Month: October 2020

Enlarge / US Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a public memorial service for former astronaut and US Senator John Glenn at Ohio State University on December 17, 2016. (credit: Paul Vernon/AFP via Getty Images)

On Tuesday about a dozen space officials met virtually to simulate how a National Space Council might operate during a Joe Biden administration, should the Democratic Party nominee win the 2020 presidential election.

The American Foreign Policy Council convened what it characterized as a "closed-door" and "scenario-based simulation" to understand how the Biden administration would think through important space events. Invitations were sent to officials in the aerospace industry whom the Biden administration might call upon as advisers or to fill key leadership roles. The event was not organized at the behest of the Biden campaign.

Invitations from the non-profit organization to would-be participants explained that they would be assigned various roles to play, such as NASA administrator and the head of other agencies such as the Department of Defense and Department of Commerce. The participants would then act as a "National Space Council" to war-game scenarios.

Enlarge / Ooo, snazzy. (credit: Acer)

Acer announced Intel-powered refreshes of several product lines today at the Acer Next 2020 online event. Notable new or refreshed products include the Swift, Aspire, and Spin general-purpose laptop lines and the high-end ConceptD 7 and Porsche Design laptops.

Aspire 5, Spin 3, Spin 5

• 

  The Aspire 5 comes in both 14-inch models (shown here) and 15-inch models. [credit: Acer ]

The Aspire and Spin product lines get pretty straightforward refreshes with 11th-generation (Tiger Lake) Intel CPUs, but otherwise they remain largely unchanged.

For those unfamiliar with Acer branding, the Spin 3 and Spin 5 are convertible touchscreen laptops featuring a 360-degree hinge. That means they can be used as standard laptops, used in "tent mode" (unfolded 270 degrees, resting on edge of both screen and keyboard—a presentation much like a tablet in a folio stand), or opened a full 360 degrees into tablet mode.