Katojana

He has. Have you not watched the trust me bro wan shows?

He has. Have you not watched the trust me bro wan shows?

Because GN is in the same field of work and when he sees a horrible mismanagement in his field of work by someone else misrepresenting data and reviews he has to speak out??

He has. Have you not watched the trust me bro wan shows?

He's got a history of calling out bad actors. Bad computer manufacturers, bad retailers, bad assemblers, etc. If you watched the videos he addresses that. It's for the consumer. Because bad stuff should be called out before people spend money on it.
 
He tried giving LMG the opportunity before and was met with Trust Me Bro. After that he said he would only treat them like any other company. 
 
So when LMG posts bad data and gives recommendations on bad data you call that out. When you find out that it took to months for them to own up to the business owners that they sold their prototype (and did it by saying "good news, it's not on a shelf somewhere!" you call that out as well. And when you make a shit apology, complete with a timeline that shows you didn't do right by that company, you call that out. 
 
GN has already said he's not going to bother commenting on LMG anymore, but I hope someone does because today's apology video was tasteless. Three sponsor jokes, one reveal of the prototype cost (against the wishes of the affected party), and one really out of place sex joke. Yeah, LTT/LMG need to do better.
 
Everyone should hold them up to a higher standard. That means people on this forum with no real voice, and it means people in the media with a platform. 

Have you never gotten input on a subject that influenced your opinion on that matter?
As I get more information it affects my opinion on subjects.
Since you did not consider that possibility I can only assume that you do not, and so your opinion in any subject is not interesting.

No one wants "a pound of flesh" 

What they want is accountability. They expect the face of the $100 million company to stop acting like a spoilt child anytime anyone points something out to them they hadn't thought of. 

When a reporter asks for comment before going to print/air....that presumes that anyone reading/watching the the coverage doesn't have any knowledge of "the other side" 

Everyone knows Linus position. They've already heard his response to the criticism. Over. and Over again. 

In the first minute of the video reviewing the "monoblock" Linus, himself describes it as "a one of a kind, utterly unique water block intended to cool both the CPU and graphics card as one" 

They discuss during the video that they've already agreed to send the block back because "it's obviously very important to their business"

When they get called out for selling the block Linus responds with "We didn't sell it, we auctioned it for charity" (because that somehow makes it better for the wronged party) 

Why would GN think it's beneficial to anyone but Linus to give him more chances to explain things away given that people like you take the position that "well Billet is obviously stupid, and everything is their fault because why would anyone send a prototype to the god king of tech coverage unless they're idiots"

Once money is involved their stance changes? 

You mean after said god king of tech coverage misuses, misrepresents, and shits all over your product before AUCTIONING IT OFF?  Yeah small wonder the circumstances have changed in their eyes. 

Everyone already heard Linus's honest unvarnished opinion "stupid, overpriced product that performs badly and no one should ever buy" and despite every issue raised along the way....people like you are still taking that stance to heart.Billet must be  stupid, greedy or somehow trying to scam...something somehow. 

You're not defending some 2 man operation with 200,000 subs who pumps out a video every week or two and struggles to reach 20k views a post. You're defending a $100 million corporation with 100 odd employees, 15 million subs, with views for every video in the millions who has personal and professional relationships with every major manufacturer they review.  One that for many, is the singular resource for everything tech related.  

Like it or not, the rules are different when you're playing at his level, with his audience, and his reach.

So many people are trying to justify everything being called out on the presumption that people are "smart enough to see through a business owner placating his audience" yet they somehow fail to grasp why so many are angry and frustrated with longstanding failures and bad behavior. 

From the guy with the $100 million empire.
 
But sure, we're all just here with our pitchforks basking in the schadenfreude.  


 

Everyone who lets them watch cartoons. FFS this is such a non issue..  and only an issue for puriteans... Especially since innuendos go over childrens heads...

Everyone who lets them watch cartoons. FFS this is such a non issue..  and only an issue for puriteans... Especially since innuendos go over childrens heads...

LMG grew way too fast over the last few years. It inflated to such a degree that it now blew up into Linus' face.
This was not natural growth as well...

Linus says, and I quote - £700 billet block is an egregious waste of money"
 
 
So why did you not try and talk him out of spending that much on a PC, that was, hilariously, an egregious waste of money.
 
Further more, how much did the TV stand you bought recently and then boasted about cost? wasn't it $15k or something like that?
 
Dude you so out of touch you've already reached Mars. Tell Elon he lost.

Steve is correctly calling out Linus for the word salad here ("sell" vs "accidentally auctioned", an auction is a type of sale) and for nonsense claims (like that the Billet labs prototype could not be meaningfully re-tested with the proper GPU), how inaccurate many of the benchmarks were and how that was not addressed in any way in any detail and how any root cause analysis/preventative action to prevent it from happening again in the future, etc...
 


Some points:
Called out that it being put up for charitable auction was actually worse as it roped an innocent third party (the charity) into a messy situation (LMG selling something they didn't own) Billet labs did not previously agree to accept compensation for the lost prototype as of the time Linus posted his statement on these forums! (4m5s into video)

GN to Billet asking for comment:
Billet's response to GN:


So Linus weasel words it to make it seem like LMG had already reached an amicable settlement for the prototype prior to the GN video publication, when in fact LMG did not offer to compensate Billet labs for the auctioned prototype until GN published this video.

Man. Still watching this and it is getting worse and worse.

GN'S response: 
 

The last time I posted on the LTT forums was around the time LTT had just released the first GTX 700 series reviews. I really enjoyed your content in those days.
 
You’re correct that GN has not followed a journalistic etiquette by allowing the party of topic to respond prior to publication of a critical piece, if you weren’t contacted beforehand.
 
However, it is impossibly difficult to gloss over the ethos behind this statement; the writer of these words has evidence against them, from a source with historically larger ethos through publication accuracy, that their own professional practices lead open holes for inaccuracies and fallacy in their own product. 
 
If you found it disappointing that a piece was produced without adhering to etiquette not employed constantly but rather only intermittently by other outlets than The Associated Press, Ritzau, Reuters and the like, imagine the disappointment of us who’ve followed your channel and supported your team monetarily for well over a decade when dishonest practices are revealed - and the response is “Did we make mistakes? Yeah. But we’re humans.”
 
Repeated offences in reporting accuracy or professionalism costs most of us mortals our jobs. Not just our internet popularity. They are corrected with stringent plans of improvement and outlining how honest mistakes occurred, and how they will be corrected, with future projects safeguarded against these mistakes.
 
Linus’ reply is not a plan of action or clarification of future intent. It’s an excuse, alongside self-pointed questions, a classic method of deviation away from critical questions so overused it appears as a joke in a certain children’s movie.
 
5 years ago, when Xiaomi made a MacBook Pro lookalike, LTT and a few other YouTube channels produced content covering it. I bought it off of those reviews’ presentation, implying they were analyses of a product and the analysis showed it was a good product. It turned out to be an insanely flawed laptop, with easily uncovered issues, many of which I since listed in the comments on those videos, if you spent anything more than 24 hours with it. And I got a response to it. 
 
“Sorry, we just don’t have that amount of time to cover these products so you can’t expect us to do that much.”
 
I asked back then, and I will ask now 5 years later once again: if covering these products to their exact specification, use case, and the results they deliver in those circumstances is too much work, then why in the world do you brand yourself a reviewer? Why do you talk big game about a “lab” (an insult to anyone having anything to do with actual laboratory science granted the “lab”s flawed results so far…) if you’re not willing to give products and testers the time they need in the first place? Brand yourself as what you are instead - and entertainment influencer - and leave genuine reviews to the organisations that take the time and due diligence to apply scientific standards and proper methodology - and scrutiny, an absolute requirement - to channels that take the extra time to produce this content. 
 
A such source has called out this unacceptable contrast between branding and actual content delivered by LTT as a content source, and the response is now excuses and self-aimed questions and answers so cliché they’re jokes for kids. 
 
This is ignoring blatant long term health issues of speeding your employees to a point where they cannot stand behind their own work. This is well documented and meta analyses on the topic are readily available with overwhelming evidence at the US National Library of Medicine’s website. I would know - I wrote my BA on the damned psych. category and designing interventions for it. It’s horrific long-term and killed one of my parents. Shame on you for this alone.
 
In conclusion, I regret supporting this company entirely and whole heartedly. I’m sorry your day is awful. I hope your company seriously revises itself.

an official LTTstore sock will be arriving in your mailbox soon (maybe in a few months). Thanks for your hard work defending poor Linus and his 100 million dollar company online.

Now lets see, in your Toyota one you seemed quite clear that you weren't going to bother disclosing. [Including the fact that it allowed you to film the Mirai video in California, and they covered at least part of the cost...how much we don't know because you don't disclose]
You own stake in Framework and didn't disclose it in multiple videos; including one involving soldered on components (where there were clearly mentioning framework in the comments).
You talk about Infinite Cables in a video where you claim the cable was under $1000 when in reality even it's over $5000.
 
Your whole transparency and improvement has constantly been dropping.

Reach out... you mean like Billet Labs did to recover their prototype before it was auctioned of fOr cHaRiTy?

Ironic

Perhaps he feels you've grown unreachable and needed a good OP metaphorical shake back to reality.

What I seem to notice in the entire conversation is people talking about the Framework investment as something they were aware of, and that they are fine by it! Some people defending Linus as just being Linus or that they explained this issue on WAN. WAN is specifically watched almost exclusively by those who are long term followers of the channel. What about the average joe who was googling which graphic card to buy or is that cooler better than this one? LTT being one of the largest tech video is often recommended on the top of these search results and can horribly misguide a person's opinion! LTT is not a channel just for its subscribers when they release a PRODUCT REVIEW. This was said countless times by LINUS himself and the very fact these factual errors are popping in more than they should is an absolute crime for a channel of LTTs size.

I find some of Steve's points not that troubling, like the private framework investment or the past workplaces of some employees.
 
But the Billet Labs situation makes me speechless. So many bad takes and then selling the prototype. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK LMG?
In WAN we get all the talk about how hard product design is. How small creators are affected by YouTube decisions or by react content. But when it is in LMG's hand you don't seem to be any better.
 
I also stopped watching ShortCircut some weeks ago, because I felt like the content was just useless. It is to long and has to many opinions for an unboxing but is not accurate enough to be review. I also felt misled with a ShortCirut representation of a product, after buing it myself.
 
I was already disappointed by the "Trust me Bro" shitshow. Even if Linus is now publicly stating that this wasn't a great move, there is still no heartfelt apology.
So, I will again hope for the best but only expect a “RIP Billet Labs” t-shirt on WAN show. Which is kind of sad. ☹

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

Linus calls out businesses all the time for shady business practices but when he's called out it's an issue?