Volkswagen meldet 5,82 Milliarden Euro Quartalsverlust (heise online)

GRANT BRICKMAN: Volkswagen lands deep in the red with a loss of 5.82 billion euros, and Porsche is a big part of it.

GRANT BRICKMAN: Now the full story. Volkswagen has a quarterly loss. I used to read numbers like these off a teletext page, and they were smaller. ▶

DR. VERA VECTOR: Volkswagen's third-quarter result after tax was about minus 5.82 billion euros. A year earlier the loss was a good 1.07 billion. ▶

DR. VERA VECTOR: Special effects of 7.8 billion euros are the main reason. Revenue fell 6.3 percent to about 75.28 billion euros. ▶

GRETA FOOTNOTE: Vera, what are those special effects? ▶

DR. VERA VECTOR: Mostly a goodwill writedown on Porsche of about 6.4 billion euros, because expectations for its future development are lower. ▶

DR. VERA VECTOR: On top: weak business in China, price and competition pressure, US tariffs, and a bigger share of lower-margin electric cars. ▶

GRANT BRICKMAN: So Porsche handed back six billion euros in cash. Dramatic. ▶

DR. VERA VECTOR: No. The writedown is not cash-effective. It still weighs heavily on operating profit. ▶

DR. VERA VECTOR: Porsche was already a main reason for the loss a year earlier. The open question is whether those lower expectations hold. ▶

GRETA FOOTNOTE: A writedown is an accounting entry, Grant. Nobody carried six billion euros out of a showroom. ▶

Steam: Neues Horrorspiel mit besonderer Grafik ist überraschend anders (4Players)

GRETA FOOTNOTE: A Finnish horror game with photographed faces and 2D characters is heading to Steam.

GRETA FOOTNOTE: Steam is about to get a Finnish horror game called The Polar Darkness, from the Finnish studio Horsefly Games. ▶

GRANT BRICKMAN: Finnish crime stories. Cold cliffs, a detective with a sad past. I know the genre. Gary, how is the cold? ▶

GARY: Cold and getting dark. Night falls in about a minute here. The Polar Darkness sets its story in northern Finland in the 1980s. ▶

GARY: You play journalist Emma Järvelä, who travels to a remote village to report on a sect with a charismatic leader. Classic guru plot. ▶

GARY: On screen is the look. The makers combine photos of real people with 2D characters. Think Tenebris Somnia, which the report names. ▶

GARY: The report also names Silver Pines, a survival horror game out since early October. I rate the idea four diamonds out of five. ▶

GRETA FOOTNOTE: No release date in the report. We know the studio, the setting and the look. ▶

GRANT BRICKMAN: A journalist investigating a sect in a snowy village. In my day we called that a Tuesday shift. ▶

The Spin Room (PXL)

GRANT BRICKMAN: Google's new Gemini model, and how two outlets chose to word it.

GRANT BRICKMAN: Welcome to the Spin Room. Google has a new model, Gemini 4 Carbon, and two outlets with two headlines. Greta? ▶

GRETA FOOTNOTE: Engadget: Google's Gemini 4 Carbon promises 'significant leap' in AI coding and cybersecurity. It leads with the benchmark wins. ▶

GRETA FOOTNOTE: The Verge: Google launches Gemini 4 Carbon with a ‘significant leap’ in cybersecurity. It leads with cybersecurity and notes limited access. ▶

GRETA FOOTNOTE: What happened: Google released Carbon. It tops the Artificial Analysis index, v5.0, ahead of Claude Opus 5.5 and GPT-6 Astra. ▶

GRANT BRICKMAN: Engadget says promises, The Verge says launches. Launches means I can download the AI today. It's one guy, he'll come when called. ▶

GRETA FOOTNOTE: Per The Verge, it's only available to a select group of cybersecurity defense companies. Not to you, Grant. ▶

GRANT BRICKMAN: Select group. Then The Verge is hiding it behind a velvet rope, and Engadget at least admits it's just a promise. I stand by Engadget. ▶

GRETA FOOTNOTE: Spin score: 33 out of 100. The outlets share a lot of words. The difference is what they lead with. ▶

GRANT BRICKMAN: Thirty-three. A stunning gap. Still Engadget, still right. ▶