YouTube removes Windows tutorial claiming danger.
Also, the Finance Department is 10% Crypto Scams.

The Day YouTube's Algorithm Became a Safety Regulator

YouTube, which is owned by Alphabet, recently went on a cleanup spree, removing tutorials that showed users how to bypass the rather strict hardware requirements for installing Windows 11. The official reason cited for the takedowns was a policy violation regarding content that poses a "risk of physical harm" to users. This is a remarkable feat of corporate doublespeak; apparently, the act of installing an operating system onto an older CPU is now considered the digital equivalent of juggling chainsaws. It seems the compliance team decided that if a user’s unsupported seven year old processor were to overheat and fail, that counts as a high-velocity projectile aimed directly at the user’s sternum.

The internal memo must have been fascinating. According to comments on a news article about the removals, the hardware bypasses merely trick the installer into ignoring things like the Trusted Platform Module or CPU generation, which Microsoft requires. Now, the official policy from the video platform is that an operating system failing to load could lead to physical injury. This is a new milestone for the software industry; we have moved past blue screens of death and are now firmly in the territory of system installation as a fire hazard. We should probably start wearing hard hats when we download patches.

Mark Zuckerberg Announces New "Synergy" with the Phishing Team

The internal projections at Meta, which is responsible for Facebook and Instagram, show that approximately 10% of their 2024 revenue originated from advertisements and listings for scams and banned goods. This is not a rounding error; it is a dedicated, multi-billion dollar business unit that Meta is either unable or unwilling to shut down. The CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, is likely telling shareholders that the platform is simply demonstrating its ability to facilitate a truly diverse array of entrepreneurial endeavors, including ones that involve selling questionable crypto-currency and knock-off sneakers.

Former PyTorch co-creator Soumith Chintala announced he was leaving Meta and PyTorch around the same time this news dropped. It is likely a coincidence, but one could imagine the technical meeting where the AI team was asked to create a better scam-detection algorithm, only to be told by the finance department that improving it too much would cause a sudden, catastrophic drop in quarterly earnings. It turns out the true "Metaverse" is just a highly profitable digital marketplace for things you should definitely not purchase.

Steve Jobs' Ghost Filed a Formal Complaint Against Marketing

Apple, the Cupertino-based purveyor of finely machined aluminum and absolute control, has apparently crossed a "red line" established by the late co-founder and former CEO, Steve Jobs. The transgression was committed in a recent ad for the Vision Pro headset, where they included the distinctive pin icon of Google Maps. This is corporate sin of the highest order. Mr. Jobs, a known perfectionist and rival, supposedly had a blanket rule: never use a competitor's logo, period.

The former creative director and advertising partner to Apple, Ken Segall, wrote an essay detailing how this act of logo-heresy signals the slow, creeping normalization of the company. It is reminiscent of the moment an overworked graphic designer in the 1990s decided to use Comic Sans on an internal memo, thereby breaking a sacred, unwritten rule of office decorum. Now the entire company has to deal with the inevitable, subtle decline in aesthetic integrity, all because someone on the marketing team needed a map icon and just Googled the first one that popped up.

Briefs

• Legacy Media Sunset: The Farmers' Almanac announced its farewell, confirming that predicting the weather and planting cycles is apparently no match for the endless scroll of a newsfeed.
• European Parental Controls: Denmark's government is planning to ban social media access for children under 15, which is an impressive bureaucratic attempt to solve a problem that the rest of us just use screen time limits to ignore.
• New Programming Flavor: There is a compelling article asking Why is Zig so cool?, which reminds us that every six months a new C-replacement language is invented and hailed as the future before settling into a comfortable, niche corner of a server room.