Month: May 2019

Enlarge / The unusual, gemstone-inspired edges are designed to make this laptop stand out. (credit: Samuel Axon)

The HP Spectre 15 x360 is a good laptop, but it seemed we always found one or two things to quibble with.

With the 2017 model, we liked some key design decisions but felt let down by the performance and battery life. We were bigger fans of the 2018 update, which amped up performance while also improving battery life and making the 4K display standard. But we felt the trackpad was awfully small and didn't like that the fingerprint reader and power button were separate.

Now we're working with the 2019 model, and it brings a whole new design along with some faster internals and extras like clever port placement and a hardware webcam kill switch. At its heart, the 2019 HP Spectre 15 x360 still seeks to accomplish the same things as its predecessors. It's an eye-catching (if a bit bulky) convertible packed with most of the features creatives and heavy consumers of media are looking for.

(credit: Ron Amadeo / Nest)

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.—Don't be distracted by the shiny new "Nest" smart display that was just announced: Nest died at Google I/O 2019. "Google Nest" is the new reality now, where Nest is no longer a standalone company, but instead is a sub-brand (not even a division) of Google. The shut down of Nest as an independent company was announced in 2018, but the pile of announcements at and around I/O 2019 is the first time we're seeing what the future of Nest looks like inside of Google.

Nest laid out its future in an ominously titled "What's Happening" page on Nest.com, and a notice on the Works with Nest page. It sounds like a brutal outcome for users, who are looking at a dead-end ecosystem, potentially broken smart homes, and the shattering of the Google/Nest privacy firewall.

Meet the "Google Nest Learning Thermostat"

First up is Google's salvaging of the Nest brand as a general purpose smart home sub-brand. Just as Google has the "Pixel" brand for smartphones and laptops, it will now use the "Nest" brand similarly, so get used to saying and reading "Google Nest," which now means "a Google smart home product."

Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base. (credit: Aurich Lawson/SpaceX)

Welcome to Edition 1.48 of the Rocket Report! Mostly good news this week, with launch-related successes in Japan, the United States, and New Zealand. We also have an interesting article written by a friend of Vice President Mike Pence, who says NASA should use Falcon Heavy rockets for the lunar return.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Japanese start-up launches suborbital rocket. Interstellar Technologies launched its suborbital Momo-3 booster to an altitude of 114km on Saturday, The Japan Times reports. The booster fell into the Pacific Ocean 10 minutes after the launch. "It was a complete success. We'll work to achieve stable launches and mass-produce (rockets) in quick cycles," company founder Takafumi Horie told the publication.