lal12

I was so excited when Luke came "back" to host a few videos. Looks like he's gone again though. I just can't tune in to the new hosts the way I could to Luke, and later James & Rylie.
 
 
Man I've got an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico I'd like to point out to you...
 
 
For anyone wondering what the pitchforks look like. ^ 

Actually, are you the same guy going off about Linus' kids earlier? 
 

I think it's unfortunate that Linus didn't get a heads up. I know I have been somewhat anti-Steve in this thread, but I was really hoping a private conversation was had, and rebuffed. That said, this now provides @LinusTech an excellent opportunity to develop a content piece that lays out his side of things in detail. I hope he does. Go over the mistakes, how they happen, how they can be corrected, etc. 

I agree Steve is often a bit to "harsh" and applies standards which I wouldn't agree with or perceive as realistic. However he is consistent with those standards, so not really something to blame just to disagree. And honestly given the issues a video definitely was necessary, yes I would have done it a bit less "harsh" too.

Getting all the details before publication is *NOT* the opposite of journalistic integrity.

This isn't about being on a side... There's no war. You don't need to fight. You need to slow down and think.... 

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.

The worst part is mishandling the water block for billet labs. Imagine sending off a prototype to a media company, something which could well being confidential, then not sending it back despite promising too and then later on auctioning off someone else's property(perhaps to a potential competitor). Now the company has lost a prototype and LMG faces no accountability for quite likely tanking someone's business on a false premise and false testing.

Everybody that keep saying "I watch LTT for entertainment not facts". Guys thats not the problem. I too watch it for entertainment, but there was a point where if Linus says this product is good, I would trust him and maybe buy that product over another. With all the errors, people that still does that, will end up with false information. 
They keep using labs as a proof that if they say something is good or bad you can trust them. The problem to me is it seems like no one is watching the video or reading the script before pushing upload.

I dont watch a video about a product more than once, I can watch vlogs and wacky high jinx multiple times, but lets say a video about a 4090 I would watch once and never again. How would I know to come back days later and look for a pinned comment stating that benchmarking was wrong. Or what if I dont look at the screen but mostly listen.

Either they need to spend more time on the script or have someone watch the whole video before upload. And they also need to be able to do reshoots. I dont get why tech quicke cant do reshoots. Its not a channel with deadlines or NDA´s, just take the extra 10 minuts to reshoot/do a voice over and do it properly. 

This is so on point. Linus feels like more of an actor than ever. Fabricated excitement is so easy to see through and it kinda deflates a video from the get-go.

I agree Steve is often a bit to "harsh" and applies standards which I wouldn't agree with or perceive as realistic. However he is consistent with those standards, so not really something to blame just to disagree. And honestly given the issues a video definitely was necessary, yes I would have done it a bit less "harsh" too.

I agree Steve is often a bit to "harsh" and applies standards which I wouldn't agree with or perceive as realistic. However he is consistent with those standards, so not really something to blame just to disagree. And honestly given the issues a video definitely was necessary, yes I would have done it a bit less "harsh" too.

Firing him because of what he said would be completely inappropriate.
1. this statement was made in front of other people,
2. it was edited, 
3. it was reviewed (hopefully QC?), 
4. (AFAIK) he isn't in a leading role (non technical at least)
5. as far as I understood it, it is actually the plan/goal for the lab
6. the lab provides data the writer puts them in a video

As Steve himself said I would consider that a minor issue. The other issues and specifically the Billet Labs thing are much worse. Whether someone should be fired for it highly depends on the circumstances and can only be reviewed internally.

Yeah media should always focus 100% on the biggest news piece at any given time and should for sure play favorites !!
 
Unless you can point out GN making false claims your missing the mark by an interstellar distance.

I haven't watched LMG content regularly in quite a while, the last one I was interested in was the Framework review, and didn't even trust that one very much because of Linus' financial involvement with Framework, I'm not on Floatplane either, the forum community is sort of separated from the main LTT content, people are mature and knowledgeable here, while the main LTT content is very much targeted towards a younger and less mature audience.
 
Indeed, the Toyota review was one that bothered me, Linus even replied to that thread and acted like he was above having to disclose how they got the vehicle for review, I think if LMG wants to get into car reviews they need to be more transparent with sponsorships. Linus seems to take things too personally and keeps on having the "trust me bro" attitude like viewers are just supposed to trust LMG as a company, the fanboys are of course although the whole "trust me bro" goes against what Linus says himself not to trust corporations.

Mistakes happen during reviews, frequency of mistakes is what matters. (Personally can't comment on the frequency without compiling data)
There are other things that feel a bit meh about the recent LTT videos:
If Linus is hosting the video, it feels like he doesn't read the script before posting the video.
Feels like, He does not know the exact contents(might know the title/basis of what's happening but not the exact idea) of the video untill the shoot starts.
They have to push out content as they have 100+ employees to pay. But that's hurting their reputation.
 
Even their employees think that they are moving too quickly and want to slow down.
 
But, at the end of the day LTT is a good vendor for educational/tech content. Let's just hope they take the video as criticism and improve the quality of what they put out.
(Also find a way to give back the prototype). 
 
 

I made account here just to tell you how EXTREMLY angered i am by all of this. If only 10% of what GN claims is correct (and i presume most of it if not all actually is) this will be one of the biggest f-ups in the industry. I will wait for wanshow and if linus does not explains 90% of this stuff i am unsubscribing. I am  angered beyond belive. This is just insulting

GN did actually offer returns, even after months, to anyone affected.
 
Here's GN's response to that issue - I started the video where they explain the situation.
1. They immediately marked the mat as "Out of Stock" so that no on else would buy them.
2. They attempted to find a means to fix the issue by correcting the mats and failed to find one.
3. They created pinout cards to send to affected customers, which include not only the correction, but additional pinout info. They also made metal pins featuring the corrected pinout. Anyone affected was sent an email where they could get a kit featuring these. Anyone who didn't want a kit was allowed to return the mod mat for a refund instead.
4. They did then decide to sell the remaining mod mats, however, with the full correction kit, and with complete transparency on their website about what you were getting.

did you miss that linus himself said that he would prefer more time to make content in the "lmg employees speak" video? actually.. bonus point to steve here for actually including that.

I noticed a long time ago that the quality of LTT content went down during the past few years. Less creative, more repetitive, more commerical, more "trying to pull the video out of your butt" (in Linus' own words). And now it turns out that it is also getting more and more factually inaccurate (which is completely counterintuitive given that LMG staff is constantly growing, so, there should be more pairs of eyes to catch the errors). I understand it is hard to be creative to release videos on a daily basis but they somehow managed it much better 5 years ago while having several times less employees and resources.

If Linus or the CEO doesn't respond to these claims and show that their trying to do better. Then I will lose all faith of lmg and the subchannels of technical reviews or the legitimacy of any of their claims

Even the employees and Luke have publicly said things should be properly tested/they should focus more on quality than numbers.
a.k.a. it is a well known problem and Linus won't budge.
 
The prototype auction is the cherry on top. Criminal stuff.

If you want to say something negative about Apple or Microsoft, you do it publicly in a review, not try to privately call Tim Cook or Satya Nadella to tell them about your concerns. Why LMG should be treated any differently? They are a big corporation with big profits and a big impact on the industry, not a bunch of goofy YouTubers making silly videos

I agree if LTT wants to position Labs as a factual database to guide for consumers they NEED to establish their reviewing/correcting guidelines. We all know the YouTube algorithm is unforgiving and that they intend to implement some sort of "bug bounty" programs for their videos and seems like that can't come soon enough. I'm rooting for them and appreciate how they're being held accountable.

Can't wait for this weeks WAN show

I agree with a lot of GN points. All the corrections are troubling, there need to be time for reshoots, voice overs or what ever to correct a mistake, not just an annotation or a pinned comment. I see LTT as a sort of Top Gear for tech as Top Gear was to car reviews. I watched Top Gear for entertainment not for actual reviews. The difference between LTT and Top Gear is that Top Gear knew that it was purly entertainment and did not hide it. LTT talks a big game about alle the employes and all the tests Labs can do and will do. I think they should proberly decide what type of content they want to make. Personaly I love the Alex and Jake type of content. Give me more wacky builds or projects, maybe long term projects. I stopped watching LTT GPU reviews a couple of generations ago because it was rushed, typicaly only a hand full of games and not really worth my time. Now I dont watch them because they are rushed and full of mistakes.

I wanna say I have watched LTT ever since the AMD Phenom 2 days, and will still watch them. But take the input and make better content instead of more.
Also why did short circuit change from a quick unboxing channel to 20+ minuts? 

I agree. Having watched the new techquickie (especially at 2x speed because ADHD) the number of * corrections surprised me. And, thinking about it, I'm surprised I'm not surprised that there was a correction to begin with, which just goes to show how common it's become.

This is the worst thing in the video. If that truly is the case there is no excuse for that.