Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - How to Game Spotify and Dyson’s Insane Headphones

Episode Date: April 1, 2022

Marques and Andrew discuss how some people could potentially be gaming Spotify through playlists before jumping into the new Samsung M8 Monitor and a new Playstation Subscription. They wrap it up with a new Dyson product that or may not be an April Fool's joke (we hope it is!) This is a fun one! P.S - Make sure to join the Discord if you're interested in joining us on the Place Reddit experiment! Links: The Electric Car Pre-Order Problem Bitr8 Analogue Pocket Reply All - Episode #183 MKBHD Spotify Playlist Playstation Subscription Dyson Article Naomi Wu Twitter thread Josh Wardle Interview Twitters: https://twitter.com/wvfrm https://twitter.com/mkbhd https://twitter.com/andymanganelli https://twitter.com/adamlukas17 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wvfrmpodcast/ Shop the merch: shop.mkbhd.com Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/mkbhd Music by 20syl: https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. All right, welcome back, people of the internet, to another episode of the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marques.

And I'm Andrew. And in today's episode, I would say this is one of our more chaotic, random episodes off the wall bunch of topics but we're going to talk about samsung's new studio display competitor type thing we're going to talk about spotify and how maybe there's a little bit of gaming the system happening yeah and also uh maybe a really weird futuristic dyson gadget that shouldn't actually exist all in the same conversation we got a bunch to talk about.

But first, some content. Yeah, content. Everyone knows content. We made some content this week. We made some content. I'm really happy with them. Which one should we start with? The EV video? Yeah, we might as well. I mean, because a lot of it, some of it stems from conversations we've had on the podcast. Like we had that Atlas rant before we talk about EVs all the time here. And like almost every time we talk about EVs, there's some sort of question of like, when will this come out? Will this be able to do this thing it promises? Yeah. Yeah.

We kind of had that conversation. It probably was like two weeks ago or something like that. But really, we've reworked the video so many times. I was trying to figure out the the what the real problem is like is the problem that they're too expensive is the problem that they're unreliable what is the problem with these priorities are they real are they real that's one problem that's one problem but basically for me it came down to the gap between when you put your money down and commit and when you're actually going to get the thing

is so massive that the commitment doesn't mean anything anymore. So you can put down, you know, a hundred, a thousand dollars or whatever for an EV, and they'll say it's coming out in a year. And that product you're going to get is probably not coming out in a year, probably not coming out at the same price you reserved it for, and probably not going to be the same product that you actually reserved. It's a very loose reservation. And I mentioned in the video, Sony has been getting better at unveiling phones and then shipping them quickly. Their latest one was, I think, in less than six months. I think it was like four months.

But that was such a big problem for them because, you know, Apple, think about it. Apple does the iPhone event. It's like clockwork every year. It's on stage. They go, pre-orders will begin this day on Friday and they'll start shipping the next day. And within like nine days,

everyone's getting their boxes from UPS. The hype doesn't have time to die. They just ride that wave. Same thing with all the other big ones. And if there's enough time in between when you put your money down and when it comes out for other options to pop up and for other things to change, then it almost feels like the point is lost. So that that gap and, you know, there are people who are willing to wait, especially

in the high end car business. People will sometimes see an announcement car and go, yeah, I want that. And they'll order it and they'll know they won't get it for a year or two. So that's real sometimes in cars. But it's getting kind of crazy for every electric car from everyone to have such a massive gap. So that's what the video came down to. Yeah, and it's really good. And you and David have spent weeks just going back and forth.

You said you restructured this a bunch. David's done a ton of research on different things. And it felt like a video from the side of hearing you guys write it. It was just kind of like, oh, this video is working along. Oh, did you see this company? Did you see it's like they have the same guy from this company before and that they're promising this and that. It felt like every day you guys were finding something new that was just really strange. And

I mean, sketchy seems to be one way a lot of these companies work. Sketchy to the consumer, I guess. As a consumer who doesn't understand how to build a full business, which is most of us listening, there's a lot of weird things going on. I think you guys did a really good job at bringing that all into one video and getting a quick overview of a lot of different companies. Yeah, and it's also funny because there's so many things that we see now in the world of investing,

where when I was in school, we didn't learn about investing. It just wasn't a subject taught in school. I went through all of school never being formally instructed on what that meant. And investing what five years ago would have been way different than investing right now because investing is a lot different. Right. It's everywhere now. There's like everyone knows what crypto is already. Everyone views all of these new coins and things as investments like

nothing is this company that's founded on your ability to like crowdsource and invest in their future. And so investing is like actually mainstream at this point. And so to me, it feels kind of funny that the EV companies are all doing this startup thing where some of them want your money so they can give you a car. But some of them seem like they're just trying to be a good investment. And a lot of people just look at it as an investment. For the amount of research I did on Lordstown Motors, it is unbelievable to me that people still think that it's a good investment. The company doesn't do anything.

They don't ship anything. They'll parade things around like they're going to, but they don't. And people still think it's a good investment. They think, oh, yeah, this company is going to 10X in a year. There's no doubt I should put my money here. That was the wildest part to me was how many weird investment angles you could find about these new electric car startup companies.

Yeah, I'm going to assume all the hate comments on a YouTube video are directed at you because you're the one saying it's worth it. Yeah, I mean, do you think Lordstown is worth it? No comment. Not, it's worth it. Yeah. I mean, do you think Lordstown is worth it? No comment. Not. It's just not. But, you know, that's, I think that video is worth watching.

Definitely check it out. And we did another one on the studio channel, our second, third channel, whatever you want to call it, if you're including the Waveform podcast. We've been toying around with this idea and it kind of started with David, David's like a video. We're calling it bit rate. It's kind of a review, shorter review based. It's genius.

Yeah. Because I think it's, is a very good name. It is based on the people around the studio can pick an item that they're passionate about and one that won't get reviewed on the main channel and do a little review since it's called bit rate. It's a score eight out of eight out of eight. It's perfect. and one that won't get reviewed on the main channel and do a little review. Since it's called Bitrate, it's a score eight out of eight. Out of eight, it's perfect. This new one is about the analog pocket,

I believe it's called, right? Everyone's favorite, Adam Molina did it. Came out really, really good. Really interested. Nostalgic for sure. Hold on, I've been seeing you guys have like way too much fun with this thing for the last couple of weeks

to the point where like I never wanted to use it. And I like I didn't have that retro. You know how there's like a little part of your brain that just sees the nostalgic bit and just wants to use it. I never used the Game Boy, so I'd never connected for me. Yeah, but it looked like so much fun that I just I had to check it out. So the video did a good job of showing all the things the pocket can do. It also makes it look like Adam comes in every day and lays on the couch and plays pokemon and just chills yeah i loved it um there is one minor correction i saw in the video towards it which was we mentioned

the saving process that was actually because the game cartridge was old and the battery was dead inside the cartridge so it would have been able to save just normally because you're just playing the game adam just found a different way to save it through the console itself seems like most cartridges will be old i think so but i'm sure there's a whole world i know there's a world out there that's still using these old school like gaming systems and i'm sure there are plenty that are still out there or how to fix them um but definitely suggest that studio channel analog bitrate adam melina all the buzzwords you've ever wanted to hear it rate is such a good name it's so good it's so good like we pride ourselves in our names like let's be real autofocus is an incredible name for a series

and i think bitrate is right up there and then I have one other piece of content that dives into a story that just buckle up. We're about to talk about a lot of random things here for a couple of minutes. Okay, kick it off. If that's cool with you. Yeah. Piece of content that is not ours that I consumed recently that I really liked.

Reply All, we've talked about it a million times on this podcast. I think both of our favorite podcasts. They've been kind of on a hiatus for a little bit, but they came back. They had two really good super tech support episodes, which is generally the hosts of the show trying to figure out weird little tech mishaps

that callers have. With like weird hidden solutions. Very weird. It's a fun format. I like it. But one of the newest ones, episode 18 episode 183 will post in the show notes without spoiling it essentially the host emmanuel has a caller come in who spotify wrapped has a an artist that she's never heard of before it's second on our list and it's just this like totally underground no one knows artist and it's very strange why it's

up there but the reason i connected so much with it is because it talked a lot about how people game spotify because spotify is a way to make money it is a way to get um like acknowledgement as an artist or a producer or something like that and through this episode, the main culprit of the whole thing does a lot of different things to game Spotify. And it's really, really interesting. Game Spotify. Interesting. Yeah, I mean, I always find social media

kind of like gaming or hacking or whatever you want to call it really interesting. I think for the most part, it never works out how you really want it to. But I do find looking at different ways to manipulate like instagram or twitter youtube really interesting and for some reason spotify's never like been a platform to me that i thought a lot of people would game because i'm not in the music world that much

but it totally is and i've made this connection now to something that i've complained about on twitter a bunch and then to also something that I've noticed recently, and all of them kind of connected together. So I'm going to do a small story time here that's probably just going to make me look like the Charlie Day, Sunny in Philadelphia meme of like connecting all the red dots or red strings. So at the office, you have a Spotify playlist, right? The MKBHD one. I do. And it is just basically all the songs that we put in videos. That exactly is what it is.

I just, anytime there's a new song that we use in an intro or in a video and it is available on Spotify, I just drag that into the playlist. It's probably about 40 songs. And you and I, since I handle the public email address, you handle your email address, get a lot of emails begging to be put on that playlist, right? Yep. Yep. I get a lot of people emailing me specifically saying, Hey, I am an artist. I've made these songs. Here's the MP3s. They're not just saying, Hey, feel free to use them if you want. They're saying, Hey, please use this song

and give it credit and here's the link. That's what they want. And also, can you put it on your playlist? And put it in the Spotify playlist. Which to me always thought it was more along the lines of, I want these songs in your videos, like you said, but I'm thinking it's more they're gunning more for the playlist and that's something that happened

in this episode and something that I discovered a few months ago where I was climbing. I was trying to think of some music I wanted to listen to. I had an old playlist I had saved, which was just the Tony Hawk Pro Skater playlist, which is like, I'm sure there's a lot of people that know the game. It's known for having like a phenomenal soundtrack,

like very early 2000s pop punk we should like rock and roll soundtracks there's some really good ones we would get destroyed because we don't play some of the games but i'm a huge fan of some of the need for speed and nba 2k soundtracks but okay great so tony hawk is very well known as like indie grunge metal like all that kind of fun stuff a lot of rap also um and i was listening to it and i've listened to it a bunch of times before and it starts off with the very you're not gonna know these songs but um if you play tony hawk you'll understand superman number one superman my gold finger is like the most popular song from tony hawk pro skater easy um

euro barrage like the very common ones, I think it got about five songs in. Then I noticed as I was listening to it, I didn't recognize a song. Whatever. Get to the next one. Didn't recognize a song. So I started having this weird, what's going on with this playlist? There's like 20 Tony Hawk games. Maybe it was from later ones and I just didn't notice, but it was from later ones and I just didn't notice, but it was just song after song that I didn't know that I didn't know that I didn't know. And eventually looking at the soundtrack, I realized it's not an official or playlist. Sorry. It's not an official playlist. It's a user-made playlist that got really popular

because of how popular the Tony Hawk Pro Skater soundtrack is. And it just had, popular the Tony Hawk Pro Skater soundtrack is. And it just had, I think I counted it. I went back and counted it today between the songs that are actually on the playlist, because it goes in order from Tony Hawk one. There are 50 songs that are not actually on Tony Hawk Pro Skater. It goes one through five on the soundtrack to get you into it. And then it's 50 songs that are not on it and then goes back into the actual soundtrack. Oh, really? really okay so that's what you mean by gaming spotify so i think this was a super popular playlist that started getting contact and getting paid to put smaller level production companies or smaller level artists songs onto the soundtrack just to kind of like essentially trick people into listening to it yep um i'm sure their reasoning for it was like oh well it's just in there and maybe you'll listen

to it maybe you'll like it and then people start playing it but i think it's just to artificially game the numbers and to look better and i don't know how spotify adsense or whatever works or payments but it clearly feels like that. And now these playlist owners are taking full advantage of it. Right. That is so interesting. Okay. So I know I'm trying to think of how this would go on YouTube because YouTube's algorithms are so advanced that if you were to shove in a random video in a playlist from a show and you got episode one, two, and three, and then a random video that got paid to that paid to be there and then episode four everyone would skip that video so

fast and they would all hate that it's there and they would all like dislike the video but you'd get the well dislikes don't matter now yeah they don't matter now but you you would get the clicks and you would theoretically get a little maybe a pre-roll ad revenue something like that if somebody left autoplay on and didn't realize what was happening for 30 seconds. Um, but it wouldn't, you would get the view count though. You, yeah, theoretically, I don't know exactly how a view is counted. Nobody does, but you would probably get more views from being in that popular playlist. But that sort of reputation risk for the person who made the playlist is pretty solid. We're on Spotify. If I just want

to find like a video game soundtrack, I'm sure I've done this before in like random albums or something where I'm searching on Spotify. I don't know exactly what it's called, but I searched something. I find someone made a playlist and it's close enough. So I just click it and it, it has all the songs that I wanted. I get very happy about that. But then if it's, if it's not what I wanted, I just ignore it. And I never think about disliking it or leaving a comment about how it's the wrong song or something like that. So it's a little, it's different from YouTube, but it is fascinating that people just do

that. So I also wonder if potentially these are PR marketing agencies that are telling small production companies or artists like, hey, we can increase your listen count. And then this is the kind of shady way that they're increasing that. And then all the artist sees is artificial numbers that they don't know how that's happening. Yeah. So if I was trying to do this smartly,

I would at least try to get this random underground song into a playlist of similar sounding music yes i agree so if you got the tony hawk pro skater music i would want something in that same genre for sure so if somebody is listening and they realize they got to the end of the first game and there's a new song it's like oh maybe it's just going on radio or something yeah yeah and it's still enjoyable maybe i think i think that would work i also would do you don't bunch all of them up together you play four songs from the playlist that people know and like throw one in and then go straight back to the playlist and then throw another in but

i mean to be fair a lot of these playlist creators probably made them for fun to start and then got a bunch of offers and are like i'm just gonna cash out and get as much money as i can right now and but ruin a perfectly good ruin a good playlist if anyone knows a different tony hawk pro skater one through four playlist please link me that actually has it because it is phenomenal and i'd like to listen to it more often yeah like i guess there's like maybe two types of spotify playlists that search for. One is an unofficial themed playlist and the other is like an official, like that has some sort of a requirement

to be in the playlist. Like if I search for like the best of the Daft Punk hits, I do not want to hear a non-Daft Punk song. I better not hear a random song in my Daft Punk listening experience as I go through the top 30 songs ever made so if it's a but if it's a random like best of the 90s playlist then i could see any random song with that vibe being in there even if it's not from the 90s you know what i mean so there's like there's leniency for

certain playlists to do it the one you found seems like it shouldn't have done that it should just stick to the theme but like you said if you're the uploader of or the creator of that playlist what do you have to lose just toss it it doesn't matter to you yeah you can make it again it's a shame but i don't know i hope that story didn't go on too long i thought it was really fascinating for the record i will never put songs in the mkbhd playlist that i don't actually use in a video. I would love if everybody's sending us those emails we're listening right now because I'm really tired of deleting like five emails a day asking to be put onto the playlist. Flip it. Send it as an email signature. Email signature. All right thanks for

taking that journey with me. I hope it was interesting. I thought it was kind of fascinating and I just it feels like I finally have an answer to it, which is a sad answer because I want my Tony Hawk Pro Skater soundtrack back. But anyways, we'll link the reply all episode in the show notes. And let's take a quick break. And when we come back, Samsung's studio display competitor. BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer,

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please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario with uber reserve good things come to those who plan ahead family vacay reserve your ride as soon as you book your flights to all the planners now you can reserve your uber ride up to 90 days in advance see uber app for details. All right, welcome back. Let's talk products named M8. Okay. All of them?

Yep, all of them. List them all right now. It's funny because I just thought of this. There's other products. There's the HTC One M8. I really like that phone. There's also, Ari makes the lights

that we've used all over the studio. And one of the really big, bright HMIs, they have like the M4 and the M5 and the M6. We have an M8. Yeah, it's basically the sun. Yeah, there's like an M20 and M40 and they're gigantic. But we have an M8. But the M8 that we don't have is the one that Samsung just announced.

There's a new monitor. They've had their M series displays for a while. It's called the, well, let's just look up the name real quick. series displays for a while it's called the uh well let's just look up the name real quick it's called the 4k smart monitor with streaming tv and slim fit camera included blue but the point of bringing this one up is this monitor is bait this monitor is bait it's bait to compare it to the studio display even though it's a very different display it's fascinating like you just look at it and you can't think that this doesn't look exactly like the studio display slash iMac yeah like okay here's how I describe it this is

this is how you're going to talk about it if you are going to compare it to the studio display this is a slim bezeled 32 inch 4k monitor with a stand that looks just like an iMac, like exactly like an iMac. It's a 4K resolution. It has a built-in set of speakers. It has a webcam at the top with face tracking and auto framing to follow your face around a frame. And it has a chip built in so it can do smart TV features. And it's $729. We should have started this segment with just listing

it off and then everyone would be picturing the studio display and then you would say it has Bixby and then everyone would realize it's not. It has Bixby. Do you think it has a Bixby button? I hope not. I hope not too. No way. But yeah it is like if you're trying to picture what this looks like

because you haven't seen it yet imagine the studio display the stand exactly with the colors of the iMac and then like a little like periscope pointing over the top because the webcam is not built into the bezel it's literally like clipped onto the back right yeah pops out over the top um but in reality this is a very different display than the studio display studio display obviously we've talked about it at length on this podcast, but just a quick refresher, it's a 5K display made by Apple, built-in ultra-wide webcam with face tracking called Center Stage, built-in speakers, and of course this metal body,

this $400 extra height adjustable stand, and it costs $1,600 starting. height adjustable stand and it costs one thousand six hundred dollars starting um 500 nits 5k that's that's one of the more like niche specs about it this display being 730 dollars it's funny some people look at it and go see why would i ever buy a studio display yeah when i can get this which is basically the same thing and works perfectly with my pc and is bigger for four 700 less almost half the price yeah less that's 900 less dollars yeah why would i get the studio display the other half are going how on earth are you comparing this this crappy 400 4k like low brightness monitor to the studio display they are nothing alike so i just this monitor is bait it's so funny that by the way it was announced before the studio display came out

they just finally yeah this is just coming on sale now yeah so all the comments are naturally like people arguing about how they copied the studio display and then people who have seen this pre-order go this came out before the studio display. At least it was announced already. I actually didn't know that. Yeah, so this is, like I said, it's bait. It's hilarious. It is though hard to not, I mean, it's hard not to compare it a little bit.

It's obviously going to run comparisons. The thing to me is the colors are like almost the exact iMac colors. So like to me, this almost felt more like a monitor trying to replicate the iMac, the like regular iMac, the colorful one. Yeah. That is just a monitor instead,

but it does have speakers and a webcam. There's also like to me, and maybe I'm getting ahead of us a little here with it, the smart TV feature aspect of it feels kind of weird. And I know you and Adam disagreed with me on this. I don't know why it has smart TV capabilities. It has an IR sensor at the bottom that I think looks really bad. It kind of looks like an SD card slot, but it's not. And then to me, a smart TV is just like a way that your TV can have the internet, but this is a monitor, so it's probably already connected to the internet,

and therefore I feel like it kind of already is a smart TV. Easy. People double up their TV and their monitor. They use it as a monitor at their desk, and then they walk across their apartment and lie down on the couch and use the remote to use it as a TV. I'm just trying, yeah, I don't know.

I am someone who has been like the laziest dorm room or like college apartment liver before. And I've never been in this position where I've like used my computer monitor as a TV. Actually, I think I did do this. I mean, I didn't really watch much TV, but I would full screen like a long 30 minute YouTube video and sit 15 feet away on my bed instead of on the chair, much TV but I would full screen like a long 30 minute YouTube video and I sit

15 feet away on my bed instead of on the chair which is like how I watch a movie so if you have a couch though that means your couch is pointing at your desk well I didn't have a couch in that room so yeah there was a separate room with a couch but yeah in this case it was like kind of nice that I could have the smart use it UI it is which is nice. Yeah. I guess it could do that in a dorm room if you just have a bed and your desk. That would probably work. I don't see a lot of people getting this for a dorm room

because it's still a $700 monitor and you can buy way cheaper. And most people in, I think the reason is when I was in college, I had a laptop. So if I wanted to do that, I could put my laptop wherever I wanted. And that was the TV if I needed.

Yeah. You know, there's a lot of different use cases. This is obviously something you can choose to get, or there are other options that'll do similar things, but yeah, it is definitely a fun one. Your point on the colors is super on point. Like I'm looking at the iMac colors right now. Yeah. There's a black and a white iMac. And then there's a pastel green, pastel blue and pastel pink. And then you look at this one and there's a pastel green pastel blue and pastel pink and then you look at this one and there's a pastel green a pastel blue and a pastel pink yeah I I don't know what the deal is with pastel for the past couple years but a lot of companies have been using it and this is no exception it just looks very much like an iMac now yeah especially from the side it has a chin that replicates the colors it has a stand that is exactly the same which is like a nice rectangular thick stand with like a cutout in the middle like

but but it's height adjustable it is i mean without spending an extra four dollars it is though i have not tried this i give apple despite it being expensive credit for their height adjustability is insanely smooth and just a good experience this is a sliding one which i've seen a lot of other monitors including the ultra fine uh 5k yeah in general they're not that great but i also don't care because when i'm usually height adjusting a monitor i just do it once and it's pretty much over or i have an arm for it because it's in a position where I'd like to move it a lot. And therefore, even just up and down

doesn't really help that that much. So it's very different. Yeah, this monitor, Samsung, I have no doubt somebody's goal at Samsung was like, yeah, we're going to get more people to talk about this if we make it look like this. So you know what? To whoever that is at Samsung watching this,

congrats, mission accomplished. This monitor was bait and we bit.'re welcome you're welcome and their their release the whole release aspect of it though was perfectly built whether they meant to do it or not because it looks like it was probably copying more along of the imac and when i say copying if you look back at the m7 it looks nothing like this yeah Yeah, very different. Funnily enough, it looked more like the LG Ultra Fine. It looked like a normal monitor. Yeah, it looked totally normal. This is completely different from what the previous model was. And it looks way more like an iMac.

The fact that the studio monitor came out before this, and then this came out right after, probably increased the hype on this because now it's getting compared to the most talked about computer monitor in the tech world right now. That's funny, yeah. So I doubt you tried to do this on purpose, Samsung, but you nailed it.

Well played. Yeah, well, well played. Do you think we're going to give it a shot? Should I get one, you're saying? I don't really think we need to. I mean, if there's enough requests and people really want to know if they should get this one, then I'll check it out. But I don't know if there's any extra need for evaluation.

It's probably going to be pretty decent. It's $700. Yeah, and even at $700, though, computer monitors are cheap these days. You can get some nice monitors for far less than that. The M7 is $300 right now. And 4K smart TV also, right? Yep.

You just don't get it to pretend it's an iMac big selling point um one more quick story here I just want to talk about because I saw a lot about it on Twitter and a little disclaimer here I'm sure you all know you've told me in the comments many times that neither of us are really console gamers or like hardcore console gamers so we don't use these a lot you play console games for sure yeah i am if you if i game anything at all it's on the console but you're not like glued to your xbox or playstation which there are a lot of people out there you're not you don't use any like of like subscription services to play a bunch of games right you're pretty locked into your bubble games okay yeah

um so disclaimer we are talking about this from a tech standpoint, not a intense console gamer standpoint. Okay. But PlayStation came out with what a lot of people are calling a Game Pass competitor. And I think a lot of people are interested in this because the way Xbox has, I don't want to say stayed relevant, but has stayed close to the hype of PlayStation. Because we all know in terms of consoles, PlayStation is winning the hype battle there. Xbox has done a really good job with their game pass connecting it to pc getting a lot of day one content like it is a really really awesome and almost not necessarily but really really good way to get the best out of your xbox so the fact that playstation potentially is coming out with something that people are comparing maybe unfairly so like the studio display to the m8 um people want to know about it and it's getting a lot of hype so i have a really quick rundown here super basic understanding

just if you've seen it and you kind of want to know about it um essentially playstation they have playstation plus already but they're kind of breaking it up into three tiers going forward. And that is going to have all sorts of different things with it. Right now, the three different ones are PlayStation Essential, which is their basic tier, two monthly downloads, a couple discounts, cloud storage, online multiplayer accents. That's kind of the base of it. Then you get PlayStation Plus Extra. We don't know prices. I didn't want to list every

single price because it's like they have prices monthly one thing they're doing cool here is they have like monthly quarterly and yearly prices okay um i believe essential starts around 12 a month okay um but they do a really good discount yearly and i have the comparison to game pass yearly here um PlayStation Plus Extra, you get basically everything from Essential, but you also get 400 PS4 and PS5 games, and it does include some really popular games like Spider-Man, Miles Morales, but not all of the huge ones,

which one very specific one a lot of people talking about are God of War Ragnarok is coming out soon, and they've already said that day one of release that will not be available on any of these playstation passes or subscription bases and then there's playstation plus premium which is 340 more games and it includes a bunch of older older games like ps1 ps2 ps3 and even psp titles which is kind of cool. Something kind of similar Nintendo Switch has been doing. Oh, the PSP. The PSP.

That was ahead of its time. I didn't play one. I always wanted one really bad. Yeah. Funny enough, my mother-in-law found a PSP game in their house recently and was like, I don't know if you'd like to play this and handed it to me.

And I was like, thank you. This is really sweet. I don't have a PSP. and it says copyright 2002 on the back yeah i remember this is that was quite a while ago and i do remember people having it in school wow it was kind of cool i mean we got steam deck and the switch and everything now but where's where's the psp psp looked like the new psp yeah i should make another one. Big screen, past the Game Boy. It was more of like console gaming in your hands. I'm sidetracking, but yeah, that was actually super cool.

Yeah, it was neat. Yeah, I always wanted one, but I never had one. Let's buy one. That's the really, really quick overview of it. There's not too much behind it. There are a lot of cool things if you want to play old games and for nostalgic aspects of it, but it's not going to include day one releases which is something that game pass is doing really really well with all their first party stuff yeah that's tough

like financially like to make that work it's always a question like if we're subscriptionifying everything yep that is always going to hit the day one release because you know how we used to pay a dollar for every song if you're a big artist and you were going to drop a new song on iTunes, you wanted as many people to buy your song as possible. You can get a cut of that. But now you drop your song and it's just streaming. And it's just whoever's subscribed can stream it and you get your cut of the streaming revenue. And that's kind of the same as what's happening to these game developers and development studios, which is, do you want to be dropping day one for 90 bucks or do you want to be just looped into the streaming thing? I think for your own revenue,

you want to be dropping day one for 90 bucks still. And that's what a lot of people are assuming. So PlayStation itself is focusing far more on that. It seems like Sony is focusing on that. They still want that to be a thing because that is clearly a huge revenue builder. Sony has a lot of those games that are insanely hyped that drop those days and have millions of pre-orders probably. So this just feels more like a small upgrade to their subscription service, which at the same time, Sony also wants a cut of that sweet, sweet subscription service that you're going to forget about and pay every month,

even the months you're completely forgetting you have it, and you're playing God of War Ragnarok for four months in a row instead. So I guess if you're looking at these, they haven't released all the games that are going to be available, but if you see a bunch of games in there that you really like, probably a good deal. If not, probably best to just buy the games you want. Pricing real quick,

I have for a year, 120 bucks a year for PlayStation because they give a really awesome discount if you buy yearly and 180 for Xbox Game Pass. But again, I don't think they're comparable. You're getting Halo. You're getting all that really good stuff with Game Pass right away and you're not with PlayStationstation yeah even for someone like me who only plays maybe four games a year on console it's still gonna just be more economical to just buy one game at a time but there's a lot of people who this is gonna make a lot of sense for so that's why they're introducing it yeah a lot of people who are gonna want to play some old playstation one games like uh crash bandicoot or something maybe if it's on there that would be

awesome psp the psp well it's kind of cool too so they don't have to spend all the money to make it like totally backwards compatible it's actually streaming those games online playing on it so i'm guessing kind of like a i don't know exactly but kind of like geforce now or something like that so a really easy way to give people access to a bunch of old games and most people will probably buy that so they can play an old metal gear solid or something like that for like two days to remember yeah and then realize the graphics are terrible and that they don't like it anymore but you got the kick the retro kick sick all right well we got to take a break but we're going to come back and talk about dyson doing the opposite of what they're supposed to do very best

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My Nest thermostat is one of my favorite things. Yes. The June oven, major props. I've had that thing for years. It's killer. And my Dyson vacuum barely counts as a tech product, but it counts. Has an on button.

Has an on button. Has a really impressive motor in it because Dyson makes amazing motors. And Dyson knows that they make a great vacuum and then they got their head really big and they started making other things with motors in them yeah that aren't as good as a vacuum so uh I guess the latest generation the latest development here now here's the little triple asterisk disclaimer this episode comes out on April Fool's Day, but we're recording this before April Fool's Day. And as of right now,

we have no reason to believe that this is an April Fool's Day project, but it totally should be. I don't think it is, but yes, you're right. This should be. I think I've already seen a video in Sam Sheffer's hand. So this is not fake.

Yeah, it exists somewhere. So this is called the Dyson Air Purifier. What is it actually called? Personal Air Purifier? It has a name. Air Purifying Headphones? The Dyson Zone Air Purifying Headphones. And the reason it's called the Zone

is because you put it on and it's got these tiny Dyson motors in it, which they're really good at. And those motors are spinning fans that will help air around you pass over your nose and mouth quickly to keep it purified and pass it through a filter and all sorts of things like that. So you will have your own little bubble of pure air. Yeah, essentially what it is is it's a pair of noise canceling headphones that they say

also cancels out like pollution and propellants around you i guess and and it's just a pair of gigantic headphones i mean like twice as deep because if you pop off the outside of each ear cup there's a small filter inside it then the the Dyson motor. And then essentially what you do is you grab this piece that kind of looks like another band on top of the headphones, magnetically connected to the ear cups, and then it goes over your mouth. And so it's going to pull the air in through your ears or your ear cups, go through the filter, push it through the mask, the whatever you want, the bane mask, whatever you want to call it, and then blow air into your face that's purified, essentially creating this kind of air bubble, I guess,

purified pressurized air around your face. It's interesting. Is there a price for this? Is that's, that's going to be my hint is if this actually gets a price tag, then it might not be an April fool's day thing. I do think this is real. There's a really good Twitter thread by Naomi Wu who talks a lot about it and it was hilarious and really eyeopening as well. Um, we'll link it in the show notes. You should definitely look at it because there's a lot of really good information. But this got patented actually around 2016

or their first design patents for it were around 2016. So pretty sure it's real or else the most intense April Fool's joke. But the thing about it is, which is really funny and really interesting, you can tell this was created pre-COVID where they're focusing way more on pollution and air quality to help that

because this mask that goes in front of you isn't creating a seal. It's got space around it and it's just hoping that the air pushing out is what you're breathing in and then deflecting any other air from coming in, I guess. Now, the issue with that is pre-COVID, we weren't so worried about airborne pathogens,

which now this machine and what Naomi calls is the snot cannon is essentially just blowing air into your face and now blowing all the air you breathe out whatever you exhale gets blown everywhere even further than you were already nice doing it so you have your own personal super spreader she literally calls it the mobile super spreader event like it is come on it is insane so and it makes so much sense because do you know those dyson or doesn't make sense but i'm not surprised by this do you know those dyson hand or it doesn't make sense, but I'm not surprised by this. Do you know those Dyson hand dryers in the bathroom? Yeah. So like if somehow you're not familiar with this,

air dryers in the bathroom so you don't use paper towels, reducing waste. Dyson started making one which was essentially a U-shaped where you stick your hands in the top of the U and on both sides it has an airstream that pushes out really hard. So when you've got

water, you can push your hands down and basically feel the water push straight off your hands. Problem is a U isn't open. It's a cup. So now all of this nasty bathroom water that you have in your hands is getting blown into this stagnant pool at the bottom. And now every time the next person puts their hands in, the air is just shooting down and now every time the next person puts their hands in the air is just shooting down and now spraying this they're disgusting that's pretty gross dyson is really good at making bad products outside of their vacuums dyson look dyson to me though every time i see a new dyson product i always think the same, which is Dyson is a bunch of people in a room where they're like, guys, we make the best motors anywhere. We just need to find things that need motors and put our motors in the thing. So what needs a motor? Okay. A hairdryer. Cause it's got

to blow a fan. We make the best hairdryer in the world. It's several hundred dollars. We make a, we make a bladeless fan. Cause we have this cool design and these super high RPM motors. And then didn't we see rumors of like, well, electric cars need motors, don't they? Oh, I haven't seen that rumor. There is a rumor that Dyson might make a car for some reason, but cause they make these great motors and now they made this, they've made this thing where they're like, well, what if we push air through a filter with our amazing motor technology?

Dyson, PSA, you make good motors, probably just chill on the things. Leave them in vacuums. Yeah, like the vacuums are great. Like keep doing that. Even the fan and the hairdryer, that's just a fan inside the base of it. Yeah.

Pushing air into tunnels that look like where a fan should be, but now it's bladeless. It's really smart because those are really powerful motors and they spin those fans real fast and they they make a really a really cool impression because it seems to be pushing air out with no blades and people love that so they've got some clever ideas this i am i am gonna put my foot in the april fool's day camp

on this one really there is no price i looked it up i'm clicking through i'm looking at all the info on the page and they just have a sign up page that just says find out when the latest dyson technology becomes available to purchase and you put in your email your first and last name and a zip code and submit and i better not get an email about how like this is available to purchase i better get an email on april fool's day saying gotcha this is a joke but also like remember dyson we make cool motors and stuff but that's also sort of thrown off by the fact that this on April Fool's Day saying, gotcha, this is a joke. But also like, remember Dyson, we make cool motors and stuff. But that's also sort of thrown off by the fact that this idea was patented

like five years ago. Yeah, and there's like a lot of promotional material. They have like, I mean, I know people have gone intense for April Fool's Day, but like they have like a guy standing in a train with this on, like they have promotional material for this. It looks insane.

Even if you were just wearing these headphones, they're like three times the thickness of the ear cups of a regular headphones. Imagine our Audio Technica's coming out like four more inches. Yeah, huge. It's crazy. I wonder how it sounds

to stand next to somebody wearing this. How do you think it sounds in the ear cup to also have a motor running a fan right behind the driver of the music probably sounds like you have a tiny vacuum cleaner on on your head i guess and the best part is it's is it noise canceling because it's actively noise it's like the outsider because the motor's so loud you can't hear the outside we had to cancel the wine of the motors um this is either a slightly harmful april fool's day project or a potentially very harmful real product. And I'm rooting for the first one.

But I mean, in that case, yes, I'm rooting for the first one. Wow. The snot cannon. Yeah. I appreciate that a lot. Well, I guess this is your this is your your annual reminder to not take the headlines you see today too seriously. And April Fool's day is a fun time it's kind of come back after the past couple years of uh not wanting to do it in 2020 so we've got april fool's day stuff happening and maybe there's gonna be some good ones oh reddit's bringing back the place aren't i can't wait for that that was originally an april fool's day experiment and they just kept it going and then it eventually went away but it's a subreddit where you can just show up and contribute towards a larger mural by the community type thing. Huge mural.

That's really cool. I think you allowed to place one pixel per five minutes and communities kind of come together, create something on that mural that can't get overlapped. We actually had Josh Wardle, the creator of Wordle, was on the project creating place. Yeah.

Previously when he worked at Reddit, we've had it on the podcast before place yeah previously when you worked at reddit we've had it on the podcast before if you want to listen to that episode but i'm really excited for that what do you think the chances are we could get enough people to somehow get the mkbhd logo on there the logo i think we just a small logo i think we could organize our own subreddit to to troop over there on a certain time and just create a logo but it's such chaos that's the thing like anything you want to create somebody on the other side of the world is gonna walk over there and mess it up yeah do you think if we created a discord uh channel in our discord server and we all that would be the best way for people to like actively communicate on

how to keep it because you have to draw it and then you have to continue to make sure it stays there because other people can draw other Other people can draw wherever they want. Let's try it. Let's try. We'll tweet something at some point when it goes live and we're going to try and put the MKBHD logo on that somewhere. Even if it's only for a minute. I can't tell you how happy I would be if we pulled that off.

The place is back. The place is back. Happy April Fool's Day, everybody. Thanks for listening to this episode of Wave Forum. Of course, send us your favorite April fool's day products and ideas because they're going to be out there in the tech world but until next week we'll catch you later peace this episode was produced by adam molina we are partnered with vox media and our intro outro music was created by bane so being so.