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An Anonymous Coward writes:A Speaker for the Dead is a person who attends a funeral or similar convention to speak on behalf of the deceased as described in the second Ender novel. A funeral director has taken up the path of being a Speaker delivering messages to those who have come to grieve, clearing out parts of the lives for people unable to do so, and arranging mementos for the living.It's good to see science fiction continue to inspire us.Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:The Moon Is Rusting, and Researchers Want to Know Why:

Several people have submitted leads to stories about how Ring Smart Doorbells might also alert people to the approach of law enforcement.FBI: Ring Smart Doorbells Could Sabotage CopsAn Anonymous Coward writes:Ring is the gift that keeps on giving...From https://threatpost.com/fbi-ring-smart-doorbells-sabotage-cops/158837/

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:Amazon's Prime Air drone delivery fleet gains FAA approval for trial commercial flights – TechCrunch:

'Just Passed a Guy in a Jetpack': Sightings at Los Angeles Airport Fuel Concernupstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow96:'Just passed a guy in a jetpack': sightings at Los Angeles airport fuel concern:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:Rocket Lab secretly launched its own company-made satellite on latest flight:

"exec" writes:Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

RandomFactor writes:For the first time, U.S. officials have approved a small nuclear power plant design.

Freeman writes:Facebook complains, Apple responds: iOS 14's big privacy change gets postponed:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for RandomFactor:Noble metals dissolved without aqua regia[*]:

takyon writes:ZTE announces the world's first phone with a behind-the-screen camera:

Freeman writes:Facebook halts Oculus Quest sales in Germany amid privacy concerns:

takyon writes:Microsoft launches a deepfake detector tool ahead of US election

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:NSA spying exposed by Snowden was illegal and not very useful, court says:

The weird physics of levitating liquids and upside-down buoyancy [2 Marge!]c0lo writes:Nature video for the doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2643-8.Vibration overcomes gravity on a levitating fluid

The Mighty Buzzard writes:Congrats to the wannabe APK noobtard for advancing the site's codebase despite me having extremely limited time to play. I added three lines of code and now Spam modded comments (and comment trees) auto-collapse and you can still moderate a comment as Spam even if it's already at the minimum score. Honestly, the folks using any other downmod on obvious Spam annoy me more than the noobtard does but that annoyance at least is now history. Changes are to hot code only, I'll put them in the repo as part of my next pull request.Suck it, noob. --TMBRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:These Students Figured Out Their Tests Were Graded By Ai — And The Easy Way To Cheat:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:Apple mistakenly approved a widely-used malware to run on Macs – TechCrunch:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:Navy CIO: 'Malicious Cyber Actors' Attacking Military Telework Infrastructure - USNI News:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:Federal court rules geofence warrants are unconstitutional:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:Orange peels used to extract valuable metals from spent batteries:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:Facebook pilot links user profiles with online news subscriptions:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:Meet GW190521—a black-hole merger for the record books:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:When Asthma in Jail Becomes a Death Sentence:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for RandomFactor:A Molecule in Honeybee Venom Destroys Breast Cancer Cells in The Lab, Study Shows:

[Ed. note: per community request, this story is in addition to our regular story cadence. It is provided so that those who are interested will have an opportunity to plan ahead to watch the launch. Launch is scheduled for 12h45m from when this story goes "live". --martyb]upstart writes in with an IRC submission:SpaceX targets another Starlink launch Thursday to continue record pace:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:US Hails New Milestone in Development of Hypersonic Weapons:

Phoenix666 writes:China working to double nuclear warheads:

Phoenix666 writes:Walmart+ takes aim at Amazon Prime, launches September 15:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:Canada Post says dog attacks on mail carriers have increased during pandemic:

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:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:Parents more likely than non-parents to turn to alcohol during pandemic, survey finds:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:Tesla will cash in on surging stock price with $5 billion stock sale:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:The confusing but cute 3 wheel Solo EV is finally in production:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:Empirical evidence that nice people don't always finish last:

takyon writes:Trump administration forces Facebook and Google to drop Hong Kong cable

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:This 'Gamer Grandma' Has More Than 900,000 'Grandkids':

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 GPUOriginal SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:Boeing and NASA target December for second try at uncrewed orbital demonstration flight – TechCrunch:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:Study finds insect shows promise as a good, sustainable food source:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:CenturyLink outage led to a 3.5% drop in global web traffic:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:Estrogen may lessen severity of COVID-19 symptoms in women, study finds:There is growing evidence that Covid-19 poses greater risks for men than women. Wake Forest School of Medicine has published a review of preclinical data that may indicate a protective effect related to estrogen.

Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/08/another-covid-19-reinfection-this-time-second-infection-was-more-severe/

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:Unredacted suit shows Google's own engineers confused by privacy settings:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:Single-use N95 respirators can be decontaminated and used again, study finds: Scientists hope new methods can mitigate the chronic shortage of personal protective equipment:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for RandomFactor:It's Official: Africa Has Just Been Declared Free of Wild Poliovirus:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

RandomFactor writes:China currently has four launch centers (three inland and one coastal) and is building a floating one.

takyon writes:Google Images is making it easier to license photo rights

martyb writes:The month of August is winding to a close. Here are a few updates on site activity. If you are interested, please read on after the fold. Otherwise, a new story will be along shortly.Read more of this story at SoylentNews.