Mkbsd: Download all the wallpapers in MKBHD's "Panels" app for free

44 pointsposted 9 months ago
by swyx
(github.com)

70 Comments

usef-

9 months ago

Not to comment on the rest of it, but this FAQ answer is a bit flawed:

> Q: Aren't you stealing from artists by running this script?

> MKBSD accesses publicly available media through the Panels app's own API. It doesn't do anything shady or illegal. The real problem here is Panels and MKBHD's complete inability to provide a secure platform for the artists that they're exploiting working with. Any other app could have avoided the issues that make MKBSD possible had it been engineered competently.

That's pretty embarrassing for the app developers, but it's not addressing the question.

"It's okay to extract the artists' sell-able work for free, because their landlord didn't lock the door"?

addicted

9 months ago

> "It's okay to extract the artists' sell-able work for free, because their landlord didn't lock the door"?

Well paraphrased.

ihuman

9 months ago

> artists that they're exploiting

I thought he pays the artists?

akmarinov

9 months ago

They figure a 50-50 split is exploitation, where there are tens of thousands of wallpaper apps that don’t see the light of day, because they don’t have someone like MKBHD backing them

RockRobotRock

9 months ago

> MKBSD accesses publicly available media through the Panels app's own API. It doesn't do anything shady or illegal.

I know this one. It's called coming up with an excuse for the thing you were going to do anyway.

> The real problem here is Panels and MKBHD's complete inability to provide a secure platform for the artists that they're exploiting working with.

You mean the ones you are exploiting right now?

> Any other app could have avoided the issues that make MKBSD possible had it been engineered competently.

No, they really couldn't have. Anyone can just take a screenshot.

We've all written slightly evil code, but the bullshit justification really set me off.

sakjur

9 months ago

The project has a terrible (and pro-DRM) self-justification. But there’s still a person with flaws, insecurities, loved ones and dreams on the other side.

I doubt you mean that first sentence of your last paragraph, and those words are very harshly chosen. They might cause harm, and I’d suggest you’d reconsider them and republish your comment unless you truly stand by them.

RockRobotRock

9 months ago

Yeah you're right, that last part was pretty unnecessary.

dvngnt_

9 months ago

it's hackernews though.

brigadier132

9 months ago

It's definitely copyright infringement. Also it's hilarious that the owner of this repo is advocating for DRM. When someone uses the word "exploit" to describe commercial transactions you just know they have room temperature IQ.

pdntspa

9 months ago

Are you sure about that? So much of "good business practice" is really exploiting your suppliers. If you are trying to underpay for a resource, or forcing cost cuts, or simply taking more of the pie that you previously gave your resource, for the same or better quality service, you are exploiting that resource.

brigadier132

9 months ago

Economic transactions only happen if there is a mutual benefit. Typically one side of the transaction has more market power than the other and captures more of the surplus but the transaction doesn't happen if one side is worse off from it.

The entire idea of economic transactions being exploitative is literal Marxist propaganda. If you read the word "exploit" in some news article and it's referring to economic transactions, you are reading propaganda.

Incipient

9 months ago

"exploit" has two perfectly usable definitions in this context, essentially. One is negative, one is not.

    To employ to the greatest possible advantage.

    To make use of selfishly or unethically.

brigadier132

9 months ago

Yes, they are always using the second definition.

BestHackerOnHN

9 months ago

Loving this classic HackerNews-type discussion!!!

pdntspa

9 months ago

I don't usually ask for citations on comment threads, but assserting that 'exploitation' is Marxist propaganda is gonna need some citations for me to take even remotely seriously. Otherwise, talk about room temperature IQs...

> Economic transactions only happen if there is a mutual benefit.

There are all sorts of coercive circumstances that may appear mutually beneficial on a superficial level, but may actually not be the case, whether due to contract details, opportunity costs, strategic mistakes, or otherwise. Perhaps this is true given perfect information and execution, but the real world is much more messy.

As an example, consider Spotify or Adobe's transition to a subscription model. There are a lot of people for whom those models are a very bad deal compared to what was.

BestHackerOnHN

9 months ago

> I don't usually ask for citations on comment threads

No - please do!!! It'll ensure we have robust discussions on this great site!

user

9 months ago

[deleted]

brigadier132

9 months ago

It's a dog whistle. There are no studies on this, why would academia (which for the field that would study this is 100% composed of leftists) have a study on leftist dog whistles?

Also, putting any value on "studies" when they almost universally fail to replicate outside of hard sciences is dumb.

pdntspa

9 months ago

Hillsdale College somehow sends me a circular several times a year full of right-wing neoconservative religious cocksucking. That right there immediately disproves your "100% composed of leftists" assertion. I'm sure the students and faculty at BYU or USD or any number of other religious academic institutions would agree.

sweeter

9 months ago

[flagged]

dang

9 months ago

You've broken the site guidelines badly in more than one place in this thread. Can you please not do that? Regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are, it destroys what HN is for, and we have to ban such accounts.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

p.s. I'm not banning your account immediately because I didn't see any other cases of this in your recent history. That's good. Please make sure it doesn't happen again.

sweeter

9 months ago

Understood. I will do that. Thanks.

brigadier132

9 months ago

[flagged]

dang

9 months ago

We've banned this account for breaking HN's guidelines. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

p.s. If you had only been doing it in this one thread, I'd have posted a warning instead of banning you immediately, but this is clearly a pattern and not cool:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41627310

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41583798

Also, we'd already warned you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36384393.

hombre_fatal

9 months ago

Not sure what's worse, the smug glee for doing something trivial or the amateur code. But I did publish some lame repos as jokes and statement pieces back when I was a beginner, I'll admit.

As for Marques Brownlee's wallpaper app, it's pretty harmless. It's not like it tricks you into spending money like those $7/week PDF scanner apps. I'll take his word for it that people in his fanbase ask him regularly about his wallpaper.

Would it still be dumb if 1000 people ($50,0000/yr) were willing to subscribe to get his curated wallpapers, or is it only dumb if you imagine that 0 people would do it?

talldayo

9 months ago

> it's pretty harmless

Then his target audience will be happy to support him. Honestly the only "amateur code" I can see here is a SaaS that can't figure out how to hide paywalled content from a Python scraper.

windexh8er

9 months ago

This entire debacle for Marques shines a light on his actual prowess. He's claimed to be a "reviewer". He's even stated he reviews things in their current state, not future. If he was "reviewing" his own app he'd rip it to shreds. The cost, the privacy nightmare that it is, and now the shoddy quality of it altogether.

He's a marketer. And a charlatan if he wants to claim he's actually skilled at objective reviews that follow some process outside his stream of thought.

Does he have good production sense? Sure. But he's not what he claims. Neither is his app. Between his garbage sit down with Apple, his shilling for Buick and this you'd think he'd realize he should stay in his lane.

linotype

9 months ago

Yes, he’s clearly a failure at reviews and business with billions of views on YouTube. Just because his content isn’t for your doesn’t mean his reviews are bad.

talldayo

9 months ago

With fairness, I believe you can absolutely call marketing-influencers like Mark Gurman and MKBHD bad reviewers. None of them ever really express original thoughts - there's no "oh Apple messed up" admission or meaningful criticism of their business choices. They are absolute and documented yes-men that exist almost entirely to kiss up to FAANG businesses and drive the tech market whether it's grasping at life or succeeding to the utmost.

I guess that's what you should expect, though. People don't want reviewers that detract from the hardware they own, they want blinded optimists who will say anything is good for you.

linotype

9 months ago

That’s not the impression I get from his iPhone 16/Pro review: https://youtu.be/MRtg6A1f2Ko

His summary is don’t buy unless your phone is on its last legs or older than the 13. Also knocks the 60hz screen on the 16.

> People don't want reviewers that detract from the hardware they own, they want blinded optimists who will say anything is good for you.

Frankly, I’m tired of people being so pessimistic. For instance Star Wars Outlaws was a lot of fun but the video gaming YouTube community was down on it before it even launched. Some people have unrealistic expectations.

talldayo

9 months ago

> Frankly, I’m tired of people being so pessimistic. For instance Star Wars Outlaws

I've heard people who've never played a Bethesda game before tell me that Starfield was a lot of fun. That didn't save it from being a commercial failure because people are tired of cooker-cutter formulaic open-world games though. You can extend this rationale of pessimism to a lot of things, including smartphone hardware and software deficiency.

Play whatever you like, but don't act shocked when the industry's most notoriously lazy studio doesn't receive critical acclaim for a licensed IP featuring characters nobody can recognize in a faux-stealth gameplay loop that's been recycled since Assassin's Creed III. Saying you're tired of pessimism towards Ubisoft is like saying Facebook deserves softer criticism because some people like the Instagram redesign.

user

9 months ago

[deleted]

windexh8er

9 months ago

Just because he calls himself a "reviewer" doesn't make him that. Also people can enjoy his high production marketing videos. But just because people like his content does not make him a good reviewer OR unsuccessful.

I also didn't say he was a failure, but enjoy your baseless assertions.

For reference - you think this [0] is a good review? Give me a break. Also a great breakdown of his grift [1].

[0] https://youtu.be/gfC8Y66tR6o [1] https://youtu.be/Z0DF-MOkotA

nozzlegear

9 months ago

The title of your referenced video [0] is "The Largest Daily Driver Unboxing!" It was my impression that most reviewers use the term "unboxing" to mean "this is a video of me literally taking the product out of the box and giving you my first impressions on it". Marques himself often has a "Product XYZ Unboxing" video¹, where he gives his initial thoughts on a product, followed by a "Product XYZ Review" video² several days or weeks later.

I'll also note that the video you linked was sponsored by Buick, which he says within the first 20 seconds.

¹ MKBHD: iPhone 16/16 Pro Unboxing: End of an Era! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3BKjZMGoIw

² MKBHD: iPhone 16/16 Pro Review: Times Have Changed! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRtg6A1f2Ko

windexh8er

9 months ago

Ahhh, yes. All the great review outlets not only provide unpaid & unbiased reviews but also take money from those same vendors (either directly or indirectly) all while maintaining and upholding a high level of standards in their objective approach to their tech unboxing/reviewing/pontificating/vlogging companies. Suuuure.

Also, iPhone 16. Isn't it amazing MKBHD asks such tough, clearly not-agreed-to-before-the-interview when he's dealing with Apple directly and then goes with the masses on how "meh" the iPhone is within a couple months? He's clearly an amazing reviewer and not influenced by a vendors status or potential revenue that particular review will garner him. Not. At. All. /s

This is why it's amazing to see everyone like - yeah, he's a great reviewer! It's OK to take money and ask softball questions depending on all of those external variables. Go look at a site like RTINGS [0]. That's a review site. The links posted as his reviews don't follow a framework, they're not objective. It's all opinion and pretty B-roll. You legitimately can't do what he does and be an objective reviewer. It's not possible.

[0] https://www.rtings.com/

nozzlegear

9 months ago

How does what you said jive with, for example, his review of the Humane AI Pin¹, where he reviewed the product so negatively that he received flak on social media for being too harsh and careless with his influence. Another video of his, a review of the Fisker Ocean², lead to accusations that he killed the company behind the car due to the negative review.

¹ MKBHD: The Worst Product I've Ever Reviewed... For Now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TitZV6k8zfA

² Auto Focus: This is the Worst Car I've Ever Reviewed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xWXRk3yaSw

³ MKBHD: Do Bad Reviews Kill Companies? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QztFpzKsdeA

windexh8er

9 months ago

It "jives" because he's not s reviewer. He's just an opinionated YouTuber who has a cult-like following who listens to him verbatim.

The most obvious thing I can point you to is that his "review" of Humane should be the same as his "review" of his own wallpaper app. Yet... Marques doesn't dogfood his own advice. That speaks volumes about his ethics and motivations.

He's driven by $$$. He gives zero shits about the validity of his messaging. Just as long as it's edgy to get the views, which is why he's finding success right now on the other side of the coin: negative "reviews".

linotype

9 months ago

So if he writes positive reviews he’s a shill, if he writes negative reviews he’s an edgelord. Ooof.

windexh8er

9 months ago

They're not reviews in the first place. That. Is. The. Point.

I mean, feel free to describe how his reviews are even remotely objective and not driven by some other factor that benefits Marques... I'll wait.

user

9 months ago

[deleted]

type0

9 months ago

> or is it only dumb if you imagine that 0 people would do it?

oh, sure and it needs NFT /s

ClassyJacket

9 months ago

Isn't this copyright infringement?

The FAQ says "MKBSD accesses publicly available media through the Panels app's own API. It doesn't do anything shady or illegal.", but I don't think that logically follows. Just because something doesn't have DRM, doesn't make copying it not piracy. There are plenty of PC games with no DRM but you still aren't licensed to use them without buying.

Like, it's not as if I could care less about a bottom line of an already rich YouTuber, but is this really the hill to die on, especially with legal risk?

addicted

9 months ago

It’s also a ridiculous argument for anyone in the open source community, or anyone who has benefited from the open source community to pay even a moment’s attention to.

It basically invalidates every open source licence because it’s essentially saying that if the terms of the licence cannot be enforced by code then the licence itself doesn’t apply.

boristsr

9 months ago

I'd personally be worried publishing this due to potentially also being classified as gaining unauthorized access to a computer system. It may temporarily be a publically accessible and poorly secured API, but that doesn't mean it's intended for public consumption when you have poked around the app to work out the API and then bypassing payment mechanisms.

dontdoxxme

9 months ago

Person seems to work for cure53, who have done reviews of lots of open source apps. Apparently they don't care about copyright though.

abhinavk

9 months ago

They also sell apps on AppStore (with in-app purchases), Switch and Steam. So I think that they do.

Zren

9 months ago

IMO, they should have made it a simple mailed print/postcard subscription with an email newsletter with the jpg wallpaper. You could even provide access to a private wallpaper app that changes it for you monthly if people want that.

LTT has the right mentality that supporting an influencer should give you something physical for your support or when asking a superchat on a livestream that may or may not get answered.

amir734jj

9 months ago

$50 annual subscription for the context.

panpan1409

9 months ago

Just because an API is poorly secured or misconfigured doesn't make it ethical or legal to exploit it. While the technical ability to bypass restrictions might exist due to bad engineering, that doesn't necessarily give you the right to do so. If the content is behind a paywall, you're likely violating the platform’s ToS and possibly laws like the DMCA or similar anti-circumvention regulations. The real issue here is with the platform's engineering and how it protects (or doesn't) creators' work, but bypassing those safeguards doesn’t fix that problem—it just contributes to it.

Insanity

9 months ago

Look, I get it, the app is silly. I’m clearly not the target audience as I know how to google for wallpapers.

But publishing this repo is not OK. Write a small article, let them know and get a potential bug bounty, sure. But don’t just release something that avoids the artists getting paid.

dysoco

9 months ago

Can anyone give context on what the app is and why it's considered "grifting", "predatory" and "shitty"? I'm just curious.

notaustinpowers

9 months ago

The app is a repository of artist-submitted and curated wallpapers. The app allows for SD downloads, but you have to watch 2 ads, or HD downloads if you have a subscription ($12/month or $50/year).

The pushback is due to multiple factors:

- Quite a few of the wallpapers are simple gradients, and one is just the color orange. So they don't quite feel "curated".

- The app asks for some unnecessary permissions (cross-app/site tracking, and location tracking).

- The app doesn't look to be something that was actually made by MKBHD and his team. It's had an online presence since 2021. To many, it feels like he just bought it, slapped his name on it, and is using his "brand" to push an inferior product.

addicted

9 months ago

> Quite a few of the wallpapers are simple gradients, and one is just the color orange. So they don't quite feel "curated".

Then ask for a refund. Don’t go and steal the content.

> The app asks for some unnecessary permissions (cross-app/site tracking, and location tracking).

Then ask for a refund. Don’t go and steal the content.

> The app doesn't look to be something that was actually made by MKBHD and his team.

Then ask for a refund. Don’t go and steal the content.

notaustinpowers

9 months ago

Sorry, when did I say anything about stealing the content?

gerash

9 months ago

> Quite a few of the wallpapers are simple gradients, and one is just the color orange. So they don't quite feel "curated"

Pardon my language but then don't fckng use the app!

What if you put your car for sale for $20K and then someone else says: nah that piece of junk is not worth that much and then steal it from you and give it to someone else for free. That seems to be what's happening here.

notaustinpowers

9 months ago

Well, I'm not using the app, so... But that doesn't absolve someone of public ridicule or commentary.

MKBHD, who has been a huge proponent of privacy, asking for my LOCATION for a wallpaper app? You and I both know its for ad targeting, and happens whether you're paying a subscription or not.

Also, where in my original comment did I say anything about stealing the artwork?

opan

9 months ago

There's no scarcity to digital data, that analogy is a bit ridiculous.

amin

9 months ago

lmao