{"id":725982,"date":"2026-08-03T12:41:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T12:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/725982\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T12:41:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T12:41:09","slug":"hackaday-links-august-2-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/725982\/","title":{"rendered":"Hackaday Links: August 2, 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

About a month ago, we brought you word that the commercial rescue mission designed by Katalyst Space to save NASA\u2019s Swift gamma-ray observatory had reached orbit and early indicators were looking good. Unfortunately, it didn\u2019t take long for things to start going sideways, and up until very recently, the situation seemed pretty dire. But according to an interview with Katalyst\u2019s CEO published yesterday by Ars Technica, the company has made some impressive progress on getting things back under control<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For reasons unknown, the robotic vehicle started tumbling out of control last week. Shortly after that, mission controllers lost contact with Swift. After 24 hours without contact from the ground, the spacecraft automatically performed a sort of \u201chard reset\u201d in an attempt to regain communications. That got it talking again, but somewhere along the way the craft overheated, which in turn cooked the control circuitry for the reaction wheels, which would usually be used to control its orientation. Not great, not terrible.<\/p>\n

As of yesterday\u2019s update, we now know that engineers have figured out a way to gimbal the thrust from the craft\u2019s xenon-fueled electric thrusters \u2014 which were originally intended for orbit-raising \u2014 to counteract its spinning. It\u2019s slow going as these thrusters don\u2019t have a lot of kick, but it seems to be working. We\u2019ll keep an eye on this one and let you know when we know more.<\/p>\n

Katalyst isn\u2019t the only company producing a robotic savior with an uncertain future. If you enjoy starting the day with some freshly prepared eggs, but never quite mastered the skills required to make them, the Efficient Gastronomic Operational Robot (EGOR)<\/a> may be for you. The $400 countertop gadget, which can be had for 50% off during the Kickstarter campaign, can not only crack the eggs for you, but can cook them to whatever style you wish. It even has the ability to start the process at a specific time, say a few minutes before your alarm goes off in the morning.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a certain Jetson\u2019s-like appeal to EGOR, but it\u2019s hard to imagine there\u2019s a huge market for a $400 \u201crobot\u201d that\u2019s only function is to cook eggs. At the same time, we don\u2019t think comparisons with the\u00a0disastrous Juicero Press<\/a> are entirely accurate. What doomed the Juicero, beyond the $700 price tag, was the fact that it was only capable of squeezing juice out of proprietary pouches that needed to be purchased separately. If you could have put whole fresh fruit into the machine and it could have automatically rendered it into juice, as you can put eggs from the grocer into EGOR, it probably would have stayed on the market for a bit longer.<\/p>\n

All that being said, the end result is still going to be the same for folks like us. Eventually somebody is going to take apart an EGOR, and we\u2019ll get to see what makes the breakfast bot tick. Then we just have to wait until these things start hitting the curb to see what the community can do with their guts. Maybe it will be as fun as our teardown of the Quirky Egg Minder<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On the subject of impending gadgetry, 9to5Google has released leaked images<\/a> of what appears to be Google\u2019s long-awaited answer to Apple\u2019s AirTag. While the search giant has offered their \u201cFind Hub\u201d service for a while now, there hasn\u2019t actually been an official first-party device to utilize it. All we know about Google\u2019s offering is that it\u2019s visually differentiated from Apple\u2019s device thanks to its more oval shape, and goes by the highly imaginative name of \u201cGoogle Pixel Tag.\u201d More official information is likely to start appearing in the coming weeks, coinciding with the launch of the Pixel 11. We\u2019ll have to wait a bit longer to find out when the company will decide to unceremoniously abandon them all, however.<\/p>\n

Finally, we leave you with a recently uploaded video from the USS Cod Submarine Memorial that explores an area of the WWII Gato-class submarine that we had no idea existed, but which makes perfect sense in retrospect. Given the enormous number of vacuum tubes required by the submarine\u2019s 1940s vintage radio equipment, and the vital wartime necessity to minimize the downtime of said systems, the submarine has a dedicated storage compartment specifically for tubes and other spare parts directly under the radio room. The radio operator could simply open a hatch at his feet, descend a small ladder, and have immediate access to shelves full of the parts he would need to keep his station up and running.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Of course, modern naval vessels will have stores of critical spare parts as well. But the unique storage and organization requirements of vacuum tubes, combined with the near certainty that some number of them would need to be replaced while the submarine was on patrol, meant they needed to be kept close at hand at all times.<\/p>\n

See something interesting that you think would be a good fit for our weekly Links column? Drop us a line<\/a>; we\u2019d love to hear about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"About a month ago, we brought you word that the commercial rescue mission designed by Katalyst Space to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13414,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[59,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-725982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-gb","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=725982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=725982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=725982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=725982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}