- Whoa, jeez.
Ah, there's a lot of tech news flying around here today.
- [Riley] Linus, are you okay?
- What, you can't see them?
- [Riley] Are they in the room right now?
- Yeah, here look.
Here's one, boom.
- [Riley] Ah.
- Got him.
Meta suffered a monumental blow this week,
when it reported a drop in daily active Facebook users
for the first time
since the platform launched 18 years ago.
I don't have my prompter remote 'cause I threw it at Riley.
As a result, the tech giant stock dropped by over 20%,
wiping out over $250 billion in value,
the single biggest valuation wipeout
for an American company in history.
- [Riley] What about General Electric?
- Now, usually it would seem rude
to revel in others' misfortunes.
But after Facebook's tumultuous history of hiding data
about its problematic psychological impacts,
while leaking vast amounts
of user data that it sells to advertisers,
well, let's just say the internet
didn't have very many F's to give.
On top of all that,
Facebook is facing a lawsuit
from Australian billionaire,
Andrew Twiggy Forrest,
over what he describes as its failure to stop criminals,
using his image to advertise for crypto scams.
Making things more confusing is the fact
that Forrest is in the business of mining,
but not crypto mining,
like the real one.
- [Riley] Oh.
- Will Facebook survive of this?
Yes, yes, they will.
But it's okay.
Let's just a moment and chat and Freud together.
(Riley laughing)
- [Riley] Eat it, Facebook.
- In the Netherlands,
Apple has offered to reduce its commission
on iOS in-app purchases from 30%
to a generous 27%,
when users use a payment processor other than Apple Pay.
- [Riley] How nice.
- And honestly, I feel like we should be thanking them.
3% can do a lot,
if you invest it.
- [Riley] They're still doing well.
- The announcement comes
after Dutch regulators ordered Apple
to allow the use of third-party payment processors
in iOS dating apps and fined the company 5 million euros
for missing the first deadline to comply.
Many experts analyzing the Epic-V-Apple lawsuit
expected Apple to continue to charge a commission,
if third party payments were allowed.
But since a 3%-drop might not actually
even cover the transaction fees
of whatever Apple Pay alternative is used,
many developers are wondering if switching is worth it.
And then, there's also the fact
that you're trying to use iOS,
Apple's intellectual property,
without paying them a third of your income.
Have you any morals?
- [Riley] Can you imagine getting a desktop
that's for free?
- That's their property in the metaverse.
And Intel has pulled another Intel
with a new report comparing the number
of hardware vulnerabilities found in Intel's chips
versus those from its arch enemy, AMD.
Intel's 2021 security report notes
that 31 flaws were discovered in AMD CPUs,
while only 16 were found in Intels.
Intel did have almost twice AMD's flaws in their GPUs,
but actually, apparently,
that's due to a component found
in Intel graphics chips made by (coughs) AMD.
- [Riley] They're beautiful flaws.
- This would all kind of make sense
if every flaw was equally dangerous,
but not all vulnerabilities are as bad
as the one in Helm's Deep.
That single explosive,
I mean, we didn't see that coming.
Besides, Intel and AMD should probably focus
on unity right now,
since 23 serious flaws were just found in UEFI firmware
that's actually used by both
of the companies and many others.
So it's time to stop fighting.
- [Riley] Yeah.
- I mean keep fighting,
but fight bad guys,
not each other.
- [Riley] Oh.
- And no groin shots.
Time for a Riley break.
- Now, it's time for "Quick Bits"
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- You, guys, totally thought
I was gonna give you a break from Riley,
but it was a break of Riley.
- [Riley] Was it a what?
- Google has gotten into the right-to-repair spirit
with their new Chromebook repair program,
which will help schools set up repair facilities,
partially run by and for students.
The program is obviously meant to help Google compete
against recent pro-repair moves made by Microsoft.
But that doesn't mean we can't celebrate the fact
that the program encourages fixing devices,
instead of chucking them.
There's a different school program for that.
- [Riley] That's a star player.
- Twitter is initiating a wider rollout
of its Reddit-esque downvoting feature,
which will now be offered to a selection of users worldwide.
For now, the downvotes will only be visible
to the user that does the downvoting,
so you won't have the satisfaction
of knowing you just taught that person a lesson.
And they're probably still just gonna post the same meme
for the 200th time.
But to be fair, guys,
it is a funny meme.
- [Riley] Great GIF.
- Amazon is increasing the price
of its all-encompassing Prime subscription service
for the first time in four years.
Now, access to free same-day shipping,
ha ha not really free,
some books and music,
some Twitch stuff,
and some TV shows that,
It says mediocre in here,
but I don't know-
- [Riley] They're okay.
- I haven't watched any of them,
will cost 139 US dollars a year instead of 119.
Thankfully, there is a way to secure one more year
at the old price,
that'll be in the news sources down below,
or you could just not.
- [Riley] eBay is a thing.
- I mean, Daddy Bezos gotta have them rebuild
that bridge for his yacht, right?
- [Riley] He should have the rocket.
- Rockstar has confirmed
that Grand Theft Auto V will go
through one more zombie mutation
and lurch (groans)
onto Playstation 5 and Xbox series S and X
on March 15th.
- [Riley] Not bad.
- The studio also announced
that they're working on the next Grand Theft Auto,
which will come out at some point,
probably involve stealing cars-
- [Riley] What?
- Maybe Grand Theft Auto Vs.
- [Riley] In space.
- In space. (laughing)
We could be wrong.
And Meta might be struggling,
but they are adding a personal boundary system
to their Horizon Virtual Reality World,
VR chat, poppy thing.
It will prevent other avatars
from getting too close to yours,
which may help prevent virtual harassment
initiated by creeps online.
Somehow, those creeps got online.
- [Riley] What?
- How do they do that?
- [Riley] Stop.
- Although pushing up against the boundary
would probably be just as creepy,
they're just, yeah,
let's make it-
- [Riley] Right, it's just like if they're just here.
Is that as-
- Yeah, it's still weird.
And what's also weird is this video's over.
- [Riley] What?
- There was all that tech news flying around.
I swear I saw it.
- Not, it's in your mind.
- That wasn't that much.
- [Riley] Get it.
Get this man some help.
- We need more of us.
Come back on Monday.