Normal view
AI infrastructure company Cornelis raises $205M to chip away at Nvidiaβs dominance
Stop Overpaying for Adobe Acrobat: $35 PDF Editor Has AI Built In
PDNob Pro gives IT teams and business professionals lifetime license to AI-powered PDF tools for just $34.97.
The post Stop Overpaying for Adobe Acrobat: $35 PDF Editor Has AI Built In appeared first on TechRepublic.
Larry Ellison cancels $7.5 billion sale of Oracle stock
OpenAIβs Sam Altman says it would be βill-advisedβ to go public in 2026
Tesla says it will finally unveil the second-generation Roadster on October 1
Kimi-maker Moonshot AI targets $2B in annual revenue
Nscale adds former OpenAI exec Fidji Simo to its board ahead of potential IPO
6 must-watch shows to stream before the 2026 Emmys
Televisionβs highest honors will be awarded to several shows at the 2026 Primetime Emmys. HBO led the field with 122 total nominations, including nominations at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards, followed by Netflix (111) and Apple TV (89). These three services will be searching for Emmy glory in several of the major categories, including drama series, comedy series, and limited or anthology series.

Proxima Fusion bets β¬140M on a critical fusion ingredient dominated by Asian suppliers
Google is making it easier to switch between password managers on Android
The Boring Company raises $3B in round led by UAE
The hinge for Appleβs new foldable phone was built with AI
Harvey hits $15.5B valuation, months after reaching $11B
Shipt becomes the latest delivery app with an AI shopping assistant
White House takes down βBuild the Wallβ game after the Tetris Company complains
Disassembling a Mini Air Blower to Make RC Airplanes
As a certified RC airplane fan, the [RCMakerLab] on YouTube found themselves looking at one of those nifty mini air blowers that provide an alternative to a compressor and canned air for dusting and other high-volume, high-pressure air-related tasks.
![]()
Inside these quite affordable units is a ducted fan (EDF) that can produce fairly high levels of airflow to get to every last dust bunny hiding on a PCB or inside a keyboard, raising the question of whether you could use these to fly a model airplane with.
As can be seen in the torn down unit, there isnβt a lot to these air blowers, with the ESC bolted onto the EDF and only the speed regulator and on/off switch being external controls. This would make it very easy to integrate into an airplane, but leaves the question of whether it can generate enough thrust to make it worth the effort.
Using a custom rig, it was shown to generate up to 110 grams of thrust with a current of 16.5 A, which would at least go a long way to carrying its own battery pack. In order to create an airplane with it, probably two of these motors are needed. Thereβs also the potential of reducing weight by changing the ESC and such, making reusing these little EDFs from any discarded or broken mini air blowers at least worth a shot.
At the very least, it seems like it has a better shot of working than a plane powered by an electric leaf blower.
A hacker stole $340M in a crypto heist, then returned most of it
A secret new Elizabeth Holmes documentary stuns Telluride
Hackaday Links: September 6, 2026
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 Labβs Electron. Although the booster is not reusable, Isar Aerospace has stated theyβre targeting a respectable launch cost of β¬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, theyβll 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 βarrival phaseβ 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 planetβs gravitational field when it swoops by in November.
Launched in 2018, the BepiColombo mission is actually carrying two separate craft: the ESAβs 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 systemβs 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. Theyβve 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 weβre eager to see what comes of it.

Speaking of keeping things open, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) has joined Bluesky β but they arenβt 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 canβt 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 canβt 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, thereβs a good chance that anyone whoβs willingly regularly using said platform doesnβt 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, weβre also on Facebook, although the automatic sharing of new posts hasnβt worked for quite some time and honestly we canβt be bothered to figure out why. For our readers with a particular aversion to grass, weβve 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, itβs been 50 years since the introduction of the ColorChecker β that little card with 24 blocks of colors thatβs 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 βA Color-Rendition Chartβ 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; weβd love to hear about it.