China's courts are now handling more than 550,000 intellectual-property cases a year -- making it the world's most litigious country for IP disputes -- as the nation's own companies, once notorious for copying foreign designs and technology, find themselves [1]on the defensive against a domestic counterfeiting epidemic fueled by excess factory capacity.

The problem runs from knockoff "Lafufu" plush toys (cheap copies of Pop Mart's wildly popular Labubu dolls, which prompted a nationwide crackdown and a Shanghai police bust of a $1.7 million stash in July) to copied motorcycles and solar panels. Judges in Shanghai, the preferred venue for IP litigation, are working through cases at a rate of roughly one per day, and it still takes three months for a case to land on a court's docket.

Chinese companies are also increasingly clashing abroad: patent-related cases involving Chinese businesses in America surged 56% in 2023, according to data from GEN, a Chinese law firm. Luckin Coffee and Trina Solar have both filed suits against foreign-based copycats.



[1] https://www.economist.com/business/2026/02/09/china-once-stole-foreign-ideas-now-it-wants-to-protect-its-own?taid=32f71dff-f41e-4018-919f-4d988061d35f

Mazda, the automaker that for years defended its scroll-wheel infotainment system as a safer alternative to touchscreens, is [1]abandoning the approach entirely in the 2026 CX-5 in favor of a 15.6-inch touchscreen and zero physical buttons.

The current lineup -- the CX-50 Hybrid, CX-70 and CX-90 -- still relies on a console-mounted scroll wheel and dedicated action buttons to navigate a tablet-like screen perched atop the dashboard. Upper-trim CX-70 and CX-90 models do have 12.3-inch touchscreens, but touch input only works when parked and only inside CarPlay; it disables automatically once the car is in drive.

The new CX-5 goes the other direction entirely, eliminating all hard buttons including the volume knob and physical climate controls that current models still offer. Mazda says the touchscreen is safe because core functions like climate are pinned to a persistent bottom bar -- an approach Ford, Rivian, and most of the industry adopted years ago.



[1] https://www.thedrive.com/news/mazda-finally-admits-its-infotainment-system-is-the-worst

The software industry's decades-old habit of charging companies a flat fee for every employee who uses a product is [1]running into a fundamental problem : AI agents don't sit in chairs, and they don't need licences.

As autonomous agents take on tasks that human workers once handled, the per-seat pricing model that made SaaS revenue so predictable is giving way to consumption-based and hybrid alternatives. Snowflake and Databricks (valued at $134 billion) already charge based on usage. Salesforce initially priced its Agentforce customer relations bot at $2 per conversation but faced customer pushback and now offers action-based pricing, upfront credits and fixed fees.

ServiceNow's finance chief Amit Zavery said last month that some customers aren't ready for purely consumption-based models. Goldman Sachs estimates US software spending will nearly triple to $2.8 trillion by 2037 as automated tasks blur the boundary between IT and wage budgets, but that money will no longer arrive in the neat recurring instalments that investors and private equity firms have come to expect.



[1] https://www.ft.com/content/8784de75-861f-4460-b8c3-6937f626dbd1

Valve has updated the Steam Deck website to say that the Steam Deck OLED may be out of stock " [1]intermittently in some regions due to memory and storage shortages ." From a report:

> The PC gaming handheld has been out of stock in the US and other parts of the world for a few days, and thanks to this update, we now know why. The update comes shortly after Valve delayed the Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and Steam Controller from a planned shipping window of early 2026 because of the memory and storage crunch.

>

> "We have work to do to land on concrete pricing and launch dates that we can confidently announce, being mindful of how quickly the circumstances around both of those things can change," Valve said in a post about that announcement from earlier this month. Its goal is to launch that new hardware sometime in the first half of 2026, and the company is working to finalize its plans "as soon as possible."



[1] https://www.theverge.com/games/879845/valve-steam-deck-oled-out-of-stock-memory-storage-ram-crisis

Sony Group has developed a technology that can [1]identify the underlying music used in tunes generated by AI , making it possible for songwriters to seek compensation from AI developers if their music was used. From a report:

> Sony Group's technology analyzes which musicians' songs were used in learning and generating music. It can quantify the contribution of each original work, such as "30% of the music used by the Beatles and 10% by Queen," for example.

>

> If the AI developer agrees to cooperate for the analysis, Sony Group will obtain data by connecting to the developer's base model system. When cooperation is not attainable, the technology estimates the original work by comparing AI-generated music with existing music. The AI boom has sparked numerous cases in which AI developers are accused of using copyrighted music, video and writing without permission to train machines. In the music industry, AI-generated songs using the voices of well-known singers have been distributed online. The Japanese company thinks the technology will help create a system that distributes revenue generated by AI music to original songwriters based on their contribution.



[1] https://asia.nikkei.com/business/technology/artificial-intelligence/sony-group-tech-can-identify-original-music-in-ai-generated-songs

Instagram head Adam Mosseri told a Los Angeles courtroom last week that a teenager's 16-hour single-day session on the platform [1]was "problematic use" but not an addiction , a distinction he drew repeatedly during testimony in a landmark trial over social media's harm to minors.

Mosseri, who has led Instagram for eight years, is the first high-profile tech executive to take the stand. He agreed the platform should do everything in its power to protect young users but said how much use was too much was "a personal thing." The lead plaintiff, identified as K.G.M., reported bullying on Instagram more than 300 times; Mosseri said he had not known. An internal Meta survey of 269,000 users found 60% had experienced bullying in the previous week.



[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn71mgmzljlo

Sales of refurbished PCs are on the up amid shortages of key components, including memory chips, that are making brand new devices more expensive. From a report:

> Stats compiled by market watcher Context show sales of refurbished PCs via distribution [1]climbed 7 percent in calendar Q4 across five of the biggest European markets -- Italy, the UK, Germany, Spain, and France.

>

> Affordability is the primary driver in the secondhand segment, the analyst says, with around 40 percent of sales driven by budget-conscious users shopping in the $235 to $355 price band for laptops. The $355 to $475 tier is also expanding -- representing 23 percent of the refurbished market, up from 15 percent a year earlier -- indicating some buyers are prepared to spend a bit more for improved specifications.



[1] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/16/refurbished_pcs_memory_crunch/

The music industry's long romance with an ever-expanding catalog of songs [1]appears to be souring , as streaming platforms and rights holders confront a daily deluge that now includes 60,000 wholly AI-generated tracks uploaded to Deezer alone -- roughly 39% of the French service's daily intake, a statistic the company shared during Grammys week last month.

Streaming services now host 253 million songs, according to Luminate's most recent annual report, after adding 51 million tracks over the course of 2025 at an average pace of 106,000 uploads a day. Spotify has already responded by requiring songs to hit at least 1,000 plays in the previous 12 months to qualify for royalties, and Luminate reported that 88% of tracks received 1,000 or fewer plays in 2025.

The distribution layer is in flux too: Universal Music Group is trying to acquire Downtown Music, owner of DIY distributor CD Baby, TuneCore's head recently stepped down without a planned replacement, and DistroKid is reportedly up for sale.



[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-02-12/streaming-music-enters-its-less-is-more-era

Samsung has all but confirmed that its upcoming Galaxy S26 will [1]feature a built-in privacy display , releasing an ad that demonstrates a "Zero-peeking privacy" toggle capable of blacking out on-screen content for anyone peering over the user's shoulder.

The underlying technology is reportedly Samsung Display's Flex Magic Pixel OLED panel, first shown at MWC 2024, which adjusts viewing angles on a pixel-by-pixel basis -- and leaker Ice Universe has shared a video of the feature selectively hiding content in banking and messaging apps using AI. Samsung's Unpacked event is scheduled for February 25th.



[1] https://www.theverge.com/gadgets/879652/samsung-galaxy-s26-privacy-display-ad-flex-magic-pixel

Western Digital's entire hard drive manufacturing capacity for calendar year 2026 is [1]now fully spoken for , CEO Irving Tan disclosed during the company's second-quarter earnings call, a stark sign of how aggressively hyperscalers are locking down storage supply to feed their AI infrastructure buildouts.

The company has firm purchase orders from its top seven customers and has signed long-term agreements stretching into 2027 and 2028 that cover both exabyte volumes and pricing. Cloud revenue now accounts for 89% of Western Digital's total, according to the company's VP of Investor Relations, while consumer revenue has shrunk to just 5%.



[1] https://wccftech.com/western-digital-has-no-more-hdd-capacity-left-out/

Human software engineers and AI are currently in [1]a "centaur phase" -- a reference to the mythical half-human, half-horse creature, where the combination outperforms either working alone -- but the window may be "very brief," Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said on a podcast. He drew on chess as precedent: 15 to 20 years ago, a human checking AI's moves could beat a standalone AI or human, but machines have since surpassed that arrangement entirely.

Amodei said the same transition would play out in software engineering, and warned that entry-level white-collar disruption is "happening over low single-digit numbers of years."



[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/anthropic-ceo-dario-amodei-centaur-phase-of-software-engineering-jobs-2026-2

New Delhi's air quality index [1]averaged 349 in December and 307 in January -- levels the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classifies as hazardous -- and the months-long smog season that forces more than 30 million residents to endure respiratory illness has this year sparked something new: public protest. Hundreds of demonstrators gathered at India Gate on November 9 to demand government action; police detained more than a dozen people, and a follow-up protest later that month turned violent.

The government's response has been largely cosmetic. Authorities deployed truck-mounted "smog guns" and "smog towers" that scientists widely regard as ineffective, and a cloud seeding trial in October failed outright. A senior environment minister told Parliament in December that no conclusive data linked pollution to lung disease -- a claim doctors sharply disputed. The government cut pollution control spending by 16% in the latest federal budget. Almost 1.7 million deaths were attributable to air pollution in India in 2019, according to the Lancet. A 2023 World Bank report estimated the crisis shaves 0.56 percentage point off annual GDP growth.



[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-02-13/india-s-toxic-air-pollution-spurs-public-anger-in-new-delhi

An anonymous reader shares a report:

> The European Parliament has [1]disabled AI features on the work devices of lawmakers and their staff over cybersecurity and data protection concerns, according to an internal email seen by POLITICO. The chamber emailed its members on Monday to say it had disabled "built-in artificial intelligence features" on corporate tablets after its IT department assessed it couldn't guarantee the security of the tools' data.

>

> "Some of these features use cloud services to carry out tasks that could be handled locally, sending data off the device," the Parliament's e-MEP tech support desk said in the email. "As these features continue to evolve and become available on more devices, the full extent of data shared with service providers is still being assessed. Until this is fully clarified, it is considered safer to keep such features disabled."



[1] https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-parliament-blocks-ai-features-over-cyber-privacy-fears/

A partner at KPMG Australia has been fined $7,000 by the Big Four firm after using AI tools to [1]cheat on an internal training course about using AI. From a report:

> The unnamed partner was forced to redo the test after uploading training materials into an AI platform to help answer questions on the use of the fast-evolving technology.

>

> More than two dozen staff have been caught over this financial year using AI tools for internal exams, according to KPMG. The incident is the latest example of a professional services company struggling with staff using artificial intelligence to cheat on exams or when producing work for clients. "Like most organisations, we have been grappling with the role and use of AI as it relates to internal training and testing," said Andrew Yates, chief executive of KPMG Australia. "It's a very hard thing to get on top of given how quickly society has embraced it."



[1] https://www.ft.com/content/c30ded60-bece-45e0-981d-653e1e3e9818

Ireland has announced what it says is the world's [1]first permanent basic income program for artists , a scheme that will pay 2,000 selected artists $385 per week for three years, funded by an $21.66 million allocation from Budget 2026. The program follows a 2022 pilot -- the Irish government's first large-scale randomized control trial -- that found participants had greater professional autonomy, less anxiety, and higher life satisfaction.

An external cost-benefit analysis of the pilot calculated a return of $1.65 to society for every $1.2 invested. The new scheme will operate in three-year cycles, and artists who receive the payment in one cycle cannot reapply until the cycle after next. A three-month tapering-off period will follow each cycle. The government plans to publish eligibility guidelines in April and open applications in May, and payments to selected artists are expected to begin before the end of 2026.



[1] https://www.irishcentral.com/culture/ireland-basic-income-for-the-arts

The European Commission has adopted new measures under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) to [1]prevent the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear. From a report:

> The rules will help cut waste, reduce environmental damage and create a level playing field for companies embracing sustainable business models, allowing them to reap the benefits of a more circular economy. Every year in Europe, an estimated 4-9% of unsold textiles are destroyed before ever being worn. This waste generates around 5.6 million tons of CO2 emissions -- almost equal to Sweden's total net emissions in 2021. To help reduce this wasteful practice, the ESPR requires companies to disclose information on the unsold consumer products they discard as waste. It also introduces a ban on the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing accessories and footwear.



[1] https://environment.ec.europa.eu/news/new-eu-rules-stop-destruction-unsold-clothes-and-shoes-2026-02-09_en

An anonymous reader shares a report:

> Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is "close" to [1]cutting business ties with Anthropic and designating the AI company a "supply chain risk" -- meaning anyone who wants to do business with the U.S. military has to cut ties with the company, a senior Pentagon official told Axios.

>

> The senior official said: "It will be an enormous pain in the ass to disentangle, and we are going to make sure they pay a price for forcing our hand like this."

>

> That kind of penalty is usually reserved for foreign adversaries. Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told Axios: "The Department of War's relationship with Anthropic is being reviewed. Our nation requires that our partners be willing to help our warfighters win in any fight. Ultimately, this is about our troops and the safety of the American people."

>

> Anthropic's Claude is the only AI model currently available in the military's classified systems, and is the world leader for many business applications. Pentagon officials heartily praise Claude's capabilities.



[1] https://www.axios.com/2026/02/16/anthropic-defense-department-relationship-hegseth

Sony is considering delaying the debut of its next PlayStation console [1]to 2028 or even 2029 as a global shortage of memory chips -- driven by the AI industry's rapidly growing appetite for the same DRAM that goes into gaming hardware, smartphones, and laptops -- squeezes supply and sends prices surging, Bloomberg News reported Monday.

A delay of that magnitude would upend Sony's carefully orchestrated strategy to sustain user engagement between hardware generations. The shortage traces back to Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron diverting the bulk of their manufacturing toward high-bandwidth memory for Nvidia's AI accelerators, leaving less capacity for conventional DRAM. The cost of one type of DRAM jumped 75% between December and January alone. Nintendo is also contemplating raising the price of its Switch 2 console in 2026.



[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/rampant-ai-demand-memory-fueling-223000743.html

Google never asked its users before adding AI Overviews to its search results and AI-generated email summaries to Gmail, [1]notes the New York Times . And Meta didn't ask before making "Meta AI" an unremovable part of its tool in Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger.

"The insistence on AI everywhere — with little or no option to turn it off — raises an important question about what's in it for the internet companies..."

> Behind the scenes, the companies are laying the groundwork for a digital advertising economy that could drive the future of the internet. The underlying technology that enables chatbots to write essays and generate pictures for consumers is being used by advertisers to find people to target and automatically tailor ads and discounts to them....

>

> Last month, OpenAI said it would begin showing ads in the free version of ChatGPT based on what people were asking the chatbot and what they had looked for in the past. In response, a Google executive mocked OpenAI, adding that Google had no plans to show ads inside its Gemini chatbot. What he didn't mention, however, was that Google, whose profits are largely derived from online ads, shows advertising on Google.com based on user interactions with the AI chatbot built into its search engine.

>

> For the past six years, as regulators have cracked down on data privacy, the tech giants and online ad industry have moved away from tracking people's activities across mobile apps and websites to determine what ads to show them. Companies including Meta and Google had to come up with methods to target people with relevant ads without sharing users' personal data with third-party marketers. When ChatGPT and other AI chatbots emerged about four years ago, the companies saw an opportunity: The conversational interface of a chatty companion encouraged users to voluntarily share data about themselves, such as their hobbies, health conditions and products they were shopping for.

>

> The strategy already appears to be working. Web search queries are up industrywide, including for Google and Bing, which have been incorporating AI chatbots into their search tools. That's in large part because people prod chatbot-powered search engines with more questions and follow-up requests, revealing their intentions and interests much more explicitly than when they typed a few keywords for a traditional internet search.



[1] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/ai-is-giving-you-a-personalized-internet-but-you-have-no-say-in-it/

Installing Linux on a MacBook Air "turned out to be a very underwhelming experience," [1]according to the tech news site MakeUseOf :

> The thing about Apple silicon Macs is that it's not as simple as downloading an AArch64 ISO of your favorite distro and installing it. Yes, the M-series chips are ARM-based, but that doesn't automatically make the whole system compatible in the same way most traditional x86 PCs are. Pretty much everything in modern MacBooks is custom. The boot process isn't standard UEFI like on most PCs. Apple has its own boot chain called iBoot. The same goes for other things, like the GPU, power management, USB controllers, and pretty much every other hardware component. It is as proprietary as it gets.

>

> This is exactly what the team behind Asahi Linux has been working toward. Their entire goal has been to make Linux properly usable on M-series Macs by building the missing pieces from the ground up. I first tried it back in 2023, when the project was still tied to Arch Linux and decided to give it a try again in 2026. These days, though, the main release is called Fedora Asahi Remix, which, as the name suggests, is built on Fedora rather than Arch...

For Linux on Apple Silicon, the article lists three major disappointments:

"External monitors don't work unless your MacBook has a built-in HDMI port."

"Linux just doesn't feel fully ready for ARM yet. A lot of applications still aren't compiled for ARM, so software support ends up being very hit or miss." (And even most of the apps tested with FEX "either didn't run properly or weren't stable enough to rely on.")

Asahi "refused to connect to my phone's hotspot," they write (adding "No, it wasn't an iPhone").



[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/technology/software/i-tried-running-linux-on-an-apple-silicon-mac-and-regretted-it/ar-AA1Wq5VD