Amazon takes on Temu and Shein with Haul, Spotify guns for TikTok and YouTube
Amazon has launched a new outlet called Haul which caps the price of products on sale at $20 (£15.79), in an effort to take on low-cost retailers Temu and Shein. The online shopping giant unveiled Haul as a mobile-only experience available in its Shopping app for US customers on Wednesday. It says shoppers can expect “crazy low prices” on Haul products that are “worth the wait” of up to two weeks for delivery. Amazon’s Chinese e-commerce rivals have enjoyed rapid growth in recent years but also faced criticism over the environmental impact of making and shipping ever more cheap products. BBC
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are asking Americans who are “high-IQ small-government revolutionaries” and willing to work over 80 hours a week to join their new Department of Government Efficiency – at zero pay. In a new X post on Thursday that doubled as a job announcement and another one of Musk’s trolling attempts, the account for the newly formed Doge wrote: “We don’t need more part-time idea generators. We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.” The Guardian
Watch out, scammers. O2 has created a new weapon in the fight against fraud: an AI granny that will keep you talking until you get bored and give up. O2, the mobile operator arm of Brit telecoms giant Virgin Media (VMO2), says it has built the human-like AI to answer calls from fraudsters in real time, keeping them busy on the phone and wasting their time by pretending to be a potential vulnerable target. “Daisy” is claimed to be indistinguishable from a real person, fooling scammers into thinking they’ve found perfect prey thanks to its ability to engage in “human-like” rambling chat. The Register
While we still await the launch of Spotify HiFi (or a Hi-Res Audio tier of another name), the company continues to be busy in other areas. In fact, it’s latest major update could well be even bigger that an upgrade in sound quality. Announced by Spotify boss Daniel Ek during its Now Playing event in Los Angeles, the service is expanding more rapidly into video – not just music videos, which it has dabbled in before, but video podcasts and presentations from some of the world’s biggest influencers. It’s coming for YouTube and TikTok, basically. T3.com
A hacker has been sentenced to five years in a US prison for laundering the proceeds of one of the biggest-ever cryptocurrency thefts. Ilya Lichtenstein pleaded guilty last year in the case involving the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange being hacked in 2016 and the theft of almost 120,000 bitcoin. He laundered the stolen cryptocurrency with the help of his wife Heather Morgan, who used the alias Razzlekhan to promote her hip hop music. At the time of the theft, the bitcoin was worth around $70m (£55.3m), but had risen in value to more than $4.5bn by the time they were arrested. BBC
Drivers of new electric cars face paying £2,125 in luxury vehicle tax from next year in a move that is “at odds” with the Government’s net-zero agenda. Electric vehicles (EVs) registered from April 1 will attract an additional levy, known as expensive car supplement, if priced above £40,000. The hefty surcharge, which costs £425 a year, is payable annually between the second and sixth years of a car’s lifespan, even if the vehicle’s ownership changes hands. Zero-emission motors have been exempt from the levy since 2020, but Tory plans to bring them back into the fold from April are being followed through by Labour. Telegraph
