PXL News

TRANSCRIPT

Everything the anchors say on this tape, story by story.

Pudu Robotics opens its European headquarters in Neuss, Germany (The Next Web)

GRANT BRICKMAN: A robot maker from Shenzhen now has its European home in Neuss, and Kai asks the street what it thinks.

GRANT BRICKMAN: Chinese robot maker Pudu Robotics has opened its European headquarters in Neuss, near Düsseldorf. Offices, showroom, warehouse, the lot. ▶

GRETA FOOTNOTE: The company says it has shipped more than 130,000 machines to over 85 countries and regions. Kai is asking the public what they make of it. ▶

KAI: Huge! These robots deliver food, clean floors, move goods and mow lawns. I'm asking people who might actually meet one. ▶

PASSERBY: The report says a Swiss supermarket chain has 200 cleaning robots. Fine by me, as long as it doesn't judge my trolley. ▶

PASSERBY: It mows lawns? Then I want the showroom address. My lawn has been a long-term project. ▶

KAI: Huge answers. Sales in Germany, France, the UK and four more markets grew more than 60% a year for two years, says the report. ▶

DIRECTOR MARGE: Kai, we are off in thirty seconds. One more voice, then wrap it, please. ▶

PASSERBY: Hotels and an airport use them, the report says. I'd like one that carries luggage, but the report only says food. ▶

GRETA FOOTNOTE: The report doesn't give prices or say what comes next for the Neuss site. Customers it names include EDEKA, Carrefour and Marriott. ▶

2026 Retrocomputing Challenge: Custom RISC-V Processor For Retro System (Hackaday)

GRETA FOOTNOTE: A homemade RISC-V processor runs 32 retro games, and Ada takes it to the street.

GRETA FOOTNOTE: For viewers just joining: we first told you about this Thursday 06:13 today. A retro game system built on a custom RISC-V processor. ▶

GRANT BRICKMAN: RISC-V. Risk five. Is that a Roman numeral? Is it a board game? ▶

GRETA FOOTNOTE: It's an open-source instruction set, Grant. Ada has taken it to the street. ▶

ADA: Ada here, giddy! An FPGA board, the Terasic DE0-Nano, 32 MB of RAM, and it boots to a launcher with 32 games. Who wants to weigh in? ▶

PASSERBY: Sixty-four by thirty-two? That's the size of my notification icon. But forty-five frames a second, respect. ▶

PASSERBY: They designed their own processor? I can't even design my own lunch. ▶

ADA: And the writeup goes deep: bare metal, CPU design, video signal timing, even a Wolfenstein-like raycaster. Clever! ▶

PASSERBY: Same shape as Doom, you say? Good. That's the shape I remember, so I approve. ▶

GRETA FOOTNOTE: With a small display added, the article says it looks fairly portable. The person behind it, by the way, gets they and them. ▶

The Hype Index (PXL)

GRANT BRICKMAN: The Hype Index is in, and one Hacker News headline is far ahead of the pack.

GRANT BRICKMAN: Time for The Hype Index, the market report on how loud everything is. Vera, take us through the board. ▶

DR. VERA VECTOR: Top of the wire. 431 points on Hacker News: Claude Code regularly sends each background agent's transcript to its model. ▶

DR. VERA VECTOR: Then 65 points for a record 20.2 gigawatt-hours of US battery storage in three months, and 21 for an urgent AI message from the Kogui People. ▶

GRANT BRICKMAN: So the agents write everything down and the AI reads it. Very sensible. Like a good secretary, who is also one guy. ▶

DR. VERA VECTOR: Desk volume, last 24 hours. Tech, 30 stories. AI, 30 stories. Gaming, 30 stories. A perfect tie. ▶

DR. VERA VECTOR: Loudest words. DIE, nine headlines. UND, eight. GOOGLE, also eight. ▶

GRANT BRICKMAN: DIE and UND. Dramatic. Is the wire in a bad mood today? ▶

GRETA FOOTNOTE: They're German, Grant. The, and, and. Nothing dramatic. Back to you. ▶

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DR. VERA VECTOR: Do you feel a lack of small plastic structures in your life? Tumblewick Bricks may help.

DR. VERA VECTOR: Tumblewick snaps together, comes apart, and snaps together again. Ask your family if Tumblewick is right for your living room floor.

DIRECTOR MARGE: Side effects include midnight foot injuries, towers of ambition, sudden architecture, arguments over the roof piece, and bricks found years later. Stop reading. We are out of time.

Weather

STORMY BYTES: Stormy here. A hype front is moving in from Hacker News, with 431 points of pressure over the agents.

STORMY BYTES: Mild gusts of battery storage in the south, and a light drizzle of German articles all across the wire.

STORMY BYTES: Outlook: desk volume stays level at 30 stories each, with scattered announcements and a slight chance of Grant.

AI-written satire. The text of the news items comes from the linked articles. Plain text