The lowdown: 7 things that’ll interest you in tech this week — January 8
- Locked out of heaven
On Wednesday, pro-Trump rioters stormed into the Capitol, destroying and stealing properties. Following a video of Donald Trump addressing the rioters at Capitol, with love, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and other major social media platforms took turns to suspend Trump’s accounts. Facebook suspends Trump’s account until after the transitioning on January 20.
2. Do or Die
WhatsApp has updated its terms of service and this new update forces users to share personal data such as phone numbers, IP addresses, contacts’ phone numbers and more with Facebook from February 8.
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3. Strike two!
The Federal government’s directive through the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) and National Communications Commission (NCC) to block every subscriber who fails to link their mobile numbers to their NIN before the February 9 deadline may not hold as staff of the NIMC commence indefinite strike.
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4. Bitcoin defies gravity
Following the price fall on Monday, Bitcoin hits a record high of $38,000, breaking its previous $31,000 record set on Tuesday, and it’s not slowing down
5. Pfizer vaccine Vs. Coronavirus
Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine successfully neutralized variants of coronavirus in lab tests, initial data shows.
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6. Google, again.
It was a slow start to the year 2021 as Google’s Slack experienced another downtime as businesses resumed earlier on Monday. Just less than a month ago, we experienced a massive outage in Google services. Is this the new normal?
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7. Silicon Valley union
Following the exit of AI researcher, Timnit Gebru and and years of unspokenness, Google workers have formed a union, Alphabet Workers Union to fight against employee injustice and discrimination.
