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YouTube testing infinite scroll for long-form videos in-app

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YouTube testing infinite scroll for long-form videos in-app

YouTube is testing infinite scroll for long-form videos. This change, spotted in the YouTube app, could alter or even destroy an important gesture navigation for smartphone users.

YouTube app goes into infinite scroll mode for long-form videos

YouTube is by far the biggest crowd-sourced video-sharing platform. Hence, even the smallest of changes, or bugs, make a huge impact on users.

There have been some drastic changes to the way users can access or watch YouTube videos in the past year. In its constant battle with ad-blockers, YouTube even made some serious alterations that viewers didn’t like.

Some users have now spotted a small but important change to the YouTube app. YouTube is reportedly testing continuous scrolling for long-form videos.

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Several users have indicated that the change interferes with one of the key gestures that have made the YouTube app very popular. Specifically speaking, scrolling down to see the notification shade is now essentially broken.

Longer YouTube videos too going the YouTube Short’s route?

As spotted by Tushar Mehta on X (formerly Twitter), YouTube seems to be testing continuous scrolling for long-form videos. Currently, the change is noticeable in the full-screen video player.

Needless to say, this behavior is observable when watching YouTube Shorts. YouTube seems to be testing the new method, as the change hasn’t trickled into the stable version of the YouTube app.

To summarize, YouTube may introduce a scroll gesture for the full-screen video player for long-form videos. Currently, the swipe-up and down gestures allow users to enter and exit the full-screen video player respectively. However, moving forward, when YouTube app users swipe down on a full-screen long-form video, the app may play the next video.

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It is not clear if YouTube will deploy this feature. However, during the testing phase, if the device is in landscape orientation while a video is playing in full-screen, users are not able to minimize the video player with a swipe gesture. Needless to say, this gesture has been available for several years. But YouTube may change the behavior of the gesture.

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Watch autonomous cars do doughnuts and drift sideways round corners

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Watch autonomous cars do doughnuts and drift sideways round corners

Driverless cars can now do doughnuts and drift like stunt drivers, skidding sideways around corners while maintaining control, which might help the cars recover from dangerous situations

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Android is getting call scam detection, real-time app threat alerts

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Android is getting call scam detection, real-time app threat alerts

Google’s focus on Android safety and security has been pretty evident this year. From partial screen recording and private spaces to protection against juice jacking attacks, Android 15 has been quite a reassuring iteration.

Google is now injecting some more energy into that endeavor with a couple of new features that tackle the threat of scam calls and bad apps. These features are appearing first on Pixel smartphones, and will subsequently make their way to other Android phones.

First in line is Google Play Protect live threat detection, which shows real-time alerts for apps that pose a threat. “Play Protect analyzes behavioral signals related to the use of sensitive permissions and interactions with other apps and services,” says Google.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

The latest upgrade allows the system to send an alert as soon as it detects that an app is engaged in unusual activities. This notice will help users take necessary action, such as revoking access or uninstalling it, before a malicious app package does more damage.

The entire risk evaluation process relies on Android’s Private Compute Core, a safe processing environment that pushes for on-device analysis. Real-time alerts, originating from activity analysis, will initially focus on apps engaged in stalking behavior, and will soon expand to other types of harmful apps.

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Next, we have enhanced scam detection for calls. Once again, this is an on-device system, one that relies on AI to look for signs of suspicious behavior, such as a scammer asking for money or a code transfer.

A Google Play Protect alert
Google

“If a caller claims to be from your bank and asks you to urgently transfer funds due to an alleged account breach, Scam Detection will process the call to determine whether the call is likely spam,” explains Google. This feature is now available to users in the U.S. as part of a phase testing program.

Less than a month ago, Google announced enhanced scam detection for the Messages app, with the intent of preventing fraudulent and package delivery scams. As far as call scam detection goes, it’s an opt-in feature.

It will be set to “off” by default, and only when users enable it, will the AI be able to do its job. The AI in question here is the Gemini Nano model, which is running locally on Pixel 9 series phones. However, it will expand to the Pixel 6 series, as well as all the subsequent models.


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OnePlus 13 and 13R colors detailed ahead of global launch

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OnePlus 13 and 13R colors detailed ahead of global launch

The OnePlus 13 launched last month in China with some amazing features. As we await the global launch, the device was recently spotted on multiple certification sites. Another smartphone that OnePlus will soon debut in the global market is the OnePlus 13R. Previously, rumors have hinted that it could be a rebrand of the OnePlus Ace 5. Now, a tipster has detailed the colors and variants of the OnePlus 13 and 13R ahead of the global launch.

The color options of the OnePlus 13 and 13R surfaced online ahead of the global launch

The OnePlus 13 is likely to launch with similar specs in the global market as well. OnePlus debuted three different variants of the OnePlus 13 in China with 12GB, 16GB, and 24GB RAM options. Today, in a post on X, the tipster (@MysteryLupin) hinted that won’t be the case with global models.

The tipster mentioned that the OnePlus 13 will debut globally with only two variants. You’re likely to see one variant with 16GB of RAM paired with 512GB of storage, while the other will feature 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. That also means OnePlus wouldn’t launch the 24GB RAM variant of the OnePlus 13 in the global market.

Apart from these details, the tipster has also detailed the colors of the OnePlus 13 ahead of the global launch. If we consider the tipster’s words, the 16GB RAM variant of the OnePlus 13 will be available in Black Eclipse, Midnight Ocean, and Arctic Dawn color options. On the other hand, the base variant with 12GB of RAM will come in a single Black Eclipse color option.

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OnePlus 13R could be a premium mid-range phone

The tipster has also shared some details about the upcoming OnePlus 13R. According to the tipster’s post, OnePlus will globally launch the OnePlus 13R in only one variant variant featuring 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. However, that model might be available in two color options – Nebula Noir and Astral Trail.

In the past, a popular Weibo tipster hinted that the OnePlus 13R could be a mid-range device with premium features. Moreover, the tipster has also hinted that the device would pack the Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC under the hood.

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Alteryx adds tools for cloud, hybrid analytics deployments

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Databricks Apps a toolkit that simplifies AI development

The latest Alteryx platform update provides new capabilities to support all types of data management and analytics system deployments, whether in the cloud, on premises or a hybrid of both.

Included in the vendor’s Fall 2024 Release are the general availability of Standard Mode, a channel in Designer Cloud that provides new data integration and preparation capabilities for working with data in the cloud, and LiveQuery, a feature that improves integrations with cloud data warehouses.

In addition, Alteryx’s update, unveiled on Nov. 12, includes new connectors to data storage platforms, support for analytics applications, whether on premises or in the cloud and improvements to APIs designed to improve efficiency.

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Not included are the general availability of any significant new AI capabilities, which Alteryx tends to unveil separately from its general platform updates. For example, the vendor introduced its version of a generative-AI-powered assistant in May. However, one AI-related feature included in the Fall 2024 release now in public preview is Magic Reports, which uses AI to automatically generate insights.

Without any generally available AI features with the potential to change the way Alteryx customers interact with their analytics systems, the vendor’s Fall 2024 Release is made up of additive but not groundbreaking capabilities, according to Doug Henschen, an analyst at Constellation Research.

“The update is delivering mostly incremental improvements such as new connectors, app and user management upgrades and API enhancements,” he said.

While perhaps incremental, the update is providing customers with what they want, according to Jay Henderson, Alteryx’s senior vice president product management.

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For example, adding new connectors and improved APIs was driven by customer feedback.

“We’re continuing to prioritize functionality that makes the analytics user’s life easier, and their work more efficient,” Henderson said. “By combining customer-driven product features with cloud advancements, Alteryx is [meeting the] needs of our customers.”

Based in Irvine, Calif., Alteryx is a longtime data management vendor whose platform is designed to automate aspects of the data preparation process.

In December 2023, following a slow evolution to the cloud that led to an executive overhaul in 2022, Alteryx agreed to be acquired by a group of private equity firms for $.4 billion.

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Platform update

Standard Mode and LiveQuery are perhaps the most significant features in the latest Alteryx platform update, according to Henschen.

Designer Cloud is Alteryx’s cloud-based environment for data preparation, blending and analytics without writing code. Standard Mode is a new channel within Designer Cloud that contains added Designer Prep and Blend tools that broaden their potential applications beyond what was available and make it more efficient to work with data in the cloud.

LiveQuery, meanwhile, aims to improve Alteryx’s interoperability with cloud data warehouses such as Databricks and Snowflake by enabling users to work with data within cloud-based storage tools more directly. The intended results include reduced data egress costs, improved processing times and a lower risk of accidental data exposure.

“Taken together, the general availability of the new Standard Mode inside Designer Cloud and the LiveQuery capability for cloud data warehouses will be significant for any company that has its center of data gravity in a public cloud or multiple clouds,” Henschen said.

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Like Henschen, Kevin Petrie, an analyst at BARC U.S., characterized Alteryx’s Fall 2024 Release as an incremental update. However, he noted that including the public preview of Magic Reports is noteworthy because data and AI teams now view AI-powered tools and enhancements as required features.

Magic Reports combines advanced editing capabilities with automated analysis and AI to automatically surface insights and simplify reporting.

Petrie noted that BARC research shows that enterprises are optimistic about generative AI’s potential with nearly half of them reporting that generative AI will dramatically improve their use of analytics.

Magic Reports feeds into the concept of AI simplifying and improving the analytics process.

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“Alteryx is helping [data] stakeholders by providing them with AI prompts and auto-summarization of Magic Reports,” Petrie said.

In addition, Petrie pointed out the value of integrating more smoothly with cloud data warehouses including Databricks and Snowflake with LiveQuery.

“Alteryx is wise to integrate more deeply with Snowflake and Databricks,” he said. “The more they can help users transform and view data within those platforms, the better they can safeguard governance controls and reduce costs.”

Beyond Standard Mode, LiveQuery and Magic Reports, the latest Alteryx update includes the following:

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  • New connectors, including support for Google Cloud Storage and SingleStore, to enable customers to access their data more easily.
  • Support for analytics applications in Alteryx Cloud Extension for Desktop, which allows AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure users to deploy and manage custom applications both on premises and in the cloud.
  • New security controls for administrators.
  • API improvements that let administrators schedule analytics workloads and retrieve jobs in a move designed to improve efficiency.

Collectively, almost three years after Alteryx overhauled its executive suite, the new features continue Alteryx’s evolution away from serving only on-premises users to meeting the needs of customers with different types of deployments, according to Petrie.

“Alteryx’s recent turnover does show they have struggled lately,” he said. “This [update] helps by making their platform more automated and intuitive, which builds on its strengths.”

However, Petrie noted that customers still express concern over the price of using Alteryx’s data management and analytics tools — Designer Cloud starts at $4,950 per user, per year — and the level of its support for Python, a popular programming language.

“I’d be interested to see them provide more visibility into processing cost with, for example, FinOps features and enhancements to support Python-oriented users,” Petrie said.

Henschen, meanwhile, noted that Alteryx’s presentation of its latest data management and analytics capabilities — highlighting its support for different deployment types — is notable.

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Alteryx was founded in 1997, before the advent of the cloud. When data management and analytics shifted from exclusively on premises to cloud-based deployments, Alteryx was slow to adapt its data preparation platform for the cloud. Meanwhile, as it was evolving, other vendors such as Tableau and Qlik began offering data preparation tools in addition to their core analytics capabilities.

As a result, Alteryx lost some of its growth momentum, evidenced by modest revenue growth preceding its sale.

Now, however, as the cost of cloud-based deployments continues to grow, many organizations are reconsidering their data management and analytics strategies. Alteryx’s messaging suggests it’s trying to appeal to those enterprises.

“Alteryx had been struggling to become more cloud-centric and to deliver more value to justify new and existing licenses,” Henschen said. “Like many vendors with on-premises roots, Alteryx is … now reminding customers that it supports hybrid deployments, seeking to ride the coattails of the cloud-cost backlash we’ve seen over the last year.”

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Plans

With its Fall 2024 Release now available, Alteryx’s product development plans include adding more AI-powered data management and analytics features and continuing to add cloud and hybrid capabilities, according to Henderson.

“We’re committed to making analytics easier to adopt and use, enhancing AI-assisted functionality to improve productivity and providing cloud-based features that are both powerful and secure,” he said.

In addition, Alteryx’s roadmap includes improving the user experience to enable faster and more efficient insight generation and adding new governance and security features that meet the needs of Alteryx’s largest and most complex customers, Henderson continued.

Henschen, meanwhile, stressed that Alteryx needs to continue working to discover messaging that will attract new customers and help the vendor regain the growth momentum it lost during its slow transition to the cloud, which didn’t begin until 2021.

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If it doesn’t, the vendor could be a target for a merger or acquisition.

“The company needs to find a clear new direction to regain the sales growth momentum it once enjoyed,” Henschen said. “However, the competition is fierce, and budgets are tight, so we’re likely to see consolidation in the market overall.”

Eric Avidon is a senior news writer for TechTarget Editorial and a journalist with more than 25 years of experience. He covers analytics and data management.

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PBS programming is coming to Prime Video

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PBS programming is coming to Prime Video

Amazon and PBS have entered a partnership that will bring content from the public media operation to Prime Video. More than 150 local PBS channels and the PBS Kids Channel will launch as a free ad-supported TV (or FAST) offering on Prime Video over the coming months. The from PBS noted that this is the first time this collection of programming will be available on a major streaming service for free.

PBS Distribution is also launching two new FAST channels that will be available exclusively on Prime Video for a limited time beginning November 26. These channels are PBS Drama and PBS Documentaries. It seems Amazon is looking to focus on a lineup of FAST channels within Prime Video for free viewing, since the company announced that it is .

Having yet another place to watch public media content is a happy development for PBS fans. The broadcaster recently launched a FAST channel with Roku called PBS Retro, specifically with shows from the 1980s and 1990s for those of us who want to dive into a little nostalgic escapism.

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Snowflake Build 2024: the 4 biggest announcements

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Snowflake Build 2024: the 4 biggest announcements

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At this year’s annual BUILD conference, data architecture giant Snowflake went all in to give its customers advanced capabilities, including some long-previewed features, to easily mobilize their datasets to build and share powerful AI applications. 

The company debuted new tools for Cortex AI, its fully managed offering for developing conversational AI apps grounded in enterprise data hosted on its platform.

It also announced Snowflake Intelligence, enabling users to create ‘data agents’ that could not only answer questions related to structured (organized in tables) and unstructured data (PDFs, documents, etc.) on the platform but also take action across third-party platforms like Salesforce and Google Workspace using the generated answers.

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Below is a rundown of all major announcements:

Cortex AI enhancements

Ever since its introduction last year, Cortex AI has been receiving regular updates from Snowflake to simplify how developers create and run AI apps.

At BUILD, Snowflake continued to bolster this offering with new multimodal input support for apps in development, managed connectors to integrate internal knowledge bases to the apps, and knowledge extensions to tie third-party documents, like news articles, to the services.

The company also announced Cortex Chat API combining structured and unstructured data into a single REST API call for fast-tracked RAG and agentic app development; observability for the developed AI apps (building on the TruEra acquisition); and support for SQL Joins and multi-turn conversations in Cortex Analyst to unlock richer insights from structured data.

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Snowflake Intelligence

Using the enhancements to Cortex AI, including integration with internal knowledge bases, the company announced Snowflake Intelligence, a unified platform enterprises users can use to build ‘data agents’. T

The agents will use Snowflake-hosted business intelligence data as well as that connected via third-party platforms to provide users with instant answers to their business questions. 

Further, once the insights are produced, the users can ask the same agent to act on them across integrated third-party tools.

This could involve a wide range of tasks across third party apps, from automatically and autonomously creating an editable form in Google Workspace using the generated insights to modifying an entry in Salesforce CRM.

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Open Catalog, Document AI enhancements

Back in June, during its flagship summit, Snowflake and its industry partners unveiled Polaris as a vendor-neutral catalog implementation for indexing and organizing data conforming to the Apache Iceberg table format.

The offering has since been open-sourced and donated to the Apache Foundation. At BUILD, the company took a step ahead and debuted a fully managed, hosted version of the catalog called Snowflake Open Catalog. T

Now generally available, Polaris helps enterprises grow and evolve by integrating new engines and applying consistent governance controls. 

In addition, Snowflake also announced the general availability of Document AI, the product it offers to let users extract data from unstructured documents like invoices, on AWS and Microsoft Azure.

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Threat prevention and security monitoring

In light of the recent customer data breach, Snowflake has taken multiple steps to bolster the security of its users, including enforcing multi-factor authentication by default.

At BUILD, the company continued this work with the introduction of Leaked Password Protection, a capability that will automatically detect and notify customers if their Snowflake credentials have been exposed on the dark web (much like Google).

According to Christian Kleinerman, the EVP of product at Snowflake, the company may even go and disable the accounts with compromised credentials for account protection.

In addition to this, Snowflake announced a new Threat Intelligence Scanner Package for its Trust Center, the place where users see how well their accounts are configured.

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The feature will provide users with a risky user view, giving them the ability to detect when a potentially risky user is active along with the best steps to deal with the situation.

Snowflake’s Trust Center is also getting extensibility, which will enable third-party partners to leverage Snowflake’s native app framework and add additional checks and assessments to the dashboard.

Snowflake BUILD runs from November 12 to November 15, 2024.


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