A promising sign for cross-platform VR

Facebook has accused BlackBerry of stealing its voice-messaging technology in its instant messaging app.

Veeco Instruments has announced that John Peeler, chairman and CEO, will transition to the role of executive chairman, effective October 1, 2018. William J Miller, currently president, will become CEO and will join the company's board of directors bringing the size of the board to eight.

Local production was also hit, with Toyota Motor halting operations at most of its group plants, and Honda Motor halting its Suzuka plant in Mie prefecture. Kyocera, Murata Manufacturing, Panasonic and Shiseido were among other manufacturers shutting some of their facilities.

Uber is to block customers in Australia and New Zealand from its ride service if they have a low passenger rating. The move is aimed at improving passenger behaviour, the company said.

Typhoon Jebi on Tuesday struck the heart of one of Japan's largest metro areas, killing 10 people and shutting down Osaka's main international airport indefinitely. The storm also shuttered shops, factories and amusement parks.

The international pact - the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, known as the so-called "Five Eyes" group of nations - quietly issued the memo last week demanding that providers "create customized solutions, tailored to their individual system architectures that are capable of meeting lawful access requirements."

China's southwestern city of Chongqing plans to establish a 50 billion yuan ($7.3 billion) fund to help develop the semiconductor industry.

At the 67th International Motor Show for Commercial Vehicles in Hanover, the technology company Continental will showcase the further development of ContiConnect, its digital tire monitoring platform. The portfolio will be enhanced by a new solution that can be integrated into existing systems. With this solution, Continental is fulfilling the wishes of fleet customers to have digital tire monitoring built directly into existing fleet management systems.

TV used to be the entertainment center of the home, but as mainstream technology has evolved to include smartphones, streaming, and smart speakers, the television has become less essential for many consumers. This is something Toshiba hopes to rectify with its latest range of high-spec TVs, including its first ever 8K TV concept model.

This is the latest report from Jon Peddie Research on the GPUs used in PCs. It is reporting on the results of Q2'18 GPU shipments worldwide. Overall GPU shipments decreased -1.5% from last quarter, AMD decreased -12.3%, Nvidia decreased -7% and Intel, increased 3%.

Renesas Electronics is considering an acquisition of Integrated Device Technology to expand beyond the automotive sector.

LG Electronics is looking to significantly increase its global automotive component sales by targeting growth segments such as autonomous driving. Company CEO Jo Seong-jin, speaking at the IFA 2018, said he was considering joining forces with US electronics company Nvidia to expand in the self-driving sector.

The giveaway comes from GalaxyClub digging into the database of popular benchmarking software GFXBench. It discovered Samsung is already testing Android 9.0 Pie on the Galaxy S9 Plus less than a month after the software was released by Google.

Got an iPhone 8 - not iPhone 8 Plus - that's acting up on you? Maybe it's crashing, the screen is freezing, or won't even fire up? Well, you might be in luck because Apple has just kicked off a repair program.

Amazon executive Daniel Rausch stood onstage before a crowd of hundreds at Berlin's IFA tech show Saturday to share a few big numbers about Alexa.

Vodafone's Australian operations will become part of a new telecoms giant. Under a US$11bn merger Vodafone Hutchison Australia and TPG Telecom will create a mobile, fixed-line and broadband provider with the scale to rival Telstra and Optus.

Microsoft has announced a policy requiring its contractors to offer employees a minimum of 12 weeks paid parental leave, paying them up to US$1,000 a week.

SoftBank reportedly won't buy into next month's IPO by electric car maker Nio Inc. The Japanese electronics giant explored investing as much as US$200 million in the Chinese car maker whose US headquarters is in San Jose, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The headline change to the Pixel 3 is the jump to a 5.5-inch 2:1 aspect ratio display, which is 10% longer than the 5-inch panel in the Pixel 2. There's also an increase in pixels from 1920 x 1080 to 2060 x 1080 to support the elongated panel.

San Francisco dealt a blow to the largest shared-scooter companies on Thursday, awarding two smaller startups exclusive rights to rent the electric-powered vehicles for a year in a decision that could change the course of the nascent market.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has bought a stake in India's largest digital payments company, Paytm. Berkshire confirmed "the investment was made" in One97 Communications - the parent company of Paytm.

Reports have long suggested that Apple has been working on a trio of new iPhones for 2018, and now we know when we'll actually get to see them.

We always see major products launched at IFA and it looks like this is going to be another year absolutely packed with announcements.

Apple has acquired a startup focused on making lenses for augmented reality glasses, the company confirmed on Wednesday, a signal Apple has ambitions to make a wearable device that would superimpose digital information on the real world.

Production at China's ZTE is back to normal after the lifting of a U.S. ban and its carrier network business will return to a standard growth track in 2019, according to the firm's newly elected chairman and chief executive.

Samsung Electronics on Wednesday introduced a new portable solid state drive, the Samsung Portable SSD X5, which boasts improved speed that can transfer a 20 gigabyte file in 12 seconds.

ICE TECH is one of China's leading companies in AI algorithms and chip technologies.

More than 98 percent of internet users in China have smartphones, according to a state-backed report.

While Intel's new Whiskey Lake and Amber Lake mobile Core chips differ from their predecessors mainly in terms of available boost speed, Intel's marketing spin will emphasize something else: Notebooks and tablets sold with these new 8th-gen U- and Y-series chips will be labeled as "optimized for connectivity."

LG is embracing Google's Android One program not in the way you might have expected. It's launching the G7 One, a device that melds the G7 ThinQ's core design with Android One's streamlined app loadout and focus on timely security updates.

Bose may be one of the biggest brands in the traditional speaker market, but the company knows that connected smart speakers are the future. With Amazon's Alexa voice assistant fully integrated into its new models, the company is clearly gunning for premium rivals like Sonos and Apple.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise stock rose on Tuesday after the company reported better-than-expected earnings for the third quarter of its 2018 fiscal year, which ended on July 31.

Chinese ride-sharing giant Didi Chuxing has issued a public apology, blaming "ignorance and pride" for safety lapses that led to the rape and murder of a female passenger. Executives said they would stop using growth to measure the firm's success and prioritize safety instead.

A minor fire on the grounds of the Tesla Inc factory in California on Thursday evening was contained by the Fremont fire department, a Tesla spokesperson told Reuters.

The robotic pooches cost about as much as some of the most sought-after purebred dogs at US$2,899. That's the price of Sony's First Litter Edition, which includes the Aibo, dog toys, commemorative dog tags, and a three-year cloud plan, which allows it to upload and access its memory.

HP reported better-than-expected fiscal third quarter earnings on Thursday, but the stock dipped in extended trading. Revenues in the period rose 12% from a year earlier.

The Pixel 3 and 3 XL leaks keep coming, and today, 9to5Google reports additional details on both devices' camera setups. The report says that both devices' rumored dual, front-facing cameras will house one wide-angle sensor, so users can take "Super Selfies." These cameras would also ship with an improved portrait mode. Google seems to be sticking with the single, rear-facing camera.

Russian manufacturing firm Kalashnikov has wheeled out a retro-looking electric car it says will give Elon Musk's Tesla a run for its money. The firm behind the famous AK-47 assault rifle presented the eggshell-blue prototype vehicle, the CV-1, at an event near Moscow.

Chinese smartphone maker Huawei says the Australian government has banned it from providing 5G technology for the country's wireless networks. It said fellow communications firm ZTE had also been banned, reportedly due to national security concerns.