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owl writes:

https://martypc.blogspot.com/2026/09/decoding-nec-v20-microcode.html

reenigne's decoding of the 8088 microcode in 2020 opened the doors for extremely accurate emulation of the 8088 CPU.

Although I had added support for the NEC V20 in MartyPC, the V20 core was not cycle-accurate in terms of the V20's actual timings. It was an 8088 in a V20's clothing - a copy-paste of my 8088 core with V20 instructions tacked on.

This was not an ideal case, but the prospect of making my V20 core cycle-exact without the microcode seemed like it might be a discouraging slog of trial and error.

So why not get the microcode, then?

I recently commissioned InfoSecDJ to take die photography of an NEC V20 CPU (actually a second-source V20 fabricated by Sharp, but a V20 nonetheless). He did an excellent job.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Predictive text remains available, but users will have to invite it into their workflow:

Microsoft is switching off text predictions by default in Word and Outlook after acknowledging that unwanted suggestions can interrupt rather than assist some users.

The change is coming to Word for Windows, the web, iOS, and Android, as well as classic Outlook for Windows and Outlook for Mac. The feature will remain available but will no longer be enabled by default.

Introduced several years ago, the feature is the computing equivalent of Microsoft peering over users' shoulders and suggesting what they might type next. Depending on the user and their workflow, it can be a boon, an irritation, or simply something to ignore. The irksome part was that it was turned on by default.

According to Microsoft, "text predictions helps you write documents and emails more efficiently by suggesting words and phrases as you type. While some people find these suggestions useful, others prefer to write without predictive text. This update gives you more flexibility, allowing you to customize your editing experience and create a workflow that best suits your needs.

"This update helps ensure that predictive text remains available for people who find it helpful, while reducing unwanted interruptions for those who prefer to write without suggestions appearing automatically."

The Windows behemoth did not explain whether the change will disable text predictions for users who have already enabled them or apply only to new installations and profiles. Users who want the suggestions will still be able to switch them on through the applications' settings.

Microsoft is not the only company to suggest text as users type. Google, for example, introduced Smart Compose in Gmail in 2018.

Microsoft did not say whether telemetry or user feedback prompted the reversal, but it has elected to make the feature opt-in rather than opt-out.

It is a small change, but perhaps a sign that Microsoft is listening to customers who would rather decide for themselves whether AI belongs in their workflow.

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://manualdousuario.net/en/libreoffice-download-record-no-ai/

LibreOffice 26.8, released on August 26th, became the software's most popular update. LibreOffice is a free alternative to Microsoft Office that's been around for nearly two decades. In one week, the installer was downloaded more than 1 million times — not counting updates via Linux distribution repositories.

Someone might say the improvements to the writing system and typography are a hit among NGOs, government agencies, and offices that use LibreOffice. I'm putting my money on a "non-feature," though: the statement that LibreOffice doesn't come with generative AI features due to the technology's (lack of) privacy.

A day after celebrating the download record and the wide media coverage, The Document Foundation (TDF), which manages the software, spelled out its position in a post titled "Yes, no AI is now a feature".

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Project PANOPTES puts £5M on the table for an autonomous, vehicle-mounted defense:

Britain's Ministry of Defence (MoD) is seeking anti-drone technology capable of protecting troops from saturation attacks designed to overwhelm defenses or exhaust their ammunition.

The tender, dubbed Project PANOPTES, is being run by UK Defence Innovation (UKDI) on behalf of the MoD, with an initial £5 million ($6.8 million) available to successful bidders.

First-stage submissions close at midday on September 23, suggesting that the MoD is in something of a hurry.

According to the competition document, PANOPTES aims to deliver "an integrated Counter-Uncrewed Aerial System (C-UAS) force-protection capability, capable of autonomous operation."

The MoD wants a system that complements its existing defenses by detecting, tracking, and defeating low-cost threats without being overwhelmed or rapidly exhausting its ammunition. It must operate autonomously and be mountable on an Army vehicle.

UKDI is "particularly interested in capabilities centred on Laser Directed Energy Weapon (LDEW) effectors," although it will consider credible alternatives.

The initial focus is on NATO Class 1 uncrewed aerial systems, a category covering military drones weighing up to 150 kg. These include the small battlefield craft used extensively in Ukraine against targets ranging from armored vehicles to individual soldiers, rather than larger drones intended to strike fixed installations.

The requirement covers "single, repeated, sequential and simultaneous threat profiles" – including potential swarm attacks – as well as drones used for disruption or surveillance.

[...] Vulnerability to drones is a major concern for armed forces around the world. US defense startup Mara recently unveiled a counter-drone system that launches small interceptors from a vehicle roof, but these would eventually be used up in a battlefield situation.

Original Submission

Anonymous Coward informs us of a link:

Scientists turn eggshells into next-generation spacecraft protection

[...] At first glance, eggshells seem fragile, but nature has designed their structure to absorb energy and spread stress. The team then asked themselves if this principle could be applied to spacecraft shielding.

There are aluminum egg-shaped shells, arranged in a grid, situated between two aluminum plates, each of the shells being fully filled with water and thus forming an intact protective arrangement. When this structure is hit, the egg-shaped shells in the array will not deform separately and scatter; rather, they will remain connected and deform in unison.

Throughout the deformation process, they will be crushed one after another, dissipating the impact force and preventing it from concentrating on a single point, thereby buffering the damage.

[...] This eggshell-inspired shield is part of a growing movement in engineering: bio-inspired design, where nature's solutions to survival challenges are adapted for human technology.

Journal Reference: Yuxin Wang, Yuqing Liu, Hao Li et al. Dynamic analysis of the water-filled aluminum eggshell array metastructure under hypervelocity impact. Journal of Applied Physics. DOI: 10.1063/5.0324502

Original Submission

JoeMerchant writes:

On August 26, 2026, the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated the Italian technology collective Autistici/Inventati (A/I) as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist organization. Under Executive Order 13224, Washington alleged that the volunteer-run platform provided material and technological support to violent far-left networks and international Antifa cells.

Founded in 2001 in Italy, Autistici/Inventati was an independent, volunteer-run tech collective that provided free privacy-oriented communication tools for activists and grassroots social movements. Rooted in anti-fascist principles and funded entirely by donations, the platform rejected corporate infrastructure and advertising. At its peak, A/I hosted over 16,000 secure email mailboxes, 10,000 blogs via its custom NoBlogs platform, 5,500 mailing lists, and 1,500 websites, serving as a critical hub for global digital self-defense.

A/I strongly rejected the classification, stating that "antifascism and anticapitalism are not terrorism". However, the U.S. sanctions quickly disabled the group's digital infrastructure. The U.S.-based Public Interest Registry placed autistici.org on serverHold status, revoking its domain and making its services invisible. Furthermore, the Italian lender Banca Etica suspended A/I's bank account due to secondary compliance risks, while criticizing the political use of extraterritorial U.S. sanctions.

Faced with severe legal and financial vulnerabilities for its network, A/I officially announced on September 6, 2026, that it would completely shut down. According to a report by Reuters, the closure permanently dismantles a non-commercial privacy network that has operated since 2001.

Digital rights advocates, including the European Digital Rights (EDRi), issued statements of solidarity with the collective. They warned that the case sets a dangerous counterterrorism precedent by aggressively targeting open-source, independent internet infrastructure and European digital sovereignty. A/I is currently providing a winding-down window to protect its community and allow users to back up their data.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

LG Smart TVs Caught Mapping Your Network, Logging Audio With Screen Off — Here's the Full Technical Breakdown

A 135-Minute Investigation by Gamers Nexus Exposes How 200 Million+ LG Televisions Harvest Data From Every Device on Your Home Network, Transcribe Voice Prompts in Plain Text, and Feed It All to an Advertising Engine, Even When the TV Is Off

Your living room television is doing a lot more than displaying content. A July 2026 investigation from Gamers Nexus found that LG smart TVs actively scan home networks for phones, smartwatches, and other connected hardware, capture microphone audio while the screen appears powered down, transcribe voice commands into plain-text logs, and upload it all to LG's advertising division as soon as an internet connection is available. LG has sold an estimated 216 million smart TVs worldwide. LG Ad Solutions, the company's ad division, markets access to 363 million "secondary addressable devices" in the US alone, a number that exceeds LG's own installed base and points to network-level device enumeration happening inside people's homes.

The investigation was led by Steve Burke of Gamers Nexus, working with Level1Techs and several independent security researchers. Over a 135-minute video and accompanying documentation, the team ran packet captures, bench-tested microphone behavior in standby, found remote code execution flaws in webOS, and traced the data pipeline from a living room to LG's ad-targeting infrastructure.

LG has not publicly responded to the specific findings as of publication. The company's existing privacy language states that its televisions "do not collect, record, or store ambient conversations." The evidence in this investigation contradicts that.

Also: LG TV shown scanning LAN for third-party phones and other devices

[...] LG's ad business, LG Ad Solutions, has said in recent marketing materials that it can reach 363 million "addressable secondary devices" in the US.

When reached for comment, a company representative shared a statement from LG Electronics via email:

LG TVs can identify compatible devices on the same network to enable features such as device connectivity, content sharing or smart home functionality.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

The EFF says the law is additionally too broad and based on uncertain science, too:

With social networks tracking every single motion of our scrolling fingers and now the advent of data-hoovering AI models, it's easy to argue that staying anonymous online has never been harder. If you're a Californian, though, it will soon become harder still. Bill A.B. 1709, effectively requiring age checks on social networks, is set to become law unless Gavin Newsom vetoes it — a measure the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is requesting in an open letter to the governor.

A.B. 1709 doesn't explicitly require an actual online physical ID check, but given the way it's written, companies are free to use any means they see fit to fulfill that requirement. In turn, this leads the EFF to remark that the most likely choice for networks would be invasive checks like requiring the uploading of government IDs and/or biometric checks. The Foundation says that this would concentrate even more power in social media companies' hands, with a Californian's personal ID adding to their datasets.

The EFF also argues that A.B. 1709 wouldn't help teenagers and could do more harm than good by keeping them out of "supportive online communities," as well as "deny [them] opportunities to develop their own voices and perspectives." The letter mentions that research on whether social networks are good or bad for teens is inconclusive, and that teens could have their First Amendment rights infringed as a result.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Malware download prompts were embedded in Microsoft Excel files:

Aktulaev was extradited to the U.S. in August 2026, five years after his arrest in Cyprus in May 2021. He made his first appearance in federal court in San Francisco — after which he was remanded to federal custody — and is scheduled to appear in district court on October 5, 2026. The arrest was made after an FBI investigation, and the case is being prosecuted by the National Security, Cyber, and Special Prosecutions Section.

The attack used TVRAT (TeamViewer Remote Access Trojan) and DarkVNC malware, both of which grant the attacker remote control of the infected system. TVRAT exploits TeamViewer, while DarkVNC exploits VNC Viewer, popular remote administration tools. The malware stole and uploaded data from the victims' computers to a command-and-control server, from which Aktulaev and his co-conspirators extracted the stolen data to “commit fraud and other criminal activities”.

The indictment says thousands of computers infected by the TVRAT malware were “calling back” to a command-and-control domain hosted in the United States, which was paid for using virtual currency. Roughly half of the victims were in the United States, many of whom were Northern District of California residents, according to the indictment.

“A database found on the command-and-control domain revealed thousands of victims. Additionally, a shared document on the email account used in the criminal activities contained information to include e-commerce login credentials, as well as personally identifiable information (“PII”) for hundreds of victims,” the press release said.

If convicted, Aktulaev could spend up to 20 years behind bars and pay a $250,000 fine or twice the total illicit gains for the conspiracy to commit wire fraud charge alone. The other charges carry terms ranging from two to twenty years in prison, in addition to fines. Meanwhile, the FBI is currently investigating another hack in which 153 million US and Canadian drivers’ licenses were leaked on a Russian cybercrime forum.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/09/medieval-manuscripts-are-biological-time-capsules-for-deadly-sheeppox-virus/

Sheeppox is a highly contagious, often fatal viral disease that was largely eradicated from much of European livestock in the 20th century. But there is still the occasional regional outbreak, such as the one that afflicted many flocks of sheep in Greece last year. In order to reconstruct how the virus has evolved over the last 3,500 years, scientists extracted and sequenced sheeppox DNA preserved in the animal skins used for the parchment of numerous medieval manuscripts. They reported their findings in a new paper published in the journal Science Advances.

"The recording of ancient DNA of pathogens has completely changed our understanding of infectious disease in the past, and here we show that parchment can also preserve animal pathogen DNA. It is possible that archives and libraries around the world also contain the genetic traces of disease outbreaks in animals in the past," said co-author Louis L'Hôte, a graduate student at University College Dublin. "These genomes help us understand how these pathogens evolved and how they impacted past societies—such as sheeppox virus, which we show has been affecting Eurasian sheep herds for at least three and a half millennia."

Per the authors, the earliest known written evidence of sheeppox infection dates to the first century CE, when Roman accounts described outbreaks of skin lesions ("pustules") in the animals. There are more frequent mentions of deadly outbreaks of "pockes" or "variola" in sheep by the Middle Ages, recorded in various agricultural texts and accounting documents in France, Spain, and England. There seemed to be a decline in outbreaks in 17th-century France, although frequent outbreaks re-emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries, often with high mortality rates in the flocks. Great Britain did not experience a sheeppox resurgence until 1847.

However, very little was known about the genetic history of the sheeppox virus. That's why L'Hôte et al. turned to analyzing DNA in medieval manuscripts—the parchments were often made from sheep leather. A number of analytical techniques have emerged in recent decades to help create these kinds of historical molecular records.

For instance, last year we reported on research that used microbial DNA analysis of human remains to identify the likely pathogens that killed many soldiers in Napoleon's army in 1812. Two pathogens in particular stood out: Salmonella enterica, which causes paratyphoid fever, and Borrelia recurrentis, which is transmitted by body lice and causes relapsing fever. Both are consistent with written contemporary accounts.

The team collected samples from medieval manuscripts housed in collections at Yale University, Cambridge University, Corpus Christi College, University College Dublin, the Lambeth Palace Library, and Trinity College, among others. Those works included pages from a 15th-century Speculum Historiale; the 15th-century Clairvaux manuscripts; several 9th-century gospel text fragments; the 9th-century Achadeus Psalter; the early 11th-century Trinity Gospels; the Lambeth Bible; and the 1,000-year-old York Gospels.

Multiple pages, often from the same manuscript, were found to contain DNA from the sheeppox pathogen, which means infected animals were likely used to make the parchment—and thus, that medieval flocks experienced frequent outbreaks of sheeppox. The authors were surprised when they also found evidence of the sheeppox virus on parchment made from calfskin and goatskin, suggesting either cross-species infection or contamination when the parchment was being made.

The team also extracted DNA from Bronze Age sheep teeth collected at settlement sites in Russia and Central Kazakhstan, since teeth can preserve DNA evidence of infection over thousands of years. After comparing those ancient sequences with the medieval ones, the authors concluded that the sheeppox virus diverged from the goatpox and lumpy skin disease viruses (all members of the Capripoxvirus family) between 11,500 and 3,700 years ago. That coincides roughly with the domestication of animals in Europe. All told, the team recovered 21 ancient genomes from 1700 BCE to early modern Europe.

"Parchment making has been considered a vanishing craft, but we are beginning to understand just how much of the past it has retained," said co-author Kevin G. Daly, also of UCD. "This project shows that parchments not only preserve our cultural history for hundreds of years, but also the landscape of disease in our livestock in the medieval period. This kind of exciting, surprising discovery is only possible when researchers from a range of disciplines come together to share their expertise and data—a generosity and trust that collaborative science depends on."

DOI: Science Advances, 2026

(About DOIs).

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.slashgear.com/2250921/coolfly-urban-vtol-personal-aircraft/

Ever wanted to ride a skateboard... In the sky? CoolFly has revealed what it's calling an "air skateboard" as part of its new eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing) series. Chinese startup CoolFly is claiming that the Urban is the first-ever standing-position personal aircraft ever made — and you could learn to fly on it within 10 minutes.

It costs $99,999, and delivery is estimated for 2027. However, you can't place a preorder at the time of writing, as CoolFly says that the entire 2025 and 2026 production has sold out. The Urban is part of CoolFly's longer-term goals of exploring lightweight personal aircraft, a growing focus for tech startups. "Urban represents CoolFly's vision for the future of personal flight: aircraft that are lighter, more compact, easier to operate, and more practical for individual users."

The hoverboard-like aircraft is powered by the NA80, an in-house-developed flight control system. You simply stand on a platform, press the takeoff button, and steer yourself with a control stick. Sensors will track your body movement, automatically adjusting the fan to shift the center of gravity and keep you balanced. You'll then be able to reach up to 43 miles per hour and remain in the air for 11 minutes.

The concept of a hoverboard coming to life is exciting — but CoolFly also wants it to be safe. The startup has been testing the Urban in a variety of conditions, including extreme cold during a presentation in February 2026. There's a backup control system, protection around the fans, a radar-assisted automatic landing system — and a parachute. If that's enough to get you on an air skateboard, the Urban could be available soon as a tourist attraction in China. CoolFly is also trying to bring its products to the United States through partnerships. While CoolFly says its ultralight aircraft don't require a pilot's license, it's not yet clear what the rules will be in the U.S.

Personal aircraft are becoming a popular form of transportation for startups to explore, like the Pivotal Helix, allowing people to get places faster and more efficiently. China has started building low-altitude infrastructure as it prepares for an envisioned future filled with drones and flying cars. But just like with autonomous robotaxis, people are questioning the safety of this new technology. Jetson held a race with its flying cars in 2025 to show off its capabilities. XPENG's EVTOLs collided with one another while training for a demonstration that same year, but the company claims it has over 7,000 orders from around the world for its flying cars.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/09/trumps-100-drone-tariff-has-cops-and-firefighters-panicking/

On Thursday, the Trump administration imposed a 100 percent tariff on foreign-made drones, alarming critics who warn that high tariffs would harm public safety and devastate thousands of US businesses.

Guidance posted by US Customs and Border Protection says that starting Thursday, a 100 percent tariff will apply to imported drones that use thermal imaging or weigh more than 55 pounds.

Additionally, a 25 percent tariff has been placed on smaller drones, and drones from US allies were hit with smaller but not inconsequential tariffs. There's now a 10 percent levy on British-made drones and 15 percent levies on drones from the European Union, Japan, Liechtenstein, South Korea, Switzerland, and Taiwan. "Nonsensitive" drones without thermal imaging and their components will carry a 25 percent tariff, starting on February 9, 2027.

While announcing the tariffs, President Donald Trump said that taxing foreign-made drones will strengthen US national security by decreasing reliance on Chinese drones and increasing reliance on domestic drones.

But critics say Trump's tactics seem short-sighted, citing estimates that "a single Chinese company—Shenzhen-based DJI—manufactures more than 70 percent of the world's commercial drones," The New York Times reported.

They fear that Trump's tariffs will do "more harm than good," the Times reported, since these drones are considered "essential" for US law enforcement and public safety officials. Thermal drones are regularly used to find missing people, track spreading wildfires, support police and rescue operations in environments with unknown risks, and serve a range of other routine public safety uses. A chief of a large unit comprising police officers and firefighters in the Cleveland area, Scott Mlakar, told the Times that Trump's tariffs would spike drone costs so much that they would likely "put thermal drones out of reach for communities that needed them the most."

Beyond the immediate increase in the cost of drones, even more drones could soon be restricted in the US. The Federal Communications Commission is considering whether to reclassify a range of common drone technologies as "military grade," a move that many commenters warned would further restrict access to countless drones that serve no military purpose and pose no threat to national security.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/09/meet-the-2026-ig-nobel-prize-winners/

It's that time of year again, when we learn which lucky scientists are among the winners of the Ig Nobel Prizes. This year, the prizes honor research on designing the perfect splash-free urinal; using mosquito proboscises to "necroprint" tiny nozzles; studying composition rates of buried cotton underwear; and the aerodynamics of a healthy nose-blow, among other highlights.

Established in 1991, the Ig Nobels are a good-natured parody of the Nobel Prizes; they honor "achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think." The unapologetically campy awards ceremony features miniature operas, scientific demos, and "24/7 lectures," whereby experts must explain their work twice: once in 24 seconds and the second in just seven words.

Acceptance speeches are limited to 60 seconds. And as the motto implies, the research being honored might seem ridiculous at first glance, but that doesn't mean it's devoid of scientific merit. In the weeks following the ceremony, the winners will also give free public talks, which will be posted on the Improbable Research website.

After 35 years in Boston, the annual prize ceremony will take place in Zurich, Switzerland, this year and will continue to be held in a European city for the foreseeable future. The reason: concerns about the safety of international travelers, who are increasingly reluctant to travel to the US to participate. Four of last year's 10 winners opted to skip the ceremony rather than travel to the US, and the situation has not improved.

"During the past year, it has become unsafe for our guests to visit the country," Marc Abrahams, master of ceremonies and editor of The Annals of Improbable Research magazine, told The Associated Press in March. "We cannot in good conscience ask the new winners, or the international journalists who cover the event, to travel to the US this year."

Next year's ceremony will be held in Antwerp, Flanders. The Ig Nobels will return to Zurich in 2028 and every even-numbered year after that. "In that respect, it will be a little like the Eurovision Song Contest with a base in Europe," said Abrahams, who founded the Ig Nobels and serves as emcee during the annual ceremony.

Without further ado, here are the winners of the 2026 Ig Nobel prizes.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.theregister.com/devops/2026/09/04/javascript-installer-pnpm-recast-in-rust-because-ecmascript-cant-keep-up/5294394

The popular JavaScript package manager pnpm, already known for its speedy downloads, has further cut installation times by up to 90 percent thanks to a complete rewrite in Rust.

Yet the freshly released version 12 of pnpm should not cause consternation while upgrading, its maintainer says.

"Upgrading should not feel like a migration. The commands, flags, settings, and lockfile format of pnpm 11 all carry over, and the documentation covers both versions," wrote Zoltan Kochan, the current lead maintainer of pnpm.

In the project's own benchmarks, pnpm 12 installed a sample uncached package in 5.19 seconds, compared to the 8.22 seconds pnpm 11 required and the 47.7 seconds npm itself required.

The project team also built a registry server in Rust, called pnpr, which improves performance even further. In the above test, the installation took only 3.37 seconds with pnpr on the backend.

A new Rust core binary, on which work started in April, eliminates a lot of the overhead that comes from routing filesystem work through Node.js. This new version is 65.9 percent Rust and 33.5 percent TypeScript, according to the GitHub stats. 

"Package installation is dominated by fetching metadata and tarballs, unpacking files, resolving dependency graphs, and linking packages into node_modules, making it a natural target for native code and parallelism," wrote Sarah Gooding, vice president of communications for security provider Socket, in a blog post. 

Gooding also noted that the project benchmarked pnpm against Bun and Yarn, but the results were removed due to testing SNAFUs. Nonetheless, she noted the software cut install times by up to 90 percent in some cases.

Developer Rico Sta. Cruz originally created pnpm in 2016 as a faster alternative to npm (Node Package Manager), JavaScript's de facto package manager, which devs used to find and download libraries and tools. GitHub acquired the open source npm software and repository in 2020.

Npm garnered a reputation for being both sluggish and hungry for disk space, thanks to its generous practice of downloading all needed dependencies onto users' machines, regardless of whether they were duplicates. 

Pnpm's secret sauce is content-addressable storage. If you need a single library for 100 different applications, pnpm downloads it only once, and downloads another copy only if the developer specifies a different version.

Like npm, pnpm still draws from the official npm repository, but arguably works better than npm for many. Many devs also like [video not reviewed. --Ed] that the lockfile describing the package's dependency tree was more readable thanks to its use of YAML.

The 2025 State of JavaScript survey showed that pnpm was by far the most popular package manager for JavaScript monorepos, a party that also included Nx, Lerna, Yalc, Turborepo and even npm's built-in Workspaces. About 38 percent (3,840) of 10,251 surveyed developers used the package manager.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Prompted by CentOS 8's premature demise, it's a very visible loss for the Red Hat ecosystem:

CERN is moving several thousand computers that control its particle accelerator hardware from Red Hat-family Linux distros to Debian.

CERN – the place that runs the Large Hadron Collider – generates a lot of data, and that means it uses a lot of computers. Most of them run Linux, and for over 20 years, it used distros in the Red Hat family. Now, that's beginning to change: it's moving what it calls the "front end" computers, the ones underground that control the LHC, over to Debian Linux.

At the end of last month, the MiniDebConf Winterthur 2026 was held in Switzerland, and two CERN engineers, Federico Vaga and Nikos Tsipinakis, gave a talk about Controlling CERN's Accelerators with Debian. In a dense 40 minutes, they talked about the size and complexity of CERN's computer systems and the many problems with moving some of them from the Red Hat family over to Debian.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research - whose CERN acronym comes from the French name of its predecessor, Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire - is one of the world's most high-tech research organizations. It's where the World Wide Web was invented, and CERN has also long been a major user of Red Hat-family Linux.

For many years, CERN and Fermilab – its equivalent in the USA – jointly maintained their own RHELative, called Scientific Linux. This started in 2004, and its first mention on The Register was in 2007. For some years, Scientific Linux was one of the leading free RHELatives... until 2014, when Red Hat brought CentOS in-house. CERN's job is doing physics, not maintaining a Linux distro, so once CentOS became official, CERN switched to it – starting with its own build of CentOS 7.

You can probably already guess where this story is going. With hindsight, that wasn't a great move.