Hey.

From Apple’s letters, I learn that Apple TV + still did not take off, at first the free subscription was extended until February this year, and then a new letter arrived, now the free service has been extended until July. As before, the service lacks any significant films and TV series, and in general there are few of them, there would be some way to cope with the stream of new products from Netflix. But the very fact of being free of charge perfectly demonstrates what is happening with this service. But in all other aspects, the company is doing fine, setting sales records, and we will definitely talk about this today.

But we need to start our issue with a sad topic that requires that you know about it. Go.

Content

1. Death by electronics in the bathroom, sad statistics
2. Results of the fourth quarter and year in the smartphone market
3. Ordinary People vs. Wall Street – Stock Gaming
4. Russian Telegram, 500 million users
5. Facebook vs. Apple, like a toad and a viper fought
6. Driverless Taxis in Shenzhen – A Happened Future

Death by electronics in the bathroom, sad statistics

There are topics that you have to come back to from time to time, since in their perception by people almost nothing changes. In theory, everyone knows about the dangers of electronics in the bathroom when your devices are connected to an AC power supply. Alas, this is only a theory, in practice there are many “smart people” who claim that nothing bad will happen and they have done it a hundred times. When adolescents act as such “smart people” and they lack life experience and horizons, this is one story, but when statements come from adults, their ignorance and ignorance can be considered as provoking death. Our world has changed a lot, we often hear opinions that do not have the slightest foundation, but are presented as the ultimate truth. It is good when this does not affect people in a noticeable way, but sometimes the payback for ignorance is fatal, people die.

It is imperative to return to this story, the reason was the death of a 12-year-old teenager. I read about it on Instagram, where his mother runs a channel about art, here are her words: Well, my good ones. I can speak, it’s time to say. On January 10, we lost our son. He was 12. It was unexpected, he was not sick, and so far we do not know why this happened. I will find out, I will think, I will write my thoughts in a story.

A little later, another entry appeared, which outlines the reasons for the death of the child:

“On January 10 we lost our son. He was 12. Absolutely healthy. Happy. With big plans. We resuscitated him for 40 minutes, but nothing helped. And we didn’t understand what had happened. Today, after almost 2 weeks, the medical examiner told us the reason.

It was an electric shock. In the bathroom. From the phone on the charge.

A small iPhone 4c, whose battery was running out quickly, fell on his stomach for a second. The son managed to throw it on the floor, but it was too late. My husband heard a noise in the bathroom, knocked down the door, began resuscitation a minute later, but …

I want every person to know: yes, they die from this. So that you once and for all forbid children – and yourself – from taking the phone to the bath. Children – never. Under no pretext.

Today I was shown photographs of people who died while taking a bath with a phone in their hands. It turns out there are a lot of them. Because we underestimate the risks. I was sure that it was impossible to die from this. If I knew…

Please repost. I believe it will spread and save someone’s life. Someone will think, someone will forbid, someone will simply know that it is truly life-threatening. Then at least some meaning appears for me in what happened. Please do it. Because children should not die of stupidity that is so easily prevented.

.

PS No need to write in a personal. Straight at all. Nothing. It only makes it worse. “

I do not know the words that can be found in such a situation, they simply cannot be. Unfortunately, it is a reality when people die from electric shock in the bathroom, although they believe that nothing like this can happen. Someone does not know about such a danger, someone relies on an RCD or on the fact that they have expensive electronics, where engineers have foreseen all possible situations. The truth is that every year in our country alone, dozens of people die from this, and these are someone’s children, relatives, friends. And their only mistake was the underestimation of risks, ignorance, which led to a sad outcome.

I don’t know what the Internet does to people, why in this media many people lose even a hint of sympathy, empathy for the grief of others. Every time I cringe from comments in which versions are invented in order to prove to others that a phone connected to an outlet cannot kill anyone. Stupidity and callousness in one bottle, a repulsive combination. Reasoning about statistics looks even worse. “There are not very many such deaths, so there is no point in wasting time on discussions and reasoning,” – say strangers on the network. This reflex does not fit in my head when people try to speak out on such an occasion, although it is better to remain silent here.

Please don’t be callous. Please think about the safety of yourself and your loved ones. The bathroom is not the place where you need to sit on your phone or tablet, get yourself some books. Never plug your electronics into a power outlet in the bathroom while you are splashing in the water, you don’t need that!

Don’t skimp on chargers, don’t buy them in underground passages, in traffic jams, where merchants carry them between cars. Left charges cost a penny, but in the end they can kill, and not only in the bathroom, there are dozens of such cases every year, there are many more of them in the world. We do not see these stories, we miss them in the hustle and bustle of everyday life, we do not consider them significant or what can happen in our families. Please be careful as this is dangerous. I do not know how to ask you about this, often, trying to reach out to consciousness, I stumble upon a stone wall, when people begin to make fun of such situations, they know better than anyone else in the world that nothing like this is simply impossible (the phone in the bathroom cannot kill, they say ). Our responsibility is to teach our children to avoid danger. And the phone in the bathroom is a dangerous thing, there can be no two opinions. Always, even if the probability of an event is minimal, you need to proceed from the fact that something may go wrong. Take care of yourself and your loved ones, please play it safe, blow on the water and be safe and sound.

extracurricular reading:

Results of the fourth quarter and year in the smartphone market

Most research companies have summed up the results of 2020, as well as the fourth quarter. Let me remind you that 2020 was a difficult, unusual year and the pandemic made its own adjustments to the usual business for all electronics manufacturers. The shortage against the background of the lack of demand for many categories of goods – all this turned the market upside down. But in fact, we see that the smartphone market has not sagged as much as it could and as many expected. Let’s take a look at the IDC data (channel shipments, sell-in).

To assess how the market was growing or falling, you can look at the table from Canalys, the chart clearly shows the results of each quarter, the market still sank, it does not grow. But the volume of the fall is not as significant as it could be.

Let’s take a look at how the shares of companies were distributed, it is interesting to look at the chart from Canalys, it shows everything clearly.

Please note that until the second quarter of 2020, the market was falling, with the exception of Apple, it made a leap forward and then grew until the end of the year to set its all-time record for the number of iPhones shipped in the fourth quarter. Something similar happened at the end of 2019, but today the result is slightly higher.

The seasonality for Apple remains, but the start of sales in 2020 of the new generation of iPhone fell on the end of the year, they were delayed. Therefore, the total shipments increased, but they exceeded those for 2019 slightly. At the end of the year, the company even grew a little in unit terms, not to mention the money, the growth in the average price of the iPhone is cosmic, as well as the money that the company receives from the chargers that it sells separately. Revenue for the quarter exceeded $ 111 billion, growth in sales of services is insignificant (15 billion in the total pie).

Apple cannot catch up with Samsung, since the gap between the companies remains significant, in the first quarter due to the new flagships and the release of the updated A-series, we will see an increase in Samsung shipments, there is also seasonality, this year the company hastened to do it faster. There is no evidence to suggest that Apple’s shipments are directly converting to retail sales, the first quarter could be relatively weak, look at 2019 when we saw exactly this picture.

Now is the time to talk about Huawei, the company is under sanctions, actually sold Honor and is considering selling the smartphone division. In the absence of access to components, the direction of smartphones is gradually losing opportunities for development, as a result, you need to get rid of it. This is a temporary measure, but even after occupying half of the Chinese market, Huawei is gradually losing foreign markets, which is clearly seen in the example of Russia.

For other Chinese companies, this is to some extent a gift, their shares are growing in foreign markets, as the place occupied by Huawei is freed up. A striking example is the growth of Xiaomi, but here there is a problem with the fact that the company came under US sanctions, this card will be played over the next two years, gradually Xiaomi will cut off oxygen outside China. The scenario has been worked out on Huawei, so there will simply be more casualties in the US trade war against China. The company is defending itself in exactly the same way as Huawei, appealed to an American court with a demand to exclude itself from the sanctions list. We know from past experience that this approach does not work at all.

Chinese companies have been aggressively cutting prices, which hit Samsung’s mid-year sales in mid-year. But interestingly, in response, Samsung keeps smartphone prices low, preventing competitors from raising them to the point of profitability. Everything will change in March-April, when the company pulls the cost of devices up, the market will follow it. The cost of all electronics in 2021 will go up due to a shortage of components, no other scenario is possible here. Smartphones are still a happy exception, but video cards and computers have already felt this trend, prices have increased since the beginning of the year by at least 10%, and this is not the limit.

Ordinary People vs. Wall Street – Stock Gaming

One of the key stories that happened last week was the discussion of how ordinary networkers beat Wall Street funds, outplayed them in a foreign field and made them lose billions of dollars. The topic quickly became widely discussed in literally all media, as it perfectly fits the archetype of the power of small people against corporate monsters. The tale that small people can unite and, unable to do anything, defeat a huge monster is very attractive. But, unfortunately, this is a fairy tale, because when playing some kind of game, you need to clearly understand the rules and boundaries of the possible.

Let’s look at the situation in the order in which the events took place, and evaluate how small people here benefited. On Reddit (for understanding, this is a huge resource with hundreds of millions of people), the WallStreetBets group appeared, in which they discussed strategies and opportunities for market manipulation. The subscribers of this group could implement the described strategies in practice, since they allowed them to achieve tangible results, namely, to manipulate the value of the shares of a particular company. In my opinion, the only difference from companies and funds on Wall Street was one thing – there was no money from specific institutions, and the movement of the value of shares was provided by the contributions of specific people. It was necessary for people to believe that they could win, and to act on the orders of a small group of those who organized this whole story. It is possible to explain that this is a movement of the crowd and that no one stands behind it, but such an explanation is very far from the truth. The fact is that the choice of goals, coordination of actions was done by professionals, those who clearly understood where to make money. And, one way or another, he convinced the crowd of this.

Let’s take a look at the stocks of GameStop, Blackberry, Nokia and see that for no apparent reason their value has risen.

There was no reason for the rise in the value of the stock, in fact, it was a concerted action of individuals who used their money to send it into space (an increase of hundreds of percent in a matter of days). For my taste, this is a clear manipulation of the stock market, but this is exactly what Wall Street does all the time, and there are no violations of the law here. However, for the first time, individuals were able to coordinate their actions so efficiently and quickly across different social networks to squeeze profits from the rise in share prices. On the other hand, those who gambled for a fall in the value of shares recorded losses, sometimes billions of dollars in losses.

The scandal erupted around the fact that Wall Street players felt that strange people invaded their territory and were playing against them. The first and emotional decision was simple: we need to ban these games, because they harm business. But the very essence of the game is such that it is no different from the game on the stock exchange by large companies. Yes, private investors did not have their own brokers, they used open source programs like Robinhood. The pressure on the owners of Robinhood was such that they suspended trading in specific securities, for example, GameStop. This resulted in the bombing of the application in all stores, he was given one star. For example, Google removed all reviews for certain days and returned the app’s rating back.

But the problem is not at all in the application, in several articles I came across an apt metaphor when this situation was compared with the fever around tulips and their prices, in Holland this led to a financial collapse. Something similar happens here, when a lot of people, out of greed, invest money in a pyramid in the hope that they will have time to quickly get out of it and fix a profit. There are stories circulating on social media that some private investors have invested all their money in the growth of the shares of certain companies. But are they doing it consciously? Definitely not.

Another thing is that the strategy of those who presented it in WallStreetBets is a winning one, since it was prepared by professionals and at the time of the events described it was not a pyramid. But others will follow in their footsteps, and then we will see the collapse of hopes, ruined people who believed in a fairy tale. There are more than enough prerequisites for this. In parallel, in America, they began to close social networks and groups where private investors could coordinate their actions, for example, Facebook temporarily closed a group where there were more than 100 thousand people and where they discussed their investment actions. WallStreetBets was removed from Discord, as we noticed violations in this group. All this can be seen as a reaction from Wall Street and partly from the authorities. For the former and the latter, the situation itself is unacceptable, since it enables private investors to earn money by manipulating the market, which undermines its work and devalues ​​the investments of large players, the same investment funds. For government officials, this is also their own money, which lies in such funds, and the task now sounds simple: to protect themselves and their money as much as possible from manipulation by third-party players.

One way or another, the situation with WallStreetBets will be twisted in the “right” direction, the holes in the legislative acts will be closed. But the main thing is that the same Robinhood, to which private investors are sending claims, will not be responsible for anything, the license agreement is drawn up correctly. Much like Tinkoff in Russia with their stock trading platform. Read the reviews of people who are unexpectedly faced with the fact that they are losing money due to the actions of the platform owner, and their ideas about beauty are at odds with how they see it in big business. History will teach people to be responsible with their money, to understand the “little things” and not try to follow the lead of large companies that use private money as a cheap tool for their own games. But the whole story is about the fact that you cannot become a successful player on the stock exchange only by reading this or that forum. You may be lucky, but, most likely, you, one way or another, will lose your money. And here it is important to say that this is possible, as well as to correctly assess your risks. On the other hand, it’s like in a casino, many people believe in their luck and that they will leave with a win.

For America, the situation is interesting in the aspect of what makes it possible to further strengthen censorship on social networks, provides the necessary arguments for forbidden topics to arise and what cannot be discussed. Increased censorship is not far off, it is happening before our eyes.

Russian Telegram, 500 million users

I love how Pavel Durov bends his line and turns the situation to his advantage. In January, Telegram received 100 million new registrations, as many users decided that WhatsApp and other applications did not provide the necessary security. Trump’s supporters began to switch to Telegram, and even his son got himself an account, like the presidents of several countries. The issue of blocking Telegram is now more acute than ever, since we know from the past that America is trying to control all social networks, and those that cannot be bought become enemies, they are blocked. Something like this happened with the unknown Parler, who clearly could not pose a threat to national security. In a single rush, the application was blocked on iOS / Android, but Amazon hosting was also revoked. I am writing these lines and decided to see if Parler works or not, no messages are shown in the application, it is pristine.

In the United States, a group of proactive comrades have already turned to Google and Apple with a request to remove Telegram from app stores, since the messenger allegedly does not monitor the cleanliness of the environment, namely, it allows you to express incorrect points of view. This is only the first bell. Blocking in 2021-2022 for Telegram will become inevitable, since America cannot allow such an instrument to exist outside its own control. Pavel Durov’s attacks on the same iOS can be easily explained by the fact that the blocking on the Apple platform will be maximum, it will not work to install the application like on Android.

Let’s take a look at the balance of power between different social networks and messengers.

Telegram’s achievement in the form of 500 million active users (there are noticeably more registrations, we are talking about an active audience) can be safely called a record. After all, Telegram is not a traditional messenger, it is a kind of social network, and the same Telegram channels allow you to communicate and transfer information from one to many, which is the essence of social networks. With the growth of Telegram, we will see attempts to ban it in different states (in Russia, there has never been a real attempt to close Telegram, we observed an excellent advertising campaign for a secure messenger, attracting large masses of people from all over the world to it).

The way out for Telegram and avoiding blocking by the United States is the presence of a strong state behind the back, which Pavel Durov always had de facto. At the moment, Telegram is preparing to launch all possible infrastructure on the territory of Russia in order to avoid blockages. The next logical step is to run the application from any browser, bypassing the application ban in the stores of American companies. Surprisingly, it is Telegram that is trying to become the essence of the Internet as we knew it – free for communication, without restrictions and obstacles. But it will still be an instrument in the global struggle, and an interesting instrument for the Americans, since their government does not control it. At the same time, it is an ideal tool for collecting information for Russia. I repeat my thought that Telegram is one of the strongest projects, an asymmetric response to what has happened and is happening on the Internet from the side of America. The story is just beginning, it will be more interesting further, and in some ways the denouement of events will resemble spy detectives. I really hope that no one will suffer in this case, since there will be different ways to force Telegram to change the flag, there is no doubt about this, alas.

Facebook vs. Apple, like a toad and a viper fought

Let me remind those who forgot that Apple introduced new restrictions in iOS14, namely forced third-party developers to explicitly inform users what data a particular program collects. At the same time, Apple made an exception for its own applications, they do not need to say anything like that. For example, Google has not updated all of its iOS apps since early December until last week. But the late January update came along with warnings about what data each app collects. We can say that Google agreed with Apple’s rules. But Facebook can’t do the same, the company’s entire business model is built around the fact that it collects user data and then trades it. Apple’s warnings can alienate audiences, as we saw with WhatsApp. The company has been collecting all the data for years, and no one knew about it, but as soon as it announced it, people began to abandon the application en masse, no one wants to be a product in someone else’s business. Something similar can happen on iOS as well.

The only way out for Facebook is to appeal to antitrust authorities, in which the company will argue that Apple’s approach is different for third-party developers and for its own applications. Really! But it’s also true that for users, Apple’s approach becomes a movement in the right direction, when they cannot be spied on, and this becomes known. In fact, Facebook wants to maintain the status quo, to be able to follow any user without reporting anything about it. Of course, the interests of the company are above all, but this approach does not cause support for sure. Court showdowns and public polemics will continue for quite a long time, which, in my opinion, should please us. An increasing number of people will learn about what is happening in this area and what data companies collect about their activities on devices. Many are so far from this that they do not want to study, watch, and so on. Therefore, we will observe with great interest and wait for the development of events.

Driverless Taxis in Shenzhen – A Happened Future

In the absence of more or less regular trips, I only regret one thing – that I cannot touch with my own hands those technologies that have already become a reality. In Shenzhen, the Chinese startup AutoX (a subsidiary of Alibaba) has launched fully self-driving cars into commercial operation, such taxis used to travel with a person behind the wheel, but now only you will be in the car. So far, cars without drivers drive only in one area of ​​the megalopolis, but the trouble is the beginning. With an increase in the number of trips, the geography will also expand, the main thing is that this is a commercial event that has already happened. In America, there is something similar in Phoenix, but there the volume of operations from Waymo is quite insignificant, there is also a full-fledged service without any discounts. It is interesting that the user does not know which car will come to him, there is no way to select the autopilot. Which is also logical from the point of view of service, because the main thing is that a person must get from point A to point B. Watch a short video in English about how it all works, I think everything is clear there without translation. I really hope that this future will come in our area in the coming years, the direction of development is very correct.

PS With great surprise I read the “professionals” from the telecom, who discussed the “clowns” who allegedly want to turn off the connection at the rallies. I have not seen such a first-class nonsense for a long time, since no one disconnected the connection, did not want to disconnect, and even on the contrary, the connection was vital. In Moscow, in the center, all restaurants, cafes and hotels asked to turn off Wi-Fi in order to make all traffic completely controlled, and for the first time in history, all traffic was completely collected and analyzed in real time (for this, traffic was sent to mobile networks). Following the results of the first unofficial rally, I recorded a short video in which I explained how everything works (someone saw intimidation in this, but what the hell, intimidation, you just need to clearly understand how the world of technology works).

This Sunday, for the first time in Moscow, new systems, software and hardware complexes were tested, allowing to control the movement of people, their negotiations and so on. There was nothing like this, these are the first field tests, and they are full-scale, without any restrictions. I will make a reservation that such systems and their use do not violate any rights of citizens, despite fears that this is exactly the case.

I sincerely want to wish you to be realistic, this is the quality that is so important in our world. In this issue, we talked about the danger of electronics in everyday life, about how ignorance can lead to irreparable damage. And being realistic is not bad, and sometimes just important. So in everything else, when you know how the world works, how certain technologies work, you can draw your own conclusions. And emotions are a bad advisor here, you always need to know how everything works. I hope that you have enough curiosity and desire to get to know our world and understand it. Good luck in good deeds and excellent mood, may the days be easy.

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