Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity

[TheChroNickL]

18 minutes ago, Dom1252 said:

it's funny how many people are now experts on journalism, lol

both sides are always wrong

I'm not professing to be an expert, just offering sources to industry experts.

 

19 minutes ago, TheChroNickL said:

To everyone making comments about Journalism or Journalistic Integrity etc. This is the Editor's Code of Practice and an interpretation from IPSO regarding contacting subjects of a story:

 

https://www.societyofeditors.org/resources/editors-code-of-practice/

https://www.ipso.co.uk/news-press-releases/blog/ipso-blog-do-journalists-have-to-contact-people-before-they-publish-a-story-about-them/

 

 

 

 

 

[4bettingrags]

2 minutes ago, EmilyShabang said:

I'm guessing this is why there's no LTT videos today

What do you expect from somebody who's been coasting for almost a decade? Success has got to his head. 

 

 

[FadedSpark]

3 minutes ago, Checkraisingallday said:

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't enjoying this. LTT and his merry band of deluded cultists are attempting to contain the damage. I'd always known this day would come. I had an account here in 2014, and even then I always felt something was amiss. This pompous idiot should fade into obscurity only after he's spent a lot defending himself. The only reason he's gotten this far is because of a now-defunct firm named "NCIX."

 

 

Pro-tip: stop being LTT apologists and support independent journalism. LTT is no better than MSM outlets, spewing propaganda for "entertainment purposes" just to line the pockets of his corporate cash cow enterprise that'll soon die.

 

PS: You reap what you sow.

Jesus this is a bad take and I'm with Steve but Holy wow this is truly delusional.

 

The actual discourse has been fairly reasonable on both sides here.

 

New copypasta????

[atxcyclist]

2 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

That's a fair and good point.  But again, I think focusing on GN not sending Linus an email completely misses the main point.  The main problem with LMG still exists.

 

  

To avoid a double post I'm adding this.  As I said above, that makes a fair point.  But again, I think you're ignoring LMG's problem.  And as I said, two wrongs don't cancel each other out.

I've previously made a post acknowledging that Steve/GN's criticism isn't without merit, I just take issue with how he's gone about it.

[FelixWS]

Well for starters, I have not read all 34 Pages of comments, so my Points could already be coverd.

I´m a regular watcher of nearly ervery channel and the wan show and also a paying customer like a lot of us here most likely.

 

To narrow it down, from my prespective they have a size problem, they grow so fast, need to release so many videos to make enough money to sustain so many staff.

At this scale, some stuff will fall unter the bus.

 

I remember @LinusTech said in a video or the WAN show (which I´m watching the recording of the recent one right now) that they had a super nice super fast server, and it just got scraped because it was in the wrong pile or a misscomunication internaly. This in conection to the waterblock auction.

In my former company they had me scrap a never used large HP storage array, 1 controllers, 8 Discracks, everything origanly packed. I was told it was old used hardware which wasn´t needed anymore after a fire and a subsequent rebuild of the company. From my concultion, it propably was a spare wich survied the fire, but noboy could remember it, even though the IT department was only around 16 people with everybody working there for years.

But acidentaly scraping something or selling something or realsing something you where not supposed to will happen again and again at the scale LTT is operating now. You can reduce it, but you will not be able to stop it.

 

In reguards to the content, I think LTT will have to and can do better, they are drifting more and more into enterrainment and pushing out videos on mass with a drop of in quality going with it.

With a stratagey rearangement this can be changed or slightly corrected, if they want to.

 

Will I change my watching habbits because of this new and not so new revulation? ... No, not realy, I only watch the stuff I´m interested in anyway, but I will have to look closer on the datasheets if I need to recomand stuff and videos to friends and famalie, I can´t take it for granted that at thair pace the content will be relaible. (Hoping for the Labs website to fill this gap.)

 

Bye I´m going to sleap now its 2 in the morning in germany.

 

Felix

[ToboRobot]

1 minute ago, Checkraisingallday said:

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't enjoying this. LTT and his merry band of deluded cultists are attempting to contain the damage. I'd always known this day would come. I had an account here in 2014, and I was always suspicious of anything. This pompous idiot should fade into obscurity only after he's spent a lot defending himself. The only reason he's gotten this far is because of a now-defunct firm named "NCIX."

 

 

Pro-tip: stop being LTT apologists and support independent journalism. LTT is no better than MSM outlets, spewing propaganda for "entertainment purposes" just to line the pockets of his corporate cash cow enterprise that'll soon die.

 

PS: You reap what you sow.

Given the advice you give at the end, I don't understand your negativity.  Criticism is valid, enjoying the misery of others is pathetic.

 

Hope LTT does better. 

 

I hope Linus won't doesn't feel personally attacked, and is ok.  I also hope he recognizes and corrects the problems. 

It feels better not to be consumed by negativity.

 

[PcBeExpensive]

Man, I think his main point is the ethics. Where I got pissed is the fact where you fucked out with the pwnage review you still tried to put some blame on the company for making the covers so hard to see. Just admit that you fucked up and say sorry. Also cut down on videos, more shit videos vs less good videos. Cut down to 2-3 good videos a week.

[IsaakStoop]

2 hours ago, LinusTech said:

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.

I hope you do take your time to discuss this. The video was a bit blunt but that doesnt matter in the end. We know LMG exists out of people and that no ill will is ment. But there seem to be some real issues and it degrades the integridy of the company.

 

I love the videos hooenyou guys do some reforms and take this moment to tackle these problems head on. 
 

Greatings 

a fan 

[ClassicCustoms]

2 hours ago, LinusTech said:

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.

As a layman who only casually watches GamerNexus and LTT once in a while (albeit I do watch GN more often), I do find it disappointing that Steve didn't reach out. However, at the same time, it sounds like GN was called out, maybe even mocked publicly to an extent, before they released their video. An eye for an eye situation, I suppose. I do think Steve should have done the right thing and reach out to LMG, but that doesn't make his points any less valid.

With a somewhat-outside perspective, I do think it's a mistake not to talk about this publicly. I can understand not wanting to incite further drama, regardless of if Steve's intent was to cause drama or not. However, I also don't think it's great that I, and many others, should have to go looking in a forum board that, mind you, isn't even advertised or linked on the main LTT YouTube channel (I could be wrong though) just to find a response to the situation. As much as it would probably be great not to create a response, GN's video is getting a ton of traction, and I think there's going to be a need for a response anyway, be it in a video, a tweet, or what-have-you. A lack of a response could cause confusion, and lead to a lot of people assuming the worst. And from what I can tell, Steve's points in his video aren't untrue, even if he could have gone about the whole thing a lot better.

You claim you don't want to be drawn into a public sniping match. Yet, I ask, what was the point of seemingly slinging mud at GamersNexus for their prior response to what appears to be one of your other mistakes? Like I don't want to say you deserved to have your day ruined, but I also feel like this kind of thing wasn't entirely out-of-the-blue. From what it seems, it may take a long while before you and Steve make amends and become a part of "Team Media," whatever that may entail.

In terms of auctioning off a one-of-a-kind prototype, that was a pretty big blunder. I don't think maliciousness was intended, but you could easily have risked an entire start-ups' existence due to what I've interpreted as a lack of communication and structure (I'm tired, so I apologize if I get some things wrong). Also, what do you mean by "this transparency gets warped into a bad thing?" I don't think anyone was condemning you or your team for being honest. The whole issue surrounding the asterisk problem is that there's so many of them per video, many of which correct rather important comments in said videos, that you'd be better off redoing the whole video.

The whole pitchfork comment, while understandable, does come across as a bit of a bad move at this point in time. Especially when quite a few comments in this thread are trying to be fairly objective, albeit stern in what they believe LTT did wrong and what it should do to fix things in the future. And your comment about "my honest response might be inconvenient" comes across as rather accusatory of Steve, intentionally or not. I don't know the full history between you and Steve (and, personally, I don't care to know if it's actually, genuinely personal), but I don't genuinely think Steve made the video just to be intentionally malicious. Yes, him not contacting you first was a very bad look, but I do believe him when he says he wants LMG and LTT to improve. If he didn't want that at least a little bit, then I doubt he would have made a video with quite a few valid complaints, regardless of other complaints that may be less valid. However, this whole situation has kind of made me wonder if I should unsub from both LTT and GN. I'm genuinely disappointed in how both Linus and Steve handled this situation, and hope that they do better.

[FlyingPotato_is_taken]

 

2 hours ago, LinusTech said:

Let's see if anyone actually wants to know what happened.

Absolutely.

How did a prototype the company wants back and was promised to be returned ends up at auction?

 

2 hours ago, LinusTech said:

As for what steps we're taking, you're talking about an outlier issue that has happened once in 10+ years of operation. There won't be a new SOP to ensure we don't accidentally auction stuff. We just need to tighten up some documentation.

To be clear: The loss of prototypes or confidential material is a big deal.

It doesn't matter if it happens weekly or once in a decade, because every incident must be thoroughly reviewed followed by actions to address the identified deficiencies. This is so serious that even every near incident must be reviewed. 
It doesn't even matter if it's a major upcoming product or "just" a new CPU cooler by a start up that was fine with showing the internals on camera.

Devil's advocate:
AFAIK everything at LMG is in the inventory system as soon as it comes through the door till the moment it leaves the company. This means that in logistics everything is probably initially treated as a normal item and someone manually changes that status and or, worse, relies on a manual process to match the inventory system with a list of "special" items. Both of these would be unacceptable with a staff count of more than 100 as such a process would be prone to human error.
If there was a remark and it was properly categorized, it is a serious operational issue that this item went all the way through to the auction. e.g. no four eyes check as well as no point and call (especilly point and call is a powerful tool).

 

By the way: GN had some valid points, but to imply that the LTT lab head (management, not lab technician) has a conflict of interest so serious that he should not be hired is distasteful. So distasteful that one might call this defamation.

[Alan G]

1 hour ago, LinusTech said:

We talk constantly about how we intend to move forward and make better content. It's just taking longer than any of us would like. If everything had gone according to plan, we'd have our camera range, theater room, and acoustic chamber done like 6 months ago. Instead our warehouse is torn apart right now because they had to reinforce our roof in order to support the heat pumps that we've been trying to get procured since last summer.

The real world is messy, and the more cooks you have in the kitchen, the more room there is for error.

 

With that said, if all you want is a non-ambiguous statement that we're going to keep trying to get better, then here it is. We're going to keep trying to get better. Gary did a wonderful 'state-of-the-union' update for the company this morning about recent milestones and what we have in store. Those investments will keep flowing, and I promise that they will be a win for consumers and the tech industry.

For now, it's hard to do because I'm frustrated by the timelines too, but all I can do is say, "Stay tuned. it's upward from here and we're really excited."

@LinusTech = I'm sorry but you keep digging a deeper hole rather than owning up to what is really wrong.  If you have a QA/QC problem, heat pumps on the roof are not going to fix that as all.  Your statement about more room for error is just bonkers (to be charitable as I won't use any profanities which is what I really think about this).  You are doing things way to fast and not sitting back and thinking what is the intent of what we are doing with respect to data integrity and presentation.  This is what your whole business depends upon and if you are willing to slough off serious questions about quality, you are really missing what your viewers want and depend upon.  Until you publish a commitment to quality and not just getting bigger and reaching Gary's milestones, LMG's credibility will continue to drop.  You might seriously want to bring some outside consultants in QA/QC to look at all your testing and review procedures as that's the crux of your problem.  If you just want to be a bunch of guys joking around and posting YouTube videos, that's fine with me as I don't watch them but at least you should be honest and state that up front.  The staus quo won't fly!!!!!

[jscottstearns]

I have been a long time fan of LTT. I have been watching since the days of him and Luke sitting on the couch. I love the goofball stance that they have on a lot of videos. I can not only learn about tech, but laugh my but off at the same time. I watch many of their videos multiple times a week. I have also watched many of GN videos. I love watching the overclocking live streams. I think they are pretty cool pushing the boundaries of modern equipment. I know that I may not understand  the depth of a lot of what GN goes into (a bit over my head), but still cool. If it is true that Steve dropped this video with out ever getting a statement from  LTT or expressing concerns to them offline, I think it's a low blow. Both LTT and GN have the position of being very well known in the tech community, and YouTube. This, in my opinion, places them at a significantly higher standard than the average individual online. I wont argue with the fact that some of the stuff that they have put out recently has seemed rushed. I don't believe the LTT people shouldn't let this get them down, I think your team is still awesome Linus and I will continue to be a long time supporter, and viewer of your crew

[4bettingrags]

2 minutes ago, FadedSpark said:

Jesus this is a bad take and I'm with Steve but Holy wow this is truly delusional.

 

The actual discourse has been fairly reasonable on both sides here.

 

New copypasta????

Linus is just a goodwill Steve Jobs with no charisma, kiddo.

[dimforest]

2 hours ago, LinusTech said:

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.

I don't think you'll see this message but in the odd chance that you do....

 

I work in the corporate world. It blows. Despite the last few years of booming successes and changes with LMG, one aspect I've enjoyed most while watching your content above the usual videos I find myself viewing for work purposes is the vibe and feel. While I understand you are a massive company now (despite headcount), the videos never felt corporate. The vibe never felt overly curated or influenced by bottom lines, even if at the end of the day we all know it had to be. 

 

This response is exactly the kind of response I'd expect my CEO/President to make in this situation and for me, personally - just makes this whole situation suck that much more. This doesn't feel like the LTT from yesteryear, this feels like my workplace issuing a response because something negative gained enough traction to warrant it and we need to do some quick damage control before pretending like it never happened. 

 

It isn't a good response, Linus. I wish you would've slept on this one and then rallied the team tomorrow to have a serious internal discussion before posting a quick response on your forums. The fact that you auctioned the cooler instead of selling it is absolutely irrelevant. You still got rid of it against Billet's request and wishes and put them in a really crappy position. They don't have the equity and sway that LMG has. They cannot afford to go toe to toe with you guys over a prototype they sent out and they likely feared that doing so would result in millions of LTT fans (their potential customer base) immediately pitchforking them. You must understand the crappy situation you created for them and how incredibly unprofessional and silly it is to suggest that auctioning their prototype off instead of outright selling it is utterly beside the point. You recently voiced frustrations over a prototype LTT backpack and yet you seem to not understand why Billet may feel the same way. The main difference is your backpack isn't going to make or break the company. Billet, on the other hand, does not have a plethora of other content or products to fall back on. They also don't have their prototype.

 

You can be upset about the way Steve delivered his message but that doesn't mean you should entirely negate the message and the points he brought forth. As the leader of your team, CEO title or not, this is when you should be getting out in front of this and doing what you can to fix things and build confidence that they will actually be addressed. Your response seems to indicate that you don't believe anything is actually wrong and Steve's video was unwarranted. You also took offense to viewers being upset after watching the GN video. Then you ended with what I can only assume is an attempt to play on emotions with "Today sucks." So it was deny, deflect, and pity. These are, again, what you'd expect to see in the corporate world. 

 

I posted a while back and while I doubt you're even reading this message, I doubly doubt you'll take the time to go back to read my previous post in this topic as well. So to summarize: I really believe the best thing for everybody here is to not attack Steve or his methodology but rather address the points, admit fault where there is fault, and then more importantly - show what is going to be done to resolve and prevent. Your team is overworked and you're valuing quantity over quality - you've all alluded to this on camera. This constant rush for numbers has caused quality to drop and mistakes to be made. Slow down. Give your team some room to breathe and be proud of the content they publish instead of feeling like they're rush-studying for an exam the night before. Most of all - use your unique platform for some positive change and please fix the Billet situation. Cutting them a check is one thing but dragging them and then giving away their prototype should warrant more than a "ok fine, here's a check" response.

 

Lastly, don't gloss over the inaccuracies and mistakes in your videos. The tech community is a community of min-maxing stat nerds, so the numbers DO matter to us. I don't want to have to watch LTT videos knowing the numbers may be wrong. I'm watching your breakdown videos because I am expecting that a company of your caliber will show me accurate information so I can make a more informed purchase or decision. One of your biggest projects right now is finding objective ways to test products. You should be nailing the basics first so we can trust the more in-depth results later on.

 

Wish you all the best and I, respectfully, hope you reconsider this initial response. 

[Tugmaster]

I saw Linus post not discussing on WAN show and other things they will or won’t do. How about we ask the new CEO what the audience wants to see or have happen? Linus stepped down for a reason so let’s address this in a proper and mature way this Friday. How about the CEO puts up a poll? By not talking it outside this forum leads me to believe their is a lot of truth Tech Jesus claims.

[McGherkin]

Long time viewer of LTT and obviously here to chip in my 2 cents on the issue. What I'd hope is that someone is going to go through this thread and see what the community's concerns are seriously, and I'd like to think my opinion was valued like the others who watch LTT.

POINTS IN FAVOUR OF LTT.
1. I personally don't have an issue with the whole Trust Me Bro thing. LTT has a long standing reputation for stellar aftersales service. Hell, anyone having any issues could have just linked in that episode of WAN and it'd be hard for any customer service agent to argue against their own CEO saying approve the replacement.

2. The whole Framework dig is weird to me. Linus bought shares in a company, honestly and openly declares it, and reviews their products objectively. It's all above board and I don't think it shows bias. Do people have issues when Dragons in the TV Show Dragons' Den offer their contacts and marketing teams alongside their investments, because that is far more 'shady' than this? 

3. Minor mistakes, goofs etc have always been a trademark of LTT. Honestly I think sometimes they're considered a part of the 'flavour' of the channel and where they could be cut, they were considered minor hiccups which can have a comedy asterisk.

4. I don't think any of this was deliberately shady practice. By the looks of it the whole Billet thing appears to be an accident where they forgot to return it, then someone else discovered it and thought it'd be good for the auction, although this doesn't make it acceptable. Making mistakes in a review which might not be edited by someone who knows that a 5800X3D has so many mb of cache is obviously wrong isn't the end of the world. 

POINTS AGAINST LTT:
1. LTT runs on a 'we push, or we die' principle. I cannot deny that GN has absolutely nailed that LTT is pushing content as fast as it can and the production line can't stop. I have already noticed occasions where even the host AS THE SHOOT IS ROLLING is aware that things are wrong, but they press on regardless, and I end up thinking at the end of the video 'why didn't you guys just whole-ass this and get it right before putting it out?'

2. I do feel that LMG is too big to reliably say that the whole company is aligned with Linus' view, or has Linus' knowledge. You have editing teams who aren't all necessarily experts on graphics card architecture, logistics personnel who aren't necessarily aware of the chaos a misplaced prototype can cause, and generally speaking there's no way that Linus can go around every single area of the company and ensure everything is as it should be, like he was able to do when there were only 10, 20, 30 people. When you have a big company like that, you can get these instances where you have a customer service rep that turns down genuine returns, a staffer who forgets to send a sample back, someone who makes a dodgy comment about a competitor, and all these things are relatively minor but can blow up into massive drama bombs. To be clear, these things are inevitable with a company this big, but the answer to that is LMG is now a company. It's not a bunch of guys that are all super duper into computer and therefore what one person at that company sees or believes, even if it is the CEO/CVO, is not necessarily representative of that entire company, and to claim otherwise is somewhat false.

3. The car reviews. The GR Corolla review posted recently just made me puzzled. The talk about the drivetrain being fully locked in 50/50 mode and this is the most tailhappy mode was completely factually incorrect, the focus on the stereo and lack of armrest was just weird when 90% of the car's owners are not going to care about that, and don't get me started on the driving and lack of safety precautions. It reminds me of when the BBC tried to relaunch Top Gear with comedians who knew nothing about cars (Harris excepted, although he was forced to play a dumbed down character) and then wondered why nobody cared what they had to say and they kept crashing. Couple this with reviewing 600+bhp, 2 tonne super EVs and somewhat questionable driving talent, there is going to be an accident at some point, and for what? Producing what are frankly car reviews for people who don't care about cars.

4. The worry here is that we are heading towards the Labs era, where hardware reviews will be posted with tonnes of benchmarks from a huge range of games. But what use will that be if the data is full of bugs? If LTT is already struggling to produce ACCURATE data from the amount of benchmarks being run now, it's going to be orders of magnitudes worse when a full suite of automated tests gets going on the RTX 5090.

5. The response to this has already been to say that there is no response. It didn't work for Trust Me Bro, and it's not going to work here either. These are very real concerns that have been raised and they are not going to go away. If anything this thread is revealing that people are getting worn out with the LTT push of content for the sake of content, without actually being able to trust that content because it's just plain wrong half the time. What needs to happen is Terran puts Linus on mute, orders a sit down of the company and makes it clear that accuracy comes first and not profit, and tell the community that loudly and proudly. That ultimately has to happen if the community is going to trust LMG going forward, otherwise there's just this frankly damning video of LMG making mistakes and (inadvertently) screwing a startup, and crickets from the culprits. Linus coming on here and going 'yeah it's okay we're making a few mistakes but it's gonna be better' isn't good enough, and this is actually the point where Terran actually does the job Linus hired him to do - be Linus's boss.

6. Complaining that Steve didn't get in touch first... I get it, you considered Steve as your friend, and I do hope you put aside your differences and work together on this, but he's not exactly hidden the fact that LMG gets treated like a company now. Much like the companies in Secret Shopper get to find out how they did when the video goes up.

7. Y'all are reviewing cars but don't have proper sims in your benchmarks like DCS World? F1 22 is something at least but not really a sim. I mean that's kinda personal but still lol. Baffles me how you claim to be a serious tech/PC/gaming reviewer but then get something like a Moza R12, plug it in for 5 minutes without mounting anything properly, say haha wheel go brr and that's it.

Guys, you can be better, and at least you admit that. But you need to properly own it if people are going to believe you are seriously committed to improving from what is a quite bad place right now. At the moment I pretty much just watch the WAN show and that's mainly in the background so I can get a general gist of the news and the 'Luke take'.

I am seriously concerned that the genuine issues outlined here and repeated by genuine members of the LMG community as concerns that have been growing before the posting of this video will be passed off as a 'bandwagon torch mob' sent by GN and therefore are not to be taken seriously.

[charliebros]

14 minutes ago, Drazil100 said:

I agree that reaching out is best practice, brushing something like this under the rug isn't. Steve should have reached out and then made the same video with the same level of harshness but with more information.

That said Linus should NOT have dissed Steve's journalistic approach in not reaching out. Just cause it is best practice doesn't mean he has to do it and getting mad that he didn't is a bad look. Given how poorly Linus has taken this, surprising him with this video was probably the best approach. It is the least friendly way to go about it but Steve isn't trying to be friendly here and the surprise of this coverage gives us the viewers additional insight as to how Linus handles controversy, rather than giving him time to brace himself for it and come out with a statement ahead of time.

I would go so far to say this was the friendliest way to approach this, is great to have friends that tells you "Everything is going swell, maybe juuust do this and that, but otherwise great", but your best friend will undoubtedly go ahead and slap your face and say "this shit is completely wrong", something that in a recent LMG Clip was mentioned, where Linus was asked about what was the favorite thing about Luke on WAN Show

[hysteresis]

2 hours ago, LinusTech said:

 

 

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 do. How did it happen? Because from the outside it looks pretty bad.  Granted I don't watch every video, mainly the funny ones like junkyard wars and "weirdest pcie cards on ali express" or the weird watercooling videos and stuff like that.

 

How do we know the waterblock didn't go straight to another larger company making gpu coolers to copy/reverse engineer with enough resources to mass produce it faster than billet could? If it did, how will LMG take care of that? Can other companies (particularly smaller ones) have confidence something like this won't happen with prototypes they might want to send in?

[Forbidden Wafer]

2 minutes ago, Checkraisingallday said:

Linus is just a goodwill Steve Jobs with no charisma, kiddo.

If he had no charisma, LTT wouldn't be a thing. Stop doing drugs.

[Namija]

2 hours ago, LinusTech said:

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.

…

Thanks for reading this.

Taking a SUPER zoomed out view here, because there are arguments on both sides that are completely accurate and valid, and others that are insanely out of touch. 
 

The main problem is that LMG is a corporation, and the ‘trust me bro’ moniker had a LOT more corporate implications than LMG probably wants to accept. Heck even I felt like a consumer instead of having a relationship with the youtuber when that statement was said (or having a relational ‘feel’ if ykwim). 
 

At a business, personal stuff is left at the door. In a corporation, if you can’t eat the negativity that was shown, EVEN IF THE POINT WAS VALID, then you need to back off. Watching some of the past few floatplane BTS’s kinda show there’s a fast-paced work environment, which can be a sign of an unhealthy environment. Like seriously, everyone getting up together to go drink red bulls in Bisneyland at the same time so they can work more efficiently is not a good sign.
 

As for GamersNexus, my trust in their reporting isolated here, is not very high. I don’t say this because of the facts presented, but they did the same thing to LMG that he was calling out LMG for doing to Billet labs, which is INCREDIBLY hypocritical. That said, maybe tension was building and this was a way to let off steam, idk. But he should have reached out first before even thinking about posting a video. 
 

This all said, anyone who is a corporation, company, LLC, small business owner, incorporated in some way, etc., is NEVER going to be your friend 100%, and Linus JUST SAID THIS on a recent WAN show. Last week’s I think.
They wont be friends with each other, with their consumers, with constituents, etc. even if they are genuinely trying to be transparent. There has to be some level of protection on the company end. 

 

Breakdown:

-Companies aren’t friends

-Companies look out for themselves

-Too fast paced work environments are BAD work environments

-Buy something from LTTstore.com and the GN official store because we consumers are swagalicious 

[delslow]

2 hours ago, LinusTech said:

Billet sent us a quote. I don't know or care how they arrived at the value. If they're good, I'm good.

As for what steps we're taking, you're talking about an outlier issue that has happened once in 10+ years of operation. There won't be a new SOP to ensure we don't accidentally auction stuff. We just need to tighten up some documentation.

 

I know you don't care how you sound or how people take things, but geez.

"We paid them off, so they're happy, nothing is gonna change."

 

[HaughtonBothered]

LMG was already aware of every issue GN brought up and were already working to correct these things before his video. Steve would have known this if he had actually reached out to LMG and handled this privately. If his goal was truly to give constructive criticism, a private meeting is all that was needed. Instead, going public just raises suspicions that he is trying to discredit LTT Labs since it will be encroaching on his content. It's just a shame to see him tearing down LMG when LMG has been trying to build others in the space up.

[Aluminumhaste]

So when newegg was screwing over customers, Gamer's Nexus gave them a chance to say their side before posting the video.

When dealing with Asus, they did the same thing.

 

But even though GN said in a previous video he's going to treat LMG like a corporation and not a friendly youtuber in the creator space, he doesn't reach out for comment/clarification first before posting this video?

 

As disappointed that I am in LTT for how they handled the review of the product and the communication failure, I'm MORE disappointed in Steve at GN for how he went about this. This smacks of a hit piece designed to sow doubt in the results of the LTT Labs and LTT group itself.

As much as I disregarded other people's comments that the Labs is starting to step on the toes of GN, it's starting to look more and more like that might be the case.

 

The points that GN brings up are worth discussing, it's the way this was done that I don't agree with.

Like Linus with "Trust me Bro", it wasn't the message, that written warranties are just as worthless to the consumer as verbal ones (he's right about that), it's the way he went about it and his attitude that I disagreed with.

(Been screwed over by companies denying legit warranty claims for completely bogus reasons, and having zero recourse, is exactly what Linus was talking about).

 

 

[SplitScream]

2 hours ago, LinusTech said:

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.

You should have waited 24 hours before posting this as a reply to the situation. Emotions are hot as a result and immediate response allows for emotions to cloud the perception of the situation.

Regarding GN, they should have sent a preview of the video to LTT before posting it similar to how they do so with secret shopper or other reviews to answer questions or discuss directly with the company the content revolves around to alleviate any misunderstandings and get input before posting the final product.

[Drazil100]

6 minutes ago, atxcyclist said:

I've previously made a post acknowledging that Steve/GN's criticism isn't without merit, I just take issue with how he's gone about it.

Given how Linus has shifted the focus of this whole discussion to how Steve chose not to reach out, I am kinda in Steve's camp. You shouldn't go after people for reporting facts. You can correct them with more accurate and up to date information, but I strongly dislike how Linus tried dismissed the video as bad journalism rather than focusing owning up to his mistakes. There was nothing wrong with Steve's video, and now half the thread is talking about how Steve should have reached out, rather than the actual controversy and how things should move forward.

If Steve never reaches out to Linus for a statement again I won't blame him after this fiasco.