We announced our first round of speakers, and then the workshops, and we were going to dribble out updates on the rest of the speakers as they came in, but then time slipped away from us. So we are left here announcing a veritable cornucopia of twenty wonderful talks that you absolutely won’t want to miss.
And the talks are just half the fun. Between food, merriment, a killer badge with the biggest e-paper display that you’ve ever seen, and all the assorted shenanigans, it’s the highlight of our hacking year. Come join us!
Many of the image formats we’re familiar with have been around for decades. We all know JPEG and PNG like the back of our hands, and GIF even had a bit of a resurgence when tiny annoying looping animations became cool again on social media. There has been a growth in newer formats, though, like WEBP, and AVIF, with various platforms and software companies adopting them for greater efficiency, performance, and image quality.
Amongst the new crop of formats vying for relevance is JPEG XL. It was touted as a format that improved on what JPEG could do in the lossy compression space, while also adding on a lossless mode. There were grand hopes that it would become a universal replacement for all existing raster formats on the Web. A major problem was that Google was seemingly against it, only to backflip—with the format now slated to hit the big time with renewed backing from the search giant. So what’s going on?
Since we last covered the way that the Linux Kernel project has been dealing with the influx of code created using LLM-based coding assistants, all the way back in April, things have changed a lot, with most recently the Linux maintainers deciding to fully drop the requirement to mark LLM-assisted commits with the Assisted-by tag.
While not a fully uncontroversial decision – as also reported by Phoronix – with key maintainers already having made this decision it seems certain to proceed. This is not the only change made fairly recently, with a ‘Sashiko’ bot introduced that is supposed to handle code reviews.
In a July LKML post [Linus Torvalds] defends this decision, with a follow-up post in August by [Jakub Kicinski] it being stated that budget has been secured for using Meta’s LLMs, using said LLM-based resources for reviewing patches, as well as creating and editing commit messages. As noted by [Jakub] they’re running multiple frontier models on each patch to try and weed out confabulations.
Whether this will prove to be the right decision remains to be seen. Whereas most open source projects have firmly banished or heavily curtailed LLM-based contributions on slop, copyright as well as licensing grounds, the Linux Kernel project may be an interesting experiment in what the outcome of the exact opposite approach will be.
Supercon is Hackaday’s annual gathering, and you absolutely need to be there.
Today, we’re pleased to announce our lineup of workshops, and it’s more than we’ve ever offered, thanks to moving to a bigger venue and to our awesome community of hackers stepping up to give them. There’s something here for everyone, so if anything strikes your fancy, be sure to book yourself a slot soon. (If you have a ticket already, you sign up for the workshop as an “add-on”, BTW.) Workshops always fill up fast, due to the small and hands-on nature of the beast.
Philadelphia’s homegrown hacker con returns this weekend, and this time it’s starting a day early to pack in even more talks, demos, and activities. Tickets are still available for anyone who can get themselves to Arcadia University by the end of the week, and as always, students with a valid .edu email address get in for free. The talks will also be recorded for hackers that can’t make it out in person, but of course there’s no substitute for a weekend spent hanging out with like-minded folks.
Now in its fourth year, JawnCon continues to steadily grow and evolve. In 2026, it’s not only getting an extra day, but also a second stage for talks, delivering nearly 30 presentations on everything from board games to modern pager networks. For style points, the schedule is available via HyperCard running on an emulated Macintosh Plus, but you can also just read it off the web page if you insist.
In addition to the talks, there will be exhibits from local groups such as Philly Mesh, PhilTel, and the Open Organisation Of Lockpickers, as well as a dedicated classroom for those looking to study ahead of their amateur radio exams. Attendees can even use a pair of Zebra ID printers to produce custom badges, and we’re sure nothing untoward will happen with them.
Although the demise of the Zilog Z80 processor has long been predicted, it would seem that this moment has finally arrived. The owner of the Zilog name – Littelfuse – recently sent out PCN ZAC26-0074, notifying customers that they will be taking final orders for the eZ80 and all other microcontroller lines that they currently own.
Over at Mouser, eZ80 parts have correspondingly all been marked as “End of Life”. This comes a few years after the original Z80 and its peripherals were discontinued, with the eZ80 still being an alternative until now.
Any potential sellers will have to put in their orders today, with orders still accepted until December 21 2026, with final deliveries taking place throughout 2027 as Littelfuse winds down its MCU manufacturing. This means that for commercial customers are least this is pretty much the end of the road for any circuit that still uses the eZ80 or similar.
Many of us have fondness for the Z80, which also has led to a potential way that the Z80 can live on. This includes both the many open source cores that are compatible with the Z80, as well as real silicon courtesy of the TinyTapeout project.
As Director of the Software Engineering Division at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, Margaret Hamilton was responsible for the software for the Apollo program. The code she was responsible for ran the lunar lander, and brought multiple missions successfully to the surface of Luna and back to orbital rendezvous. We regret to inform you that she passed on September 30th of 2026, aged 90 years.
Hamilton, with the code that put men on the moon.
If you call yourself a software engineer, you have her to thank. Hamilton didn’t just help define the field through her efforts, she literally coined the term while at NASA in an effort to get “mere” programming taken more seriously. Suffice to say, that ambition was realized, and few see programmer as a low-status career these days.
After decades of obscurity, known only to those willing to dive deep into the Apollo program to discover her work there, Hamilton found deserved fame late in life. Her likeness eventually found its way to classroom posters and even an official LEGO figure. She also got the Presidential Medal of Freedom, but we don’t see how that could possibly compare to being immortalized in LEGO.
Some have called her a feminist icon, blazing a trail for girls and women. While that’s true enough, it’s also thinking perhaps too small. Like the missions she did so much to make successful, Margaret Hamilton blazed a trail for all of humanity.
We wish Margaret’s family the best as she blazes a trail we all must someday follow into that one last undiscovered country. Our own biographical tribute is several years old now, but it bears rereading in light of this news.
