etek

So you're saying one can't criticize another person's behavior because both have products that are produced in china? This was never the point of this whole thing. Linus was crizicized because it was genuinely bad behavior.

Having their products made in China has absolutely nothing to do with what's been talked about here. Linus has literally said they have their screwdrivers made in China but, again, that is NOT what is being discussed here.

Conjecture warning! There be assumptions ahead!
 
I see another key difference with the Labs:
 
Gary.
 
Linus hired someone he trusted with the project and handed them the reins. He even remarked in last week's WAN Show about how satisfying it is to give high level direction to a VP and watch them run with it, without having to get bogged down in minutiae himself.
 
Contrast that with this behind-the-scenes from March 2021. He's trying to be three people at once (CEO Linus, Producer/Host Linus, and Home Linus), and heavily involve himself in the writing and editorial output (reviewing every script, for example). You can see their workflow get bottlenecked by his available time, energy, and patience:
 
 
Assuming this is a reasonably realistic portrait of an average week at LMG, and they didn't ham the dysfunction up for dramatic effect (and the monday.com sponsorship) it's small wonder he comes across so stressed on WAN Show. Wearing so many hats worked back in the Langley house days, and they've mostly gotten away with it for the last few years, but as the company has grown the cracks have begun to show. (Factual errors slipping through to finished videos, the Vaultpocalypse, the transphobic editor alias in that one video...) One can only spin so many plates before they start crashing to the ground.
 
I think hiring a dedicated executive producer to delegate the day-to-day production grind onto would be a good start. Just scrolling through the staff list, it looks like the only person with "producer" in their title is Bell (and he focuses on ShortCircuit and WAN Show).  A trustworthy EP should be able to handle the script reviews and writer's meetings at the very least.
 
It's also long past time LMG hires a full time IT admin. Jake does a lot, but his primary job is "writer". Anthony is powerful, but even he can only do so much. Vault crashed because it wasn't set up right and nobody was minding it, and recovery was left to Jake, who was already swamped, and Wendell, who doesn't even work for LMG. The mega-expensive server project / video series took a back seat because its main writer (Jake) ran out of bandwidth between fixing Vault and overseeing the tech integration at Linus's new house.
 
I'm not trying to be mean, or say that anyone at LMG is incompetent or bad at what they do. It's just that the operation has grown to the point where no one person can be involved in everything. I get that relinquishing direct control is a difficult thing to do, especially when the final product has your name and face on it, but a general doesn't have a million privates reporting directly to them. The org chart can't look like it did in the garage just with more people on it, that's not scalable.
 
I have no doubt Linus cares a great deal about what he does. He clearly wants to be connected to the content, and that's admirable. But he's spread himself too thin for too long. You've built a strong operation, let it fly.
 
TL;DR: Executive producer + IT admin + more staff focus = less stressed Linus, IMO.
 
That was in 1985, so he was 30. He was meddling with projects, micromanaging, generally getting in the way, in denial about the direction the Macintosh division was going, and eventually made a failed attempt at a boardroom coup. Pepsi Man CEO John Sculley basically stripped Jobs of all meaningful responsibilities and relegated him to a "chairman" figurehead position and an office at the fringes of the Apple campus. Then Jobs resigned and started NeXT, poaching some Apple engineers along the way.
 
https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=The_End_Of_An_Era.txt
 
 
I think the backlash wouldn't have been as harsh and widespread if Linus's responses on Twitter and the WAN Show weren't so dismissive and backpedal-y. He started off with comments along the lines of "warranties are worthless so we're just going to do what we always do", then "I could fold the company tomorrow and the warranty would be void anyway so why bother", to finally "guys if I die and my wife sees a warranty claim come through she'll be sad why do you want my wife to be sad". 
 
Honestly, I think that was just him being impulsive, getting more than a little defensive, and putting his foot in his mouth again. (How many times do we hear "what I meant was..."?) It was "Adblock is piracy" round 2. It really seemed like he took that "we don't implicitly trust companies and influencers" personally, even though on multiple occasions he's said not to implicitly trust companies and influencers.
 
If he just said from the beginning "we're drafting a written warranty that will cover manufacturing and material defects, and we'll go above and beyond for our customers just like we always have", I think this whole thing would've blown over. This is one instance where "PR crap" would've saved everyone a whole lot of grief and aggravation. (Seriously, I could hear Luke's internal facepalm in the last couple WAN Shows.)

To me the biggest thing regarding warranties and "trust me bro" is that warranty is covered by company, not by owner at the time of purchase.
What if Linus sells the company tomorrow? Trust me bro is no obligation to new owner.
On a side note which I think has lead to this situation - this monetize everything approach is the main reason why I basically don't watch any LTT videos now. The original plan/promise to publish video every day is biting in the a.. for quite some time since most videos are just useless. Well, if it generates enough views I guess it's all good.

While I agree on everything else, I disagree with it just because he likes to profits from his own drama, like the "Trust me bro" and "piracy" t-shirts, this makes me think that he's not truly sorry for it

I am not familiar with this warranty controversy.  From what I gather from the video the issue is the backpack has no written warranty but instead a verbal one.
 
  There are potential problems with this system.  It strikes me as a fiscally foolish move.  The things are sold in the E.U for one thing, where a one year warranty is a legal requirement.  In the U.S. for example,  It would make sense to do a standard 90 day warranty in the US, but also have a discretionary “we’ll take care of you” policy beyond that time. This is actually quite common.  Throwing a legal minimum in there simplifies things.  The thing is well built but also commensurately expensive.  It is possible to get a backpack (of vastly lower quality to be sure) for 1/10th the price.  Snap-on and sears offered lifetime warranties but had serious problems with abuses, so had to abandon that policy. The issue with long warranties is they’re basically unregulated insurance.
 
The primary issue seems to be the behavior of the company regarding complaints about this by consumers. 
A company that has a policy of saying “nice” whenever the number 69 is mentioned is not going to worry all that much about taste. You can like their behavior or not. I speak only as to whether or not it is a good idea to do that.  I think it isn’t. It’s a legal mess waiting to happen.    Warranties protect the manufacturer too.
 
Regarding extended warranties and why I think they are a rip-off:
I basically never buy an extended warranty on anything.  They are normally managed by Assurion and as such The probability that they are not a rip-off is extremely low.  There is a reason insurance had to be regulated, and companies that do nothing but duck it (which is basically what assurion has for a business model) worry me.  Before I developed my policy of never signing a paper with the name assurion on it, I had several such things and their deductible was always far higher than the retail cost of an identical undamaged replacement device.  Sometimes double or more.  I had been paying them a fee for nothing. 

You mean the support which has a lot of thread here complaining that they're expecting a reply for more than a month? The support where Linus said many times in the WAN show that if you need "fast" reply, to create a post here and tag nick, or to tag him and nick on twitter complaining? The support where it has months of tickets on the backlog and it only keeps increasing?

Eh... I can't agee with that. Don't get me wrong, I'm with you that his actions were pretty stupid, but everyone should be able judge for themselves on what exactly he meant.
It's not an excuse for any of his actions, but I've done similar things (of course not in that magnitude) and so I can relate. That's really all I'm saying.
 
And it's not like he has never taken responsibillity. He has been generally honest with his viewers. I don't see this as such a big deal.
 
 

perhaps the best way to describe things i've seen all week...

i'd hardly call the GN thing "beef". if anything it's Steve doing news coverage on what's brewing in tech (and if you're a big youtube channel about tech.. you're happening in tech..) and reflecting on his own way of how he should cover youtube channel drama compared to corporate manufacturer drama.
 
Steve is the ultimate uncensored objective view on anything that happens around him. He makes a lot of good points in the two segments he made on the topic so far, but in my opinion the lesson to be learned here is simply this:
 
When shit hits the fan, more people should take a moment to think "Is my opinion on this matter correct?"

LMG would probably be better off as a company if Luke was the one running the business side, instead of futilely toiling away on Floatplane. 

After the recent backpack warranty controversy Gamers Nexus re-evaluated where LTT stands as a company and decided to not treat them as a friend anymore, but as a company like MSI, EVGA, etc. As a result he called out Linus' behavior during the whole warrany controversy. I personally found it rather funny that he put in clips of Luke's expressions when Linus talks about it, showing that Luke had a much better understanding of the whole situation while Linus only cared about the T-shirts he sold because of it.
 
GN has again earned my respect for setting a friendship aside for a moment to report objectively.
I wonder if Linus can do the same thing and take this criticism to heart or if he'll dig himself a hole 🤔
 
Here is the video: (The LTT segment goes on until 15:35)
 
So what's your take on this?
Do you respect GN for going this route or do you think they only did it to cause more controversy for clicks?
 
For me LTT has lost an incredible amount of credibility purely because of their CEO's public behavior during the last year.
 
It was a couple of WAN shows ago that Linus talked about how companies are not your friend, not even LTT. Now he's shown that it's not just LTT who doesn't care about their community, but also their CEO who prefers T-shirt sales over a good relationship with his own community.

TIMESTAMPS:
 
 
5:47 - LTT getting WAN Show computer upgrade
12:12 - AMD Ryzen Video Card
24:50 - iPhone Explosion
26:48 - Facebook partners with fact checkers regarding fake news
35:05 - Shameless forum/floatplane plug
39:40 - Crytek sinking
42:00 - [Sponsor] Squarespace
45:03 - [Sponsor] iFixit
47:43 - WD announcing 12TB/14TB helium hard drives
49:47 - Amazon Prime Air's First Shipment Made
53:53 - Twitch introduces self-learning moderator "AutoMod"
55:44 - LoL e-sports made streaming deal with MLB
56:56 - Cortana coming to fridges and other appliances
1:00:17 - Apple charging $69 to replace one AirPod
1:02:44 - LG bringing 4K HDR USB-C monitor to CES
1:04:00 - LTT is getting RED cameras to improve Floatplane
1:06:06 - Microsoft Surface Hub has successful release
1:08:32 - GIF of ATM skimmer appliance

TIMESTAMPS:
 
 
5:47 - LTT getting WAN Show computer upgrade
12:12 - AMD Ryzen Video Card
24:50 - iPhone Explosion
26:48 - Facebook partners with fact checkers regarding fake news
35:05 - Shameless forum/floatplane plug
39:40 - Crytek sinking
42:00 - [Sponsor] Squarespace
45:03 - [Sponsor] iFixit
47:43 - WD announcing 12TB/14TB helium hard drives
49:47 - Amazon Prime Air's First Shipment Made
53:53 - Twitch introduces self-learning moderator "AutoMod"
55:44 - LoL e-sports made streaming deal with MLB
56:56 - Cortana coming to fridges and other appliances
1:00:17 - Apple charging $69 to replace one AirPod
1:02:44 - LG bringing 4K HDR USB-C monitor to CES
1:04:00 - LTT is getting RED cameras to improve Floatplane
1:06:06 - Microsoft Surface Hub has successful release
1:08:32 - GIF of ATM skimmer appliance

TIMESTAMPS:
 
 
5:47 - LTT getting WAN Show computer upgrade
12:12 - AMD Ryzen Video Card
24:50 - iPhone Explosion
26:48 - Facebook partners with fact checkers regarding fake news
35:05 - Shameless forum/floatplane plug
39:40 - Crytek sinking
42:00 - [Sponsor] Squarespace
45:03 - [Sponsor] iFixit
47:43 - WD announcing 12TB/14TB helium hard drives
49:47 - Amazon Prime Air's First Shipment Made
53:53 - Twitch introduces self-learning moderator "AutoMod"
55:44 - LoL e-sports made streaming deal with MLB
56:56 - Cortana coming to fridges and other appliances
1:00:17 - Apple charging $69 to replace one AirPod
1:02:44 - LG bringing 4K HDR USB-C monitor to CES
1:04:00 - LTT is getting RED cameras to improve Floatplane
1:06:06 - Microsoft Surface Hub has successful release
1:08:32 - GIF of ATM skimmer appliance

TIMESTAMPS:
 
 
5:47 - LTT getting WAN Show computer upgrade
12:12 - AMD Ryzen Video Card
24:50 - iPhone Explosion
26:48 - Facebook partners with fact checkers regarding fake news
35:05 - Shameless forum/floatplane plug
39:40 - Crytek sinking
42:00 - [Sponsor] Squarespace
45:03 - [Sponsor] iFixit
47:43 - WD announcing 12TB/14TB helium hard drives
49:47 - Amazon Prime Air's First Shipment Made
53:53 - Twitch introduces self-learning moderator "AutoMod"
55:44 - LoL e-sports made streaming deal with MLB
56:56 - Cortana coming to fridges and other appliances
1:00:17 - Apple charging $69 to replace one AirPod
1:02:44 - LG bringing 4K HDR USB-C monitor to CES
1:04:00 - LTT is getting RED cameras to improve Floatplane
1:06:06 - Microsoft Surface Hub has successful release
1:08:32 - GIF of ATM skimmer appliance

Source: Engadget
 
MIT has created a new system which allows them to 3D print glass. They used two heated chambers, one 1900°F chamber acting as a kiln and another to anneal the structures.
 
Full story/source:
 
http://www.engadget.com/2015/08/21/mit-figured-out-how-to-3d-print-using-glass-instead-of-plastic//?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget&ncid=rss_semi