The EU records a 34 per cent drop in emissions, regulators find Tim Hortons is tracking its customers, and Meta’s COO steps down.
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That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now, welcome to Hashtag Trending. It’s Friday, June 3, and I’m your host, Tom Li.
The European Union lowered greenhouse gas emissions 34 per cent compared to 1990 levels by 2020, overshooting its target of 20 per cent. This upbeat news came from the official data submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The EU had already reduced its emissions by 26 per cent in 2019 and had achieved its 20 per cent target before pandemic lockdowns began impacting emission levels. According to an article by Euractiv, While almost all EU countries managed to reduce their emissions, the drop was mainly because of the U.K. and Germany, which accounted for 47 per cent of the total net reductions over the past 30 years.
Source: Euractiv
Tim Hortons wants to know more than just your coffee order. Canadian regulators on Wednesday found that Tim Hortons tracked and collected customers’ location data through its mobile app. An investigation led by Canada’s privacy commissioner found that with the help of a company called Radar, Tim Hortons was able to collect data on its customers’ locations “as often as every few minutes.” The investigation began mainly because of a June 2020 article in the Financial Post in which the author reported that the Tim Hortons app was still tracking his location even when the app wasn’t in use. According to the journalist, the Tim Hortons app had recorded his GPS coordinates over 2,700 times in the span of five months.
Source: Gizmodo
Meta Platforms Inc.’s Sheryl Sandberg is stepping down as chief operating officer. Sandberg will remain on the board of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, reported Bloomberg. Javier Olivan, who has led the company’s growth efforts for years, will take her place as COO when she formally leaves in the fall. Sandberg is recognized for her work after helping Facebook transform from a startup into a multibillion-dollar advertising powerhouse. Sandberg joined the Facebook team in 2008 and helped turn it into a social media giant. In an interview with Bloomberg, Sandberg called her time at Meta the “honour and privilege of a lifetime.”
Source: Bloomberg
NASA will release the first operational images taken by the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope on July 12. While Webb officials are still keeping those first imaging targets secret, they emphasized that it took years of work from various space agencies to decide what those first images will show. Although the Webb team has shared several images already, these were all interim alignment images taken to evaluate the observatory’s capabilities. The new images in July will come after each instrument is “calibrated, tested, and given the green light by its science and engineering team,” NASA said. The images will be available in full colour and will show the full prowess of Webb’s capabilities. Apart from pictures, spectroscopic data to show elemental composition and other information that astronomers can infer from the spectrum of light will also be included.
Source: Space
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