YouTube is now building its own video-transcoding chips

Enlarge / A Google Argos VCU. It transcodes video very quickly. (credit: Google) Google has decided that YouTube demands such a huge transcoding workload that it needs to build its own server chips. The company detailed its new "Argos" chips in a YouTube blog post, a CNET interview, and in a paper for ASPLOS, the Architectural Support for Programming...

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iOS and iPadOS 15 will feature major changes to notifications, home screen

Enlarge / The iPhone 12. (credit: Samuel Axon) Yet another report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has emerged with details of Apple's future product plans. Citing "people with knowledge of the matter," the article broadly describes some of the key upcoming features in iOS 15 for iPhones and iPadOS 15 for iPads. Apple is likely to reveal iOS 15 and...

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Meet Thistle, the startup that wants to secure billions of IoT devices

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) For more than two decades, Window Snyder has built security into products at some of the biggest companies in the world. Now, she’s unveiling her own company that aims to bake security into billions of connected devices made by other companies. San Francisco-based Thistle Technologies said on Thursday that it received...

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Apple to boost ads business as iPhone changes hurt Facebook

Enlarge / Tim Cook, chief executive officer of Apple Inc., speaks about the new iPhone during an event at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, Calif. on Sept. 10, 2019. (credit: Bloomberg) Apple will expand its advertising business, according to two people familiar with its plans, just as it brings in new privacy rules for iPhones that are likely...

8h

Garmin’s 2 new smartwatches want to make the casual athlete more advanced

Enlarge (credit: Garmin) Garmin has just launched its latest pair of smartwatches, the Garmin Venu 2 and Venu 2S, aimed at those who feel Apple Watches and typical Android smartwatches just don’t give enough health and fitness data. Garmin has a seemingly bottomless roster of smartwatches, and most cater to those who train rather than just exercise...

10h

Mini-PC review: The Ryzen 5 Pro 2500U-powered Minisforum UM250

Enlarge / This tiny PC's Ryzen 5 Pro 2500U is a couple generations out of date—but it's inexpensive, and it still packs a serious punch. (credit: Jim Salter) Minisforum's UM250 is a very small form factor PC with the power and the ports to take on a lot of tasks. And due to its choice of an older CPU, it's pretty cheap, too. A couple of months ago,...

10h

Here are the updates that didn’t make it in Apple’s livestream yesterday

Enlarge / Apple presents the new iPad Pro at its April 20, 2021 event. (credit: Apple) Apple crammed quite a few announcements into a short, one-hour presentation yesterday: new iPad Pros, new iMacs, a new Apple TV 4K, and the long-rumored launch of AirTags, to name a few. But for everything Apple executives and product managers said onstage, there...

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In epic hack, Signal developer turns the tables on forensics firm Cellebrite

Enlarge (credit: Moxie Marlinspike/Signal) For years, Israeli digital forensics firm Cellebrite has helped governments and police around the world break into confiscated mobile phones, mostly by exploiting vulnerabilities that went overlooked by device manufacturers. Now, Moxie Marlinspike—creator of the Signal messaging app—has turned the tables...

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Samsung starts official smartphone upcycling program

Samsung's upcycling program can turn an old smartphone into an audio baby monitor. [credit: Samsung ] Samsung on Wednesday kicked off something genuinely innovative in the smartphone market: an official consumer upcycling program. Samsung's...

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Brace yourselves. Facebook has a new mega-leak on its hands

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Still smarting from last month's dump of phone numbers belonging to 500 million Facebook users, the social media giant has a new privacy crisis to contend with: a tool that, on a massive scale, links Facebook accounts with their associated email addresses, even when users choose settings to keep them from being public....

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