Some Albertans can add their vaccine passports to their Apple devices, crypto platform accidentally sent $90 million to its users, and Internet Explorer loses Google’s support.
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It’s all the tech news that’s trending right now, welcome to Hashtag Trending! It’s Monday, October 4, and I’m your host, Tom Li.
On October 1st, Alberta rolled out its vaccine passports in QR code, and some users are reporting that they can already add it to the Apple Health App. The feature of integrating vaccine passports to Apple devices came with iOS 15, the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system. With it, users can load their QR code or official PDF proof of vaccination into the Apple Health App or their Apple Wallet. The goal is to increase the trustworthiness of the documents, as well as increase their shareability across third-party apps. Note that although Alberta is already rolling out its scannable QR code, the app to scan them will be released in the upcoming weeks. Also, it appears that the QR code can only be added to the Apple Health App and not Apple Wallet, at least not yet.
Crypto platform Compound accidentally sent $90 million worth of Ethereum assets to its users. Although the company traced where all the tokens went, its CEO is asking the recipients to return them willingly. As an incentive, the company says that the erroneous recipients will be able to keep 10% of the transfer as a white-hat fee. Otherwise, the company threatens that it will report the transactions as income to the IRS, and that it has “doxxed” its users, meaning that they have their personal information. Unsurprisingly, the announcement gained much criticism, and the CEO later retracted the statement, calling it a “bone-headed approach.” Still, honesty seems to be prevailing as the funds are slowly trickling back. Aside from losing the “white-hat” fee, it’s unclear just how much Compound will be able to get back.
With just eight months of life remaining, Internet Explorer is losing more and more support from critical services. As Android Police points out, when users open up the Google search engine from Internet Explorer, they’re met with a stripped-down version of the service. Aside from only being able to perform basic search functions, the sleek, rounded UI is replaced by blocky elements. A Google Engineer explained that with the browser pretty much dead already, there’s no point in continuing to support it. Still, Google hasn’t totally flipped the switch yet, but once Microsoft drops Internet Explorer completely on June 15, 2022, expect even more downgrades from more apps.
That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or your Google Home daily briefing. Make sure to sign up for our Daily IT Wire Newsletter to get all the news that matters directly in your inbox every day. Also, catch the next episode of Hashtag Tendances, our weekly Hashtag Trending episode in French, which drops every Friday at 3 pm. If you have a suggestion or tip, please drop us a line in the comments or via email. Thanks for listening, I’m Tom Li.
