Science and Technology Morning Post丨Apple will suspend the sale of Apple Watch Series 9 in the United States, and the number of fans of Oriental Selection has rebounded to more than 30 million

苹果将在美暂停销售Apple Watch Series 9及Ultra 2

On the evening of December 18, Beijing time, Apple said in a statement to the media that it would stop selling Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 smart watch products in the United States later this week.

As for the specific end time, from December 21 at 3 p.m. EST, Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 will no longer be available for purchase from Apple's official website in the United States, and the inventory of these two products in Apple retail stores will not be restocked after they are sold out on December 24.

Apple's suspension of sales of some Apple Watches was affected by Apple's previous patent dispute with medical device company Masimo. In October 2013, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled that the two Apple Watch watches infringed some of Masimo's blood oxygen sensor patents, and therefore required Apple to "stop and terminate" the import and sale of its Apple Watch with blood oxygen detection function.

Chen Xiaohua resigned as chairman and executive director of Kuaigou Dache

On December 18, Kuaigou Dache announced on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that due to other affairs, Chen Xiaohua will resign as chairman and executive director from December 19, 2023, and will no longer serve as a member of the company's nomination committee and any position in the group. At the same time, Yu Wing-sze resigned as company secretary and process agent with effect from 23 December 2023 and was replaced by Ho Wing-nga.

Kuaigou did not mention in the announcement where Chen Xiaohua went after he resigned as chairman, nor did it mention who would take over his position.

According to public information, Chen Xiaohua was born in Shaoyang, Hunan Province in 1981, graduated from Xiangtan University, and joined 58.com in 2007 and became one of the founders of 58.com. In 2014, Chen Xiaohua founded 58 Daojia (now Swan Daojia) as CEO and chief strategy officer of 58.com, and later founded Kuaigou Dache in 2017 and served as the chairman. Kuaigou Taxi, formerly known as 58 Suyun, was established in 2014 by 58 Daojia.

Hema Fresh has suspended the opening of paid memberships

On December 18th, some media reported that Hema has been unable to open or renew members recently, and Hema manual customer service responded that from December 13th, due to business adjustments, it is temporarily not supported to open or renew Hema X members, and the membership rights and interests that have not expired before can be used normally.

In this regard, a person close to Hema told Jiemian News that Hema is vigorously doing discounting transformation, and after the price reduction of all products is completed in the future, there is no need to buy additional members to enjoy low prices.

In the context of the launch of paid membership in the entire retail e-commerce industry, Hema Fresh also officially launched the business in 2019 - paid members can enjoy members-only prices, milk tickets, meal tickets and other commodity rights, with an annual fee of 218 yuan/year. In the following years, the paid membership business of Hema Fresh has been adjusted many times, including the price has risen to 258 yuan/year, opened up with X members, and launched a diamond membership of 658 yuan/year.

At present, the paid membership of Hema can be used in fresh stores and X member stores, but it is not applicable to the outlet format, and the membership system of the Hema fresh format has been adjusted this time. According to the above-mentioned person, due to the launch of the "discount" reform in October this year, many products have achieved a direct drop in price, which has contradicted the original membership system in the best position in the channel, consumers do not need to buy additional members to buy low prices, so adjustments have been made, but the X membership store format has not been affected.

Dong Yuhui returned to the live broadcast room, and the number of fans of Dongfang Selection rebounded to more than 30 million

At 8 p.m. on December 18, Dong Yuhui, who had not carried out live streaming for nearly a week, returned to the Dongfang Selection Douyin live broadcast room with a new identity. He also appeared with Yu Minhong, the founder of New Oriental and the current CEO of Oriental Selection. Less than five minutes after the broadcast that night, the popularity of the Dongfang Selection live broadcast room exceeded 100,000, and after an hour and a half of live broadcast, the Dongfang Selection Douyin account returned to the level of more than 30 million after many days of "losing fans".

This live broadcast, which lasted for more than two hours, not only marked Dong Yuhui's official "return", but also his first time as a senior partner of Dongfang Selection, not just a dialogue between its anchors and users.

Not only that, this afternoon, New Oriental Education Technology (Group) Co., Ltd. also issued a notice appointing Dong Yuhui as the cultural assistant to the chairman of New Oriental Education Technology Group and the vice president of New Oriental Cultural Tourism Group.

Affected by a series of news, Oriental Selection also bid farewell to the stock price decline for many days, and closed up 21.9% today.

OpenAI releases a disaster recovery architecture to address large model risks

On December 19, OpenAI released the initial version of the disaster recovery architecture on its official website, describing its response process to track, assess, predict and prevent catastrophic risks brought by increasingly powerful models. OpenAI specifies four levels of security risk and says only models with a score of "medium" or less can be deployed. OpenAI said it will set up a task force to oversee technical efforts and establish an operational framework for security decisions, "We are building a cross-functional security advisory group to review all reports and submit them to both leadership and the board of directors." While leadership is the decision-maker, the board has the power to overturn decisions." In addition, OpenAI will develop protocols to strengthen security and external accountability. The disaster recovery team will conduct regular security Xi to test their business pressures and company culture.

Google Gemini revealed that it used Baidu Wenxin Yiyan training

On December 18, Weibo V@ Yan Xi and "AI Research Bureau" and other self-media broke out that when testing Google Gemini, if they used Chinese to ask Gemini's identity, they would insist that they were "Baidu". If you enter prompt words such as "Xiaodu" or "Xiaoai", you can wake up Gemini directly, not only admitting that you are Xiaodu or Xiaoai, but also asking the user if there is anything they need help with.

The situation quickly attracted attention, with many attributing the "gibberish" to the cliché hallucinations of large models, while others said it was biased in the model training data.

In the afternoon of the same day, when Jiemian News also did a similar identity test on Gemini-Pro, it was found that it had carried out model optimization and no longer admitted that it had a "connection" with Baidu. However, upon questioning, Gemini admitted that some training corpus came from Baidu, and also elaborated on the way to obtain data from Baidu's internal sources. It can be seen that half a day after the problem was exposed, Google technicians have basically fixed the bug.

Hu Yilin, the founder of Maverick Electric, started a new business, and the new company "Shiyanjia" has received an investment of 50 million yuan

On December 18th, it was reported that Hu Yilin, the founder of Maverick Electric, started a business again, and the new company "Shi Yanjia" TIMEZ has completed two rounds of seed/angel financing, led by Capital O, IDG Capital, Meihua Venture Capital, what is worth buying, Maverick Electric, Shi Yanjia founding team and individual investors followed, with a total financing amount of 50 million yuan and a post-investment valuation of 300 million yuan. It is understood that the TIMEZ platform will provide watch enthusiasts with global watch market data, watch AI intelligent identification, watch trading and other services with the help of artificial intelligence technology and the first self-developed AI vertical model in the field of watches - Watch JARVIS.