wall03

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 time has come for me to step down as CEO of Linus Media Group (and everything else under the umbrella). Let me tell you what that looks like: what's changing, what's not, and who is taking my place...
 
 
 

<html> <body> <a href="https://lttstore.com" padding="30px" background="orange" margin="auto" border-radius="20px">get off of this terrible website</a> </body> </html>  

I know this is probably never going to happen. But I need confirmation so I don't get my hopes up. I just REALLY want an LTX east. As I live in Michigan, I am currently 39 HOURS away from Vancouver. So an LTX east would be awesome. 

I'm in the same boat (I live in PA so its even farther for me)
Problem is its already a lot of work for the LTT team to do one convention close to home it would be even harder (If not impossible) to do one 100s of miles away.
 
Short answer is no  (From an external opinion)

Says this.. then promptly goes and reports a post almost immediately... geeeh, Thanks for the start of the new year!

Do it more.

I find it funny what mortis calls motf

Jokes aside, I honestly didn't expect it to be that much lol. I'll probably ease up on reporting from now on, sorry mods.

I'm coming for you next year, @Levent.
 

I'm reluctant to publish other members' stats, but you are indeed #1 for reports filed in 2022, with 531.

Who snitched most this year? I might be up there.

I definitely can't promise that, but it would be nice

Here's a selection of statistics of the forum in the past year:
 
Posts
Topics started: 75,559
Posts: 539,329
Most active topics (by num posts in 2022):
LTT Official Folding Month V (2022) - 2792 posts Car Enthusiast Club - 2165 posts [MOTF] Most Obnoxious Topic on the Forum - 2121 posts Most active users (by num forum posts in 2022):
@RONOTHAN## - 6074 posts @Bombastinator - 5951 posts @jaslion - 5643 posts Most active users in Troubleshooting (by num posts in the Troubleshooting section in 2022):
@Bombastinator - 1353 @An0maly_76 - 1314 @191x7 - 1093  
Reactions
Reactions given: 240,912
Top reaction givers:
@Mel0n. - 10,556 @Schnoz - 8845 @soldier_ph - 6854 Top reaction recipients:
@Mel0n. - 7292 @Schnoz - 5825 @FakeKGB - 4537 Top reaction recipients for forum posts outside Off Topic only (also excluding status updates):
@RONOTHAN## - 3490 @Middcore - 2978 @jaslion - 2306  
Moderation
Spammers banned1: 16,252
Reports: 6517
Posts and topics removed2: 12,027
 
1Only bulk spam that is totally irrelevant to the site - bans for regular advertising or any other reason are not included in this statistic.
2Most spam content is caught by our spam filter, so it gets removed by moderators without ever being reported or publicly visible, which is why removals is much larger than reports.

Nice, thanks for the cool statistics list. Are you guys gonna do this every year from now on ? Yeah I really like reacting to things lol.

Sorry for what? It's a valid question and a good lesson to learn.

Update: They replied.

I think the Trust Me Bro shirt is super funny, and the design is great but why is there not a pin available for the backpack!!! 

It's made of recycled watter bottles. The brand is Repreve.
 
I'd recommend hand washing. 

Since the Backpack is supposedly more watertight than their warranty (I couldn't help myself), I imagine a simple wipe down with a damp cloth would suffice for cleaning?

Unfortunately no, the chip I needed for the keyboard is not in production and the person who made it decided not to make any more or share the files.. 
And other than that.. I mean making the battery is not that much more and I just don't have time. (And other, more important projects)

The mystery line.
 
The mystery shirts are $8 off normal shirts, so if you don't care what the design is then it's 60% of the normal price.
 
Same with the mystery water bottles. $10 off the water bottle for an old design. You still get a design that has been available for a long time for only 2/3 the price!

I mean there's a brazillian brand named Linus that sells sandals, and you bet they come in orange as well. These came to mind when I saw them on an Instagram story a while ago and thought about LTT straight away.