Tech Talk

Image: Brave Brave Search has launched a new feature that gives you a way to create or apply custom filters that change the way its results are ranked. It’s called “Goggles,” and it could potentially help uncover sources you might not find right away on traditional search engines like Google. Brave has some demos ready for users to try today , including ones that prioritize posts from smaller tech blogs and filter out posts from the 1,000 most-viewed sites on the web. There’s even a Goggle to exclude posts from Pinterest — because Brave clearly knows the frustration of trying to find an image and getting a Pinterest post with no source. Brave says these Goggles are just for demonstrative purposes, and developers can expand on or fork them. It will start deleting these Goggles once users start coming up with their own, but I’m hoping the Pinterest one sticks around. While Brave says its engine, which is independent from entities like Google and Bing , “doesn’t have editorial biase

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple will no longer let you use an iPad as a home hub to control HomeKit accessories starting with iOS 16, MacRumors reports . Text apparently found in iOS 16’s second developer beta by MacRumors contributing writer Steve Moser spells out the change. “A home hub is required to take advantage of features like receiving accessory notifications and allowing other people to control your home,” text in the Home app reportedly reads. “You will not be able to view shared homes until those homes are also upgraded to the latest HomeKit. iPad will no longer be supported as a home hub.” “Only Apple TV and HomePod are supported as home hubs.” If the change goes into effect as the found text suggests, it means you’ll need to use a HomePod, HomePod mini, or Apple TV as your home hub when you upgrade to iOS 16. Apple didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment. But as MacRumors points out, the company’s iOS 16 preview webpage says that “o

Micron has unveiled the world’s highest-capacity microSD card , the i400, with storage space of up to 1.5TB, 50% more than the former champion, the C200 . The semiconductor giant reached that capacity by using its 176-layer 3D NAND technology (similar to that used in SSDs ) and will target the enterprise market, especially anything that has to do with video storage at the edge. In other words, don’t expect the card to be cheap or easy to source, especially as it is designed to handle five years of continuous 24x7 high-quality recording and a whopping MTBF of two million hours. No details have been provided about its performance, but this is clearly an industrial-grade product - unlike the C200 - which means that write and endurance are likely to be at the top end of the spectrum. The C200 used a 96-layer 3D NAND technology and the i400 (also available in capacities as small as 64GB) is likely to have some spare capacity for wear leveling. Analysis: What comes next for microSD? To

The Volvo FH Fuel Cell Electric semi at a hydrogen fuel station. | Image: Volvo Volvo’s commercial trucking division is testing hydrogen fuel cell semi trucks in the hopes of getting ahead of the maturing technology. With fuel cells built by CellCentric, a joint venture between Volvo and Daimler Truck Automotive Group, Volvo claims its trucks are capable of 1,000 kilometers of range (about 621 miles) and can be refueled in under 15 minutes. Volvo Trucks has been “developing this technology for some years now,” said company president Roger Alm in a statement this week . Hydrogen fuel cells will be suitable for long-distance hauling and could work in countries with limited battery charging infrastructure, Alm said. The company started building battery-electric trucks in 2018, but they still aren’t widely in service in the US. Now with hydrogen fuel cell trucks, Alm says he expects growth in the supply of clean hydrogen in the next couple of years. Image: Volvo Volvo claims refu

The company was accused of letting advertisers exclude protected groups from their campaigns. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The US government and Facebook parent company Meta have agreed on a settlement to clear up a lawsuit that accused the company of facilitating housing discrimination by letting advertisers specify that ads not be shown to people belonging to specific protected groups, according to a press release from the Department of Justice (DOJ). You can read the full agreement below. The government first brought a case against Meta for algorithmic housing discrimination in 2019, though accusations about the company’s practices go back years before that . The company took some steps to address the issue, but clearly, they weren’t enough for the feds. The department says this was its first case dealing with algorithmic violations of the Fair Housing Act. Meta’s changing how it selects audiences for housing, as well as credit and employment opportunity, ads

The new social tags might make it easier to find a good group. | Image: Epic Games Fortnite can be an absolute blast to play with your friends, but being matched up with random players is more hit-and-miss. In some of the randomized groups I’ve been in, coordinating any sort of effective strategy can be a challenging endeavor, particularly if some team members want to rush into battle while others would prefer to play it slow. To help you find better squadmates, Fortnite developer Epic Games is testing new social tags for profiles that let you indicate how you like to play and can be used to match you up with other like-minded players. According to a blog post , tags will include things like your favorite game modes and whether you want to use a mic or not. If you have added at least one social tag, you’ll be able to send and receive party invites from people with matching tags who are in your server region using a new “Looking for Party” section in the sidebar menu. You can fli

Password manager firm 1Password has released a new solution it claims will help firms improve their overall security posture. Insights from 1Password contains tools to help firms monitor data breaches, password vulnerabilities, and team usage within shared vaults, while also providing suggested next steps and allowing businesses to notify employees of data breaches. The news comes as fatigue regarding password security remains high among the workforce, 20% of burned-out workers feel their company’s security policies “aren’t worth the hassle” according to 1Password’s own research, not a glowing recommendation of the current crop of business password managers. What can the solution do? Insights from 1Password can monitor how data breaches affect existing team members and identify the type of data exposed. As part of the product’s suite of ID management tools, it can also identify business email addresses exposed in data breaches among employees who have yet to register for a 1Pa