17 Feb 2026
Hacker News
Long-term unemployment is becoming 'a status quo' in today's job market
17 Feb 2026 4:36am GMT
Slashdot
The Music Industry Enters Its Less-Is-More Era
The music industry's long romance with an ever-expanding catalog of songs 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.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
17 Feb 2026 3:00am GMT
Hacker News
Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl from abuse
17 Feb 2026 1:01am GMT
Slashdot
Samsung Ad Confirms Rumors of a Useful S26 'Privacy Display'
Samsung has all but confirmed that its upcoming Galaxy S26 will 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.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
17 Feb 2026 12:01am GMT
Hacker News
Building for an audience of one: starting and finishing side projects with AI
17 Feb 2026 12:00am GMT
16 Feb 2026
Slashdot
Western Digital is Sold Out of Hard Drives for 2026
Western Digital's entire hard drive manufacturing capacity for calendar year 2026 is 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%.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
16 Feb 2026 10:01pm GMT
Ars Technica
Get ready for new Macs and iPads: Apple announces "Special Experience" on March 4
Apple has not confirmed whether you'll be able to watch live, but Ars will bring you the news.
16 Feb 2026 8:30pm GMT
Best Buy worker used manager’s code to get 99% off MacBooks, cops say
Employee allegedly exploited Best Buy's discount system for months.
16 Feb 2026 8:10pm GMT
Linuxiac
Bottles 62.0 Adds Dynamic Launcher Portal Support

Bottles 62.0, a Wine prefix manager for running Windows apps on Linux, introduces Dynamic Launcher portal support and adds detailed progress reporting for backups and restore operations.
16 Feb 2026 7:53pm GMT
Ars Technica
ByteDance backpedals after Seedance 2.0 turned Hollywood icons into AI “clip art”
Hollywood backlash puts spotlight on ByteDance's sketchy launch of Seedance 2.0.
16 Feb 2026 5:42pm GMT
Linuxiac
KDE Responds to FUD Over Alleged systemd Mandate

KDE addresses misinformation about systemd requirements, stating Plasma remains usable on non-systemd systems.
16 Feb 2026 3:35pm GMT
Sparky 8.2 Refreshes KDE Plasma, LXQt, MATE, and Openbox Editions

Sparky Linux 8.2 brings KDE Plasma 6.3.6, Openbox 3.6.1, Xfce 4.20, and the newest packages from the Debian 13 repositories.
16 Feb 2026 2:14pm GMT