YouTube will soon detect products so it can “recommend” them to you
Anyone else noticed recently that YouTube ads are becomingly particularly egregious? They’ve always been annoying but it feels like YouTube is doing its best to push people to subscribe to Premium and this latest update is no exception. YouTube is reportedly testing a feature that automatically scans the videos you watch for any kind of product so that it can “recommend” that you purchase them. YouTube has been making a big push into the realm of shopping and this appears to be the first major step in that process.
As written on YouTube’s feature support page, “Testing automated list of products detected in videos: We are experimenting with a new feature that displays a list of products detected in some videos, as well as related products. The feature will appear in between the recommended videos, to viewers scrolling below the video player. The goal is to help people explore more videos and information about those products on YouTube. This feature will be visible to people watching videos in the US.”
It seems a little weird to us that YouTube will be able to monitor the content of a video exclusively for the purpose of selling content when it can’t even efficiently detect videos that violate its terms and conditions. We’ll see how well this pans out in the future.
Source: TNW
John Cleese is selling an NFT bridge to mock the whole system
Ah, it’s always a good way to start a week when John Cleese is the first person you read about in the morning. The beloved comedian is selling a drawing he’s done of the Brooklyn Bridge on his iPad Pro as an NFT masterpiece, insisting that he won’t part with the piece unless it sells for $69.3 million. Of course, he’s not doing this to become rich, he’s making a statement on the whole NFT process. Talking to Vanity Fair, Cleese described NFTs as “another investment vehicle for the uber-rich.”
The bid for the crudely drawn bridge started at $100 and is currently sitting at around $36,000, which is lower than we would have expected. Cleese continued on to say that “technology is changing and moving so quickly that we can’t even see we’re standing in quicksand as we stare at a bunch of pixelated JPEGs, wondering what they might sell for next.”
Source: The Verge
Check out this new Lego Space Shuttle and Hubble Telescope set
This one is for all you Lego fans that desperately want to go to space. To celebrate the first space shuttle flight that took place 40 years ago, Lego has unveiled its latest set. It’s a 1:70 scale model of the iconic space shuttle NASA first launched into space and consists of 2,354 pieces. Not only does it look great but it’s also stuffed with cool little features like functional landing gear, payload doors that open and close, a moveable rudder and even elevons.
The best part is that the Hubble Telescope is contained within the little Space Shuttle. You can expose it for all your visitors to see or tuck it away, a secret shared between you and Lego. It looks like a wildly cool build and will be launching on 1 April, 2021. No word yet on whether we’ll get it in South Africa but Lego is usually very good at ensuring we don’t miss out at the bottom of the world.
Source: Engadget
Spotify’s got a new, cleaner home screen
It’s about time Spotify cleaned up the home screen for its mobile app; frankly, it’s been a mess for some time now. While it did tweak it last year to make it easier to find what you were looking for, it’s always felt a little cluttering and difficult to parse.
Given that the music streaming app has been on a run of great updates recently, it’s good to know that Spotify has announced that’s working to clean up the home screen even more by tweaking everything so that it’s easier to just pick up where you left off, particularly for playlists and podcasts. Unfinished podcasts will now be displayed at the top of the screen to make it easier to leap back into them while shows that have been recently updated will display a little blue dot to indicate that there are new episodes.
There’s also a new “history” button that will take you to a page that highlights what you’ve been listening to for the past three months, both in terms of podcasts and playlists. It’s a much-needed feature as it’s always been a pain to figure out what you’ve been listening to. Some decent improvements across the board! You can expect this update to roll out to your iOS or Android device over the course of the next month.
Source: Engadget
