Global Breaking News - Monday, December 23, 2024

Zhang Dayi makes a living by livestreaming. And for her, it's turned into a very lucrative business. In fact, she's a millionaire. Dayi films herself talking about items of clothing and answers questions on anything from its sizing to smell. Ahead of China's online shopping festival "Double-12", the equivalent of e-commerce giant Alibaba's Single's Day, millions have watched her every move - and provided affirmation in the form of 'likes'. The secret to her success? Well, she says it takes dedication, ambition and the direct communication that comes with livestreaming. "I started my shop in the second half of 2014. At first, I used a form of photo and text, and then short videos, and then gradually used livestreaming as a tool to frequently chat with users. I think livestreaming is an all-around and more direct way of communication. Along with the development of the internet and changes to online platforms, we are also optimizing ourselves. I think when it comes to us selling products, it is a very effective way to convince users and communicate with them as well as establish trust with them." Dayi dipped her toe into the world of live-streaming when Alibaba started testing the service. She has four businesses - which earned 48.6 million US dollars across the Singles Day event in November.

Amazon's order of a big stake in food delivery group Deliveroo could be going astray. The tech giant led a 575 million dollar fundraising for the firm in May. That pitched it against the likes of Uber Eats and Just Eat in the global market for takeaway food deliveries. But now UK regulators say the deal raises 'serious competition concerns'. The Competition and Markets Authority flagged two problems. It says the tie-up could deter Amazon from providing its own delivery service, to the detriment of consumers. And it says competition could suffer in the emerging market for convenience grocery deliveries. Amazon and Deliveroo have already established leading positions in that market. Now the regulators say they could start a full investigation of the deal. That's if the two firms fail to provide legally binding proposals that address the concerns.

Netflix may have racked up the most Golden Globe nominations of any media company this awards season but that's not easing worries of a customer exodus. Shares of Netflix are down Tuesday after receiving their fourth Wall Street downgrade in two months. The premise behind Tuesday's downgrade from Needham: Netflix could lose about 4 million U.S. subscribers in 2020 due to rising competition from lower-priced streaming services including AppleTV+ and Disney+. In order to address the competition, Netflix is going to have to introduce a new lower-priced offering, according to the analyst who downgraded the stock. Another option: allow ads to play. Ads on Netflix? That's something the company has strongly been opposed to. Fear that rising competition will eat away at Netflix's sector-leading 61 million paying U.S. subscribers has weighed on investor sentiment , along with its heavy debt load to pay for all its original content. The stock is up only 13 percent year to date, while the gain for the tech-heavy Nasdaq is more than double that.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is placing the blame on President Donald Trump for Amazon's loss of a $20 billion cloud contract from the Pentagon - that went to its rival, Microsoft. In a complaint filed Monday, Amazon said Trump's bias played a role in the decision and that the U.S. President launched repeated attacks in public and behind-the-scenes to steer the Pentagon contract, known as JEDI, away from Amazon Web Services. The company claims Trump's motive was to "harm his perceived political enemy," Jeff Bezos, who is also the owner of the Washington Post. The president has not been quiet about his dislike of Bezos and Amazon, repeatedly launching attacks against both. As a result, the company claims the scrutiny made it impossible for the Pentagon to judge a winner fairly. Amazon is now calling on the Pentagon to reevaluate the proposals that were submitted and issue a new award.

Fungus headphones don't sound like they should be a good idea, but Finnish researchers have bio-engineered a prototype that they believe is worth listening to. The Korvaa headphones were created in a joint effort by 3 sets of scientists who hope their creation may one day even replace traditional plastics in everyday consumer electronics. Senior Scientist, Geza Szilvay explains how they've refined the process. "So we have hard plastics, like bioplastic here, then we have soft cushioning made from fungal foaming protein and cellulose. And then we have a fungal leather-like material covering the cushion parts." According to the Pezhman Mohammadi from the Technical Research Center of Finland, the aim of the project is to raise awareness about the possibilities of using microbes in sustainable production process. "We wanted to combine these different materials into the headset because we thought it was a great opportunity to combine different materials and no one had done it before actually to bring all the different microbes into the development of an electronic device." The soft padding of the headphone cushions is made by combining the foaming protein produced by a fungus with cellulose. 3D-printing then makes the more rigid parts along with biodegradable PLA plastic made from lactic acid produced by yeast. These headphones aren't commercially available just yet, but the team hopes to hear more about them very soon.