So I ran into my old pal Aragorn, son of Aerithon, and he says to me,
Riders of Rohan, what news from the Mock?
To which I reply, buddy, I don't know what you're talking about.
But I can tell you the tech news. YouTube has finally addressed concerns over view counts
raised by a good number of creators in recent weeks, including Red Letter Media, Second Wind,
and even Awkward Teenager with a full beard Linus Tech Tip, Sebastian.
YouTube's response, as delivered in a support article published this morning,
essentially boils down to skill issue.
It's all in your head. Get good, pleb.
The article first addresses the idea that the reason view counts suddenly dropped in mid-August
was due to YouTube rolling out age verification. This is a hypothesis that Red Letter Media talked about in their video,
but they referred to accounts that had been age restricted
as having restricted mode automatically turned on, which I guess led YouTube to spend this whole section clarifying
that restricted mode can only be manually turned on.
It's a separate thing that has absolutely nothing to do with what they call age restricted content.
Restricted mode restricts the viewing of videos based on whether they're appropriate for kids,
but that doesn't mean that the videos blocked by restricted mode
are classified as age restricted content.
Does it make sense? Yeah. This part of the response was super helpful
in not addressing the question of whether the age verification rollout,
which happened on August 13th, has anything to do with the massive views drop reported by creators around the same time.
So thanks for that, YouTube. The other major hypothesis going around is that YouTube has stopped counting views
from devices using an ad blocker, or they've changed the way they count views
in some way. But YouTube says, you fool, we've done no such thing.
There is no systemic issue that is impacting creators.
Okay, but there's just one problem. As pointed out by Linus and one of LMG's best boys,
Dan Besser on the WAN Show, while views have dropped,
the ratio of likes to dislikes has shot up, and the revenue per video is about the same despite lower views,
which would be consistent with ad blocked views not counting anymore
as YouTube creators only get revenue if the viewer sees an ad.
That's just how it works. Then there's this little detail spotted by Josh Strife Hayes.
It's views from computer users specifically that have dropped.
You know, the device on which it's easiest to install an ad blocker.
And you know what? You may have noticed our views have also been down since mid-August.
So let's take a look at our views from mobile. It looks mostly fine.
TV? Yeah, seems normal. Computer? Whoa!
Okay, but YouTube's probably right. We're just a victim of on-platform competition.
You know, it's just hard for me to grasp that because we're the only tech news channel on YouTube.
I checked. Eden, a Nintendo Switch emulator, has launched on the Google Play Store.
It's not the first Switch emulator on the Play Store. The infamous Yuzu emulator was also available on the platform
before being thoroughly destroyed by Nintendo's legal team.
Eden is a fork of Yuzu, apparently built by a team of masochistic developers.
Its brazen release onto the Play Store has fans excited,
but also probably wincing a little bit as they wait for a legal orbital strike from the Mushroom Kingdom.
According to Eden's Play Store page, the emulator focuses on high performance
without compromising aesthetics, compatibility, or stability.
And that concentration on performance is one of the more attractive points about Switch emulators in general,
because Nintendo hardware, first-party hardware,
is rarely the best place to actually play Nintendo games.
For example, just this weekend, Digital Foundry released a video about how the Switch 2's CPU
holds back the performance of games that use Unreal Engine 5.
With a nearly constant stream of new Android-powered handhelds,
the timing of Eden's release seems great, but we'll just have to see how long they can dodge the wrath of Nintendo.
Good luck, Eden, and I'm sorry for bringing attention to you. NVIDIA is being accused of violating anti-monopoly laws
by a Chinese regulatory body. These enormous corporations just cannot catch a break.
China launched the investigation into NVIDIA's business practices
back in December 2024 over NVIDIA's potential failure
to comply with government provisions in its acquisition of U.S.-Israeli chip designer Mellanox Technologies
back in 2020. The specifics of NVIDIA's breach of those provisions are still vague,
but the timing of this whole scenario makes a lot of sense.
The investigation into NVIDIA started only a week after the U.S.
announced tougher export controls on certain chips and chip-making equipment going into China.
And now, the Chinese regulator's accusation of monopolistic behavior from NVIDIA
comes just as U.S. and Chinese officials meet in Madrid for trade talks.
So maybe NVIDIA is as bad as China is making them out to be,
or maybe this is all just part of a political game between two global superpowers.
Or, you know, two things can be true at the same time.
So my other buddy Gandalf, who was a white wizard at this point,
good for him, told his steed, Shutter Facts! Shutter's at the meaning of haste!
But I said, hold your horses, friend. These quick bits will do just fine.
TikTok might be sticking around in the U.S. after all.
While in Madrid for the U.S.'s trade talks with China, U.S. Trade Secretary Scott Besant told reporters that the two countries have reached
a framework on a deal to switch TikTok from the hands of bite dance
into U.S. controlled ownership. Now, one key to the deal succeeding was the fact that China
is interested in Chinese characteristics of the app.
But the U.S. doesn't care about Chinese characteristics.
TikTok has been given until September 17th to make a deal,
or they risk being banned from the U.S. But this date has already been pushed back before,
and probably will be again. The perpetual doomscroll continues.
Speaking of which, Qualcomm has announced its next flagship processor,
the Snapdragon Elite 8 Gen 5.
A doozy of a name that kicked off a conversation about whether Qualcomm
had maybe had one too many drinks and skipped a few generations of chips.
That's because Qualcomm's preceding chip was called the Snapdragon 8 Elite.
No gens, two to four, I guess. The name caused enough confusion that Qualcomm felt the need to explain themselves
in a blog post, writing, Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 marks the fifth generation of our premium 8-series platform
since we introduced our new single-digit naming,
and adding, Gen 5 isn't just a number, it's a signal that this platform leads the family forward.
And why is it called Elite again? Because it is Elite.
Awesome, just checking, thank you. Google has had a lawsuit brought against it by Penske Media Corporation,
or PMC to its friends. The publisher of Rolling Stone Variety,
Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter, and they're also an investor in Box Media.
All my aunts, uncles, and parents' favorites.
PMC's complaint claims that Google's AI overviews
give someone no reason to actually click on the source of the information
that the AI just summarized, and that results in a loss of traffic for PMC's sites.
We've talked about this before on the channel. In a statement, PMC's CEO, Jay Penske,
said that PMC will proactively fight for the future of digital media
and preserve its integrity, all of which is threatened by Google's current actions.
And while I don't watch a lot of combat sports, I am here for inter-corporate juggernaut brawls.
And TSMC is buzzing about their newest announcement.
Ah, well, is that a pun? Maybe the company, the world's largest semiconductor manufacturer,
is getting into the honey business. Not the extension.
Nope. As Tom's hardware states, TSMC has worked with local beekeepers in Taiwan
to produce GME, TSMC-branded honey.
Okay, the Taiwanese business isn't just getting into the venture for the honey money, though.
These beekeeping efforts are to show off that TSMC is environmentally responsible,
and their operations don't affect the natural ecosystems around the facilities,
like at all, an uplifting story, but one that makes me hungry.
So I'm gonna go. If you enjoyed this video, please like and subscribe,
and don't forget to come back on Wednesday for more tech news. In the meantime,
I'm going back to having one-sided conversations with my TV
while I rewatch Lord of the Rings. Bye-bye now.