Technology

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 ...

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 ...

eBay made its biggest move yet into the world of digital collectibles with news today of the company acquiring NFT marketplace KnownOrigin. The online auction company is keeping lips sealed on the deal’s value but confirmed in the press release that the deal is closed as of June 21st. “This partnership will help us attract a new wave of NFT creators and collectors,” said KnownOrigin co-founder David Moore. KnownOrigin describes itself as “one the world’s first, and largest, NFT Marketplaces,” and it currently ranks No. 12 on all-time trading volume for Ethereum-backed NFTs at $7.8 million, according to DappRadar. Higher ranked, more popular marketplaces include OpenSea (No. 1) with an all-time trading value at $30.43 billion and Decentraland (No. 8) at $155.66 million. NFTs like this curre...

General Motors is bringing artificial intelligence into the vehicle inspection process. The automaker is making an undisclosed “strategic investment” in Israeli startup UVeye, which makes vehicle diagnostic systems that use sensors and AI to quickly identify damaged parts or maintenance issues. The investment in UVeye was made by GM Ventures, the automaker’s venture fund, which also has investments in a variety of other AI-themed startups. GM will sell UVeye’s technology to its dealer network to upgrade their vehicle inspection systems As part of the collaboration, GM will sell UVeye’s technology to its dealer network to upgrade their vehicle inspection systems. (The company’s systems are already being trialed at a small number of GM dealerships across the country.) GM will also work with ...

For the first few years of Instagram’s existence, it was a pain to hide Stories from people. You had to dig into an individual Story’s settings and select followers to hide it from. Then, if you wanted to let those followers see the next Story, you had to go into that Story’s settings and undo the block. But in 2018, Instagram launched the close friends feature, which makes it much easier to share content with a limited group. Once you’ve created a close friends list, you’ll have the option to share a Story with just that list. If you’re posting content that could be controversial, personal, or NSFW, the option can save you some stress. In case you don’t know how to add folks to your close friends list, we’ll show you how to get started. How to add close friends in the Instagram app Open t...

Mark Zuckerberg announced on Wednesday that Facebook Pay has officially become Meta Pay, but his post is mainly focused on what the company hopes to build in the future — “a wallet for the metaverse.” While Meta Pay is essentially the same tool as it was before, just with Meta branding, Zuckerberg says the company is working on something that will let users manage their identities, items, and payment methods while making their way through the digital world that Meta bets will be the future. The company has hinted at these plans before — its May announcement of the Meta Pay rebranded also mentioned that it was “scoping out what a single wallet experience might look like” with regards to making payments and storing your identity and digital items. Zuckerberg’s post, though, focuses mostly on...

A number of big profile companies have joined forces, bonded by their commitment to achieving a “ pervasive, open and inclusive metaverse.” Dubbed the Metaverse Standards Forum, the new organization is founded by the likes of Meta, Microsoft, Huawei, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Epic Games, Unity and Adobe, among other companies. The organization’s homepage states that “multiple industry leaders have stated that the potential of the metaverse will be best realized if it is built on a foundation of open standards.” Per its mission statement, it appears that the Metaverse Standards Forum intends to serve as a conduit between standards organizations and companies. Rather than create its own set of standards, the Forum says it will “coordinate requirements and resources to...

Google is paying the Wikimedia Foundation to help serve up the most accurate and up-to-date information on its search engine. The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit group behind Wikipedia, says Google is one of the first companies to buy into its commercial Enterprise service. Launched last year, Wikimedia Enterprise allows customers (like Google) who reuse massive chunks of information from Wikimedia’s services to access its content more efficiently. Instead of relying on free data dumps and publicly available APIs (application programming interfaces) to scrape information from Wikipedia’s web pages, Wikimedia Enterprise lets customers use APIs better suited to recycling and spitting out information on a much larger scale. The service also enables customers to retrieve updates for the co...

Geoff Keighley isn’t sure what E3 is anymore. Even before COVID forced the cancellation of the in-person version of the giant video game commercial masquerading as an industry trade show three years running now, the event was already a pale, big-three-publisher-less imitation of its former self. E3 is coming back. The organizers said so in a very “for realsies this time, you guys” kind of way. But when I asked Keighley about the prospect of E3 and Summer Game Fest — affectionately known as Not-E3 or, my personal favorite, Keigh-3 — coexisting next year, he just didn’t seem convinced they would need to. “E3 said they’re coming back. Which I don’t know what that means, right?” he told me at Summer Game Fest’s new in-person component in Los Angeles. “ So, I don’t know what that means.” E3 sai...

Polestar, one of the first automakers to adopt Google’s Android Automotive operating system for its electric vehicles, is now throwing a bone to all the iOS users. The company announced that its Polestar 2 electric sedan now supports Apple CarPlay, thanks to a recent over-the-air software update. People who own both a Polestar 2 and an iPhone will now be able to mirror their phone’s display on the vehicle’s 11-inch portrait-oriented touchscreen. In addition to accessing some of their apps, CarPlay users will also be able to use Siri to change music or find locations on Apple Maps. Polestar made a name for itself by establishing a direct link to Apple’s main rival, Google The introduction of CarPlay support is interesting because Polestar made a name for itself by establishing a direct link...

Pornhub owner MindGeek has lost two high-level executives: CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo, as first reported by Variety. Their resignation comes shortly after The New Yorker released a scathing report detailing the holes in the company’s content moderation system, which has failed to address videos depicting underage and non-consenting individuals. Despite the timeliness of The New Yorker’s report, a spokesperson for the company told Variety that MindGeek had been planning a leadership change since earlier this year. The representative also said Antoon and Tassillo will remain shareholders in the company and that MindGeek is currently searching for their replacements. MindGeek didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment. Pornhub has long been criticized for hosti...