Yesterday, Isar Aerospace secured its place in the history books when the upper stage of their Spectrum rocket put a payload of CubeSats into low Earth orbit (LEO). Not only does this make them the first European company to achieve such a feat, but it also marks the first time a booster departing from continental Europe has reached orbit. Not bad for a second attempt.

Standing 28 meters (92 feet) tall, the two-stage Spectrum rocket is just shy of half the size of the SpaceX Falcon 9 and designed to put a maximum of 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds) into LEO and 700 kg (1,500 lb) into the Sun-synchronous orbits used by Earth observation satellites. That puts its performance considerably ahead of other commercial launchers such as Rocket Lab’s Electron. Although the booster is not reusable, Isar Aerospace has stated they’re targeting a respectable launch cost of €10,000 ($11,700) per kilogram. The German company notes there are several more Spectrum vehicles currently in production, and when their new factory is operational, they’ll have the capacity to produce up to 40 of them each year.

In other European space news, BepiColombo has now entered what the European Space Agency (ESA) is calling the “arrival phase” of its nearly decade-long journey to Mercury. On Thursday, the spacecraft jettisoned its ion propulsion module as it had achieved the necessary trajectory and velocity to be captured by the planet’s gravitational field when it swoops by in November.

Launched in 2018, the BepiColombo mission is actually carrying two separate craft: the ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter from Japan. After the two separate from each other in December, they will operate independently to study their respective aspects of the solar system’s innermost planet for the next year, although, as is often the case for missions like this, an extension is always possible if things are still going well at that point.

On the subject of hardware outliving its original design lifetime, an active community of hackers has done a fantastic job of keeping the Spotify Car Thing up and running after the company officially pulled the plug on it just two years after its 2022 release. They’ve got a full Linux distribution running on it featuring a slick UI that can launch apps, check the weather, tap into Home Assistant, and of course, play music. The community is currently running a contest with cash prizes to spur on development of new open source software for the liberated Car Thing, and we’re eager to see what comes of it.

Speaking of keeping things open, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) has joined Bluesky — but they aren’t exactly thrilled with it. Being federated and largely comprised of free and open-source software, the FSF admits that Bluesky is the lesser evil when compared to something like X or Facebook. But they still can’t recommend others join the service, as the actual signup process requires your browser to run non-free JavaScript code.

One may wonder why the FSF would join Bluesky if they can’t recommend the service to others, and the answer is simply because they want to get the word out to a wider audience. While the FSF already operates an account on Mastodon, there’s a good chance that anyone who’s willingly regularly using said platform doesn’t need any additional convincing when it comes to the evils of proprietary software.

This is as good a time as any to point out that Hackaday is on Bluesky and Mastodon as well, and unlike the FSF, we’re also on Facebook, although the automatic sharing of new posts hasn’t worked for quite some time and honestly we can’t be bothered to figure out why. For our readers with a particular aversion to grass, we’ve even got an official IRC channel on libera.chat where you and nearly 50 others can feel superior to the thousands of immoral heathens that have joined our Discord server.

Finally, it’s been 50 years since the introduction of the ColorChecker — that little card with 24 blocks of colors that’s placed in the frame of a picture or video to provide a visual reference point. In honor of the milestone, Calibrite has put together a timeline that walks you through its history, starting with its inception in the 1976 paper “A Color-Rendition Chart” by C.S. McCamy, H. Marcus, and J.G. Davidson and running up to how the handy tool evolved for the digital age.

There are plenty of facts and trivia about the ColorChecker that you can bring up the next time you want to impress a photographer, and we especially appreciated the breakdown of what each of the original 24 colors was meant to represent.

See something interesting that you think would be a good fit for our weekly Links column? Drop us a line; we’d love to hear about it.

While the Thunderbolt 5 Wokyis G7 dock certainly goes after the retro gaming nostalgia vote, it also happens to be a well-thought-out add-on for your Mac Studio or older Apple Silicon Mac mini.

I am not a stranger to Mac docks. I suspect between myself and the rest of the staff, we’ve done the most reviews of them out of anybody facing the internet over the last decade.

And, I’m not a stranger to nostalgia.

Previously, we looked at the Wokyis M5 Dock, which turned a Mac mini into a Snow White design ethos compact Mac thanks to a clever enclosure and a built-in display. One year later, we’re looking at another similarly styled dock that aims for the same blend of utility and retro vibes.

The Wokysis G7 80Gbps is another dock designed to sit on top of your Mac. This time, on top of a Mac Studio or the older M1 and M2-era Mac mini.

But rather than resembling an old Mac, it instead plays on gaming themes. Specifically, that of the original Game Boy.

And, it does this while still trying to provide as much utility to modern users as possible.

Wokyis G7 review: Specifications

Wokyis G7 review: Design

Most docks hide under a monitor or behind a desk. The Wokyis G7 wants to sit out in the open, on top of a Mac Studio.

The device is designed to be a hat for the Mac Studio or the Mac mini with the same footprint. It connects to the back of the Mac using a supplied Thunderbolt 5 cable, that honestly, could be a little shorter.

I think that’s the first time I’ve ever wished for a shorter Thunderbolt cable to come with a dock.

Wokyis G7 review: Beside a Mac Studio for scale

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Like other docks, it’s got ports on the front and rear, and there’s a well-hidden slot for an M.2 SSD to be attached.

The styling mimics the original Game Boy. Obviously, it’s only in homage to the console with enough changes to keep Nintendo’s normally vicious lawyers at bay. Just ask Switch emulator developers how that goes.

There are also a series of buttons, which gives it the overall appearance of a stylized miniature arcade cabinet.

There is obviously a lot of novelty value here, but there’s a lot more than just something that makes you think about games from the 1980’s and 90’s.

The build quality is solid. Think Star Wars toy plastic, not Lego, though.

This is not something that needs aluminum all over, but the SSD cover is metal to act as a heat sink. There are sticky heat sink pads in the box, and all you need to do is add your own M.2 drive.

Wokyis G7 review: The flip-up display and buttons

The main visual element is obviously the display on the dock itself.

The previous novelty dock from Wokyis, the M5, also had a display, and did a lot more to serve the styling of the peripheral than it does here.

At a resolution of 1,280 by 800, it’s not intended for you to do work on.

Wokyis G7 review: The display can flip up to look like an arcade cabinet.

You could use it as a secondary display, though. It can also be employed as a digital photo frame, a clock, or a way to watch shows in the background instead of using your iPad.

There is the obvious temptation to use it for gaming due to the dock’s styling. You certainly could try, but you can’t and shouldn’t rely on those buttons to control your actual gameplay.

A real game controller is always going to be better than this. And cheaper.

Those buttons are actually a selection of one-touch keyboard shortcuts, complete with little icons explaining what they do.

Wokyis G7 review: Screen is laid flat. Those buttons are actually usable.

The D-pad handles brightness, volume, and media playback. The two red buttons are copy and paste, and the middle two are for putting the Mac to sleep and taking a screenshot.

This is a fairly handy way to make the dock a little more useful, like a simpler form of a Stream Deck or other macro pad.

If the display is taking a bit too much vertical space or you need to store it, you can flip it down. It’s not perfectly flat, but that’s okay.

Wokyis G7 review: Thunderbolt 5 and connectivity

Speed is the G7’s serious claim, thanks to its use of Thunderbolt 5. As the name implies, it can really use that 80Gbps of bandwidth.

The 80Gbps figure needs a Thunderbolt 5 Mac to reach that figure. For a high-end model like the Mac Studio that this is designed to sit on, it’ll be fine.

On an older Thunderbolt 4 Mac, it runs slower. Speeds drop to a 40Gbps ceiling, which is still fast, if not 80Gbps. Monitor support drops to just 4K on Thunderbolt 4 hosts, though.

The front of the dock has a CFexpress Type B slot. Wokyis rates that slot at up to a gigabyte per second, making it handy for offloading footage from high-end cameras. We got about 600 megabytes per second in actual testing, which is close enough.

Wokyis G7 review: Front ports are good enough for direct usage.

There are also SD and microSD 4.0 ports that work at up to 312 megabytes per second, and a pair of USB-A ports operating at 10Gbps. You also get a pair of USB-C ports running at 10Gbps too.

This is more than enough ports and memory card slots facing the user, both for charging and data offload uses.

The ports selection around the back is a little more long-term-connectivity based, but not by much.

You have the USB Type-C connection to the host, as well as two USB-A 2.0 ports for peripherals not needing speed, like keyboards and USB microphones. A headphone jack rounds it all out.

External monitor connectivity is handled by HDMI and DisplayPort, with the latter supporting 8K at 60Hz on a Thunderbolt 5 system.

Wokyis G7 review: The rear ports.

The remaining ports are one more USB-C port with 36 watts of power delivery, and a screen switch.

This isn’t the only model available. There’s a G7 10Gbps, which is less expensive, works using USB-C instead of Thunderbolt, and has a fairly sizable selection of ports, too. They’re just bandwidth-constrained.

The use of Thunderbolt 5 on this 80Gbps version means there’s plenty of bandwidth available for all of the ports, as well as displays. The host connection is not going to be a bottleneck here.

Wokyis G7 review: Storage

While the Thunderbolt 5 connection can drive all of the ports, connected displays, and the included screen without breaking a sweat, it’s not all that the G7 can do. There’s an included SSD slot, too.

Underneath the display in a screwed-down hatch is a slot for installing an M.2 NVMe SSD. The space can take M and B&M Key connectors, as well as M.2 sizes from 2230 to 2280.

Wokyis says it can take up to an 8-terabyte M.2 NVMe stick. The real benefit is thanks to the use of Thunderbolt 5, as it can transfer at up to 7,000MB/s under the right conditions.

Wokyis G7 review: Install an M.2 NVMe drive here.

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We are not made of money, and do not have a 8TB M.2 drive to test with. We do have PCI-E 5.0 smaller drives, and saw about 6,200 megabytes per second read, and 5,100 megabytes per second write speeds, with a 4K 120Hz monitor connected. Given overhead, this is close enough.

This is very handy for anyone who wants more storage for their Mac but doesn’t necessarily want an extra external drive littering the desk. Since it’s incorporated into the dock, it’s all built-in and doesn’t need to occupy an extra port.

It’s also probably the real selling point of this model over the 10Gbps version. Sure, the ports are nice, but that high-speed storage capability will be extremely useful for anyone who needs it.

Wokyis G7 review: A crowdfunding project with retro gaming charm

Wokyis has a habit of launching products on Kickstarter, and it’s doing the same thing here with the G7.

Crowdfunding carries the usual risks. Delivery can slip, and specs can change before shipping.

That said, the Wokyis G7 is an unusually fun take on a Mac dock. Its retro shell and flip-up screen give it character, though you’re not going to seriously consider it to be a gaming device.

Underneath, the specs are serious for creatives. Thunderbolt 5, CFexpress, and an SSD bay all matter to that audience, and a little extra digital screen estate doesn’t hurt too.

The open questions are price and delivery. It is a pre-launch crowdfunding product, so caution applies.

For Mac Studio owners who want personality, it is a crowdfunding project worth watching. The 80Gbps speed needs a Thunderbolt 5 Mac to shine, as well as the chunky casing to sit on. .

Wokyis G7 Pros

• Retro gamer styling with a flip-up screen
• Thunderbolt 5 speed with an internal SSD bay
• CFexpress plus dual SD card readers

Wokyis G7 Cons

• Pre-launch crowdfunding product, not yet shipping
• Buttons are not suited for gaming
• Final pricing not yet confirmed

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

The Wokyis, even after early-bird pricing, is competitively priced with other docks without screens. The screen opens up some interesting scenarios with monitoring, or even using the Home app on a small display.

Personally, it’s good during the workday to have a baseball game on, or similarly passive media.

It’s not as squarely aimed at the classic Mac nostalgia crowd, and I’m not as endeared to the original Nintendo Game Boy as many are. That said, I like what Wokyis has here.

But even if you’re in the same boat as I am, it’s still a nice piece of hardware, a good-performing dock, and attractive on your desk.

Where to buy the Wokyis G7

The Kickstarter page for the Wokyis G7 80Gbps lists multiple prices, including a limited Super Early Bird of $219 and an Early Bird of $229. The MSRP is listed at $369.

The 10Gbps versions are also listed, with the G7 10Gbps at $109 or $199, with an MSRP of $199, but as with the earlier review, we think that’s bandwidth challenged.

John Coltrane’s 1963 Impulse! Records release Impressions is sometimes overlooked by jazz newcomers and even established fans of the artist. But it represents an important stepping stone between his work on albums such as Giant Steps, My Favorite Things, and Africa/Brass, which I reviewed quite recently, and the final run-up to his January 1965 masterpiece, A Love Supreme.

Universal’s Verve / Acoustic Sounds Series has revived this excellent album and put it back within reach of the public with a fine new reissue. Again driven by Chad Kassem (of Analogue Productions fame), the lacquers for this new pressing of Impressions were crafted by Matthew Lutthans at The Mastering Lab.

The 180-gram vinyl discs were pressed at Quality Record Pressing (QRP), and each comes housed in an audiophile-grade, plastic-lined inner sleeve. The beautiful gatefold cover is manufactured to recreate the exacting look and feel of original editions, with glossy laminated cover artwork and the period-accurate, 1963-era orange starburst style Impulse Records label design (comparison of 1963 original to reissue below).

A mix of studio and live recordings, the fidelity changes a bit on this one, as it features two tracks from the same sessions that gave us Coltrane’s wonderful Live At The Village Vanguard albums. It still kind of blows my mind that, at a time when much of the pre-Beatles world was listening to often insipid pop fluff, the strong jazz underground could still allow an artist like Coltrane to thrive, creating such inspired music.

The music on Impressions, and the track “India” in particular, was definitely an influence on many artists. For example, The Byrds’ co-founder Roger McGuinn has frequently gone on record mentioning this album, as well as Africa / Brass, as important influences on the evolution of their expansive sound, particularly on tracks like “Eight Miles High.”

Unlike my last review of Africa / Brass, where I only had a 3rd or 4th pressing to compare it to, in this instance I actually own a quite nice condition 1st pressing. Short of being able to conduct a true A/B test, I made some quick back-to-back reality checks between both versions, and the new Acoustic Sounds reissue clearly bests my original.

It is less compressed and fuller sounding, with Reggie Workman and Jimmy Garrison’s twin double basses feeling far more present. When Eric Dolphy’s bass clarinet solo enters, the impact is stunning, with a rich presence at which the original only hints.

So now I am in a pickle: I love owning original pressings, but this presentation is so well crafted that I may well purge my OG. First-world problems for sure, I know.

You can get Impressions on Amazon for a very reasonable $38.98, which is a great deal, especially when you consider buying a vintage pressing on the collector’s market.

For example, at the time of this writing, a 1963 original stereo pressing in, at best, VG+ condition on Discogs would cost you at least $75. A more pristine copy, like the one I have, would cost much more. The choice is yours, but if you are simply looking for great sound and an authentic presentation of Impressions, this new reissue is a winner.

Our Ratings

★★★★★★★★★★ Music

★★★★★★★★★★ Sound

★★★★★★★★★★ Packaging

Where to Buy

Mark Smotroff is a deep music enthusiast / collector who has also worked in entertainment oriented marketing communications for decades supporting the likes of DTS, Sega and many others. He reviews vinyl for Analog Planet and has written for Audiophile Review, Sound+Vision, Mix, EQ, etc.  You can learn more about him at LinkedIn.

Ditching the cable can make life easier, but it does come with tradeoffs.

How does Wireless Android Auto actually work?

The pros of Wireless Android Auto

The Bold Bureau/Shutterstock

The cons of Wireless Android Auto

TY Lim/Shutterstock

AI chatbots can help plan a vacation or suggest what to pack. But there are situations where advice from someone who actually knows what they are doing is the safer choice.

As reported by the Chicago Tribune, three novice hikers from Roseville, California, had to be rescued from Mount Shasta after becoming stranded overnight. According to the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office, they had used Google Gemini to help plan the climb. The sheriff’s office said Gemini advised the group to carry far less food and water than they needed.

An eight-hour hike turned into an overnight rescue

The group started toward the summit at around 3 a.m. on Sunday. Hikers are advised to turn around if they have not reached the summit by noon, but the three continued and eventually reached the top at around 7 p.m.

Things went wrong on the descent. They lost their route in the dark and ended up in Mud Creek Canyon instead of staying on the Clear Creek Route. One of the hikers had also injured his knee, forcing the group to spend the night in a steep drainage before rescuers reached them the following morning.

The sheriff’s office advised hikers to carry multiple methods of navigation, including an offline option, and recommended calling the local U.S. Forest Service ranger station before attempting the climb. It also specifically warned people not to rely solely on AI for trip planning.

AI can give advice, but it cannot replace experience

Similar problems have surfaced when people turned to AI for legal and medical advice. We previously covered a lawyer who used ChatGPT for legal research, only to discover that the cases it cited did not exist. He even asked ChatGPT to confirm they were real, and the chatbot said they were. A study testing ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Meta AI, and DeepSeek also found that roughly half of their answers to medical questions were flawed or incomplete, while some included fabricated references.

Chatbots have their uses, but getting a plausible answer is not good enough when a mistake could put someone’s health, safety, or livelihood at risk. Advice from a professional or experienced expert should come first. At the very least, AI-generated information should be checked against reliable sources before anyone acts on it.

Even the chatbots themselves tell users not to take everything they say at face value. Gemini carries the warning, “Gemini is AI and can make mistakes.” Cases like this are a good reminder of why that warning is there.

Apple’s Time Machine tool removes the need to store everything online.

Setting up a drive for Time Machine

Adnan Ahmed for Engadget

How Time Machine works

Adnan Ahmed for Engadget

How far back can you go with Time Machine?

Adnan Ahmed for Engadget

What just happened? Google introduced its Gemini Audio AI models earlier this year, during the latest developer-focused I/O conference. Now, the advertising corporation is going to bring these additional features to three of its most popular mobile apps for Workspace customers.

Google is significantly expanding Gemini Live’s reach to Gmail, Docs, and Keep, at least for paying customers of the enterprise-focused Workspace service. The Alphabet company highlights how these new capabilities will enrich its customers’ day-to-day lives with a new option to use their apps and personal data, but not all users seem ecstatic about the idea of talking to a mail client on the phone.

The newly announced features are based on Gemini Live’s conversational AI models, so they are conveniently named Gmail Live, Docs Live, and Keep Live. Thanks to Gmail Live, customers can quickly recall important details about a meeting or their kids’ school events. They will just need to ask the app what they want in natural language, and Gmail will (hopefully) bring the right details to the conversation.

Docs Live does not necessarily work on pre-existing data. The AI feature is designed to be a “co-writer” for new document projects, helping users lay out a first draft based on “rough” thoughts and ideas. Furthermore, Docs Live can also extract “relevant” details from other Workspace apps (Gmail, Drive, Chat, etc.) if the user grants specific permissions to do so.

Finally, Keep Live is conceived as a novel way to turn whimsical, undefined notes and ideas into more organized and therefore “actionable” notes. Google is inviting users to “dump” their mind’s content in the company’s note-taking app, and then ask Gemini Live’s AI engine to turn a stream of consciousness into a more useful list of data or ideas. Google added that Gemini should be able to understand everything being said.

Gemini Live’s new conversational features for Gmail, Docs, and Keep are already rolling out to eligible subscribers of Google AI Plus, Pro, and Ultra plans. Furthermore, they should arrive soon for business customers using Google’s Workspace productivity suite.

While some people consider talking to a mobile app a rather natural way to interact with computers and personal devices, others see it differently. Some early reactions to Google’s new conversational features highlight the ever-growing number of AI tools that are now being proposed to interact with Android apps, while one disgruntled user said that “chatting” with an email app is definitely not the most appealing thing to do on a phone.

In this week’s Sunday Reboot, the sudden top-table rule changes and how John Ternus will be a good Apple CEO, whether he likes it or not.

Sunday Reboot is a weekly column covering some of the lighter stories within the Apple reality distortion field from the past seven days. All to get next week underway with a good first step.

More than one job change

September is always a big month for Apple, but this one is bigger than ever. Not because of the inbound hardware, but because of the people making it.

The key change is at the top of the Apple executive food chain, as the multi-month transition process has almost concluded. John Ternus is now the CEO, taking over from Tim Cook, but that doesn’t mean the process has ended.

Of course, there’s some behind-the-scenes logistics happening, such as Cook moving out of his office and into a new one for the leadership-adjacent position of executive chairman of the board.

Ternus, meanwhile, will be watching some hardware lackeys shifting cardboard boxes full of circuit boards and unused tech from his old office to his new one. It’s a big move too, as he will be among his fellow executives instead of near his beloved hardware teams.

It’s a thing that has to happen, as Ternus takes the mantle. Though inevitably other unintended changes are also underway too.

Apple Fellow Phil Schiller

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Apple Fellow Phil Schiller has decided to reduce his workload. He’s switched out of running the App Store for a more relaxed existence within Apple, presumably taking another step to retirement.

Then there’s Luca Maestri, who was the previous CFO but continued managing Corporate Services. Except he’s not doing that anymore and current CFO Kevan Parekh has picked up those duties too.

We know that seismic change can prompt other employment updates, and a new CEO would certainly count as one. But there was no serious expectation of a mass exodus as Ternus took his seat.

There still isn’t that expectation, but it doesn’t stop things like this from happening. We do know that the Schiller change was in the last days of Cook’s management, but Maestri’s decision took place a few weeks ago, long before the CEO switch.

It’s probably safe to say that the two changes are not massively consequential to Apple.

At least, Schiller’s App Store withdrawal could be a bit worrying, until you consider it’s only part of a larger Services division. Maestri’s post-CFO role was also not what you would call critical to Apple’s success, or at least wasn’t as critical as managing a massive segment of the company.

Besides, this CEO transition has been going on for months. Anyone who would’ve seriously objected to Ternus being in control has had ample time to get out of Dodge.

The people who are still leading Apple are going to hang around for quite a while longer.

Ocean liner management

As the opening weeks and months of Ternus control continue, there may be the threat of more managerial shake-ups. But it certainly won’t be from radical moves by the CEO.

You can expect him to make small changes to how the company functions. I say small in a relative fashion, because Apple is a tech giant.

His changes need to be like a captain steering a cruise ship. It takes time to slow down and to adjust course, as rocking the boat of that size would be dangerous.

That is to say, anything he decrees will take a long time to become an actual problem for someone. If a problem does indeed manifest down the road.

Then there’s the corporate culture, since any decision Ternus makes will affect thousands of people. Even though the CEO’s word is effectively gospel, if there are enough people who disagree, there’s always the risk of a mutiny.

Apple CEO John Ternus [left] and previous CEO Tim Cook [right]

There is one more safety barrier in place to prevent Ternus from creating a Titanic-like situation. Cook is still hanging around.

Sure, he’s not going to have much of a say on what products Apple will develop. Nor should you expect him to appear during an Apple event video in the future.

But it’s hard to get away from the thought that Ternus won’t have free rein without Cook’s oversight or advice.

Cook has a wealth of experience as captain of the SS Cupertino, and it would be foolish for Ternus not to listen to anything Cook says.

You’re not going to get any insane company-destroying proclamations coming from Ternus. Anything that he does say will have been discussed and debated to an exhaustive degree to keep it sane and safe.

Ternus is a safe pair of hands. But even if he wasn’t and was hell-bent on hitting an iceberg, Cook would still be a sanity safety net.

Last week’s Sunday Reboot discussed Apple’s early Mac upgrades and John Ternus meeting Pikachu.