Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity

[coonwhiz]

Just now, lacion said:

Those who believe that the absence of direct monetization and sponsors means GN isn't benefiting need to understand the broader dynamics of online content. It might be worth re-evaluating such beliefs without being overly simplistic.

 

There are myriad ways to profit from online content, with direct monetization often being one of the lesser earners.

 

The true value of these companies lies in their audience reach and the metrics they can showcase, which attest to their influence. So, in essence, every video they release contributes to their long-term monetization strategy. This isn't exclusive to GN; it's a common practice for many creators discussing this topic. The intricate nuances of how content creators profit are often obscured from the general audience.

 

To claim they're not reaping benefits from their content is both disingenuous and misleading.

I'm not saying there's no benefit. The claim was that they're making money on the video. They categorically are not.

[kdawgmaster]

17 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.

My take on this would be that i agree that maybe Steve could have reached out to you for clarification on some things but i feel the grand idea of the scope would be the same.

I chalk up what your engineer said as "overzealous passion" and he let slip something that maybe shouldnt have been said. Do i feel that this SHOULD have been caught somewhere down the pipeline?  Yes, 100%. Do i think you guys are trying to push boundaries in the benchmarking scene and there will likely be things that need to be worked on? Of course. But I will be honest in that i think you guys push quantity over quality and thats hurting you over all. You were once a site that i took a lot from in my purchasing decisions of hardware and now you are probably on the bottom of list of GN, HUB, DF and some others as even i have noticed your errors. 

 

As for the Billet Labs thing. I think you harping on the idea of the money going to charity isnt the right tact in this case. You should be attempting to get the item back, if you can, and return it to Billet Labs. Personally i would think that you, as a person who makes marketable items, can respect how important a prototype is for the makings of an item and why this should be returned. I will also say that your video on the cooler was done INSANELY poorly and that did make me question your intent on the video in the first place. A 3090Ti is not a 4090 and thus the cooler wasnt meant for it. We dont know the impacts this could have on the coolers performance and it felt like the content was pushed more for its entertainment value over its probative value of the data.

 

If i were to say where i think things can be improved on it would be these as of right now.

1. make less videos so the quality can go up.
2. updated benchmarks to show improvements in the competition. I feel that if you truly care about the data this is CRITICAL. As we saw with the RX6000 series, they get better over time and keeping old data around means that if you have that card in the data set its out of date.

3. Better corrections for errors that come up on videos

 

I would think with your advocation of the Intel Arc GPU's this (#2) would be important to drive the competition for you, and i think it would be a NET positive for the consumers and market. 

 

I will continue to watch your videos, but do know that they are under some amount of scrutiny and have been for some time. I also feel that you undersell how much impact you might have on the markets like GPU and CPU purchases.  

Edited August 15, 2023 by kdawgmaster

[joaopt]

1 minute ago, MrSuperb said:

 

nobody is forced to work there

 

 

 

ah the classic it's the employees fault. Jesus how can people like you exist

[Reclus]

57 minutes ago, Neroon said:

Steve should not contact Linus under any circumstance, for what reason? You do get that he can contact Linus, listen to his response, not find it valid or relevant, and simply not include it. Or he can state that he contacted Linus, repeat what he said, and conclude that he does not find his answers sufficient or whatever.
More information can never be bad if you want as much as the truth out there.

 

So yeah, what reasons are there for not doing it? I don't know. Is it because of time? Is it because he didn't want to have this chat with Linus? Did he felt he would get a lot of BS? Did he want to be able to wildly speculate without knowing the 'official' response? Nobody knows but the people at GN.

There is a point at which repeating an argument only serves the ignorant. This point has been reached. I've laid my arguments multiple times. If they are not to your liking than so be it. The entirety of this mess lies with Linus and LTT. Deflecting onto Steve makes it worse.

[King Podge]

6 minutes ago, joaopt said:

 

what comment was needed? to explain away all the mistakes, errors, killing the employees with insane workloads, put profit in front of accuracy, failing to apologise when needed, etc...

 

this was an expose, a very good one. Linus can comment, and btw he decided not way, hoping it goes away, guess what it didn't.

Tell me you’ve never journalism without telling me you’ve never journalism…. It’s called right of reply, kid… 

 

‘killing employees’ - Captain, scanned are detecting dangerous levels of hyperbole

 

[MrSuperb]

Just now, joaopt said:

ah the classic it's the employees fault. Jesus how can people like you exist

Do you work at LMG? Or are you taking all the knowledge from the GN video?

What needs to be done for you to be happy? By Linus? By LMG? Please elaborate!

[poochyena]

I was actually going to make a thread a few days ago complaining about all the asterisks in videos. Its like every video there is some error that has to be corrected. Seems unprofessional. I'm glad GN brought it up.

[joaopt]

2 minutes ago, King Podge said:

Tell me you’ve never journalism without telling me you’ve never journalism…. It’s called right of reply, kid… 

 

‘killing employees’ - Captain, scanned are detecting dangerous levels of hyperbole

 

 

there were no journalists involved in the making of any of this, zero. These are just influencers on YT

[RockerBug17]

30 minutes ago, cjbtlr said:

Let that sink in? Yes, GN literally self-demonetized the video. It's the first line in the video description. This isn't the "gotcha" you think it is. There is no conspiracy or long con. 

 

It's a small hardware review channel of 4 people with ten or whatever years of experience getting and reporting accurate and reliable data, holding accountable an entertainment channel with a much larger reach and over 100 staff that are now attempting to do the same - and, despite considerable investment in testing equipment, frankly, failing at it.

 

Pointing out their "lower" view rate doesn't change the validity of anything Steve pointed out.

I'm going to assume English is not your native tongue, because I said Steve may have demonetized the video, but he and his team will benefit from it no matter its monetization state. I said nothing about whatever this "lower view rate," you speak of.

 

Oh and welcome to the LinusTechTips forums, btw. So glad I could compel you to comment for the first time ever. Try reading the comment before posting next time.

 

 

[Big Head Tech]

17 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.

Hey Linus,

 

You may or may not recognize me but I've been a follower since 171k subscribers. I always loved watching your videos because you have a lot of the same likes and biases I do. To be honest, I never really used your testing at the gospel but I also always did my own testing when I was a reviewer. I loved your personal takes on many products because it feels genuine.

With that said, I think you should have waited to respond. Maybe just a simple post stating that you saw the video and want to take some consideration and feedback from the team then responding. The reality is, and you may not agree with it, but this won't just blow over. This is not something that in 2 weeks everyone will forget. This will impact future sponsorship deals (afraid of being exposed for favoritism) or just negative PR. When the whole "Hard R" incident happened, everyone including me felt you were genuine, and even I had the same thoughts on its meaning. This won't be like that.

 

Are you wrong about Steve not checking with you regarding the block issue? No, but you phrase it in a defensive way. Yes, your brand is being questioned but look at the backlash. All of Reddit, well 90% is against you atm. The reality is, a shorter response would have been better. Acknowledge the water block issue, issue a correction, and acknowledge that you agree with Steve that you have much to improve and will put policies in place after consulting others in leadership. Then reach out to Steve and have a serious conversation and see if you can pick his brain as well. Work WITH the media not against them, embrace feedback don't reject it. You know deep down, you're going too hard too fast and it's a problem. Rome wasn't built in a day nor was it built by 1 person.

 

Thanks,

Stevie

[ToboRobot]

7 minutes ago, RockerBug17 said:

We know why he didn't.

No we don't.  Unless it's been publicly stated and I missed it, I am not a mind reader and we shouldn't assume peoples motivations without asking them for comment. 
 

[King Podge]

Just now, joaopt said:

 

there were no journalists involved in the making of any of these, zero. This are just influencers on YT

Except GN reference journalism in their video, and in many videos. In fact, i can’t think of a situation where they haven’t given the accused party right of reply. 
 

if you’re going to say you’re a duck, you gotta quack like one. Otherwise you’re right, it’s influencer drama. 

[ravagetalon]

17 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.

Linus, You don't have much of a leg to stand on when it comes to "proper journalistic practices" when a not insignificant portion of your organization's videos contain false and misleading information. You don't get to claim foul when your own ducks are not in a row. Steve has only pointed out the obvious here, and he's gone on record before about issues with how your organization generates content.

Make good on your assertions in this statement. Do better. Be better. Your people actively want to do better and have been outspoken as such. You, and now Tarren, need to give them the room to breathe so they can.

[RockerBug17]

6 minutes ago, joaopt said:

 

a one of a kind prototype

pay for the production cost, per Linus words

 

i can't be the only one that find this incredible stupid and unfair

It sucks, for sure. But they talked about it and worked out a deal that both parties agreed to.

[ImorallySourcedElectrons]

22 minutes ago, JiRoDev said:

No, that's very wrong, if you wish to test performance you use the best API of each platform, you seem to believe different API produces different visual quality, and that's also very wrong. By your reasoning then why not test windows games using Metal, emulate it and watch performance tank by 80%, how is that fair for Mac and not for windows?

No, what I'm saying is that if you rewrite the game for a different platform you're also going to be making other adjustments, and by no means will the game represent the same load or achieve the exact same graphics fidelity, we already see this when you apply a different graphics API on the same platform, so yes, you will get a different visual quality. So I'm really curious as to why you think it won't make a difference for this benchmark across different systems? There's no reason why "medium graphics" on platform A is the same as it is on platform B, and you damn well know it. So it could very well be one system is handling a far more difficult workload than the other, and comparing the graphics output to find traces of this is going to be ridiculously difficult and a complete waste of time most likely, so unless if you write an entire very basic boring benchmark suite that tests each aspect of the GPU individually, there's no real point in comparing. 

[joeygreco1985]

3 minutes ago, poochyena said:

I was actually going to make a thread a few days ago complaining about all the asterisks in videos. Its like every video there is some error that has to be corrected. Seems unprofessional. I'm glad GN brought it up.

 

I will say that I figured that was standard Youtube creator practice since I see other YouTube channels doing the asterisk thing a lot too (Cathode Ray Dude as an example off the top of my head). But the difference with LMG is they have the resources to go back and fix the errors relatively quick, and they should be doing it. 

 

[joaopt]

5 minutes ago, MrSuperb said:

Do you work at LMG? Or are you taking all the knowledge from the GN video?

What needs to be done for you to be happy? By Linus? By LMG? Please elaborate!

 

they said they would like more time to make better content and rarely were happy with their work. Their own words. Doesn't seem like a great place to work.

 

more like a sausage factory

[BigPhilR]

17 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.

 

Part of growing a company is ensuring process grows with the organisation, something LMG have clearly failed to do, by Linus' own admissions. (I've personally led SW companies from 5 heads to just under 200, so I have some personal experience here... Mistakes are normal, repeating them is not.)

 

LMG isn't a startup, and I'd be very surprised if Linus accepted the same excuses if offered by a company who's product one of the LMG channels is covering.

 

It's time for LMG to grow up.

 

Bringing in a new CEO is a start, but clearly a lot more is needed.

 

I do get the need for growth - it's a key component in retaining staff: a growing company can provide a lot more opportunities for the career progression of it's employees than a stagnant company. However, if this prioritisation of growth ultimately damages the reputation of the company the wrong balance has been struck, and I think this needs to be seriously reconsidered.

 

In none of Linus' reponses to the GN video have I seen (of course, I may have missed something) any response to the schedule pressure. Without this approach changing, I fear LMG are doomed to repeat the same errors.

 

Acknowledging the issue is a good start, but futile if action is not taken.

[RockerBug17]

1 minute ago, ToboRobot said:

No we don't.  Unless it's been publicly stated and I missed it, I am not a mind reader and we shouldn't assume peoples motivations without asking them for comment. 
 

This entire thread is full of mind readers. Mind readers that want blood, for some reason. LMG wronged Billet. They made good on that mistake to Billet's satisfaction. What more could LMG do?

[Kisai]

53 minutes ago, fartmuncher69_420 said:

You also want to make sure that your video guy isn't working weekends and putting in 80 hour weeks because that's illegal.

 

Maybe I'm not making myself clear:

 

"Hourly billing" is for work that has a clear and consistent rate of output. Paying someone $8/hr to stock shelves, that anyone off the street can do, is maybe justified as being billed that way. Same with someone working in a cookie factory. They can replace any peoplecog in the factory and it will always turn out the same product, at the same rate. So you only hire as many people you need to operate the equipment at the output you need, no more, no less.

 

When a lawyer, or video editor is paid by the hour, it's because you value their output, not their experience. So fretting about if someone spends 4 hours or 40 hours on one video is completely missing the point. They get the thing done at the quality they were paid for.

 

Lawyers have the good sense to bill their clients for an hour even for questions that took a minute. That is not being aggressively greedy, that's just telling their client that their time is valuable.

 

But you should only be doing hourly pay rates for people who are not actually employed directly by the company. If people work directly for the company, you pay them a salary, regardless of output.  If someone is sick for two weeks, you are still paying them to do nothing (or work from home), where as if you're paying that person by the hour, they're going to show up sick and get the entire company sick if they come to work because they need the hours.

 

You have to decide what you value more, the output quality, or the output quantity.

 

 

It's like the meme goes "Good, Cheap, Fast" pick two.

 

When you pay people by the hour, you are always picking "fast", because you only care about the time. So the question is, do you not give people enough time, so the product is worse, or do you give people enough time to do the work, and thus the product is more expensive and takes longer?

 

Salaries give people unlimited time to do "good" work, but that doesn't mean that it will be fast, or cheap. Generally the point of a salary is that you are paying for the person's expertise and experience in doing a thing and you trust they can do "good" work. Otherwise, why would you have being hired to do the thing.

 

Now if a salaried person is doing 80 hours when they should be doing 40, that's a different problem, because that means likely everyone is doing 80, when you should instead hire twice as many people. 

 

No legitimate business should be allowing people to work overtime. Go home. Have a life. If people are working overtime because they need the money, then you are not paying them enough.

 

[Slizzo]

1 minute ago, RockerBug17 said:

This entire thread is full of mind readers. Mind readers that want blood, for some reason. LMG wronged Billet. They made good on that mistake to Billet's satisfaction. What more could LMG do?

Perhaps acknowledge, publicly, that their testing of the product was severely flawed and take down the original video?

[coonwhiz]

1 minute ago, BigPhilR said:

LMG isn't a startup, and I'd be very surprised if Linus accepted the same excuses if offered by a company who's product one of the LMG channels is covering.

He doesn't as evidenced by the Billet Labs video IMO. He said no one should buy the incredibly niche product. This is coming from the guy who sold $10,000 whale tickets to LTX... The people who can afford a $10,000 whale ticket are the exact people who I'd expect to buy the Billet Labs cooler once it was a final product. His comments that it wasn't a good product are also incredibly bad takes. It's a prototype, that means it's not the final f'ing product. It would be like reviewing their first version of the LTT screwdriver which (was probably awful compared to the final one), and saying that no one should buy the final product.

[kdawgmaster]

1 minute ago, RockerBug17 said:

This entire thread is full of mind readers. Mind readers that want blood, for some reason. LMG wronged Billet. They made good on that mistake to Billet's satisfaction. What more could LMG do?

You say this entire thread is full of mind readers and go on to say that Billet is satisfied with the outcome. The more likely scenario is that they excepted the likely outcome and would still prefer that they had their prototype.

[coopa]

Just now, King Podge said:

Tell me you’ve never journalism without telling me you’ve never journalism…. It’s called right of reply, kid… 

 

Many have pointed this out, including Linus himself, but honest question - what would it have changed? All it would have changed is that Linus' statement made here would have been included in the video, and honestly, given how feeble and corporate-speak Linus' reply was here, I don't believe it would have changed anyone's mind.

The only substantive point addressed in Linus' post here is that he disputes that they did not "sell" the prototype, they "accidentally auctioned" it. Firstly, Steve from GN stated MULTIPLE times that LMG auctioned the Billet labs prototype. Secondly, that is a distinction without any real difference - they were given a review sample (a prototype), and instead of returning it as agreed, they sold it. The fact that the money went to charity instead of LMG's corporate coffers is irrelevant - they sold something that they did not own.

Further on Billet, Linus improperly tested the product having been told that it was for a 3090 Ti not a 4090, and when this was pointed out, they said it wasn't worth the time/money to re-review it. Testing a monoblock on a GPU it was not designed to be used on is a completely invalid test, so Linus' conclusion that it wasn't worth retesting because it didn't cool a 4090 well was completely invalid because it wasn't designed to be used on a 4090. His conclusion that it wasn't worth retesting based on performance was based either on ineptitude, laziness, or malice by LMG to install and test the product properly.

 

The rest of Linus' post is all corporate speak in the vein of "we try hard, we make mistakes, we're trying to do better" without any real addressing of GN's other points or substantive commitment acknowledging the quality errors/mistakes in LMG videos and trying to improve on them. It's word salad.

 

One can say that GN should have given LMG the chance to reply before publication, and I agree with that - but it doesn't make anything that Steve said incorrect or wrong. And based on Linus' responses here where he is completely dismissive of criticism rather than honestly acknowledging it, it wouldn't have mattered anyways.

Linus and LMG need to take some reflection and take an honest and hard look at what GN said, and work as a team to form a cohesive, meaningful reply. Instead of a rushed one that was clearly not based on watching the video (example: Linus' statement that GN said that LMG "sold" the prototype is wrong. Steve said they mistakenly put it up for auction multiple times.)

[DavidRomao]

It's shame plenty of people are just deflecting and instead of judging the facts presented in front of them, are instead pointing the finger back at GN. No channel is perfect and Steve is surely aware there are problems on his side as well, that doesn't invalidate the facts he presented about LTT/LMG videos.

So instead of pointing your anger at him, just reflect on what you were made aware of. I speak for myself as well, as I mainly watch LTT videos, we have to be able to get out of the bubble, not be a fan boy, and at least listen to the criticism presented agaisn't the current pratices of LTT.

 

It is honestly worrying seeing some members of the staff saying they're very rarely proud of a video they've worked on. You should take some time to reflect @LinusTech is this is really the correct approach, as having your employees feeling that way is worth the amount of videos you put out weekly. If you can prioritise quality during the development of your merch, why can't you seem to afford to do the same for your videos ? Nobody really needs 25 videos a week from you, it's self imposed goal and if you can't do it in a sustainable way, then perhaps it shouldn't be done at all ( said from a guy with absolutely no knowledge about having a YT channel, just my honest opinion )

 

Will definetely continuing watching the channel as I've done for many years for the time being, as I believe the issues will be addressed and the processes adapted where needed.