Arch-rivals Samsung and Apple have decided to drop a series of bitter patent disputes pending in multiple courts outside the United States, the South Korean electronics giant said Wednesday.

The two companies have been locked in a prolonged war of legal attrition in close to a dozen countries, with each accusing the other of infringing on various patents related to their flagship smartphone and tablet products.

This week's news that a Russian crime ring has amassed some 1.2 billion username and password combinations makes now a good time to review ways to protect yourself online.

The hacking misdeeds were described in a New York Times story based on the findings of Hold Security, a Milwaukee firm that has a history of uncovering online security breaches.

Yahoo and the online metrics firm comScore announced plans Tuesday to work together to better measure audience reach for ads on Yahoo websites.

The move, which comes as Yahoo loses ground to rivals in online advertising, will use comScore's verification platform to provide better data to marketers.

Xiaomi, a Chinese handset maker little known in the West, overtook tech giant Samsung Electronics Co. to become China's top-selling smartphone brand in the second quarter, a market research company said Tuesday.

According to Canalys, Xiaomi sold 15 million smartphones in China during the second quarter, more than a three-fold surge from a year earlier. It surpassed Samsung, which had the leading position in China for more than two years, as well as local brands such as Lenovo and Huawei.

A video game distributor says Thailand's film and video censors have banned a city-building simulation game for computers because it could hurt the country's security.

New Era Thailand marketing manager Nonglak Sahavattanapong said Monday the censorship office blocked sales of "Tropico 5" because they feared its content might affect peace and order.

A messaging app launched in the aftermath of Japan's 2011 earthquake and tsunami, Line is moving towards a possible dual listing in Tokyo and New York as it jostles for space in an increasingly crowded and imaginative market.

Combining instant messaging with shopping, gaming and other features such as letting users send each other cute cartoon "stickers", Line is hugely popular in Japan, particularly among teenagers. 

Apple said Friday it closed its $3 billion deal for Beats, the high-end audio equipment and streaming music service, a tie-up that could allow the iPhone maker to reach new audiences.

"Today we are excited to officially welcome Beats Music and Beats Electronics to the Apple family," Apple said on its website.

A talking robot assembled from household odds and ends is hitchhiking thousands of kilometers across Canada this summer as part of a social experiment to see if those of its kind can trust humans.

A brief Facebook outage on Friday prompted a flurry of complaints and comments on Twitter less than two months after a similar incident affected users worldwide.

Microsoft on Friday fired a legal salvo at longtime partner Samsung, accusing the South Korean giant of breaching a contract over licensing of technology used in the competitive smartphone market.