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The Z80 has been gone a couple of years now, but it’s very much not forgotten. Still, the day when new-old-stock and salvaged DIP-40 packaged Z80s will be hard to come by is slowly approaching, and [eaw] is going to be ready with the picoZ80 project.
You can probably guess where this is going: an RP2350B on a DIP-40 sized PCB can easily sit on the bus and emulate a Z80. It can do so with only one core, without breaking a sweat. That left [eaw] a second core to play with, allowing the picoZ80 to act as a heck of an accelerator, memory expander, USB host, disk emulator– you name it. He even tossed in an ESP32 co-processor to act as a WiFi, Bluetooth, and SD-card controller to use as a virtual, wirelessly accessible disk drive.
The onboard ram that comes with an RP2350B would be generous by 1980s standards, but [eaw] bumped that up with an 8 MB SPRAM chip–accessed in 64 pages of 64 kB each, naturally. If more RAM than a very pricey hard drive wasn’t luxury enough, there’s also 16 MB of flash memory available. That’s configured to store ROM images that are transferred to the RAM at boot– the virtual Z80 isn’t grabbing from the flash at runtime in [eaw]’s architecture, because apparently there are limits to how much he wants to boost his retro machines.
If somehow you missed it, the venerable Z80 only hit EOL in 2024, so supplies won’t be drying up any time soon. This hack is really more about the quality-of-life addons this allows. Come back in a decade, and we’ll see if the RP2350 lasts longer than the stack of NOS Z80s.
Despite being declared the third-hottest year on record, 2025 was a relatively quiet year for climate disasters in the US. No major hurricanes made landfall, while the total number of acres burned in wildfires last year—a way of measuring the intensity of wildfire season—fell below the 10-year average.
But starting this week, the West is experiencing what looks to be a record-breaking heat wave, while forecasting models predict that a strong El Niño event is likely to emerge later this year. These two unrelated phenomena could set the stage for a long stretch of unpredictable and extreme weather reaching into next year, compounding the effects of a climate that’s getting hotter and hotter thanks to human activity.
First, there’s the heat. Beginning this week and heading into next, a massive ridge of high-pressure air will bring record-breaking temperatures to the American West. The National Weather Service predicts that temperature records across multiple states are set to be broken in dozens of locations, stretching as far east as Missouri and Tennessee. The NWS has issued heat warnings for parts of California, Arizona, and Nevada, as well as fire warnings for parts of Wyoming, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Colorado.
“This will be the single strongest ridge we’ve observed outside of summer in any month,” says Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources.
The other remarkable thing about this heat wave, Swain says, is just how long it’s going to last. “This is not a day or two of extreme heat,” he says. “We've already in some of these places been seeing record highs every day for a week, and we expect to see them every day for another at least seven to 10 days.” The later end of March will be much more intense, with temperatures in some places breaking April and May records. “There aren't that many weather patterns that can result in an 85- or 90-degree temperature in San Francisco, Salt Lake City, and Denver in the same week.”
This late winter heat wave is adding on to an already warm winter in the West—with big implications for the summer. A month ago, snowpack levels across multiple states were at record lows thanks to warmer-than-average temperatures. According to data provided by the Department of Agriculture, snowpack levels were still sitting below 50 percent of average across many Western states. Snowpack is a critical natural reservoir for rivers in the West; between 60 to 70 percent of the region’s water supply in many areas comes from melting snow. Low snowpack is a bad sign for already-stressed rivers like the Colorado, which supplies water for 40 million people in seven states.
The ongoing heat wave, Swain says, will more than likely make conditions even worse. “April 1st is typically the point at which snowpack would be, at least historically, at its peak,” he says. Even if temperatures cool off until summer, these low snowpack levels are also a worrisome sign for the upcoming fire season. Snow droughts like the one the West is experiencing can dry out soil, kill trees, and lessen stream flow: ideal conditions for a wildfire to grow. Meanwhile, the water supply in the Colorado River could drop even lower. States that rely on the river are already facing a political crisis as they attempt to renegotiate water rights; a drought would only up the ante.
Then there’s El Niño. Last week, the National Weather Service announced that there was more than a 60 percent chance of an El Niño event emerging in August or September. Various weather models suggest that this El Niño could be particularly strong. While we likely won’t know for sure until summer, “the fact that [all the models] are moving upwards is worth watching,” says Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at Berkeley Earth.
El Niño is a natural cycle of climate variability, usually concentrated in the tropical Pacific, that pushes heat from the ocean into the atmosphere and towards the western coast of the US. El Niño years are typically warm—an average El Niño can increase yearly global temperatures by 1.2° C.
No one can predict for certain what impact, exactly, El Niño will have in the coming months. The phenomenon has a variety of effects on weather around the world. “It’s not always super consistent: Some areas get wetter, and some areas get drier,” says Hausfather. In the US, El Niño is generally associated with cooler and wetter conditions in the Southeast and Southwest with warmer conditions in western Canada and Alaska.
This could be potentially good news for some areas in the Southwest that, following a parched summer due to lack of snowpack, need more water. But, says Swain, an El Niño event could also increase the chances of dry thunderstorms in some areas—which up the chance for wildfires from lightning in already-dry terrain. During the last strong El Niño event in 2016, heavy rain triggered mudslides in some areas of drought-stricken California. Heavy storms in areas affected by both wildfires and drought have been linked to increased likelihood of mudslides.
“People talk about ‘climate chaos’—I don't love the term in the context of climate change, because we still have a very structured climate,” says Swain. “But a very strong El Niño event really does induce chaos. It induces patterns that are very different from typical historical norms.”
And there’s no denying that human-caused climate change is upping the ante for heat increases from natural events like El Niño.
“Obviously, any El Niño event that happens is happening on top of human-caused climate change,” Hausfather says. “We’ve warmed the planet 1.4° [Celsius]. So you’re going to have a much bigger impact from heat, for example, if you start at that level versus 150 years ago.”
This story originally appeared on Wired.
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The executive also noted that this change to the web would require the development of new technologies, like sandboxes for AI agents that can be spun up on the fly and then torn down when their task has finished. These could come into play when consumers ask AI agents to perform certain tasks on their behalf, like planning a vacation. "What we're trying to think about is, how do we actually build that underlying infrastructure where you can -- as easily as you open a new tab in your browser -- you can actually spin up new code, which can then run and service the agents that are out there," Prince said. He imagines there will soon be a time when millions of these "sandboxes" for agents would be created every second. "I think the thing that people don't appreciate about AI is it's a platform shift," Prince said. "AI is another platform shift ... the way that you're going to consume information is completely different."
Meanwhile, Google is promising a "complete transformation" of the navigation experience in Maps with what they're calling "Immersive Navigation." It brings detailed 3D visuals, smarter route previews, and improved guidance powered by data from Street View and aerial imagery. "You'll see accurate overpasses, crosswalks, landmarks, and signage in the new navigation experience," reports Ars. "Google also aims to solve some of the biggest usability issues with turn-by-turn navigation in this update. [...] Immersive Navigation tries to show you more of the route as you drive, using smart zoom and transparent buildings to help you plan ahead. Voice guidance will also reference turns after the next one where appropriate."
Immersive Navigation will also highlights the tradeoffs between different route options, such as longer routes that avoid traffic or tolls. And, as you approach your destination, it will uses Street View imagery, building entrances, and parking information to help you orient yourself. The features are launching on Android and iOS first, with broader platform support coming later.
"Folks, as you likely know, the availability of the site and related infrastructure has not been good recently," Dave Treadwell, a senior vice-president at the group, told employees in an email, also seen by the FT. The note ahead of Tuesday's meeting did not specify which particular incidents the group planned to discuss. [...] Treadwell, a former Microsoft engineering executive, told employees that Amazon would focus its weekly "This Week in Stores Tech" (TWiST) meeting on a "deep dive into some of the issues that got us here as well as some short immediate term initiatives" the group hopes will limit future outages.
He asked staff to attend the meeting, which is normally optional. Junior and mid-level engineers will now require more senior engineers to sign off any AI-assisted changes, Treadwell added. Amazon said the review of website availability was "part of normal business" and it aims for continual improvement. "TWiST is our regular weekly operations meeting with a specific group of retail technology leaders and teams where we review operational performance across our store," the company said.