecture on a customized Samsung "8nm" process node.

The GeForce RTX 3080 ($700) has 10 GB of GDDR6X VRAM and will be released on September 17. TDP is up significantly, at 320 Watts compared to 215 Watts for the RTX 2080. The GeForce RTX 3070 ($500) has 8 GB of GDDR6 and a TDP of 220 Watts. The GeForce RTX 3090 ($1500) is the top card so far with a whopping 24 GB of GDDR6X VRAM. The GPU is physically much larger than the other two models and it has a 350 Watt TDP.

Nvidia's performance benchmarks should be treated with caution, since the company is often using ray-tracing and/or DLSS upscaling in its comparisons. But the RTX 3070 will outperform the RTX 2080 Ti at less than half the launch price, as it has 35% more CUDA cores at higher clock speeds.

Nvidia also announced some new features such as Nvidia Reflex (4m53s video), Broadcast, Omniverse Machinima, and RTX IO. Nvidia Broadcast includes AI-derived tools intended for live streamers. RTX Voice can filter out background noises, greenscreen effects can be applied without the need for a real greenscreen, and an autoframing feature can keep the streamer centered in frame while they are moving. Nvidia RTX IO appears to be Nvidia's response to the next-generation consoles' use of fast SSDs and dedicated data decompression.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series | Official Launch Event (39m29s video)

Previously: Micron Accidentally Confirms GDDR6X Memory, and Nvidia's RTX 3090 GPU

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Boeing and NASA target December for second try at uncrewed orbital demonstration flight – TechCrunch:

NASA and Boeing have provided some updates around their Commercial Crew plans, which aim to get Boeing's CST-100 spacecraft certified for regular human flight. The CST-100 and Boeing's Commercial Crew aspirations hit a snag last year with a first attempt of an uncrewed orbital flight test, which did not go to plan thanks to a couple of software errors that led to an early mission ending, and a failure to reach the International Space Station as intended.

In a blog post on Friday, NASA said that it and partner Boeing were aiming to fly the re-do of that uncrewed test no earlier than December 2020. This will involve flying the fully reusable Starliner CST-100 without anyone on board, in a live, fully automated simulation of how a launch with crew would go, including a rendezvous and docking with the ISS on orbit, and a return trip and controlled landing and capsule recovery.

[...] Provided OFT-2 goes as intended for Boeing, Starliner could be ferrying its first passengers for a crewed demonstration launch as early as June 2021, with plans for a first operational mission now set for December 2021. All these dates are subject to change, of course.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Study finds insect shows promise as a good, sustainable food source:

With global food demands rising at an alarming rate, a study led by IUPUI [( Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis)] scientists has found new evidence that a previously overlooked insect shows promise as alternative protein source: the yellow mealworm.

The research is based upon a new analysis of the genome of the mealworm species Tenebrio molitor led by Christine Picard, associate professor of biology and director in Forensic and Investigative Sciences program at the School of Science at IUPUI.

[...] "Human populations are continuing to increase and the stress on protein production is increasing at an unsustainable rate, not even considering climate change," said Picard, whose lab focuses on the use of insects to address global food demand.

The research, conducted in partnership with Beta Hatch Inc., has found the yellow mealworm—historically a pest—can provide benefit in a wide range of agriculture applications. Not only can it can be used as an alternative source of protein for animals including fish, but its waste is also ideal as organic fertilizer.

[...] "Mealworms, being insects, are a part of the natural diet of many organisms," said Picard. "Fish enjoy mealworms, for example. They could also be really useful in the pet food industry as an alternative protein source. Chickens like insects—and maybe one day humans will, too, because it's an alternative source of protein."

Journal Reference:
T. Eriksson, et al. The yellow mealworm (Tenebrio molitor) genome: a resource for the emerging insects as food and feed industry [open], Journal of Insects as Food and Feed (DOI: 10.3920/jiff2019.0057)

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

CenturyLink outage led to a 3.5% drop in global web traffic:

US internet service provider CenturyLink has suffered a major technical outage on Sunday after a misconfiguration in one of its data centers created havoc all over the internet.

Due to the technical nature of the outage -- involving both firewall and BGP routing -- the error spread outward from CenturyLink's network and also impacted other internet service providers, ending up causing connectivity problems for many more other companies.

The list of tech giants who had services go down because of the CenturyLink outage includes big names like Amazon, Twitter, Microsoft (Xbox Live), EA, Blizzard, Steam, Discord, Reddit, Hulu, Duo Security, Imperva, NameCheap, OpenDNS, and many more.

Cloudflare, which was also severely impacted, said CenturyLink's outward-propagating issue led to a 3.5% drop in global internet traffic, which would make this one of the biggest internet outages ever recorded.

If someone can cause this much chaos accidentally, how much damage could someone deliberately cause?

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