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Amazon is reportedly working on custom networking chips

Amazon is reportedly working on custom silicon chips for its hardware network switches, according to The Information. The chips, which could help Amazon improve its internal infrastructure as well as AWS, are said to be the result of Amazon’s $350 million acquisition of Israeli chipmaking firm Annapurna Labs back in 2015. Amazon building the silicon… Read more

Privacy and ads in Chrome are about to become FLoCing complicated

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is forging ahead with its third-party cookie replacement technology Repent, o ye ad trackers, for the cookiepocalypse is nigh! If Google sticks to its roadmap, by this time next year Chrome will no longer allow websites to use third-party cookies, which are cookies that come from outside… Read more

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 vs Xiaomi Mi Mix Fold vs Huawei Mate X2: What’s the difference?

(Pocket-lint) – Huawei’s second generation of its foldable smartphone comes in the form of the Mate X2, while Xiaomi’s foldable phone is called the Mi Mix Fold. Both follow a similar design to the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold series after Huawei changed the format of the folding device from its predecessor – the Mate X and… Read more

Google’s new experimental app is a powerful AI document scanner for Android

Google is releasing a new experimental app today called Stack that borrows the technology underlying its powerful DocAI enterprise tool for document analysis. The end result is a consumer document scanner app for Android that Google says vastly improves over your average mobile scanner by auto-categorizing documents into the titular stacks and enabling full text… Read more

Google Nest Hub (2021) review: Sweet dreams are made of this

(Pocket-lint) – The Google Nest Hub (second gen) updates Google’s first smart display, which originally launched as the Google Home Hub. Sporting a 7-inch display, it rivals Amazon’s Echo Show models, looking to bring a visual experience to Google Assistant, and slot the Mountain View company into the centre of your home. This time around,… Read more

Google celebrates the unblocking of the Suez Canal with a small boat parade in search

The big boat is no longer stuck. After days of rapt attention from the internet, a non-metaphorical rising tide has indeed lifted all the boats — and particularly, the Evergreen Marine Corporation’s Ever Given cargo ship — reopening the Suez Canal to regular shipping traffic and ensuring that the precious lifeblood of capitalism can continue… Read more

Google is making some big upgrades to directions in Google Maps

Google is announcing a bunch of new features planned for Google Maps, including a new tool to help with indoor navigation and suggestions for eco-friendly driving routes. The features announced today aren’t rolling out all at once, though; many aren’t available just yet, and it’s unclear when some will be available in some parts of… Read more

Cleer Audio Enduro ANC headphones boast 60 hours of noise-cancelling playback

Home News (Image credit: Cleer) Cleer Audio has announced the follow up to last year’s super long life Enduro 100 over-ear headphones. The San Diego-based company’s new Enduro ANC headphones claim an impressive 60 hours of playback with noise-cancelling and Bluetooth engaged – around two to three times more than is typically offered by the… Read more

Samsung Galaxy Tab Active 3 review: Rough and tumble

(Pocket-lint) – When a product arrives with a bag of sand and a bucket in tow for testing purposes, you know it’s not going to be just any old standard lifestyle product. But that’s exactly the point with the Samsung Galaxy Tab Active 3: it’s a rugged tablet, designed for drops, water- and dust-resistance, and… Read more

Hulu’s Android TV app finally gets bumped from 720p to 1080p, at least on some devices

Hulu’s Android TV apps can finally stream in 1080p on new Nvidia Shield TV set-top-boxes and Sony Bravia TVs, as spotted by users on Reddit, and written up by Gizmodo, Android Central, and 9to5Google. Users first noticed the change in the “App & Device Info” page in the Hulu app. After updating, the app lists… Read more

Facebook, Uber, and Microsoft plan to start bringing employees back to offices

Facebook is planning to start its return to in-person work in May, after over a year of working remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Bloomberg. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced remote work plans near the start of the pandemic that promised around half of his employees could work remotely in the next five… Read more

Vergecast: OnePlus 9 review and this year’s first big tech congressional hearing

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Every Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where we discuss the week in tech news with the reporters and editors covering the biggest stories. This week, co-hosts Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn bring in Verge reporter Allison Johnson to chat about her review of the… Read more

Area-codeless local calls will largely go away in October — but for a good reason

In many places, you can call up a neighbor or local pizza parlor just by dialing seven numbers, as long as you have the same area code — but that ability will soon be going away, in order to make the National Suicide Prevention and Mental Health Crisis Lifeline easier to reach. If you live… Read more

Competitively priced Motorola G100 and G50 offer 90Hz screens and 5,000mAh batteries

Motorola has unveiled the G100 and G50, two midrange phones headed first for European and Latin American markets. Both offer displays with fast 90Hz refresh rates for smooth scrolling and animations, 5G connectivity, and they embrace Motorola’s ethos of “more battery, more better” with huge 5,000mAh cells. The higher-end G100 is poised to compete with… Read more

Google is testing Memory, an upgrade for Assistant to “save and find everything”

Google is reportedly working on a new feature for Assistant called Memory, a combination of a to-do list, a notes app, a Pocket-like reading list, and Pinterest-style collection board into a single overarching digital locker integrated into the broader Google Assistant app. 9to5Google first revealed the feature, which is currently in “dogfood” testing for Google… Read more