The whole downside is that not everyone is a data horder with space for videos

Some media players allows for streaming directly using yt-dlp, e.g.;

mpv <youtube url>

Will use yt-dlp if installed

No bios update, but you most likely received both microcode updates (which is what will fix/mitigate the Intel issue, the bios is only to ensure everybody gets the microcode update) and firmware updates (from linux-firmware)

Of course non-mainlined (i.e. not in the linux kernel) firmware is a bit more iffy, luckily it’s getting slowly better with OEMs using fwupd for those scenarios