GoKawiil
Tech News
China's auto industry association reported that passenger car exports jumped 64% year-on-year in September, as domestic sales growth remains weak. Automakers are increasingly turning to overseas markets to sustain growth, even as the EU caps imports of Chinese hybrid vehicles at 350,000 units annually.
TrendForce's latest report projects global notebook shipments will fall by a low single-digit percentage in 2027, driven by weaker consumer demand rather than component shortages. The research firm also expects the share of notebook production outside China to shrink from 24% in 2025 to 21% in 2026, and potentially below 20% in 2027, as rising costs make offshore manufacturing less appealing. TrendForce notes that CPU, DRAM, and SSD prices currently make up about 68% of the bill-of-materials cost for a typical $900 notebook.
Bloomberg reports that open-weight AI models, which can be run locally and stripped of safety guardrails, are increasingly being used to produce child sexual abuse material. According to the report, these models can be trained on existing CSAM and generate new content offline, making detection by law enforcement difficult, and have spawned large dark web communities around this practice. Child safety expert Rebecca Portnoff told Bloomberg that over 500 open source models are now implicated, up from fewer than a dozen two years ago, while NCMEC-reported incidents of AI-generated CSAM jumped from 67,000 to more than 1.5 million in a year.
The FCC will vote October 29 on rules barring device certification testing performed in mainland China, with a transition period ending December 1, 2028. Currently 82% of electronics authorized last year were tested in China, versus under 4% in US labs, according to Chairman Brendan Carr. The rules would limit recognized labs to the US or countries offering reciprocal recognition, with Hong Kong and Taiwan reportedly included but mainland China excluded.
Omer Develioğlu, co-founder of Northend Games, published a breakdown showing that $560,000 in gross sales across two Steam titles—Northend Tower Defense and Deepstone Rift—over five years and 135,000 units ultimately left him and his co-founder with just $134,000 to split, and $73,000 after further costs. He says that works out to roughly $15,000 per year for him personally.
Ting-Wei 'Willy' Sun, a third-party broker charged alongside Super Micro co-founder Yih-Shyan Liaw and sales manager Ruei-Tsang Chang, has pleaded guilty to conspiring to illegally reroute Nvidia AI chips to China. Sun's plea is tied to an agreement with prosecutors whose cooperation terms haven't been disclosed, and he's scheduled for sentencing on September 8, 2027. Investigators allege the group disguised real Super Micro servers as dummy units to deceive export inspectors before routing them through Thailand to Alibaba.
During China's National Day Golden Week, Guangzhou South Railway Station served over one million passengers in 24 hours, a reported world record, according to South China Morning Post. The station ran 1,252 trains that day with headways as low as 40 seconds, while China's national rail network logged 25.2 million passenger trips on October 1 alone.
Manus, a Chinese AI startup, announced it has raised more than $500 million in its initial funding round since ending its $2 billion acquisition agreement with Meta. The funding was led by Boyu Capital and IDG Capital, with participation from existing investors including Tencent and HSG. The company plans to expand its hiring efforts globally and has not disclosed its current valuation, though reports suggest it was in talks for a $4 billion valuation last month.
Uber and Chinese autonomous vehicle firm Pony.ai announced plans to begin testing their Gen-7 robotaxis in London within weeks. This move expands their partnership, which initially focused on the Middle East and now includes European markets, with a goal to deploy 2,000 vehicles across several cities. The companies have not disclosed who will own or operate the London fleet, but the initiative continues Uber’s broader strategy to develop autonomous ride-hailing services globally.
American hardtech startups are attracting more attention, with deep tech funds outperforming traditional venture capital. Increased investment is supporting the transition from invention to commercial scale, reflecting a growing recognition of the sector's potential.
A shipment of sensitive F-35 fighter jet parts from Australia to the U.S. was rerouted through Hong Kong due to a missed email warning from freight company DSV. The UPS agent responsible for the shipment did not see the instructions to avoid certain regions under ITAR regulations, leading to the parts passing through a Chinese territory. The components included stealth coatings and critical aircraft parts, raising concerns over security and compliance.
Prosecutors in Taiwan have charged ten company executives over the illegal export of military-grade chips from US manufacturers Texas Instruments and Analog Devices to China. The chips, falsely declared as made in Taiwan and ordered under the guise of Taiwan defense institute names, were allegedly diverted to Chinese military projects including missile and radar systems. The investigation revealed that the chips originated from multiple countries and were shipped through Taiwanese distributors using forged documentation to bypass export restrictions.