First We Feast. After months of searching for a buyer to take First We Feast — the production company behind Hot Ones — off its hands, BuzzFeed has finally secured an $82.5 million all-cash deal to sell First We Feast to “a consortium led by an affiliate of Soros Fund Management LLC” The consortium’s list of investors includes First We Feast founder Chris Schonberger and Hot Ones host Sean Evans. In a press release, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti said that selling off First We Feast “marks an important step in BuzzFeed, Inc.’s strategic transformation into a media company positioned to fully benefit from the ongoing AI revolution.” “In the coming years, we will continue to invest in our most scalable and tech enabled services, launching new AI-powered interactive experiences, and delivering for our loyal audience and business partners,” Peretti said. BuzzFeed acquired First We Feast in 2021 when it bought rival media outfit Complex, the production company’s original owner. Though BuzzFeed wound up selling Complex off to Ntwrk earlier this year for $108.6 million, it elected to retain control of First We Feast. The deal comes after months of speculation about how BuzzFeed might go about paying down $123.5 million in debt and interest payments. Failed Republican presidential candidate and soon-to-be DOGE co-head Vivek Ramaswamy (who recently purchased a 9 percent stake in BuzzFeed) previously insisted that BuzzFeed wouldn’t be able to get on top of its debt problem and that he could somehow end up running the company. However, with cash on hand plus $75.6 from this sale, Buzzfeed says it can pay down the debt, and end up with more cash on its books than debt.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge For about a year, I’ve gotten notes from readers asking why our YouTube embeds are broken in one very specific way: you can no longer click the title to open the video on YouTube.com or in the YouTube app. This used to work just fine, but now you can’t. This bothers us, too, and it’s doubly frustrating because everyone assumes that we’ve chosen to disable links, which makes a certain kind of sense — after all, why on earth wouldn’t YouTube want people to click over to its app? The short answer is money. Somewhat straightforwardly, YouTube has chosen to degrade the user experience of the embedded player publishers like Vox Media use, and the only way to get that link back is by using a slightly different player that pays us less and YouTube more. I know this because I’ve spent months chasing down the mystery of the broken links, and after tons of back and forth between Vox Media’s teams and YouTube, and even me pushing this up to YouTube CEO Neal Mohan, they’re not going to change it. Here’s the really long version: like everyone, we publish our videos on YouTube. But YouTube isn’t the same for everyone. Publishers like Vox Media can use something called the YouTube Player for Publishers, or PfP, which has been around since 2016 and basically competes with the wacky custom video players you see on so many other sites. It allows publishers to sell their own ads at higher rates while still having the videos live in the YouTube ecosystem, which is a nice win-win and not something anyone had to think about until earlier this year. (I didn’t even really know about it until this links kerfuffle — if you listen to The Vergecast this week, you know our newsroom is firewalled from the business side of our company.) But around the beginning of this year, YouTube decided to change PfP and remove all of its branding from the publisher player. And “branding,” according to YouTube, includes that title link back to YouTube. If publishers want that link back to YouTube, they have to use the standard YouTube player — and give up their ad revenue and control to YouTube. That’s why so many YouTube players around the web — not just ours — don’t have links that work, even though they otherwise look and behave just like YouTube’s standard player. Here’s what YouTube spokesperson Mariana De Felice told me about it: “News publishers can choose between the standard YouTube embedded player or a version designed specifically for them, which gives greater control over the ads experience, but removes YouTube branding and links back to YouTube. This version provides publishers greater control over the ads running on their videos, but YouTube doesn’t have visibility into which ads are served. In order to protect our advertisers and partners, we’ve removed our branding and links back to YouTube from the player.” I am a real brat and have complained about this for months now — it had all worked fine since 2016! — but that’s the situation. Our choices are basically leaving things alone, making less money to have the link work, or switching to some other player on the site in protest, which would also not have a link back to YouTube but would at least let us pretend there’s market competition in video players. Ultimately our business side will make the call, but that’s why the link is broken — a tiny example of the modern platform internet that tells a huge story about how everything else works.

A worker handles wafers at the GCL Technology production plant in Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province, China, on Tuesday, July 2, 2024. GCL Technology is one of the world’s largest makers of polysilicon, a key material in solar panels. | Photo: Getty Images Tariffs on solar wafers, polysilicon, and certain tungsten products from China are going to rise dramatically come January 1st, 2025, the Biden administration announced Wednesday. That means higher price tags on key materials needed to make solar panels at a time when solar is the fastest growing source of electricity in the US. Polysilicon is used to make solar wafers, which are the semiconductors in solar panels. Tungsten — the same material in old-school incandescent lightbulbs — has many uses in electronics because of its high melting point. The metal is also part of supply chains for the aerospace, automotive, defense, medical, and oil and gas industries. That means higher price tags on key materials needed to make solar panels at a time when solar is the fastest growing source of electricity in the US It’s the latest instance of the Biden administration hiking up tariffs on goods from China — which dominates solar manufacturing — as part of its plan to build up domestic supply chains for clean energy. Solar products from the Xinjiang region in particular also face accusations of forced labor and human rights abuses. The Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) also said that the decision to raise tariffs follows an investigation into cyber theft and economic espionage by China. “The tariff increases announced today will further blunt the harmful policies and practices by the People’s Republic of China,” ambassador Katherine Tai said in a statement. “These actions will complement the domestic investments made under the Biden-Harris Administration to promote a clean energy economy, while increasing the resilience of critical supply chains.” Starting next year, tariffs on polysilicon and solar wafers will double from 25 to 50 percent. Tariffs on certain tungsten products will go from zero to 25 percent. Chinese companies produce more than 75 percent of the world’s polysilicon. Considering all the manufacturing stages for solar panels, which includes polysilicon and wafers, China holds more than 80 percent of global capacity. American manufacturers welcomed the changes. “These trade measures will begin to counter the pervasive Chinese government subsidies in solar manufacturing. It is a step in the right direction,” Mike Carr, executive director of the Solar Energy Manufacturers for America (SEMA) Coalition, said in an emailed statement. To be sure, Chinese policies aimed at boosting solar manufacturing have led to economies of scale that have allowed prices for solar panels to plummet around the world. Chinese companies also make much more affordable electric vehicles than US manufacturers. EVs from China have been similarly subject to soaring tariffs during the Biden administration to 100 percent from 25 percent this year. In May, Biden also announced that tariffs on battery parts and lithium-ion batteries would rise to 25 percent from 7.5 percent. In addition, he increased the tarifff rate on solar cells from 25 percent to 50 percent. And by 2025, the rate on semiconductors from China will double to 50 percent. President-elect Donald Trump has said he plans to hike tariffs on imported goods from China even more than his predecessor, which is expected to increase prices on everything from cars to electronics.

Apple on Wednesday released the next major iOS 18 update, which includes new Apple Intelligence features like ChatGPT integration. OpenAI turned the ChatGPT milestone into one of its "12 Days" event surprises, showing how ChatGPT will work on the iPhone in iOS 18.2 and the Mac in Sequoia 15.2. The work on Apple Intelligence doesn't stop there. Apple will release iOS 18.4 in the spring, complete with other AI functionality like the smarter Siri capabilities shown off at WWDC 2024. However, the ongoing work on iOS 18 versions and AI features will impact the development of iOS 19, which is set to be unveiled at next year's WWDC event. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said a few weeks ago that various iOS 19 features would be delayed. In an update on X, Gurman said that engineers who should have moved to iOS 19 development are still working on iOS 18 features. Continue reading... The post iOS 19 features to reportedly see delays as Apple’s AI struggles continue appeared first on BGR. Today's Top Deals Best Echo Dot deals for December 2024 Black Friday blowout: Massive Apple sale, LG OLED TVs, KitchenAid mixers, Instant Pots, laptops, more Best Apple Watch deals for December 2024 Best Apple deals for December 2024

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