Due to a Supreme Court ruling, you only have until Thursday to fill out the census.
Today's Login is 1,396 words, a 5-minute read.
Due to a Supreme Court ruling, you only have until Thursday to fill out the census.
Today's Login is 1,396 words, a 5-minute read.
The iPhone 12 Pro features both 5G support as well as a lidar sensor. Photo: Apple
With the iPhone 12, unveiled Tuesday, Apple has made some big technology bets that should boost demand for 5G networks as well as help spur developers to create more advanced augmented reality applications. However, phone buyers will probably have to wait for a payoff.
Why it matters: Many tech advances start out as chicken-and-egg problems, with developers waiting for a market to emerge while consumers don't yet see the value in spending more. Apple has the rare ability to push past that block. Because of its size and comparatively focused product line, its support of new technologies like 5G and lidar can vault them into the mainstream.
Driving the news:
The two Pro models add not only a zoom lens, but also a lidar sensor for depth sensing and advanced augmented reality capabilities.
The big picture: Apple is investing in areas that it sees as key to the long-term future, but consumers who buy the latest iPhones are paying for those advances now.
Yes, but: Some of the other features that Apple has added to the new phones — including the faster A14 Bionic processor, larger image sensor and improved OLED display on the base model — will benefit people out of the gate.
What they're saying:
A growing number of tech companies say workers need not ever come back to the office if they don't want to. The move comes as pandemic-related closures have already kept many tech workers out of the office for months.
Why it matters: Technology's spread into every corner of the broader economy keeps boosting demand for workers with tech skills. That pushes employers to accommodate tech talent wherever they find it.
Driving the news:
Between the lines: Tech companies once lured workers with the fanciest offices and best perks. Now, companies increasingly feel they need a work-from-home option to stay competitive.
Yes, but: Workers who move from pricey areas like the Bay Area or New York may see their salaries cut to reflect their more affordable living circumstances.
The big picture: Flexible remote work policies may be helping companies retain employees, too, according to data from recruiting technology firm TopFunnel shared with Axios' Ashley Gold.
Microsoft, which recently announced a hybrid permanent work from home policy, was an outlier: its employees have been replying to outside recruiters at a higher rate than before.
Governments around the world have seized on the pandemic as an opportunity to expand digital surveillance and harvest more data from their citizens, according to a report out Wednesday from Freedom House, a democracy and human rights research group.
Why it matters: As Axios' Kyle Daly reports, privacy advocates have warned since early in the pandemic that the tech behind efforts to conduct contact tracing and enforce quarantines and other public safety protocols could be abused and made permanent, particularly in authoritarian countries like China.
What's happening, according to the report:
Dozens of countries have rolled out government-backed contact-tracing apps without effective laws to protect people from overly expansive data collection.
Governments in at least 28 countries censored websites and social media posts to suppress information such as unfavorable health statistics and corruption allegations.
Of note: China was found to have the world's worst conditions for internet freedom for the sixth consecutive year, but the U.S. was not far behind — in seventh place, with internet freedom worsening for the fourth year running, Freedom House found.
Facebook said Tuesday that it will ban anti-vaccine ads in an effort to combat misinformation and support public health experts. However, Axios' Ursula Perano reports, the policy doesn't apply to the organic spread of anti-vaccine misinformation, including that spread by influencers.
Why it matters: The policy shift comes before the arrival of — and amid the continued politicization of — an expected COVID-19 vaccine.
What they're saying: "Now, if an ad explicitly discourages someone from getting a vaccine, we’ll reject it. Enforcement will begin over the next few days," Facebook said.
The big picture: Americans' willingness to get a coronavirus vaccine dropped to 50% in late September, a dramatic 11-point fall from the previous month, according to the latest Gallup poll.
Photo illustration: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
The longstanding but now hotly contested law that keeps online platforms from being held liable for what users post should be narrowed, conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote Tuesday.
Why it matters: Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is a growing target of bipartisan ire. Thomas, arguably the most conservative member of the Supreme Court, is laying down a marker as the likely confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett looks set to tip the high court further right, Ashley reports.
Driving the news: Thomas wrote about Section 230 in a filing following the court's decision not to hear a Section 230-related case, MalwareBytes Inc. v. Enigma Software Group.
What they're saying: Thomas wrote that internet companies have been granted "sweeping protection" and courts are reading more comprehensive immunity into Section 230 than was intended.
The other side: Internet companies and the law's authors have long argued that the purpose of Section 230 was to allow companies to moderate online content and remove material as they see fit.
Yes, but: Those defenses have a shrinking constituency in Washington.
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These people sure figured out how to make their high school yearbook quotes count.