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Who's going back to the office?

Good morning! This Wednesday, small tech isn't playing by Big Tech's rules when it comes to vaccine mandates, China will pass a new data privacy law, and Palantir loves gooold.
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The return-to-office playbook for Big Tech is starting to look like this: Don't reopen before October, and require workers to get vaccinated before coming to work. (New research from Qualtrics shows that 75% of tech workers support vaccine mandates, and even CES will require attendees to get vaccinated to attend in January.) But that's not the case across the board.
Apple and Amazon remain the most notable holdouts when it comes to implementing a vaccine mandate, though Apple is reportedly now sending out two COVID-19 tests per week to employees opting to participate in its testing program.
Some smaller tech companiesremained open this summer without requiring employees to get vaccinated. Three we've spoken with — Starry, C3 AI and Cepton — are also embracing in-office work as the default, even as much of the industry adopts a hybrid approach.
Meanwhile, January 2022 is quickly becoming the new October 2021 when it comes to reopening offices.
And the White House is expected to announce today that most Americans should receive a booster shot eight months after receiving their second dose — right around the time companies like Facebook and Amazon plan to reopen. Will Big Tech look into a booster mandate? Stay tuned.
Ransomware victims paid over $416 million worth of cryptocurrency to attackers in 2020, more than quadrupling 2019 totals. As of July 2021, we know that ransomware attackers have taken in at least $210 million worth of cryptocurrency from victims. Shouldn't we just ban crypto? The answer is no. Cryptocurrency is actually instrumental in fighting ransomware.
Social media platforms are trying to get a grip on the Taliban, but some of their actions can do more harm than good, says Ashley Jackson, an expert in the region:
On Protocol | Workplace: You can't become a remote-first company overnight, GitLab's Darren Murph said, and that's OK:
On Protocol: Amazon banned some Chinese sellers' accounts, but Mabang CEO Zhang Jie isn't worried about it:
Manik Gupta is joining Microsoftas corporate VP for Teams consumer, Skype and GroupMe. Gupta previously served as Uber's chief product officer, and, before that, worked at Google.
Minjae Ormes is headed to LinkedIn as its new VP of global brand and consumer marketing. She'll leave her role as Visible's CMO for the job.
Greg Monahan is joining Binance. He's the company's new global money laundering reporting officer, joining after a long career including a stint as the U.S. Treasury Criminal Investigator.
Harry Temkin left eBay for DriveWealth, where he'll be CIO. He previously served as eBay's VP of seller experience.
Brace yourselves, New Yorkers: Electric scooters have made their way to the Big Apple. Bird, Lime and VeoRide dropped off 1,000 electric scooters each in the East Bronx yesterday, and if things go well New York City may let the companies deposit a few thousand more.
So if you want those two-wheelers to stick around, be careful. The protected bike lanes in the East Bronx aren't super robust, so don't rely on them too much to safely get around. And even though the scooters can pick up speed fairly quickly, you aren't a car, so don't act like one while you scoot around and remember to obey the rules of the road.
The key to tackling ransomware is disrupting the ransomware supply chain — developers, affiliates, infrastructure services providers, launderers and cashout points — and the blockchain is the only data source that ties these actors together. So while it may seem counterintuitive at first, ransomware groups' use of cryptocurrency for ransom payments is actually beneficial to ransomware investigations.
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Correction: This story was updated on Aug. 18, 2021, to reflect changes in Bloomberg's reporting about Palantir accepting gold as payment.
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