San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
If you missed it ...
In a week when both Facebook and Twitter rejected items supporting President Trump, this also happened:
Start Small, the philanthropic fund of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey (pictured), awarded $1.6 million to San Francisco community support group Code Tenderloin, according to a Code Tenderloin press release. This grant will sustain the nonprofit’s Calming the Corner street pop-up, which offers food, medical supplies and other resources to Tenderloin residents in need. In April, Dorsey pledged to donate $1 billion to coronavirus relief through Start Small.
Britain said it will scrap plans to launch its own coronavirus contact tracing smartphone app because of technical problems and will now work on building one using technology supplied by
Apple and Google, health authorities said. The government’s app had been undergoing trials on the Isle of Wight, and was expected to be rolled out to the rest of the country later. But the program, previously hailed as a fundamental pillar of the U.K. response to the pandemic, has been delayed. Officials overseeing the app’s development said they couldn’t overcome a number of technical challenges they found during field tests with the app, such as reliably detecting other users on specific mobile operating systems.
Long-term U.S. mortgage rates fell to an all-time low. Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac reported that the average rate on the key 30-year loan declined to 3.13%, the lowest level since Freddie began tracking average rates in 1971.
Apple said it is closing 11 stores in Arizona, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina that it had reopened just a few weeks ago as infections rates in some regions in the U.S. begin to rise.
Daily Briefing is compiled from San Francisco Chronicle staff and news services. For more items and links, subscribe to the Tech Chronicle newsletter at www.sfchronicle.com/newsletters/techchronicle. Twitter: @techchronicle