TRANSCRIPT · Pudu Robotics opens its European headquarters in Neuss, Germany

## Pudu Robotics opens its European headquarters in Neuss, Germany (The Next Web)
https://thenextweb.com/news/pudu-robotics-european-headquarters-neuss-germany
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)
https://hackaday.com/2026/10/28/2026-retrocomputing-challenge-custom-risc-v-processor-for-retro-system/
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.

## [AD · fictional product] Tumblewick Bricks
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.