Police Chased Criminals Using 'Find My' App

We’ve heard a number of stories about how the Apple Watch has alerted people suffering from a heart condition, potentially saving their lives. Now it seems, Apple products are helping fight crime. The Sydney Morning Herald told the story of how the ‘Find My’ app helped police pursue two men, in what ultimately became a fatal police chase.

The victim opened his tracking app, which pinged the iPad, and he began following his stolen Triton. Police called him off before officers tracked the ute and iPad to the Glengala Hotel in Sunshine. The police air wing was called in, but when officers arrived at the scene the ute had been dumped. The iPad, though, began pinging inside the Toyota Kluger. Over the following two hours the men were traced heading to the Sunshine Motor Inn and across the suburb before a brief police pursuit on the Western Ring Road. Police then tracked the Kluger to Tullamarine, Epping, Mernda and Thomastown.

Twitter Urges Employees to Work From Home

In an updated blog post, Twitter encouraged its staff to work from home in a bid to protect them from COVID-19. It became one of the first major U.S. firms to take such a step.

We are working to make sure internal meetings, all hands, and other important tasks are optimized for remote participation. We recognize that working from home is not ideal for some job functions. For those employees who prefer or need to come into the offices, they will remain open for business. Our Real Estate & Workplace team is increasing deep cleaning and sanitizing in all spaces, as well as more visual reminders for personal hygiene best practices and pre-packaged, pre-composed, and pre-plated food options. Working from home will be mandatory for employees based in our Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea offices due in part to government restrictions. Our criteria will evolve over time as we get more information, and we will communicate to affected Tweeps as appropriate.

Book Publishers Artificially Limit eBook Lending in Libraries

Major book publishers impose limits on how libraries handle ebooks, with short-term licenses and contracts.

Because only one reader can check out an ebook at a time, and because the cost of licensing an ebook is prohibitively high for libraries to invest in hundreds of copies for every new title, library-goers have become accustomed to long waits to check out ebooks, particularly bestsellers. For publishers, that’s the point. If you have to wait weeks to check out a new ebook, you might just cruise on over to Amazon and pay $14.99 to have it delivered immediately to your Kindle or the Kindle app on your phone.

Expensive college textbooks and dumb eBook rules are two good examples of how ripe for disruption this space is. It’s also shortsighted. The point of digital media is to make it so easy to access that people don’t feel the need to pirate anymore. But practices like this is partly what drives people to pirate.