Robot dogs go to silicon heaven

Japanese owners of old robot dogs have been holding traditional funerals for their "pets".

Could allow it to make acquisitions

Japanese chipmaker Renesas Electronics said a state-backed fund and other shareholders would reduce their stakes in the Japanese chip maker, in a sale worth $2.8 billion.

Battery problems

A Japanese bullet train had to make an emergency stop after a tablet computer apparently owned by a passenger caught fire while the train was en route to Tokyo Station, police and railway officials said.

Walking into smartphone users

Japan’s train stations are seeing a new form of vigilante – grumpy old men who don’t like people using smartphones.

Auction might be scuppered.

Western Digital is going for a court injunction to prevent Toshiba  from flogging its chip business without the U.S. firm's consent  in a move that might scupper the auction.

Beginning of the end

While most people have focused on factory robots and self-driving cars may kill off millions of jobs, the fact that AI will kill off white collar work has been quietly ignored.

130 petaflops 

Japan's government  plans to build the world’s fastest-known supercomputer for developing and improving AI, driverless cars, robotics and medical diagnostics.

This is going to hurt

On the day that Apple’s iPhone 7 went on sale in Japan, it’s emerged that it’s been told to pay a hefty $118 million (¥12 billion) by government tax authorities in the country.

Lacks THX certification, analog outputs

Panasonic has just launched a lower-cost version of its flagship DMP-UB900 Ultra HD Blu-ray disc player in Japan, according to a recent listed posting on the company’s Japanese website.

Will crush Chinese rivals

ISC Fujitsu is working on a supercomputer built around 64-bit ARMv8 cores and creating a machine which will clean the clock of the new crowned Chinese king of the supercomputers – Sunway TaihuLight machine.