Recode Daily: Apple’s upbeat earnings report is outshone only by its shiny holiday-shopping forecast

Donald Trump’s Twitter account disappeared for 11 minutes. Twitter blamed a single employee, who apparently deactivated it on their last day of work. How did that happen? And what will Trump — and other politicans, who are already scrutinizing Twitter — say today? In the meantime, many Twitter users have been entertained by the incident. [Kurt Wagner + Kara Swisher / Recode]

Apple reported buoyant fourth-quarter earnings, with revenue up 12 percent to $52.6 billion over the year-ago quarter and earnings per share up 24 percent. The company made $8.5 billion from its services division during the quarter — more than from AirPods, Apple TV, Watch and iPads sales combined. But the most important number Apple revealed was the forecast for its fiscal first quarter, which includes today’s launch of its flagship iPhone X and what the company projects will be record sales during the holiday season. [Dan Frommer / Recode]

Closing out two weeks of earnings reports from big tech companies, Pandora reported yesterday (revenue up 8 percent year over year, but a decline in active listeners), as did CBS (revenue up 3 percent to $3.17 billion, with key profit measures declining) and Alibaba (up 61 percent YoY to $8.3 billion).

Amazon is shutting down its Fresh grocery delivery service in some cities. That’s a suprising move in the wake of its Whole Foods acquisition. [Jason Del Rey / Recode]

President Trump appointed a new head of the Federal Reserve Board, bypassing Janet Yellen for a second term and picking centrist candidate Jerome Powell over economist John B. Taylor, the hawkish reported choice of hard-line conservatives. Powell, a lawyer and investment banker who isn’t trained in economics, has been a member of the board since 2012. [Steven Rattner / The New York Times]

Two high-profile local digital news operations, DNAinfo and Gothamist, were suddenly shut down yesterday by their owner, Joe Ricketts, the billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade and a vocal opponent of unions. A week ago, his 115 journalists had voted to join a union. [The New York Times]

The U.S. Congress released a list of 2,752 now-deactivated Twitter accounts that the company identified as being tied to Russia’s “Internet Research Agency” troll farm. Here’s the complete list of handles, from @10_gop to @ZzzacharyZzz. [Dan Frommer / Recode]

Top stories from Recode

Will Donald Trump’s justice department really sue to stop the AT&T-Time Warner deal?

Or does it just want some leverage? It’s a very expensive question.

Spotify has brought in a new head of PR as it gets ready for a 2018 IPO.

Dustee Jenkins, who used to run comms for Target, moves to the streaming music service.

HelloFresh is growing three times faster than Blue Apron and is worth twice as much.

The meal-kit-delivery service went public today. Investors now have options.

Niche co-founders Rob Fishman and Darren Lachtman are reuniting at video startup Brat.

And they’ve raised another $10 million.

WeWork is opening a second headquarters — in San Francisco.

Don’t call it a real estate company, it’s a tech company. WeWork will open an office in Salesforce Tower and will hire around 100 engineers.

Should I be worried that Amazon knows so much about me?

On the latest episode of Too Embarrassed to Ask, Recode’s Jason Del Rey says the commerce giant’s power in search is growing, thanks to Alexa.

This is cool

Inside the great poop-emoji feud.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Will you support Vox’s explanatory journalism?

Most news outlets make their money through advertising or subscriptions. But when it comes to what we’re trying to do at Vox, there are a couple of big issues with relying on ads and subscriptions to keep the lights on:

First, advertising dollars go up and down with the economy. We often only know a few months out what our advertising revenue will be, which makes it hard to plan ahead.

Second, we’re not in the subscriptions business. Vox is here to help everyone understand the complex issues shaping the world — not just the people who can afford to pay for a subscription. We believe that’s an important part of building a more equal society. And we can’t do that if we have a paywall.

So even though advertising is still our biggest source of revenue, we also seek grants and reader support. (And no matter how our work is funded, we have strict guidelines on editorial independence.)

If you also believe that everyone deserves access to trusted high-quality information, will you make a gift to Vox today? Any amount helps.

One-Time Monthly Annual

$5/month

$10/month

$25/month

$50/month

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $5/month

Yes, I'll give $5/month

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via