Monthly Digest - January 2021

Hey folks, welcome back to our monthly digest! Let’s slow down things and start off the year calm, cool, and collected. A lot happened even though 2021 just started, but I’ll try to start the year slowly so I don’t quickly exhaust myself with overambitious things.

As always, feel free to skip ahead to your preferred content by using the quick links provided above to jump to your the section.

Article of the month

They’ve created an infographic saying they can’t see shared location and other stuff that its privacy policy says otherwise, it feels so disingenuous and seems like they’re deliberately trying to confuse us as much as possible. If they keep going on like this, people will eventually notice and avoid them like a plague.

Still not sure? Take a look at these privacy labels in messaging apps

Here’s another really good and simple explanation why everyone is concerned about the new WhatsApp policy.

Honorable article mentions

• [Kira McLean] What I Use Now Instead Of Google

For those who rely heavily on Google, read this and take a look on all those alternatives. Unclutter and decentralize your life from Google (or any one company), try to be independent and not rely everything heavily on them. Start early and slow, you don’t need to do it in one jump, as long as you progress.

• [Reddit] If you think you are boring read this

For th… no, everyone should read this. Read the post and its comments, reflect if you’ve ever did those things, and stop being so harsh on yourself. Quoted straight from the last sentences.

Take some time to appreciate yourself. Stop calling yourself boring. You aren’t a fucking jester here to entertain people. You’re an entire human being with just as much validity as anybody else. Love yourself for who you are, and help other people feel good about themselves and you will never feel lonely again.

• [xdavidhu.me] Stealing Your Private YouTube Videos, One Frame at a Time
• [xdavidhu.me] The Embedded YouTube Player Told Me What You Were Watching (and more)
• [Medium] How I stole the data in millions of people’s Google accounts

A Google product related articles. Worth the read for those learning Computer Science or any developers out there. It’s quite technical, but worth it once you get the idea behind it. The first 2 articles are bug hunting reports related to YouTube made by the same person, a fun read on behind the scenes when “attacking” these things.

Content of the month

This is a given. You know it’s coming. The highlight of January 2021. A great way to start the year is to definitely watch this! It’s popularity is on-par with Spirited Away and Your Name. If you haven’t watched the first season, I highly recommend you do so. If you have, the what are you waiting for.

*Note that you can’t really see this without watching the first season of Demon Slayer since this movie is a direct continuation of the first season.

Honorable content mentions

I’ve finished the first season last December, and this isn’t quite fair to the show because it’s such an amazing series, so putting it as an honorable mention doesn’t really represent the whole series. But, I’ve only watched the first one and haven’t seen the next seasons, so I’ll put it here for this month’s digest.

A short slice of life series consisting of 12 3-min episodes. With absolutely no dialogue, Joshikausei tells a story about the every day life of 3 high school girls by only using expressions and their actions. It isn’t like the classics, say Tom and Jerry or Pink Panther level, but I still enjoy it nevertheless since it’s not something you see often in a form of Anime. There’s also a lot of fan service, if you’re into that kind of stuff. Aside from that, their comedy amusing enough and the whole series is available on YouTube (dropdown video above) in one-sitting for 35 minutes, so there’s not really much to lose.

Music of the month

A release from Tristam never seems to disappoint, with such beautiful vocals, melody, and lyrics, Children in the Dark easily takes the spot for this month’s featured music. Just kidding, it wasn’t that easy, but I’ve certainly come to like this the more I listened to it.

Honorable music mentions | Spotify / YouTube

YOASOBI is on a roll this January and it truly makes this much harder. I can’t possibly give all the spots for their releases, so here’s one of the best that I enjoyed. It’s also bundled with THE BOOK and makes this their first exclusive album release (not a single). This preview is what hypes me up when I first listened to the trailer, and it delivers well.

This is (from what I heard) the last release IZ*ONE will produce, they’ll be disbanded (end of contract) after this. But for their final release, it was really amazing, especially the MV. They must’ve put a lot of time and effort for this and it really shows in the video.

Monstercat has a lot of artists lately and it’s quite hard to keep track of all of them, but this is one of those release that sticks to your ear. An Instinct release, this brings back a lot of memories when I first discovered Future Bass.

Video of the month

If you haven’t subscribed to this man, where have you been and what are you doing all this time? Go subscribe to the best YouTube philanthropist out there! This is the long awaited YouTube rewind that we want and needed but never got from YouTube.

Honorable video mentions | YouTube

This one’s for all programmer geeks out here. One of the best well-explained video of an absurd algorithm from an old game that really makes you think about how you’re going to use any of the stuff that you learn and actually use it like this.

I’ve been watching Mushi-shi lately and I love every single episode of it. Whether it’s a myth or others, Japanese stories are always cool and insightful. This myth is also one of them, if you knew more of these please tell me.

They finally delivers another video and most of them from this video hits too close to home. These skits are humorous and aren’t harmful like most “pranks” these days. Most of their other videos are also fun to watch so definitely check them out when you don’t have much to do.

Headlines of the month

Signal and Telegram as WhatsApp Alternatives

As millions of WhatsApp users noticed the ToS changes, many are looking for alternatives and here’s Signal and Telegram as best ones so far. “Recommended” by Elon Musk on his Twitter, he urges people to use Signal. Ever since then, their downloads has been “up and to the right” and they weren’t kidding.

Signal was downloaded globally 246,000 times the week before WhatsApp announced the change on 4 January, and 8.8 million times the week after. [BBC]

This topic also correlates with the article of the month. I’ve, since then, prepared myself to migrate and permanently delete my WhatsApp account. Backing up the important things and exporting stuffs I cherish. I’ll probably delete my account early February, until then I’ll still use it just to tell my contacts. Here’s also some status stories to convince your friends & family to switch to Signal. There shouldn’t be any huge difference, these alternatives are imo way better while still being more or less the same as in as long as you have their phone number, their contacts will automatically be available to contact from the app.

Here’s a useful thread for new Signal users

Source(s): [Links Above | BBC]

New Visa From the UK to HK Residents

The UK will introduce a new visa at the end of January that will give 5.4 million Hong Kong residents the right to come and live in the UK, which is a staggering 70% of the territory’s population, in case you’re wondering.

This is for British Overseas Nationals, which is still a significant portion of Hong Kongers that have a type of British nationality. Them and their families, spouse and kids, will be allowed to come and live in the UK.

The article predicted that only an estimated of 300k people would actually take the offer, while the majority would still be in HK. This is both good and bad news however you see it. What would happen to HK if everyone (majority) leaves the country, but also what would happen to them if they don’t leave and stayed in HK.

Source(s): [Reddit | BBC]

MDN Web Docs, The Online Bible, is in Danger

MDN is (was) in danger lately, and the online community has join in to help prevent it from a total shutdown. Both Microsoft and Google Open Source has pitched in $250k each and claimed the top 2 financial contributors as an organization.

MDN has done a really great job on standardizing and documenting the web resources, as well as keeping it up to date, essentially being the single source of truth, hence nicknamed the online bible. It would be terrible for everyone if it disappeared, and both Microsoft and Google seems to acknowledge that as well. From all the standard compliant APIs and many non-standard that doesn’t even belong to Firefox, MDN basically has it all.

While this is great and all, Mozilla laid off 250 people (including some working on MDN) while still giving raise to the CEOs, and then “asking” developers to maintain MDN for free by being open source. Making it open source is probably the right call and I don’t dislike it since everyone can then contribute and will be more maintainable by crowdsourcing. I’m not against Mozilla or their CEOs, but the choices and strategies they’ve been making lately are questionable at the very least.

Source(s): [TheRegister | OpenCollective | Reddit]

[NSFL] Cannibalistic Chickens

NSFL Warning! Don’t read past this if you’re not comfortable with gory stuff.

More of a Today I Learned (TIL) from a personal story by a certain Reddit user. It all started from this image when they recounts some of their chicken eating habits.

meme about cannibalistic chicken

They’ve had baby chicks and there was an accident involving a truck and a baby chick one time which results to having the baby chick barely alive. The other adult chickens were trying to eat and pull its guts out, so they’ve stepped in hopes of ending its life in a quicker fashion. But, as they’re holding it, the baby chick looks down, sees it’s own guts, and starts eating them. “And thats why I don’t feel bad feeding my chickens leftover chicken”, and I will never look at chickens the same way again after that.

Source(s): [Reddit]

That’s it for our recap of January 2021, folks! Stay safe and have a great February 👋