Pretty damning review.
Linus posted a response on the LTT forums:
There won’t be a big WAN Show segment about this or anything. Most of what I have to say, I’ve already said, and I’ve done so privately.
To Steve, I expressed my disappointment that he didn’t go through proper journalistic practices in creating this piece. He has my email and number (along with numerous other members of our team) and could have asked me for context that may have proven to be valuable (like the fact that we didn’t ‘sell’ the monoblock, but rather auctioned it for charity due to a miscommunication… AND the fact that while we haven’t sent payment yet, we have already agreed to compensate Billet Labs for the cost of their prototype). There are other issues, but I’ve told him that I won’t be drawn into a public sniping match over this and that I’ll be continuing to move forward in good faith as part of ‘Team Media’. When/if he’s ready to do so again I’ll be ready.
To my team (and my CEO’s team, but realistically I was at the helm for all of these errors, so I need to own it), I stressed the importance of diligence in our work because there are so many eyes on us. We are going through some growing pains - we’ve been very public about them in the interest of transparency - and it’s clear we have some work to do on internal processes and communication. We have already been doing a lot of work internally to clean up our processes, but these things take time. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but that’s no excuse for sloppiness.
Now, for my community, all I can say is the same things I always say. We know that we’re not perfect. We wear our imperfection on our sleeves in the interest of ensuring that we stay accountable to you. But it’s sad and unfortunate when this transparency gets warped into a bad thing. The Labs team is hard at work hard creating processes and tools to generate data that will benefit all consumers - a work in progress that is very much not done and that we’ve communicated needs to be treated as such. Do we have notes under some videos? Yes. Is it because we are striving for transparency/improvement? Yeah… What we’re doing hasn’t been in many years, if ever… and we would make a much larger correction if the circumstances merited it. Listing the wrong amount of cache on a table for a CPU review is sloppy, but given that our conclusions are drawn based on our testing, not the spec sheet, it doesn’t materially change the recommendation. That doesn’t mean these things don’t matter. We’ve set KPIs for our writing/labs team around accuracy, and we are continually installing new checks and balances to ensure that things continue to get better. If you haven’t seen the improvement, frankly I wonder if you’re really looking for it… The thoroughness that we managed on our last handful of GPU videos is getting really incredible given the limited time we have for these embargoes. I’m REALLY excited about what the future will hold.
With all of that said, I still disagree that the Billet Labs video (not the situation with the return, which I’ve already addressed above) is an ‘accuracy’ issue. It’s more like I just read the room wrong. We COULD have re-tested it with perfect accuracy, but to do so PROPERLY - accounting for which cases it could be installed in (none) and which radiators it would be plumbed with (again… mystery) would have been impossible… and also didn’t affect the conclusion of the video… OR SO I THOUGHT…
I wanted to evaluate it as a product, and as a product, IF it could manage to compete with the temperatures of the highest end blocks on the planet, it still wouldn’t make sense to buy… so from my point of view, re-testing it and finding out that yes, it did in fact run cooler made no difference to the conclusion, so it didn’t really make a difference.
Adam and I were talking about this today. He advocated for re-testing it regardless of how non-viable it was as a product at the time and I think he expressed really well today why it mattered. It was like making a video about a supercar. It doesn’t mater if no one watching will buy it. They just wanna see it rip. I missed that, but it wasn’t because I didn’t care about the consumer… it was because I was so focused on how this product impacted a potential buyer. Either way, clearly my bad, but my intention was never to harm Billet Labs. I specifically called out their incredible machining skills because I wanted to see them create something with a viable market for it and was hoping others would appreciate the fineness of the craftsmanship even if the product was impractical. I still hope they move forward building something else because they obviously have talent and I’ve watched countless niche water cooling vendors come and go. It’s an astonishingly unforgiving market.
Either way, I’m sorry I got the community’s priorities mixed-up on this one, and that we didn’t show the Billet in the best light. Our intention wasn’t to hurt anyone. We wanted no one to buy it (because it’s an egregious waste of money no matter what temps it runs at) and we wanted Billet to make something marketable (so they can, y’know, eat).
With all of this in mind, it saddens me how quickly the pitchforks were raised over this. It also comes across a touch hypocritical when some basic due diligence could have helped clarify much of it. I have a LONG history of meeting issues head on and I’ve never been afraid to answer questions, which lands me in hot water regularly, but helps keep me in tune with my peers and with the community. The only reason I can think of not to ask me is because my honest response might be inconvenient.
We can test that… with this post. Will the “It was a mistake (a bad one, but a mistake) and they’re taking care of it” reality manage to have the same reach? Let’s see if anyone actually wants to know what happened. I hope so, but it’s been disheartening seeing how many people were willing to jump on us here. Believe it or not, I’m a real person and so is the rest of my team. We are trying our best, and if what we were doing was easy, everyone would do it. Today sucks.
Thanks for reading this.
FYI your link does not format properly on Kbin at least.
If Linus knew he wasn’t going to recommend anyone buy the waterblock no matter how it performed, but also didn’t want to show it off as a niche ‘supercar’ of waterblocks, then why agree to review it at all? Was he maybe not in the loop at all until shooting the video?
Seems like there was no good way for this to turn out for Billet which is a real shame since they seemed to just want to show off something cool and maybe get some publicity for their startup.
And auctioning off their handmade prototype, even accidentally and for charity, is a collosal fuck up that really can’t be solved with money alone.
I get vibes of Top Gear reviewing the Tesla roadster.
Linus posted a response on the LTT forums:
Thanks for sharing his side/comment here.
Not that I agree with his defense (seems like allot of avoidance), but I am glad I could read it.
There won’t be a big WAN Show segment about this or anything
The starting line really puts me off. I don’t really care much about the tech content but find their videos entertaining.
I have un-subscribed from all their channels and will see how much this video is addressed in the next WAN before I decide if to continue to watch their content at all going forward.
"I’m sorry…
…that you feel that way"
Kind of post.
Does anyone have any examples of Linus genuinely admitting he made a mistake or was wrong in a way where he dealt with a modicum of consequence? I can’t think of any, but I don’t watch him very much, at least recently.
Linus criticizing Steve on “proper journalistic practices” shows an incredible lack of self-awareness.
Did this motherfucker just respond by chiding someone else for not following “proper journalistic practices” after completely fucking burying a company without reaching out to them about their prototype product?
Yeah. That hit me hard was well. Dude is apparently way more unhinged than most people knew. In his rise to fame, he’s become a complete hypocrite (which also isn’t unique).
Rules for thee, not for me.
Linus is a massive narcissist. He literally thinks he’s special.
Oh he reached out to them, agreed to send it and their graphics card (that they didn’t use for the testing) back to them and then
soldauctioned it off.
(like the fact that we didn’t ‘sell’ the monoblock, but rather auctioned it for charity due to a miscommunication…
Steve never uses the wold ‘sold’ in his video, and uses the word ‘auctioned’ twice.
As if “sold at a charity auction” isn’t an incredibly common and normal phrase. Linus is grasping.
I mean, since when has auctioning not been selling something? Auctioning is literally a method by which to sell something.
Right. And that’s what Linus lead with.
But he never even used the word sold, just auction/auctioning.
I find him only responding in the forums sketchy, like I a lot of people have an will watch gamers Nexus video and will want a response from Linus. If Linus actually wanted to clear the air why wouldn’t you do it on the wan show, he did it with the trust me bro situation. Almost nobody who watched the GM’s video will read this post and I think that’s what Linus wants, less eyes on the situation.
A couple of other things am sorry but DW guys we had a bit of a miscommunication with billet labs and sold their best prototype but we are gonna pay them back soon*tm is an awful way of handling it.
Also with the inaccuracies he doesn’t actually address the problem, they are making too many videos too quickly, no matter how many checks and balances you put in if you rush people you will get a rushed shitty product. Not to mention he doesn’t actually respond to the glaring issues of benchmarks being wrong or them trying to get the benchmarks to fit amds given ones or hell the clear conflicts of interest with noctua or Asus
He’s only responding to his fans. It’s just sad.
For now. Y’all acting like Linus should immediately make a video in response to Gamer Nexus’s 45 minute one. There’s a lot to break down and go over so these things take time. Honestly WAN show being live would be a much better time to discuss it than the quickest response video in the west when one of the complaints right now, too is sloppiness when rushing.
There’s a lot to break down and go over so these things take time.
Wait, so now they care about getting things right?
They are the ones that make him money, so they are what he is focused on.
Maybe if a video is made about this then that amplifies the Nexus video and the criticisms it had. By not meaningfully engaging with it, they are not exposing it to their audience which is substantially larger than Gamers Nexus.
I think it could be that he does do it eventually though, after he finds better arguments or finds support from his community.
I have a hunch LMG will come out with a company reply. LMG is not Linus, and Linus is not LMG, despite owning the company. You can also see in the comments how many people get this wrong, some even going on ad hominem attacks on Linus’ person.
It could be the case, that the forum post was Linus’ personal answer and the other execs stopped him from running his mouth on a live show (WAN) and dig them a deeper hole. I don’t work at LMG and I don’t know Linus personally, but if LMG would want to be “taken seriously as a company”, it should be a company statement, not a personal one.
They are doing too many videos Indeed, but what’s the solution? Doing less videos is penalized by the algorithm, which means not enough money to keep everyone around. So one solution would be to scale down, fire a bunch of people, close a bunch of channels and really focus just on LTT. To me this seems unrealistic and I doubt anyone in Linus’ position would do this.
The other option instead is to double, triple and quadruple down, hire a bunch more people, create lots of tools and know how, ways to create more data, more easily and accurately, remove lots of work from the writers and try to grow until the issues are resolved. This to me seems the only solution and is one that LMG has been pursuing for years now.
The third option is to just handwave the problem away and say they should do better without actually offering a real solution l (and I’m talking from both points of view)
Am I wrong?
They could hire more people, so the production load would be more spread out.
A few months ago there was a post on Reddit pointing out the problem with the writers being rushed from someone claiming to work at LTT. The solution the Reddit post suggested was to hire more people. Linus mentioned it on the WAN show but dismissed the post as just a whiner. (I believe the person making the post may have already been fired prior to making the post.)
If LTT was unionized there would have been an institutional path for this person to go through to get their grievances addressed. But Linus views that as some kind of personal failure. Rather than an institutional change that needs to happen to ensure the company is well run.
If that was what would be necessary, then yes, scaling down would be the correct choice, because in that case scaling up was a mistake.
Infinite growth is unsustainable, and it always falls apart in the end. Why can’t we just be happy with some slow and sustainable growth, until a sustainable plateau?
The one real point that I thought Linus had here was that Steve didn’t talk to him first. That part is getting a lot of ridicule, because it sounds petulant, but it’s valid–it is accepted journalistic practice to give the subject of a story a chance to comment before publishing.
Since we can now see what that comment likely would have been, it doesn’t seem to change the conclusion much. From experience I can guess at Steve’s likely response–he would have tentatively given LMG credit for compensating Billet for the loss, pending verification and comment from Billet, and ripped all the rest of Linus’s excuses a new one. But that still doesn’t change the fact that Steve didn’t quite live up to the journalistic standards that he touts on his channel.
That failure gives things a bit more of a “drama” flavor (It’s hard not to suspect that this is primarily a response motivated by that clip of Linus’s lab tech attacking GN’s and HUB’s testing methods). But of course it doesn’t absolve LMG and its vaunted lab of milking the Youtube algorithm first and being a source of real information a distant second–which was argued pretty convincingly by GN and which a lot of us started to notice long before this video came out.
I think the way LTT handled the backpack warranty debacle shows that by contacting LTT, you won’t get anything substantial in response. Linus will just keep being stubborn and you’ll get nothing in response. Even the way that Linus responded in his “response”, it’s still a nothingburger response.
He’s still doubling down on the way that he reviewed Billet Labs cooler and doesn’t even acknowledge the biggest criticism that GN levied towards LTT, spending more time in making sure that the content that they’re producing is accurate. Having a pinned comment and edited fixes shows that LTT doesn’t really care about quality and instead pushing to keep more producing content.
I saw a post somewhere showing that at least 300 people unsubscribed from Floatplane, so that means at least 1500 USD/month (can be more if there’s people who subscribe for 4k content) of revenue are lost. Just from him not wanting to spend 500 USD of his employee time to make sure that he reviewed the products properly.
Linus has completely lost the plot here. Although it’s not unexpected since the way he handled the backpack warranty situation.
Please explain why it aught to be/is standard practice to try and get a reponse before publishing.
It’s a customary practice, and I think it’s a good one because it makes the story less one-sided and can diminish the appearance of it being a hit piece if it’s negative. Bottom line, it’s natural to want to know what the person the story is about thinks of it and what their perspective is. Obviously not all journalists seek a comment from every subject, but if they do, they often mention that they asked for a comment even if they weren’t able to get one, because people want to know that they at least tried.
What could LMG have said which would change the reporting of the inaccuracies of their content? Getting a response before hand may be able to get some more information but giving corporations time to react also gives them time to act in bad faith (e.g. cover up or attempt to blackmail, etc).
Wanting to know what the person in the story things doesn’t appear to me to support sharing your criticisms before posting. Something being a custom doesn’t justify it being a custom (if it really is one).
(if it really is one).
I mean, I’m not a journalist, I’ve just been reading them for decades. It’s a thing.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/policies-and-standards/
No story is fair if it covers individuals or organizations that have not been given the opportunity to address assertions or claims about them made by others. Fairness includes diligently seeking comment and taking that comment genuinely into account.
Just as an example that came up in a quick web search–the Washington Post is a major US newspaper and this is its stated policy. Seeking comment from story subjects is an important practice in journalism, and if you consider yourself a journalist and don’t do it in a given case, you should probably have a good reason. This is why Steve felt the need to explain himself on that point.
I assumed some do it, perhaps most do and that makes it a standard.
Taking their comment into account has the potential to get more information which would prevent you reporting misinformation. I’d love to know how often their comment is useful vs how often corporations take advantage.
tl;dr with commentary:
On testing errors: Yep, we’re trying to be better. [i.e. Let’s move on and forget this ever happened.]
On the Billet auction: We’re trying to do the right thing after a miscommunication. [This one’s probably the best response, but that’s not a high bar.]
On the Billet hit piece: We were only assholes to them to get them to be better. [MAJOR abuser vibes. “I wouldn’t have beat you if you didn’t deserve it”.]
On releasing knowingly inaccurate videos: This is actually a good thing because we show our mistakes with footnotes. [WTF]
On conflicts of interest from corporate partnerships: Crickets [No surprise]
The worst part about the billet testing I feel is the arrogance when he said “it wouldn’t matter if it dropped temperatures by 20 degrees, it’s a bad product”
Like a bad product to who? If I were overclocking and something knocked off a full 20 degrees, that’s a great product regardless of price
There’s a reason people bought 4090s, some people want the highest tier performance and dropping an extra thousand to get something decent isn’t a concern for some
To be fair, he meant 20 degrees from where it was during testing, not from stock or competitors. Even in this hypothetical it would match other options at best despite a higher price. But the problem is that we can’t know this because they didn’t test it properly
What I thought was interesting about this is that apparently not only me, but tons of other people have all kinda felt like LTT has seemed off the past year or so, and this video kinda explained it all
It’s been a consistent decline over many years, which makes it more noticeable the longer it’s been happening.
My own conclusions was that their lab building took so many resources.
I’ll have to watch this review to have a knowledgeable opinion, but from the LTT I’ve been watching over the past few months, my initial feeling it is must suck to constantly have to come up with new content and to have the it’s core business at the whim of the YouTube algorithm (where quality of content doesn’t seem to be weighted much anymore). I’ve read a while ago that a thumbnail with a person’s face weighed more than a thumbnail without in the algorithm, that’s why all the LTT videos have the stupid face. It’s small dumb shit like that (to play by the algorithm’s ever changing rules) that can really chip away at a YouTube series
I just can’t get myself to care about the majority of the content anymore. They make so many videos that the topics just end up being about some goofy and dumb stuff that I don’t really care about. The ratio between serious reviews about serious products and some goofy random stuff is just worsening all the time on the main channel and it just pushes me away.
I mean I will never get why people actually watch graphics cards reviews. Just set a budget clock through 20 reviews and take the one that was mentioned most of the time. Watching a video with graphs and benchmarks is so boring
It’s not really new. LTT initially was breaking the advertising standards laws by using undeclared sponsors for videos without telling anyone. It started as an advert for companies products with paid placement. Many people didn’t care, the Canadian ASA told them to stop by which point they were already succeeding. The fact they deleted evidence of that shows what type of person Linus is.
At no point has LTT throughout its existence shown any regard for the law let alone ethics, morality, integrity or accuracy. Now it’s bigger and throwing out a lot more content it’s showing this at a frightening pace.
As the old adage goes, behind every great fortune is a great crime. I consider Linus at the very least unethical throughout his entire YouTube career. There is probably more going on than we can see, he seems more than willing to just lie openly so at this point any statements about anything he has said regarding framework and other investments and impartiality should at least be seen as highly questionable.
And Linus/LTT will have excuses over excuses instead of sincerely apologizing and actually trying to get better.
Doesn’t matter for me, I’ve stopped watching them years ago. Their extremely clickbait titles make it hard to search for anything anyways.
I watched this yesterday and even I was cringing for both of them because i like LTT but GN’s points are valid, but also you can tell this was a very tough video for GN to make.
There’s a certain tone or cadence to the way that Steve talks that really makes him sound like an authority on the subjects he’s talking about. Like an old school radio reporter from the 30s or something. Not sure exactly how to describe it, but once you hear him say something, you know it’s a very serious topic.
Either way, I think GN made some very valid points, but also some much less so. I mostly watch LTT for the entertainment value but I’ve never taken their reviews particularly seriously. I’ve always hated how LTT handles charts and data - they just zip through the data so bloody fast. At LTT it is clear that Linus knows his stuff, but it’s also clear that he’s not trained as a scientist or engineer in the scientific method. Listening to him, yiu can tell there’s a lack of knowledge in the methodology of setting up an experiment, but on the other hand if you step back for a second, you realize how ridiculous some of the topics all these reviewers obsess over really are. 5 FPS in a game that’s already getting 150+ is utterly pointless in the real world. These are just games, guys. It’s not the end of the world here.
I’ll continue to watch LTT, mostly for TechLinked and now GameLinked because Riley, James and now Jacok crack me up.
I mostly watch LTT for the entertainment value but I’ve never taken their reviews particularly seriously.
Except, people spending hundreds to a thousand dollars on PC hardware do clearly trust him and his channel for the final “should you buy this or not” stance at the end of each review. It’s not a negligible amount of influence he has on the tech review space, and it’s explicitly because of their click-bait / algorithm friendly thumbnails and titles that they’re able to reach such wide audiences and become the top few results when someone searches for a product.
it is clear that Linus knows his stuff
Is it? I’ve been watching for years and he always exudes “content creator persona” and very rarely expresses and real technical knowledge. He’s essentially the youtube star version of that one kid who built their PC and never shuts up about it; he has certainly educated himself on consumer tech stats and comparisons, but his background and especially his current work have very little to do with actual technical know how.
And I’m not even saying that’s a “bad thing”, since he has writers and staff and now the Lab who should be able to reach that level of understanding and let him be just the face on the screen. But the fact is like Steve has said, that clearly also isn’t what’s actually happening behind the scenes.
Given how they have handled all their server hardware over the years any real IT pro is cringing how badly they are doing things. I see no signs they know what they are doing whatsoever.
Back when I first got into IT and started doing things with computers six or seven years ago I thought he was a technical guy, but as I got my certs and started into the field I slowly realized he had more of the “I build PC’s as a hobbyist and constantly shit on the co-hosts that clearly know more than I do about things” mentality.
I stopped watching a long time ago when he got into really severe click bait and clearly just wanted people to pay him to build absolutely ridiculously overpowered machines.
LTT is no better than the fnaf guy.
I don’t even know who that is.
Their issues are:
- Bad data - major errors in review videos
- Ethical concerns - conflicts of interest, Billet review, Pwnage review
Seemed like fair criticism to me, honestly. I enjoy watching LTT, but if they want to be a reliable source of data with “The Lab”, they can’t continue acting purely as an entertainment company.
Yeah, it was very measured and specific. You could tell he took no pleasure in doing it, the disappointment felt very genuine. It was also a classy move to avoid monetization
I mean for sure he just got a ton of viewers, but it didn’t feel like YouTuber beef or a takedown.
I think he hints at the real issue a few times when he calls them “the company”. It’s the issue why I haven’t been into Linus for a while - he talks like a capitalist now. He’s got plenty of technical opinions, but you can tell he’s not keeping up to speed on the tech (he’s always getting help from someone off screen) - instead, he’s always talking about business.
He talks about making products, the challenges, plans to expand, the sometimes hard to watch reccounts of changing relationships with his friends turned staff.
Which is still content, and I am led to believe he genuinely has a commitment to making good products and standing by them. But I’m not into that. I don’t find it interesting, and I find myself skeptical of his technical judgement and less able to identify with him
Bad data is not the issue when they’re the ones generating it. Rushed reviews are the issue.
“Billet review” is downplaying by an extreme degree.
They reviewed a cooler prototype designed for one GPU using a different one and claimed the product was not worth a purchase for anybody, ever. Linus was aware of the issue, but said the cooler was bad “regardless of what the true results would’ve shown” and not worth “$500 of extra time reviewing it correctly”.
Then, they took this internal prototype that the company lended for review and, after claiming to be ready to give it back two times, SOLD IT to a random third party during an event. An event where competitors from the original company were visiting.
The company already confirmed that was their best prototype and they were relying on it to iterate on the design.
So LTT accepted a lent prototype from a new company, absolutely trashed the product in a review they purposely published with wrong methodology, then stole the prototype and sold it to God knows who.
This is hard to believe, it seems too comical.
I believe you of course, and without accumulating enough about Linus’ & LTT’s antics I would have doubted you. I wonder what it is that causes these kinds of things to happen. I want to say success but I think there may be something about their ethos. Not what they espouse but what they sorta believe internally.
If LMG gave out a prototype for their latest screwdriver to be reviewed and it was onsold, I highly doubt it being called a “mistake” would have sufficed, heads would be rolling
Feel terrible for Billet and how they were treated here
Billet was treated very bad here and i’m not trying to defend anyone, but i didn’t saw the video and only heard from them because of this shitshow
Ltt is certainly not innocent here but this one I’ll disagree with since it basically just happened to them with an early sample of the backpack.
I don’t understand why he won’t just own up to the wrong gpu thing and move on. It’s like getting pissy that the f150 exhaust sounds like shit on your ford ranger.
I think that their point that it’s an $800 product for a last-gen card, there really isn’t anyone out there that should buy this, and therefore it’s a bad product is valid. They could have handled the whole thing better and honestly should’ve just scrapped the video before release.
Auctioning off the prototype when the company asked for it back is pretty inexcusable. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that it wasn’t malicious, but they clearly have problems with internal communication of things like this are happening.
At any rate, it’s going to be a spicy WAN show this week. Linus needs to actually watch the video and address this point-by-point. If he “reads the comments” or cherry picks some of GN’s weaker arguments he’s just going to end up throwing fuel on the fire.
I dont think it was malicious, but it is incredibly negligent. It puts a huge stain on the company that’s expected to honor embargos for unreleased products.
It’s pretty normal for water blocks to come out well after a GPUs release. Also it looks like it was a new product/company so it makes sense the design took longer than the competition.
I feel that if LMG looked at this product and thought “hey this is really dogshit”, the decent thing to do would have been to go back to billet and tell them we can’t cover it at all (and cop the loss of few hours as part of running an ethical business)
Then they shouldn’t have reviewed it if their decision was made before even holding the product in their hand.
They could have reviewed it from the point of view of an R&D curiosity with the potential future iterations and cost reductions as the new startup finds their feet. Because, you know, that’s what it was. But they decided to shit all over it for dishonest reasons instead.
LTT should be getting the pants sued off of them for that kind of behavior. No way this whole cooler prototype thing was not nefarious.
At the very least it appears incredibly reckless.
what they did to billet is goddamn evil
Evil - least sheltered redditor, just an ass
ruining a prototype product, talking shit about it, and then selling it is a lot worse than being “just an ass”
K hes hitler the evil twins
the dictionary definition of evil is “morally reprehensible”. you don’t need to overreact by going straight to a godwin
So what we call hitler then
Damn, I thought we had a while before the 14 yr olds showed up on Lemmy.
Ad hominems, buddy projecting find an argument next time
What the fuck, that’s deplorable
I filtered out ltt on yt a long time ago bc they were clickbait tech trash, like the journalistic equivalent of people magazine
This is why I feel only mildly outraged, compared to other comments here. LTT/LMG was only ever entertainment to me so gross factual errors neither surprise nor frustrate me personally. Any graphs or data presented couldn’t be trusted because they were the product of what you saw on screen, which was a buncha dorks bashing around equipment with a running gag of dropping expensive tech on the floor.
Linus justifies his frantic video production pace in terms of budget and finance. He should at least be able to reflect on the monetary harm to the small businesses that his botched reviews caused. To me, that’s what needs to be remedied ASAP because the two case studies presented (Billet and Pwnage) are not huge Nvidia corporations. Getting knocked around in the market can spell doom for everyone who works there.
I unsubscribed from LTT years ago when the silly content ramped up.
YouTube kept suggesting LTT and I had to block the channel so I’m not really familiar with their content anymore, looks like they only got worse.
This is shameful.
Hey, remember that time when Linus promoted a kickstarter scam? https://youtu.be/VHjmlQdzpW4
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For some great irony check out this wan show segment where linus talks about how he doesn’t like that a prototype (backpack) of theirs ended up in the hands of the public https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwgZaSYuBLc&t=3209 Time 53:29, in case the timestamped link doesn’t work
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I forgot about this segment, thanks for bringing it up.
Although good points were made, as I’ve been following this. I think its also suspicious GN is rather new with their ethics pages etc and it seems like it was a planned attack.
LTT does do corrections, but also GN alone has had 3+ in 2023 errors. Now account for the absolute size difference…
Why would it be suspicious? Thats just like writing a user manual based off of what you see users do.
Only because of how recently they have implemented the ethics and fails pages on their website and in the video they don’t really make it clear like “We realized how important it is and recently implemented a system to make our failures as public as possible a few months ago.”. Just looks bad and makes me think it was planned, maybe not and like I said good points were made by GN. Skimming over the size difference between LTT and GN and how GN still got 3+ errors listed? I haven’t done the numbers on the failure percentage but I don’t feel it would be horrible.
Even if true, and was a planned attack, that does not remove how objective the criticisms were.
Correct, as stated I agree with the good points made. But does make me question his character if his spent the last few months planning this. If it really mattered about the community being mislead it would’ve came out ASAP, not after his got his duck in a line putting together an ethics page, updating it with content for a couple months, skimming thru all content for errors and then BAM time for the kill.
Nobody will probably ever know weather that is the case, just imo I watch both pretty evenly and it’s like two parents fighting. Both imperfect and be hide closed doors just hoping the other backs down, otherwise the show must go on.
I don’t think the size difference works in the favour of lmg.
If gamers nexus puts out pretty much industry leading day one reviews out on every launch with 5-6 people and LMG with labs and 100+ employees can’t then there’s something wrong.
GN has a point LMG shits out videos without QC and it’s starting to bite them of late. The water block review is the perfect example of just being stupid. Why not just test the item with the right product and judge it for what it is as opposed to turning it into a joke review where no matter what the product is going to look bad.
The short circuit thing with the mouse is also a bit ridiculous.
But the charts are the main thing, I’ve noticed it myself over the years that lmg charts made no sense relative to gamers nexus or HUb or even jayz 2 cents which meant something was wrong with the testing.
Ultimately this is probably a good thing. From what I’ve gathered of Linus he is a person that can recognize his mistakes, but only once you get past his stubbornness. His response saying they should’ve hit him up is kind of classic response. What could you have said really? Like GN is right that like almost every video has a pinned comment or on screen edit of a correction. And you know these companies are complaining. Yet it continues.
Having their audience put them to task will go a long way to making them recognize it is a bigger issue than individual videos. I’m really curious about the idea of Labs being able to actually test things publically in a way consumers haven’t been able to. (Give me more of transparency like digital foundry for games and Jerryrig everything for durability.) So they need to pull their shit together if they want to claim to be a data driven lab. Like accuracy is all that matters.
I think the ethical concerns section is overblown. LTT is almost harsh on their sponsors and I got a kick out of Linus starting the last video talking about Framework saying how he doesn’t actually use the Framework laptop as his daily driver at the time and complained about it.
Their production cycle seems to be more targeted at producing content, moreso than anything else, like integrity or correctness.
I’ve noted several errors myself, most of the ones I’ve seen are relatively minor, and mostly pedantic, but they’re inaccuracies nonetheless.
If LMG wants to move towards being more journalism and a reputable source of accurate information, which, from everything they’ve done recently (most notably the lab), they seem to want to be, then they need people to go and fact check everything, and scrutinize final products to ensure accurate information. Making sure that inaccuracies are caught and sent back to the beginning of the pipeline to be re-reviewed, and if necessary, re-shot.
They can’t keep doing things by the seat of their pants and hoping for the best.
My hats off to GN for bringing it to light, and hopefully some meaningful changes come from this.
I wonder how much of that is because of how much they grew vs the production cycle as dictated by constantly feeding the yt algorithm.
The difference between putting out a video every day and putting out a video when it’s ready is a decision that each channel makes
It very much feels significantly more like incompetence than malice (not that I think any particular person at LMG is incompetent. The processes likely are however). Honestly LMG just probably grew way faster than any of their processes could scale.
The sponsor related aspects I feel they handle pretty well for the most part, they’re often critical of sponsors and I don’t get the feeling he’d straight up sell out. It feels like they’re putting out so much content across so many channels that they’re not able to keep up the accuracy / quality. That’s a fair point I think Steve raised and to see it fobbed off by Linus in his response is disappointing
Linus has already put out a response and it’s not great either. There’s some points of contrition, that it was done on his watch so ultimately he’s reasonable, but overall he justifies their actions as a company coming into it’s stride and being transparent with their mistakes (instead of them just rushing out content without proper vetting)
It’s not a great look, but it’s one I’ve come to expect from him given how he’s handled previous community backlash with the backpack, screwdriver and other scenarios.
If you don’t mind me asking, where was the response posted? I haven’t seen anything on official channels/social media about a LTT response
He posted on the LTT forums, which seem to be down atm.
EDIT: Someone on Reddit posted a screenshot: https://i.redd.it/dh24b8ss85ib1.jpg
(treats other people like shit)
“believe it or not, I’m a real person”
Yeap. Turns out Linus is another piece of shit too. How sad.
I get the whole video, it has a lot of stuff that is bad for LTT, what bothers me is the editing style. It feels more like a hit piece than a piece of criticism with how the cuts are made. If this was to be a video calling out the behaviour and actions of LTT and their channels I think it could have been edited in a way that didn’t seem to have constant cut ins from various videos mocking them. I could see a different cut done by a different editor that took the whole project seriously that would be more effective.
If this was to be a video calling out the behaviour and actions of LTT and their channels I think it could have been edited in a way that didn’t seem to have constant cut ins from various videos mocking them.
Could you elaborate on one with a timestamp?
I’ve watched it twice, and I’m not seeing what you are seeing, especially ‘mocking’.
It’s the constant cut ins and zoom ins on faces throughout the video. I don’t know if mocking is the right term but what I am getting is that this video feels more like a hit piece than a form of investigative journalism that Gamers Nexus is very good at.
It doesn’t feel right to me. But I could just be crazy.
Could be wrong, but those face zooms could be from the video their cutting to, as in GN didn’t add the zooms, they used vids that already had those zooms from LTT.
The WAN show clips weren’t, but it’s also possible that they were zooming in for the sake of keeping the viewers attention.
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All valid points. But regarding the measurements, neither LTT or GN testing methodology are realy scientific. Those are youtubers with limited understanding of experimental design and analysis. I have never seen them do simple significance tests or try to explain the variability in the data. But I havent watched all the videos so 乁( •_• )ㄏ
Idk why they don’t just run the test 3 times and average the result.
It would fix a lot of these issues… If you are testing a cooler, remove, clean CPU, reapply thermal compound and reseat cooler.
It’s really not that hard to make their testing, maybe not perfect, but a lot better
Idk why they don’t just run the test 3 times and average the result.
Hardware unboxed does this if I remember correctly
I’m not really sure if you ever watched a GN video, but he throws facts at you at a rate which no one else i know does.
He knows his stuff and is always open to learn new things.
For the variability point, they do tests in as a controlled environment as they could, and do the tests until they get consistent data. But what do you mean by significance test and how can they do it?
I agree they’re not the gold standard but they’re the best we got in terms of independent third party testers, and I would assume they’re more than good enough for tech stuff.
It was really obvious to me Linus was full of shit when he pretended to give Linux a try but then defied a scary error message warning him not to continue which he did anyway and it wiped his desktop environment completely.
He then basically implied if you couldn’t just randomly copy paste cli commands without understanding them AND ignoring a scary warning message, then Linux just was too sketchy for average users to use. It would be trivial to make that exact argument about windows… Because it’s a bullshit meaningless argument
Anyone with even the tiniest experience with a cli, imo, should’ve known at that point he’s full of shit. Fuck their shitty videos.
Yeah, it was the worst video about GNU/Linux I’ve ever seen. The whole idea was stupid from the beginning: let’s be ignorant and try to use a new operating system we don’t know anything about, spend 5 minutes on research and definitely don’t ask anybody for help.
Linus’s issue was caused by some new bug in Pop OS, but he ignored the warning message and even typed “DO AS I SAY”! But of course the conclusion had to be that GNU/Linux is not ready yet. I’m pretty sure he could have just downloaded Steam from their website instead.
The most annoying part was the response from the community. Instead of criticizing his ignorance and incompetence, people were praising him for finding a bug 🤦.
I’m with you completely. I also saw comments defending his idiocy at the CLI. Most people I know who don’t know software very well are afraid to try anything without checking somewhere for validation. But the comments were like “it’s fair because non-linux users won’t expect a command to destroy their os”. 🤦to the max.
I can easily find a command that will destroy (or royally fuck up) windows and for added evil, tell you it does something else. But yeah if it’s Linux then that would mean it’s an os only for experienced sysadmins.
He could actually still log in and use terminal (https://youtu.be/0506yDSgU7M?t=760). So couldn’t he have just reinstalled the desktop environment? :D
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Well yes but his point was that an average user would need to figure it out. He demonstrated that his argument was not in good faith though
I do kinda wonder: Pop OS told him that whatever he was doing may remove some essential stuff. Pop OS specifically said “Are you REALLY sure about that?” and didn’t let him skip the warning by pressing Y and enter.
A normie, perhaps my mom, would indeed not know what these packages mean but sure enough she would see the warning and perhaps call me to ask what this means. It takes a lot of naivety to ignore the warning.
Naivety? Nah it takes either a complete moron or someone who doesn’t care. Since he was making a video which could oppose or uphold a popular opinion, I am guessing he didn’t care…
I love this comment so much. “You crossed Linux? Now you’ve crossed me, blud.”
I don’t get what you’re referring to
More often than not, people who are passionate about something, such as Linux, take personal offense when someone says something incorrect or offensive about said thing. Oh, and blud is just to call someone a poser.
Despite how idiotic this argument sounds, but given the stupidity I have witnessed from people who are not that tech savvy, it leads me to believe that this is quite possible for them to do.
I haven’t been following LTT for more than 2 years, but as far as I remember, they were really good with the stuff they did. Got me into the whole PC building and immense knowledge on those parts.
Quite surprised to see this stuff coming out from them. Honestly, I’m disappointed with them for becoming the monster they ought to defeat.
So if your computer said “press Y to possibly brick your shit” it’s in any way reasonable to blame the computer if that happens after you press y?
People are dumb. They do so much dumb shit that your computer should be dummy proof enough to not delete the main OS itself with just a command and button press.
That’s not what happened though.
And I submit someone that stupid would toast windows in no time also.
