Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity

[the-last-englishman]

Just signed up to say: What a disgrace LTT, you should have never treated Billet Labs this way , I just unsubscribed from your YT channel.

If you make this right, I may resubscribe.

 

This is what ChatGPT thinks:

 

Oh, gather 'round, dear techies, and lend an ear, For a tale of Linus, his mishap is here.

He once took a startup's product, all shiny and neat, To review on his channel, a grand tech feat.

But alas, poor Linus, his focus astray, He bumbled and stumbled through that fateful day.

The product's true purpose? Lost in the mist, As Linus waxed poetic, his thoughts amiss.

He praised its sleek design and buttons aplenty, While forgetting the feature that made it so plenty.

The startup's dreams shattered, their hopes in despair, As Linus rambled on, with nary a care.

And oh, the worst part, the deed so absurd, He never returned the product, the nerve!

It sat in his office, collecting dust and grime, As the startup's CEO cried, "It's a crime!"

"Linus, oh Linus," they wailed in despair, "Our startup's now sinking, it's just not fair!"

But Linus, oh Linus, he shrugged with a grin, "I've got too many gadgets, let the chaos begin!"

So here's to Linus, the reviewer so bold, Whose blunders and antics never get old.

He messed up a review, left a startup to sigh, And kept their product, oh my, oh my!

But remember, dear Linus, let's learn from this plight, Give startups their due, and review them just right.

For tech dreams are fragile, handle with care, Lest you find yourself tangled in gadgets' snare!

[TLP]

I've got to agree with the quality issues. I think LTT needs to slow down, figure things out and then, maybe then can build back up again.

 

The cooler thing was dumb, a dumb mistake that shouldn't have been made.

 

The corruption or paid biased stuff doesn't hold water with me.

[mirai99]

30 minutes 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.

What do you mean there won't be a big WAN show segment? I mean it does not neet to be this week, but if there is not one this or next week... the allegations are serious, given how you have established the vision of Labs as a professional outlet, well-researched, and well documented. I have seen all of the screw-ups over the weeks and months, but watching GN's video made me look at the big picture.

I am a floatplane subscriber, and i would REALLY expect a WAN segment discussing the video within the next 2 weeks...

[lal12]

28 minutes 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 think there is a certain lack of transparency. Not in the way of "Linus telling the community XY-Details on WAN show", but in general expectations.
E.g. regarding the "trust me bro" I think you're right when saying "you have to trust me anyway, so why not take just my word for it, that I will make it right". The issue isn't trust (as it so often isn't when e.g. hiring a contractor) it is about getting one the same page and understanding what "right" means for each other. That's where something conclusive and formal does help, not even necessary written but in a clear spot and easily findable, what can I expect here.

The same probably can be applied to some of you practices and guidelines. What does an Unboxing on SC incorporate what are the standards for evaluating? Where are the border for a sponsorship vs a review and so on. To clarify it again, this isn't about trusting you, this is about understanding what exactly to trust you for, because people can and will have different understanding and views.

 

I know you've said so in some videos, but even I who watches most of your stuff would neither know the newest stands on above mentioned points nor where to look for them. So probably a video or "policy text" explaining such stuff would be nice and then linked and the endcard and maybe with a short standardized summary for each channel in the description + a link to the whole explanation/guidelines.

 

Really props to you, for reacting so quickly.

[Ex14]

1 minute ago, post_screen said:

Didn't say to this degree, but something has to be said. It is kind of a big deal, they damaged another company with some of their actions. For someone who preaches accountability and transparency, something has to be said, even if its as little as we messed up, we are sorry, and we will do such and such to hopefully not do it again.

 

 

I'll start writing this at the end of every post: be CIVIL; don't make it personal by going after someone's families

I think he handled it okay or even well. 
 

With exception of the video quality concerns. The tone and general message of his repo sense is what I expect of him and for the most part.so alls good for me. I do think they might need to do abit more on the part of billet and maybe talk more openly about the video quality concerns but Yeap mostly answered for me

[Harlem_Shaker]

6 minutes ago, BeefSupreme said:

I'm sorry that it feels like GN just dropped the whole world on your head. I'm sure most of us fans understand your commitment to integrity and will still love you despite this. I really do think your heart is in the right place.

 

While I understand preferring Steve to handle this privately, I can understand why he went public. Even in this response, you don't address his chief complaint: pushing out videos too fast to reasonably expect your employees to get everything right. Even your employees seem to be begging for more breathing room to do their jobs. I understand corrections happen, but yeah, you would have a lot less corrections if you spent the extra time to make sure the testing was ironclad. I would really love to hear you address this.

 

I don't think Steve did any of this in bad faith (or at least I hope not), but he felt as if the "corrections" are happening more and more frequently and to larger degrees and he's trying to push LTT/LMG to be better.

I've said this in other comments, but I think Steve's video was absolutely personal.  Did he make fair points, yes!  Was it edited in a sensationalist way to make Linus look bad, also yes!  Was it necessary to cut to Luke's face in the WAN show highlights?  Seems like he is making it more personal than journalistic.  Also, am I the only one that noticed that Steve mis-quoted Linus' dollar amount invested in Framework?  Seems like a pretty big whoopsie in a video calling someone out for all of their errors...

[Cavalry Canuck]

8 minutes ago, Tajl3r said:

So do u , u can't pump false information on yt cause u have 300 employees so u need to feed them and u doing the videos fast like working rabbits ...

Ur making ur content suitable for non educated kids and making u totally irrelevant in serious tech audience but that's going on for awhile,since i'm here long time ago [2013] i can atest that.

GROWTH is great but not like this.

There is a saying"when u fly way to high the crash is even lower"

nhf

 

Man, you can't even slow down enough to type sentences with proper spelling, punctuation, and grammar. 

[mirai99]

Just now, the-last-englishman said:

Just signed up to say: What a disgrace LTT, you should have never treated Billet Labs this way , I just unsubscribed from your YT channel.

If you make this right, I may resubscribe.

 

This is what ChatGPT thinks:

 

Oh, gather 'round, dear techies, and lend an ear, For a tale of Linus, his mishap is here.

He once took a startup's product, all shiny and neat, To review on his channel, a grand tech feat.

But alas, poor Linus, his focus astray, He bumbled and stumbled through that fateful day.

The product's true purpose? Lost in the mist, As Linus waxed poetic, his thoughts amiss.

He praised its sleek design and buttons aplenty, While forgetting the feature that made it so plenty.

The startup's dreams shattered, their hopes in despair, As Linus rambled on, with nary a care.

And oh, the worst part, the deed so absurd, He never returned the product, the nerve!

It sat in his office, collecting dust and grime, As the startup's CEO cried, "It's a crime!"

"Linus, oh Linus," they wailed in despair, "Our startup's now sinking, it's just not fair!"

But Linus, oh Linus, he shrugged with a grin, "I've got too many gadgets, let the chaos begin!"

So here's to Linus, the reviewer so bold, Whose blunders and antics never get old.

He messed up a review, left a startup to sigh, And kept their product, oh my, oh my!

But remember, dear Linus, let's learn from this plight, Give startups their due, and review them just right.

For tech dreams are fragile, handle with care, Lest you find yourself tangled in gadgets' snare!

Linus claims Billet sent him a bill and he greenlit the payment, so you can re-subscribe.

[bright_things]

Just now, LTTinthegravetonight said:

You mean the post where he admitted that they were billed but still haven't paid, seemingly only considering it now that there's a shitstorm?

I imagine the quoting process and communication took Billet some time, I highly doubt it was only considered because of a shitstorm, LMG fucked up, and they are fixing it, what are they gonna do, not pay because they don't want to?

[FadedSpark]

Anyone else of the opinion that the real fall over point in content was when the wanshow started being more about merch messages?

 

I used to love listening to 2 or 3 on my drives to visit family and another 2 or 3 on the way back, but I don't anymore.

 

The content just isn't as interesting.

[Jazmodo]

7 minutes ago, LTTinthegravetonight said:

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

Never purchased a single item from the LTT Store, they wouldn't have an address for where to find me, even if they wanted to. 

 

I'm not defending Linus/LMG per se, I'm more sick of the attitude & arrogance of GN & Steve in particular. It's grating.

[borus87]

36 minutes ago, LinusTech said:

we didn't 'sell' the monoblock, but rather auctioned it for charity

So what you're saying is that as long as I auction off something for charity rather than taking the money to myself I can sell... sorry... "auction" anything even if I don't own it?

 

ANNOUNCEMENT:

I have Linus Cars, PC's, House and the whole LMG is for sale now. Buyer to collect. The money goes to Saving Kids With Cancer Foundation.

[Moortu]

Just now, the-last-englishman said:

Just signed up to say: What a disgrace LTT, you should have never treated Billet Labs this way , I just unsubscribed from your YT channel.

If you make this right, I may resubscribe.

 

This is what ChatGPT thinks:

 

Oh, gather 'round, dear techies, and lend an ear, For a tale of Linus, his mishap is here.

He once took a startup's product, all shiny and neat, To review on his channel, a grand tech feat.

But alas, poor Linus, his focus astray, He bumbled and stumbled through that fateful day.

The product's true purpose? Lost in the mist, As Linus waxed poetic, his thoughts amiss.

He praised its sleek design and buttons aplenty, While forgetting the feature that made it so plenty.

The startup's dreams shattered, their hopes in despair, As Linus rambled on, with nary a care.

And oh, the worst part, the deed so absurd, He never returned the product, the nerve!

It sat in his office, collecting dust and grime, As the startup's CEO cried, "It's a crime!"

"Linus, oh Linus," they wailed in despair, "Our startup's now sinking, it's just not fair!"

But Linus, oh Linus, he shrugged with a grin, "I've got too many gadgets, let the chaos begin!"

So here's to Linus, the reviewer so bold, Whose blunders and antics never get old.

He messed up a review, left a startup to sigh, And kept their product, oh my, oh my!

But remember, dear Linus, let's learn from this plight, Give startups their due, and review them just right.

For tech dreams are fragile, handle with care, Lest you find yourself tangled in gadgets' snare!

Strong words.

people are human, an organisation that grows makes mistakes.

They aren't blameless but why is everyone so up in arms?

 

 

Page 18 he clarified that they already got a quote from Billet and paid.

 

[Tajl3r]

1 minute ago, Cavalry Canuck said:

Man, you can't even slow down enough to type sentences with proper spelling, punctuation, and grammar. 

sure little budyy next time

 

never

[IndustrialBananaBread]

4 minutes ago, Cavalry Canuck said:

Man I've got an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico I'd like to point out to you...

Haha point taken

[MageTank]

5 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

The criticism of the gaming PC overheating in Blender is fair enough, as it was built by Microcenter, I was expecting a PC built a by a gaming PC store to do well enough in any scenario, depending on the game it would utilize the CPU and GPU enough to have similar overheating. The main criticism being the CPU cooler, which I agree with his sentiment on spending a few more dollars on a decent cooler so it wouldn't throttle.

I think he needs to inform himself more about OEM workstations and servers, he has gotten things wrong in regards with parts like power supplies , but I like his pre-built reviews in general.

Yeah, I think his testing methodology itself was flawless, I just find the scope weird. If you want to point out throttling in Blender, that's perfectly fine, but I'd also prefer to see some actual game performance. Then the conclusion could be "Buy this if you only want to game, but avoid this if you need to do heavy CPU rendering on the side". Most of the people that I would refer to review channels online are mostly just gamers, not people educated enough to draw their own conclusions.

 

While I personally water cool all my stuff, I don't see pairing a 5600X with a stock cooler as a bad thing. Steve mentioned in video that it is a 65w processor, and the AMD stealth cooler (assuming that is what it was based on pictures/video) is rated for 65W. The fact that it maintained a 300mhz boost on that stock cooler under Blender is impressive by itself, lol.

 

I am assuming Steve would tell people to refer to the 3060 review if they want gaming performance, but if the throttling is such a concern, I'd like to see that explored in the video itself, especially since the title of the video also refers to the system as a Gaming PC. Would have also been great to see if the extra $20 he spent on the replaced cooler improved FPS and if so, by how much? Would help inform buyers that paying X percentage more results in Y percentage performance boost.

[DarkSwordsman]

All I can say is that there have been a lot of inconsistencies that I've called out in comments and I believe on this forum before. The biggest one I remember was the SATA SSD vs M.2 SATA vs M.2 NVMe test and how the drives used were random and old, plus there was a chance there for explanation of why this happened that was never explored, or at least clarification that was just skipped.

I get that LTT is trying to push a lot of content and be accurate, but you can't hit two birds with one stone. You can certainly find safe shortcuts and improve processes for accuracy and speed (oftentimes, accuracy IS speed), but over the years, so many video have had small imperfections that seemed glaringly obvious to fix. It seems like the focus has been on bandwidth and not quality. Your company has grown how big and how many channels do you have now, but the accuracy has barely improved, if not gotten worse in terrible ways? It seems many aspects are being skipped and small errors are falling through the cracks.

I do know you mentioned possible "beta" program through Floatplane for community members to review videos for accuracy, so I do hope that works out. But I can count on more than two hands the number of times I saw some glaring error or oversight that should have been noticed.

I think this is a time for LTT to focus on quality over quantity, even if it takes a hit to revenue. There needs to be a fix for this, as soon as possible.

[Dom1252]

1 minute ago, mirai99 said:

Linus claims Billet sent him a bill and he greenlit the payment, so you can re-subscribe.

I doubt the bill was high enough, I mean, if it was auctioned, the damage could have been anywhere from $2k to tens of millions

[Guest]

49 minutes 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.

Even if you auctioned it off for charity, that's still selling property that isn't yours. Stop 'mitigating' the issue with semantics, it just makes you look worse. I want to know what happened, but saying a "communication issue" isn't actually what happened. Do you not have processes for correctly marking stuff in inventory to be sent back? If so, what changes are you going to make as "we'll do better" is a nothing burger as actions speak better than a reply in a forum post.

 

Your just deflecting the issue like you've done with Trust Me Bro and all the other problems you had in the past and you don't seem to realise how bad it makes you and LMG look. People won't be able to trust Labs if you keep making the same mistakes and make minimal effort to correct them and stick your head in the sand when people have valid concerns about your ethics of accurately representing a product and your relationships to sponsorships.

Personally, your Framework investment makes me trust you less, as a lot of the videos like the once you did with them on CES show floor do not adequately disclose the investment only until 2/3rds of the way in you briefly mentioned it meaning that viewers who stopped watching or just missed it are not aware of your investment. This should of been flagged as soon as you start the video like you do with sponsored videos (both spoken and on screen). It's all these little issues that add up and make LMG seem untrustworthy and sleezy

 

edit: In addition, saying you'll only talk about it here is just admitting your wrong and too cowardly to admit imo as in the past you've talked about controversies in the past, unless you'll know you'll look bad no matter what. 

[Cavalry Canuck]

1 minute ago, Dom1252 said:

I doubt the bill was high enough, I mean, if it was auctioned, the damage could have been anywhere from $2k to tens of millions

 

If we're going to guess...

I figure about $25,000. 

 

1 minute ago, Tajl3r said:

sure little budyy next time

 

never

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean.

[Bananasplit_00]

31 minutes ago, LinusTech said:

Today sucks

Nice, maybe you can feel part of what the billet people felt when you ran their faces through the dirt on the silver screen, doubled down on it and auctioned off their IP.

 

Their IP is now out there, somewhere, ready to potentially ruin their business. What if this block is 20C better? And EK gets it, or Corsair or Byski or anyone? Boom, billet no longer exists. Even just a few degrees better because of some innovation they came up with that can now be copied.

 

This is beyond irresponsible and egregious, paying for a new prototype isn't the absolute lowest level you could go. Hiding behind "it was for charity tho guys!! It's not so bad!" is despicable.

[BankHealthy]

Like most viewers have noticed, I have been seeing a lot of those in-screen corrections lately on LTT videos. And I agree that LTT needs to let up their foot off the gas. I still enjoy and support LTT, and that's why I have finally decided to join the forums today. I personally, just see this as growing pains for the company. It's something to learn from moving forward.

[bright_things]

5 minutes ago, borus87 said:

So what you're saying is that as long as I auction off something for charity rather than taking the money to myself I can sell... sorry... "auction" anything even if I don't own it?

 

ANNOUNCEMENT:

I have Linus Cars, PC's, House and the whole LMG is for sale now. Buyer to collect. The money goes to Saving Kids With Cancer Foundation.

I see the issue as one of connotation, criminal compared to careless. An accusation of selling the block would mean that he purposely sold illegally for profit, which didn't happen. For an auction shows me that they were careless, but not criminal.

 

Edit:

I want to be clear that LMG better fix the problem, whether criminal or careless, they majorly ducked up.

[Gianluca Angeli]

31 minutes 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.

These issues aren't new and if Steve decided to post that video it's because you CLEARLY refused to listed. There is literally a whole section of the video about your staff complaining about your rushed schedule. You shouldn't "clean up the process" you should fucking slow down and check the video before publishing it.

 

Not addressing the situation on WAN is just a coward move and you'll get a shitstorm 10 times bigger by doing so.

Not that you don't deserve the shitstorm considering the whole Billet Labs situation that is genuinely embarassing and made me cringe so hard. And this joke of a reply is the cherry on top  "uwu isn't actually sold  but rather auctioned it for charity". Come on Linus, are you so out of touch? 

 

[is0p0d]

Theres so many “you need” responses to Linus lmao.
 

From folks that I’m sure the peak of their journalistic and content producing experience is posting a screenshot of their pc build on this forum.