The depreciation of the Japanese yen has led to a significant increase in the export of PlayStation 5 consoles from Japan to China, creating a substantial grey market. The price disparity due to currency exchange rates and low shipping costs has made the Japanese PS5 consoles much cheaper for Chinese consumers. Sales figures for PS5 consoles from Japan to overseas markets have surged dramatically in the first half of the year. Sony declined to comment on the reselling issue, while Nintendo acknowledged awareness of the problem.

The Pokémon Company International announced a five-year, 25 million USD donation plan to support children and social equity globally. The initiative includes monetary donations and gifts of play, such as the Pokémon Trading Card Game and Pokémon Center products. Beneficiary organizations include Save the Children, KidsOut, and Stop AAPI Hate, with potential for additional organizations to be added.

The semantic matching problem in product search aims to retrieve semantically relevant products based on user queries. Extreme multi-label classification (XMC) models, which use TF-IDF vectorizers and sparse matrices, face challenges in model building time and hardware costs when scaling to hundreds of millions of labels. Enhancements in a tree-based XMC model have achieved over 10 times acceleration in model building time and a 25% reduction in hardware costs, significantly improving efficiency and reducing staleness before deployment.

Warehouse clubs, targeting middle-class families for wholesale buying, are gaining popularity in Shanghai, China. These clubs, like Sam's Club and the newly launched Carrefour, require a membership fee and offer goods at lower prices. Carrefour accused Sam's Club of monopolistic practices, which Sam's Club insiders denied. The sector includes other players like Metro AG, Alibaba's Hema, and Yonghui. Alibaba was fined for anti-monopoly law violations. Costco's Shanghai store reported high sales, while Carrefour struggled and sold a majority stake to Suning. Chinese brands like Fudi are also entering the market, with Fudi's store located closer to the city center.

China's Double 11 shopping festival, initiated by Alibaba, has evolved into a 22-day shopping marathon, starting from October 20. The extended duration aims to adapt to slowing e-commerce growth and netizen expansion, encouraging consumer participation and motivation. Sellers use price discrimination and complex coupon strategies to maximize profits, while the stretched festival alleviates the logistics industry's burden, despite some delivery issues. The festival, which began in 2009 to celebrate singles, now sees competition from platforms like JD.com and Pinduoduo, and influencers like Austin Li Jiaqi and Viya. Double 11's popularity has also spread to Southeast Asia, with platforms like Lazada and Shopee offering discounts.

The study presents a peak load shifting control strategy for rural home hotel clusters, focusing on a typical visitor village in Zhejiang Province, China, with over 470 rural home hotels. The strategy involves analyzing power load characteristics, proposing a 'No Visitors Day' model, and establishing a cluster control peak-load-shifting system using phase change energy storage. The system aims to reduce peak electricity loads, especially during weekends and holidays, by utilizing the natural conditions of rural houses and the characteristics of air conditioning power loads. The results show a significant reduction in maximum peak load and peak-valley difference, demonstrating the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed regulation strategy for improving grid stability in rural tourism areas.

The domestic shipments of smart home appliances in China are surging, driven by the 'lazy economy' which emphasizes time-saving and convenience. Chinese millennials and Generation Z are the core consumers, with major players like Xiaomi, Huawei, and Haier leading the market. The sector has seen significant investments, with companies like Aqara and Dreame Technology raising substantial funds. However, challenges such as security, privacy, and interoperability persist. The market is also expanding due to the growing elderly population, with wearable devices gaining popularity. Despite these challenges, the smart home market in China continues to grow robustly.