Image: Piqsels / Protocol
The offices are staying closed

Good morning! This Tuesday, the Trump administration has big ideas about Section 230, Google extends its WFH policies, and plant-based meat is coming for everyone.
(Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here to get Source Code every day.)
Just under the wire, the NTIA met President Trump's executive order and published its ideas for "fixing" Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Here's the greatest hits:
Actually, wait, before the greatest hits, some context:
So there's that! There's probably nothing in this you need to immediately worry about. But anyway, the greatest hits:
Will any of this go anywhere? Hard to say, but I wouldn't go rewriting your terms of service just yet. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr seemed to like it; Geoffrey Starks didn't; Ajit Pai was his usual lukewarm self. Trump's still mad, though: he tweeted his fury with Twitter's Trending sidebar on Monday afternoon. "Even if you think all the asks are a good idea," Colorado Law professor Blake Reid said, "it's an absolutely atrocious way to implement them. The proposed regs are terribly unclear, badly drafted, and poorly conceived."
In related news: Josh Hawley is also mad at Section 230. He's introducing the BAD ADS Act, which would amend Section 230 to remove immunity from tech companies enabling or displaying "manipulative, behavioral ads."
Tech companies continue to kick the can on when they'll go back to the office, and Sundar Pichai just kicked it extra hard. He told Google's staff that they're not coming back anytime soon. "To give employees the ability to plan ahead," he wrote in a note, "we'll be extending our global voluntary work from home option through June 30, 2021 for roles that don't need to be in the office."
Even a year-long delay puts a lot of Googlers in tricky positions, though. If you work at Twitter, Square, Facebook, Shopify or a number of other places, the remote-first-forever policy means people can move wherever they want … and settle there. Pichai is still keeping people in comparative limbo.
For tech CEOs, this is becoming an interesting competitive landscape. Is remote flexibility an upside? Or are you scaring people off by telling new hires they might never meet their colleagues in person? Safety is obviously the most important thing, but it's not easy to manage employees' needs, competitive cultures, and the increasing number of unknown unknowns about the future of work.
Oh, and if you're four months into remote work and recently decided it's not nearly as productive or sustainable as you thought? You're not alone.
Shakeel Hashim writes: If Costa Yiannoulis has his way, you'll be eating lab-grown meat within the decade. As the investment director of CPT Capital, Yiannoulis has overseen investments in every type of meat alternative you could imagine, including giants like Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods and Memphis Meats. And he thinks you can add his specialty to the list of trends accelerated by COVID.
We're still in the early stages of all this, but within the next two years, Yiannoulis thinks you'll be able to buy food products that contain "recombinant protein," produced by genetically-modified microbes. CPT's latest investment, Geltor, uses this to make human collagen for cosmetics companies.
By the way: If you're a budding alt-food entrepreneur, Yiannoulis has a pitch for you. "There's a lot of companies doing [recombinant] proteins as ingredients. There aren't a lot of companies doing fats ... that's probably a big white space." I hope McDonald's trips count as market research.
Email's overwhelming, but it doesn't have to be. Introducing HEY — a radical refresh of email. Screen your emails like you screen your calls, block spy pixel tracking, merge threads together, newsfeed-style reading, and much more. Try it today at HEY.com.
With TikTok out of India, Triller boss Ryan Kavanaugh said people started immediately looking for alternatives:
A group of creatives is protesting Twitter this week, after the platform left up an anti-Semitic screed from a British rapper. U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel supported the protest:
Nobody on the internet is better at drumming up viral attention than MSCHF, and founder Gabriel Whaley said it's by subverting the whole process of doing so:
Jim Lanzone is the new CEO of Tinder. He comes from running CBS Interactive and replaces Elie Seidman, who the WSJ reported is going back to working with early-stage companies. Tinder also named Joshua Sell its new CPO.
Kim Milosevich is the new head of communications at Coinbase. She'd been a marketing partner at Andreessen Horowitz since 2013 and has been working with Coinbase since a16z invested in the company.
Singapore's StarHub is looking for a new CEO after Peter Kaliaropoulos said he'll step down at the end of October. He said he's leaving for personal reasons.
There's a trove of fascinating stuff inside the massive security breach at Nintendo that's now known as The Gigaleak. New characters, new levels, a way for Luigi to give the middle finger? But hands down the best find so far is Beta Yoshi, a gangly version of everyone's favorite rideable dinosaur. The fan art's already here in droves, and I can only assume the merch is coming soon. Given the fan reaction, Beta Yoshi's going to get its own Switch franchise before you can say, "Wait, is that Mario punching Yoshi to get him to stick his tongue out?"
Email's overwhelming, but it doesn't have to be. Introducing HEY — a radical refresh of email. Screen your emails like you screen your calls, block spy pixel tracking, merge threads together, newsfeed-style reading, and much more. Try it today at HEY.com.
Today's Source Code was written by David Pierce, with help from Shakeel Hashim. Thoughts, questions, tips? Send them to david@protocol.com, or our tips line, tips@protocol.com. Enjoy your day, see you tomorrow.
To give you the best possible experience, this site uses cookies. If you continue browsing. you accept our use of cookies. You can review our privacy policy to find out more about the cookies we use.