Jurors late Friday ordered Samsung to pay just a fraction of the big-money damages sought by Apple in a high-stakes Silicon Valley case over smartphone patents.

The jury in federal court in California found that Samsung violated some patents and ruled that the South Korean consumer electronics giant should pay $119.6 million in damages.

The global market for tablet computers went into hibernation in early 2014, ending a long run of sizzling growth, a survey showed Thursday.

The IDC report said sales of tablets including newly introduced convertible PCs totaled 50.4 million units in the first quarter of 2014. 

Microsoft Thursday released a patch for a perilous hole in its Internet Explorer browser that hackers could slip through to invade computers.

The flaw was deemed so dangerous that the U.S. software colossus planned to take the unusual step of releasing a fix for its aged Windows XP operating system, which it officially stopped supporting last month.

A study ordered by U.S. President Barack Obama and released Thursday concludes that analysis of "big data" can help society in many ways, from improving health care to spurring economic growth.

But the report also said the vast expansion of computer analytics of large data banks creates new threats to privacy, and recommended updated rules and laws to protect stored information.

Retroviruses that quietly multiply unnoticed, spread through communities and threaten humanity. Robots that mutate into semi-conscious beings and go on the run from their human masters.

Television screenwriters all over the world are taking our darkest fears and turning them into popular entertainment. 

U.S. computer giant Hewlett Packard and Taiwan's Foxconn unveiled plans Wednesday to join forces to produce servers optimized for the Internet cloud.

"This partnership reflects business model innovation in our server business, where the high-volume design and manufacturing expertise of Foxconn, combined with the compute and service leadership of HP, will enable us to deliver a game-changing offering in infrastructure economics," said Meg Whitman, president and chief executive at California-based HP. 

Facebook moved Wednesday to bolster the trust of its more than one billion users by providing new controls on how much information is shared on the world's leading social network.

In a major shift away from the notion long preached by Facebook co-founder and chief Mark Zuckerberg of having a single known identity online, people will be able to use applications anonymously at Facebook.

While major video game makers place sure bets on sequels to blockbuster titles, Sony is working with independent studios to bring sassy new titles to the PlayStation platform.

Sony excitedly showed off nearly two dozen new "indie" games including "nidhogg" and "The Witness" late Wednesday at its PlayStation campus in the Silicon Valley city of San Mateo.

Jurors have begun deliberations in a patent infringement lawsuit involving Apple and Samsung over smartphone technology.

The panel of four men and four women were sent to the jury room on Tuesday after closing arguments concluded at the trial.

Twitter shares sank Tuesday to their lowest levels since the company's market debut after the popular messaging platform reported a jump in revenues but disappointing growth in users.

The net loss for the first quarter amounted to $132 million, wider than the $27 million deficit a year earlier, largely due to a rise in stock compensation, Twitter said in its earnings statement.