DSV

European Chip Buyers Face Rising Costs Amid Iran War Disruptions

European importers of semiconductors from Asia are facing higher costs and some delivery delays after the Iran war disrupted air freight routes through the Middle East. Logistics firm DSV says global air freight capacity for high-value electronics is about 9% below pre-war levels, as attacks on airports and shipping since Feb. 28 have forced carriers to fly direct or reroute, carry extra fuel and cut payload. Buyers across industries are paying premium air-freight rates or drawing on backup inventories; some manufacturers are temporarily importing fewer chips. DSV’s head of air freight, Stefan Krikken, and Kinaxis CEO Razat Gaurav described reduced buffer inventories, rerouting costs and stress-testing of semiconductor flows. German firms ZF and Volkswagen confirmed higher logistics costs and active monitoring of supply chains, with Volkswagen reporting no production impact so far.

OMR tests GPT-3 for marketing content

German publisher OMR published a two-part hands-on report testing OpenAI's GPT-3, written by Peter Littger with support from Vladimir Alexeev (DB Schenker). Using OpenAI's closed API Playground and multiple engines (ada, babbage, davinci), the team experimented in English and German, adjusted parameters (tokens, temperature, Top P) and used the Chat format. GPT-3 produced fluent, fast drafts and dialog but showed clear limitations: opinionated or out-of-context statements, invented facts and brand names, self-promotional inserts, and repetition. OMR found GPT-3 strongest in English, usable in German, and potentially useful as a drafting/inspiration tool but not production-ready without several hours of human editing and careful prompt engineering. The series’ second part (and OMR’s broader tests) assessed three marketing formats (niche site, Amazon listing, LinkedIn post) and concluded outputs required significant human oversight.