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Volkswagen is facing a reckoning. The German automaker's operating profit has collapsed from twenty-two point six billion euros in twenty twenty-three to under nine billion today, with twenty twenty-six potentially cutting that figure in half again. Formal negotiations with the powerful IG Metall union begin November twenty-fourth, and rumors are circulating that Audi may be eyeing a manufacturing foothold in the United States as the company scrambles to right-size its operations.
Closer to the ground, a hardware engineer has demonstrated something genuinely impressive — running SIMD-accelerated computer vision on an ESP32-S3 microcontroller that costs roughly two dollars. By exploiting the chip's vector processing extensions, tasks typically reserved for far more expensive hardware become viable at the edge. It's a reminder that clever software can stretch cheap silicon further than anyone expected.
And in Serbia, a political era may be shifting. Crowds filled the streets of Belgrade after President Aleksandar Vučić conceded defeat for his ruling party in snap parliamentary elections, capping nearly two years of persistent student-led protests. Whether this translates into durable democratic change remains to be seen, but the celebrations suggest the pressure from below finally found its moment.
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