Steemit, a decentralized sharing system, lays of 70% of staff

Steemit, a distributed app designed to reward content creators, has laid off 70 percent of its staff citing “the weakness of the cryptocurrency market, the fiat returns on our automated selling of STEEM diminishing, and the growing costs of running full Steem nodes.”

The remaining team will focus on reducing server costs by shrinking the size of the Steemit blockchain and slowly the dependence on Amazon AWS instances.

Founder and CEO Ned Scott wrote:

We still believe that Steem can be by far the best, and lowest cost, blockchain protocol for applications and that the improvements that will result from this new direction will make it far better for application sustainability. However, in order to ensure that we can continue to improve Steem, we need to first get costs under control to remain economically sustainable. There’s nothing that I want more now than to survive, to keep steemit.com operating, and keep the mission alive, to make great communities.

Steemit became one of the first working decentralized applications and allowed users to submit content and pay content creators. The Steemit coin, STEEM, has fallen 96 percent from its all-time high and is currently trading at $0.37 USD.

Steemit follows Civil down the decentralized toilet as the idea of idealized decentralized apps rams headfirst with the volatility of the crypto market. Civil, for example, promised to pay journalists for their work and a number of organizations created Civil-based payment programs for writers. With the fall of crypto, however, these organizations have pulled back, sometimes cutting salaries by 70 percent.

I’ve requested clarification on the actual number of layoffs and further plans for the product from Steemit.

WTF is happening to crypto?

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/28/steemit-a-decentralized-sharing-system-lays-of-70-of-staff/

The Alexa-enabled Big Mouth Billy Bass is real and now for sale

In September, Amazon launched its Alexa Gadgets Toolkit into beta, allowing hardware makers to build accessories that pair with Amazon Echo over Bluetooth. Today, one of the most memorable (and quite ridiculous) examples of that technology is going live. Yes, I’m talking about the Alexa-enabled Big Mouth Billy Bass, of course. You know, the talking fish that hangs on the wall, and has now been updated to respond to Alexa voice commands?

Amazon first showed off this technology over a year ago at an event at its Seattle headquarters, then this fall confirmed the talking fish would be among the debut products to use its new Alexa Gadgets Toolkit.

The toolkit lets developers build Alexa-connected devices that use things like lights, sound chips or even motors, in order to work with Alexa interfaces like notifications, timers, reminders, text-to-speech, and wake word detection.

The talking fish can actually do much of that.

According to the company’s announcement, Big Mouth Billy Bass can react to timers, notifications, and alarms, and can play Amazon Music. It can also lip sync to Alexa spoken responses when asked for information about the weather, news, or random facts.

And it will sing an original song, “Fishin’ Time.”

When the gadget is plugged in and turned on, it responds: “Woo-hoo, that feels good!”

(Oh my god, who is getting this for me for Christmas?)

“This is not your father’s Big Mouth Billy Bass,” said Vice President of Product Development at Gemmy Industries, Steven Harris, in a statement about the product’s launch. “Our new high-tech version uses the latest technology from Amazon to deliver a hilarious and interactive gadget that takes everyday activities to a fun new level.”

The fish can be wall-mounted on displayed using an included tabletop easel, the company also says.

The pop culture gag gift was first sold back in 1999, and is now updating is brand for the Alexa era.

Obviously, Big Mouth Billy Bass is not a product that was ever designed to be taken seriously – but it should be interesting to see if the updated, “high-tech version” has any impact on this item’s sales.

The idea to integrate Alexa into the talking fish actually began in 2016, when an enterprising developer hacked the fish to work with Alexa much to the internet’s delight. His Facebook post showcasing his work attracted 1.8 million views.

The Alexa-connected fish is $39.99 on Amazon.com.

(h/t Business Insider)

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/28/the-alexa-enabled-big-mouth-billy-bass-is-real-and-now-for-sale/

90% of coaching is self-coaching

A cherry can’t grow without the pit. The drupe works because it uses the pit as instigation, a foundation to go forward from.

The same is true for the way most of us engage with a coach. That basketball coach screaming from the sidelines? There’s no way the player can hear what he’s saying. That’s okay. The shift is happening inside.

And the coaching that happens with a good boss or inside a program like the altMBA? The theory is the same. Your preparation for an upcoming meeting, the voice in your head as you think about your choices, the knowledge that you’re accountable for your actions–all of these end up weaving into the future version of you.

It’s entirely possible to coach yourself. To develop internal habits and standards that help you ratchet forward, drip by drip. But when you find yourself alone in a “co” working space, or isolated from good leadership, or wondering about what’s next, it might just be a signal that you’re missing the 10% from the core, the seed that you can build on and then internalize.

Sooner or later, all motivation is self motivation. And the challenge and opportunity is in finding the external forces that will soon become internal ones.

       

from Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/582613800/0/sethsblog~of-coaching-is-selfcoaching/

Amazon’s newest service uses machine learning to extract medical data from patient records

Amazon has launched a new service that uses machine learning to extract key data from patient records and can potentially help healthcare providers and researchers save money, make treatment decisions, and manage clinical trials. The company announced the service, called Amazon Comprehend Medical, on Tuesday, shortly after the Wall Street Journal reported on it.

The cloud software combines text analysis and machine learning to read patient records that often consist of prescriptions, notes, audio interviews, and test reports. Once those records are digitized and uploaded to Comprehend Medical, it picks out and organizes information about diagnoses, treatments, medication dosage, and symptoms.

Amazon’s other recent forays into healthcare include paying almost $1 billion to acquire online prescription service PillPack and new joint venture with Berkshire Hathaway and JP Morgan Chase to improve employee healthcare. It joins other large tech companies that are increasingly focused on healthcare. For example, earlier this year Apple launched a feature that lets customers view their hospital medical records on their iPhones, while Google recently hired former Geisinger CEO David Feinberg to unify and lead the healthcare initiatives across its businesses, including search, Google Brain, Google Fit, and Nest.

In its announcement, Amazon said “identifying this information today is a manual and time-consuming process, which either requires data entry by high skilled medical experts, or teams of developers writing custom code and rules to try and extract the information automatically.” The company claimed that Comprehend Medical can accurately identify “medical conditions, anatomic terms, details of medical tests, treatments, and procedures.” In turn, patients can use the service to help manage different aspects of their treatment, including scheduling healthcare visits and prescription medicines or determining insurance eligibility.

Of course, the uploading of medical records to the cloud for machine-learning analysis might questions from patients about how Comprehend Medical will ensure their privacy. Amazon says patient data is encrypted and can only be unlocked by customers who have a key, and that no data processed will be stored or used for training its algorithms. Comprehend Medical complies with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Comprehend Medical is already being previewed by Roche Diagnostics, the Switzerland-headquartered pharmaceutical and diagnostics equipment company, and Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center in Seattle, which is using it to identify patients for clinical trials. By using the software to analyze “millions of clinical notes,” Amazon says the center was able to reduce the time it needed to process each document “from hours, to seconds.”

In a statement, Matthew Trunnell, the CIO of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, which studies cancer and conducts clinical trials and volunteer studies on new treatments, said “For cancer patients and the researchers dedicated to curing them, time is the limiting resource. The process of developing clinical trials and connecting them with the right patients requires research teams to sift through and label mountains of unstructured medical record data. Amazon Comprehend Medical will reduce this time burden from hours per record to seconds. This is a vital step toward getting researchers rapid access to the information they need when they need it so they can find actionable insights to advance lifesaving therapies for patients.”

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/27/amazons-newest-service-uses-machine-learning-to-extract-medical-data-from-patient-records/

Robinhood hires 20-year Amazon veteran to CFO role as high-flying startup eyes IPO

Robinhood, the zero-fee stock trading app and cryptocurrency exchange, is bringing on a former Amazon finance exec to help the company prepare for an eventual public debut.

Warnick

The startup has hired Jason Warnick, a former exec at Amazon who was with the company for nearly 20 years, most recently serving as the commerce giant’s VP of Finance. Warnick has worn many hats inside the Seattle company’s finance departments, with positions touching operations, internal audit, investor relations and risk management. In his most recent role, Warnick also served as the chief of staff to Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky.

At TechCrunch Disrupt SF earlier this fall, Robinhood CEO Baiju Bhatt told us that the startup was eyeing a public offering but wouldn’t be doing so in the “immediate term.” At the event, Bhatt also revealed that the company was searching for a CFO to help the highly valued startup prep for an IPO.

Warnick’s wide range of financial admin expertise will undoubtedly be helpful to the five-year-old Robinhood, which has grown to be one of the most valuable venture-backed startups. The fast-growing startup has raised more than half a billion dollars and earned a $5.6 billion valuation in its latest fundraise.

“We’re incredibly lucky to have Jason join our leadership team,” Robinhood co-CEO Vlad Tenev said in a statement. “We look forward to working with Jason to build out our operational and financial infrastructure and continuing to deliver the best possible financial products to our customers at the best possible prices.”

Warnick is just the latest in a line of Amazon execs fleeing the company for CFO roles at highly valued startups. Yesterday, Airbnb hired Dave Stephenson as its new chief financial officer. A few weeks ago, Zillow hired Allen Parker — another Amazon finance VP — to its CFO role.

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/27/robinhood-hires-20-year-amazon-veteran-to-cfo-role-as-high-flying-startup-eyes-ipo/

Cyber Monday hits $7.9B in online sales, $2.2B spent via smartphones

Cyber Monday 2018 is likely to be the highest-online selling day of the holiday season this year, and in US e-commerce history, with $7.9 billion in online sales.

Adobe — which tracks trillions of transactions across the U.S. among major retailers online — says that today will see $7.9 billion in sales online when all is tallied, up 19.7 percent on 2017’s figure of $6.6 billion.

Mobile devices accounted for $2.83 billion in sales for the day, another high watermark — neatly 36 percent of all sales, growing the proportion of transactions not on desktop. Smartphones were the majority of that activity. They alone accounted for 27.7 percent of sales, or $2.2 billion.

Mobile also accounted for 54.3 percent of visits to retail sites, versus 34.7 percent for desktops and 6.4 percent for tablets. That’s an increase of 32.1 percent growth in smartphone visits over last year. Smartphones also have accounted for 42.6 percent of sales thus far, or 43.0 percent year-over-year growth.

Among the biggest retail winners, Amazon today said it was the biggest shopping day in its history. Although it didn’t provide sales figures, it said the ‘Turkey 5’ broke records as customers in the U.S. purchased millions more products over the five day period vs. the same period last year, with more than 18 million toys and more than 13 million fashion items on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, combined.

It’s no surprise that Cyber Monday is so strong for online shopping: after a weekend of people juggling brisk online buying with visiting physical stores, and hassling with each other in stores, Monday many went back to work, but the sales kept going.

And so, there was a significant swing to online shopping — driven by promotions on sites (driving 25.3 percent of traffic), paid search (25.1 percent), natural search (18.8 percent) and email (24.2 percent). Social media drove only 1.1 percent of traffic.

The holiday sales season used to kick off on Black Friday, but e-commerce and the trend of shopping whenever you want — and not just when a store is open — has led to sales and seasonal promotions — and shopping — earlier and earlier.

There has, as a result, been $58.5 billion spent this month online so far, up nearly 20 percent over last year, with every day seeing sales of over $1 billion (six have broken the $2 billion mark).

On Black Friday, online U.S. sales hit $6.2 billion, with more than one-third of sales coming from mobile devices. Thanksgiving this year had a record $3.7 billion in sales, while one of the newer “shopping holidays,” Small Business Saturday, rung up $3.02 billion in online sales, said Adobe, up 25.5 percent.

Small Business Saturday kicked off a big Thanksgiving weekend for shopping. Adobe says November 24-25 “was the biggest online shopping weekend in US history” netting $6.4 billion.

Buying started early on Cyber Monday. As of 7 AM PST / 10 AM EST on Monday, consumers had already spent over half a billion dollars — $0.531 billion, specifically — with online retailers by that point. By 5 PM PST, the total for the day reached $6.2 billion.

“As in past years, we expected that Cyber Monday deals would entice early shoppers kicking off one of the largest online shopping weeks of the year,” the analysts at MasterCard said. “Our initial early numbers are showing that overall online retail sales this morning are in line with the season expectations and will likely set new records for this individual day.”

But it’s not only daytime shopping that will net large returns for retailers.

Adobe estimates that the “three golden hours of retail”, between 10:00 pm and 1:00 am Eastern, brought in $1.7 billion, “roughly $300 million more compared to an average full day in the year.” The idea here is that shoppers catch final Cyber Monday deals right before bed or after work on the west coast. Subsequent conversion rates peak above 7.3 percent for the season (almost 2.5 times higher compared to the rest of the year).

But these are estimates, and so you are bound to get a lot of variation.

MasterCard provides a slightly more conservative figure: its SpendingPulse analytics predict that total sales “could exceed” $3 billion. It also estimated that last year’s Cyber Monday sale day brought in no more than $2.4 billion.

While Adobe says that it builds its estimates by tracking transactions at 80 of the biggest retailers online in the U.S., Mastercard tells us that SpendingPulse uses “national retail sales across all payments types in select markets around the world. The findings are based on aggregate sales activity in the Mastercard payments network, coupled with survey-based estimates for certain other payment forms, such as cash and check.”

The real numbers may lie somewhere in the middle.

More generally, strong sales today indicate just how big so-called shopping holidays — and their marketing push — have become for e-commerce.

“Despite some of the best deals coming earlier in the holiday season, the Cyber Monday brand has great staying power. Many shoppers have waited on certain purchases, with three hours tonight expected to bring in as much revenue as an average full day. While certain discounts have remained since Black Friday, out-of-stock rates are starting to peak up and shoppers looking for the hottest products should not wait much longer,” said Taylor Schreiner, director, Adobe Digital Insights.

Buying trends

While smartphones have a clear role to play in sales, it’s not an evenly-distributed trend. Adobe noted that larger reatilers (over $1 billion/year in sales) have better tech in place for converting browsers to buyers. Smaller retailers did better with desktop sales.

And generally, mobile is becoming an increasingly credible platform:

“Converting mobile traffic to sales has long been a thorn in the side of retailers, but investments in making the experience faster and easier have paid off,” said Taylor Schreiner, director, Adobe Digital Insights. “Cyber Monday shoppers relied heavily on their mobile devices, resulting in an unprecedented 55.6 percent year-over-year increase from smartphones alone. Additionally, Buy Online Pick Up Instore saw a record 65% increase, signaling that retailers are increasingly fulfilling consumer expectations for integrated cross-channel experiences.”

The report also suggests that Cyber Monday was the best day to buy TVs (18 percent discounts) anf computers (17.8 percent), with toys doing best the Sunday before.

Out-of-stock levels were above average at 2.4 percent, working out to $187 million in lost sales.

Denver was the biggest when it come to basket size ($163), with $157 in San Francisco, $156 in New York, $156 in Portland and $154 in Seattle/Tacoma. The nationwide average was $138, up 6.1 percent.

Additional reporting: Sarah Perez

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/26/cyber-monday-2018/

Daily Crunch: Black Friday’s online sales are projected to hit $5.9B

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. (This one’s a little shorter than usual — it’s a holiday weekend in the United States.) If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here:

1. Black Friday predicted to hit $5.9B in online sales, $645M spent so far

After a record-breaking Thanksgiving with $3.7 billion in digital sales across desktop and mobile devices, it looks like Black Friday will also pull in a bumper year for e-commerce. Adobe — which tracks trillions of transactions across a range of retail sites — says that as of 7am Pacific Time, there has already been $645 million spent online.

Shopify, which provides a real-time sales visualisation for some 600,000 merchants on its platform, notes that the average sales per minute for those merchants is hovering at just over $400,000 per minute.

2. Amazon warehouse workers in Europe stage ‘we are not robots’ protests

They’ve timed the latest protest for Black Friday, one of the busiest annual shopping days online as retailers slash prices and heavily promote deals to try to spark a seasonal buying rush.

3. Be a Thanksgiving security hero with these family-friendly tips

If you’re reading this, chances are you’re: Pretty good at tech stuff, spending time with your family for Thanksgiving and bored because you’re reading this newsletter right now.

4. Silentmode’s PowerMask is a $200 connected relaxation mask

Someone described the PowerMask as a kind of small scale take on a sensory deprivation tank — and sure, why not?

5. BlueCargo optimizes stacks of containers for maximum efficiency

Under current sorting methods, yard cranes end up moving a ton of containers just to reach a container sitting at the bottom of the pile. BlueCargo wants to optimize those movements by helping you store containers at the right spot.

6. Gift Guide: 16 fantastic computer bags

Yep, it’s another TechCrunch gift guide, this one focused on Matt Burns’ favorite subject.

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/23/daily-crunch-black-friday/