Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large. 

Pure envy

Youtube personality MKBHD is in some hot water for his recently released Panels app. It’s a $50 per year (introductory price) subscription for wallpapers. You might be thinking, “Who actually pays for digital wallpapers?” And you’d be right! I personally don’t remember ever paying for a piece of art to adorn the background on my laptop or smartphone. Pictures of Kpop girl group members are very free on the Googles.

That’s what the hubbub is about: MKBHD is daring to charge money for something that people think should be free. Lament all we want about the devaluation of the arts, but you simply cannot force people into paying customers. Do people care about supporting their favorite music artists? Clearly not: give me millions of songs available to stream at any moment for a low monthly subscription. Would you pay to watch your favorite Youtube channels? I at least pay for YouTube premium.

Obviously, MKBHD is free to make an app and charge however much he wants. The complainers aren’t likely to be customers anyways. Whether or not there will be enough customers for a $50 per year wallpaper app? The capitalistic mechanism will sort it out soon enough.

What is surprising to read on the Reddits is people saying mean personal things about MKBHD. He’s out of touch! He’s greedy! His reviews are just shilling for the big tech companies! I think this is all plain jealousy. Here’s a guy making millions of dollars doing Youtube videos, and also happens to own a few material things in the six figures of dollars. MKBHD has reached escape velocity into being rich. He’s no longer the humble everyman that you and I can relate with. You either die a hero, or live long enough for people to see you as an asshole.

Same thing happened to automotive YouTuber Doug DeMuro. Soon as he sold his car auction website for tens of millions, he crossed the threshold into rich asshole-dom in the eyes of some fans. All of the sudden, his car reviews are no longer entertaining. And his opinions are “out of touch.”

It’s not really about the wallpaper app. It’s a reflection to those who did not chase their dreams to success. So when the guy that did messes up, well then, time to knock him down a peg.

ACC.

I rather be wrong

One of the YouTube rabbit-holes I fall into are car dash cam videos. Compilation of idiots on the road causing car accidents. It’s not the sadist in me that enjoys watching the suffering of others. I like watching dash cam footage because I get to observe and learn what not to do when I am on the road.

And also: we all should install a dash cam in our cars. Should misfortune befall you and it’s your word against the other driver, video footage (caught in 4K) can potentially save you a ton of money. I would have a dash cam permanently installed in my BMW M2 if I had a commute. As a weekend car, I simply use a mounted GoPro.

The most important point I take from watching the dash cam videos: don’t play the vigilante. You are not the police, so don’t play the enforcer of road rules (written or otherwise). There’s always going to some drivers on the road doing something stupid or being a bully. The best thing for us to do is to stay as far away from that action as possible.

I’ve see way too many footage of drivers playing cop. For example: blocking someone from “illegally” merging, or refusing to slow down/change course because they had right of way. What ends up happening is they collide with the offending cars. It’s so stupid: sure, they’re logically in the right, but now they’ve got a mangled car to repair. Even if the other driver’s insurance will cover it - if they’re insured at all - those drivers are still out the time and energy to take the car to the shop.

Stubborn drivers, piloting 4,000 pounds of fast-moving steel, refusing to back down is some scary shit! No wonder our insurance rates are so freaking high.

Step by step.

Can't touch me

Word on the street is that YouTube is cracking down heavily on ad blockers. Videos absolutely will not play if you don’t disable/whitelist. I intensely abhor watching YouTube with ads, especially when videos are less than five minutes. If I had to watch a 30-second commercial before a three-minute music video, I would just skip both entirely. More than any other streaming service, YouTube is where I spend most of my viewing time. A smooth experience with zero ad interruptions is kind of important (first world problems).

Over the years, browser ad-blocking extensions have done well to keep the YouTube ad machine in check. However, even before this latest crackdown, YouTube has been doing whack-a-mole on the extensions for a long time. It would work fine one day, then the next you’re suddenly seeing ads on videos, wondering why your ad blocker isn’t doing its magic. The solution is to switch to another one, and if that also gets whacked, then to another. Perhaps you’ll end up back to the ad blocker you started with, because it's received an update to combat the YouTube shenanigans.

Frustrated by this, I picked the obvious solution to the problem: pay for YouTube Premium. I bet that’s what YouTube hopes to achieve with its latest crusade against ad blockers: get more folks to pay up. At a not cheap $14 per month, I get the full YouTube experience completely ad-free. Best of all, I can watch videos on my Apple TV’s built-in YouTube app, also without ads. It’s not possible to run an ad-blocker on TV apps, so prior to subscribing, I avoided watching YouTube on my much larger (than a laptop screen) LG TV. These days, a majority of my YouTube time is on the TV.

Crack down on ad blockers all you want, Google. I am chilling over here. The people complaining about it are sitting in the cheap(skate) seats.

A San Francisco classic.