I am really starting to wonder if we are living in a simulation

https://www.theverge.com/policy/1016751/trump-rename-atlantic-ocean-sundar-pichai-google

Great, now my sponsors are increasingly sending out 18 page "briefs" for each product. All AI generated of course, so I can spend 30 minutes nonsense just so I can find the 3 bullet points that contain actual information.

My best guess is that Submerged is "home page content", meaning it gets broadly promoted and placed on the home page of many people who have no concept of the channel yet and therefore are likely to scroll over it. It's something YouTube is trying to push to a generalist audience who will always be less likely to click. Meanwhile TFC is a habit-based video. It has a very high likelyhood to get a click from a returning viewer, but isn't a great pitch to a random person on a homescreen so YT doesn't promote it as much. This means Submerged gets many people playing it for a few frames as they scroll over it while TFC doesn't.

If my theory is correct ... this means channels who have a strong, loyal returning audience got a much smaller bump (in this case half as big) and so they now look like they get fewer relative views! Since audiences and sponsors both tend to view high view counts as a signal, this is a real disadvantage!

(🧵2/2)

You know how YouTube recently inflated viewcounts massively by starting to count ever single frame played as an active view? Like all YouTubers I know, I've been trying to wrap my head around what the "real" views on my videos are comapred to what they used to be. The best metric we have is an "engaged view", which is hidden in analytics, but is more or less the same number that used to just be called a "view" before this change was made.

So yoo can take a video and compare engaged views vs. views to see how much the public numbers have been inflated. Not only is it a lot, I also find it wild how the inflation is *way* stronger on some videos than others. On our latest Submerged video it is 3.2x, on the latest episode of The Friday Checkout it is 1.6x!!!

(🧵1/2)

The Fairphone Gen 6+ is here and it's also the first Fairphone to come to the US!

Nebula: https://nebula.tv/videos/techaltar-fairphone-comes-to-the-us-with-a-new-phone

(YouTube coming soon)

RE: https://mastodon.xyz/@nextcloud/117075679794474587

Wow, only 39% of responses saying they use "regular" Android is somehow even lower than I imagined.

Obviously Nextcloud will disproportionally attract the open source techie crowd, but I also generally think Mastodon is just very heavily skewed into this direction as well. Love my bubble, but good to be reminded every now and then just how much of a bubble I'm surrounded by :)

Wild times. People now have a more favorable view of China than they have of the US in most places around the world

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s54ikGBw6Wo

Just booked an overnight sleeper train from Berlin to Budapest, which will be my first sleeper experience in Europe. Weirdly exciting, haha

Insane graph of the day:
You're lookign at the largest export categories of my small home country, Hungary.

- Blue & orange represent cars & batteries. These have been the cornerstone of Hungarian economic planning for decades. Massive factories built & subsidized for BMW, Audi, Mercedes, BYD, CATL, etc.
- Teal represents "digital dataprocessing units", a.k.a. AI servers built by a single Foxconn factory that most Hungarians didn't even know existed and was basically an afterthought for politics. On a monthly basis it has now become the largest export category of the whole country.

Source: https://www.portfolio.hu/gazdasag/20260709/varatlan-fordulat-magyarorszagon-nem-az-autogyartas-hanem-a-mesterseges-intelligencia-porgeti-fel-az-exportot-848114

The best demonstration I've seen of massive pickup trucks & SUVs being a deadly liability yet. The animations, examples, etc. are superb 👏

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/06/21/us/trucks-suv-pedestrian-crashes.html

I have just learned that a close family member has recenlty gotten themselves completely into conspiracy theories. Covid vaccines carrying nanobots, 15 minute cities lockign you in, agenda 2030, whatever that might be, etc. They get all the nonsense from Facebook reels.

I feel that they still doubt a lot of this and have asked me what I think about them, which tells me there is a window of time for an intervention. They were somewhat receptive towards me refuting individual points, but seemed convinced that in general "the elites" are trying to ruin everything. So even if I refute one point, 3 new ones take their place.

Have you ever experienced this? Do you have any suggestions for how to deal with it? I could really use some advice if you have...

RE: https://mastodon.social/@verge/116714923712600528

Ai executives must simultaneously explain two contradictory things to the public:

1. AI will soon be omnipotent and able to do all jobs
2. Despite this, it will somehow NOT make a meaningful amount of humans unemployed.

Only one of these two things can be true at the same time. If #1 is false, their investment thesis is wrong and they are wasting money. If #2 is false, the economy collapses and you get a revolution.

Can you imagine making your first video on YouTube and everything about it is an absolute banger? Idea, Thumbnail, Structure, Execution, all 10/10.

And the beauty of the (often deservedly much hater) algorithm is that right away a video blows up, as is should.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DW0XUsyBBuY

My friend shot this double rainbow above the Hungarian parliament today. Feels quite prophetic with the anti-LGBT govt defeated 😂

RE: https://mas.to/@Techaltar/116482898184719213

Now also on YouTube: https://youtu.be/JkSlhxSBBrI

I did a deep dive into what works and what doesn't for electrifying ships:
- What are the physical limitations?
- How far has electrification come?
- What clever designs exist already?
- Which types of boats can't be electrified?

Now on Nebula:
https://nebula.tv/videos/techaltar-electric-ships-are-finally-starting-to-make-sense

Coming to YT later.

Fidesz' massive defeat comes despite:
- multiple active Russian disinformation campaigns
- the US government actively supporting Fidesz
- Fidesz owning the majority of TV & radio stations + newspapers
- Fidesz having gerrymandered the crap out of the country
- many documented cases of voter suppression & paying disinfrenchised voters for support
- Fidesz pouring unprecedented $$$ into their campaign

Feeling a little proud of my country for the first time in a while 🇭🇺

Voting selfie. Fuck Fidesz 😊

PSA: If you share a YouTube video using the native share feature it now attaches your user ID (?si=xxxxxx) to the URL automatically.

YT likely does this to growth-hack DMs. When someone clicks on the link, YT can start a DM thread between you two automatically with this ID even if they found the link outside of the YT app.

If you post links publicly, I strongly recommend deleting the ID unless you want to post your user profile.

Every pro-renewables politician should be working at 100% capacity to flip the "the greens are making your life more expensive" narrative into "the fossil fuel lobbyists are making your life more expensive" right now, but I fear our side is too nice to effectively exploit a situation like this