It’s hard building a search engine from scratch, which is probably why privacy-centric web browser DuckDuckGo relies on Bing for its search index. But when privacy-focused browser company Brave launched a search engine a few years ago, the company did build its own search index… but still relied on Bing for image and video search. Now Brave Search is cutting those ties and using image and video search indices developed in-house.

In other recent tech news from around the web, Microsoft is disabling the Cortana app for Windows PCs… and the company also accidentally leaked an internal tool for enabling experimental features in Windows 11. And a hardware hacker has put together a pretty nifty looking handheld computer powered by a tiny single-board computer.

Here’s a roundup of recent tech news from around the web.

Handheld Linux Terminal [Balazs / HackADay.io]

This is a neat little handheld computer with an ortholinear keyboard, a 5 inch, 800 x 480 display, 10,000 mAh battery and a 1.2 GHz ARM Cortex-A7 quad-core processor and 512MB of RAM courtesy of a removable NanoPi Neo Air single-board computer. 

Microsoft deprecates the Cortana app on Windows 11 devices as it reaches End of Support [Neowin]

Microsoft is following through on its promise to pull the plug on Cortana for Windows. An update rolling out now disables the app and shows a message saying Cortana in Windows is deprecated. Uninstalling it altogether requires a bit of work though.

Microsoft leaked its internal tool that enables secret Windows 11 features [The Verge]

Microsoft accidentally shared a download link for StagingTool, which the company uses internally to enable experimental or hidden Windows 11 features for testing purposes. The link’s been taken down, but the tool is now in the wild.

Brave cuts ties with Bing to offer its own image and video search results [The Register]

When browser maker Brave launched a search engine two years ago, it used Brave’s own index for links to websites, but relied on Microsoft Bing for image and video results. Now those are also served by Brave’s in-house index.

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  1. “But when privacy-focused browser company Brave launched a search engine a few years ago, the company did build its own search index…”

    Frankly, that’s an extraordinary claim, Brad. Just because a company says they are this or that doesn’t mean it’s true. Wish to do some fact checking before claiming they are privacy based?

    I don’t trust any company that pushes so hard them being “privacy focused”. Sorry, but I think you’re just using their jargon without doing any real journalism and investigating those claims.

    -1 this time, Brad.

    Reply