Holiday season e-tailing + more things

3 minutes estimated reading time

Holiday season e-tailing links –

Exclusive: Huawei in talks to sell parts of its Honor smartphone business – sources | Reuters – interesting move that move Honor out of the US sanctions. Less convinced that Huawei can focus on high-end phones as there was a supply chain and design synergy with Honor. More on Huawei here.

Amazon launches an AR app that works with new QR codes on its boxes | TechCrunch 

Why the Serverless Revolution Has Stalled | InfoqServerless computing refers to an architecture in which applications (or parts of applications) run on-demand within execution environments that are typically hosted remotely. That said, it’s also possible to host serverless systems in-house.

China’s Games Streaming Giants Huya and DouYu to Merge – Variety – Twitch analogues

EFFECTOR® -ROCK ON THE EYEWEAR- – amazing Japanese eyewear. More style related content here.

Samsung pulls BTS-branded products from online Chinese platforms | Financial Times – this just makes Chinese netizens look ridiculous. It shows a fragile nature in Chinese nationalism. The kind of fragility that could drive China to conflict as the party tries to stay ahead of nationalist sentiment

The ‘Fake Rich’ of Shanghai: Peeking Inside a Wannabe Socialite WeChat Group | What’s on Weibo – this shows the lengths people will go to be ‘living their best lives’. There have been examples of western and Russian netizens doing similar things for Instagram

Caterpillar bets on self-driving machines impervious to pandemics | ReutersFred Rio, worldwide product manager at Caterpillar’s construction digital & technology division, told Reuters that a remote-control technology, which allows users to operate machines from several miles away, would be available for construction sites in January. – They’re not self driving as the headline says, but controlled remotely: think drones not robots. John Deere had done work on pre-plotted courses guided by GPS for ploughing and spraying in large fields. However in agriculture, this is also tied into a bigger issue around the ‘right to repair’ making automation to date non-viable for many farmers

Taiwan academics told to identify as Chinese in journal | News | The TimesSpringer Nature claimed that under its editorial policy, authors alone could choose their affiliations, but said that it was “unable to enforce” the same standard on journals it did not own. It considered Eye and Vision, owned by the Wenzhou Medical University in China, as a “co-publisher” that operated under separate editorial guidelines. “The stipulations of this and other Chinese-owned journals with respect to Taiwanese affiliations are beyond our control,” it said. Its position has prompted outrage from leading academics in Britain, who have demanded that Springer Nature stop partnering with journals that operate under rules set by authoritarian regimes

#MyLevisMyVibe Hashtag Videos on TikTokEarlier this year, Levi’s tested the TikTok ‘Shop Now’ button, which allowed them to provide their fans with a more integrated shopping experience within the app. We are truly moving towards the type of social commerce that has already been going on in China for several years. Now Levis has come back for another big TikTok campaign. This #MyLevisMyVibe is a simple, fun way for people to play around dressing up with Levi’s apparel. What better way for retail brands to connect with their fans than by highlighting them trying on actual clothes? It reminds me a bit of the Asos #AySauceChallenge we covered a few weeks ago. We’re starting to see so many brands now use TikTok that the total set of case studies to draw from is getting larger. I also noted that the language used by Levi’s in the hashtag challenge says “Show us your authentic self,” emphasising the trend of authenticity we are seeing across all modern advertising. I must say that by seeing random people creating their own videos to voluntarily participate in a challenge, it really does feel authentic. – the take from Good TikTok creative

Orders from the Top: The EU’s Timetable for Dismantling End-to-End Encryption | Electronic Frontier Foundation – interesting that this appeared, alongside Five Eyes governments, India, and Japan make new call for encryption backdoors | ZDNet