YouTube

Neal Mohan, the CEO of YouTube, just published his annual letter, which is sort of a State of The YouTube Union address. There’s nothing new in here, really: YouTube is big on AI, loves creators, etc. etc. But I was yet again surprised by how big a subscription business YouTube is:

The company confirmed the change in a reply on Reddit, saying it’s rolling out the enhanced bitrate option for “updated 4K-compatible streaming devices.” It doesn’t mention which channels support the new picture quality, so you might have to do a little channel surfing to find out.

This drone footage from wildlife filmmaker Carlos Gauna might be the first ever captured of a living newborn great white shark.

NBC News reports the arrest of Justin Mohn, who allegedly murdered his father, a federal employee, and displayed the head in a 14-minute video posted to YouTube. Mohn claimed he was in command of America’s militias against Joe Biden and “woke mobs,” and he called for attacks on federal law enforcement officials.

Just look at how many image and title iterations The Try Guys go through when trying to make sure a video pops off.

That comes after 404 Media reported on a ring of them, leading to more than a thousand being wiped off the platform.

Don’t worry: he’s sticking around. But he has an interesting perspective on the trend of big names like MatPat and Tom Scott stepping back and what it means to actually be a full time YouTuber.

Folks online have accused YouTube of targeting AdBlock users with degraded performance, with reports of the desktop player freezing up, lagging while buffering, and hogging CPU usage.

Shane Wighton from the Stuff Made Here YouTube channel has made a lot of basketball-themed projects, ranging from a curved backboard guaranteeing most shots to a cable-actuated goal that zips around to compensate for badly aimed lobs.

This Lego build of Hokusai’s 1831 woodblock print, designed by Lego artist Jumpei Mitsui and assembled here in a 10-minute time-lapse that Boing Boing pointed to today, was recently featured in the Seattle Art Museum.

The folks over at the Out of Spec Reviews channel started this Cybertruck look by comparing the pinch sensors (or lack thereof) of the doors and frunk of a Rivian truck, a Cybertruck, an F-150 Lightning, and a Tesla Model X.

Matthew “MatPat” Patrick will be retiring on March 9th, he announced yesterday. While he jokes that the move was inspired by Tom Scott, who recently ended his 10-year run of posting a new video every week, Patrick says that he and his wife have been working towards the change for years.

As promised, YouTube now allows users to upload podcasts from their RSS feeds. YouTube is understood to currently be the most-used podcast platform, but its inability to ingest RSS feeds made it more difficult for podcasters to distribute on the streamer. It is another step in its goal to woo creators and corner the podcast market.

Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai will soon stop uploading videos to his popular video game development YouTube channel. According to a post on the community page, he says he plans on wrapping up the channel sometime this year while hoping folks continue to watch.

Disney just released season 2 a few days ago. Now Marvel has posted a “look into the future” of the alternative timeline Avengers series, featuring a younger Red Guardian, the Winter Soldier, and a car chase.

In the mobile YouTube app, when you’re making YouTube Short from one of your own videos, you’ll now see layout options for different kinds of split-screen videos, with the ability to pan and zoom on specific parts of the screen.

9to5Google reports that some YouTube TV subs are seeing a pop-up message noting that a long press of the OK or Select buttons on their remotes will quickly flip back to the last-viewed channel. That’s one of the best old-school cable box remote features there was, so let’s hope it rolls out wide soon.

Green walks through the intricacies between TikTok, Reels, and Shorts — along with his earnings from each. The gist is Shorts > TikTok > Reels in terms of CPM, but watch the full clip for more context.

Wired reports that YouTube recently removed a bit of public code that flagged whether a channel was monetizing through ad revenue. The change happened a few weeks ago, according to developers tracking it:

Max just became the latest addition to YouTube’s Primetime Channels. As of today, you can subscribe to the ad-free tier of Max directly from YouTube.

If you’ve never come across it, here’s a 1986 commercial featuring then-future Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer selling Windows for $99 (except in Nebraska).

Hyundai has a new concept for dealing with snow driving: shape-changing, bent memory alloy rods, integrated with a “wheel and tire assembly,” that extend out to act like snow chains when a current is applied.