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More than 200 staff at Google's parent company Alphabet have formed a union in a rare move for a Silicon Valley tech company.

The Alphabet Workers Union (AWU) announced its formation on Monday after a year of running off-radar.

All Alphabet employees across the US and Canada will be able to join the union,including contractors and temporary staff, making it the first union of its kind at the company.

The union says it isn't organized around a list of demands or specific issues, but instead aims to promote inclusive working conditions and ensure Alphabet acts ethically in the best interests of society and the environment.

The union is also pushing for more transparency from Alphabet on what employees' work is used for, and said that workers should be allowed to decline to work on projects that don't align with their individual values. That comes amid internal outcry over Google's work with the US military, and concerns over the ethics of artificial intelligence.

"We need to know the impact of our work, whether it's on Alphabet workers, our communities, or the world," AWU said.

The union will collect dues from members, equivalent to 1% of their total compensation. The union will have paid organizing staff and an elected board of directors.

Unions in the US are typically formed after an election by the National Labor Relations Board. But the Alphabet Workers Union is forming without this federal ratification, meaning it won't have collective bargaining rights.

Read more: After a Twitter thread exposed the mistreatment of Black employees at Google, I ended my company's partnership to connect HBCU students with the tech giant. Here's why we decided to pull the plug.

The union is part of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 1400, and all AWU members will be CWA Local 1400 members. Local 1400 will take on AWU's legal responsibilities, process dues, and handle its bank accounts and membership records.

AWU noted that though it has "significant influence" within Local 1400, ithopes to ultimately become its own Local separate from 1400.

"This union builds upon years of courageous organizing by Google workers," Nicki Anselmo, program manager at Google, said in a statement, describing how staff have "seen first-hand that Alphabet responds when we act collectively."

"Our new union provides a sustainable structure to ensure that our shared values as Alphabet employees are respected even after the headlines fade," she added.

Alphabet software engineer Dylan Baker called the union's formation "historic," noting that it is "the first union at a major tech company by and for all tech workers."

On its website, AWU describes growing unrest among workers.

Alphabet has more than 120,000 workers globally, butAWU notedthat half of Google workers are hired as temps, vendors, or contractors, meaning they don't have access to the benefits offered to full-time employees.

Despite this, "executives have been awarded tens of millions of dollars in exit packages after documented sexual harassment against fellow Googlers," AWU said. In October 2018, CEO Sundar Pichai said 48 employees were fired for sexual harassment in just two years. The New York Times reported in 2018, to public outcry, that Google had handed Android creator Andy Rubin a $90 million exit package after a sexual harassment investigation. Days later, almost 17,000 Google employees went on strike.

Internal tensions over the Alphabet's work with the US government have also spilled into public view. The firm had won a contract with the defense department on Project Maven, a drone warfare project, triggering months of protests among employees. The firm said in 2018 it would not renew the contract, which was taken over by tech firm Palantir.

"And the company has taken on unethical government contracts, like drone targeting for the military, yet kept the nature of that technology secret even to the Googlers working on those projects," the AWU said.

AWU also noted how Google had removed its previous motto "Don't Be Evil" from its mission statement.

The union also referred to Dr. Timnit Gebru, the leading artificial intelligence researcher fired by Google in December. The incident left staff "seriously pissed," Google employees previously told Insider.

"Workers who have organized to stop these trends have been met by intimidation, suppression, and blatantly illegal firings," AWU said. "Instead of listening to workers, Google hired IRI, a notorious anti-union firm, to suppress their organizing. This is how Google's executives have chosen to interact with workers."

In December, the National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint alleging Google illegally spied on employee activists, fired them, and blocked workers from organizing.

"We've always worked hard to create a supportive and rewarding workplace for our workforce," Kara Silverstein, Google's director of people operations, told Insider.

"Of course our employees have protected labor rights that we support. But as we've always done, we'll continue engaging directly with all our employees."

More:
Google, Alphabet workers form union after years of unrest - Business Insider - Business Insider

Haven, the joint healthcare venture between Amazon, JPMorgan, and Berkshire Hathaway, is shutting down.

The company told employees on Monday that it would disband by the end of next month, CNBC reported. Brooke Thurston, a spokesperson for Haven, confirmed the news to Business Insider in an email.

Haven was announced in January 2018 with a cryptic press release about solving the embarrassing cost of healthcare in the US. The three giants would form an independent company "free from profit-making incentives and constraints," it said. Using their combined resources, Havenwould come up with tech-savvy answers to healthcare problems, bringing down cost and giving member employees access to great care.

Dr. Atul Gawande, healthcare rockstar and author of "Being Mortal," was hired as Haven's CEO the following June. In the months that followed, Gawande still wasn't sure what he wanted Haven to do, saying months later at the 2018 New Yorker festival that perhaps the company would focus on middle class employees who didn't qualify for federal assistance, but couldn't afford commercial insurance.

It took another year before Haven, which wasn't named until 2019, got its first test project off the ground. That short-lived effort was ultimately defunded, which Gawande told employees was thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. During Haven's short tenure, it also faced lawsuits from rivals, lost top leadership, and ultimately couldn't settle on a direction, showing once again thathealthcare in the US is a network of problems that is difficult to solve.

The industry had high expectations for Haven.

Stocks of healthcare companies plummeted on the day JPMorgan, Berkshire Hathaway, and Amazon announced the joint venture in 2018, as investors feared that the massive employers would have success in reducing the $3.8 trillion the country spends on healthcare each year, more than 20% of which is waste, estimates indicate.

Haven, however, never came up with an answer as complicated as the problems it was trying to solve for employees based all around the country in a range of different jobs from warehouse workers to Wall Street bankers.

"Haven's founders tested the hypothesis that innovation in healthcare can be adopted at scale, and on the same pace, across different local and regional environments in the US," Tom Cassels, president of Rock Health, told Business Insider on Monday.

"It turns out that one size doesn't fit all when it comes to what individual employers want to stand behind and what their employees personally value," he said.

In a statement, Haven's Thurston said that the three companies would continue to work together loosely in pursuit of their individual ideas, depending on what makes sense for their employee populations.

When Haven was announced, Warren Buffet said that the "ballooning costs of healthcare act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy" in a statement. The new company was supposed to do something about that with technology, and not many other details were provided in 2018 or since.

That might've been Haven's first blunder. It was formed without a clear mandate and promised an abundance of resources, but good will from the founding companies soon burnt out.

Read more: Amazon wants to build a medical care empire. Here's what that means for Haven, Amazon's joint venture with JPMorgan and Berkshire Hathaway that set out to fix healthcare.

Gawande, who was passionate about primary care, led the company towards its first big pilot. Codenamed "Starfield," Haven stood up an app that would connect employees to a dedicated primary care team, as The Information's Paris Martineau reported in July 2020.

Starfield, launched in November 2019, was expensive to build and similar to other telehealth apps, which embarrassed employees and bothered executives at the founding companies, The Information reported. But ultimately it's downfall was two-fold: an intense culture of secrecy, per that report, and an unfriendly relationship with Amazon, Business Insider found.

When it came time to roll out the app to JPMorgan Chase employees based near Columbus, Ohio, Haven didn't widely market the service because executives were wary of leaks to journalists. As a result, there was little engagement. Just two months prior, Amazon added to Haven's difficulties with the public launchof its own primary care service, Amazon Care.

Amazon Care connects eligible Amazon employees to home visits, remote care, and prescription delivery. Just like Haven, it's tech-friendly and works with a mobile app that's built around preventive care. The thinking is that better access to care on the front-end should limit pricey emergency room and urgent care visits.

Haven employees were shocked when they learned about Amazon Care through news reports in September 2019, according to The Information. But Amazon was working on the program long before Haven came along, two people close to Amazon told Business Insider.

"No one at Amazon was happy about Haven because it was a shot across the bow from Bezos that the internal team wasn't doing its job to control costs," a person familiar with the matter said. "Hence, everything Haven brought them was dead on arrival."

Soon after Starfield's launch, Haven began to lose funding, according to The Information.

Read more: Amazon wants to provide medical care to workers at major companies. Here's an inside look at Amazon Care.

In its short life, Haven lost a number of top leaders.

Jack Stoddard, Haven's chief operating officer, left in June 2019. Stoddard now serves as executive chairman of Eden Health, a startup focused on primary care.

Read more: A former top exec at the JPMorgan-Amazon-Berkshire Hathaway healthcare venture shares the 3 reasons he joined a primary-care startup as executive chairman

There was a score of layoffs in the beginning of 2020, followed by the shuttering of Starfield in April, The Information reported. In May, Gawande left his post as CEO. Serkan Kutan, Haven's chief technology officer, left in August 2020 for telehealth company Amwell, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Gawande became chairman of Haven's board and said his departure from the CEO role would allow him to focus on the coronavirus pandemic.

"This will elevate my focus from daily management to supporting Haven's strategy, board, and leadership. It will also enable me to devote time to policy and activities addressing the immediate and long-term threats to health and health systems from COVID-19," Gawande said in a statement at the time.

Since, Haven wasn't able to find a new CEO with fresh ideas or recruit top notch executives after the exodus that summer and spring.

The company told Business Insider that it shifted its focus away from primary care, without providing further details, in December. Mitch Betses, a longtime CVS Health executive, was brought on in March as chief operating officer, and took over Gawande's responsibilities when he left in May.

Some thought that Haven, under Betses' leadership, might turn to the too-high cost of prescription drugs for its founding companies. Instead, the upstart never recovered from a failed primary care project that divided leadership and ran head-first into Amazon's ambitions.

Read the rest here:
3 reasons why Haven, Amazon's joint healthcare venture with JPMorgan and Berkshire Hathaway, was doomed from the start - Business Insider

Welcome to 2021. The next few months may not be any easier than the last, but lets take it one week at a time. Heres the business and tech news you need to know for the days ahead. Charlotte Cowles

Under mounting pressure from both parties, President Trump on Dec. 27 finally signed a $900 billion pandemic bailout package, which he had previously opposed. The bill, which took months of haggling in Congress, averted a government shutdown and provided billions of dollars in coronavirus aid to hospitals, schools, businesses and American families. By delaying his signature, Mr. Trump allowed two pandemic-related unemployment assistance programs to expire, imperiling the livelihoods of millions of Americans. The new legislation reinstated them.

The aid bill may be official, but Congress is still debating one of its provisions: the direct-payment stimulus checks. Should they be $600 each, as the bill originally stated, or $2,000, as Mr. Trump has demanded? Democrats were more than happy to oblige Mr. Trumps push for higher payments, putting Republicans in the awkward position of defying the president if they disagreed. But the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, said there was no realistic path for the proposal, which he effectively managed to block by tacking on two other measures that Democrats would never agree to, including an investigation of the integrity of the 2020 election. The $600 payments started going out to Americans last week, and most recipients are expected to save the money rather than spend it and boost the economy.

If you have ever paid a hospital bill, you know how confounding they can be. Thats because the price tag of a medical procedure depends on the rate that each hospital negotiates with individual insurers. That amount is usually kept confidential and is substantially marked up from how much the procedure actually costs the hospital to provide. But now, under a new federal rule that took effect on Jan. 1, hospitals will be required to disclose the rates they negotiate with insurers or face fines of up to $300 a day. That penalty is peanuts compared with what hospitals typically charge both insurers and patients, but its a move toward transparency.

Did you cancel your vacation plans this year? I certainly did it seemed pointless to take time off just to sit at home. Apparently Im not alone, and now many employers are adjusting their vacation policies so that workers can hold on to the vacation days they didnt take in 2020. Instead of use-it-or-lose-it rules that require employees to forfeit unused vacation time at the end of December, a number of major companies, including Bank of America, Citigroup, and Cond Nast, are making special allowances for people to roll over their paid time off into the new year. Yet another thing to look forward to in 2021.

Everyone agrees that vaccine distribution in the United States is going too slowly, and the federal government fell far short of its goal of having 20 million people vaccinated by the end of 2020. But no one can agree on why. The Trump administration has blamed states for not moving quickly enough with the vaccines they have received. State governments say they need more federal funding. And holiday shipping delays arent helping, either. President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. criticized the Trump administrations handling of the process and cautioned that at this rate, it would take take years, not months, to administer enough vaccines for the country to be protected and the economy to reopen.

Another thing were glad to leave behind in 2020: Brexit and its incessant drama. More than four years after Britain voted to leave the European Union, the two sides finally agreed on new travel and trade rules, and the British Parliament approved the deal this past week. The arrangement will establish new customs procedures at Britains border and end the free movement of people between Britain and E.U. countries. But thats already happening anyway, as Britain reels from a new variant of the coronavirus that is raging across the country.

See the rest here:
The Week in Business: Happy New Year, Heres $600 - The New York Times

Happy New Year, and Happy 12th Genesis Block anniversary! The Genesis Block timestamps the beginning of the Bitcoin blockchainand since Bitcoin SV (BSV) is the only blockchain that still maintains Bitcoins original protocol, its BSVs holiday alone to celebrate.

The Bitcoin Genesis Block is also known as Block #0, and was not mined in the way subsequent Bitcoin blocks were. Instead it was constructed by creator Satoshi Nakamoto, aka Dr. Craig S. Wright, as a reference point and hard coded into the protocol software, using a key value pre-computed externally. Bitcoin Block #1, mined six days later using the protocols proof-of-work algorithm after Satoshi released the software to the public, marks the true beginning of Bitcoin as we know it today. You can read more details and trivia on Bitcoins birth story here.

Satoshis easter egg

We cant talk about the Bitcoin Genesis Block without mentioning the now-famous easter egg Satoshi coded into the original 50 Bitcoin coinbase. It reads:

The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.

If only government bank bailouts were our biggest economic problem in 2021! Dr. Wright has said he included this line as a real-world timestamp to mark Bitcoins beginning, and also as a call for accountability and transparency. Bitcoin was created on capitalist principles (sadly lacking in todays economy) with built-in incentives to reflect them. It is neither anti-bank nor anti-government, but exists on a global ledger of truth that would make their decisions and actions more honest, since theyre recorded on the blockchain forever.

On the Genesis Blocks 10th anniversaryin 2019 and less than two months after Bitcoin BSV formally declared its independenceBSV mined a transaction block 103MB in size. This was the first ever Bitcoin block to top 100MB, making a mockery of those who claimed for years that the network couldnt scale.

Restoring the original Bitcoin protocol

Today there are still other blockchains that claim or use the Bitcoin name. The best-known are BTC and BCH. However neither of those chains follow the original protocol rules and may even be using Bitcoins 12-year long transaction database illegally. BSV is the only true version of Bitcoin still in existence today.

BTC officially separated from the Bitcoin blockchain when its developers introduced SegWit, or segregated witness that separated digital signatures from the transaction block data. They also decided to keep transaction blocks limited to 1-4MB in size, and move all but large payments to separate networks (still in development) outside the blockchain.

These changes not only made BTC transactions unfeasibly expensive, but also broke the ability to legally prove Bitcoin ownership, and many transactions. That may have been intentional, or it may have stemmed from a poor understanding of what Bitcoin was supposed to be. It was never meant for anonymous payments and it was never meant to be digital gold, traded but never moved. Bitcoin was designed to be used for millions of transactions a day, and it was designed to be auditable. Without these factors, Bitcoin has no place in the world.

BCH avoided SegWit and tiny blocks, but it had its own plans to change the protocol. So in November 2018, those wishing to keep only the original rules bid them farewell as well. Thus was Bitcoin Satoshi Vision, Bitcoin SV, or BSV, born. BSV developers restored the Bitcoin protocol software as it was originally released in February 2020 with the public release of Genesis. Bitcoin today, as BSV, has no transaction block limits and can handle transactions for around 1/100 of a U.S. cent. Its data processing capabilities are literally unbounded, and the network could one day replace the Internet itself.

With that in mind, its on to Bitcoins proper birthday, which happens in six days time. As we mark these anniversaries, its important to reflect on what Bitcoin is supposed to be for, and why its original rules matter.

New to Bitcoin? Check out CoinGeeksBitcoin for Beginnerssection, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about Bitcoinas originally envisioned by Satoshi Nakamotoand blockchain.

See the original post:
12 years since the Genesis block: A reminder of what Bitcoin is really about - CoinGeek

New Jersey, United States,- The report, titled Free Music Making Software Market Research Report is based on the extensive analysis of analysts and contains detailed information on the global market area. A detailed examination of the business landscape, as well as the essential parameters that shape the marketing matrix of the market, is included.

A thorough qualitative and quantitative study of the global market has been conducted in this report. The study takes into account various important aspects of the market by focusing on historical and forecast data. The report provides information on the SWOT analysis as well as Porters Five Forces Model and the PESTEL analysis.

The Free Music Making Software Market research documentation provides details on drivers and restraints, regional growth opportunities, market size, as well as the spectrum of competition, prominent market candidates, and segment analysis.

The following Manufacturers are covered in this report:

The report aims to enumerate various data and updates related to the World Market while developing various growth opportunities that are believed to support the market growth at a significant rate during the forecast period. The report provides an insightful overview of the Free Music Making Software market along with a well-summarized market definition and detailed industry scenario.

A comprehensive summary revolves around market dynamics. The segment encompasses insights into the drivers driving the growth of the Free Music Making Software market, restrictive parameters, existing growth opportunities in the industry, and the numerous trends that define the global marketplace. The report also includes data on pricing models and a value chain analysis. The expected growth of the market during the analysis period based on the estimates and historical figures has also been factored into the study.

The Free Music Making Software market report provides details of the expected CAGR recorded by the industry during the investigation period. Additionally, the report includes a number of technological advances and innovations that will boost the industrys prospects over the estimated period.

The report further studies the segmentation of the market based on product types offered in the market and their end-use/applications.

Geographic Segmentation

The report offers an exhaustive assessment of different region-wise and country-wise Free Music Making Software markets such as the U.S., Canada, Germany, France, U.K., Italy, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam, Mexico, Brazil, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, U.A.E, etc.

North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, The Middle East and Africa

What are the main takeaways from this report?

A comprehensive price analysis was carried out in relation to product area, range of applications and regional landscape A comprehensive round up of the key market players and leading companies operating in the Free Music Making Software Market to understand the competitive perspective of the global marketplace Important information on the regulatory scenario that defines the market, as well as the inflow of investments from majority stakeholders in the world market An in-depth assessment of the various trends that are fueling overall market growth and their impact on global market projection and dynamics A descriptive guide that identifies the key aspects along with the many growth opportunities in the Free Music Making Software market A detailed documentation of a wide variety of ongoing issues in the world market that will encourage important developments

Some Points from Table of Content

1. Study coverage2. Summary3. Free Music Making Software Market Size by Manufacturer4. Production by region5. Consumption by region6.Free Music Making Software Market Size by Type7. Free Music Making Software Market size according to application8. Manufacturer profiles9. Production forecasts10. Consumption forecasts11. Analysis of customers upstream, industrial chain and downstream12. Opportunities and challenges, threats and influencing factors13. Main results14. Appendix

Verified Market Intelligence is a BI enabled database service with forecasted trends and accurate market insights on over 20,000+ tracked markets helping organizations globally with their market research needs. VMI provides a holistic overview and global competitive landscape with respect to Region, Country, Segment and Key players for emerging and niche markets.

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Excerpt from:
Free Music Making Software Market Size, Share, Growth Trends, Revenue, Top Companies, Regional Outlook, and Forecast, 2020-2027 - LionLowdown