2024-08-03
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Apple puts pressure on Tencent and ByteDance to close small game payment loopholes
New Oriental denies dismissal of Dong Yuhui, both parties part ways amicably
WeChat Pay Malay Wallet stops operating, official says cross-border payments by Chinese tourists will not be affected
Xiaohongshu admits that it has "big company disease" and needs to start over
Lei Jun appeared at the Nürburgring Nordschleife, and the Xiaomi SU7 Ultra prototype will challenge the
Nvidia faces U.S. Justice Department investigation over competitor complaint
Suno admits using copyrighted music to train AI, but denies infringement
Yao Shunyu, a graduate of Tsinghua University's "Yao Class", joins OpenAI
Nintendo's sales fell 46.5% last quarter
JD Cloud President: Big models can only come alive if they are put to use
Huawei MateBook GT 14 and WIKO external graphics card cube are now available for pre-sale
WeChat earthquake early warning platform launched nationwide
New FLUX.1 graph model released, created by the original Stable Diffusion developer
Heeyo: An AI Friend for Kids
2024 Imported game licenses issued, Rainbow Six and Marvel Confrontation approved
The movie version of "Only Green" is scheduled to be released on National Day
News worth watching over the weekend: Apple puts pressure on Tencent and ByteDance to close the payment loophole for small games
Bloomberg reported that Apple is putting pressure on Tencent and ByteDance to make changes to their apps WeChat and TikTok.
It is reported that Apple has asked Tencent and ByteDance to plug the loophole that allows developers within their apps to direct users to external payment systems. This loophole allows developers to circumvent Apple's App Store channel's 30% commission, the so-called "Apple tax."
There are thousands of mini-games or mini-programs within the internal ecosystems of WeChat and Douyin. As these mini-games become popular, developers make profits by selling virtual items in games and guide users to bypass App Store payments in various ways.
People familiar with the matter revealed that Apple warned Tencent in May and asked it to remove links in WeChat mini-games that directed users to external payment platforms, otherwise it would likely reject important updates to WeChat.
Tencent has currently agreed to ban developers from circulating payment links, but Apple has asked Tencent to further disable the in-game chat function between users and developers because this function can also be used to replace payment links, which Tencent has not agreed to.
Another person familiar with the matter also revealed that Apple also used the ban on TikTok updates to ask ByteDance to plug similar loopholes. TikTok launched a program in June that allows Apple to collect commissions from in-app purchases.
Apple's move reflects its efforts to strengthen its control over iPhone platform payment policies worldwide. In the past two years, Apple has had multiple confrontations with game developer Epic and music streaming platform Spotify over the issue of providing external payment links within apps. This year, the European Union also required Apple to allow developers to guide users to pay in ways other than the App Store.
Apple’s financial report released yesterday showed that revenue in Greater China fell 6.5% in the last quarter and the revenue amount failed to meet market expectations.
The Information once reported that Apple and Tencent have always maintained a relatively delicate relationship, which is reflected in WeChat: Apple has always banned applications with mini-program functions from being listed on the App Store, but has approved WeChat with its "mini-program" ecosystem.
In 2017, WeChat on iOS closed the “reward” function for public accounts due to Apple’s ban. This function bypassed the App Store and transferred money directly to the author. Apple stated that if you want to reward, you must use the “in-app purchase channel” of the App Store.
New Oriental denies dismissal of Dong Yuhui, both parties part ways amicably
New Oriental issued a statement saying that the separation of Huitongxing from Oriental Selection was the result of friendly consultations and consensus reached between the two parties.
New Oriental issued a statement on the TikTok platform, saying that at the New Oriental Group's fourth quarter earnings conference for fiscal year 2024, an analyst asked about the company's related costs and expenses paid to Dong Yuhui, and used the term "one-time compensation." This expression was misunderstood by some people as a one-time severance pay given to Dong Yuhui by New Oriental Group in order to dismiss him.
But in fact, the separation of Huixingxing from Oriental Selection was the result of friendly consultations and consensus reached between the two parties.
At the same time, the company arranged to pay Dong Yuhui all the profits of "Walk with Youhui" since its establishment and all the funds related to the equity transfer of "Walk with Youhui". This is a support for his and "Walk with Youhui"'s continued development in the future, rather than severance pay.
In the recent "Talking with Hui, Athletes" program, famous volleyball coach Lang Ping and Dong Yuhui had a conversation. They called for not "only focusing on gold medals", saying that excessive attention to results is unfair to athletes, and everyone who tries their best should be respected.
WeChat Pay Malay Wallet stops operating, official says cross-border payments by Chinese tourists will not be affected
There are rumors that WeChat Pay MY (WeChat Pay Malay Wallet) will stop registering new users from August 1, 2024, and will officially stop all payment services from September 1, 2024.
The relevant person in charge of WeChat Pay responded to Interface News that the business is an e-wallet service provided to local users in Malaysia. Due to adjustments to the local business strategy in Malaysia, the business has stopped registration.
The person in charge emphasized that this adjustment is only limited to the e-wallet service of local Malaysian users, and will not affect Chinese tourists' use of WeChat Pay in Malaysia, nor will it affect the WeChat communication service of local Malaysians. Malaysians can also bind their bank cards to use WeChat Pay for consumption in China when they come to China.
Xiaohongshu admits that it has "big company disease" and needs to start over
Xiaohongshu celebrates its 11th anniversary and officially released its 11th anniversary letter, signed by Xiaohongshu founders Mao Wenchao (Seiya) and Zhai Fang (Mulan).
The letter stated that during the rapid development of Xiaohongshu, it had to be acknowledged that the so-called "big company disease" was gradually appearing within the company.
The two founders mentioned that they met some colleagues who were "particularly arrogant", some leaders who only spent time understanding the intentions of their superiors, and some responsible persons who were slow and hesitant in making decisions.
The letter stated that in the 11th year of Xiaohongshu, it is necessary to start anew and maintain the status of an agile and focused entrepreneurial team. It is hoped that Xiaohongshu people will be agile, focused, and get close to users and customer merchants.
Previously, there were media reports that Xiaohongshu’s top management was dissatisfied with the efficiency ratio and would start a new round of layoffs. An insider of Xiaohongshu also revealed that the average length of service of colleagues around him was only half a year, and those who had worked for more than two years were called "living fossils."
Lei Jun appeared at the Nürburgring Nordschleife, and the Xiaomi SU7 Ultra prototype will challenge the
Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun posted on Weibo today: "Nürburgring, here we come!", along with a picture of him checking in at the track.
At Xiaomi's annual speech on July 19, Lei Jun brought the Xiaomi SU7 Ultra prototype car and said it will officially go to the Nürburgring in October this year.
The full name of "Nürburgring Nordschleife" is Nürburgring North Circuit, which is located in the small town of Nürburg in Cologne, Germany, and is 20.8 kilometers long.
Later, in the Xiaomi SU7 Q&A session (Episode 51) released by Xiaomi Motors on July 24, Xiaomi Motors said that it was considering bringing the SU7 Ultra prototype back to China after the Nürburgring and showing it to everyone. The mass-produced version of the Xiaomi SU7 Ultra is also expected to be released next year.
Nvidia faces U.S. Justice Department investigation over competitor complaint
The U.S. Department of Justice has launched an antitrust investigation into Nvidia after its competitors complained that it may have abused its market dominance to sell AI chips, The Information reported.
It is reported that the relevant departments have contacted AMD and several AI chip startups in recent weeks to collect information about the complaints.
There are allegations that Nvidia pressured cloud computing service providers to buy a number of Nvidia products and forced them to bundle network cables and AI chips for sale.
The Justice Department will also investigate whether Nvidia offers higher prices for networking equipment to some customers who buy AI chips from companies such as AMD.
Nvidia responded that the company remains fair in competition, wins through investment and innovation, and strictly abides by all laws.
Suno admits using copyrighted music to train AI, but denies infringement
Suno, an AI music generation platform company, admitted that it had used music content from the three major record companies (Universal, Sony, and Warner) to train AI, but the company claimed that this practice fell within the "fair use" principle and did not constitute infringement.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed a lawsuit against Udio and Suno on June 24, accusing the two companies of using copyrighted music to train their models.
Suno CEO Mikey Shulman said they used medium-to-high-quality music that can be found on the open internet to train their model, although most of the open internet does contain copyrighted material, some of which is owned by major record labels.
Shulman believes that this behavior is no different from "a child listening to rock music and then writing his own rock song." "Learning is not infringing. It has always been so and it is still so now."
Yao Shunyu, a graduate of Tsinghua University's "Yao Class", joins OpenAI
Yao Shunyu, a researcher who graduated from Tsinghua University's Computer Science Experimental Class and Princeton University's computer science PhD, announced on the X platform that he has joined OpenAI. He said, "It's time to turn our research vision into reality."
Yao Shunyu's research achievements include: "Tree of Thoughts" that allows large language models to think repeatedly and improve their reasoning ability; SWE-bench, a dataset for evaluating the capabilities of large models; and SWE-agent, an open source AI developer.
Tsinghua University's Computer Science Experimental Class, also known as the "Yao Class," is dedicated to cultivating top-notch innovative computer science talents who are as competitive as or even more competitive than undergraduates from world-class universities such as MIT and Princeton University.
Nintendo's sales fell 46.5% last quarter
Nintendo released its performance report for the first quarter of fiscal year 2025 (the second quarter of the 2024 calendar year, ending June 30). The financial report shows that in the first quarter, Nintendo's net sales were 246.6 billion yen (equivalent to about 11.334 billion yuan), a year-on-year decrease of 46.5%; net profit was 80.9 billion yen (equivalent to about 3.718 billion yuan), a year-on-year decrease of 55.3%.
Nintendo's flagship Switch console sold 2.1 million units, down 46% year-on-year. Nintendo previously said a new Switch device would be released before March 2025.
Nintendo announced that it will launch a series of games in the coming months, including new games based on its big IPs Mario and Donkey Kong.
As game console sales slow, Nintendo will try to license IP for use in movies and theme parks. However, movie-related sales fell this year, with related sales falling 54% in fiscal 2025. The new "Super Mario Movie" is scheduled to be released in 2026.
JD Cloud President: Big models can only come alive if they are put to use
Cao Peng, Chairman of JD Group's Technology Committee and President of JD Cloud Business Unit, talked about some views on the application of large AI models in an interview with The Paper.
Cao Peng believes that big models need to be put to use in order to "come alive." "At present, there is no model that can solve all application scenarios of an enterprise. General big models can be built by stacking cards, but good enterprise big models must be used by the business." Cao Peng said.
Talking about the prospects of AI, Cao Peng believes that there is indeed a bubble in model training and overall computing power. From the perspective of commercial applications, he is more optimistic about the final connection of the B-end (enterprise-end) scenario, and believes that the current model is not sufficient to support its intelligence on the C-end (consumer-end).
Huawei MateBook GT 14 and WIKO external graphics card cube are now available for pre-sale
Yesterday, Huawei's new MateBook GT 14 notebook was available for pre-sale, positioned as a "super-powerful flagship."
In terms of configuration, the Huawei MateBook GT 14 notebook is equipped with an Intel Core Ultra processor, up to an Ultra 9 processor, and 32GB+2TB memory storage configuration, supporting 75W normal power.
In terms of screen display, the notebook is equipped with a 14.2-inch 2.8K OLED full screen with 100% DCI-P3, 95% Adobe RGB, 100% sRGB multiple color gamuts, and is equipped with 4320Hz PWM dimming.
The laptop weighs 1.49 kg and is 15.3 mm thick. It adopts a jet direct air outlet design and is equipped with USB-A, Thunderbolt 4, HDMI interface and SD card slot.
Huawei has also teamed up with WIKO to create a MateBook GT 14 external graphics card cube, equipped with an RX 7600M XT graphics card and 8GB of video memory; it has a built-in 240W power supply, supports 100W external power supply, and uses a Thunderbolt 4 interface to connect to the notebook.
The 16GB+1TB version of Huawei MateBook GT 14 notebook is priced at 7,499 yuan, and the external graphics card cube is priced at 3,999 yuan.
WeChat earthquake early warning platform launched nationwide
Yesterday, Tencent officially announced that the national version of the "China Earthquake Networks Center" WeChat earthquake early warning service platform was launched for public testing.
Tencent introduced that this is an official and authoritative earthquake early warning platform jointly launched with the China Earthquake Networks Center and the National Emergency Broadcasting of China Central Radio and Television, which will push WeChat earthquake early warning messages as soon as possible.
When encountering a strong earthquake, mobile phones with different systems will receive early warning reminders. Among them, mobile phones with Android system will receive full-screen early warning reminders and vibrations when the screen is locked.
Different intensities correspond to different warning colors and prompts. When the intensity is small and the magnitude is low, prompts will only be given in WeChat service notifications to reduce disturbance to users.
In May this year, Tencent was the first to launch an earthquake early warning function in the entire province of Sichuan.
New FLUX.1 graph model released, created by the original Stable Diffusion developer
Robin Rombach, one of the developers of the Wenshengtu AI model Stable Diffusion, founded the startup Black Forest Labs and launched the first model series "FLUX.1".
FLUX.1 includes three variants:
FLUX.1 supports a variety of aspect ratios and resolutions, can generate text images normally, and the depth of field processing is also consistent with the real lens feeling.
Black Forest Labs said that the company's next goal is to launch a SOTA Vincent video model.
Heeyo: An AI Friend for Kids
Unlike most AI chatbots, which prohibit minors from using them in their terms of use, Heeyo is an app that provides AI chatbots specifically for children aged 3 to 11, with more than 2,000 interactive games including books, quizzes, and role-playing adventures.
Heeyo also allows parents and children to design their own AI and create new learning games based on family values and their children’s interests.
Heeyo founder Qu Xiaoyin said that safety is at the core of Heeyo products, from the way data is processed to how chatbots interact with children on sensitive issues. Heeyo also complies with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act and does not request any personal information from children or store any voice data.
Qu Xiaoyin said Heeyo is a good help for children with special needs or autism, and can also help parents create stories related to their own culture and religion.
Heeyo recently announced the completion of a $3.5 million seed round of investment. Investors include OpenAI Startup Fund, Amazon Alexa Fund and Pear VC. The latest valuation exceeds $20 million.
2024 Imported game licenses issued, Rainbow Six and Marvel Confrontation approved
The National Press and Publication Administration has announced the latest approval information for imported online games in 2024. The following well-known games have been approved:
The movie "Only Green" released a release poster, announcing that it will be released on National Day, but the specific release date has not yet been determined.
The film version of Only Green is co-directed by Zhou Liya and Han Zhen, the original directors of the dance drama version, and co-starred by Meng Qingyang, Zhang Han, Xie Suhao, etc. It tells the story of a modern cultural relic researcher who, when A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains is about to be exhibited, delves into the heart of Xi Meng, a young painter in the Northern Song Dynasty, and witnesses Xi Meng's painstaking and selfless creation, and his work with countless workers to create a painting that will be passed down through generations after untold hardships.
✨ It’s the weekend! One Fun Thing | Turkish man wins silver medal with one hand in pocket
Recently, in the 10m air pistol mixed team competition at the Paris Olympics, Turkish male athlete Dikechi became popular because of his "relaxed feeling".
Unlike most shooting athletes who wear big earmuffs and professional glasses, Dickage wore a pair of ordinary myopic glasses and a pair of sleeping earplugs. He put one hand in his trouser pocket and held the gun to participate in the competition, and won the first silver medal in shooting competition for Turkey.
Netizens said that Dickage looked like he was just passing by a target shooting game stall at a night market and playing around. Others joked that Dickage looked like one of those retired top killers in the movies.
Some media found that Dickage's homepage has his life motto written on it: "Success doesn't come with your hands in your pockets."
What to watch this weekend | Frances Ha
"Frances Ha" was directed and starred by Greta Gerwig, starring Mickael Sumner and Adam Driver. It was nominated for the Golden Globe Award and the American Critics' Choice Movie Award.
Frances and Sophie have been friends and roommates for many years, but one day, Sophie moved out. Unable to afford the rent on her own, Frances looked for a new place to live, met new friends, and pursued her dream of dancing.
A Guide to Buying Books Without Reading｜《2666》
"2666" can be regarded as the masterpiece of Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño. This novel contains five relatively independent yet interconnected stories.
The novel revolves around the mysterious writer Archimboldi, a series of female murders in the Mexican border city of Santa Teresa, and the fate of each character. Through multi-line narratives and complex character relationships, Bolaño explores themes such as violence, literature, history, and human nature, presenting a broad and profound social picture.
Game recommendation | "Catch the Rabbit Together"
Paquerette Down the Bunburrows is a path-finding based bunny catching puzzle game. Players will control a character named Paquerette, and when she gets close to the bunnies, they will run away. The bunnies carefully move through tunnels and avoid dead ends.
Each level of the game is carefully designed to teach players new and surprising ways to catch rabbits.
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