Adidas Wilson's Blog, page 91
August 23, 2017
Uber drivers have made more than $50M in the first month of tipping
Uber is making additional changes to its driver-side app by allowing drivers to set more destinations and offering “long trip notifications” to tell a driver when a rider is requesting a ride that’s 45 minutes or longer.
The company will also stop penalizing drivers who turn down trips. Previously, when a driver turned down potential trips, it could affect promotions and account standing.
The changes are part of a process the company is calling “180 Days of Change,” which it says will transform the driver experience for the 2 million people who drive for Uber each week. It began about two months ago with the notable addition of tipping to the app. Uber US and Canada manager Rachel Holt told several press outlets that the company’s drivers have earned $50 million in tips since that feature was added. In-app tipping became available nationwide in mid-July.
In addition to tipping, the changes increased driver pay for wait time and reduced the “cancellation window” from five minutes to two minutes.
Before the changes were implemented, drivers were able to set destinations twice per day, which allowed them to get ride-hailing work while also heading in a direction they wanted to go anyhow. Now they can do that six times per day.
The long trip notifications still won’t tell drivers where a rider is going until that rider is picked up. It will just be a simple alert letting the driver know that the ride is estimated to take longer than 45 minutes. Holt told TechCrunch that most drivers like longer rides, since they earn more money. But they also want to be able to plan for breaks, and the notifications will help with that.
The “180 Days of Change” campaign came a week after Uber put into effect changes recommended by an internal investigation. That included the firing of some executives and the resignation of then-CEO Travis Kalanick.
The company is still waiting for a new CEO. The Associated Press reported Monday that former GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt is among the finalists for the position.
Source:
Here’s How Daenerys Could Have Kids Again on ‘Game of Thrones’
Daenerys Targaryen’s dragons are the only children she can ever have on Game of Thrones, it is known. And yet, one fan theory that seems increasingly probable says that Jon Snow will get her pregnant.
The penultimate episode of Game of Thrones Season 7 makes not one, not two, but three references to Daenerys and Jon’s potential offspring. First Jorah mentions it, then Tyrion, and finally Daenerys herself. One interpretation suggests that their potential kid is the true “Song of Ice and Fire” from the book series title.
But go back a step. How would this happen? Daenerys believes she’s infertile because of the witch Mirri Maz Duur she enlisted to save Khal Drogo in Season 1. Of course this plan backfired horribly. Duur told her that “only death can pay for life,” and while Dany thought this only involves sacrificing his horse, it turned out to be the life of their unborn baby.
To make matters worse, after all that Drogo was alive but effectively brain-dead. The implication is that in one fell swoop, after trusting the wrong person and the wrong magic, Daenerys lost her husband, unborn child, and potential to ever have human kids.
But it’s the “only death can pay for life” part that fans are latching onto, because in Season 7, Dany’s dragon “child” Viserion has died. And she’s looking awfully cozy with Jon Snow.
“Only death can pay for life”
So perhaps the death of her dragon child will pay for a new life. Of course, some fans are also theorizing that this ominous prediction will mean that Dany pays for her child’s life with her own. After all, her own mother died in childbirth and Jon’s mother Lyanna Stark did too.
But for now, there are no indications about Daenerys’s death in the show. There are, however, several indications that she will have a child with Jon.
Source:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/apos-daenerys-could-kids-again-150700005.html
Medium will now pay writers based on how many claps they get
Medium plans to start letting more and more authors publish paywalled articles. And to determine how they get paid, the blogging platform has selected a fairly unorthodox method: claps, which are, basically, Medium’s equivalent of a Like.
A couple weeks ago, Medium replaced its “recommend” feature — a little heart button at the end of each article — with a “clap” button that you can click as many times as you want (much like how Periscope lets you send broadcasters an infinite number of hearts). The site wants people to send authors claps to show how much they enjoy reading each article.
Now, those claps are actually going to mean something. Medium pays authors by dividing up every individual subscriber’s fee between the different articles they’ve read that month. But rather than doing an even division between articles, Medium will weight payments toward whichever articles a subscriber gives the most claps to. It’s not clear exactly how much each individual clap tips the scale, but you can be sure that writers will be asking readers to click that button.
It’s a pretty strange way to implement payments, since it relies on a really arbitrary metric that individual subscribers might use in really different and inconsistent ways. Time spent on page and whether someone shared an article probably would have been useful metrics by which to tell how much a reader enjoyed a piece, but maybe that makes too much sense for a startup in the middle of its second business model pivot. On the positive side, claps can help Medium surface content that people are enjoying and get it in front of more readers.
For now, Medium is dividing between writers the entirety of subscribers’ $5 per month fee. Eventually, the company plans to “start covering our own costs,” but it’s not taking a cut for the time being, as it tries to attract writers.
So far, Medium has worked with specific authors and publishers to put their articles behind the site’s paywall. As of today, it’s going to start rolling out the option to more and more of the site’s writers. A representative for the company wouldn’t clarify if all writers would eventually be given this ability, but said Medium is “planning to ramp up quickly” the number of eligible authors.
Source:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/22/16180150/medium-paywall-articles-claps-author-payments
Google and Walmart Partner With Eye on Amazon
Google and Walmart are testing the notion that an enemy’s enemy is a friend.
The two companies said Google would start offering Walmart products to people who shop on Google Express, the company’s online shopping mall. It’s the first time the world’s biggest retailer has made its products available online in the United States outside of its own website.
The partnership, announced on Wednesday, is a testament to the mutual threat facing both companies from Amazon.com. Amazon’s dominance in online shopping is challenging brick-and-mortar retailers like Walmart, while more people are starting web searches for products they might buy on Amazon instead of Google.
But working together does not ensure that they will be any more successful. For most consumers, Amazon remains the primary option for online shopping. No other retailer can match the size of Amazon’s inventory, the efficiency with which it moves shoppers from browsing to buying, or its many home delivery options.
The two companies said the partnership was less about how online shopping is done today, but where it is going in the future. They said that they foresaw Walmart customers reordering items they purchased in the past by speaking to Google Home, the company’s voice-controlled speakerand an answer to Amazon’s Echo. Walmart customers can also shop using the Google Assistant, the artificially intelligent software assistant found in smartphones running Google’s Android software.
Walmart customers can link their accounts to Google, allowing the technology giant to learn their past shopping behavior to better predict what they want in the future. Google said that because more than 20 percent of searches conducted on smartphones these days are done by voice, it expects voice-based shopping to be not far behind.
“We are trying to help customers shop in ways that they may have never imagined,” said Marc Lore, who is leading Walmart’s efforts to bolster its e-commerce business. He came to Walmart last year after the retailer bought the company he founded, Jet.com.
Google is a laggard in e-commerce. Since starting a shopping service in 2013, it has struggled to gather significant momentum. Initially, it offered free same-day delivery before scrapping it. It also tried delivery of groceries before abandoning that, too.
If Amazon is a department store with just about everything inside, then Google Express is a shopping mall populated by different retailers. There are more than 50 retailers on Google Express, including Target and Costco. Inside Google Express, a search for “toothpaste” will bring back options from about a dozen different retailers.
Google said it planned to offer free delivery — as long as shoppers met store purchase minimums — on products purchased on Google Express. Google had charged customers a $95 a year membership for free delivery. Amazon runs a similar program called Amazon Prime, offering free delivery for members who pay $99 a year.
The partnership with Google represents one of several steps that Walmart has taken over the past year to strengthen its online business.
Source:
August 22, 2017
The IRS Has Special Software to Find Bitcoin Tax Cheats
One benefit of using bitcoin is the digital currency can be anonymous—its owners can move money around the world without revealing who they are. Well, in theory at least. In reality, bitcoin is less secret than people think.
The latest reminder of this comes via a report that the Internal Revenue Service is using software to unmask bitcoin users who have failed to report profits. According to a contract unearthed by the Daily Beast, the IRS is paying a company called Chainalysis to help identify the owners of digital “wallets” that users employ to store their bitcoins.
In a letter to the IRS, the co-founder of Chainalysis says the company has information on 25 percent of all bitcoin addresses and that it deploys millions of tags to help track and identify transactions. Here is a screenshot of a paragraph from the letter:
The decision by the IRS to license the software of Chainalysis, which is based in Switzerland with an office in New York, appears to be part of the agency’s larger campaign to target digital currency users who have failed to pay tax.
As Fortune reported earlier this year, the IRS claims only 802 people declared a capital gain or loss related to bitcoin in 2015. This is significant since the price of bitcoin soared from around $13 to over $1100 between 2013 and 2015, and hundreds of thousands (like millions) of Americans bought and sold digital currency during this time—in other words, there are many people who face bitcoin-related tax trouble, and the IRS is tracking some of them down.
There are indications, though, the IRS is focusing only on the bigger fish. For instance, in the agency’s ongoing legal battle with the popular digital currency exchange, Coinbase, the IRS recently agreed to limit its request for customer records only to accounts with transactions over $20,000.
Nonetheless, the IRS’s use of the Chainalysis software is likely to make some bitcoin owners uneasy. Meanwhile, on bitcoin forums, some users have expressed resentment against exchanges like Coinbase, Kraken, and Mt. Gox for allegedly storing wallets in such a way that analytic companies like Chainalysis or BitSeer can identify individual users.
The forum chatter also shows some bitcoin users are thinking of switching to other digital currencies like Monero that are harder to trace.
Finally, the existence of tools like Chainalysis doesn’t mean bitcoin users can’t be anonymous. Those who wish to keep their identity concealed can do so by maintaining their own wallet and avoiding exchanges that collect customer information.
Source:
http://fortune.com/2017/08/22/irs-tax-cheats-bitcoin-chainalysis/
