Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - YouTube Needs to Fix This!

Episode Date: June 20, 2025

This week Marques, Andrew, and David talk about everything from a potential new Xbox to the rumored Instagram app for iPad. Then they talk about YouTube using AI to autodub videos based on viewer location and the pros and cons of the new feature. After that, Adam and David gush over the new Fujifilm X Half before talking about cameras more broadly. It's a short one this week, but a fun one! Links: The Information - iPad Instagram app The Verge - Fediverse news David's Threads interview Windows Central - New Xbox handheld YouTube - AI Autodubbing Music provided by Epidemic Sound Shop the merch: https://shop.mkbhd.com Social: Waveform Threads: https://www.threads.net/@waveformpodcast Waveform Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/waveformpodcast/?hl=en Hosts: Marques: https://www.threads.net/@mkbhd Andrew: https://www.threads.net/@andrew_manganelli David: https://www.threads.net/@davidimel Adam: https://www.threads.net/@parmesanpapi17 Ellis: https://twitter.com/EllisRovin TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@waveformpodcast 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

School's out, the weather's getting warmer, and you know what that means. It's sleepaway camp season. It's never been the case that the majority of American children went to summer camps, but summer camps came to assume a really important place in American popular culture. If most of us didn't go to camp, why are we so obsessed with it? That's this week on Explain It to Me. New episodes every Sunday, wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Scott Galloway, NYU professor, bestselling author, serial entrepreneur,

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Again, that's Prof G Markets wherever you get your podcasts. Again, that's Prof G Markets. They just smash Xbox inside of an existing product, like ROG Xbox Ally. You just described the whole Microsoft strategy for the last decade. What if they did MacBook, Xbox Pro? That would go nuts. That would go so hard.

MK Xbox HD. That would go nuts. That would go so hard. MKXboxHD. Yo, what is up, people of the internet? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marques. I'm Andrew. And I'm David. So last week, we talked a lot about the thing that

happened that week, which was WWDC. And we talked for our entire time, which means all the rest of the stuff that we didn't get to talk about, now we can talk about it. Right. It's a good time. So we've got some old news we missed last week.

We've got Xbox speculations, a new Fuji camera, a Fetaverse corner, of course. And we have some thoughts about some new YouTube features. But first, the biggest news of them all, the elephant in the room that just barely, barely got eclipsed by WWDC, which was the headlines that I read that Instagram may be launching an iPad app this year.

I'll believe it when I see it. It could happen. Where's the horn soundboard? Yeah, I was hearing that. Baa baa baa. Oh yeah. We'll believe it when we see it. Yeah. Because they did launch a WhatsApp for iPad

and that is a meta property that we also never thought would get an iPad app and so now here we are. Yeah, but Instagram is a small team, you know. Lean, yeah. Lean team. I did just Google it recently. Literally tens of thousands of people. 20,000.

20,000. 20,000. 20,000. Just on Instagram? Just on Instagram. Lean team. Holy hell. But you know, it's maybe coming.

20,000? The app updates like twice a year. That's like a small city. What the heck? Speaking of what those 20,000 people are doing, maybe this is just a me problem. I feel like part of this pod is what issues is Andrew having? But my Instagram is cooked.

There are so many issues. I like how we have like a David Fedover's corner and Andrew tech support corner. I've been having three main issues on Instagram and I wanna see if any of you are experiencing them. One, when I try and send a reel, do you know how like it pops up all the profile pictures and names to send it to?

A third of those pictures don't load. They're just blank. Kind of annoying, not too bad. I don't have that pic. Let me try it. I've been having another one recently where reels just play half the video and then pause. Oh, I have that all the time.

Okay, that's been. That happens all the time. Really, that's the most annoying. So you're really annoying. Like I just swipe to a reel and I'll just play a quarter to half of it and then stop and we'll play the rest of it. That's only ever happened to me

when I have a crappy internet connection. No. No, it happens in my house. Yeah, all the time. Yeah. This one is the least annoying, but the most annoying because of how simple it seems. Like every third, you know, like in a reel,

the bottom left corner is their username and profile picture. Yeah. That profile picture is like completely blown out and almost impossible to see, like exposure through the roof. And then you click on their profile and it's totally normal. I think I posted one in Slack somewhere. I've not had that problem,

but I think it would be fun to enjoy. That is the weirdest one. I think it's the weirdest one. I like the chaos, bring on the chaos. It's kind of good that the reals just pause in the middle of them because then you wake up from your trance and then you go outside. It's a feature.

It's a feature, not a bug. They're like, you wanna stop? You should probably stop. It's like how when you're, it should pause and then open the selfie camera. Look at yourself right now. Your eyes like. So bloodshot. This is what it looks now. Your eyes so bloodshot.

This is what it looks like. Do you see it? That's awesome. Yeah, super bloodshot. This is like every third image is just, we'll put it on the screen, but yeah, just like totally exposure slider all the way up. Yeah.

And the rest of it is, yeah, normal. And everything else is normal. The video, when you go to the profile, totally normal. I have a, speaking of HDR, my friend who works at Apple, he, in the new iOS beta, he added a feature that lets you do HDR, not screenshots, but HDR screen recordings,

and he was like, hey, go check out this setting in your phone, and I did, and I was like, oh no. And I was like, Hey, go check out this setting in your phone. And I did. And I was like, Oh no. And I was like, I love you. But, um, I already, my eyes already bleed when I see random HDR content on Instagram, so I'm not sure I want to be like sending videos to people or HDR screen recordings to people, you know what I mean? I feel like HDR around here has turned into a way for us to troll each other

instead of actually using it. I'm just under my covers at night like, yeah, yeah. And then someone reacts with our HDR emoji on Slack. That is my least favorite one. Yeah. On top of the story as well, I just wanted to make a note that Megan Fox is a real person. She did email me after we mentioned that she emailed me first before and she said, yes, I am a real person. So shout out to Megan. Wait, Megan, email me. I think sorry, keep going.

Okay. Why did she email you again? Because she thought it was funny that I was like, is she real? Oh, is it like Megan Fox, Megan Fox, or is it coincidentally someone named Megan Fox? Do you think Megan Fox from Transformers would be doing PR for Beeper? I don't think she'd be doing PR for Beeper, but I do totally see Beeper as the kind of company to be like, how do we get people interested in the Fenneviers? How much money can we give Megan Fox?

Beeper is not a Fenneviers app. Oh, right, it's the, It's the like multi-texting app. Yeah. Oh, it's the woof. Yeahing app. Yeah. But I still- It's the woof. Yeah. I still don't know if Megan Fox from Transformers 1

would be interested in doing beeper PR. That's what I thought. I thought it was Megan Fox got paid to do a beeper thing and like it sent out an email quote from Megan Fox. Yeah, but she had, yeah, that's true. That is a good way to get like tech reporters to open their email. Oh, it's to be named Megan Fox? It's from, okay, that's not- I didn't think she was doing PR. That's true. That is a good way to get like tech reporters to open their email

PR I just thought that Megan Fox from Transformers 1 emailed David and Mel. That's also what I thought that's a possibility Honestly, I've had weird Okay, I currently still think that okay. Yeah. All right, although the other Megan Fox that emailed you was pretty cool She She was really cool I felt really I felt bad because I think when people have common names like that They probably get made fun of all the time. Well, this section is not helping that not at all But thank you, but thank you Megan. You're a real one. Okay moving on to the Fediverse corner All right, uh, there was some threadsverse news this week. I don't know if any of you guys that are watching this use threads or care about the Fetaverse,

but I'm gonna tell you anyway. So they introduced some new features where now there is a dedicated Fetaverse feed on threads, which is actually quite good. Very cool. Yeah, I'm curious about this. So is it the same way you can make a list? Like currently on threads will just be like a Fedover so on desktop on threads right now You can like show multiple feeds at the same time What I have it set up as as the for you feed and the following feed Because I want to be able to just scroll my following list most of the time and also for you You can set one of those to just Fediverse follows. Oh, interesting, okay. So you can follow accounts from like flipboard.social or Macedon.social or whatever,

and then all of those posts show up in one feed. And the reason that that is like good and kind of interesting is like for example, Ghost, which is a publishing platform, is also on Activity Pub, which means if you wanna like read articles, you could use threads to read articles, which is interesting.

I just opened threads, just because while you were talking about it, and mine is extremely broken right now, where basically everyone's name and profile picture is correct, but then the text and content of their post is something else. And it'll all just be the same as the one before it. So my top post is Adam Messeri saying, we're testing a way to hide spoilers and threads. And then next is a random

post of like the WNBA fight last night. There was a fight? Yeah. And the caption is we're testing a way for you to hide spoilers and threads. And then it's David Amell posting saying, it's just been about a year since threads started the Fedover's integration, and then the next post is, we're testing away to hide spoilers and threads. Then it's Jono posting, then there's a random person saying, I love Caitlin Clark getting bumped and shoved to the floor by Marina Mabry. And then the next post is Jono with a picture of you are here right before World War III, and it says, I love Caitlin Clark getting bumped and shoved to the floor. And then it's an AUDL post also saying,

I love Caitlin Clark getting shoved to the floor. And then another person saying, I love Caitlin Clark getting shoved to the floor. And then another person saying, I love Caitlin Clark getting shoved to the floor. And then YouTube saying, I love Caitlin Clark getting shoved to the floor. And then another random person is just like.

They're a lean team, okay? This is so broken right now. The worst part about it is it's got all the correct media. So the text being changed with the media sex the same makes there so much better Well, if you were on the Fediverse feed, you would probably see the same thing. Let me find that but the roll out already So yeah rolled out I have it now It's great So that what I was saying is like the kind of the nice thing about that is like if you follow a ghost

Publication when people publish on ghost, which is like their website, it will also show up on your Fediverse feed if you follow that on the Fediverse. So now you can basically, it's kind of like an RSS reader in a way for a lot of things. I miss those. Yeah, it's frustrating because you still can't interact really past lightning.

That was my next question. So if you want, I interviewed Peter Cottle, who is the head of the Fedoverks integration at Threads yesterday as of time of recording. In a thread, which is a horrible way to interview people, I will say, because Threads- Wait, wait, wait. You interviewed him in like, in replies to a thread?

So we organized an interview, but the interview was like me asking a question, him answering me asking a question, him answering. The problem is that threads as a platform prioritizes top level, like the top level post and like the top comments, but anything under that, like does not come through very easily. So you tried to thread the whole interview,

but then the top replies. So we threaded the whole interview and it, it's really hard to find. You'd think someone at Threads would have realized that probably wasn't a great idea. Yeah. Sorry, not to derail that, that's just crazy. I agree with you.

So anyway, but if you do want to see that interview, you can go see it, I'll have Adam put it in the show notes. No, I won't. He won't put it in the show notes he won't put in the show notes my mind's broken also because right now looking at David Amell's profile is pinned comment lately I've noticed companies smashing so I made a new video every single post after this oh my god I will say if this is wow I will wow is everyone have the same bug right now?

I guess so. That's kind of dope. The rest is busted. All right, well if this was because of the Fetiverse integration, then I'm glad for you, but also I'm sorry that happened. Anyway, yeah, that happened. So now you can follow all your Fetiverse people

in one small thing. Basically you can silo them so that you never have to hear about it again for me, unless you want to. And that's all I have to say on that. The actual Fediverse corner. I think we do need a real Fediverse corner here with like the pins and red string connecting everything. The actual Fediverse corner.

And it just slowly grows as we do it. That'd be fun. I think it's- As more people federate, we can grow the, you know. Until it's just a tangle of red yarn. Slowly it could probably find a corner. As more people federate, we can grow the, you know. Until it's just us in a tangle of red yarn. Slowly will not be a corner anymore. Slowly will be the Fedover's office. That's my goal.

Nice. Federate. Next up, we have a new Xbox handheld sort of. Well, so much. Which we're really late on now. So what I wrote here is actually a little different than that, but we can start with that, the ROG ally. The ROG Xbox ally.

It's like, that's a whole, they just smash Xbox inside of an existing product, like ROG Xbox ally. You just described the whole Microsoft strategy for the last decade. What if they did MacBook, Xbox Pro? That would go nuts. That would go so hard. MK Xbox HD. That would go nuts. That would go so hard. MKXboxHD.

So I haven't watched too much about the new ROG Xbox Ally X, but not only do they do it with the name, that's pretty much what the device is. It is a ROG Ally X. Switch Xbox 2. Nintendo Switch Xbox 2. Has all three in there. OK, continue.

That's OK. They pretty much did it with the name and the actual console, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, two. It has all three in there. Okay, continue. I'm sorry. That's okay. They pretty much did it with the name and the actual console because it's an ROG Ally X, slightly upgraded, and where you hold it is more like a real Xbox controller, including, I believe, on the Ally, Xbox Ally X, not the Xbox Ally, because there's two tiers of them.

The higher tier has the responsive triggers or whatever. Why I posted this though is actually a teaser that the Xbox CEO posted recently about their next gen consoles that a lot of people are speculating off of that I thought was pretty interesting. So the main thing they did was they were announcing they're continuing their partnership with AMD for new consoles. The X and S were already using AMD, so it's nothing that interesting in that sense. But in that they said a couple things. Well, first of all, they said they're also going to use the

power of AI to enhance graphics. I think they're the last home console that's kind of like jumping on the AI bandwagon. I think we all expected that. Yeah, my Nintendo Switch 2 definitely has so much AI in it. All that. I mean, it has upscaling. AI upscaling? It is AI upscaling. There's a lot of companies that would call that AI upscaling. It's all AI baby. Oops, all AI.

But one of the main things they said is, one, she announced that they were going to be making the new chips to bring the next-gen Xbox to your living room and to your hands, which kind of sounds like since this just came out, maybe they're doing a first party handheld. Everyone's like, the Switch 2, we need a competitor. I mean, PlayStation did one, right? It was kind of that like streaming one. Yeah, the PlayStation portal.

Yeah. Yeah. So I'm not really sure about that, but then there was a statement. Yeah. There's a statement at the end of the video that everybody is really speculating on. They said, delivering you the Xbox experience not locked to a single store or tied to one device,

that's why we're working closely with the Windows team to ensure that Windows is the number one platform for gaming. A little weird, the Xbox CEO is saying Windows is the number one. They are owned by Microsoft. I still think it's strange that Xbox is saying that. But not being tied to a single store or one device, everyone's hoping that this means the new Xbox is basically a toned down Windows platform

that can run Steam and Epic Games Store. Which could be really sick if your Xbox and or Xbox handheld device is running Steam games. The dream of the Steam PC is alive and well, I see. Yeah, the like hybrid PC console. I also gotta say, so Dave2D did a video recently. There was a Lenovo Legion handheld device that had originally run Windows and it was not good.

And then they released a Steam OS version that was much better. Like it got a much higher frame rate and like cooled better and everything. And that was all because it was running steam OS instead of Windows. And the whole thing was like, Oh, Windows was the problem all along. So this, yeah. Is this really a good idea? title. This. Yeah.

Is this really a good idea? Maybe if they're focusing more on it and creating it into. I mean, I guess it's not only the hand on. I think more people are excited about an Xbox console being able to play Steam games, which is a speculation also. That'd be great. That would be

awesome. But also then what would be the value of the Xbox store? You know, I mean, well, it still has there's still Xbox exclusive games that aren't on Steam. So you have both, you just have more choices now. That's about all we have because we are definitely not the bastions of console games. Yeah, we're not the gaming, except for the Nintendo Switch 2. Everyone comes to us for Nintendo Switch 2 news.

I want to do a, just planting the seed for the future. I'm reading about this AI upscaling DLSS stuff right now And I'm I'm kind of curious like the whole idea that like you load lower resolution files into your memory to save motherboard bandwidth knowing that your GPU can upscale them with machine learning when they become like close to the player like That that doesn't make sense to me. Like how can a graphics card be that fast that it beats out motherboard bus speed? Well, I think it's like memory read speed.

You know, like. The upscaling is faster than loading higher resolution assets or something. I know, but doesn't that just feel wrong coming out of your mouth? I don't know. I mean, maybe it's just me. You either just sound like the bus.

I don't think either of us know enough about me. You either just said something remarkable or someone listening to this is like, what an idiot. No, I mean, I'm sure it is what an idiot, but at the same, like, just think about it. Like the idea that like, like as someone who has messed around with a bunch of these, I granted not on like a dedicated chip, but I've messed around with a bunch of these AI upscaling things and they're not, you know,

they're not exactly lean. Again, I'm not doing it on a dedicated chip. And the idea, you know, we're doing this on a Mac studio, which is essentially a big giant bus city, you know, with these like super fast memory read and write speeds and buses between everything. So I'm just like, damn, were we really at that place where it's more efficient? A lot of the drama around the new Nvidia cards was that they're not actually that much faster They just did a lot more AI upscaling Well, either way if you are the kind of person watching this who knows how stupid what I just said is Right to me and I don't know we'll talk about it. You're gonna get tweeted out a lot this week. I love it

Yeah, good if I had to guess without getting piled on by how wrong I am We're all gonna get piled. Everyone get your fingers ready to type. It's not that it's just, you know, like one chip doing all of the upscaling. It's one chip that's using machine learning to help the already powerful graphics chip in that. Get to that point.

It's not doing it all by itself. No, don't do that. That's... What was that one? 15, 16, 17, 18. That's why, okay. That's true. That's... What was that one? That's why, okay. That's what's gonna be on my Twitter in a few days. This whole conversation just reminded me when I was at Newark Airport the other day.

No, this one makes sense. Did Megan Fox show up? No, you know, the guy who checks your ID and like your boarding pass before you get in, he was like, oh, yeah, I watch your videos, like good to see you or whatever. I was like, oh, cool, thanks. And then I went in and then he got onto his break

immediately and then walked back up to me and was like, by the way, I have a question. I have a RTX 4090, what chip should I get? I was like, I don't know, what games? There's too many answers to this question. And I just was like, I don't know. That's when you were like, don't there's too many answers to this question I just was like, that's me like my Macintosh my my plane leaves in five minutes Yeah, and I was like unloading my bag on to the conveyor belt like I don't know man Whatever you want like I could tell in that moment. I was like

I know I am NOT giving a good there are multiple dedicated channels for those Yeah, is it an RTX 4090 good? Yeah. yeah. Yeah, he said, what processor should I get? He's like, I have this card, what processor should I get? I have like the most sought after card in the country right now. I was like, honestly, man, you're probably gonna be fine. You can't play Cities Skylines with an old CPU though. You should have been like, oh, last year's card?

Broke boy. All right. We gotta move on. Okay, this is another extremely small story. No, no, no, no, no. We need a segue. Speaking of... Maps.

Why was there maps before? Because planes fly on maps, and now this is a map. We just saw a car... Planes fly in the air, Andy. Yeah, planes fly on maps and now this is a map. We just saw CarPlay. Planes fly in the air. Yeah, planes fly on maps. Marques was delayed for 11 hours. It didn't fly too much. Last week, we saw CarPlay Ultra with the new Aston Martins.

It wasn't last week, it was a while ago. And how the UI kind of matches the CarP. We got our first glimpse of that in Google Maps in Android Automotive. First of all, I thought Android Automotive wasn't a term anymore. I thought we were now Android Auto and cars with Google. Drive.

Google. Built in. Built in, right? That was funny. Google Drive. That was funny. Wait, I made that joke like four years ago. I got that so late.

Dang, wait, that's a really missed opportunity. Yeah, Google Drive. It should have been called Google Drive. Well, yeah, no, Android Automotive is just what the cars, like the Pulsar's run that have Google as the UI. Yeah, it was like, it's the UI using it without having to plug your phone. It's Android Auto without your phone.

It's pretty much. It's just an Android tablet, pretty much. Inside your car, as your car's UI. But then I thought at Google I.O. they announced like Google, Google car with or car with Google Drive. No, no car. Cars with Google built in. With Google built in.

Yeah. Cars with Google built in is now what they called it. That's right. So I thought Android automotive was gone, which is the first thing that confused me about this. So I think that that would refer to the cars, like the GM cars where it's not that the entire operating system is Google, but they do have Google Play Store access and you can install Android apps on them.

So you can install Spotify and Waze on it, even though the whole thing isn't Android Automotive. I'm not saying this is easy to understand. This is totally a Google's fault for making several things with similar names, all being difficult to understand, but yeah. Android Auto, Android Automotive, and Google with, no, cars with Google built in are three different things.

Cool. Sounds like a Google product. Yeah, exactly, nailed it. But we saw our first glimpse at an Android automotive being slightly modified to match the car's UI vibes, I guess. CarPlay Ultra, baby. Yeah, pretty much. There's a Polestar.

It's super simple. Google Maps now has an orange button instead of a blue button. It's more squared off. Everything matches with Polestar. It's very nice. But it made me think, is Polestar the Google Pixel of the Android Auto software, or Android Automotive software?

Polestar. Like if you want the Android Automotive latest updates, you have to buy a Polestar, because it seems to get all of this first. Polestar is the Pixel of Android Automotive. Yes. Yes. It's the pixel of EVs period, I feel like. Maybe that's rude.

I just feel like I see so few of them now compared to everything else. But there are still enough of them where you see them. And they're good, and people who like them are like, wow, this is amazing. Why does this not have more market share? Is that the almond of the walnut? I was thinking the same

How do they get how do they how do they milk the almond Okay, I don't have the answer DJ and I usually have all the answers Can I for which chip to get for a 49? I can feel this derailing we should work a break. Wait, wait, wait. Before we take a break. Before we take a break. I just want to read a tweet that I tweeted six years ago. OK.

Perfect. So I decided to rename all the Google services. Google Keep. Wait, OK. Google. Wait. You're doing great, sweetie. OK.

I said Android Auto should become Google Drive, which was Alice's joke. But I just want to let you know I made that six years ago. Wow. Way to one-up Alice. That's messed up. Let him have this moment. No one laughed at it in here either.

I said Google Drive should be renamed to Google Keep because you're keeping stuff. Or Google Cloud because it is a cloud service. Google Cloud also exists. And that Google Keep should be renamed to Google Notes. So I just wanted to say. That was it. That wasn't all the services.

I was expecting like 21. Google Pixel should be Google Phone. I didn't say that, but it would make sense. Anyway, we can take it to break down. I'm sorry, Ellis, that was really mean. I should have just been like, you're funny, but I was funny first. Don't worry, Ellis has an old VHS tape

from a first grade recital where he made that same joke and you actually stole it from him. Well, in my Bible, Jesus actually said. Oh yeah, well, if you come with me, I have cave paintings where they're painting about how funny it would be if it was called Google Drive, okay, in their weird split stone cars. Fossils which have engravings on them.

Anyway. Ancient aliens came to me and said they should, when the Big Bang happened. Hit the button right now. The sound that reverberated was, Android Auto should be called Google Drive. I think this is the sharpest decline of listeners we're ever gonna see on analytics of an episode.

That was very chaotic. Oh my God. Question one, let's get right into it, folks. In the early days of Instagram, back in the, oh my God. No one laughed this hard at the actual joke. I was so proud of it. It's because I made it first. It's never funny the second time.

If you made it this far into the episode, comment Google Drive down below. I just want to know. I just want to know if you made it this far. All right, question one. In the early days, in the late 2000s, the early days of Instagram, the original conception of it was not

as a photo sharing app, but actually as a location based social network. Once Foursquare took off, they realized they were not going gonna capture any of that market share and they pivoted to images. But before they pivoted, what was the original name of the app? Before it was called Instagram.

Before it was called Instagram. Did you know that Fours four square recently bought another company? How with what that's what I'm saying. I'm like I read this news and I was like they've bought companies in 2019 from snap They acquired something from snapchat in 2019. They bought something in 2021 They bought something this year and I'm like, where is your money coming from? I also think it's hilarious that it seems just like Everyone wanted to start a four square in the late 2000s. Yeah.

Sam Altman was doing it. Well. Instagram was doing it. That was like the birth of like location data. So everyone was like, what can we do with this? And they all had the exact same idea. Cause it's the only idea. Yeah.

Well, we will think about this one. Answers will be at the end, like usual. We'll be right back Support for the show comes from Shopify Look any business ventures that you partake in comes with its fair share of ups and downs. That pressure to grow can get suffocating if you're lacking the right tools and support. Luckily, Shopify is here to help you find

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Use code WAVE at monarchmoney.com for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year at MonarchMoney.com with code WAVE. What do President Biden's two senior most national security advisors think of the US strikes on Iran? The longer tail of the threat from Iran remains and will have to be taken seriously. I'm Preet Bharara. And this week, Jake Sullivan and John Feiner join me on my podcast, Stay Tuned with Preet, to discuss the US military action in Iran

and what comes next for the Middle East. The episode is out now. Search and follow Stay Tuned with Preet wherever you get your podcasts. All right, welcome back. We gotta talk about this sort of double edged sword of this one new YouTube feature that is attempting to do good things. But obviously it's a double edged sword, so there are bad things happening too.

So we talked a couple of weeks ago actually about dubbing our videos. We've been paying to have our videos transcribed so you guys who are unable to hear the videos can obviously read along but also if you don't speak English We started working on audio tracks in different languages That would play alongside the video for people who speak different languages So obviously if you're in English region you watch the video It's English if you're in a region like let's say Germany for example, and a lot of people speak German, it could theoretically insert a dub of me,

like my voice, but speaking German. Was hast du sagt? And it will play alongside the video as if it was just like normally how it sounded. And it's kind of a cool idea, you might have heard about this before, auto-dubbing, a lot of other channels have tried it. We experimented with voice actors

who would speak alongside me but don't necessarily sound like me, but the translations would typically be very accurate. We also, they take a while, and then we also experimented, since tech videos are fast turnaround, with AI dubs, which would actually sound like me, but wouldn't necessarily be as accurate,

but they'd be much faster. So there's a whole bunch of things we've been trying. That actually, so the last time we talked about this, that was the conundrum when we were in and we asked our audience, what would you rather have? The like paid for a voice actor that's more accurate coming seven days later or the AI within 24 hours. And the funny thing is the feedback we got was,

please stop. It's auto, it's defaulting to those tracks based on my region. And I've been watching you in English for so long. This is now making watching your videos super annoying. Yeah, so that's where we get to this new feature, which is YouTube. I got an email. Actually, I'm gonna pull up the email right now from YouTube.

So real quick, before we get to that, that actually changed our whole strategy. And what we're currently working on now, if people are interested, is instead of taking the most popular regions and trying to adapt to dubbing from some of those, we actually decided to take the least popular regions that watch us, I think like Russia and Japan are to right now,

because if somewhere like India, which is one of our biggest viewer audiences, they're already listening to us in English, they like it in English, there's not a lot more people to reach to there. So let's try and find the people that aren't listening in English. And so if it does auto-dub it based on the region,

that might be able to expand the audience. So that's what we were trying until this feature rolled out. Yeah, the key issue was that YouTube was auto changing the dub track based on the viewer's location and would not give the viewer an option to change back. That's awful. Or you would have to do it individually per video. I don't even know you can change it at all.

No, I think you can change it in the audio track in the settings, the gear icon. It's similar to where you change like speed of end quality. Oh, I know that might hurt. Yeah, but the issue is like, okay, all these millions of people are used to watching in English and it just got switched to a different language on them. And even though it's one of the languages spoken

in the region, they'd really rather just watch in English. So I get this email, hi Marques Brownlee, we'll soon be enabling automatic dubbing on your channel. This means that YouTube will automatically generate translated audio tracks in different languages, making your content accessible to more viewers. No action is needed.

We'll enable this on your channel in the coming weeks, and once it's enabled, when you upload a new video, we'll automatically add the dubbed audio to your video. Over time, we may also dub previously published videos. In some cases, we may be unable to generate the dubbed audio, so you'll first be able to see the status of the dubbed audio in YouTube Studio. Effective today, you can turn it off for your entire channel.

Oh. But once it's enabled for your channel, while uploading new videos, you'll also have the option to turn off automatic dubbing for that video. And it's a bunch of languages. So if you click the learn more link in there, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, and all I presume will continue

to be locked to the regions that they assume people are from and speak those languages. So yeah, YouTube just go ahead and flipping the switch on the AI dubbing feature that they've been building in the background. Double-edged sword. I think a lot of creators, maybe smaller creators especially, will find this useful because they don't have

established audiences who are used to listening to them in a certain language. So this is just free extra visibility to them in new places that wouldn't have ordinarily been able to consume their video. It's great. But the other side of that sword is myself, a channel who already has people who are used to listening in English

and don't want it switched, would just have a bunch of people suddenly getting weird AI dubbed tracks when they're used to listening in English. And they're gonna have to find that button to switch it back to English, which is not necessarily easy to find. I believe every time a new video starts, you would have to do that too, which is so annoying.

It happened to me the other day because I was doing the dishes as we do here in this podcast. And I usually just leave my phone off in the corner playing videos while I have an AirPod in or something. And I had changed my phone recently to the Spanish language to help me just get more. To read in Spanish. And it auto-dubbed it.

It was so weird. I had to drive my hands. If Duolingo had this feature and you were doing French or whatever and then it just started talking in English to you That'd be pretty funny. Yeah, the Duo AI just takes over your phone and starts dubbing things. You know YouTube calls this a dub feature. I call it an L Nice. I mean, I I think we all understand what they're trying to get at.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you make that joke first? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thanks. I mean, I think we all understand what they're trying to get at. Did you make that joke first? Yeah. Something, something big bang. We get it. Like I remember squid games came out and everyone, like it had all the different dub tracks on it already and like got super popular and like, we all understand the benefits of this dubbing in here to be able to reach it. I think it's just like way too surface level and people aren't understanding

that like what we saw from feedback from our audience is really upset about people who already listen to you in English. And the other thing is, is like we did it in Hindi. We had so many people saying, Hey, India speaks like 12 different languages. Like, not even all, a lot of us probably know English better than Hindi, but now you're gonna all get region locked to Hindi, or maybe it's based on phone. I'm still not 100% sure about how that works.

Yeah, I don't know if I just like, maybe it was just a weird hack that happened or something because I changed the system language on my phone. I can easily see YouTube's point of view from this because there's all of this content that people could be watching that would just give them so many more ad dollars. So if you make it opt out instead of opt in,

people can just watch any video and enjoy it and then YouTube gets more ad revenue. So it makes a ton of sense from a monetary perspective. Here's my proposition to YouTube to make it make sense for everyone. Allow users, like viewers, a little bit of control over the default viewing experience for their channel. I've brought this up before.

I brought this up like many, many years ago where I was like, I would like YouTube to automatically default whatever video I'm watching to the highest available resolution. I will wait for it to buffer. I will. And I don't mind that that's like gonna take longer for certain videos or certain worst connection environments,

but that's a flip I would switch in my YouTube experience. Let me flip the switch. But that's not a flip that I can switch. That's not a switch that I can flip. Yeah. But I want another switch. Another switch. Cause this would make sense.

If you're gonna do this YouTube, I get it, great. Give us another switch that just says, default all videos to their naturally uploaded language or default all videos to English or default all videos to dubbing in this language so that I don't automatically get videos in the language I don't speak and I have to like switch them a whole bunch of times.

I just wanna watch everything in whatever language it was natively made in, whole bunch of times. I just wanna watch everything in whatever language it was natively made in, give me that. Or I just wanna watch everything in English because I speak English and just do that. Companies are strangely adverse to giving you like granular control of things. Yeah. They know better.

Yeah. Yeah. I also, I don't think subtitles is that bad of a thing to do, like I don't know why it needs to dub because. The anime world has very strong Exactly, and there's so many like not even outside of anime like I'll watch YouTube from youtubers in other countries doing like I don't know EDC travel videos or something like that and You miss a lot of like how they feel about something

Even though I don't understand the language I could tell they get excited about certain things or like things like that Which I can read what it says perfectly fine as long as I'm getting like the intuition of their excitement through their voice. Yeah. I have a thought and I have one more step further on a proposition for how to fix it. My thought is this feels like a very American step because I feel like in America we don't know a lot of other languages.

We're in a lot of other countries. People know three, four, five languages, that's super common. So it feels like to us, oh, you live in another country, you speak different language. Here it is. Rather than like, they might know a bunch of different languages and watch different channels in different languages. So that's what causes this issue of default locking that to a region or a language based on your phone being annoying, my proposition is when you subscribe to a channel, you get to click, keep this defaulted all the time I watched this person's videos in original or that. It brings back the subscribe button

to actually being important again, because it's not really that important right now. But they don't want it to be important, right? They want people to just go roaming around watching videos. But they don't want it to be important, right? They want people to just go roaming around, watching videos. But I don't think YouTube would be mad at seeing those numbers continuing to increase because it still does represent success. I mean, they just changed all the Shorts Views numbers

for literally no reason to just pretend to be successful. So if we bring back the subscribe button to meaning a little bit, something then somebody who maybe does watch other videos in Hindi, but wants to watch you in English, can subscribe to your channel and be like, all videos from MKBHD are in the original audio file, original language. That would be the best user in my eyes,

like user flip to switch. Yeah, or like giving the users. But you would only get that subscribing to someone. Right. Yeah. What if you're just like on the users. But you would only get that subscribing to someone. Right. Yeah. What if you're just like on the TV clicking around random videos? Yeah, I had this happen to me

and it was totally by accident, but there's another YouTuber who does car videos and I don't know where, Romania, and somewhere in Europe they had this foreign language channel that they are very successful with, but they did dubs of it in English just to get a larger audience and they made an English channel.

And so I was looking up car reviews and I was watching a bunch and I clicked on one and it started playing and it was very clearly an AI dub. But I went with it because I was still learning facts about the car or whatever. So I had encountered this channel and they had this English speaking AI dub channel just for these videos and I made it through the video

and it was okay. And I think in an ideal world, instead of those views going to a separate channel that they had to make, it would all go to one original video just with different dubs playing for different people watching the video. Without me subscribing or having to engage

or anything necessarily, it would just know who I am, what language I wanna watch the video in and play it for me. So I just want that toggle on my end to be like, hey, YouTube, you might think I wanna watch in this language, but I actually just wanna watch the original or actually just wanna watch English and that would be fine, yeah.

Yeah. There are some people though who probably know different languages where they might watch one channel in Spanish and might watch another channel in English and then it has to default to everything. So I guess that's my reason for like, if I subscribe to a channel, this is the channel I know I want to watch in this language. Sure. Therefore it all does that. And then you default your non-subscribe channels to whatever language you pick.

That makes sense because I do have just like straight-up Spanish youtubers that I watch that speak Spanish So yeah, that would be weird to have make everything English as a toggle. Yeah Andrews it's really crazy that you made that point about the like letting the subscribers choose based on their channel because I actually tweeted that six years ago I Really I can you pull it up I actually have been thinking about this all episode and it really was a really big, it was a huge move. I promise we're okay, I just love callbacks.

Well, so did I, that's why I pulled up the six year old Jeff. It's the lung. Damn, that was good. So to wrap this up, I think the moral of it is if you're a larger channel, you probably should opt out of auto dubbing, right? Yeah, if you have an international audience. It's hard to say. If you're a channel like us where you have a large English-speaking audience in a whole bunch of countries that speak English, and then there are a bunch

of other countries that probably wouldn't benefit from you having auto-dubbing, then you're good. But maybe you are a small Romanian car channel, and you are very limited in your audience, and only people who speak that language, maybe you do want auto-dubbing turned on for your channel, and then you get a whole bunch more viewership that you wouldn't ordinarily have gotten. So it depends on who you are or what channel you are and how popular the language that you're speaking is

that you might want to turn it on or off. So it's typical YouTube. This is a decent idea that will probably not be that great because they don't let users have enough control over them. Yeah, just a little control. I've always wanted, there's definitely like a lot of technical reasons and I know that companies will like sunset features that are not getting enough use, which is always very frustrating because it's like, well, some of your users use it, but the problem is then they have a code base that they have to keep up and it makes it slower and

whatever. I just think companies are very adverse to giving more granular control, which is frustrating. So many products could be made better if even really, really, really deep in the settings, you just gave us so much specific tweaking control, but they don't wanna do that because the code base would be too complicated. This reminds me a lot of how YouTube rolled out shorts because remember at first we were kind of confused

and we made a whole separate channel just for shorts because we didn't want to mess up with our algos and stuff like that and viewership. It seems like they just kind of rush out these features before they're completely baked in in the way that they should be at launch. Yeah. Because now I think shorts is fine, like on your channel.

Totally. They separated out perfectly fine and no big deal. Shorts is fine, like on your channel. They separate it out perfectly fine, no big deal. Shorts is a good example, because it is a huge feature on the site, so it obviously takes time. You can't necessarily roll it out perfectly on the first try, but it is tough because you have this whole ecosystem of power users

and people who depend on it and want to do well immediately with it that will be frustrated as it evolves and changes and gets better. So yeah, you want to do well immediately with it, that will be frustrated as it evolves and changes and gets better. So yeah, you wanna do as well as you can right out the box, but it's not gonna be perfect. You do have to improve it. And then there are features that just go away.

Like I remember, I go to the Creator Summit every year and every year Linus brings up, I'm not trying to call him out, but YouTube stories. All other creators are bringing this up too. Like YouTube used to have stories. And every year there's a question about like, how do we avoid that happening again? Because you guys rolled out stories for a couple months

and it was actually working for some of us. And it was like a cool feature we could use to give temporary updates. And then it just stopped and it just went away. And now we were relying on that feature. We had like a whole show going on stories and now it's gone. Just don't do that again. That's the goal.

I think the hard thing is with a lot of products, you can roll out beta features and it's like, it's either good or bad or whatever, but with products that people rely on for like their livelihood, it's very difficult when companies just roll out features that they have to rapidly adapt to and then maybe it will disappear

and there's just not that much transparency. It's the hard thing though because social media, if you are a social media company, you wanna try and figure it out as fast as possible and gain, so like I'm sure Linus did a good job of figuring out how to make stories work for their business, but it didn't for everyone else. And you're almost like,

you almost have to try and succeed. And I mean, pretty sure it short, do you remember IGTV? We tried to do stuff on IGTV. It's a weird, weird thing that just completely went away. And now is reels and shorts and everything. And now TikTok is just what IGTV was. It's just short videos. I just don't know if YouTube, for example,

cares that much about us as the creators, not in a way that all big companies don't really care. I just mean more so that we are not the customer of the product, you know? Like there's the viewer who is clicking around and that's who they want to reach. There's the people that buy ads, which are the actual customers for YouTube,

and then there are creators who make the content. So all of this stuff is like kind of getting into weeds of who gets what control when you give people. You have to distribute incentives, right? Like you have to make it lucrative for the creators to make the content, but you also have to make it interesting enough for people to wanna keep watching the content,

and then you have to make it so the advertisers wanna advertise on the platform, and it's just the whole circle. I think I've called this the 90-10 problem or something like that, where the 90% of users don't do most of the content generation, but you have to incentivize the small 10% who are making all the content,

even though it might not be ideal for the 90% of people who are watching it. But also you want to make things that are great for the 90% of people who are watching it, but also you wanna make things that are great for the 90% of people who are watching content, it's hard. It's a balancing piece. On YouTube it's probably like 1% of 1% of 1% of people make the content.

A tiny fraction make all the content. This though is something that is hurting potentially viewers. Like people who come to watch MKBHD are watching things on YouTube for MKBHD and if now they're getting mad that they have to switch the audio track every time, they might be spending less time on YouTube versus like us wanting this very specific thing as like, this is the 90%

potentially being, or 20% of the 90% possibly being bad at something. And we saw the list of languages. So the question will be what fraction of people who are used to watching in English will have it switched on them and that's bad for them versus all the people in those Regions who speak those languages who weren't watching mkbhd videos who suddenly will Yeah, I don't know the math of that. That's that's really ours is quite unique

But I yeah, I would argue ours and some of those is probably more people mad than more people game. It's some ratio and hopefully that people helped than hurt. I have a question because I've been in podcast studio rewire world for the past week or so. So I haven't quite been following this. What happens to the music and sound effect? Do you have to upload a separate dialogue track and then it swaps that out? I know I was giving you separate dialogue and music for a while. So that's a good question. When we were doing the human method,

we would have to export a separate track for all the sound effects and music and a separate track for the voice. So that when we had someone do the re-recording in a different language, it would be overlaid in place of what my voice track was and it would still have the underlaid music. The AI dub is doing a remarkably good job

with one single audio track of just replacing the voice. Now, the AI small car channel that I watched, it was bad. Whatever tool they were using, it had the music fading in and out and breaking, and it was pretty bad, but it was just a robot English voice, so I could at least get the information about the car.

But some of these AI tools, and now the ones we've been using, and YouTube's tool ideally, we'll be able to do it all with a single audio track. Yeah. I just, you know, I'm sure it does a great job. It's just like, I spend all this time, man, like trying to make stuff sound good on the channel,

and then it's just like like only for like a robot to decide what to do with it is so painful. We shoot an 8K only for all the content to be impressed. I mean, if you walked into a movie theater and you saw like an AI dub of like a THX sound, like it wouldn't be worth all the work. I'm a big compressor nerd, especially when I'm working on music ducking or

Making a mix or any of like a channel intro, which doesn't usually well sometimes they have dialogue Like I'm doing a lot with like how what what logarithmic curve should the compressor roll off on like? How is it gonna and then just to have a robot be like? I know better. Yeah, I think the the original file will always be best and so if I am making English content those who enjoy the original file will always be best. And so if I am making English content, those who enjoy the original will always have a best. And then it's sort of like for those who don't speak English, would you rather not be able to understand the video at all or get like a C plus mix version where you can understand it? And I think YouTube's

answer is let's give accessibility, You can at least understand it. It's not gonna be a perfect mix, but more views everywhere, you know? That's the... And theoretically more views everywhere is still better for the creators because they still make more money. Yeah, that's true.

I think from YouTube's perspective, it makes sense even if it's rough. Well, speaking of English language content. This podcast. And the thing we do exclusively in English on this podcast. Trivia. I was reminded that one of the few movies that I've seen has a character voiced by Vin Diesel who just says, I am Groot over and over again.

And they do a bunch of languages of this movie. And so there are many recordings of Vin Diesel going, yo soy Groot. Is Groot the good guy or the bad guy? Groot's always good. All right, trivia question number two. So we finally have an Instagram app coming to iPad. Allegedly, maybe we'll see.

Asterisk. But when Instagram launched, it famously had a one by one aspect ratio. What were the pixel dimensions of each image? Blank by blank. Originally? Originally, when it launched. Yeah, I know, right?

It's crazy. Originally, I remember back in the day, you could only upload from the viewfinder. Remember you couldn't upload a file? Holy crap, yeah. That was instant. Yeah, that's, the world would be better. I will also accept the actual number of pixels

that Ellis calculated out for me. Oh, like the calculator? Yeah, yeah. Oh, God, okay. Cool. You know, in fact, it's called Instagram because in between the four square thing and the photo sharing thing,

they try to do like an easy bake oven, but exclusively for like Teddy Graham crackers, little cinnamon bears. So you make a big cracker into a little cracker? A big teddy bear. No, you make like a nondescript slurry of powder and liquid under an incandescent bulb into a little tiny graham cracker.

Where's that in your Twitter six years ago, David? I'm sorry. This horse is dead and still being beaten. The audience is gonna hate me after this episode. Not as much as me. And on that note. You know what? We'll be back after the break.

I give up. ["Sweet Home Alone"] In 2001, Lindsay met a man named Carlo. About a week later, they went on a date. And almost 15 years after that, she found out Carlo had been keeping a secret. Did you just go through every single moment of your relationship trying to see if you picked up on anything or... Yeah, I didn't sleep for days. I ran over things again and again in my head. And part of me didn't really still believe it. It took quite a while to sink in. I'm Phoebe Judge. Listen right now on Criminal, wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome back. This is my section of the podcast now. Ha ha ha ha ha, but also David's. Sort of, sort of. We're gonna be talking about the Fuji X half camera that I have right here. I've been playing with it for a few days. I don't know how to feel about it. It's awesome and also weird and also bad.

In very specific ways. So it is a camera from Fujifilm, it's a new camera. And if you look at the back of the camera, instead of like a screen that's normally landscape, when you like line up pictures or whatever, it is a portrait like. Orientation. Thank you, it is a portrait- like- orientation. Thank you.

It is a portrait oriented screen. So it's basically for Instagram. Turn it around, show the class, turn it around. I was just gonna put B-roll, but sure that works too. Yeah. For reference, half frame cameras in the film era were half a 35 millimeter strip of film. And because of that, the aspect ratio was vertical,

which is why this is a vertical. And it was supposed to save you money back in the day because instead of, yeah, you would get 72 shots instead of 36. This is a very expensive camera for what it is. How much did that cost you? This was 850. To be clear, they were going to sell this for 700

and then the tariffs happened. 700's still too much. I think if this was like 500, it'd be a must buy. Okay, I think you should explain it more. Wait, wait, before you do that, can I ask a question specifically about what you just said? They said out loud this was gonna be 700 and now it's 850. On the briefing I was on, they said it was like 700

and 700 is the MSRP in other countries. Okay. But in the US it's 850. So we might get to see when tariffs are not if they will actually bring it back down. They won't lower it I don't think. I don't think so either. But I just don't think we had a clear thing to point to

to see if this would happen and now we do. Fun fact, this camera has a one inch sensor which famously means the sensor measures exactly one inch diagonally. It doesn't. It doesn't. It does not. 1.0 type. Yeah, so this is a digital camera, but the whole point of it is to kind of emulate a film camera.

So there's a mode, a film camera mode that you can turn this into, you just like set it on, where you will not be able to see what you're shooting on the back screen You have to look through the viewfinder and it is Basically just like a film camera where you take a picture and all you see on the back is a number go from 0 to 1 And then you do that until you fill up quote-unquote the roll so you can choose whether you want 36 72 roll, whatever So let's say I chose 36. I'll take pictures and all I'll see is the number going up I will not see a preview of'll see is the number going up. I will not see a preview of the camera

or the picture, anything like that. Until there's a accompanying app that you can download and you will quote unquote develop the film and it will transfer it to your phone. And you can watch the contact sheet fill out as it develops in real time. And it's so cool. This calls for worse is better, okay? Worse is better.

When are you gonna learn that? Well, you can, Marques, you can take photos. You don't have to be in that mode. This is just a mode. You can just keep it in digital camera mode and it acts just like a digital camera. This is just a specific film camera mode. Show them the paddle.

Paddle? The film advanced lever. There's a film advanced lever. There's a film advanced lever on the back that switches into the mode. This thing is my number one complaint with this camera so far. It, well, the build quality in general

of this camera is very plasticky. It's very lightweight, which is cool, but Fuji cameras are typically like, they feel hunky, durable. Like they're like really good cameras. This is more like an expensive toy. And I love expensive toys. I buy teenage engineering sh** all the time.

So it's right up my alley. But this like lever here, the lever, lever thing, whatever, wherever you want. The film advanced lever. The film advanced lever has no ratcheting, no like feedback, no nothing. So it's just like, it slides into place, which is like kind of annoying.

But I've been having a lot of fun shooting with this thing. It's just it makes me wonder if I know David you had a video years ago about this about how like smartphone cameras are all about software now. How many years ago? Wait, it might have actually been six years ago. It was not six years ago. Like four years ago? It was on the the Pixel 6 came out. So it was six years ago. It was not six years ago. Okay, well like four years ago. It was on the Pixel 6 came out, so it was four years ago. Oh, that video. Four years ago you had a video about how cameras are all software now, and this is taking that

in a different direction, which I really find interesting, because it's just, it's adding features instead of processing the photos in a certain way. I find that really intriguing, and I wish that Fuji would make another one of these or bring this to their like pro level cameras. Because I think that would be so fun. If you have like an X106. Bring what to the pro level?

The film simulation mode, like all of these things. You know what? They have film simulation modes on X106. Wait, how? Oh, you mean like the film real? The transferring thing. Oh, the real mode. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The film throwback to when cameras are bad. That, I'm sorry. They were not bad. They were so good. David has a whole side career off of his film cameras. Can you talk about the sub-LCD? Yes, that is Andrew's favorite feature. So on the back, there's the main display,

which is, as we mentioned, vertically oriented. But there's a sub-display LCD thing that you can actually, wait, let me turn it on so maybe people can see. I'll just put this in B-roll. You can swipe through different film simulations on it. And it shows the canister, it looks like it's the little window that you would get in a film camera. You see the little Portra, well, not Portra,

Astia, Velvia, all of those as you swipe through, it's really cool. It's also how you navigate menus and stuff. It's not super responsive, it's a little slow. I thought it was crazy. No, when you're swiping through, it's pretty quick, but when you're tapping through for the menus and stuff, it's a little bit slow.

Yeah, that part I thought was cool. Scrolling through the fake film canister to pick the different filters was really responsive And I didn't expect it to be because gimmicky stuff like that is usually not really that well built in but it was really good Yeah, David and I were taking a beautiful walk. Sorry. Did I cut you off? I was gonna say the one other thing is that film advanced lever if you push in is also lets you see the last photo You took I guess if you're outside of whatever the mode is, but I thought that was a really quick way to check the photo.

That was nice. I think they should full send it and since the sensor is so small, high, I know it's not actually one inch guys, it's very, very small, but it's small enough that you could in theory put them on a belt and have the film weaver just advance which sensor was like in line with the,

anyway, David and I were taking a beautiful walk through North Brooklyn on a beautiful summer day a few, a week or two ago maybe, and we were talking about this bad boy, having a conversation about it, and David, you said one of the funniest things I've ever heard you say. Maybe that's an exaggeration,

because you've said some pretty funny stuff. But. He made it six months ago. But we were talking about, we were talking about how this camera, you can't pull raw images off of it. You can only pull compressed images off of it, and how people were complaining about how this camera, you can't pull raw images off of it. You can only pull compressed images off of it and how people were complaining about that.

Even though Fujifilm was kind of known for their breathtaking JPEGs. But I was like, you really don't think you'd ever wanna pull a raw out of it? You go, Ellis, all of the features in this camera are to make the pictures worse. One of the filters is literally called light leak. You're like, what are you trying to dial in on this thing?

That is my take. A lot of people, yeah, you can only take JPEGs. My take on this is I am in a one inch camera period of my life right now. I can't explain it. I just really enjoying shooting on super low, dynamic range, old one inch cameras. Mostly because the lenses that you can adapt to them

are really, really cool. And if they made this with an interchangeable lens system, oh my God. I'd buy it so fast. I'd buy it like so fast. I'd buy it like so fast. So my take is that Fuji is trying to respond to the Digicam hype that's been going on for the last year or so.

I don't know if you know about this. Is this also a throwback retro thing? Basically Zoomers are going to, so remember in 2020 when all the Zoomers were buying film cameras? Well, they broke boys because film is expensive as hell. So all the Zoomers now buying film cameras, well, they broke boys because film was expensive as hell. So all the Zoomers now are going to thrift stores and buying like three megapixel Samsung Digicams

from 2003 because it gives you that like vintage, bad quality party camera look that everyone wants for social media because the whole thing right now is like anti-perfectionism. I'm so cool, I don't care about how good the picture is. I just, I'm living in the moment, bro. Well. How much do you think a mint

Canon PowerShot G7 costs right now? This is a 10 megapixel Canon G7. On eBay. On eBay, it comes with a battery and a charger and a camera and that's it. How much it costs or how much it's worth Oh and a strap how about how much is selling? No, yeah six dollars I am here actually I should go to the sold listings, but I'm seeing them for

$32 I'm seeing them for in between two and three hundred dollars right now. Yeah, like like these things are that's a demand Yeah, these would have been these literally would have been $5 at the thrift store like four years ago. Wow. So, but yeah, so Fuji is trying to respond to that. I think the problem is that it's an $850 camera. I think the amount of R&D that they put into this is worth a decent amount of money. It's probably not worth $850.

But I think the 1.0 type sensor is intentional because they want the images to have less dynamic range. They want it to look worse. They have all these filter modes that just add these bad effects to it on purpose. Yeah, but then you get the Fuji colors, which are beautiful. But you get the Fuji colors. I think this makes sense.

Two got sold today for over $1,000. It's the newer one, the 20 megapixel one, but two Canon today. Yeah. And I just wanna say, a lot of people are like, it can't even shoot raw. And it's like, it has a 1.0 type sensor. It obviously could if they wanted it to be able to.

But Fuji intentionally made it not able to because why would you do that? Also, this is not the camera to get if you care about image quality. If you care about shooting raw, that's the type of person who cares about image quality and high performance, and this is the opposite of that. On the slider of toy to tool, if you're asking for raw,

you're pushing it towards tool. If you're asking for light leak filters, you're asking for toy. So just pick a side, and if you're asking for one leak filters, you're asking for a toy. So just pick a side and if you're asking for one, why complain about that? Yeah, this is like the perfect road trip camera where you're just like in the car and boom, boom, boom. Yeah, like if you're shooting a wedding,

you're not taking this camera. Actually, maybe. I mean, a lot of people want photos like that. Well, it wouldn't be your only camera. If you're taking it with a professional camera and add those after. If you're like with a professional camera and add those after. If you were like, you know, a wedding photographer, like a professional tool. If you were at a wedding and wanted to take some photos with a professional camera.

This is like... Fujifilm's entire instax line is run by the wedding industry. So, you know, people want those Polaroids. As someone who is entering the wedding age of their life, whoever has the Canon PowerSh shot is the most beloved person by the by the way, I was at this cannon event where they were launching the R5 Mark II.

Cannon launching. Boom. He's on it today folks. We have to stop. Notice how I laughed. And didn't try to one up. And then everyone's referencing me trying to one up. He's opening up Twitter right now.

Oh my God. I can't wait to title this episode. I just have to say, I was at this Canon event where they were launching Alice's Joke, not mine. The R5 Mark II and also the R1 or whatever it was. I like that. And so these are like the fastest, most insane, like most high professional cameras ever made basically that are like not even really cameras anymore. They're kind of just like video feeds in 8K that you can take stills from.

But there was a reporter there and she was like 20 years old. She was like, oh my God, I just got this like Canon G7. All of my friends are trying to get these right now. I was like, Oh, are you guys like photographers? She's like, Oh no, no, we just like every these are huge in my circles right now. And I was like, what? The Canon? I've never heard of they take good pictures. They do. They know they're actually great cameras and especially like the autofocus systems on them are usually really good like yeah I feel like these these sort of point and shoots got kind of passed over because

DSLRs were kind of like pumping out really incredible images, you know Yeah, but now that we have myriad mirrorless cameras and really incredible images are the defaults Yeah, it's like we you get these really beautiful I don't know and so there's sort of this weird liminal space that people want where they either want a really sh** image of like their life or they want something better than their phone. But nobody wants the phone. And I'm just here to say, HDR is bad. And stop doing HDR for everything.

HDR has driven these industries. Every industry has a slider from functional to fun. And often the nostalgia driven like toy or more like entertaining version that's towards fun is not necessarily the most functional thing, doesn't have the most high quality experience, but it has the fun factor. And then there's the other side,

which is you push all the way to functional, it feels a little more sterile or a little less exciting, but it's the one that's pushing the envelope of technology, et cetera. And so yeah, you just, you pick a side. If phone HDR had never been invented, people would not be buying these. The iPhone 7 camera looks exactly like the Canon.

Like they look the same. I was gonna ask, so this might be a Kind of an embarrassing question, but is there an app I can get for my iPhone that enables Is there an app for my iPhone that enables the sensor to be exposed one time even without HDR Yeah, no HDR. No multiple exposure. No hitting both cameras and deduce like I just want shutter open Quote unquote well shutter open quote unquote shutter closed How lied has a has a feature called process zero that I think we talked about a few months ago Maybe you remind even that is gonna not be because it's for me. It's the computational

It's like I could I would be okay with a a, if it was possible to do a single exposure, high dynamic range. Like it's not the dynamic range that bugs me, it's how on phones everything is perfectly exposed. Yeah. It's so- Well that's because of the HDR. Right, right, right, right.

It's the stacking. But Halide has that, there's an app called ZeroCam that does the same thing. And it works. Yeah, it works pretty well Yeah, the images look how much better you have to edit them obviously, but yeah Why don't you just get a Fuji x-half? I'm just saying tone curves are not meant to be $400 more than I paid for this Wow, so anyway, I think the X half is really, really cool. I like it.

I think it's too expensive, but I think it's really cool. Yeah. And I want to say that R&D, into building something that interesting and weird, and they built an accompanying app with it, does cost money, okay? 850 is too much, but it's worth something.

No, I agree. They should charge for their work. I just think 850's a little much, for sure. It also accomplishes the the most important thing is you get to walk around with a Fujifilm camera and I feel like So where's the area? I feel so good and I have the answer. Yeah, I could be like if you want to Me running beers and cameras Anyway mark has we're gonna get you to love one of these things eventually. You will like an old bad thing. I'm gonna tell you right now, I know where I am on the slider of functional to fun.

And in many of the hobbies that I'm in, and I think I've been thinking about this, like I am, I am very much towards the functional slider and the fun. This is true in cars, where like, if you ever hear about the way people talk about like driving characteristics, like when you watch Porsche about the way people talk about like driving characteristics like when you watch Porsche 911 reviews and people are like the car is too perfect, the car is like soulless. To me I'm like hell yeah, hell yeah, it's like a surgical instrument. Hell yeah it's soulless. Other people are like I want the skiddy rear wheel drive like tail happy car that like can't put the power down. They want that because it's less functional,

less performant, but more fun. So that slider exists in a bunch of different ways. I know where I am on this slider. But I know one arena of your life. I don't know if you know that you are, where you are more on the fun side. Please tell me. It's your Yamaha HS8s, which-

No, if I can, look, if I dive in and find out that those are way more towards fun and I can get something way more towards function, I'm kicking them out. No, no, no, no. What is the Yamaha HS8? Explain. My studio monitor speakers. And the studio... They are trusted studio monitors.

They're known to be accurate, especially in their price point. They're really, really great. Yeah. But the big difference between the 8s and the sevens, or yeah, there's a five, seven, and an eight in that series, is that the eights have way larger speaker cabinets than a lot of other eight-inch speaker cone, which gives them a lower roll-off point, which gives them this really punchy, clear, exciting,

low-frequency response, which can be a little bit basier, it can be a little basier than things are in real life. But when you talk to people who work in studios, who even the people who prefer a more clinical, dry, accurate, transparent speaker, the number one word people use for the HS8 is fun. It's a fun speaker to listen to. It's like I'm in the market for new studio monitors.

Especially when you have it in near field configuration. I liked this, but then I found out I could be entertained by it, so now I have to get rid of it. No, I am all function as far as like, because I got those HS8s to replace what I had before, which was like a 2.1 system from like some plastic Harman Kardon thing I had before. So like, I went in the direction of accuracy.

We can talk if you want ultra accuracy. Okay, oh yeah. But first, a little thing we hear at the Waveform podcast called trivia, dude. There's a Sharpie here, that's dangerous. Oh that's very dangerous. Eagle-eyed viewers among you watching on youtube.com may have noticed that Adam and I are sitting in the same chairs that we do every single week

and nothing has changed. Question one, Instagram was conceived as a location based social network, but eventually they had to pivot because a little thing called Foursquare came along. Before they pivoted, what was their name? Oh, I thought this was the aspect ratio. That is question number two.

Oh, sorry, wait. Can you ask the question again? Before Instagram was called Instagram, it was called what? Oh. Think very deeply because about six years ago, I'm gonna. I literally can't, I can't even think of, I guess. Yeah, it's because it's stupid.

Yeah. Who wants to go first? Me. None of us. Nothing. Nothing. Marques, what you got? I made a guess.

I wrote Insta-matic. I'll give you a hint. Their word Insta is not in it. I don't know, this hint is coming way too late. Yeah. I put Insta square. But I know it's not Insta anything. The correct answer is bourbon.

Oh, right. It's spelled B-U-R. I have actually heard that. B-N. And I've seen the logo as well. Coffee. You know, until I, this is the first time I've said it out loud.

Bourbon is an alcohol, Marques. Well, I assumed it was like urban or suburban because it was a geolocation thing But yeah, I think it actually is just like is it like untapped No, which is like dude who knows? Okay, that's like the beer rating app. Yeah. Yeah quick update on the score Marquez with 26 Andrew with 16 10 points behind, dude, how old are you? 30. With 30 points. All right, so when Instagram first launched,

it had an aspect ratio of one by one. The question is, how many pixels did it have? Resolution wise. Yes. Like, long. Like blank by blank. Blank by blank, or I will also accept the literal number of pixels.

I don't know if I can do that. Closest without going over. You don't get extra points for doing both, right? No. It's one of two options. It is. One of infinite options. No, I think it was one of one by one.

Yeah, one by one aspiration. Flip him and read, what do we got? Oh, oh, oh is not an option I wrote 320 foe by 320 foe Wrong 418 by 418 wrong. I wrote 480 by 480 Because it was wrong though was a 720 because why but why did you wrote 480 by 480. Wait, wait, wait, wait, but why did you say that? Because it was wrong though. It was a 720. Because why, but why did you choose 480?

Am I gonna make an answer and say reasoning and then you're gonna say, actually that's not correct. Well, if you're reasoning, you're kinda, your answer's wrong, but if you can nail your reasoning, I'd really like to give you a point. Because like, in resolution, you go like 480p, then 720p. I was going to say, do you mind if I take this one?

Yeah, go for it. I was gonna say, well the correct answer, Adam. 720p. 500, 512. 640 by 640? Because the resolution of the first Retina display present on the iPhone 4 was 640 pixels wide Oh, I would need to fact check this but I believe the width of the iPhone's one 3g and 3gs

Were 480 pixels wide which is why I thought you picked that is why I picked it Doubt it. Yeah. No, no, that's an interesting fun fact. Time canceled. We all got all of those wrong. That's okay. That just means the scores are all still the same. It means I'm still 30 years old. Yeah.

No, no, I was wrong. It's 320 pixels wide. Don't listen to me. Anyway, yeah. Thanks for watching and listening. Very chaotic week. We'll be back, of course, with the regular scheduled programming again next Wednesday. If anything, if you made it this far into the podcast. We'll be back of course with the regular scheduled programming again next Wednesday if anything

If you made it this far into the podcast if you made it this far into the podcast make sure to check in on looped Wherever you are. Let's yeah podcast until you're the mayor and then we'll know that you're really plugged in hope you finished the dishes Thanks for watching. Get you the next one. Peace We're from a spruce by Adam Allina and Ellis River should I say else we're over to an Adam Allina now you guys the dishes. Thanks for watching. Catch you in the next one. Peace. I heard this like wah-wee-wah-wah-wah-wah.