Okay, I know you came in here for Tech news, but I thought we’d do something a little different. Okay, pick a card, any card. Wait, wait, where you going? Don’t leave! Fine, fine, fine, we’ll do Tech news. Was this your card though? YouTube’s war on ad blockers has entered a new phase.

Over the weekend, YouTube videos appeared to be buffering significantly slower when an ad blocker is enabled. Users flocked to a video posted on Reddit showing this effect. Interestingly, the issue has also been reported by YouTube premium users, or at least the ones that also use ad block. For some reason, you know, just in case. You know, to catch any stranglers. You never have too much protection.

YouTube’s war on ad blockers is real and it can hurt you if you use ad block. PC Gamer tested this themselves and found that their CPU usage increased by 177% when loading a YouTube video with an ad blocker enabled. YouTube rolled out personalized ads last summer and viewers need to see those personalized ads, okay? That’s important!

In other news, Apple is running out of time to add support for third-party app stores, side loading, and alternative payment systems to iOS. They have until March 7th to comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act. According to Mark Gurman, the high sear of catino court, Apple plans to split the iOS app store in two. The EU version would have all the cool new stuff, while Apple users everywhere else would still be imprisoned inside the walled garden. At least it smells nice in there, right?

In more Apple news, it looks like the way that Apple would get around the pesky sales ban on the Apple Watch 9 and Ultra 2 is by removing the features that infringed on Masimo’s patents. So once the dust is settled on this whole issue, you might only be able to find those Apple Watch models without the ability to measure blood oxygen. And at that point, is it even worth it? I need to know how much oxygen is in my blood. I need to know if my blood is worth anything!

Researchers at Anthropit, one of the biggest AI companies, co-published a paper on the weekend showing that it’s possible to train large language models, or at least Anthropit’s Clau chatbot, to act deceptively when certain conditions like the presence of specific phrases were met. The models could even be trained to produce good code when told that the current year is 2023, but produce code with exploitable vulnerabilities if informed that it’s currently 2024. That’s not good.

Now it’s time for quick bits brought to you by Delete Me, the company that will help you find hundreds of online profiles while sharing your personal information and obliterate it. Because that information could be used by scammers to bombard you with robo-calls and spam emails.

In more tech news, despite American export bans, Chinese government and military entities are apparently still managing to get a hold of small batches of Nvidia semiconductors. According to records seen by Reuters, these chips include the powerful A100 and H100, as well as the duller A800 and H800. Nvidia has made another different version of the H100 for export to China. We just don’t know how they’re getting these.

Microsoft announced today that it is introducing co-pilot, specifically, it’s expanding its Microsoft 365 office AI features to non-business users for the first time for a $20 co-pilot Pro subscription.

Sharp showed off a working prototype of a cell display in a secretive demo at CES. Cell stands for Quantum Dot Electroluminescent, and it’s a technology that removes the need for a Quantum Dot display to have any LEDs involved at all.

AI is fueling innovation in the industry of bizarre Amazon product names. Researchers with the Chinese military claim they are developing a low-temperature plasma shield similar to energy barriers found in science fiction in order to block enemy radiation, such as high-powered microwave attacks. It’s also very similar to tech that NASA was looking into in the 60s and that they determined wasn’t really worth taking any further.

That’s it for the tech news today. Join us again for more tech news on Wednesday. But if you’re into nose zaps, I don’t know if we’re comfortable giving you one. We’ll see how we feel on Wednesday.

47 COMMENTS

  2. Viewers absolutely do not need to see personalized ads, or any at all. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming you were being sarcastic. There is absolutely no reason anyone needs ads in YouTube or anywhere for that matter.

  3. Using an AD blocker in the internet is just basic internet hygiene.
    Its like sleeping with a lady of the night without a condom, you probably wont catch some virus, but its more likely you will.

  5. Youtube has broken their site for anyone using Ad Block. I can't even type a comment without massive lag – the text cannot even keep up with my typing and just lags several seconds behind, like typing on Windows 95. The denial from them that they are doing this is what really makes me angry.

  6. Omg reading the comments, I am not the only one with Premiums also getting ad. I even reached out Apple support complaining my Safari browser being so slow when using YouTube 😂. Using it on chrome was better. I wonder why 🤷🏻 . Let’s milk user data mean while also charging premium eh ??

  13. i dont get why youtube hasnt embedded ads into video streams yet cant block the ad if it interupts the main video feed… buffer upto the point of the ad and dont resume buffer until ad time has passed sure you can skip forward thru the ad but gotta stay on it for the 5 or 15 seconds advertisers would be happy people see more of the ad and people would be happy theres less ads because theyre getting watched plus all ads would be somewhat skipable

  15. The latest effect I see… You-tub now hangs for longer and longer as you try and wade down the comments… and just typing comments pauses for longer and longer before what you typed appears on the screen…
    Yes I have restarted my browser, yes I've rebooted, Yes my windoze is up to date, yes I spent 25 years as an IT Tech begore getting sick of the politics… and yes XP was good, Windows 7 was almost great.. 8 SUCKER, 8.whatever barely fixed that… 10 DID fix that… yet kept some annoying issues… and after that … basically MS just removes features (and advanced options) and pretends that's GOOD. to the point where things look like Windows 1 (Yes I used that) and has become as navagateable as DOS (yes that too) to the point where I no longer like to use windows… it's just an annoying thing I have to put up with while using other programs… and is actually beginning to ruin that experience as well…

    I'm beginning to love Android over Windows even though there's far less fun to be had tweaking things…
    (oh did I mention that with Windows 7 & 10, you could tweak things from advanced menus… now you have to hack the registry to do things that should have been moved into a menu, not dumped.

  20. Right now this video its literally impossible to watch to me, it keeps loading, freezing or skipping parts all the time (im on firefox).. I have premium and disabled uBlock origin.. I dont know what else they want me to do 🤬

  23. Loading a music playlist with your headphones on your head lying in your bed or fixing some device while listening! Launching ads every 20 seconds is unacceptable. They turn a music playlist in ads playlist. Don't even get me started with ghosting comments and censoring normal comments that contain words used by everyone outside on a daily basis! They're going too far, come on now. If they stop the comments ghosting and censorship and accept that everyone has a point of view (political or not) and it needs to be heard even by those who are always tolerated as the snowflakes, only then I could accept the ads. Googletube needs to start making compromises cause we're going nowhere like that! You only take and take and take and restrict and giving nothing in return! Its not how it works and you gonna lose many users! Then you gonna have to watch the ads only by yourself!

  24. Thanks to Apple and Samsung. They band Huawei phones. …….. because they know they would lose a lot of money.😂😂😂 so they can drop some kind of crap

  26. YouTube is directly and openly attacking anyone who dares block their ads. It gets worse if you are on Chrome, as you let them attack from two sides.
    This is effectively a cyberattack – they're targeting people's CPU and RAM to coerce people to remove AdBlock. That is evil – and outright ILLEGAL in many countries/US states.
    Not that Google gives a damn, they want their money at any cost. And if lawsuits come flying, they'd do what many other companies do – take the lawsuits and fines, and keep punishing people's hardware in petty rage. Disgusting.

  28. Issue has not hit me or anyone I know of. And I'm not only adblocker but also a Yarrrr!-Editon of YT-Premium on Android.
    What are even Ads? Haven't seen any in years on YT.

  31. I don’t have an ad blocker and the advertisements are taking minutes to load , freezing up the whole process of watching a video. If this isn’t resolved soon , Youtube will be worthless.

    P.S. I couldn’t even watch this whole video as ads froze it. Bye bye Youtube. It was great until you ruined yourself.

  32. I tollerated the forced 15 second ads
    .
    Tollerated the 2x forced 15 second ads
    .
    .
    I even tollerated the forced 30 second ads
    .
    .
    .
    But they went advert INASANE with ads every 2 minutes… 30 second ads 30 seconds before the end of the vid
    .
    .
    Pop up ads loading google play etc etc
    .
    .
    Not to mention how most the ads are scams ! 🤬
    .
    .
    I completely stopped using youtube for a year until i found a decent adblock
    .
    .
    .
    Their GREED is why adblockers became so popular

  41. I switched to Brave and it's fine.
    I think they are doing something to target the problem, because the phenomenon did not occur when I put Adoblock in Brave.
    Even without this incident, Chrome is too slow these days, and if more people make the same choice, it will only reduce the browser's market share.
    I'll have to think about it again when Chromium manifesto V3-ization is implemented.

  43. I would not mind 20-40 seconds of ads at the beginning of each video…but because of my slower connection I get the same 3 or 4 ads over and over and over. AND they will sometimes buffer a lot longer than they should. With that said, I run ADP because of the nonsense on the web…but youtube does not like it. Sometimes it will gripe at me, and not let me play a video at all without restarting the browser. AND the part of the whole ad thing I dislike the most is the short videos 12 minutes or less are full of ads. Just tell me why I should watch 4 or 5 ads to be able to wahthc my 8 minute show?!

  47. i am fairly sure ad-blocking in UK can be illegal. I need to use one for medical reasons. making things worse for me is discriminatory, contravening the 2010 equalities act.

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