Bro really tried to sell his subscribers a “50$ a year” subscription to a “wallpaper” app.

Interesting points about the “app”:

  • the app has premium and free wallpapers
  • the free wallpapers are only available in sd quality and if you want hd youd have to subscribe
  • in order to unlock the sd quality you have to watch two 30 second ads.
  • theres a wallpaper called “orange” thats just the color orange
77 points

Way more than that.

  • requires crazy permissions like user location
  • wallpapers are in a publicly accessible s3 bucket
  • profit split for wallpaper creators is 50/50 which is worse than most app store splits
  • most of the creators actually seem to be current MKBHD employees
  • app is either built from a template or an old app that they bought

Source: https://youtu.be/prZ7ZfdFrNs

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23 points

wallpapers are in a publicly accessible s3 bucket

How are we still doing this, how

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2 points

Cuz iz ez, am lazy

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77 points

A wallpaper app? What is this, 2008?

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36 points
*

And there’s people in the comments being like “its only $5 for my favorite wallpaper app” which I just shake my head and laugh at. What kind of idiot eats this shit up? There’s nothing better you can spend $5 than a shitty jpeg?

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17 points

nothing better you can spend $5 than a shitty jpeg?

Two words: Star Citizen.

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12 points
*

Granted, it’s probably my favourite wallpaper app too and I only learned about it yesterday. It’s also my least favourite for the same reason. I’ve never used it, or any wallpaper app, or even knew they are a thing so it wins by default.

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10 points

my phone tries extra fucking hard to sell me on its built in wallpaper app which has data-scraping permissions out to here also

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15 points

honestly, samesies

I’m kinda taken aback at how many people are popping in saying they have such things. at almost all usage times I can barely see my bloody wallpaper, too much else going on/present

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11 points

I always have my windows tiled or maximized so I just keep an epty black desktop background.

My wallpaper is white and subtly stripe patterned and it was in a surprisingly good condition when I moved in.

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8 points

mine’s xsetroot -solid black so I don’t get a flash of the 80s in the moments before emacs loads and tiles its windows across my displays

it used to be a color I stole from the Amiga’s boot ROM for diagnostic purposes (I was going to do something like the Amiga’s diagnostics for my setup, where you could tell roughly what was broken by the color of the screen) and really I should revisit that one day

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7 points

My wallpaper is the january page of a frieren themed calendar. From 2021. I only remembered what it was today after learning about all this

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10 points

indeed. I have … a photo of the family? It’s fine and cool?

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12 points

My dad has a photo of a family photo, and I think it rocks.

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11 points

I have a wallpaper of the Internet Explorer anime mascot Inori Aizawa. No I will not explain.

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6 points

I was on interfacelift back then. Good site for beautiful backgrounds. Only background app I use is Wallpaper Engine

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35 points

Maybe I’m scarred but I have a reflexive distrust for any usage of “pumped” or “super excited” in a commercial context. No matter the subject.

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24 points

pumped: artificially inflated

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13 points

And remember kids, pump always comes before the dump

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33 points
*

I use subscription services to get the best letters of the alphabet.

For example, I use WinnrWinnrChicknDinnr to get access to the letter W (upper AND lower case!) for only $69 a month!

No idea why they needed my SSN, but look I’m not some pleb that uses free letters.

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22 points

oh finally, AaaS

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6 points

Elmo in shambles.

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7 points

Psh, I only use the Flushvalve Pro Vowel Pack. You can’t beat them in terms of value for your money.

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33 points

remember kids, if you take on responsibilities like renting out a studio space, and hiring employees, those costs are only going to go up, regardless of whether or not you continue to make the sort of revenue you’ve historically made from video views, which leads to having to rely more on merch sales, and patreon, and “other” revenue streams just to keep everyone paid. i mean, who knew, right?

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15 points
*

I rarely watch his videos, but that’s because when I have, he clearly has direct financial entanglements and conflicts with the same major brands he’s discussing or “reviewing”.

For a channel his size and reach, I can’t imagine those aren’t enough to cover his overhead, unless he’s made some really terrible business decisions.

This is, of course, entirely speculation and based off of calculations pulled from my brown star, so maybe I’m wrong about that.

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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here’s the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

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