Inspur buys US chips 🔌, DeepSeek buys Huawei chips 💾, Neuromodulation goes open-source 🧠

A New York Times investigation traces how Inspur Group, the Shandong-based server manufacturer Commerce placed on its Entity List ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ 

Sign Up |Advertise|View Online TLDR TLDR Hardware 2026-09-07 📱 Headlines and Launches How a blacklisted Chinese tech giant kept buying America's best AI chips (5 minute read) A New York Times investigation traces how Inspur Group, the Shandong-based server manufacturer Commerce placed on its Entity List in March 2023 specifically to cut it off from restricted US technology, kept acquiring Nvidia's most advanced AI chips for years afterward. The workaround was structural rather than clandestine: Inspur and entities connected to it routed purchase orders through affiliated subsidiaries and third-party resellers whose names never appeared on the blacklist itself, letting racks of cutting-edge hardware flow through channels the Entity List was never built to catch. DeepSeek plans large Huawei chip order for new Inner Mongolia data centre (4 minute read) DeepSeek is preparing a large order of Huawei AI chips to power a reported one-gigawatt data center in Ulanqab, Inner Mongolia, which could begin partial operations in late 2027 or early 2028. Nvidia's most capable accelerators can't legally sell into China, leaving Huawei's Ascend family as one of the few domestic options at this scale. DeepSeek has already been tuning models for Ascend, its V4 model launched in April built for the Ascend 950, prompting Chinese cloud providers to order hundreds of thousands of units. Nvidia's Jensen Huang has called this shift a “horrible outcome” for the US, since every model optimized for Ascend chips away at CUDA's ecosystem advantage. 🔨 Engineering and Applications Roomba Duo lets one autonomous robot carry and deploy another robot (6 minute read) The Roomba Duo is a dual-robot architecture where the larger autonomous machine physically carries and deploys an ultra-compact companion using a top-mounted mechanical arm. Both robots share a map and coordinate in real time, while dual-line LiDAR, PrecisionVision AI, and additional top-mounted cameras provide navigation and perception. The main robot adds a 60 mm roller mop with 46 N downforce, steam pre-treatment, 17 cm hub-motor wheels, and a centralized autonomous maintenance dock. Open Source Human Tracking Drone for Indoor Applications with Full Sim-to-Real Pipeline (3 minute read) This open-source repository provides a simulation-first autonomy stack for an indoor person-following quadcopter using ROS 2, ArduPilot SITL, and the Gazebo simulator. It integrates real-time visual tracking, state estimation, and dynamic trajectory planning designed to transition reliably from virtual digital twins to physical flight. 🧠 Research and Prototypes COSMIIC — Open Source Implantable Neuromodulation Platform (3 minute read) The COSMIIC System is an open-source, modular implantable neuromodulation platform designed for adoption by medical technology researchers and startups. It provides standardized, interoperable hardware modules—such as pulse generators, power supplies, and biopotential recording units networked over a Controller Area Network (CAN) bus—to accelerate translational development from benchtop testing to human clinical trials. Researchers weaponize EM injection to eavesdrop on headphones from 30 meters away (4 minute read) An attacker beaming a tuned electromagnetic carrier at a device can exploit the nonlinearity already built into ordinary components like amplifiers, ADCs, and power converters to modulate a device's low-frequency secret signals onto that carrier, upconverting them into detectable EM emissions that wouldn't otherwise radiate far enough to intercept. By tuning the injection frequency and amplitude, the resulting InjectEave attack lets an adversary actively shape how much leakage they get rather than passively waiting for it. The team demonstrated eavesdropping on audio from both wired and wireless headphones up to 30 meters away using accessible RF gear. 🎁 Miscellaneous SKD-1: A Low-Cost Open Source Skid-Steer Ground Vehicle (2 minute read) The SKD-1 repository provides open-source ROS 2 packages and configuration files for developing and operating a custom skid-steer mobile ground vehicle. It includes URDF robot descriptions, ros2_control hardware interfaces, and Gazebo simulation environments to support kinematic validation and autonomous navigation. NHTSA launches probe into Tesla Cybercab as public rides begin (3 minute read) Right as Tesla's steering-wheel-less Cybercab began offering public commercial rides in Austin, NHTSA opened a formal investigation into whether the vehicle was properly certified, reviewing the technical data and compliance procedures Tesla used to self-certify up to 1,000 units under Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. The core issue is hardware: the Cybercab has no steering wheel, pedals, or side-view mirrors, and automakers building vehicles without manual controls generally have to petition NHTSA for a regulatory exemption, a path Amazon's Zoox used successfully in July, but Tesla never filed one, instead self-certifying SAE Level 4 autonomy in Texas under new state rules and maintaining the Cybercab isn't subject to the standard 2,500-vehicle exemption cap. ⚡ Quick Links Open Source 3 Axis Micromanipulator (2 minute read) This Thingiverse project shares a 3D-printable, three-axis manual micromanipulator designed for precise positioning in benchtop experiments and inspection tasks. Running frontier LLMs on Nvidia's RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell without NVLink (2 minute read) A community-maintained wiki has emerged documenting reproducible Docker builds, runbooks, and benchmarks for running frontier LLMs like GLM-5, DeepSeek-V4, and Kimi on Nvidia's RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell cards over PCIe alone, without needing NVLink. Gravis Robotics Raises $200M for Construction Autonomy (4 minute read) Gravis Robotics secured $200 million in Series A funding to accelerate the commercial deployment of autonomous retrofit systems for heavy construction machinery. Reframe Systems raises $40M to scale its robotic microfactories for home building (4 minute read) Boston's Reframe Systems raised $40 million in Series A funding to expand its network of robotic microfactories that manufacture modular, zero-carbon housing components. 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