FoxyFox

I really do hope Linus and Luke talk about this in-depth on the WAN show for everyone to see.
 
A lot of people have never ventured into the forums after all and I think they should see the response on YouTube 

Ooof, I was keeping track of Floatplane subscribers while I was watching GN's video:
 
Floatplane - LinusTechTips
Time    Subscribers
18:26    41,109
18:27    41,107
18:29    41,103
18:35    41,100
18:41    41,093
18:45    41,088
18:48    41,083
times are in EST

Honestly given how poorly Linus took Steve's lack of contact, I respect Steve never reaching out for comment before making a video again. Unless you have sufficient evidence as to why people should not trust the people who reported on you (E.g. repeated instances of them creating drama for attention) you shouldn't publicly talk down on the reporter.
 
He could have just as easily asked Steve to reach out privately over Email, instead he chose to publicly shame GN for how they chose to cover this as the first thing people will read when reading the official response. This controversy isn't about GN right now and discrediting his video because he didn't reach out doesn't change all the recent mistakes and the fact that the prototype was auctioned.

what do you mean they can't? 
it wasn't lost, it was sold to someone, they should know who they sold it to, or have some idea at least 
"lost" was the GPU, Linus "found" it in a different video because someone misplaced it if I remember well, not the cooler 

Ooof, I was keeping track of Floatplane subscribers while I was watching GN's video:
 
Floatplane - LinusTechTips
Time    Subscribers
18:26    41,109
18:27    41,107
18:29    41,103
18:35    41,100
18:41    41,093
18:45    41,088
18:48    41,083
times are in EST

Nah, Steve can be snarky. He very often is. Not necessarily a bad thing... and imo he was particularly un-snarky through the grand majority of this video.

lol and he didn't monatize it 🙂 epic from Steve !

Linus why don't you properly address this in a video if you dont have anything to apologize for? Sure a lot of people wont be happy no matter what but I think its a pretty important thing to talk about. 
 
I say this as a pretty much a decade long fan. What steve said wasnt unfounded, and I dont think it was ill willed either.

This is at the core of so much of what's wrong with LTT, I think.
 
Linus is running (yes, yes, not the CEO anymore, spare me) a multimillion dollar enterprise with (checks website)... Good God, over 80 employees now. But he still acts like, and seems to be expect to be treated like, some random guy making YouTube videos solo in a bedroom. 

100M$+ lab and studio, but can't pay 200$ for his staff to do their job properly. W...
Auction out an invaluable unique prototype they don't own. WT...
Shit on a new company because Linus believe nobody should buy their product or that he can't do no wrong. WTF...

Linus needs to be slap back down to reality.
It's the same garbage as the no warranty on their their store products, but now over other people's creations.

This video came at an interesting time for me. I just got an LTT store order in the mail, and found "trust me bro" in the free sticker pack. That was the last straw of scummyness for me. It was always pretty cringe hearing it repeated on wan show, but the actual physical object was like someone had shat on my hand, so I cancelled my floatplane account. The way they have started to double down on doing shitty things and try to force it down your throat like if they repeat it enough you'll accept it really crossed a line for me, and I guess after watching this video... I just didn't pick up on how many other situations it has been happening. 

Ooof, I was keeping track of Floatplane subscribers while I was watching GN's video:
 
Floatplane - LinusTechTips
Time    Subscribers
18:26    41,109
18:27    41,107
18:29    41,103
18:35    41,100
18:41    41,093
18:45    41,088
18:48    41,083
times are in EST

maybe watch it? 
why do you assume anyone at LTT would read documentation? there's no time for that, it would cost money

Exactly. Just because you're big, you can't go around wrecking or disregarding other companies. 
 
I've been following LTT since the beginning, have been on the forums for a very long while (deleted the old account due to a jerk from the forums creating fake accounts pretending to be me), but this was way too much. 
 
You had inventory tracking since forever. How come there's no connection between a seeded engineering sample/prototype and related communication? 
 
Why should a startup ever send new stuff again for review?
 
There's no guarantee things will be properly evaluated, you can get flak for no good reason, and there's still a chance your prototype will be sold for third-parties. 
 
I don't think any company would complain about a real accident, just like museums don't go after people that accidently damage/destroy their pieces.
 
Selling the thing was on a completely different level. 

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.

Ooof, I was keeping track of Floatplane subscribers while I was watching GN's video:
 
Floatplane - LinusTechTips
Time    Subscribers
18:26    41,109
18:27    41,107
18:29    41,103
18:35    41,100
18:41    41,093
18:45    41,088
18:48    41,083
times are in EST

Ooof, I was keeping track of Floatplane subscribers while I was watching GN's video:
 
Floatplane - LinusTechTips
Time    Subscribers
18:26    41,109
18:27    41,107
18:29    41,103
18:35    41,100
18:41    41,093
18:45    41,088
18:48    41,083
times are in EST

Ooof, I was keeping track of Floatplane subscribers while I was watching GN's video:
 
Floatplane - LinusTechTips
Time    Subscribers
18:26    41,109
18:27    41,107
18:29    41,103
18:35    41,100
18:41    41,093
18:45    41,088
18:48    41,083
times are in EST

Ooof, I was keeping track of Floatplane subscribers while I was watching GN's video:
 
Floatplane - LinusTechTips
Time    Subscribers
18:26    41,109
18:27    41,107
18:29    41,103
18:35    41,100
18:41    41,093
18:45    41,088
18:48    41,083
times are in EST

Ooof, I was keeping track of Floatplane subscribers while I was watching GN's video:
 
Floatplane - LinusTechTips
Time    Subscribers
18:26    41,109
18:27    41,107
18:29    41,103
18:35    41,100
18:41    41,093
18:45    41,088
18:48    41,083
times are in EST

Ooof, I was keeping track of Floatplane subscribers while I was watching GN's video:
 
Floatplane - LinusTechTips
Time    Subscribers
18:26    41,109
18:27    41,107
18:29    41,103
18:35    41,100
18:41    41,093
18:45    41,088
18:48    41,083
times are in EST

I don't think you gets why it needs to be re-tested. At all.
 
The point is that, we as viewers have less reasons to trust your words as a reviewer if your views can dedicate what matters vs not matters and can stop your own reviewers from doing a proper job.
 
Hell, prior to this I saw LTT as far more entertainment and when I do want to buy something I rely more on GN, HUB and TPU. And this episode simply gives me more reason to do so.
 
Sure, LTT is entertaining, but it again reinforces my view that your word on a product that I am going to actually buy does not matter because your review process is not as rigid as other more trusted sources.
 
Trust is hard to earn, and very easy to lose.

On the WAN show where he addressed this video, he doubled down and said that even if it was 20 degrees cooler he'd still say not to buy it, so he had no intention whatsoever of giving it a good review because of the price. He knew the price before he got the product, so he knew he had no intention of a good review, pretty vindictive imo.

GN's video is the constructive criticism. Linus replied here saying that GN shouldn't have published it and they should've kept that private LOL. And he strongly implied that GN acted in bad faith.
 
Linus is undefendable right now. 

- Whether or not folks here have a "Personal Investment in Billet Labs" is 100% wholly irrelevant in every way. You don't have to have personal investment in something to understand what may have happened to them was immensely shitty.
- Money doesn't fix everything. This is a pretty big goddamn "Whoopsie" that requires a bit more of a "We fucked up, bad, here's how we're going to fix it" kind of response rather than just a check. However, if Billet Labs have said "All good", that's all that's really needed at the end of the day as far as making them whole.
 
Additionally, everyone saying that this is personal to Steve...likely? I mean, I'd imagine it has some level of personal tinge to it. You don't get to know people in an industry and not at least have some emotional attachment to them. To say that doesn't happen at all is absolutely wrong.

Stop speaking in generalities as a response to the video either way. If you're wanting to watch the video only to hate watch it and react (in either direction), back off the keyboard warrior mentality for a sec and think it through. There's a hefty amount of fast reacts going on here one way or the other and y'all need to step back and take stock.
 
Thinking you're rebutting a 44 minute video which CLEARLY has a lot of data to it in a simple forum post is folly.

Take time to digest. Sheesh.