The Labor Department will not get access to the full details it has requested on 21,000 Google employees as part of its investigation of equal pay, an administrative law judge has ruled, saying that the agency's demand for data is too broad and could violate workers' privacy.

During California's Gold Rush, it was often the sellers of pickaxes and shovels who made the most money. In the frenzy to get rich quick from cryptocurrencies, some investors are calling computer chipmakers the modern-day equivalent.

Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), the birthplace of the Robot World Cup in 1996, now presents a new technology matchup, the AI World Cup this November. The event is being organized by the Machine Intelligence and Robotics Multi-Sponsored Research and Education Platform (MIR-MSREP) of KAIST. The online, simulated AI soccer game, based on rolling updates, will be a draw for avid online gamers and tech-savvy university students from around the nation.

Dell's new Latitude 7000 series of 12-inch 2-in-1 laptops has begun shipping, with a number of firsts and impressive capabilities baked into the hardware. The Latitude 7000 series is the thinnest and lightest system Dell has ever built. It also offers integrated wireless charging, courtesy of a partnership with Witricity; the first specific model to launch with this is the Latitude 7000 12-inch 2-in-1 (7285). Dell reports that interest in its 2-in-1s and total shipments have both been growing rapidly, and were up 1.48x in Q1 2017 alone.

With 43 zones, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the globe's largest public cloud, but Google is working hard to match AWS. On July 13, Google opened its latest region, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) London (europe-west2).

Look out StyleSeat and other salon booking apps, starting today Google will let people book hair and spa appointments. "So that fresh haircut or palm tree-green mani is only a couple taps away," a post on Google's blog tells us. The addition is an expansion through Reserve with Google, which rolled out a feature last year to book wellness and fitness classes right from a business listing within Search and Maps. Google has since partnered with several salons and spas to give us the same options there.

ASML's Holistic Lithography integrates a set of products that enables chip makers to develop, optimize and control the production process at the 7/5 nanometer (nm) logic and 16 nm DRAM nodes.

Last summer LeEco announced it intended to purchase the US-based TV maker Vizio for US$2 billion. The deal fell through in March amid myriad problems surrounding LeEco, including a major cash crunch. Allegedly the deal included a US$100 million buyer-termination fee and now Vizio has filed suit in a California court to collect payment.

Huawei, which has been one of the main contributors towards standardizing NB-IoT technology (4.5G technology), has developed the first NB-IoT Smart Meter in partnership with JANZ CE and u-blox.

Intel is shedding nearly 140 staff from its Internet of Things business lines. The layoffs were probably inevitable, since during June, Intel discontinued three of its IoT product lines - the Joule, Edison and Galileo compute modules and boards.

In the second half of 2018, it is planning to deploy the 7-nanometer process, using extreme ultra violet (EUV) lithography for the first time. It will be followed by 6-nanometer and 5-nanometer in 2019.

Samsung Electronics is planning to elevate its market share ranking, which is 4th now to second place this year. As Samsung Electronics can specialize its technology competitiveness ahead of its competitors', the company disclosed its aspiration to overtake Taiwan's TSMC, the industry leader in the future.

It follows Tag Heuer's Connected watch, the Apple Watch Herm癡s and Michael Kors's Access line (in collaboration with Fossil) in an effort to, according to Michael Burke, chief executive of Louis Vuitton, combat the fact that when it comes to wearable technology, "there's a lot of ugliness out there."

Western Digital won a temporary US court order on Tuesday saying that Toshiba must allow Western Digital's employees to access databases and chip samples as part of a joint venture with Toshiba around flash memory chip plants in Japan.

Rambus, a chip designer with a lengthy history of patent litigation, is considering a sale even as it has expanded its business to include sales of its own branded chips, people familiar with the matter said.

With the launch of Bixby and reports that Samsung is building its own competitor to Amazon's Echo, the consumer electronics giant has now made an acquisition that could help power its next generation of voice-powered services.

Sales analysts have cited wireless charging as one of the features compelling enough to help the upcoming iPhone 8 shatter sales records. Now, the always-churning Apple rumor mill suggests that feature won't be in place in time for the new phone's release (which may or may not come this year) and that it might not be quite as cool as some had hoped.

Microsoft is to cut "thousands" of jobs worldwide as it attempts to beef up its presence in the cloud computing sector. The technology giant wants to strengthen its cloud computing division but is facing intense competition from rivals such as Amazon and Google.

Samsung Electronics is expected to report its best-ever quarterly profit in the second quarter, with soaring memory chip sales pushing it past Intel as the biggest semiconductor maker by revenue for the first time.

Shares of Tencent, China's biggest gaming and social media firm by revenue, fell nearly 4% this week up to the close of trade on Tuesday, wiping some US$12 billion off its market value. The stock was up more than 1% on Wednesday, reversing earlier losses.

A plan for the sale of Toshiba's semiconductor unit includes an option for SK Hynix to eventually take a minority stake in the business, people involved in the proposed deal say, contradicting Toshiba's public statements.

It has been confirmed that SK Hynix started mass-producing 4th generation (72-layer) 3D NAND flash wafers and achieved ?？olden yield', which had been SK Hynix's biggest obstacle. Its solution product that uses its own controller and firmware passed certifications.

Nokia is to supply a LTE network in the 700 megahertz spectrum band to the Shanghai Oriental Pearl Group, a diversified broadcasting, media, manufacturing and real estate company. The deployment will transform Shanghai's fast-growing former industrial district of Hongkou through a range of new smart city services, for which Nokia will supply advanced wireless communications based on FDD-LTE technology for smart city and public safety applications.

Intel plans to lay off 97 people at its corporate headquarters in Santa Clara and up to 40 more in Ireland as the chipmaker makes cuts to its Internet of Things group.

China Internet giant Tencent has limited the hours that children can play several of its most popular games. It said the measures, restricting gaming depending on the player's age, were "to dispel parents' worries."

Samsung is releasing a new phone using parts from its Galaxy Note 7, which was axed after a battery fault led to some devices catching fire. The new handset will go on sale only in South Korea on 7 July, with a safer, smaller battery, the firm said.