Lei Feng Morning News | Xiaomi releases smart air conditioners and toilet lids; Alibaba and Ant Financial enter the rental market; Microsoft Surface has the worst reliability?

• Xiaomi air conditioner is here, and surprisingly, a toilet lid is also here
  

On the afternoon of August 10, Xiaomi's ecological chain company Zhimi held a new product launch conference, at which it officially launched the Zhimi full DC inverter air conditioner and Zhimi smart toilet seat.

The Zhimi full DC inverter air conditioner adopts pure white color matching and has a simple appearance design. There is a round display screen at the bottom of the air conditioner, which can display the temperature, power statistics and other status. This product is a 1.5-horsepower wall-mounted unit, using a Japanese DC inverter compressor, with an energy efficiency level of one, and the market price is 4,399 yuan.

Smartmi's full DC inverter air conditioner can be connected to the Mijia App, which can complete all common air conditioner operations, including mode, temperature, wind speed, scheduled power on and off, etc. In addition, the App can also view the power consumption of the product and intelligently recommend the most comfortable temperature. Through the Mijia App, you can set the linkage between the air conditioner and other devices.

The smart toilet seat has functions such as ceramic heating, hot and cold massage flushing, and external treatment filtration, and is priced at only 999 yuan. Su Jun, CEO of Zhimi Technology, said:

“I hope that in the future Chinese consumers will no longer think that toilet seats are products that can only be purchased in Japan.”

• Alibaba and Ant Financial enter the rental market; Sesame Credit waives deposit requirement

On August 9, Alibaba Group, Ant Financial Group and Hangzhou Housing Security and Housing Management Bureau held a signing ceremony at the Hangzhou Municipal People's Government Conference Center to cooperate in building a smart housing rental supervision service platform. By then, all rental properties in Hangzhou will be fully introduced into Sesame Credit, using its personal authentication, credit assessment, deposit-free monthly payment and credit blacklist and whitelist capabilities to establish credit files for landlords, tenants and agents.

In the future, every available rental house, every tenant, every landlord, and every intermediary service personnel in Hangzhou will correspond to a complete credit evaluation system. When renting a house in Hangzhou, you will no longer need to pay a deposit of one month and six months' rent, or pay a deposit of one month and three months' rent. As long as your credit is good, you will not only be exempt from the deposit, but also pay the rent monthly.

Domestic News

• Jia Yueting raised funds in Hong Kong and has paid wages to employees

According to the Economic Observer, an insider of LeEco revealed yesterday that Jia Yueting arrived in Hong Kong on Tuesday. The main purpose of this trip was to raise funds to pay the salaries of employees in the domestic non-listed system, compensation for former employees, and debts owed to suppliers.

Yesterday evening, there was news that the salaries of employees of LeTV's non-listed systems, including LeTV Pictures and LeTV Zhixin, had been paid, but the salaries were several hundred yuan less than usual. Personnel news said that the base amounts of social security and provident fund had been raised.

• Are you worried about China Unicom's mixed ownership reform? China Mobile Chairman: Do I look panicked?

On the afternoon of August 10, China Mobile held a half-year performance conference in Hong Kong. After the conference, a reporter asked Shang Bing, chairman of China Mobile, whether China Unicom’s introduction of Tencent and Alibaba into the mixed-ownership reform would challenge China Mobile’s monopoly position? Would he be panicked? Shang Bing said with a smile: Do you think I look panicked? China Mobile does not have a monopoly. The country encourages the first place, and Chinese companies must be the first. People who run businesses have a sense of crisis, but it is not necessarily to be worried. I hope everyone in this industry is well.

China Mobile's 2017 interim results showed that the company achieved operating revenue of RMB 388.9 billion in the first half of the year, a year-on-year increase of 5.0%; communication service revenue increased by 6.9%, higher than the industry average.

• Kingsoft Antivirus was ordered to pay 3 million yuan for unfair competition after changing its homepage

When you open the 2345 website navigation homepage, what pops up is the Kingsoft Internet Security website directory? On August 10, 2017, the Pudong New District People's Court of Shanghai heard this case of abnormal competition dispute: since 2014, Kingsoft Internet Security software has arbitrarily tampered with the 2345 website navigation homepage set by users in the browser to the Kingsoft Internet Security website directory during installation, operation and uninstallation.

The court made a first-instance judgment on the same day: Beijing Kingsoft Security Software Co., Ltd. and other three defendants immediately stopped their unfair competition, published statements on their three websites for 30 consecutive days to eliminate the impact, and jointly compensated the plaintiff Shanghai 2345 Network Technology Co., Ltd. for economic losses of more than 3 million yuan.

international News

• Consumer Reports: Microsoft Surface has a 25% failure rate in two years, no longer recommended

On August 11, the US Consumer Reports cancelled its recommendation for Microsoft's entire line of Surface laptops and tablets, including Surface Pro and Surface Book, citing the extremely low reliability of the series.

The Consumer Reports survey involved 90,000 laptop and tablet users. According to the results, Consumer Reports estimates that the two-year failure rate of Surface laptops and tablets is 25%, which is lower than that of mainstream manufacturers such as Lenovo (21%), Dell (22%), Asus (20%), Acer (18%), HP (20%), and Samsung (16%), and is significantly behind Apple's (10%) Macbook and iPad. In this survey, the main problems reported by Surface users include freezing, automatic shutdown, and unresponsive touch screens.

Microsoft responded that the Consumer Reports survey results did not match its after-sales data and did not believe that they reflected the actual user experience.

• Tesla workers: Factory not ready for Model 3 rapid production

As the mass production of Model 3 progresses, Tesla's Fremont plant in California will enter its peak production period, when the monthly output of Model 3 will increase from 1,500 in September to 20,000 in December.

This is good news for car owners waiting to pick up their cars, but not necessarily for the workers.

Tesla workers said that Tesla skipped the production prototype testing (soft modeling) stage of new equipment to speed up production, and they were worried that the company would have difficulty solving equipment problems that would arise in the future. In addition, the number of work-related injuries at the Fremont plant is already higher than the US average. Workers are worried that inadequate production testing, coupled with the upcoming overtime work, will increase the number of work-related injuries.

Workers are putting pressure on Tesla's board of directors through their union to address production environment issues first.

• Intel completes acquisition of Mobileye, investing $15.3 billion

In March this year, Intel was exposed to be negotiating to acquire Israeli smart driving technology company Mobileye. After more than five months, the acquisition was finally completed at a price of US$15.3 billion in exchange for 84% of Mobileye's shares.

The day before yesterday, Intel announced that it would set up a L4 autonomous driving test fleet to be put on the road for testing in Arizona, the United States, in the second half of this year. Future testing sites will also include Europe and Jerusalem, and the number of test vehicles will eventually exceed 100.

The New York Times commented: "Intel was more of a spectator in the autonomous driving competition before," but the acquisition of Mobileye has greatly boosted its autonomous driving ambitions. Intel has revealed that it will invest $250 million in the research and development of autonomous vehicles in the next two years. With the help of Mobileye's ADAS, high-precision maps, and sensor technology, Intel's autonomous driving plan has been greatly accelerated.

• Coinbase Becomes Cryptocurrency's First Unicorn

Leifeng.com reported on the 11th that the digital currency trading platform Coinbase raised $100 million in Series D financing, bringing the company's total valuation to $1.6 billion. This set a new record in the history of digital currency development, making Coinbase the first unicorn (a startup company with a valuation of more than $1 billion) in this field .

Coinbase's total previous financing amounted to US$106 million, with its last financing taking place in early 2015.

The company's CEO Brian Armstrong said that innovation in the cryptocurrency field is accelerating, various new projects are constantly emerging, and Coinbase is moving towards the third stage of its secret development strategy.

• Copying Alibaba's success story? SoftBank Vision Fund invests in Flipkart

According to Leifeng.com (official account: Leifeng.com), Flipkart, the leader in the Indian e-commerce market, announced today that it has accepted an investment from SoftBank Vision Fund, but did not disclose the specific amount. Together with the previous round of investment from Tencent, eBay and Microsoft, after the SoftBank funds arrive, Flipkart is expected to have $4 billion in cash on hand.

Flipkart has a 37% share of the Indian e-commerce market, while the second-place Snapdeal has a 14% share. The investment will make SoftBank one of Flipkart's major shareholders, but interestingly, SoftBank is also a major shareholder of its main competitor Snapdeal. Previously, SoftBank tried to promote a merger between the two companies, but the talks eventually broke down last month.

• Making history! South Korea will impose a "robot tax" at the end of the year

According to Leifeng.com, South Korea will reduce tax incentives for automation investment to cope with the reduction of personal income tax revenue and the increase of social welfare expenditure caused by unemployment caused by automation. This is widely interpreted as a "robot tax" - although it does not directly tax companies using robots, it overturns the tax reduction policy previously established to encourage companies to increase their automation level.

This is the world's first tax policy aimed at restricting automation and will take effect at the end of this year.