What's that tech industry? You can do whatever you want.
You're immune to the laws of God and man. Oh, no, no, no, no, we're gonna stop
by talking about your activities in a kind of sassy way.
Oh, it's over for you. YouTube is now the world's largest
asterisk media company by revenue. YouTube's $62 billion in 2025 revenue beat even Disney,
which came just short at $61 billion.
Although it does exclude Disney's theme parks and cruises and merch.
YouTube won't catch up until they do that too. I don't even want to imagine it.
Jake Paul Cruz. To enter, you have to go through Mr. Beast's mouth.
Research firm Moffat Nathanson, wow.
That sounds like a fake name. Also estimates that the platform pulled in 40.4 billion
in ad revenue in 2025, more than Disney, NBC, Paramount,
and Warner Brothers combined. YouTube CEO, Neil Mohan,
stated that their current market position comes from YouTube's ability to bring together
human storytelling and the best of technology,
which sounds a lot better than saying, we pumped up platform full of ads and AI slop.
And it made us a ton of money. I guess we're rich now.
Part of that making money strategy was doing things like increasing the amount
of unskippable ads people see alongside their rollout of anti-ad blocker technology.
While the lion's share of revenue comes from ads, YouTube is clearly pushing subscriptions too
with YouTube premium, YouTube music, NFL Sunday ticket, and YouTube TV all driving growth.
The report also credits YouTube's heavy investment in AI tools, which gives creators the ability
to generate slop content faster than ever,
helping them take shorts to 200 billion views a day.
Take that, TikTok, you're not better than us. That's YouTube.
But some of the features YouTube has added are helpful, like this conversational AI feature on smart TVs
that'll let you ask questions mid-video. Like what ingredients are in a recipe?
What's the meaning behind these song lyrics? And would you still love me if I was a worm?
Intel has announced the Core Ultra 200S Plus lineup,
a direct refresh of Arrow Lake aimed at winning back the gaming market.
In case you forgot, Arrow Lake's disastrous gaming latency issues when it first launched
tanked its reputation with PC builders, and so Intel decided it needed to begin its apology tour.
This mid-range refresh features the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus,
packing 24 cores and the Ultra 5 250K Plus with 18.
At a price point of 300 bucks and 200 bucks respectively,
it's clear that Intel has done some deep soul searching.
If you consider soul searching to be realizing that AMD's 3D vCache stays winning.
Interestingly, Intel says these new chips are their fastest gaming desktop processors ever.
They now have a 270K that is faster
than their existing flagship 285K.
And I gotta say, as a lover of sequential value scaling,
this makes me furious. The refreshed Arrow Lake chips aren't just faster.
They come with new features meant to reduce frame time and latency bottlenecks,
increase instructions per clock in specific games to boost performance,
and support faster DDR5 out of the box. It's no wonder Reddit commenters view this
as a great deal, a better deal, if we can have some affordable RAM to put alongside it.
Like right now you got a cheap top tier beef patty,
but the burger bun costs five times as much, which seems like a problem,
unless you go full carnivore like me. I don't need buns.
I always have some kind of meat in my hands. Check out this guy's buns.
Some people like buns, I like the meat. Meta has acquired Moltbook,
the Reddit style social network for open claw AI agents,
not for people, that went viral earlier this year,
dropping any remaining pretense that Facebook is still for humans.
They're just waiting until they can go mask off. Moltbook's creators will join Meta superintelligence Labs
where they'll presumably come up with applications for their always on agent directory
that are more practical than automating rage bait posts.
Axios, which broke the story, reported that existing Moltbook users
can continue letting their agents use the platform,
though Meta signaled that's likely going to change.
While some big names in the AI world, like Andre Carpathi,
hyped it up to be a singularity event, much of the viral activity around Moltbook
was people using it to artificially increase the value of meme coins for pump and dump schemes,
which was possible because the whole thing was incredibly insecure. The acquisition is another step in Meta CEO
and puppet yearning to be a real boy, Mark Zuckerberg's strategy,
to flood the world with more soulless bots
so he can feel more normal. When you wish upon a star.
He's like, someday everyone will have dead eyes like me.
On an earnings call last year, Zuckerberg stated his intention for every business
to have a business AI, wearing a suit,
just like they have an email address and website. While on the consumer side,
people are speculating that agents would find deals,
manage bookings and shop on your behalf. So to translate this from corporate,
the end game is agents making and posting the ads,
agents looking at the ads and buying the stuff in the ads,
and then the middle Zuckerberg is managing all that infrastructure
and charging advertisers for it. And what will the humans do?
Nothing, the agents don't need us here for this. They're just fine.
We'll be in the metaverse. No, it's not dead. Oh man, tech industry, you're looking a little woozy.
Just can't handle all this sass, can you? Well, there's more where that came from.
Quick bits, go! They're like Pokemon.
Apple's MacBook Neo officially launched today
and Windows PC makers are terrified.
Reviews are glowing, calling the A18 Pro-powered budget laptop
an absolute game changer for everyday users. Not the people like you mostly, okay?
It's the normal people. It's going so well that even ASUS co-CEO, S.Y. Sue,
admitted during a Tuesday earnings call that the $600 price point
is a shock to the entire industry. He simultaneously also tried downplaying the Neo
as just a content consumption tablet with a keyboard.
Yeah, and a pizza is just bread with stuff on it.
And it changed the world. Hisense is facing backlash
for forcing non-skippable ads on users
while they're doing basic TV functions, like switching HDMI inputs, changing channels,
and navigating the home screen. This is crazy.
Apparently an update to the Vida OS used on these TVs
caused the spot tests to completely bypass
user privacy settings. While Hisense claims the tests were limited to Spain,
users from the UK, Germany, and Australia have shared similar experiences.
Well, you want content without watching any ads? That's not how it works now.
It's like Mama always said, you gotta eat your veggies before dessert,
except now the veggies are bad for you. A federal judge has ordered perplexity
to stop its AI agents from shopping on Amazon.
They're making the other shoppers feel unsafe. They're jumping on tables in the food court.
Ha, ha, ha, ha. The judge said there was strong evidence
that perplexity's comment browser accessed user accounts
without authorization, then collected information
from the website while disguising itself as a Chrome browser.
Perplexity was given one week to appeal before the order takes effect.
Soon after the ruling, the American Bar Association reported getting DDoS'd by a swarm of AI agents,
all searching what to do when being sued by Amazon.
Pretend to be Chrome, please. No mistakes, no M dashes.
That'll do it. Microsoft released a new Windows 11 update
that, shockingly, you may actually want to install.
What? Power users get a native taskbar network speed test,
Sysmon integration for performance tracking, and quick machine recovery to fix unbootable PCs.
There's even Emoji 16.0, an improved backup restoration for fresh installs.
The patch also fixes two publicly disclosed zero-day vulnerabilities and 79 other flaws.
Close. It's a rare moment of Microsoft providing genuine utility.
It's nice to see them finally focus on the operating part of the operating system.
It's a system for ads? No, no, no, no, we gotta get back to...
And thanks to leaker Evan Blass, we now have renders of an unannounced Lenovo tablet
with a big old JBL speaker slapped right on the back.
Complete with a built-in ring kickstand, it blurs the lines between an Android tablet
and a portable boombox. It looks perfect for watching movies in bed,
playing music on the beach, or becoming the undisputed most hated person
on public transit. Travis was almost beating you there for a bit,
don't you know what that to happen? Standing up on the bus.
It was on sale! And whether it's by train, plane, or automobile,
it doesn't matter what you use to get back here on Friday for more tech news, it only matters that you get here.
I want the tech industry to look into the eyes of the people they want to replace with AI bots,
and feel bad. So, I'll need your best sad puppy impression.
Oh, that's not... You know, AI will do sad puppy way better than that.
Just take a day to work on it.