Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity

[Texbobcat]

1 minute ago, Stark_Source21 said:

I'm a big fan, Linus, but that's absolutely disgraceful that you've buried your response to this in the middle of a forum thread. It abolsutely confirms what GN was driving at. You corrections and ownings are muted as an * in a video, a pinned comment beneath a video, or a buried reply on a forum, and not what the ought to be - a republished video, a wan show reply. 

 

As far as I can tell, you're becoming defensive. 

 

For a start - how any prototype could be auctioned off against the creators consent blows my mind. That was not you piece of kit, and how you thought it was, even after the maker had informed you, deserves a much bigger apology than a "whoops" in the middle of your own forum thread. 

Be better. 

The fact that he expected steve to reach out for comment first is insane, he did make those mistakes, and he did degrade the company on multiple times, then in his response he then degraded the company again with snarky remarks.

[Windows69]

10 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.

Congratulations! You are a big company now, and you seem to give the exact same amount of fucks as a publicly owned company that just wants to get bigger in numbers and not better, as this response shows it. Scaling was a good idea to create labs and make more videos, but it seems that the cost of running all of that got to your head and changed the way you approach making videos. I hope that you can scale the quality alongside the quantity in the future.

Thanks for reading this.

Linus (owner of a company with 120+ employees valued at $100 million)

[NO_ob]

46 minutes ago, RasmusDC said:

if that was the solution, then how is that bad.. Return of product, or compensation that is how this needs to be done.. i am okay with a company searching for a "fix" that might be doable for people.. 

 

But this "youtubers doing products" is a bit of a high risk thing. Linus seems to have done okay with the screwdriver. it seems to be holding up for him.

I think he should do more than that he said the product is terrible multiple times and people shouldn't buy it when he didn't even test it properly, he may say even if the temps were good its still a bad product but all the problems he had trying to install it with the incorrect gpu could have easily swayed his opinion whether he wants to admit it or not. He has potentially destroyed this companies reputation before they even have a product to bring to market. If people are interested in the cooler and search for it they're going to find this video where he trashes on the product wrongly. They should make a new video with the correct gpu and have another presenter reviewing it since their view will not be tainted by the bad experience that came from using the product incorrectly

[Mixzzz]

11 hours ago, LinusTech said:

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.

Not quite sure you understood the message here from GN. As a viewer who doesn't watch all videos and WAN shows, I had no idea that benchmarking process is still in its infancy and you cannot apparently trust the results. Considering how you were advertising LTT Labs, I was expecting that the results were going to be as accurate as they can get. Was there a disclaimer that these results might not be accurate? No. Also, if you know that they're might not be accurate due to the fact that you have a new testing process in place, why not double/triple/quadruple check your work? "...a work in progress that is very much not done..." is not a valid argument for putting out misleading information to the public. "...that we've communicated needs to be treated as such" then put out a disclaimer before your graphs or something because not everyone follows LTT all the time.

 

And it kinda baffles me that LTT as seasoned tech reviewers get so much basic info wrong(like the CPU cache one) and this of course leads me into the next paragraph.

 

Give your employees more time to work on each video. No one is asking you to publish so many videos in a week. I'd much rather have fewer videos but with higher attention to detail. And your employees seem to begging for this. When you see everything as: "This extra work hours will cost me extra xxxx$" and start to push things out the door as is, I think that's a really bad signal that your quality is going downhill.

 

Like for example videos/projects with Alex in it. It is a total cringefest 95% of the time and I'm not sure it is the fault of Alex but rather time constraints. It is astonishing how many things you cannot seem to do properly with the amount of tools you and your team have available. Often times it seems "oops, got the wrong thing, no time - lets flex tape this shit together and hope we don't kill expensive hardware" or something along these lines. Many of these crazy "science" projects could be so much more interesting and entertaining if done properly...

 

I have watching you for like 11 years now(off and on but still). For results accuracy for last few years I've been turning to GN because it is just amazing how much attention to detail they give to this rather boring stuff. LTT is starting to feel like Top Gear/Grand Tour. Its supposedly a tech channel but for entertainment. Now when you have started to market yourselves as being extremely accurate and getting so many things wrongs its getting kind of concerning. 

 

 

[Empyreal]

1 hour ago, Legitsu said:

this sounds bad

but you are correct and linus is correct its so incrediably stupid NOBODY should care 

like seriously billet can stop exisitng now please 

So, it's the same if I think your replies are stupid. Therefore, I'll immediately conclude that you're a stupid person.

 

Thanks for reading my review of this LTTForum user.

[Drazil100]

3 minutes ago, SAUVE76 said:

No you forget why I watch videos on youtube, it is for info and what ever I want to watch on the day.  LTT, NASA, Hipyo Tech, Switch & Click, Byte My bits, Nerdnest, NetworkChuck just to name a few are who I subscribe to... I watch them from wanting to know the latest game, tech, kit, what ever and I enjoy their content, but if any have a post on youtuve like what GN had, I would skip, which is what I did, as I am not interested.  It is his view and he can have it, but I do not need to watch it.  He does not work at LMG or know them well enough to know what has gone on in the background, as what seems to be the theme among many on here.  LMG have gotten things wrong, and they will say so, appolagies, and them move on, but for some reason that is not enough for some on here and that is distrubing,

 

So again I will not watch GN video as it is pointless, it is just all attacks, from someone who breif what he went on about... so yes skip, its just a attack video with some good points the manner I do not agree with -- I will say, it sounds to me that GN are affraid of what the LAB will bring at LMG, and esepcially with the new structure at LMG with new CEO etc... as Linus and LUke etc have said, they know where things are wrong, and will fix it, and it takes time

Linus is not your friend, and he won’t always have your best interest in mind. Even if he does put others before himself, his duty is first and foremost is to his employees who rely on him to get a paycheck. He understands the importance of keeping the community happy and stay true to his word, but I have seen many instances over the years where he has been openly tempted to act against the best interest of his audience for his company. (A great example of which being when he almost broke his no preorder rule for the screwdriver cause he really needed the money)

 

I personally trust Linus and It’s ok if you do not trust Steve, but don’t blindly trust Linus. It is in your best interest to know where the people you follow fall short so you know what to look for, and so you can make up your own mind if a creator is credible in the current circumstances. 

[joaopt]

I once wrote this in reddit after one of their insanely many oops, "Linus is a clown, not in a bad way, he's simply a clown, entertains but you can't take any of it serious", i imagined i would downvoted to hell. To my surprised the post was a upvote success.

 

I figured by now everyone knew this to be the truth, so getting to this point is hilarious. It was pathetic to see their Labs push and the arrogance of the clown at various points. But it's also hilarious to see that steve was that butthurt, he obviously didn't to that out of concern for anyone, he did it because of that video. It's called spite.

 

And Steve is not even above criticism but that's another story.

 

Stop listening to this clowns and INFLUENCERS for anything but a laugh, stop giving money to this idiot millionaires. They are really doing a disservice to the industry, to consumers, for the most part they are a cancer.

 

That said damn hilarious shit, i love internet drama.

 

PS: they should have never let Luke drift away, it was clearly the ONLY voice of reason in that mad house.

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, fartmuncher69_420 said:

I'm a minute into the video

 

Lmao

[Stark_Source21]

13 minutes ago, Texbobcat said:

The fact that he expected steve to reach out for comment first is insane, he did make those mistakes, and he did degrade the company on multiple times, then in his response he then degraded the company again with snarky remarks.

Yup, and this was something else Steve mentioned. This Linus-push to try to deal with things off-air, because they have a business "Media Team" relationship. Well, no, that's not how journalistic integrity works. Is that how Linus wants to run things now? Behind closed doors, away from the consumer? That's not the "transparency" he thinks it is. 

Edit: typos

[TheProfosist]

I thought this was going to be far less reasonable than it was. The comments on the video and here on the forums are less so.

 

I will say I dont think Linus's reply will go over well due to its tone. Also was rather surprised GN had no comment from LMG on it at all. Usually they would ask other companies and mention it even if no response based on previous coverage.

 

For me the Billet Labs thing is a complete f-up. I feel like inventory and tracking has not been a strong suit for them since they moved everything. My solution would be get it back if at all possible, compensate both parties for their losses and time, the double the donation as a gesture.

 

Im more irked about when they know there is an error and correct it in video, like reshoot that or dub it. If you know its bad dont put it out. Those just shouldnt be there, lop them out! Its almost as if the video is edited them someone watches it and adds the notes/corrections.

 

As for the issues on the graphs. I dont know if anyone but another tech reviewer would have noticed, especially en-masse. I have definitely run CrystalDisk in the wrong mode and only found out when I'm done editing or even published the video/review. Realistically at that point im not retesting everything. I'll either cut that item/graph/result or mention its borked.

 

Until Labs is up and they have actively updated data replacing/updating it isnt reasonable. Just because they have the ability to replace a video, doesnt mean it's a feature that should be used regularly.

 

Though, for context I generally dont look at LTT/LMG or anyone else for that matter as the end-all for testing. Realistically, how do I make recommendations? Based on hands-on experience! I know not everyone can do that. How do I know how a 3060 Ti preforms? Because, ive played games im familiar with on it. I'd also argue that those of you min-maxing every bit of your build is the wrong way to go about it but thats a different discussion.

 

Now should people who are paid to get it right, get it right,yes. I have made plenty of errors like that. Gone entirely wrong directions at work based on bad data. Timeline gets pushed or im staying late or in on the weekend. However if its a process flaw sometimes you just run with it since its all you have time to do and correct it the next time around. Gotta make sure you do that though. In some cases its take 1yr+ to develop and implement processes that I'm in charge of to a point where I'm happy. That never stops though and there is always something you can improve and do better.

 

[dynastes]

5 minutes ago, MotherboardsInThePark said:

Congrats, fellow viewers. We have created a monster. This man's ego is through the roof. The roof of his enormous house that WE have paid for, that is.

Have we? I am sorry, but that is a ridiculous take, mate. Linus, Yvonne and Luke have built this business from the ground up and are absolutely deserving of the fruits it has born. You might as well suggest that Larry Page does not deserve his wealth, because Google never would have succeeded, if users did not decide for it to be so. That is a half-truth at best. It was the best product of its category and therefore outcompeted the rest. It is not that different with LTT.

5 minutes ago, MotherboardsInThePark said:

Yes, WE, the viewers, have made all of this possible. Make no mistake about that. Without us, this guy would probably still be working in a computer store. And now he doesn't care about us anymore. Viewers can go to hell now that you've got buckets of cash, right? Who cares that some of us have been watching since the garage days? Look what we get for our loyalty...

Of course, viewers are important. At the end of the day, however, these viewers are like customers that buy a product. Said product must have been pleasing to them or else they would not have continued buying. They did, though.

It is natural to feel attachment and loyalty towards a content creator. It is delusional, however, to assume that they owe you something, because you do. They do not. They simply continue to provide their product. If you do not like it anymore, you should move on.

5 minutes ago, MotherboardsInThePark said:

I've been watching this channel for 12 years and I really regret it. It's gotten so bad that I wasn't even sad or worried when the channel got hacked and was actually a bit disappointed when they got it back. Yes, I was ok with Linus losing his channel and his "livelihood". That should tell you everything you need to know about the state of LTT these days.

Well, this just comes off as petty and jealous now, sorry.

5 minutes ago, MotherboardsInThePark said:

LTT is the dumpster fire...

Hardly.

5 minutes ago, MotherboardsInThePark said:

...we can't stop watching.

That is your problem then.

5 minutes ago, MotherboardsInThePark said:

But we should. Vote with our wallets? How about we vote with our watchtime? This guy needs to be brought down to earth ASAP.

The last part is worthy of discussion, although Linus does not strike me as outright arrogant, however unfortunate I find his response here, too.

[ImorallySourcedElectrons]

1 hour ago, JoshuaScholar said:

I would still trust Steve's technical reviews over LMG's always.

I wouldn't...

[fartmuncher69_420]

1 minute ago, DirtyHarry said:

Lmao

This video is three quarters of an hour long. If in the first minute something is taken egregiously out of context it does not bode well for the rest. At this point I have no idea how good or bad the rest of it is. That part at the start bugged me so much, I went looking for the response by LMG myself.

[maartendc]

I did not follow this story closely, but...

 

I have watched Linus since when they were 5 guys in a house, and I used to listen to the WAN show every week. But I have tuned out of their content a while ago for two reasons:

 

- I found their reviews were always seriously lacking in depth (especially as opposed to the likes of Hardware Unboxed or Gamers Nexus)

- Linus' apparent inability to take criticism to heart and learn from it, and instead doubling down on a "non-apology", really turned me off.

 

From watching the Gamers' Nexus video, not much has seemingly changed since I stopped watching.

 

In Dutch there is a saying: "Tall trees catch a lot of wind". LTT is a big channel, so they obviously get a lot of scrutiny. But I think Gamers Nexus makes valid points. Everyone makes mistakes, but it is how you correct them that matters. If anyone has the resources to do retesting when a serious error is found, it is LTT. They have seemingly been unwilling to retest, or take down videos, because it would "take too much time" or "be too expensive". That is not excusable.

 

Hopefully they can improve their testing quality in the future. Hopefully they can do the right thing going forward when serious errors are found.

[gunnarre]

8 minutes ago, fartmuncher69_420 said:

Most associations of journalists have something akin to a "Right of Reply". That is if you're making a story of a person or organisation, you put forward your questions for comment. 

 

This tends to apply when you're reporting on new allegations from a third party, not when you're commenting on the subject's already-public statements. E.g. if a journalist reports on a video or tweet made by a politician, there's no requirement to reach out to them for a right to reply. Of course they can do it anyway, but that's very much optional.

22 minutes ago, SAUVE76 said:

So again I will not watch GN video as it is pointless, it is just all attacks, from someone who breif what he went on about... so yes skip, its just a attack video with some good points the manner I do not agree with -- I will say, it sounds to me that GN are affraid of what the LAB will bring at LMG,(...)

You won't even look at the subject matter, so you don't even know if you agree with it or what "it" even is. This just wastes everyone's time.

[IrishDiem]

18 minutes ago, dynastes said:

How exactly is it delusional to not monetize a video? Sure, they know that they will get exposure regardless of ads running on the video, but they still lose quite a bit of money, viewership on that piece is quite good.

 

Otherwise, yeah, no reviewer is 100% accurate. That is a strawman argument. The point is that every reviewer should "strive" to be - the greater the reach, the larger the team, the bigger the claims, the more this holds true.

And yeah, much is about how errors are corrected - you get GN's point then, correction is done in subpar ways or not at all. That *is* an issue and saying so is neither salty nor jealous ^_^

 

GN purchases the pre-builts themselves by the way and are not sponsored by the companies making them. Sooo ... what is your point there?

 

Sorry, I am not a native speaker, I might simply not get you properly. Seems like nonsense on the face of it though.

Even with English use in different parts of the world use expressions differently. My use of delusional was nothing to do with the ad revenue. I said "delusion of grandeur" which was my take on Steve believing his own hype and that whatever moral ground he thinks he is on (and he is not on ground different to you, me, or LTT) should not be sullied by claims of he is doing this for money. Of course he is - just not on that video. He is aiming to protect a space in the YouTube tech market. He is also being salty about a flippant comment from a LTT employee. 

My point about the pre-builts was not about sponsorship about the review videos. This salty take from GN covered a lot of bases including ethics and integrity. How can we, now, view GNs own integrity and ethics. As a company, they take adverts from companies that sell to people who build their own PCs. As a company, they review pre-builts to show how poor they are. Thus, according to the gospel of the Tech Judas, there is now a conflict of interest as these two things are in opposition to each other. 

And corrections are corrections. No-one else is marking the homework here. 
 

[maplepants]

18 minutes ago, treestain said:

I wonder if GN will comment on why he never reached out to anyone asking for comment. I agree with a lot of what was said in the GN Video. but there were some moments that just semmed... strange.

Does he need to? We know why he didn't reach out: the Billet Labs story is significantly more dramatic without LMG's comments than it is with them. They knew that going in, and so why bother reaching out for a comment that puts such a damper on the headline of your drama video?

 

Because really, as much as GN has good points about how rushed videos contain more mistakes than carefully edited videos; the framing is pure YouTube drama. Why do you think he spends so much time at the beginning talking about how they're not monetizing the video, putting it in the description, and again in a pinned comment? Because the last round of drama GN tried to kick up was about the possibility of a "trust me bro" t-shirt. If you want your new drama to go viral, linking it to a past instance of drama is key.

 

It honestly just seems like the main motivator for this video from GN is sour grapes. I guess they're mad that the Labs team is going to start covering stuff like power supplies where GN was the largest player, and he's extremely annoyed that LTT can replace videos in-place without having to delete and re-upload (he mentions it a lot). 

 

Steve makes a big stink about how they treat LMG "like any other big company". Except they don't. If they heard some hot gossip about ASUS, they'd reach out if for no other reason than to say "ASUS refused to comment". But when they've got hot LMG gossip, they don't reach out because LMG might respond and it might deflate their drama.

[ramp]

12 hours ago, LinusTech said:

<Linus Response>

Honestly, this is so disappointing to hear after all these years of talking about credibility, transparency and confronting bad practices - even small ones - when you could find them on the WAN show etc.

 

You get angry one of your prototype backpacks was found in a thrift store, but suddenly Billet Labs has to "just take it" when you auction off their own block that they asked back, multiple times? How is that fair at all?

 

And financial compensation isn't a "get out of jail" free card btw - you of all people should know (since you develop actual real products like the backpack and screwdriver) that aside from the costs you have caused massive delays for this company since they have to create new ones. In the worst case scenario, if this block gets in the hands of another bigger company they can now beat Billet Labs to market and make Billet Labs go bankrupt.

 

You should know all this, since you talk about business risks all the time.

 

It also shows you haven't watched GamerNexus' actual video cause he mentions the block was auctioned, not sold, multiple times. I get you're a busy person, you have said so many times in the past on WAN show, but failing at even doing basic stuff like watching this video only proves his point that time pressure and mistakes are rampant everywhere in the LMG company. And that is because it starts from the top.

 

What I'm most disappointed by, is your admission that you won't address this next WAN show. You have adressed issues on WAN that were much more minor than this one in the past all because of "transparency".

You know well that a lot more people will see WAN show and WAN clips than read a forum thread - so this feels more like hiding. Like sweeping this all under the rug. If you haven't noticed, that's the opposite of transparency.

Not adressing this on WAN show makes 0 sense.

 

And lastly - your comment about "he should have just talked to you" - come on, be real for a second. You have made so many careless statements in the past, both on your main channel, shortcircuit and on WAN show that you haven't taken back without first communicating properly with the entity that you talk about (Billet Labs is only one of many exampes). Yet suddenly when GamerNexus creates a video about you without first communicating to you it's a big problem and you call his journalism into question (cause that's what you do by saying you were disappointed in how he handled this)?

 

To be clear here - I'm not a hater. I have been watching LinusTechTips basically daily since 2011 I think.

I have had a Floatplane sub to the channel, I have bought a screwdriver, a tech pouch, mouse mats and many other items from LTTStore (you can ask for my order IDs). I love what you guys are doing and I love the attention, care and detail you put in your products. You're the only company that I trust by placing a pre-order to actually deliver.

 

But, like you said with Eufy - even though I really like your products, I will stop buying from you and promoting you until you actually give a proper statement on WAN show or on another public place instead of this doubling down. You claim to stand for transparency, but you now show to only be transparent when the backlash is minor or it's got nothing to do with you. And until you actually stand for transparency, just like with Eufy's privacy claim, it's a no from me.

[dynastes]

3 minutes ago, fartmuncher69_420 said:

This video is three quarters of an hour long. If in the first minute something is taken egregiously out of context it does not bode well for the rest. At this point I have no idea how good or bad the rest of it is. That part at the start bugged me so much, I went looking for the response by LMG myself.

Understandable, but if you value context that much, you should still watch the entirety of the video. Otherwise it comes off as a bit of a double-standard.

[Blademaster91]

1 hour ago, ImorallySourcedElectrons said:

And if you read back earlier, LMG has been in touch with Billet, but given LTT's typical communication channels this would most likely be addressed on the WAN show. And honestly, if my employer called me up in the weekend to make some sort of apology video I'd tell them to stick it where the sun don't shine.

Discussing an issue as bad as the one with Billet is rather unprofessional to do on the WAN show,  in addition only mentioning it on the WAN show means all of the LTT fans would defend LTT's opinion on the cooler being crap. IMO its a good thing GN pointed out the Billet issue specifically, Billet has some sort of recourse getting paid for the water block, but the damage is still done since Linus bashed them.

Also not even necessary to make a full video over a weekend, an email would be fine, or a quick video clip on twitter/X would be fine until the next weekday.

1 hour ago, ImorallySourcedElectrons said:

Which they did, have you actually been reading? Would said quote magically arrive if there had been no communication between LMG management and Billet?

Plus, you also assume Billet was available over the weekend, which is also highly unlikely.

You keep moving the goal posts here, from the posts I've seen here it seems like LMG waited until a weekday to email them, even if Billet wasn't available an email could've been sent the previous weekday or on a weekend.

1 hour ago, ImorallySourcedElectrons said:

I stopped watching after the entire cringe Gigabyte PSU thing, but I remember the following grievances:

• "ZOMG WHY DOES INTEL CHANGE SOCKET SO OFTEN, LOOK AMD CAN KEEP THE SAME ONE FOR SO LONG" (ok, not like that but you get the point), while simultaneously failing to understand that a large part of AMD's I/O problems were probably caused by them trying to use the old socket. Signal integrity is very much a thing, and GN seems to have some trouble grasping that sometimes.
• Components change between production lots all the time, as circuit designer you indicate which parameters are important, and then you hope the purchasing and manufacturing department respects your choices (they don't). Meanwhile, GN explicitly stated that this is abnormal and should never happen, in reality it's the most common thing in the world to call up one of those distributors and ask them to give you whatever 47 µF 16V capacitor that fits on your footprint.
• Various bad takes on PCIe and USB at the hardware level.
• Failing to grasp that some of the things they don't like were done for reliability purposes, because maybe someone wants their device to last for more than a couple of months. You can't just toss things on a PCB willy-nilly and hope that they're OK.
• Going crazy over CPU temperatures, while failing to understand what's actually being measured, where it's being measured, how that's turned into a number on your screen, and what the actual impact on performance and longevity is.
• GN videos are a good example of how to not test a PSU, like I've never seen them do a proper stability measurement. But why not skimp over it, it's not as if your public will understand it anyway.
• Their takes on how a current limiter should behave were bad, really bad. 
• ...

So yeah, not a big fan.

The gigabyte PSU was objectively crap, and no one has called out GN on their PSU testing, I would trust them over LTT labs unless LTT's labs manages to prove them wrong.

As for your other points, Intel changes their sockets too often, even people biased towards Intel complain of that, Intel CPU's from 4th gen to 7th gen didn't really change all that much yet Intel kept changing the socket, or 11th gen was a good example of Intel coming up with a new socket for no reason to only come up with another new one with 12th gen.

 

- I think its important to have the right context on components, capacitors on power supplies or motherboards don't usually change, but this was at times the case during the pandemic with components being in short supply being replaced with suitable alternatives.

- Such as? The only PCIe one that comes to mind is the AMD X470 PCIe 4.0, apparently ASRock wanted to implement PCIe 4.0 but AMD claimed it wasn't possible due to lane signaling, I would have liked to see more testing on that one rather than a company saying its not possible and blocking motherboard makers.

-  I want to see an example for this one as well, the only things I've seen GN miss points on were OEM workstations or servers, but that isn't their expertise anyway.

- Their focus on CPU temps is fine, IMO. GN's focus on detailed CPU temps, especially measuring for throttling is more than what most tech youtubers test for, most will only test gaming workload.

- Again I haven't seen them getting called out from anyone reviewing PSU's, or anyone in the PSU industry.

 It seems like you're biased against GN and are nitpicking at things.

 

[Stark_Source21]

5 minutes ago, TheProfosist said:

 

 

For me the Billet Labs thing is a complete f-up. I feel like inventory and tracking has not been a strong suit for them since they moved everything. My solution would be get it back if at all possible, compensate both parties for their losses and time, the double the donation as a gesture.

 

You see, that there is a thoughtful response to a very messed up situation. How long did it take you to come up with that solution, Profosist? And why didn't Linus put at least that much thought into it?

 

That's what really got me here, and I'm genuinely disappointed in, even put off by, Linus on this occasion. I don't want to support a man who's so callous and off-handed. 

[CoolGoose]

My 2 cents to the whole fiasco is the following.

I think people in general have no idea that as a journalist you need to give whoever you're investigating the right to reply back. And if you look at other GN videos, they did reach out to ASUS/ MSI/ random ass other company, when they did fuckups. 

Heck, look at the NewEGG fiasco, they did 1 month of let's figure this out.

So although criticism is warranted and fair, at the same time it feels like more like bitterness than the journalistic integrity you bunch of folks like to throw around . 

[Texbobcat]

5 minutes ago, CoolGoose said:

My 2 cents to the whole fiasco is the following.

I think people in general have no idea that as a journalist you need to give whoever you're investigating the right to reply back. And if you look at other GN videos, they did reach out to ASUS/ MSI/ random ass other company, when they did fuckups. 

Heck, look at the NewEGG fiasco, they did 1 month of let's figure this out.

So although criticism is warranted and fair, at the same time it feels like more like bitterness than the journalistic integrity you bunch of folks like to throw around . 

How is he going to respond to what he said, he doubled down in a 5 minute rant on wan show explaining why he did it the way he did it, then came on here tripled down and was condescending towards the company.

He is only going to respond different to save his ass

[joaopt]

2 minutes ago, CoolGoose said:

My 2 cents to the whole fiasco is the following.

I think people in general have no idea that as a journalist you need to give whoever you're investigating the right to reply back. And if you look at other GN videos, they did reach out to ASUS/ MSI/ random ass other company, when they did fuckups. 

Heck, look at the NewEGG fiasco, they did 1 month of let's figure this out.

So although criticism is warranted and fair, at the same time it feels like more like bitterness than the journalistic integrity you bunch of folks like to throw around . 

 

there were no journalists involved here, just millionaire influencers.

[Just.Oblivious]

@LinusTech Some remarks from a casual observer:

 

Having premature “labs” testing data included in a product review only jeopardises the future credibility of the lab; don’t include it until the testing methodology for <insert category> has been finalised and tested for repeatability. Laboratories typically don’t share premature results with a wide audience, and what they share with the scientific community always includes clear remarks regarding the data being inconclusive with a detailed explanation of how they got to their results.

 

I know you’re eager to show us what your shiny new equipment can do, but please only do it to entertain us. Don’t rely on the data yet to draw conclusions about products, don’t even share the data with us until you can vouch for its accuracy.