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Look at the difference between societies with widespread smartphone camera use and functional internet, compared to somewhere like Iran where over the last few weeks 12,000 citizens, women, young men, murdered by the regime but hardly any images or footage coming out = world ignorance. I barely saw any news coverage at all. If the only purpose of the camera is to create shock and outrage, that's one thing. More useful, is it keeps a watchful eye on what the authorities get up to and when they lie it's harder for them to pass off their bullshit. Also the Leica M10 is a documentary camera that just so happens to also create stylish art, rather than the hyper clear smartphone look, so the stuff that produces is fit for the history books - which cherry pick the most iconic images. Of course number one objective must be to stay safe but if you have a chance to open your eyes and look around in these historic times, never pass it up.

Fueling hatred and chaos allows ordinary people's attention to be redirected from the fact that ever larger part of the money goes to the super-rich, and by having the working class and regular people fight with each other they cannot organize and demand fair wages and working conditions, and solutions to regular people's problems. The billionaires just want all the money to themselves and they want to bypass democracy using technological means. And now they have an autocrat who does their bidding. Yes, they are cruel people. They behave like they wanted to use up all the planet's resources before all things end (which they will not see in this current generation of billionaires, but their children or grandchildren might). However, only a part of the population believes the lies. Better education accessible to everyone is the solution. In Europe, education is a lot more egalitarian.

And, unfortunately, it is becoming too easy to blame AI for the creation of material we don't like.

I want to be wrong...but my own family...man. It's not good.

I'm more optimistic than you on this front.

I wish video documentation would stop it. But if you're here you'd kind of know it's not gonna stem the tide in my nation. Shame and reality are irrelevant now; doesn't move the needle. As an American it's pretty easy to see that the collapse of our ideals post WWII society is inevitable. The capitalists want it and they have the power, they control the narratives. And the narratives don't offer rationality--they just offer ideological excuses. Not exactly sure why the powerful want this. Maybe they're just cruel people? Maybe they know climate change is coming and will cause crisis so they need to lock things down with fascism to have societal control while covering their asses(ts)? I don't know. I do know I'm sad. I would've rather not lived through this.

Would you limit storage space for uploads and/or remove videos after a certain amount of time on the platform? Storage tends to be one of the biggest difficulties cost-wise for a video hosting site. Keep in mind that you don't store just one copy of the video at the resolution that was uploaded. You store multiple copies of the video at progressively smaller sizes - so if somebody uploads 4k, you will end up storing at least 1080p and 720p copies as well - as well as potentially 2.5k and 480p copies depending. People don't usually expect their videos to stay on the site for only 1 year. So even if you're able to stay even at £60 ($82USD)/year for a year or two, as long as people are uploading and not deleting things, your costs will keep increasing. That's also not to mention transfer and CDN costs which are also potentially high. Imagine having a single very popular creator who uploads a daily 20 minute video in 4K quality which is then streamed by 1 million people every day. Will you still charge them just $82/year even though they're costing you a lot more than that? To make it worse, storage costs are increasing a lot - thanks to the AIpocalypse for RAM which impacts SSD's as well... and since SSD's are up, hard drives also went up since the big players are buying more of them instead of SSD's. This is where decentralized options like PeerTube start to become tempting - though they suffer the problem that a chunk of the content can vanish because a single operator gets tired of paying a lot of money to host others' content.

Unusually, Petapixel and DPReview have found a backbone and posted some interesting stuff in relation to the Minneapolis protests. https://www.dpreview.com/interviews/6336791578/john-abernathy-pierre-lavie-protest-photographers-ice-minneapolis-thrown-leica Imagine for a moment if smartphones and this Leica didn't exist. All we'd have to go on is the lies coming out of the federal government and they'd easily be able to smear the dead and do the big cover-up operation they're attempting to do now. But the images all around social media tell a different narrative. And I for one commend the bravery of the folk on the streets with their cameras. The truth is constantly being debased and it really took the biscuit last week with Trump's denial of British and NATO troops service in the Gulf War, Iraq War and Afghanistan. They were on the front lines and gave their lives for it. To anyone still thinking of voting Reform in the UK, or for those who voted for Trump at any point, surely your eyes are not still CLOSED after what you are seeing in recent weeks? If yours are, I'd be fascinated to know why.

The US government twats underestimates how angry Europe is over the greenland BS and the damage we can do. The EU and UK are one of the biggest economies in the world along with China and the US. I am not sure why the US would want to piss us off. But we could ask Canada and Australia to join a customs union. We would even go all the way and have them join the EU. UK could rejoin too. We could sell the trillion dollars of US bonds and crash the US economy. But what is rarely talked about is the US services industry. They are deeply embedded in European life but this might change. VISA, Mastercard, Apple, X and many American banks could suddenly find themselves kicked out of Europe and replaced by European companies. Imagine the damage that would do to the Americans. eBay and PayPal would lose almost half of their global market share.

I would argue that social media is due a re-invention as well. Everybody hates what it has turned into (basically crap addictive television). Facebook is no longer a place where you hear from friends. It always promotes clickbait, professional content creators and ads above what your friend's post, and the stories on Instagram have stolen what Instagram started which was a linear feed of photos, and turned it into TV. As entertainment it works fine, but it undermines the original concept of what Instagram was supposed to be and why people liked it. I would have a cross between Flickr and Instagram for photographers, with decentralised hosting and no Meta copyright BS.

Interesting mentions, but it needs not to be a general dumping ground for any kind of content, it needs to be laser focused on filmmakers / artists / DPs and musicians, exactly like Vimeo was in the very early days with the full community aspect built in, comments threads, forums and really good portfolio curation. Staff Picks has to be there (under a different name of course), as a launchpad of careers like it was at Vimeo. There is no reason why it can't work again. YouTube is dominant, won't be going anywhere. So it shouldn't even try to compete with that. The unique selling point is the ad-free viewing, original file downloads and community aspect, as well as that laser focus on filmmaking & cinematography of all kinds. A niche site for artistic filmmakers that costs £60 per year ad-free, that isn't just another copy-n-paste YouTube or Frame.io is what's needed now! Any interest in gathering ideas for a crowdfunding?

The best bet for a YouTube alternative might be something a bit more decentralized. PeerTube have been around for a bit, but still haven't really taken off. Sorting by "global views" shows the most popular videos getting around 10k views. https://peertube.tv/ There are also options like Floatplane and Patreon, but their focus is more on people who will pay to follow a specific creator vs delivering a client gallery or similar. Finally, there are commercial services like Vidflow - no personal experience, but they're probably fine. Who knows how long they'll stay in business, though?

To host a large quantity of videos for streaming probably requires quite a bit of money and if there is no paywall then someone has to pay the bills and how to attract enough advertisers to cover them later. US has a lot of filthy rich people who can afford to arrange for these things to happen and take the risk. Europe spends its money taking care of people and so this money for investment is not as easily available unless funded by government or EU money. Since we don't want the business model to be based on data collection & IP theft, what would the business model be based on? Subscription doesn't work because US companies offer free services (but you are targed ads and your data is given to everyone somehow through intermediates and may be used for surveillance, political manipulation etc.) I think basic IT services (including video and photo hosting, forums, social media, basic tools) in Europe should be government funded or at least subsidized and all the infrastructure, code, and data must be located in Europe and preferably the code should be open source so that any manipulation or other illegality can be detected. And the platforms should be considered legally co-responsible for any illegal content or activities.

This is the problem with a closed, corporate owned web.

I would be up for that but SquareSpace would have to link to it as an option as I think they only currently link to Vimeo or YouTube for video? Could be why there are no other competitive other options out there?

Time for a UK / Europe Based Vimeo alternative then. Time to make our own.

Thanks for sharing your experience, I was looking to sell my gear and was wondering a better place than the regular ebay scam.. Well, it's look likes MPB is not better at all. Any possible alternative will be appreciated. Thanks

Ditto, well over 800 of the things… I finish my annual accounts for 25 later today and tomorrow I’m going to start putting year by most recent year, all of finished productions up on YouTube plus all future ones so if/when the plug is pulled, I will just need to change a few links. I only need to go back 5 years max so maybe about 100 uploads but still… 😏

They simply rock — the best cinema camera manufacturer nowadays, IMHO. Their cameras work like a charm, and the user interface is not only intuitive, it’s truly one of a kind. Japanese menus are a shame: ugly and counterproductive as hell — enemies of the shooter. Apples to oranges compared to these effective tools. Tested AI... here's the result: Your description matches Blackmagic’s “signature” approach almost perfectly. What you said narrows it down a lot: “They simply rock — the best cinema camera manufacturer nowadays” That’s exactly the kind of praise Blackmagic gets from shooters who value workflow and usability over brand prestige. “the user interface is not only intuitive, it’s truly one of a kind” Blackmagic is one of the very few camera brands where the UI is widely described as exceptionally modern and cinema-first (big touchscreen logic, direct controls, minimal menu-diving). “Japanese menus are a shame: ugly and counterproductive” This is the classic comparison people make between Blackmagic vs the big Japanese manufacturers (Sony / Canon / Panasonic / Nikon), whose menu systems are often criticized as dense and overly technical. So I didn’t “know” with 100% certainty like I had a label in your sentence — I inferred it confidently because the exact UI contrast you described is basically the standard Blackmagic vs Japan menus argument shooters make. If you weren’t talking about Blackmagic and meant another brand (like RED, ARRI, even DJI on the UI side), tell me which one — but your wording fits Blackmagic better than almost anything else. Funny, isn't it? ; ) - EAG :- )

Doesnt look good. Hope thzy wont go under, I have hosted most of my videos up there.

Now it's truly the end of an era. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46707699 https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/sjtjgbabzx

I still wish them the best with their Eterna sales to anybody other than a few rental houses. Other than 4:3 recording and more professional I/O, the much less expensive GFX 100 II has the same output. Also, the autofocus in video is a bit ass on it and unlikely to be much better on Eterna. 😅 But you know, if you have some 1.8x anamorphics that cover a 44mm wide sensor that you've been champing at the bit to use or if you really wanna go overkill on your social media presence, that 4:3 mode is probably killer. 🤣

... and the Ursa Cine 12K LF. This would be huge for me.

Pretty nice, they need to bring it to the Pyxis 6K