According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, Amazon is planning to take on UPS and FedEx with a new shipping service named “Shipping with Amazon” (SWA). The new service will reportedly roll out in Los Angeles in the coming weeks. Ars Technica reports: Aside from first starting in LA, SWA will first serve third-party merchants that already sell on Amazon. The company plans to send drivers to pick up shipments from these businesses and deliver the packages for them. While shipping and delivery will mostly go through Amazon, anything outside of the retailer’s reach will be given to the USPS and other shipping services for the “last mile” portion of the delivery. In the future, Amazon reportedly wants to open up SWA to businesses that aren’t affiliated with the site — meaning Amazon could ship and deliver packages from companies of all sizes. Amazon also believes it can compete with UPS and FedEx by making SWA more affordable for business customers, but its pricing structure hasn’t been revealed. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Amazon To Take On UPS, FedEx Via ‘Shipping With Amazon’
A vaccine against tooth decay “is urgently needed” writes Nature — and a team of Chinese scientists is getting close. hackingbear writes: Scientists at Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences developed low side effects and high protective efficiency using flagellin-rPAc fusion protein KFD2-rPAc, a promising vaccine candidate. In rat challenge models, KFD2-rPAc induces a robust rPAc-specific IgA response, and confers efficient prophylactic and therapeutic efficiency as does KF-rPAc, while the flagellin-specific inflammatory antibody responses are highly reduced. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Slashdot reader prisoninmate brings news from Softpedia: Today, Linus Torvalds proudly announced the release and availability for download of the Linux 4.8 kernel branch, which is now the latest stable and most advanced one. Linux kernel 4.8 has been in development for the past two months, during which it received no less than eight Release Candidate testing versions that early adopters were able to compile and install on their GNU/Linux operating system to test various hardware components or simply report bugs… A lot of things have been fixed since last week’s RC8 milestone, among which we can mention lots of updated drivers, in particular for GPU, networking, and Non-Volatile Dual In-line Memory Module (NVDIMM), a bunch of improvements to the ARM, MIPS, SPARC, and x86 hardware architectures, updates to the networking stack, as well as to a few filesystem, and some minor changes to cgroup and vm. The kernel now supports the Raspberry Pi 3 SoC as well as the Microsoft Surface 3 touchscreen. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
It’s no secret that Mercedes-Benz eventually wants to compete with Tesla , not just partner with it , and you won’t have to wait much longer to see how that rivalry shakes out. The company’s David McCarthy tells Motoring.com.au that you should see a concept version of Merc’s Tesla-beating electric sedan in September, or shortly before the Paris Motor Show. Its exact specs are a mystery (even McCarthy hasn’t seen it; you’re looking at the IAA Concept ), but it should sit in the Model S’ price bracket and offer similar driving range when it launches, most likely in 2018. There were previously teases that it would be “dangerously fast, ” in case there was any doubt that it would be a performance-minded ride. The automaker’s ace in the hole might not be anything design-related, however. Rather, it could be production: McCarthy notes that Tesla faces a “challenge” in making so many cars on time and within budget. That shouldn’t be a problem for an industry veteran like Mercedes, he argues. And while he’s unsure that the car is built to be a “Tesla killer, ” he admits that Elon Musk and crew will “probably have good reason” to worry about it. In that sense, Tesla may be shifting focus to the more affordable Model 3 at just the right time. Although Mercedes (or rather, Daimler) technically has low-cost electric cars like the Smart Fortwo Electric, they’re not exactly mainstream. Tesla will be targeting an audience that Mercedes has largely left untapped, so it won’t have to worry all that much if its higher-end car sales take a hit. Via: Autoblog Source: Motoring.com.au 
