Month: September 2019

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  The new HP Elite Dragonfly 2-in-1. [credit: Valentina Palladino ]

The commercial PC space can be slow to catch up to the consumer space when it comes to design and next-gen features. But HP thinks it has a solution for business users who want a laptop that looks just as good as it works and doesn't sacrifice pro features to do so. The HP Elitebook Dragonfly, despite its playful name, doesn't play around with its top-tier specs, and at just 2.2 pounds, it's one of the lightest business notebooks you'll find.

The "dragonfly" name refers to the device's ultra-light weight and its color, which HP calls dragonfly blue. The 13-inch Dragonfly is certainly one of the lightest business notebooks I've touched, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that HP still managed to include one USB-A port and an HDMI port on the convertible's slim frame. Those ports are accompanied by two Thunderbolt 3 ports, a headphone jack, and a security lock slot.

The Dragonfly's modern design would make it seem like a good competitor for machines like Dell's XPS 13 or even the now-discontinued MacBook, but it is part of the Elitebook family, so it has a number of features that pro- and business-users will require standard. The machine has a chassis made of magnesium alloy and ocean-bound plastic material and is MIL-STD 810G certified, so it will withstand drops and shocks better than most of its consumer counterparts. In addition to a shutter-able webcam, the Dragonfly can be equipped with an IR camera, and it comes with a fingerprint reader standard for Windows Hello. The Dragonfly will also support vPro Intel CPUs, up to 16GB of RAM, up to 2TB of storage, Wi-Fi 6, and optional 4x4 LTE connectivity.

Enlarge / Elon Musk in 2015. (credit: ODD ANDERSEN/AFP/Getty Images)

Elon Musk spent more than $50,000 digging into the personal life of British expat and Thai caver Vern Unsworth in summer 2018 in an effort to substantiate the claim that he was a "pedo guy." Musk revealed the spending in his latest response to a defamation lawsuit Unsworth filed against him last year.

Initially, Musk's investigator turned up some seemingly damning information about Unsworth, including a claim that Unsworth began dating his wife when she was around 12 years old. However, further investigation failed to confirm this claim, with the investigator finding she was actually around 18 years old when the couple met.

But Musk argues that it doesn't matter, legally speaking, if his claims about Unsworth were actually true. What matters is that Musk believed the claims were true at the time he repeated them to BuzzFeed reporter Ryan Mac.

Enlarge (credit: Lawrence Berkeley Lab)

The New York Times reports that the Trump administration will use a meeting at the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday to announce the revocation of California's ability to set its own air pollution standards. The state's authority was granted by a waiver that allows it to set pollution limits that are stricter than the federal government's, which is now threatening the administration's ability to roll back Obama-era standards for automobile fuel economy. This move has been rumored to be under consideration for months and sets up a legal showdown that will pit the federal government against California and the 13 states that plan to follow its lead.

As part of the Obama administration's push to limit greenhouse gas emissions, the Obama-era EPA negotiated a deal with automakers that would significantly improve the efficiency of future vehicles. As with many Obama-era environmental accomplishments, that agreement has been targeted by the Trump administration. In its analysis, the Trump EPA claimed that fuel-efficient vehicles would increase the fatalities from automobile accidents and proposed freezing fuel efficiency at 2020 levels while preparing new standards. But that analysis was hammered by scientists, who suggested that its cost/benefit analysis was flawed and that it failed to take into account negative consequences.

Meanwhile, various news reports indicated that automakers were uneasy about the degree to which the Trump administration was intending to cut back on automotive efficiency. Part of that unease was likely due to the fact that the automakers are already building far more efficient vehicles for markets that do have stricter standards. But a major factor for automakers was California's likely unwillingness to go along with the changes.

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  The dream team. [credit: Gearbox Software ]

We've had to wait seven years to get a new numbered game in the Borderlands series and almost five years since the (surprisingly fun) Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel that was supposed to hold us over in the interim. Now that we're a few days from the retail launch (our review codes arriving only hours before the game went on sale) and have plowed a fair share of hours into the game, we're struck by just how little Borderlands has changed in that intervening time, both for good and for ill.

On the good side, this means that Borderlands 3 still provides the same kind of slick, fast-paced, varied, and just-plain-smooth shooter experience that the series has always provided. As usual, the game provides a seemingly endless variety of weapons that, crucially, all look and feel entirely distinct from one another in a number of ways. Experimenting with new gear to find the correct mix of damage impact, accuracy, magazine size, reload rate, and special abilities is a never-ending and continually fascinating process.

Earning access to a new weapon that fits your style just right still provides that adrenaline hit in a way that can't be matched by finding yet another identical shotgun in most other shooters. And many guns now have a secondary fire option, greatly increasing the level of personal tuning by offering new pros and cons.

That variety now also seems matched by the game's environments. The neons and blues of planet Promethea's urban guerrilla warfare provide a welcome change from the brown and gray desert environments Borderlands is generally known for (Pre-Sequel also showed a lot of promise on this score). Even in the relatively early going, it feels like there's going to be plenty of new planets and side-quests to keep players busy if they want to hit that rarefied 100% completion.