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Safra Catz, Oracle Corp. CEO, second left, exits superior court in San Jose in 2012. (credit: Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

A San Jose jury has awarded Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) $3 billion (£2.25B) in damages from Oracle after Oracle breached its contract to provide Itanium support in its namesake database and Linux distribution.

Oracle unilaterally decided to drop support for Itanium systems running HP's HP-UX operating system in 2011. HP (as then was; the company split into two last year, with HPE retaining the interest in the server business) sued, claiming that Oracle was in breach of a 2010 contract between the two companies in which the database firm promised to support HP's Itanium systems.

That suit was decided in 2012 in HP's favor. The judge required Oracle to fulfill its contractual obligations to support HP's Itanium systems and decided that HP was due damages. Oracle resumed the software support in late 2012, but the damages portion was undetermined. The two companies were back in court some four years later to decide just what those damages should be.

(credit: We Like Cars)

A lawyer for Volkswagen Group told a US district judge today that the company will probably be able to fix the 85,000 outstanding 3.0L diesel Porches, Audis, and Volkswagens that were also discovered to flout emissions regulations, following revelations that nearly 500,000 2.0L diesel vehicles were built with illegal emissions cheating software.

The 3.0L diesels were not included in Tuesday’s news that Volkswagen would spend $10 billion to buy back diesel cars that were spewing up to 40 times the legal limit of nitrogen oxide (NO_x). The 3.0L cars were discovered two months after the first revelations of cheating and have since been on a separate track. VW Group contests that its 3.0L cars did not cheat on federal emissions tests in the same way that the 2.0L engines did, although the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has asserted that the cars in question were built with illegal auxiliary devices to circumvent emissions regulations.

Reuters reports that US District Judge Charles Breyer asked that VW Group provide and update on this fix on August 25, but the judge has not yet given VW Group a firm deadline to present a fix to US regulators. VW Group’s lawyer told the judge that the fix the company is currently working on would not be complicated or impact the cars’ performance greatly.

Dell's Venue 8 7000 was a decent tablet, but its future doesn't look bright. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

There's a lot of competition and not a lot of profit in the Android ecosystem, so it's not exactly surprising to hear that Dell plans to exit the Android business in order to focus on its Windows PCs and convertibles. According to The Verge, the company will continue to honor warranties and service contracts for Venue Android tablets, but it will no longer sell or develop new hardware and will stop releasing software updates for current devices.

This means no more updates for relatively recent releases like the odd but relatively well-reviewed Venue 8 7000.

The move is part of a wider strategy shift at Dell, one in which it will "divest from the slate tablet market" in favor of convertibles, partly because "the tablet opportunity in big business has passed" (read: it can't sell enough of these at a high enough margin to make the effort worthwhile). Windows is a stronger choice for devices that spend all or most of their time attached to keyboard docks, since it offers a wider range of "professional" apps and is already accepted among and familiar the business and IT types that Dell is targeting with these products. Dell also takes a not-so-subtle swipe at a couple of recent Apple tablets, saying that "CIOs and IT administrators have to consider much more than just the word “Pro” and visual appeal of a device when deciding which products to deploy among their workforce."

Enlarge / Spotify says Apple is using its privileged position to hurt Spotify's chances against Apple Music.

Apple Music has been around for about a year now, and despite being a little late to the game, Apple boasts that it has managed to pick up about 15 million paying subscribers. Spotify has at least twice that many users, but the company is worried that Apple is using its privileged position on iPads and iPhones to push Apple Music at the expense of third-party services.

According to a report from Recode, Apple has blocked an update to the iOS Spotify app, citing "business model rules." Spotify no longer offers iOS users the ability to subscribe to its Premium tier from within the app, a move which inconveniences users but more relevantly denies Apple its typical 30 percent cut of the revenue. The report claims this led directly to the new update being blocked, which according to Spotify's lawyers "raises serious concerns under both U.S. and EU competition law" and "[diminishes] the competitiveness of Spotify on iOS and as a rival to Apple Music."

The iOS Spotify app used to offer in-app subscriptions but charged users $12.99 instead of the standard $9.99 to compensate for Apple's cut. Spotify recently offered iOS users a three-month trial of Spotify for $0.99 if they signed up through Spotify's site rather than the app, but pressure from Apple prompted the company to remove that promotion and the in-app subscription option altogether.

The Model S uses several sets of sensors, from optical to ultrasonic to radar, to maintain awareness of the traffic around you. (credit: Tesla Motors)

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is about to take a closer look at Tesla's Autopilot, the company revealed on Thursday. In a blog post, Tesla says that it learned on Wednesday evening that the NHTSA is "opening a preliminary evaluation into the performance of Autopilot" following a fatal crash involving a Model S.

The incident, which happened in May, involved a white tractor-trailer that crossed the divider on a highway, perpendicular to the path of the Tesla, which was cruising on Autopilot. "Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied. The high ride height of the trailer combined with its positioning across the road and the extremely rare circumstances of the impact caused the Model S to pass under the trailer, with the bottom of the trailer impacting the windshield of the Model S," Tesla stated.

The company also stated that in a front-on or rear-end collision with the tractor-trailer, the outcome would not have ended in tragedy. It described the driver as "a friend to Tesla and the broader EV community" and expressed sympathy for his friends and family for their loss.