You might have a small kitchen, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make cafe-quality coffee at home. I test over a dozen coffee makers every year in my own small space, and I’ve found that when it comes to preparing delicious espresso, size really isn’t everything.

If you want a machine that will prepare 40 different beverages at the press of a button then, yes, you’ll need to dedicate a significant amount of space on your kitchen counter to a hefty fully automatic machine. However, if you just want to make delicious espresso, there are far smaller options that will do a superb job.

Miles Davis has been reissued often enough to qualify for his own pressing plant, so another version of Cookin’ With the Miles Davis Quintet needs a reason to exist. Craft Recordings has one with this new $39 Original Jazz Classics edition, mastered AAA from the original tapes at Cohearent Audio, pressed on 180-gram vinyl at RTI and housed in a Stoughton tip-on jacket.

More importantly, it sounds excellent and offers a far easier alternative to hunting down a clean Prestige original that has survived nearly 70 years of worn styli, cigarette smoke, bodily fluids, basement storage and optimistic Discogs grading. This Miles Davis Cookin’ review asks the more useful question: does Craft Recordings’ new $39 Original Jazz Classics pressing give you enough of the magic without paying collector prices for somebody else’s history?

Related Reviews:

Four Albums From Two Historic Sessions

By 1956, Miles Davis had outgrown Prestige, Columbia wanted him, and Miles found a way to make the divorce work for everybody. Still under contract to Prestige, he signed with Columbia with Bob Weinstock’s blessing, agreeing to give Prestige enough material to stockpile future albums while Columbia waited to release its first Miles recordings. The solution was two marathon sessions at Rudy Van Gelder’s Hackensack studio on May 11 and October 26 with John Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones. Prestige eventually turned those dates into Cookin’, Relaxin’, Workin’ and Steamin’ — four albums that sound considerably less like contractual housekeeping than one of the great jazz bands kicking the door off its hinges.

The reason is fairly simple: this was a working band, not five famous names assembled for a session photo. Months of touring and club dates had tightened the First Great Quintet to the point that Van Gelder’s studio could be treated almost like another gig; aside from a second attempt at “The Theme,” the material from the two marathon dates was captured in first takes. Cookin’, released in July 1957 and drawn from the October 26 session, feels spontaneous because the musicians had already done the hard work onstage.

“My Funny Valentine” strips the group down by having Coltrane sit out, leaving Miles enough oxygen to demonstrate why silence and space could be every bit as important as the notes coming out of his horn. “Blues by Five” lets Garland, Chambers and Philly Joe Jones dig in, while Sonny Rollins’ “Airegin” gives Coltrane room to bring more friction and urgency against Miles’ cooler phrasing. By the closing “Tune Up/When Lights Are Low,” there is no sense of five musicians taking turns; they are listening, reacting and pushing one another in real time. That is why Cookin’ still works nearly 70 years later. It sounds less like an album being made than a very good night that somebody had the sense to record.

How Does the New OJC Sound?

The review copy is exceptionally clean and well centered, with virtually no distracting surface noise. Although Cookin’ was recorded in mono, the instrumental definition is excellent, with Miles, Coltrane, Garland, Chambers and Jones remaining easy to distinguish throughout the recording. There is a convincing sense of space around the musicians, which allows the performances to breathe without sacrificing the density and energy of the quintet.

The horns are especially well handled. Miles has plenty of bite and presence but never becomes hot or piercing, while Coltrane retains his harder edge without sounding exaggerated. Chambers and Jones provide enough weight and propulsion to keep everything grounded, and nothing about the mastering tries to make a 1956 Rudy Van Gelder recording sound artificially modern.

Is It Worth $39?

If you already own a genuinely clean VG+ original or another excellent audiophile pressing, there is no compelling reason to replace it. For everyone else, this is a very strong value, combining AAA mastering from the original tapes, an excellent RTI pressing and quality packaging without the increasingly common $60, $75 or $100 audiophile vinyl tax.

Miles Davis was a once-in-a-lifetime musician: difficult, opinionated and equipped with an ego substantial enough to require its own rhythm section, perhaps, but none of that mattered once the horn reached his lips. Nearly 70 years later, very few musicians have sounded so unmistakably themselves within the first few notes.

Considering the session took place in Hackensack, sending Miles and the band to Hiram’s afterward probably requires surrendering my North Jersey credentials. White Manna was already serving its famous little burgers nearby, and Hackensack residents are currently cookin’ over plans to move the actual 80-year-old diner about a mile up the road and expand it. The building is coming along for the ride, but judging by some of the reaction, you would think they were relocating the George Washington Bridge.

Miles probably would have ignored the entire argument. He could have cooked those burgers with his horn, and nearly 70 years later, Cookin’ still does exactly what the title promises.

Our Ratings:

★★★★★★★★★★ Music

★★★★★★★★★★ Sound Quality

★★★★★★★★★★ Pressing Quality

Where to Buy:

Related Reading:

Anna and Elsa appear to be heading through a portal into a world of icy crystal butterflies next year, according to the first trailer for the third installment in the juggernaut Frozen franchise. 

Unveiled during Disney’s biennial fan convention D23 in Anaheim on Friday night, the Frozen 3 trailer was presented by Idina Menzel and Kristen Bell.

Frozen 3 is set “far from Arendelle in a frozen land more wild and dangerous,” Menzel said.

The trailer opens with a shot of the northern lights, where a snowflake falls and turns into a butterfly that flies to Arendelle Castle. It collides with Elsa during Anna and Kristoff’s wedding, and a portal opens. They step through it, finding an icy world filled with butterflies and an as-yet faceless new villain with dark hair who has been looking for Elsa.

Josh Gad also appeared on stage at D23 to sing a love song about a new snow woman named Samantha, with Menzel and Bell hinting that every character will have a love interest.

Disney also used D23 to show off the new Anna and Elsa costumes that kids across the globe will be demanding soon, with the ice queen now styled in a purple-blue ombre long-sleeved dress with a blue hooded cape, and the queen of Arendelle in a pleated pink dress and cape with a turquoise undershirt. In the trailer, Queen Anna wears a white wedding dress with flowers embroidered on it while Elsa is in a mauve dress.

The Frozen 3 trailer was revealed just over a year from its release date of Nov 24, 2027. To prepare for the return to Arendelle, you can stream both Frozen movies and multiple Frozen shorts on Disney Plus.

Corinne Reichert

Senior Editor

Corinne Reichert (she/her) grew up in Sydney, Australia and moved to California in 2019. She holds degrees in law and communications, and currently writes news, analysis and features for CNET across the topics of electric vehicles, broadband networks, mobile devices, big tech, artificial intelligence, home technology and entertainment. In her spare time, she watches soccer games and F1 races, and goes to Disneyland as often as possible.

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Doing anything on a frozen lake can carries some amount of risk. Nevertheless, every year events ranging from car racing to ice skating are held on them. As such, proper safety precautions are needed, the most important of which is ensuring the ice is thick enough to withstand the weight of whatever may be on it. This is done by cutting holes into the ice and measuring its depth in several locations. But this is a dangerous and imperfect process only giving a rough picture of actual thickness. So to solves these problems, a team of students at ETH Zurich made an ice measuring submersible drone. 

The concept of ice measurement employed is, on paper, reasonably simple. When a sonar pulse is sent out, some of the energy will return off the bottom of the ice sheet, but some of it will pass through creating a second return. By measuring the difference in these two returns, the thickness can be calculate with a high degree of precision. Attach the sonar to a submersible and give it a positioning system and you can simply get a thickness map, right? Well, employing theory in practice is a far more complicated prospect as the students soon found out.

The submersible itself is slightly positively buoyant. It features two concrete ballasts to adjust the center of gravity and six propulsion motors for six degrees of freedom. It’s powered by a NVIDIA Jetson to allow for autonomous operations and a whole host of sensors. Navigation is handled by a variety of sensors, mostly GPS and SBL. The GPS antenna sits in a radome at the top of the submersible, allowing for a strong enough signal for a positional fix when touching the bottom of the ice. SBL works similarly to sonar, where a transmitter on the submarine sends out an audio ping, received by a trio of hydrophones used to calculate the drone’s position.

But does all this complexity really work? Well, mostly. A number of real-world factors greatly compound the submarine’s effectiveness. The signal noise from in the sonar makes accurate measurements nigh impossible with that methodology. As such, the team used a depth based approach, by touching the submarine to the bottom of the ice, and measuring the water pressure and therefore depth, the ice’s thickness can be easily calculated. However, this method too is not without flaws. When snow falls on alpine lakes, it pushes the ice sheet downward, and a new ice sheet can form on top. This top sheet’s layer is what’s most important, but the depth measurement can only take into account the overall sheet’s thickness. Regardless, this was a really impressive first test of the submersible, and we look forward to seeing where it goes from here!

Make sure to check out this autonomous submarine next! 

I spent some time in the internet’s fakest mall, filling a shopping cart with things I could not buy, hunting for discounts on products that do not exist, and checking out three separate times for a grand total of $0.00. Then I placed a fake food order and smoked a cigarette I could not taste, with strangers I will never meet, on a rooftop that does not exist either. My bank balance never changed, but my brain, annoyingly, did.

When I first heard about South Korea’s growing “dopamine sites,” I assumed they were another internet oddity I would poke around for five minutes and forget by lunch. Instead, I found a surprisingly clever idea hiding beneath the absurdity. You can browse endless imaginary products, add everything to your cart, and complete a purchase that never actually exists. These websites aren’t trying to sell you anything. They’re trying to recreate the feeling of shopping while removing the part that empties your wallet.

Inside the sites built to fake the shopping high

FakeHaul is where I lost the most time, and I mean that as a genuine compliment to whoever names these products. I added a “CarryAll StepShield Waterproof Shoes” marked down to $59.50 from a suspiciously specific $92.00, a yoga mat I do not need, and a dress I can’t wear.

A countdown timer insisted my deal expired at midnight, which is absurd for a product that was never manufactured, and yet I felt a flicker of urgency, the kind that makes you click ‘Add to cart’ before your brain catches up with the fact that none of this is real. Every checkout landed at exactly $0.00, despite the price tag, and I kept going back for more, not entirely out of curiosity anymore. There was a small, undeniable hit somewhere in there.

The purchase was never real, but the dopamine hit was

Next, I tried the fake food delivery site FoodNeverComes, where I placed an order for steamed bao buns and watched a little bee icon crawl across a map toward my fake address. Watching that tracker move gave me the same small thrill I get from a real delivery app – complete with the anticipation, the countdown, the little rush of “it’s almost here.” When the tracking window vanished and nothing showed up, I actually felt slight disappointment, which tells you everything about how convincing this whole illusion is.

Shopping isn’t the only habit these sites fake

Damta.world is another dopamine site that lets you take a virtual cigarette break, which somehow worked the best of all three. You can tap to light it, tap again to flick off the ash, and hold the filter to blow an actual doughnut-shaped smoke ring, complete with crackling ASMR sound effects.

A live counter told me how many strangers were smoking alongside me in real time, while anonymous messages scrolled by from people just quietly getting through their day. I spent a few minutes there, and it felt like an actual break, calm in a way I did not expect from tapping an animated cigarette on my screen.

Do they actually help or simply replace one habit with another?

Psychologists interviewed about dopamine sites say they may satisfy the urge to spend without the financial consequences, but they also point out that users are still rehearsing the same behaviors. Browsing, comparing, adding items to a cart, and checking out are the very rituals many people are trying to escape.

Even FakeHaul’s creator admits the line is blurry. Features like a daily coupon wheel could keep people returning, raising the possibility that a tool designed to reduce compulsive shopping could become another engagement loop.

Given how easily my brain fell for the dopamine hit, I don’t think these websites are a cure for impulse spending. But I do think they reveal something about how shopping apps or addictive habits work. Shopping or social media apps basically trigger a psychological loop, and these fake sites just strip the products away, leaving the psychology fully exposed. What is left is a surprisingly entertaining reminder that the biggest reward was never the purchase. It was everything that happened before checking out.

General Motors is making a major change to its electric vehicles: every GM EV for the 2027 model year will get a native North American Charging Standard (NACS) port. Chevrolet, Cadillac and GMC models will all make the switch, allowing drivers to connect directly to compatible Tesla Superchargers and other NACS fast-charging networks without carrying a DC charging adapter.

According to a report by Electrek, the move covers GM’s entire 2027 EV lineup, including the Cadillac Escalade IQ, Escalade IQL, Lyriq, Optiq and Vistiq; Chevrolet Bolt EV, Blazer EV, Equinox EV and Silverado EV; and the GMC Hummer EV Pickup, Hummer EV SUV and Sierra EV.

GM is finally making fast charging less complicated

The change matters because charging standards have been one of the more frustrating parts of owning an EV. Most 2026 GM electric vehicles still use the older CCS1 connector, meaning owners need GM’s $275 NACS DC adapter to access compatible Tesla Superchargers and other NACS fast chargers.

The 2026 Cadillac Optiq has already made the transition, while the reborn Chevrolet Bolt, arriving in 2026 as a 2027 model, will also feature a native NACS port. Drivers buying a 2027 GM EV will still need adapters for some older charging infrastructure. CCS1 DC fast chargers will require a separate adapter, while most existing Level 2 charging equipment uses the J1772 connector. GM sells those adapters for $189 and $67, respectively, or $256 as a package.

For anyone shopping for a new GM EV, the native port should remove one particularly annoying piece of equipment from the charging routine. Plugging into a compatible Tesla Supercharger should work without reaching into the trunk for an adapter.

One charging app could make the experience even easier

GM is also trying to reduce the number of charging apps and accounts EV owners have to juggle. Energy Pass is integrated into the MyChevrolet, MyCadillac and MyGMC apps, allowing drivers to register and pay across multiple charging networks from a single account.

Supported networks currently include Tesla Supercharger, IONNA, Electrify America and ChargePoint, with EVgo planned for later. GM says the combined networks represent nearly 70% of U.S. DC fast chargers. Plug & Charge is also supported at compatible stations, allowing the vehicle to handle authentication while payment is processed automatically. The feature is already live at IONNA and is being expanded to additional networks, including Tesla Superchargers.

GM’s 2027 lineup should make fast charging considerably simpler, particularly for road trips. CCS1 and J1772 adapters will still be worth keeping in the trunk, though. The charging standard may be settling down, but the old infrastructure isn’t disappearing overnight.

Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital has bought roughly $215mn of Amazon shares, disclosed in a regulatory filing on Friday. It lands in the same week the firm told investors it is selling part of its OpenAI stake, in a company Amazon now owns close to 5% of.

Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital has bought roughly $215mn of Amazon shares. The position was disclosed in a regulatory filing on Friday. Thrive declined to comment and Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.

It arrives in an awkward week for a clean reading. Thrive’s first formal investor letter, sent days earlier, disclosed that the firm is selling part of the OpenAI stake that has come to define it.

Amazon is now an OpenAI shareholder. It completed a $50bn investment this month for a holding of close to 5%, ahead of the company’s expected listing.

Read together, the two moves look less like a new bet than a change of wrapper. Thrive is reducing an illiquid private position and adding a liquid public one that contains a slice of the same asset.

Amazon holds the other side of the race too. It has funded Anthropic repeatedly, agreeing to put in up to $25bn more in April, and booked a $16.8bn paper gain on that stake in a single quarter.

Underneath both sits the compute. AWS supplies much of the infrastructure the model companies run on, which is the exposure a shareholder actually buys.

The stock has been rewarded for it. Amazon passed $3 trillion in market value this month, the fifth company to manage it.

None of this is a one-off. Thrive put about $100mn into Shopify earlier this year, citing AI tailwinds in e-commerce, and its public holdings already include Figma, StubHub and Oscar Health, the insurer Kushner co-founded.

Kushner set out the logic himself. “Many of our growth-stage companies compete with, partner with, or become the next generation of public technology companies,” he wrote. “The more precise our understanding of public markets, the better our judgment will be in private markets.”

That is a reasonable argument, and it is also a venture firm filing 13Fs. The distinction between backing private companies and trading public ones is getting harder to see, and Thrive is at least doing it where everyone can watch.

Audacity is a free and open source audio software for multi-track recording and editing. It can record live audio through a microphone, mixer, or digitize recordings from other media. With some sound cards, and on any recent version of Windows, Audacity can also capture streaming audio.

Import sound files, edit them, and combine them with other files or new recordings. Export your recordings in several common file formats.

Is Audacity suitable for recording a podcast?

Yes, Audacity features a large number of effects and preset EQ curves with real time preview. It also lets you import and export WAV, AIFF, AU, FLAC, and MP3 natively. In addition, an auto-duck feature lets you mix different audio tracks or voiceovers for recording a proper podcast.

Is Audacity safe to use?

Audacity is free and open-source software that’s been around for many years, so yes, it’s safe to use. There was some controversy in 2021 after the company was acquired by Muse Group and changes were made to the program’s privacy policy, but thankfully the community’s protests got Audacity back on track.

Does Audacity work on Android or iOS?

No, Audacity is not available for Android or iOS, but WavePad offers similar functionality and is available on mobile for free.

What are the best Audacity features?

Audacity packs several features for recording and editing different type of audio files such as:

• 100+ sound effects.
• Support for 16-bit, 24-bit and 32-bit audio files
• Simple audio compressor
• A built-in mixer
• Plot Spectrum window for detailed frequency analysis
• Batch processes for tuning up several audio files at once

What are the best Audacity alternatives?

WavePad and ocenaudio are well known alternatives for recording and editing audio files.

Is Audacity free?

Yes, Audacity is free and open-source. You can use this software for any personal or commercial purpose.

Features

Recording

• Audacity can record live audio through a microphone or mixer, or digitize recordings from other media.

Export / Import

• Import, edit, and combine sound files. Export your recordings in many different file formats, including multiple files at once.

Sound Quality

• Supports 16-bit, 24-bit and 32-bit. Sample rates and formats are converted using high-quality resampling and dithering.

Plug-ins

• Support for LADSPA, LV2, Nyquist, VST and Audio Unit effect plug-ins. Effects can be easily modified in a text editor – or you can even write your own plug-in.

Editing

• Easy editing with Cut, Copy, Paste and Delete. Also unlimited sequential Undo (and Redo) in the session to go back any number of steps.

Effects

• Real-time preview of LADSPA, LV2, VST and Audio Unit (macOS) effects. Plug-in Manager handles plug-in installation and addition/removal of effects and generators from the menus.

Accessibility

• Tracks and selections can be fully manipulated using the keyboard. Large range of keyboard shortcuts.

Analysis

• Spectrogram view mode for visualizing and selecting frequencies. Plot Spectrum window for detailed frequency analysis. Support for Vamp analysis plug-ins.

What’s New

This is a patch release. It contains the following changes:

• #10688 Fixed an exception thrown when pasting into a newly-created track (Thanks, David Bailes (@DavidBailes)!)
• #10870, #10884, #10775, #10629 Fixed tone generation, waveform-scale setting, SetClip Name parameter,
• and clip-boundary command names for scripting and macros (Thank you, David Bailes (@DavidBailes)!)
• #11106 Fixed the loading of presets for the Distortion effect (A million thanks, David Bailes (@DavidBailes)!)
• #10947 Fixed paste into an empty audio track not preserving the source sample rate (Thanks, Juan Gabriel Colonna (@juancolonna)!)
• #10776 Allowed AltGr modifier in label and clip name editing (Thanks, Davide Peressoni (@DPDmancul)!)
• #9938 Added options to choose where silence is truncated (start/middle/end) (Thanks, Noah Rosenfield (@nosenfield)!)
• #9935 Added Podcast 2.0 chapters JSON export for label tracks (Thanks, Noah Rosenfield (@nosenfield)!)
• #10103 Improve UI on HiDPI displays on Linux/wxGTK (Thanks, Ivan A. Melnikov (@iv-m)!)
• #10099 Fixed MixerBoard Mute and Solo button display (Thanks, Ivan A. Melnikov (@iv-m)!)
• #10681 Fixed multichannel FLAC import
• #10999 Fixed envelope being broken after joining clips

If your weekend plans involve sinking into the couch and wondering what to do next, consider this your rescue package. This week’s lineup comes with a bonus – every single movie here is completely free to stream. I dug through Tubi and Pluto TV‘s libraries and found a pothead comedy, a Swedish vampire film that reinvented the genre, and a Korean horror movie that still gets talked about years later. So, add these free films to your Weekend watchlist right away!

We also have guides to the best new movies to stream, the best movies on Netflix, the best movies on Hulu, the best free movies, and the best movies on Amazon Prime Video.

Smiley Face (2007)

Genre: Comedy
IMDb: 5.9/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 64%

Jane (Anna Faris), an unemployed actress, accidentally eats a full batch of her roommate’s weed-laced cupcakes right before a packed day of errands. What follows is a chaotic, one day journey across Los Angeles as Jane tries to replace the cupcakes, make it to a big audition, and pay off her drug dealer, all while progressively getting more baked. However, paranoia and ridiculous distractions keep derailing her at every turn.

I recommend this one almost entirely for Anna Faris, who fully commits to playing stoned and turns this low-budget comedy into an absolute masterclass in slapstick humor. She won a Best Actress award at the Method Fest for the role, and it is easy to see why after watching her navigate simple tasks like an obstacle course. It is far from a polished film, and critics were split on it at release, but if you are in the mood for something silly and low-effort to watch, this one delivers exactly that.

Stream Smiley Face on Tubi.

Let the Right One In (2008)

Genre: Horror, Romance
IMDb: 7.8/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 98%

Oskar, a lonely twelve-year-old boy who gets bullied at school, strikes up a friendship with Eli, the strange new girl who moves in next door and only appears at night. As their bond deepens, a string of mysterious deaths begins spreading through their snowy Stockholm suburb. Oskar soon discovers Eli harbors a dark, bloodthirsty secret. Rather than leaning into typical vampire horror tropes, the film treats Eli’s condition as something tragic, tangled up in themes of isolation, first love, and quiet violence.

Director Tomas Alfredson shot the whole movie in muted blues and silences, letting the dread build gradually instead of relying on jump scares. Kåre Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson give remarkably mature performances for child actors, carrying scenes that require real emotional complexity. The final scene near the end is a masterpiece of tension and visual storytelling.

Stream Let the Right One In on Rakuten Viki.

The Wailing (2016)

Genre: Horror, Mystery, Thriller
IMDb: 7.4/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 99%

A quiet mountain village in South Korea is suddenly struck by a mysterious, violent sickness that drives locals to murder their families. An incompetent police officer named Jong-goo steps up to investigate the gruesome crime scenes. When his own daughter shows identical symptoms, his search for answers turns into a desperate race against time.

What starts as a straightforward procedural investigation slowly spirals into something far stranger, blending shamanistic ritual, possession, and paranoia. The intense exorcism sequence midway through is easily one of the most hypnotic scenes in modern horror cinema. I recommend this one for how thoroughly it commits to its slow burn, letting the mystery deepen for over two hours before its full scope becomes clear. That patience pays off with one of the most talked-about endings in recent horror cinema.

Stream The Wailing on Tubi and Pluto TV.