Huawei's Ascend 950 & DaVinci v3: How China Built a Competitive AI Chip Without EUV

DeepSeek just ordered 160,000 Huawei Ascend 950DT chips: a chip built on a DUV-only process, with self-developed HBM and a homegrown interconnect, because export controls left no other choice. Here’s how the thing actually works, and where it still falls short.

September 7, 2026 · 20 min · Hanh Pham

Agentic Coding Assistants, and Why I Don't Let Them Grade Their Own Work

“Agentic” gets thrown around loosely, but it means something specific: an assistant that decides its own next step instead of waiting for yours. That’s also exactly why you can’t trust it to tell you when it’s done a good job; here’s the verification habit that fixes that.

September 2, 2026 · 8 min · Hanh Pham