Techmeme
February 12, 2026, 2:25 PM

Top News

David Gewirtz / ZDNET:
OpenAI launches a research preview of GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark, a smaller version of GPT-5.3-Codex that it claims generates code 15 times faster, for Pro users  —  ZDNET's key takeaways  — OpenAI targets “conversational” coding, not slow batch-style agents.  — Big latency wins: 80% faster roundtrip, 50% faster time-to-first-token.
Arjun Kharpal / CNBC:
Kevin Collier / NBC News:
Google's TIG says Gemini has been inundated by “commercially motivated” actors who are trying to clone it, including one campaign that prompted it 100K+ times  —  Google says private companies and researchers are trying to copy Gemini's capabilities by repeatedly prompting it at scale.
The Keyword:
Google updates Gemini 3 Deep Think to better solve modern science, research, and engineering challenges and expands it via the Gemini API to some researchers  —  Our most specialized reasoning mode is now updated to solve modern science, research and engineering challenges.
Michael Acton / Financial Times:
US FTC chair asks Tim Cook to review Apple News' ToS and curation, citing allegations that it promotes “left-wing” outlets and suppresses conservative sources  —  US regulator issues warning to iPhone maker about its News platform following controversy over Super Bowl half-time show
Theodore Schleifer / New York Times:
Anthropic donates $20M to Public First, a super PAC pushing for AI guardrails and transparency in opposition to OpenAI-backed PACs, ahead of the US midterms  —  Anthropic and OpenAI now have their own well-funded political groups that will square off in the midterm elections over artificial intelligence safety and regulation.
Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:
YouTube launches an app for the Apple Vision Pro, with standard videos, 180° and 360° videos, and YouTube Shorts; devices with the M5 chip can play 8K videos  —  Starting today, an official YouTube app is available on the Apple Vision Pro, allowing you to watch videos on a theater-sized screen …
Financial Times:
Israeli authorities charge a reservist and a civilian for allegedly using classified information to bet on “the occurrence of military operations” on Polymarket  —  Civilian and reservist charged with security offences, bribery and obstructing justice after ‘red line’ crossed with online gambling
MiniMax:
MiniMax releases M2.5, claiming the model delivers on the “intelligence too cheap to meter” promise, priced at $0.30/1M input tokens and $1.20/1M output tokens  —  Today we're introducing our latest model, MiniMax-M2.5.  —  Extensively trained with reinforcement learning …
Yoolim Lee / Bloomberg:
Samsung says it sent the first commercial HBM4 shipments to customers; Samsung seeks to supply Nvidia and compete with memory rivals like SK Hynix and Micron  —  Samsung Electronics Co. claimed an early lead in the race to supply advanced memory for AI accelerators like those made by Nvidia Corp. …
Theo Wayt / The Information:
xAI all-hands: Nikita Bier says X hit $1B in ARR from selling $3- to $40-per-month subscriptions, but offered no details on ad revenue or other xAI financials  —  X recently hit $1 billion in annualized recurring revenue from selling subscriptions, head of product Nikita Bier said in an xAI all-hands meeting on Tuesday.
Lora Kolodny / CNBC:
Eugene Kim / Business Insider:
Internal messages: Amazon steers teams to use its in-house AI coding assistant Kiro for production, prompting criticism as ~1,500 employees push for Claude Code  —  - Amazon internally promotes Kiro over third-party AI coding tools including Claude Code.  — Some employees …
Eduardo Baptista / Reuters:
ByteDance's new AI video generation model Seedance 2.0 goes viral in China, with one state-backed newspaper saying it is bigger than DeepSeek's “Sputnik moment”  —  ByteDance's new video-generating artificial intelligence model has already impressed the likes of Elon Musk and gone viral in China …
Axios:
US DOJ antitrust chief Gail Slater says she is leaving, in a departure viewed as a victory for tech giants over some of MAGA's more populist voices  —  Gail Slater on Thursday said she is leaving the Justice Department, where she led the antitrust division.
Steve Yegge:
AI tools like Claude Opus 4.6 make engineers 10x more productive and are addictive, but also drain developers' energy, causing increasingly widespread burnout  —  This was an unusually hard post to write, because it flies in the face of everything else going on.
Kris Holt / Engadget:
Nvidia launches a native GeForce Now app on select Amazon Fire TV sticks, offering up to 1080p and 60fps gaming; Fire TV users previously had to sideload it  —  Streaming quality tops out at 1080p and 60 fps, however.  —  NVIDIA's cloud gaming service, GeForce Now, has expanded to another platform.
Financial Times:
Russia removes WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram from a Roskomnadzor-run online directory, essentially blocking them in the country, unless users rely on a VPN  —  Move follows months of pushing users to state-controlled app  —  Millions of Russians were abruptly cut off …
Bloomberg:
Chris Welch / Bloomberg:
Sony launches the $330 WF-1000XM6 earbuds, with AI-powered beamforming mics for enhanced voice call clarity, improved ANC, and hands-free Gemini on Android  —  Sony Group Corp. introduced its latest pair of premium wireless earbuds, offering a retooled design and active noise cancellation …

Sponsor Posts

Command Line:
Bringing local models and sandboxed tools to Windows and GitHub Copilot  —  GitHub Copilot will soon determine when a task is best handled by on-device AI and when it needs cloud-scale models.
Will Reed:
The best sales leaders aren't job hunting.  Here's how to reach them without months of cold outreach.  —  Our team came from Box, Square, and Brex, so we already know the GTM leaders worth meeting.
Zoho:
Zoho Books now supports CT600 & Final Accounts Filing as an add-on in the FREE plan  —  Managing end-of-year filing for limited companies in the UK is often expensive and multi-layered.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Sources:
Qualcomm's CEO on the coming AI phone supercycle
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Bringing Back Mammoths And Building Noah's Ark 2.0 | Colossal's Ben Lamm
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Great Chat:
The launch industrial complex
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Big Technology Podcast:
Can AI Keep Growing Exponentially? Let's Ask SemiAnalysis — With Dylan Patel and Jordan Nanos
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Larry Ellison's Media Ambitions & Kevin Roose on AI's Biggest Gamble
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Training Data:
Google's AI Infrastructure Chief, Amin Vahdat, on the Physics & Economics of Frontier AI
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
Subscribe to Training Data.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 2:25 PM ET, February 12, 2026.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Earlier Picks

Melissa Heikkilä / Financial Times:
Dell Cameron / Wired:
Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer:
Daniel Kuhn / The Block: