Japanese company Nidec - accused Seagate of unauthorized use of electric motors in some models of hard drives. Seagate is required to cease illegal use of Nidec's intellectual property and compensate for damages and other costs.

According to Nidec, which owns 85% of the market for spindle motors for hard drives, the Seagate 2TB BarraCuda ST200LM15 and 16TB IronWolf Pro ST16000NE00 drives violate the applicant's US patents. In particular, these models are equipped with electric motors of the Japanese company MinebeaMitsumi, with which Nidec has a cross-licensing agreement. But Seagate does not participate in this agreement and actually uses Nidec technology without its permission.

Nidec is filing a lawsuit seeking a court order to cease Seagate's illegal use of its intellectual property, ban the sale of named products, indemnify for damages, collect pre- and post-court interest, and reimburse costs and fees.

Nidec motors are one of big reasons of large HDD prices, this guys rip you off and do it silently.

Law firm DLA Piper says that, since January 28th, 2020, the EU has issued around €158.5 million (around $192 million) in financial penalties. That’s a 39-percent increase on the previous 20-month period Piper examined in its report, published this time last year. And as well as the increased fines, the number of breach notifications has shot up by 19 percent across the same 12-month period.

Italy, Germany and France are the three countries most willing to sanction companies, and have collectively charged companies €192.8 million ($234 million) since GDPR came into force. The biggest single fine, however, remains the $57 million that France levied against Google for violating data transparency rules. Other blockbuster fines, including the UK’s $123 million penalty for the Marriott data breach, was trimmed down to just $25 million.

Note that they do nothing to actually stop capitalists from selling and trading data, they actually help them. Instead they made nice big pipe from finance streams to feed from.

https://twitter.com/CryptoInsane/status/1349835605027516417

Common for many cheap TVs, and especially common for many Chinese brands TVs.

As with 95% probability it is PSU that is at fault and it is much cheaper (2-4x cheaper and separate MB) you are overpaying a lot. And lot of waste is made.

Note how none of bureaucrats or green fighters tell you about this - because if they do and start the real fight - they won't get any funding instantly.