An anonymous reader shared this report from Tom's Hardware:


The Zilog Z80 has just turned 50 years old. This iconic 8-bit processor first went on sale in July 1976 and stayed in production for 48 years until Zilog, now a Littelfuse subsidiary, stopped accepting orders in June 2024. However, there's an open-source replacement closer than ever to shipping in the chip's original 40-pin DIP package thanks to community-funded fabrication...

The chip powered the ZX Spectrum, TRS-80, MSX machines, Nintendo's Game Boy, Sega's Master System, the Pac-Man arcade cabinet, and Texas Instruments' graphing calculators, then shipped in industrial controllers for decades after home computing moved on to more powerful successors. Zilog's end-of-life notice, dated April 15, 2024, told customers its wafer foundry was discontinuing support for the Z84C00 family, and last-time-buy orders closed that June.
However, Renaldas Zioma's FOSS Z80 project, launched shortly after the end-of-life notice, now has working silicon. The first version, fabbed on SkyWater's 130nm node through Tiny Tapeout 7 on a die of just 0.064mm(2), has been confirmed as functional via the project's GitHub repository. A QFN64 version with all 40 pins exposed followed on the Efabless CI2406 shuttle, two further runs then went through IHP's 130nm process, and the current run targets the classic DIP40 form factor using chip-on-board assembly on GlobalFoundries' 180nm GF180MCU node via Wafer.Space. The end goal here is to fab a drop-in replacement for machines like the ZX Spectrum and RC2014 kits...

Zilog is trimming the Z80's official successor line as well. A product change notification from last October put the eZ80L92, along with several Z8F-series microcontrollers, on end-of-life, citing "little to no demand..." [T]he pipelined eZ80 architecture, introduced in 2001 and still inside TI's current TI-84 Plus CE calculators, otherwise remains in Zilog's catalog.





In 1999 Slashdot was calling Zilog's updated eZ80 "one of the fastest 8-bit CPUs available today, executing code 4 times faster than a standard Z80 operating at the same clock speed."

Slashdot headline from 2001: Zilog To File For Chapter 11.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"If tired or wasted passengers fall asleep in a traditional taxi or rideshare, the driver can shout or shake them awake," reports Bloomberg. "Not so in a robotaxi..."

Ditto Kasendar remembers soft music drifting from the robotaxi's speakers as he rode home late at night from a friend's birthday party in 2025. The next moment, Los Angeles firefighters were opening the door and asking if he was OK. His six-minute trip had ended nearly an hour before. A remote Waymo assistant, dialling in through the car's speakers, repeatedly tried to rouse him and finally called 911 when he wouldn't stir...

Kasendar's robocab nap was, unfortunately, not an isolated incident. As companies like Alphabet and Tesla bring self-driving taxis to more cities, the messier aspects of serving unpredictable humans are becoming harder to ignore. Passengers are falling asleep, spilling drinks, dropping food, vomiting, experiencing medical emergencies and, in at least two instances, giving birth in the cars. They stumble out of the vehicles and forget to close the doors, forcing the operators to pay nearby gig workers to do it.
These seemingly minor nuisances are becoming a drain on municipal resources and complicating the roll-out of robotaxi service. So many robotaxi customers have nodded off in the midst of a ride that Austin police and firefighters even have a name for the incidents: "sleepers". The Texas capital recorded 99 such calls in Waymo's first nine months of service there, said Roger Patterson, a commander with Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services... Remote assistants monitoring the cars try talking through the speakers and checking on passengers with interior cameras. But if they get no response, company protocols often require them to call 911. And first responders have to assume the worst. Austin dispatchers treat an incident as a potential heart attack if the remote assistant can't tell whether the passenger is breathing, Patterson said. In the end, only about 3% of such calls require transporting the passenger to a hospital, he said. But the incidents tie up personnel who might be needed elsewhere.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Vanillasludge posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

handwritten on back of photograph, "Gran a mamie"

Wiley C has added a photo to the pool:

in front of the temple's renovations.

Preliminary deal aimed at ending the war has collapsed as US and Iran fight to break deadlock over strait of Hormuz

• US says another service member killed as Israel warns Tehran’s attacks coming close

More now on Donald Trump saying the latest US strikes on Iran were being carried out in honour of US service members killed in recent days.

“We hit them very hard again tonight, and we did that in honour of the probably three, it’s probably three great patriots,” Trump told reporters as he returned to Washington after the World Cup final.

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Fans in Buenos Aires head to Obelisco monument to celebrate a semi-final victory over England and honour what looks like Lionel Messi’s last World Cup

• Spain win the World Cup after Ferran Torres dethrones 10-man Argentina in extra time

• Trump show offers fitting fever-dream end to a World Cup of excess and damage

“What happened?” people outside an empanada shop in downtown Buenos Aires ask, trying to read the groans and gestures of the customers inside whose TV was a minute ahead of theirs.

“Spain scored,” says Julián Escalante, 20, holding up his phone. Spain’s Ferran Torres had delivered the decisive blow in the 106th minute of a final that had gone into extra time, sealing a tense, largely one-sided showdown that ended 1-0.

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Youth-led movement has been galvanised after Delhi police forcibly moved hunger-striking activist Sonam Wangchuk ⁠to hospital

Thousands of protesters in Delhi are set to defy police orders and march at the Indian parliament amid growing calls for prime minister Narendra Modi’s education minister to be sacked over exam paper leaks.

Setting up a possible showdown with students, activists and political groups, police have denied supporters of the youth-led Cockroach Janta party ⁠permission to march on Monday.

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ASIA IN BRIEF Chinese President Xi Jinping has delivered a major speech on AI, which he thinks has enormous potential – for good and evil. Xi’s speech called for AI development to “adhere to the principle of openness.” “As a new engine of world economic growth and an accelerator for the shift of growth drivers, AI is moving from the digital world into the physical world. We should seize this rare, historic opportunity to encourage open source, openness, collaboration and sharing,” he said. China’s leader also thinks we need to remain open to the possibility that AI could go badly. “We should strengthen risk-awareness and ensure that AI is secure and controllable,” he said. “We should take seriously the various types of inherent and secondary risks that AI may trigger. We should put in place laws and regulations, technological monitoring, early warning and emergency response systems in order to strengthen the line of security, prevent abuses and malicious use, and ensure that AI is always under human control.” “In the meantime, we should jointly oppose overstretching the national security concept in the field of AI and placing one country's security over that of others,” he added, a remark that sounds a lot like criticism of the Trump administration’s policy of limiting access to Anthropic’s Mythos model. Xi’s next suggestion was to “encourage inclusiveness and promote mutual learning between civilizations.” He also wants better global governance of AI. “AI is an invaluable asset that encapsulates humanity's collective wisdom,” he said. “China is ready to be more open, take more practical actions, and assume a more visionary perspective,” he added. To make that happen, China last week also launched an entity called the “World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization” (WAICO) and its 29 members, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Russia, Pakistan, Brazil and South Africa. Several of those nations are already members of the “BRICS” bloc of emerging nations that China sees as a counterweight to other geopolitical groupings. Xi’s speech included a call for China to “carry out extensive international cooperation and help global South countries with capacity building to bridge the AI and digital divides, promote sustainable development, and prevent creating new historical injustice in AI.” Which sounds like a job for the WAICO. Coupang burns Coupang, South Korea’s largest e-commerce company, is on fire – but not in a good way. One of the company’s logistics centers caught fire on Saturday morning, and Korean media report firefighters have not yet extinguished the blaze. The company apologized for the incident and said the warehouse’s three tiers of shelving mean the fire is burning so fiercely that firefighters struggled to gain safe access. None of the 100-plus staff who work at the facility were hurt, but the blaze has impacted nearby residents who have sheltered in a local school. New Delhi throws more money at chipmaking and smartphones India’s government last week announced new subsidy schemes to boost local production of semiconductors and smartphones. The goals of the $13 billion semiconductor scheme include developing more fabs, and the industries chipmakers rely on to manufacture their wares. The $6.5 billion smartphone subsidy will go towards increasing the scale of local smartphone manufacturing. India’s prime minister Narendra Modi often says the world has quickly come to recognize India as a leading source of semiconductor smarts and manufacturing. However the nation’s first fab won’t open until 2028, and reports in local media suggest the first products to roll off the production line will be commodity silicon made on a 90nm process and not the 28nm chips previously touted as the likely output of the plant. Japan’s KFC cyber-crisis eases Japanese frozen food outfit Nichirei Group says it “has begun the phased resumption of operations” after the cyberattack that caused it to suspend production and deliveries and led KFC to warn of shortages and store closures. The chicken chain’s most recent advice on the situation says Nichirei is working to resume operations but continues to warn that some products may be out of stock, menu items may be limited, and stores may reduce their business hours. India’s first private rocket reaches orbit on first try Indian private space startup Skyroot Aerospace has successfully launched its Vikram-1 rocket at its first attempt. The launcher is an expendable four-stage vehicle capable of heaving payloads of up to 550kg into low earth orbit. It’s rare for first flights to succeed, never mind also placing payloads into orbit. Skyroot Aerospace achieved both feats, by successfully placing a number of demonstration satellites in orbit. The mission also carried jewelry and sculptures. Oz uni does the VMware-to-Nutanix thing Australia’s University of Southern Queensland last week announced it has shifted 800 VMs to Nutanix, including its Oracle, Peoplesoft, and Moodle. The Register understands VMware was the University’s incumbent virtualization provider. ®