Good morning. Yesterday saw Trump supporters attack the US Capitol building when the Congress was certifying President-Elect Joe Biden’s election victory. Vice President Mike Pence was rushed out of the Senate chamber. Units of US National Guards were activated. Washington DC’s mayor ordered a 12hr curfew.
Shortly, before all this happened: Trump rallied repeating lies that he won the elections.
After the building was evacuated: Trump issued a statement again repeating falsehoods about the election but told the mob to go home.
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Need to know
1️⃣ Trump got deplatformed. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat blocked Trump’s accounts for posting a video that says election results are “fraudulent” and for praising his supporters responsible for the Capitol Hill riots as “very special” people. On Twitter, 3 of his tweets will be deleted and the ban will last 12hrs. But the ban on Facebook and Snapchat will last indefinitely.
2️⃣ Trump signed an order to ban 8 Chinese apps including Alipay, CamScanner, WPS Office and SHAREit. Because the Chinese Communist Party can use data from these apps to track location and private data of federal employees and contractors.
China says Trump is abusing national power to suppress foreign countries. Which is ironical because China uses its own national powers to access data from China-based companies like Zoom.
However, President-elect Joe Biden can undo this order on his first day as the president (20th Jan).
WhatsApp’s no more private. Stop using it.
Soon, WhatsApp will ask you to either accept its new terms and privacy policy or delete your account right now. Before you decide, know that accepting this means WhatsApp will send *all* of your data (except messages) to Facebook to show you ads. This includes:
Your phone number
Who you send money to using WhatsApp Pay
How you chat with your contacts (and when)
Which phone you use and it’s IP address.
And more.
WhatsApp has this data collection since mid last year but unlike now, it was not mandatory then.
This is an extreme violation of privacy. The popular saying “When the product is free, you’re the product” applies here.
Stop using WhatsApp now. Here are 2 privacy-friendly WhatsApp alternatives: Telegram, Signal. Try them you’ll find almost all of your contacts there.
Big Tech CEOs react to Violence at US Capitol
Tim Cook tweeted:
Mark Zuckerberg (in a memo to employees):
"saddened by this mob violence. The peaceful transition of power is critical to the functioning of our democracy, and we need our political leaders to lead by example and put the nation first," per the New York Times.
Sundar Pichai (in a note to employees):
"Holding free and safe elections and resolving our differences peacefully are foundational to the functioning of democracy."
"The lawlessness and violence occurring on Capitol Hill today is the antithesis of democracy and we strongly condemn it." per CNET
Satya Nadela retweeted Microsoft’s Chief Counsels comment:
“This is a day to speak up for our Constitution and its values.”
What Else?
📊 Apple’s numbers from 2020. Apple says people spent $1.8B on the App Store over the week between Christmas and NYE. ($540M on NYE alone)
90% of iOS 14 users used Apple Music’s new features.
You can pay with Apple Pay on 90%+ of US, 85%+ of UK and 99%+ of Australian stores.
Apple Books now has over 90 million monthly active users, while Apple Arcade now has over 140 mobile games.
🤖 OpenAI showed off DALL·E, a neural network that can create images from the text description. So you can say “an armchair in the shape of an avocado” or “a tissue box in form of a rubik’s cube” and it will generate images like this:
✈️ Amazon is buying 11 used Boeing 767-300 planes for its delivery operations. It’s the first time Amazon’s buying a plane instead of leasing one.
👓 With more than 6000 people working on it, Facebook says its Smart Glasses will come soon in 2021.
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