So I ran into my old pal Aragorn, son of Arathornne, 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 Redletter Media, Second Win, 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 Redletter 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.
Doesn't 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 Lionus 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 onplatform
competition. You know, it's 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 USIsraeli chip designer Melanox 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 US announced tougher export controls on
certain chips and chipmaking equipment going into China. And now the Chinese
regulators accusation of monopolistic behavior from NVIDIA comes just as US
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. And no one knows that better than our sponsor,
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ground news vantage plan by using our link in the description. So, my other
buddy Gandalf, who is a white wizard at this point, good for him, told his
steed, "Shhatter facts show them the
meaning of haste." But I said, "Hold your horses, Fred. These quick bits will
do just just fine." Tik Tok might be sticking around in the
US after all. While in Madrid for the
US's trade talks with China, US trade secretary Scott Bessant told reporters
that the two countries have reached a framework on a deal to switch Tik Tok
from the hands of bite dance into US controlled ownership. Now, one key to
the deal succeeding was the fact that China is interested in Chinese
characteristics of the app, but the US doesn't care about Chinese
characteristics. Tik Tok has been given until September 17th to make a deal or
they risk being banned from the US, but this date has already been pushed back
before and probably will be again. The perpetual doom scroll 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 uh chip was called the Snapdragon 8 Elite. No genens 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 singledigit naming and adding Gen 5
isn't just a number, it's a signal that this platform leads the family forward.
And uh 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 Vox 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 in the channel. In a
statement, PMC's CEO Jay Pensky 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 intercorporate juggernaut
brawls. And TSMC is buzzing about their
newest announcement. Uh, 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. Uh the Taiwanese
business isn't just getting into this 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 their
facilities like at all. An uplifting
story, but one that makes me hungry. So, I'm going to 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.