Littelfuse Announces Retirement Of The EZ80

October 11, 2026 by Maya Posch 6 Comments

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.

Thanks to [Techokami] for the tip.

Margaret Hamilton, Pioneering Software Engineer, Dies Aged 90

October 9, 2026 by Tyler August 18 Comments

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.

With Latest Update, Alexa Refuses To Pass The Aux

October 8, 2026 by Tom Nardi 26 Comments

Although the feature has been deleted from newer models, there was a time when Amazon’s Echo devices included a 3.5 mm “aux” input jack that let you connect other audio sources to the smart speaker. Alexa would even let you switch over to an external source with a voice command — or at least, it used to.

As first reported by Reddit user [n8-sd], Amazon has started informing users that voice control over the 3.5 mm jack is no longer supported. While the physical input will still function on models equipped with it, if you want to mute the audio coming from an external device you’ll have to wade through the Alexa smartphone application to do it.

In a statement to Ars Technica, an Amazon rep confirmed that voice control over the auxiliary input has been removed as of the latest software version, and that their analytics showed not many people were using the feature in the first place. They also pointed out that no changes have been made to voice control of Bluetooth devices. While we don’t doubt that the total number of users that were physically plugging an audio source into their Echos was probably low in the grand scheme of things, that doesn’t really explain why such a simple feature needed to be actively removed.

Some commenters have theorized that the real reason behind the change is the fact that Amazon has no way of monitoring what users are playing over the auxiliary input. Since cataloging and selling the media consumption habits of users is big business these days, that’s a problem. While they might prefer to disable the feature entirely, they know that would stir up some bad press, so they’re opting to simply make it more annoying to use. We’re not saying we entirely buy this explanation, but it’s not the craziest thing we’ve ever heard either.

Although the Echo devices have never been particularly hackable, they have enjoyed a certain amount of success with tech-savvy users, making it all the more disappointing to see the ecosystem seemingly becoming less capable over time.

The EDG C++ Compiler Frontend Has Been Open Sourced

October 6, 2026 by Maya Posch 7 Comments

Recently [John Spicer] of the EDG C++ compiler front-end project announced that the project will be made open source, from now on managed by the non-profit C++ Alliance. Related source code can be found on the GitHub account.

The Edison Design Group (EDG) is a US company which has made compiler front-ends since 1988, previously also for Java and Fortran. They are used in the Intel C++ compiler, Microsoft’s VC++, NVIDIA’s CUDA compiler, as well as many other commercial products. Last year the decision was made to shutdown the company in 2026 and transition to an open source model, with the details outlined on the EDGCPP site.

Although far from the only C++ front-end, EDGCPP will be very interesting still for supporting bleeding-edge features and having been used in such wide-ranging, demanding applications by a host of commercial customers. For most of us C++ developers our contact with it will have been via the MSVC and Intel Compiler Collection tooling, but of course it’s just one part of the entire toolset.

We’re looking forward to seeing what this means for the wider open source C++ ecosystem, especially as it pertains to GCC and LLVM’s Clang.

No More Windows For The Dutch Government, Ze Kiezen Nu Linux

September 29, 2026 by Jenny List 101 Comments

The events of the last few years have caused many in Europe to re-evaluate their reliance on large offshore technology companies, with a corresponding move to home-grown EU-based alternatives. It’s one thing when individuals or companies do this, but another entirely when it’s an entire country. So the news that the Netherlands is building their own Linux distribution to replace Microsoft Windows in government installations, is not inconsequential. The Tweakers site linked actively breaks out of Google Translate, so you may have to rely on your browser’s translation tool if you are not a Dutch speaker.

The Digitaal Autonome Werkomgeving Overheid, or Digital Autonomous Work Environment, is a distro based upon NixOS, itself originally a product of a Dutch university. It comes complete with all the office and collaboration applications needed to replace Windows, and is reported to have been tested already by a small group of Dutch government workers.

The influence of this move is likely to be a huge one for Microsoft, given that governments have huge numbers of operating system seats. But perhaps more important than the OS itself are the extras that Microsoft would like to sell to its OS customers, such as AI services. We’d expect that there will be managers in Redmond paying close attention to Europe in the wake of this move.

Meanwhile the Netherlands has a vibrant hacker community, and we can imagine that this move will be welcomed in those quarters. All Netherlands government online services are accessed through an ID verification app called DigID, and it’s a lament we’ve heard from our Dutch friends that this only works with Windows, Android and Apple platforms. If this means a Linux version will appear on the back of an NL government Linux distro, we know some people who will be very happy indeed.

NL flag: SpinnerLaserzthe2nd, CC0. Tux: Larry Ewing (lewing@isc.tamu.edu) and The GIMP. Attribution.

Self-Repairing Conductive Material From Liquid Metal

September 26, 2026 by Ian Bos 4 Comments

PCB circuits are cool, but you know what is cooler? Terminator circuits that’s what! And what if the same material that makes Terminator circuits could also be used for smart heat sinks, flexible circuits, and self-healing material properties? Well, that is exactly what the lab at Virginia Tech’s VT MADE Lab has created, presented by Joel from [3DPrintingNerd].

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2026 Hackaday Supercon: Announcing Our First Round Of Speakers

September 23, 2026 by Elliot Williams No comments

Supercon is the Ultimate Hardware Conference™ and you need to be there November 6-8 in Pasadena, California! Below is just the tip of the speakers’ iceberg, but if that’s not enough to convince you to attend, well, stay tuned and we’ll reveal more speakers early next week.

Speakers, workshops, food, drink, music, badge hacking, and general merriment? That’s what we do every year at our annual gathering. This year is even bigger, as we’re moving a few blocks south to the Art Center campus, so be sure to come join us. Get your tickets now.

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