Tech News Roundup for July 1, 2021

This is a year where we acknowledge Canada Day more than we celebrate it. On this day, I remain proud of my country, but we are far from perfect, and we must acknowledge that, especially now.

Here are a few of the tech stories I’ve found interesting over the last couple days. This is being written earlier in the day than normal, so anything from the afternoon will not be here.

Oh, and happy Bobby Bonilla Day!

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Tech News Roundup for June 5, 2020

Here are a few things that caught my interest over the last couple days.

Supreme Court of Canada resumes hearings… via Zoom

The year of 2020 is weird.  Many institutions that have done things a certain way for a long time, sometimes literally centuries, must adapt.  The Supreme Court of Canada is no different, and this week began having official hearings virtually via Zoom.

https://mobilesyrup.com/2020/06/03/supreme-court-virtual-hearings-for-the-first-time-ever-via-zoom/

iPhones stolen from Apple stores during the protests and looting in the United States are being tracked.

A good reminder of how many modern electronic devices can work.  One of the very unfortunate part of the protests in the US has been the widespread looting of stores in various cities.  Apple is now saying that iPhones looted from their stores are all being remotely disabled and tracked.  This makes reselling them impossible and could potentially help law enforcement in apprehending those who were looting.

This also serves as a warning on buying used newer model iPhones from the US for the next few months.  There is a chance you could be buying one of these devices.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/06/local-authorities-will-be-alerted-iphone-looters-end-up-with-useless-phones/

Germany will require gas stations to provide charging for electric vehicles.

Electric vehicles are the future, but the infrastructure to charge them on long duration trips remains a hurdle, though not as big of one as many people realize.  But, the EV charging situation can always improve, and as part of a COVID-19 stimulus package Germany will be requiring gas stations within the country to install and provide EV charging.  This will greatly help with range anxiety on EV’s with more plentiful options for charging on the go, which should help adoption of those vehicles.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/5/21281380/germany-electric-car-chargers-gas-stations-adoption-vehicles-environment

Instagram requires users to obtain permission before embedding posts.

Have you ever seen embedded posts from Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc?  They’re used all over the place on the internet, basically a fancier way of linking to posts that show it inline. These posts show the post, any text or media, as well as a link to the post and the user’s profile. The Twitter embed directly shows the author of the post. You can see an example of both Twitter and Instagram embeds below.

Spring blooms

Welcome back to Instagram. Sign in to check out what your friends, family & interests have been capturing & sharing around the world.

Since no one actually reads terms of service, it has been discovered that Instagram actually requires someone who plans to embed an Instagram post elsewhere to obtain explicit permission from the person who originally posted the photo. 

This is a very bad precedent for the web.  Embeds do not “steal” content.  But Instagram is treating it like they do.  This has the potential to have serious negative consequences for content creators trying to build and expand an audience.

Instagram needs to fix this. They should either improve their embeds to have better, clearer attribution, or get rid of embeds altogether. But if this is how Instagram wants to continue, it is not sustainable.

Note: The instagram photo is one of mine, so I have given myself permission to use my photo.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/instagram-just-threw-users-of-its-embedding-api-under-the-bus/?comments=1&post=38957885