[0:00] I'm a French jewel thief, but I got a
[0:01] bit of a problem. I don't have any
[0:03] jewels.
[0:05] So, I'm off for a little day trip to the
[0:07] Louvre to get some.
[0:09] The thing is though, the Louvre is
[0:11] world's most visited museum. It's home
[0:14] to humanity's rarest treasures like the
[0:16] Mona Lisa and even the French Crown
[0:18] Jewels. And so, to actually breach this
[0:20] security would require an absolute black
[0:22] ops cover of night Ocean's 11 level
[0:25] operation.
[0:28] Oh.
[0:29] >> [music]
[0:30] >> Maybe not.
[0:32] Because in October 2025, four thieves
[0:35] literally committed daylight robbery at
[0:37] the museum. They rocked up to a window
[0:39] in a furniture lift wearing high-vis
[0:41] vests
[0:43] during opening hours and they just took
[0:45] the Crown Jewels. They hopped back into
[0:47] their lift, descended comically slowly
[0:49] back down to the ground before
[0:50] disappearing away on their scooters
[0:53] at 9:30 a.m. Ooh.
[0:58] Just in time for a breakfast [music]
[0:59] croissant. See, the Louvre had a bit of
[1:02] a tech problem. Their entire
[1:04] cybersecurity system was based on
[1:05] software almost as old as me with a 2014
[1:09] audit finding that they were still using
[1:11] Windows 2000 which was well past the
[1:14] point of still getting security updates.
[1:16] And yeah, they did have CCTV. It was
[1:18] just
[1:19] facing the other direction. So, they had
[1:21] no view of this balcony being used to
[1:23] access the window. Okay, but still these
[1:25] thieves would have had to be something
[1:27] special, right? To be able to identify
[1:29] this critical blind spot. Oh, that's
[1:31] right. The password to the entire video
[1:34] surveillance network for the Louvre
[1:37] was Louvre.
[1:40] It was not a joke earlier by the way.
[1:41] This actually happened allowing them to
[1:44] drive off into the
[1:46] rush hour traffic with a hundred and two
[1:49] million dollars of jewels. The Louvre's
[1:51] president, Laurence des Cars, was so
[1:53] appalled that she tried to resign the
[1:55] very next day. And I would still [music]
[1:57] only call this a five out of ten tech
[1:59] fail. Because it got me thinking, if an
[2:01] easy to guess password and four dudes in
[2:03] a furniture lift are enough to cause a
[2:05] hundred and two million dollars worth of
[2:07] damage, then how expensive can it get
[2:09] when the mistakes get bigger?
[2:12] That's what I found out and I kind of
[2:14] wish I hadn't.
[2:15] Like,
[2:16] >> [music]
[2:16] >> you know Dyson, the company who makes
[2:18] your vacuum, your hand dryer, your hair
[2:20] dryer. Essentially, if it moves air,
[2:22] then Dyson will sell it to you for like
[2:24] $400.
[2:25] Well, in 2016, James Dyson decided that
[2:28] what he really wanted to move was
[2:30] people. So, he started secretly building
[2:32] an electric car. And look, it wasn't a
[2:35] crazy idea. Dyson specializes in
[2:38] high-performance batteries and electric
[2:39] [music] motors and that's exactly what
[2:42] an EV needs, which is why they went big
[2:44] developing a battery back that could go
[2:46] 600 miles on a single charge. We're
[2:48] still not seeing 600 miles now [music]
[2:50] and this was 2019. Not to mention a
[2:52] floating hologram heads-up display,
[2:55] seven seats [music]
[2:56] and a design that I think I'm physically
[2:58] attracted to. Oh yeah, and the seats
[3:00] were ergonomically redesigned from
[3:02] scratch because Mr. Dyson personally
[3:04] hates the lack of lumbar support in
[3:06] normal cars.
[3:09] I can kind of see his point to be fair.
[3:11] Not our most comfortable getaway.
[3:14] The slight problem is Dyson ended up
[3:16] reworking so much that they eventually
[3:19] realized just to break even they would
[3:21] have to sell each of these cars at
[3:23] today's equivalent of $275,000. [music]
[3:28] I don't think we have enough jewels. And
[3:30] it took our good friend James burning
[3:32] through 900
[3:34] >> [music]
[3:34] >> million dollars
[3:36] of his own personal money to come to
[3:38] this realization. At which point he had
[3:40] no choice but to scrap the entire
[3:42] project, go home and
[3:44] sit on a [music] chair that
[3:46] probably gave him back pain.
[3:48] Six out of ten.
[3:49] Lads, do you want some lunch?
[3:52] But sometimes the biggest cost of a
[3:54] mistake is to your reputation like it
[3:56] was with [music] Taco Bell. Because in
[3:58] 2025, this company implemented an
[4:01] AI-powered drive-thru system in over 500
[4:04] of their restaurants hoping to improve
[4:06] customer experience and um
[4:09] let's just say it wasn't very good at
[4:11] taking orders. [music]
[4:12] And what would you like to drink with
[4:13] that?
[4:16] I want a large Mountain Dew.
[4:20] And your drink?
[4:22] >> [laughter]
[4:24] >> Oh, and my absolute favorite is when
[4:26] this guy asks, "Can I get 18,000 water
[4:29] cups please?"
[4:33] >> [music]
[4:34] >> Okay.
[4:36] What can I get for you? The way that the
[4:38] system just instantly dies and hands it
[4:40] over to a human worker is class. And
[4:42] just a repost of this AI breakdown on
[4:44] YouTube is currently sitting at nearly
[4:46] 30 million views. And so, responding to
[4:49] the fact that their AI's greatest
[4:50] achievement was becoming a meme, Taco
[4:53] Bell's chief digital officer, Dane
[4:54] Matthews, told the Wall Street Journal
[4:56] that they were going to think carefully
[4:58] [music] about where not to use AI going
[5:01] forward. Gee, thanks Taco Bell.
[5:04] How did that not occur to you before?
[5:06] Having just watched McDonald's cancel
[5:08] their own AI drive-thru after it went
[5:09] viral for putting bacon on ice cream and
[5:12] nine sweet teas in one order. They keep
[5:14] trying.
[5:15] They keep failing.
[5:16] And in the process, they just keep
[5:18] funding their own funerals. Where's the
[5:20] rest? Is that all they had left? What
[5:21] about yours? I had a croissant.
[5:25] Right.
[5:26] >> [music]
[5:27] >> I should probably go then.
[5:28] Ah.
[5:30] But it's more embarrassing for Will
[5:32] Smith who used AI to replace people but
[5:35] just
[5:36] didn't even realize. Last year he posted
[5:38] a video from his music tour and
[5:39] >> [music]
[5:40] >> do you notice anything a little off
[5:41] about it? Specifically the crowd that
[5:43] has clearly been edited with AI. It kind
[5:46] of looks like Will wasn't quite
[5:47] satisfied with the turnout so decided to
[5:50] embellish it a little with some
[5:51] AI-generated concert goers hoping no one
[5:54] would notice. Big fan of the guy so
[5:55] moved by Will's music that he's wiping
[5:57] his tears through his glasses. The sign
[6:00] saying from West Philly to West Swiggy
[6:03] and especially the one claiming that
[6:05] Will helped them survive cancer. The
[6:07] idea of all of this being AI-generated
[6:10] was horrific news for Will Smith's
[6:13] let's be honest, already waning
[6:14] reputation. With every comment some sort
[6:17] of joke at his expense like unreal
[6:19] concert man.
[6:21] Literally. And Will Smith has not only
[6:23] just melted his fans' hearts with his
[6:24] concert but also melted their entire
[6:27] bodies. But the worst part, the entire
[6:29] fiasco was an accident. Turns out the
[6:31] crowds were real. You can see them in
[6:33] phone footage from the gigs and
[6:35] bafflingly in photos posted by Smith
[6:38] himself where you can directly
[6:39] cross-reference things like the Swiggy
[6:41] sign was there in his Switzerland show
[6:44] although it actually says Swizzy. So,
[6:46] most likely Will's social media team
[6:48] just used an AI tool to put together the
[6:51] highlight reel. They fed in genuine
[6:53] photos and videos but because the tool
[6:55] itself was AI, it introduced all of
[6:57] these unintended side effects. Either
[6:59] way, damage is done. Everyone thinks
[7:01] Will Smith faked a crowd to stoke his
[7:03] ego. He's the AI crowd guy now. Four out
[7:06] of ten.
[7:08] Oh, there's that.
[7:10] There's that. But speaking of men with
[7:12] image problems, you've probably seen
[7:14] Elon Musk's Tesla Optimus humanoid robot
[7:18] at this [music] point even if it was
[7:19] only as a guy in a costume. Musk has
[7:21] stated that the Optimus robot will
[7:23] eventually account for 80% of Tesla's
[7:26] value which
[7:28] got to say sounds [music] like a
[7:29] ludicrous prediction. He's also claimed
[7:31] that Tesla currently has two of these
[7:33] Optimus robots actually working. So,
[7:35] when you see one out here serving drinks
[7:37] at a product demo, you're kind of
[7:39] expecting the real deal, right? Well,
[7:44] um
[7:49] Oh.
[7:51] The fall was embarrassing enough, but
[7:52] it's actually the hand movement that got
[7:54] people talking. Look closer. Doesn't it
[7:56] look an awful lot like it's removing a
[7:59] headset kind of like the thing was
[8:01] actually being remote controlled by say
[8:04] a human operator. And Tesla have a track
[8:06] record of doing exactly this, putting
[8:09] human-operated robots out there and
[8:11] deliberately being very lax about
[8:13] letting people know that these are not
[8:15] fully autonomous. Add in the fact that
[8:17] Musk is currently chasing a one trillion
[8:19] dollar payout from Tesla where one of
[8:22] the goals that he needs to hit is to
[8:24] ship a million bots and it starts to
[8:26] make sense why he's doing way too much
[8:28] to convince you that the future is now.
[8:30] Maybe just hang on until you have a
[8:32] working prototype before showing it off.
[8:34] At least that's what Nothing did when
[8:36] they wanted to impress customers with
[8:38] the camera on their new flagship phone
[8:41] three holding a bunch of demo events in
[8:43] stores. Five photographs were shown off
[8:45] on these in-store demo units with the
[8:47] text, "Here's what our community has
[8:49] captured with the phone three." Do you
[8:50] want to know what's crazy? Zoom into the
[8:52] reflection of this one and you can
[8:54] actually see the DSLR camera, not phone
[8:57] three, that took it. And then with a
[9:00] little internet sleuthing, fans came to
[9:02] realize that in fact every single one of
[9:05] these shots was in fact a publicly
[9:07] available stock photo. Nothing
[9:08] eventually came out to claim that they
[9:10] were just placeholder images that they
[9:12] had intended to replace but that the
[9:14] units had gotten to stores before that
[9:16] happened. Malicious or not though, this
[9:17] is a pretty costly extremely avoidable
[9:20] PR moment to be having while being the
[9:22] underdog just as you release your first
[9:25] ever flagship smartphone.
[9:27] But Nvidia has definitely lost a lot
[9:30] more rep.
[9:31] And didn't have a huge amount to lose in
[9:32] the first place ever since they pivoted
[9:34] their focus towards providing graphics
[9:36] cards to giant AI companies kind of
[9:38] ignoring their original customers, the
[9:40] gamers.
[9:41] But then, instead of deciding that it
[9:43] was time to listen to the players,
[9:46] Nvidia just decided to go full on
[9:48] friendly fire with DLSS 5. So, DLSS,
[9:52] which stands for deep [music] learning
[9:53] super sampling, has been one of Nvidia's
[9:55] superpowers for a long time. It's
[9:57] basically a smart graphics technology,
[9:59] which means that instead of each
[10:01] generation having to keep doubling the
[10:03] amount of hardware they're giving you,
[10:05] they can instead upgrade the resolution
[10:07] and the frame rates in your games using
[10:09] clever machine learning tricks. However,
[10:12] the latest version, DLSS 5, goes one
[10:15] step further to upgrade even the
[10:17] lighting and the textures, too, which
[10:19] sounds fantastic, right? Who doesn't
[10:21] want to prettier game? But let's
[10:23] actually think about it for a second.
[10:24] This scene of Grace from Resident Evil
[10:26] Requiem is a scene of her heading to
[10:28] investigate the house where her mom was
[10:30] murdered in front of her eyes. But
[10:32] Nvidia's AI slop filter doesn't know
[10:35] that. It just sees a face that looks a
[10:37] little dark and traumatized, uses its
[10:40] training data, which tells it that faces
[10:42] look better when they're yassified with
[10:44] blush and eyeliner like your resident
[10:46] e-girl, but in the process completely
[10:48] flies in the face of the possibly months
[10:51] that the developers spent handcrafting
[10:53] the very deliberate way that they wanted
[10:55] her to look in the scene. Or why does
[10:57] the professor from Hogwarts Legacy need
[10:59] more wrinkles? Guys, it really feels
[11:01] like this is just AI seeing an older
[11:03] person, then going through the thousands
[11:06] of stock photos it's been trained on to
[11:08] make her more
[11:10] old. It's funny because CEO Jensen Huang
[11:12] responded to the overwhelming backlash
[11:15] arguing that it's not about just putting
[11:17] an AI filter over everything, and that
[11:18] instead DLSS 5 is meant to be integrated
[11:21] with the artist. And so it's it's about
[11:24] giving the artist the tool of AI. Which
[11:27] made it extra awkward when it came out
[11:29] that the developers of these games found
[11:31] out at the same time as the public that
[11:34] their games were being altered in this
[11:35] way.
[11:37] Five out of 10. [music] Nvidia's gamer
[11:39] cred was already in the bin.
[11:41] Now it's in hell.
[11:43] And while we're down there, there's a
[11:44] few fails so far where there's been some
[11:47] mystery as to whether or not it's been a
[11:49] deliberately perpetrated crime or not.
[11:51] Not so much the case with ransomware, a
[11:54] type of malware that locks you out of
[11:56] accessing your data so that criminals
[11:58] behind the attack can sell it back to
[12:00] you. But at least there are companies
[12:01] out there like Digital Mint who
[12:03] specialize in negotiating those ransom
[12:05] payments down.
[12:07] Right? You know, people who truly
[12:09] understand the criminal mind. [music]
[12:12] Yeah, about that. In 2023, it was
[12:14] actually employees from inside these
[12:16] companies who used this specialized
[12:19] knowledge to carry out their own
[12:21] attacks. They targeted at least five
[12:23] American firms. They stole the data and
[12:25] demanded millions in return. But this is
[12:27] where it gets truly unhinged. When those
[12:29] victims panicked and they called Digital
[12:31] Mint up for help, who did Digital Mint
[12:33] assign to the cases? Well,
[12:36] none other than one of the guys that
[12:38] attacked them, Angelo Martino, who in
[12:41] basically the human embodiment of the
[12:43] evil Kermit meme, had managed to put
[12:45] himself in a position where he was
[12:46] playing both sides and negotiating with
[12:49] himself. Must have been some tough
[12:51] negotiations because he managed to get
[12:54] all five of these companies to pay up.
[12:56] One of them even paid $26.8 [music]
[12:58] million and it was a nonprofit. What?
[13:03] Definitely a nonprofit now. Can you
[13:05] believe that just months before Digital
[13:07] Mint featured one of these guys in their
[13:09] employee spotlight? And I quote, "We
[13:12] bridge the gap between good, hardworking
[13:14] people and bad actors." They had no idea
[13:17] how right they were. And basically
[13:19] everyone lost here. The ransomed firms
[13:21] ended up paying out $75 million.
[13:24] No one's ever going to call up Mint
[13:26] again without thinking twice. And the
[13:28] three employees involved have been
[13:29] charged with up to 20 years in prison
[13:32] each.
[13:33] Six out of 10 fail.
[13:35] But where it goes beyond funny into just
[13:37] straight up terrifying is when a man
[13:39] named Sami Asdufal developed an app to
[13:42] allow him to control his DJI Romo robot
[13:44] vacuum using a PS5 controller simply cuz
[13:47] he said sounded fun. That's not the
[13:49] scary part. Unfortunately, Asdufal
[13:52] didn't realize his own coding [music]
[13:54] power. The custom remote control app he
[13:56] built pretty quickly using Claude AI
[13:58] code accidentally granted him control of
[14:01] over 7,000 DJI robot vacuum cleaners
[14:04] across 24 countries the second it
[14:07] connected to DJI servers. How? Because
[14:09] instead of DJI encrypting the data from
[14:12] its devices like they should have, it
[14:13] was literally laid out to him in plain
[14:16] text. Zero authentication required,
[14:18] allowing him complete access. So, okay,
[14:21] he could now vacuum anyone's house on a
[14:23] whim. That feels like a Doofenshmirtz
[14:26] level scheme. Evil, but ultimately
[14:28] harmless. Until you realize that these
[14:30] robots all had cameras and microphones,
[14:33] and that he also happened to have access
[14:35] [music] to the live feeds from them. Not
[14:37] to mention the floor plan of each house
[14:39] that the vacuums had mapped out with all
[14:40] of their sensors and their location,
[14:43] too, via their IP addresses. Thankfully,
[14:45] he was a nice guy about it. He
[14:46] immediately reported the flaw to DJI and
[14:49] they immediately rewarded him with a 30K
[14:51] payout. But just imagine how
[14:53] catastrophic this could have been if he
[14:56] wasn't a nice guy. Remember, Asdufal
[14:58] didn't hack into DJI servers or do
[15:00] anything complex. He simply became god
[15:03] of all robo vacs by accident. And it's
[15:05] just mad to think that someone can so
[15:08] easily stumble into so much personal
[15:10] data from you. At least when you're
[15:12] using Surfshark VPN, our sponsor, anyone
[15:14] who might be snooping isn't [music]
[15:16] getting anything useful cuz your
[15:18] identity is masked. just made it even
[15:20] crazier by launching this brand new
[15:22] custom standard called Dosos. Instead of
[15:24] cramming everyone's data into one shared
[15:26] tunnel like a traditional VPN, Dosos
[15:29] gives you your own dedicated private
[15:31] data lane. And the reason that I bang on
[15:33] about Surfshark is because it's like the
[15:35] one deal in tech that feels like a
[15:39] steal. With the code boss, you can
[15:40] literally get Surfshark for $1.68 a
[15:43] month cuz they're celebrating their
[15:45] birthday. And that would cover you plus
[15:47] an entire crowd at a Will Smith concert
[15:50] if you wanted. Now, at least Sami had
[15:52] the decency to feel bad about his
[15:54] accidental data theft. Can't say the
[15:56] same for ChatGPT, which is meant to
[15:58] revolutionize search by accessing
[16:00] everything on the internet and bringing
[16:02] it to you. Now, that would require
[16:04] having the rights to a lot of content
[16:06] that would end up expensive and
[16:08] time-consuming to acquire. So,
[16:09] naturally, OpenAI just ignores that
[16:11] part. Why?
[16:13] Go fast and break things, of course. Who
[16:15] needs the law when you have a
[16:16] ridiculously ballooned valuation? So,
[16:18] it's a shock to absolutely no one then
[16:21] that a group of authors and publishers
[16:23] are suing OpenAI for copyright
[16:24] infringement. But it's what's happened
[16:26] as part of their investigation that's
[16:28] been the dramatic upset because the
[16:30] group managed to acquire leaked Slack
[16:32] messages and emails from OpenAI in which
[16:35] their employees openly discussed the
[16:37] mass deletion of two data sets the AI
[16:39] was trained on that they knew consisted
[16:42] of pirated books. Hilariously named
[16:45] books one and books two, by the way, in
[16:47] case it was unclear. So, not only did
[16:49] they have other people's pirated data,
[16:52] but they knew full well that what they
[16:54] were doing was wrong and tried to
[16:56] dispose of the evidence. So, a New York
[16:59] District Court has now ordered OpenAI to
[17:01] hand over those messages. And if those
[17:03] messages demonstrate willful
[17:05] infringement, and I don't really see how
[17:07] they couldn't, this could take the
[17:09] damages anywhere from $750 per piece of
[17:13] stolen work to possibly $150,000
[17:16] per work. An insane amount on the scale
[17:19] of data that these guys are working
[17:21] with. We don't know the total fines they
[17:23] could face yet, but we can get some idea
[17:25] from a recent lawsuit against Anthropic
[17:27] for similar copyright infringement,
[17:29] which saw them settling for $1.5
[17:32] billion. Dollars.
[17:34] Settling.
[17:35] Seven out of 10. But while the exact
[17:37] consequences of that are still up in the
[17:39] air, OpenAI has recently had an even
[17:41] bigger oopsie that's already cost them
[17:44] some very real, very large dollars. See,
[17:47] in 2025, the company announced a noble
[17:49] new mission that doom scrolling wasn't
[17:52] bad enough as it was, and that what
[17:53] humanity really needed was an entirely
[17:55] new short-form video app called Sora
[17:58] that lets you doom scroll content that
[17:59] was entirely [music]
[18:00] AI generated. A
[18:03] slop talk, if you will.
[18:04] >> [music]
[18:04] >> And to kick off the fun while
[18:06] downplaying the dystopian impending
[18:08] threat of anyone being able to create a
[18:10] deepfake in like two clicks, Sam Altman
[18:13] gave all users global permission to
[18:15] create videos using his own likeness,
[18:18] which of course immediately backfired
[18:20] with a litany of embarrassing videos
[18:22] mocking the guy. Like this one of him
[18:24] begging for GPUs at a doorbell camera. I
[18:26] can't train anything. Please, if you
[18:27] have anything, A100s, 3090s, I'll take
[18:29] them.
[18:29] >> Physically stealing art from Studio
[18:31] Ghibli. Give them back. NOPE, TOO LATE.
[18:33] HEY, COME BACK HERE. FREE YARD, BABY. OR
[18:36] THIS ONE of Altman hosting a Hunger
[18:38] Games style competition forcing
[18:40] contestants to fight over literal slop.
[18:43] And then of course this, which I present
[18:45] without comment.
[18:47] Meow.
[18:48] Turns out Super Sam did this to himself
[18:51] for absolutely nothing because Sora shut
[18:54] down just six months after starting. Let
[18:56] me try and put into perspective just how
[18:58] much of a flop this slop was. Sora
[19:01] generated in total $2.1 million in
[19:05] revenue.
[19:06] Sora was costing them at peak usage
[19:09] around $15 million per day
[19:12] to run all while their user base was
[19:15] collapsing under their feet with a 66%
[19:18] drop in just the first [clears throat]
[19:20] 90 days. And as if that wasn't already
[19:22] enough damage, OpenAI also, in the
[19:24] process of losing Sora, lost an
[19:26] investment deal with Disney. Disney was
[19:28] going to pay OpenAI for a stake in the
[19:30] company, which would have also given
[19:32] Sora users access to 200 plus characters
[19:35] from across the entire Disney universe.
[19:37] How much was Disney going to pay them?
[19:40] $1 billion.
[19:44] Oops.
[19:45] Now, you already know that in 2022, Elon
[19:47] Musk purchased Twitter for mountains of
[19:50] money.
[19:51] We've been living with the consequences
[19:53] ever since. But there is one consequence
[19:55] that you might have missed. That Musk is
[19:57] now being sued by the investors who
[19:59] originally put their money behind that
[20:01] deal. And the reason is one of the
[20:03] funniest things I've ever seen in a
[20:05] courtroom. So, do you remember when Musk
[20:06] was trying to wiggle out of buying
[20:08] Twitter? He'd already committed at this
[20:09] point, but he was trying to pull away
[20:11] because he said too many of its users
[20:13] were actually bots, not people. And by
[20:16] the way, he said this on Twitter,
[20:18] publicly.
[20:19] In tweets. Well, those tweets tanked
[20:22] Twitter's stock price. That made all of
[20:24] these investors panic. They believed
[20:26] him. They assumed that the whole thing
[20:27] was falling apart. And so, they
[20:29] hurriedly sold the shares they had,
[20:31] losing millions compared to what they
[20:33] paid for them. But the deal wasn't off.
[20:35] Twitter took Elon to court and forced
[20:38] him to buy Twitter anyway at the
[20:39] original agreed price of $54.20 per
[20:43] share. But all those investors who sold
[20:46] their shares at a loss,
[20:47] they never got their money back, which
[20:49] leads us to now, where a California jury
[20:51] has declared Musk liable for misleading
[20:53] them with his own tweets. Tweets which
[20:56] he himself described under oath as
[21:00] stupid tweets. You just can't make this
[21:02] stuff up. The man who bought Twitter to
[21:04] protect free speech is being sued for
[21:07] what he freely said,
[21:09] stupidly, for up to $2.6 billion. And if
[21:13] you think that's a lot of money, then
[21:15] you're not ready for the metaverse. Do
[21:17] you remember when Facebook rebranded to
[21:19] Meta out of nowhere and made a massive
[21:21] bet on our near future becoming almost
[21:23] exclusively virtual reality? The hub for
[21:25] which was meant to be Horizon Worlds, an
[21:27] online VR world where you can hang out
[21:29] with all your other friends who
[21:30] definitely have a Quest headset.
[21:33] Now, because they were trying to take VR
[21:35] from merely something that people used
[21:37] to play games into this alternate
[21:39] reality where we'll all one day live and
[21:41] work as well as play, it was important
[21:44] to have the infrastructure for users to
[21:46] visit different worlds and create their
[21:48] own for
[21:50] whatever use they might want. Like for
[21:51] instance, taking a fake selfie in front
[21:53] of a fake 240p Eiffel Tower while trying
[21:57] not to let the fake existential dread
[21:59] creep in too much.
[22:01] Wait, no. Dread was real.
[22:04] Well, it seems like Meta are starting to
[22:05] catch up with the rest of us who already
[22:07] know that no one's interested in hanging
[22:09] out in VR, whether it gives us legs or
[22:11] not. Because this year, they announced
[22:13] that they were removing Horizon Worlds
[22:14] from the Quest app store, deciding
[22:16] instead to focus 100% of their effort on
[22:19] mobile instead. Cuz yes, this is exactly
[22:22] what the phone user base has been
[22:24] yearning for. But then, a glimmer of
[22:26] hope for the roughly four remaining
[22:29] Horizon Worlds fans, Meta did a U-turn
[22:31] and announced that in fact, no, we're
[22:33] going to be keeping VR access to the
[22:34] platform after all. Just, according to
[22:36] them, to support the fans who've reached
[22:39] out.
[22:40] Must have been a long day going through
[22:41] all of those emails. But Horizon Worlds,
[22:43] as embarrassing as it is, is just one
[22:45] tiny part of the metaverse's failure.
[22:47] Because
[22:48] amidst the fallout, we've also come to
[22:50] learn the total amount of money that the
[22:52] whole metaverse project has lost Meta.
[22:55] And
[22:56] you're going to want to sit down for
[22:58] this one. We've seen millions this
[22:59] video. We've even seen a couple of
[23:00] billion. But Meta burned through $80
[23:04] billion. That's pretty much what it
[23:07] would cost to end world hunger for a
[23:09] year.
[23:10] What did it get spent on?
[23:12] This.
[23:14] Cheers Zuck.
[23:17] I got to get out of here.