Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity

[Legitsu]

6 minutes ago, Cloudhopper said:

You double down on WAN show, while Luke was popping eye balls and trying to nudge you in the correct direction to preserve your reputation as a "reviewer"
You ignored him and just went onto your righteous rant.

You fecked this up. 
You might have had a "long history" of meeting issues head on in the past. But you have worked long and hard to destroy that history.
You stopped listening to Luke and other confidants of yours.

That's how bad it has become. And its painfully obvious for most viewers, especially the WAN show audience.

In the past 2 years you have, unfortunately, written a long history of incidents like these that severely undermine the credibility of yourself and LMG as a whole as a reliable media outlet. 

That is what you are doing here.

I mean no cap luke should have just strait up said something then

lets not make assumptions about intention thats how we got in this mess 

[systmcrsh]

i'm only a casual viewer of ltt, gn, etc... i think gn cut a bit of context from the billet thing, ie, 'we're not gonna test again with a 3090 because it will cost more money and not change anything' is really watery... out of curiosity i went and found the original wan clip (6/30 1:54), the context being, the average consumer isn't NASA (paraphrasing). i think its a totally legit take

 

as far as the prototype thing goes, its hard to weigh in w/o more info... it raises some questions, one of which is what kind of recovery agreement did billet have? <- i'm not blaming billet, but whatever

[Legitsu]

1 minute ago, systmcrsh said:

i'm only a casual viewer of ltt, gn, etc... i think gn cut a bit of context from the billet thing, ie, 'we're not gonna test again with a 3090 because it will cost more money and not change anything' is really watery... out of curiosity i went and found the original wan clip (6/30 1:54), the context being, the average consumer isn't NASA (paraphrasing). i think its a totally legit take

 

as far as the prototype thing goes, its hard to weigh in w/o more info... it raises some questions, one of which is what kind of recovery agreement did billet have? <- i'm not blaming billet, but whatever

I am betting billet will be on wanshow friday! 

[Dom1252]

2 minutes ago, Legitsu said:

I mean no cap luke should have just strait up said something then

lets not make assumptions about intention thats how we got in this mess 

what do you mean? he did say something, Linus just ignored him, as per usual

[JoshuaScholar]

1 minute ago, Legitsu said:

I am betting billet will be on wanshow friday! 

Linus, use your Canadian super-power, humility!

[Deedikjepijn]

Im unsubscribing my Floatplane subscription. Have a better experience using YouTube Revanced anyway! I'm NOT okey with LMG not taking ANY responsibility whatsoever and even saying that he didn't do "proper journalism" is really just saying that you (and for that part LMG) does not have a clue for the responsabillitys they have as a tech YouTubers. You guys could make a video about what happened and how you where gonna fix it but no you just blamed someone else for doing it wrong (even tho they did they job as Journalist, just not in your favor). Hope the message that I and a lot of other people have comes trough and you guys change the buisness to be accurate instead of yolo as many videos as possible.

Have a great day and I really do hope the channel improves (or fixes what is bad)!

[Mr_Guillotine]

13 hours ago, Skiiwee29 said:

Just for clarity and clarification, it is Linus's personal money invested in framework, not LTT or LMG. 

That doesn't really matter though tbh. (not saying I have any issue with it). When you're the face of a company, your personal actions are almost always going to be viewed as being the actions of the company. Your donations and investments will be seen as those of the company, and since that is where the "personal" money comes from, the business, it isn't a huge stretch. It's why when a CEO of a company donates to hate groups, people will boycott that company. Their money comes from the business, which comes from customers, so people who do not want to contribute will stop doing business with them, even if the CEO says that it's not the company donating, it's just him, as a private citizen (I mean, that's basically the problem many have with Chick-fil-A)

Obviously in this example, Linus is invested in a company that has an approach that many of us actually do support, but no matter how much some of us may trust Linus, I'd be a liar if I said that anyone viewing it as a conflict of interest is just wrong. I have to apply the same standards here as I would anywhere else, and then decide how much personal hypocrisy I'm willing to live with. I'm fine with Linus investing in Framework. I agree with their approach to things and I want to see them succeed or at least see them influence the rest of industry into the same direction. I accept that makes me at least a little bit of a hypocrite. 

[Elinzar]

8 minutes ago, Cloudhopper said:

No Linus you don't anymore. 
THAT is the issue.

You lost touch, you are too tied up in your own world. People have told you in that very video that your approach to billet was wrong . 
You just dimissed any of their concerns.
You double down on WAN show, while Luke was popping eye balls and trying to nudge you in the correct direction to preserve your reputation as a "reviewer"
You ignored him and just went onto your righteous rant.

You fecked this up. 
You might have had a "long history" of meeting issues head on in the past. But you have worked long and hard to destroy that history.
You stopped listening to Luke and other confidants of yours.

That's how bad it has become. And its painfully obvious for most viewers, especially the WAN show audience.

In the past 2 years you have, unfortunately, written a long history of incidents like these that severely undermine the credibility of yourself and LMG as a whole as a reliable media outlet. 

That is what you are doing here.

i dont think anybody should make statements in behalf of luke

talking about what you think luke wanted to say or not is none of our concern and honestly is basically stiring the pot around a friendship for the sake of drama and i honestly think is a super dick move both for you and GN to even say anything about it, im sure Luke would have voiced his concerns directly to Linus off camera if he had to

the concern of everybody is about what LTT is doing both to Billet labs and their accurancy in data and nothing else

[Legitsu]

2 minutes ago, Dom1252 said:

what do you mean? he did say something, Linus just ignored him, as per usual

he didn't say anything directly he implied that he agreed it should  have been re-tested

but again and I can not belive I need to keep saying this

linus was right it was dumb nobody other then somebody that works at nasa is going to care 

 

[bandainamcofan]

3 minutes ago, systmcrsh said:

the context being, the average consumer isn't NASA (paraphrasing). i think its a totally legit take

Doesn't matter. You're reviewing for the people who MIGHT buy such a product. Either do it right or don't do it.

[Goodminestrina]

10 hours ago, bizzehdee said:

contacting linus personally, and resolving it quietly. is the exact opposite of "proper journalistic practices", what an absolute narcasistic arrogant buffoon

An acutal journalist, usually, reaches out to ALL the parties involved in a situation. GN did it for countless other companies too, and if they consider LMG on par as the likes of Gigabyte or Newegg, then they should have reached out to ask for comments too. It's as simple as that, it's not about "resolving it quietly" it's about integrity.

[Legitsu]

2 minutes ago, JoshuaScholar said:

Linus, use your Canadian super-power, humility!

its the best counter move get billet on wanshow talk about this make it known there is no hard feelings and we are moving on

 

will take the teeth right out of Steves Little video and make all the hyperactive pitchforks sit the guy fawkes down 

 

 

[Major_Hylton]

I’ve been a fan of LTT / LMG for more years than I care to remember however I decided to join the forum today simply to post this. 
The GN vid has many good points and Steve delivered the key messages in a well produced way however I think some contributors here need to take a step back. Every member of this forum joined because at some point they enjoyed / discovered / learnt something from an LTT / LMG video. 

I’ve worked in data for many years and it’s easy to make a mistake, it’s also easy to miss the mistake – when you’ve been staring at a spreadsheet for a period of time with a deadline, things are missed and this is where QA / QC come into play, which Linus has already said many times is constantly being improved.

The company is moving into a new area with the Lab (more granular analysis than previously needed for a one time review) and it’s going to take time to find their footing – as already called out many times there is still work to be done here on many counts and hopefully this helps steer the ship in the right direction.

What happened with the Billet Labs water block is terrible and I feel for them – however it happened, someone missed an email (which is easy to do) and someone from the LTX team wasn’t aware they couldn’t auction the item. This was not down to Linus; it was down to the team in charge of the auction.

Linus has already stated he is going to compensate Billet Labs and while that won’t put the company back in the same position (they’ll need to use the compensation to remake the prototype which takes time) hopefully it will help Billet avoid any further lost opportunity.

 

I’m not an LTT / LMG apologised – I’m just a fan who understands that mistakes happen and fearful that the forum is turning into Reddit.
 

[Dom1252]

3 minutes ago, systmcrsh said:

i'm only a casual viewer of ltt, gn, etc... i think gn cut a bit of context from the billet thing, ie, 'we're not gonna test again with a 3090 because it will cost more money and not change anything' is really watery... out of curiosity i went and found the original wan clip (6/30 1:54), the context being, the average consumer isn't NASA (paraphrasing). i think its a totally legit take

 

as far as the prototype thing goes, its hard to weigh in w/o more info... it raises some questions, one of which is what kind of recovery agreement did billet have? <- i'm not blaming billet, but whatever

"i think its a totally legit take" 

what? if they didn't want to test it with correct HW, then why not delete the video and make apology for making it in the first place? 

 

I mean, it's like testing AMD CPU in Intel motherboard... even if you pick CPU that doesn't make sense to buy, it's not an honest review if the product there doesn't work at all, because you're too lazy to test it correctly, with HW that THEY SENT TO YOU with it 

[Blademaster91]

29 minutes ago, filpo said:

It was a hotheaded gpu yes but it's still pretty good. It trails behind the 4080 which I think is pretty good for it

Someone was calling a 3090Ti an outdated GPU.   Also for LTT to be putting a 3090Ti block on a 4090 makes no sense, even for someone that never water cooled a gpu sort of video, it seems like anyone spending $800 on a water block would at least check before buying it.

[JoshuaScholar]

If there's one thing I disagree with Steve on, it's his implication that there's a problem with Linus' investment in Framework.

 

Bigger companies are starting to look at making environmentally friendly, fixable, upgradable laptops or phones.  Thank Framework for that.

 

This will be a huge improvement in mass industry on planet Earth!

[the_delicate_snowflake]

10 hours ago, LinusTech said:

 

We can test that... with this post. Will the "It was a mistake (a bad one, but a mistake) and they're taking care of it" reality manage to have the same reach? Let's see if anyone actually wants to know what happened. 

Tl;dr: GN makes some legit points about their concerns, please address them properly outside of forum without reach so we all know where we stand. You don't have to agree on everything, but you should be able to defend your decisions and values outside of the place where only the techies go. 

 

Sure we want to know both sides of the story. With your history of addressing everything head on its even weirder that you would want to contain your reaction to the forum which inherently won't have the same reach... 

Many people don't even know about the forum's existence. 

 

Yes, GN can be purist to an extreme level and are often straight up cynical. LMG has some major internal communication and system issues though, if you manage to promise twice to return it and then auction it off. 

 

Just get through all of this on WAN show or somewhere where you actually have a reach please. You did a whole video about a stupid comment about SSD speed. Why wouldn't you address something seemingly way more serious and substantiated than that? 

 

I used to admire your ability to ignore your ego situations where I knew my first reaction would be knee-jerk defense. Please continue to do so. 

 

No, you can't please everyone, but I think you should stand behind your values and address such major issue publicly. You can admit and explain the things where you agree you have made a mistake and you can explain the reasoning behind the things you don't consider to be an issue. I don't think some of the things GN complained about are as problematic as he claims, but how do we know where we stand and what exactly to expect from your content in terms of value. 

[RWxAshley]

10 hours ago, LinusTech said:

There won't be a big WAN Show segment about this or anything. Most of what I have to say, I've already said, and I've done so privately.

To Steve, I expressed my disappointment that he didn't go through proper journalistic practices in creating this piece. He has my email and number (along with numerous other members of our team) and could have asked me for context that may have proven to be valuable (like the fact that we didn't 'sell' the monoblock, but rather auctioned it for charity due to a miscommunication... AND the fact that while we haven't sent payment yet, we have already agreed to compensate Billet Labs for the cost of their prototype). There are other issues, but I've told him that I won't be drawn into a public sniping match over this and that I'll be continuing to move forward in good faith as part of 'Team Media'. When/if he's ready to do so again I'll be ready.

To my team (and my CEO's team, but realistically I was at the helm for all of these errors, so I need to own it), I stressed the importance of diligence in our work because there are so many eyes on us. We are going through some growing pains - we've been very public about them in the interest of transparency - and it's clear we have some work to do on internal processes and communication. We have already been doing a lot of work internally to clean up our processes, but these things take time. Rome wasn't built in a day, but that's no excuse for sloppiness.

Now, for my community, all I can say is the same things I always say. We know that we're not perfect. We wear our imperfection on our sleeves in the interest of ensuring that we stay accountable to you. But it's sad and unfortunate when this transparency gets warped into a bad thing. The Labs team is hard at work hard creating processes and tools to generate data that will benefit all consumers - a work in progress that is very much not done and that we've communicated needs to be treated as such. Do we have notes under some videos? Yes. Is it because we are striving for transparency/improvement? Yeah... What we're doing hasn't been in many years, if ever.. and we would make a much larger correction if the circumstances merited it. Listing the wrong amount of cache on a table for a CPU review is sloppy, but given that our conclusions are drawn based on our testing, not the spec sheet, it doesn't materially change the recommendation. That doesn't mean these things don't matter. We've set KPIs for our writing/labs team around accuracy, and we are continually installing new checks and balances to ensure that things continue to get better. If you haven't seen the improvement, frankly I wonder if you're really looking for it... The thoroughness that we managed on our last handful of GPU videos is getting really incredible given the limited time we have for these embargoes. I'm REALLY excited about what the future will hold.

 

With all of that said, I still disagree that the Billet Labs video (not the situation with the return, which I've already addressed above) is an 'accuracy' issue. It's more like I just read the room wrong. We COULD have re-tested it with perfect accuracy, but to do so PROPERLY - accounting for which cases it could be installed in (none) and which radiators it would be plumbed with (again... mystery) would have been impossible... and also didn't affect the conclusion of the video... OR SO I THOUGHT...

 

I wanted to evaluate it as a product, and as a product, IF it could manage to compete with the temperatures of the highest end blocks on the planet, it still wouldn't make sense to buy... so from my point of view, re-testing it and finding out that yes, it did in fact run cooler made no difference to the conclusion, so it didn't really make a difference.

 

Adam and I were talking about this today. He advocated for re-testing it regardless of how non-viable it was as a product at the time and I think he expressed really well today why it mattered. It was like making a video about a supercar. It doesn't mater if no one watching will buy it. They just wanna see it rip.  I missed that, but it wasn't because I didn't care about the consumer.. it was because I was so focused on how this product impacted a potential buyer. Either way, clearly my bad, but my intention was never to harm Billet Labs. I specifically called out their incredible machining skills because I wanted to see them create something with a viable market for it and was hoping others would appreciate the fineness of the craftsmanship even if the product was impractical. I still hope they move forward building something else because they obviously have talent and I've watched countless niche water cooling vendors come and go. It's an astonishingly unforgiving market.

 

Either way, I'm sorry I got the community's priorities mixed-up on this one, and that we didn't show the Billet in the best light. Our intention wasn't to hurt anyone. We wanted no one to buy it (because it's an egregious waste of money no matter what temps it runs at) and we wanted Billet to make something marketable (so they can, y'know, eat).

 

With all of this in mind, it saddens me how quickly the pitchforks were raised over this. It also comes across a touch hypocritical when some basic due diligence could have helped clarify much of it. I have a LONG history of meeting issues head on and I've never been afraid to answer questions, which lands me in hot water regularly, but helps keep me in tune with my peers and with the community. The only reason I can think of not to ask me is because my honest response might be inconvenient. 

 

We can test that... with this post. Will the "It was a mistake (a bad one, but a mistake) and they're taking care of it" reality manage to have the same reach? Let's see if anyone actually wants to know what happened. I hope so, but it's been disheartening seeing how many people were willing to jump on us here. Believe it or not, I'm a real person and so is the rest of my team. We are trying our best, and if what we were doing was easy, everyone would do it. Today sucks.

 

Thanks for reading this.

This is a very poor response, and you NEED to watch the GN video. Not once, not even twice. I think you need to take the time to fully watch it through like its the  documentary on your life because this will become LMG's reputation if you don't start steering the ship back on course Today, and publicly show exactly what you are doing to correct these issues. No half hearted corporate statements, no blowing this off like it'll be fixed eventually. No saying your still a young company growing into it like someone in their 40s living in the basement of your family home.

You absolutely have the time to take on this genuine criticism head on and realize the ultimate conclusion of Steve's video. This isn't some random forum troll, or the subreddit. This is one of your peers that could be using this chance to let you sink your own ship, and grow themselves beyond your channel that has choosen to make it public so that its harder for you to ignore. This is someone that I think knows if they talked to you on the phone you would've nodded your head, and kept going like nothing is wrong because you honestly don't see anything wrong with the direction of your channel when there are serious enough concerns bubbling within your company that its grown, festered, and ultimately begun hurting those companies sharing the same space as you. That LMG has, in a way, begun growing into a youtube, or a twitch. This company is at risk of growing into the very thing you yourself have criticized in the past for mishandling, and hurting smaller creators that exist thanks to you. You aren't ltt with less then a million subscribers anymore. You don't get to have this young tech start up attitude that you'll fix things at a Laissez-faire pace, and expect throwing money at people to solve breaking of personal trust, and business relations. You need to actually sit down, and listen to the folks around you saying that something has gone horrible wrong.

[FireFrostY]

The amount of people defending the LTT just because they they are "fanboys" is just sad, don't get me wrong I'm a fanboy myself. But what it is important is to stay objective,  owning to their own mistakes, only thing i see are just excuses, and when i was watching Nexus video i was shocked how many mistakes LTT makes that i din't even know or noticed they are mistakes, except for obvious ones with added caption. Now that being said if they make so many mistakes and not owning or even correcting them, how can i be sure i can trust accuracy of their videos without checking other sources as well. As Linus said we will just have to take it as is and I quote: "Just trust me bro". And yeah i know "Just trust me bro" was just the expression he used, and it was perfect explanation for what he was trying to say.

 

p.s. Don't hate me for this, but in my opinion all this could be handled a lot better. 

 

edit: spelling

[Sdogga]

17 minutes ago, Pulpamos said:

Linus and team,

 

As with other things, when people react to things, whether reacting positively or negatively, it means they care.

 

I have watched you and your videos since I can remember, since Luke was part of the channel and you recorded videos in your garage cooling PC's with Refrigerators.

 

When I saw GN video yesterday, I though "finally someone who speaks about this!"

 

We love your channel and we want it do do great. But we also want you and the leadership team to stop, look around and make some needed course corrections.

 

We also want you to know we appreciate what you and all of your team do. Take this opportunity to self reflect and make a change with the support of the community.

 

 

I think this encapsulates how I feel too. I really don't look at LTT and go "grr, stupid evil money grubbers!" - I love the team, the channel, and the content.

 

But your facts and research HAS to matter. It has to count. I cannot continue to believe in new tech news or great products or come here for my 6969 RTX SuperTI™ review to see if it's worth my fifth kidney if those aren't there. It's not an option, and I'd rather half - even a fifth - the amount of content if I knew that that content was utterly infallible.

[SypherX]

If it is true that GN didn't reach out to Linus or anyone else for comment/better understanding prior to writing the video, then I'm seeing this as more of hit piece from GN. They have motive too.
 

LTT and GN could live in the same space when Linus was seen more for entertainment value in the tech space, rather than the scientific testing that GN does. Now that LTT is going down the route of LTT Labs, this hurts the smaller YouTubers who built their reputation on rigorous and less-mainstream testing. With LMG now occupying both spaces, it potentially takes a chunk out of what GN are doing already or their future audience.

 

GN also come off as the good guys here, since they didn't monetize this video and mentioned it prominently, since they knew this would cause a stir. It positions them as a true, consumer-friendly alternative to LTT Labs saying that LTT testing is already bad/inaccurate.

 

Has LMG made mistakes here? Oh, 100% buddy.  Am I concerned about the quality of the videos lately and how a prototype was incorrectly sold? Absolutely. But the fact that GN has accused LMG of bad practices, lack of ethics and a proper investigation (testing) when they didn't do that prior to publishing a hit-piece video says quite a lot.

[SoldiersFortune]

10 hours ago, LinusTech said:

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.

 

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.

No, Linus, this is not a case of you "reading the room wrong". This is about how you treated a small company's product with blatant disrespect because you couldn't be bothered to test it properly to achieve a fair review. And the reasoning for this decision appeared to be entirely monetary from your comment on the WAN show. It just wasn't worth your team's time and money to go back and run the tests correctly, regardless of the damage your video could have done to Billet Labs reputation. They trusted you with their product and you broke that trust by refusing to give it a proper trial.

 

Your company is making a huge deal about the launch of the Lab, yet you don't seem to be connecting the dots. How are your viewers supposed to trust your testing/review methodology coming out of the Lab if you are going to be flippant with going back and redoing flawed tests on products that have been entrusted to you simply because you decide they aren't worth your time or you believe they are a bad value?

 

Furthermore, the block that Billet Labs provided to you was a Prototype; a proof of concept. Of course it wasn't going to be a good value to the average consumer! It was literally 1 of 1. Products become cheaper when they are mass produced and this was nowhere near the finished product. If the intent in providing LTT with their only working prototype was to build interest in their design so that they could launch a cheaper, more refined version later on with broad name recognition, your video effectively killed that goal by never showing what their design's full potential was. Small companies live and die by this sort of publicity.

 

Your message to Billet Labs was you aren't worth my time. And that attitude isn't going to make other vendors want to send you their products. And it certainly isn't going to instill trust in LTT's review/testing methodology.

[LickyLickyBumBum]

10 hours ago, Srius1 said:

Steve is lame for doing this piece on LTT for someone who linus called his friend. I can see lots of other creators not dealing with GN any more for this. I bought over $400 of product from GN but will not spend another penny there due to this.

 

zero need for this BS hit piece . There are tons of other stories he could have done and this is dumb and just starting a fight and drama for no reason. Linus has said multiple times LTT videos are entertainment first. They never said they were 1000% accurate . This is like being mad at McDonald’s for their burgers not looking the exact same as the picture…

MF thinks this is Godfather, get your goofy "You come to me on the day of my daughter's wedding and ask me for a favor" ahh out of here.

 

Go seek your beloved echo chamber elsewhere, like on Reddit, where everyone fellates each other and disagreement is sacrilegious.

[Garud]

10 hours ago, LinusTech said:

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.

@LinusTech You need to understand that there is no 'Team Media' around you. LMG is big enough to make other tech youtubers feel antagonistic as seen with the HUB response over Twitter and now GN's video. And the current climate tends to automatically support the smaller creator. I think you need to consider that no other tech youtubers are your friends or colleagues. They are out for blood and will turn every lapse, every miscommunication into cannon fodder against you. So, you need to stop expecting others to fact check with you before publishing. LMG will never be criticized in good faith as that doesn't bring any value to others. All criticism will be levied with bad faith or at best, neutrally.

 

To the forum members waiting to finish reading this before telling me how wrong I am and what a piece of shit of a human being I am for taking LTT's side, I am not. Neither am I taking GN's side. I have noticed the drop in quality but as someone who has their own startup, I am aware of how difficult it is to grow as a company. As such, I have a lot of patience in this situation and am hoping that they finish the Lab setup/website soon. As for the billet's lab fiasco, I am sure there is more to it than anyone is talking about. And for the conflict of interest, where were you guys when Linus was taking community feedback over his decision? I personally don't find any CoI and wish Linus would invest in more consumer friendly tech.

With this, I will be turning of notifications, so that I don''t ruin my mood reading the horrible things you folks are writing here.

[Godiwa]

10 hours ago, LinusTech said:

There won't be a big WAN Show segment about this or anything. Most of what I have to say, I've already said, and I've done so privately.

To Steve, I expressed my disappointment that he didn't go through proper journalistic practices in creating this piece. He has my email and number (along with numerous other members of our team) and could have asked me for context that may have proven to be valuable (like the fact that we didn't 'sell' the monoblock, but rather auctioned it for charity due to a miscommunication... AND the fact that while we haven't sent payment yet, we have already agreed to compensate Billet Labs for the cost of their prototype). There are other issues, but I've told him that I won't be drawn into a public sniping match over this and that I'll be continuing to move forward in good faith as part of 'Team Media'. When/if he's ready to do so again I'll be ready.

To my team (and my CEO's team, but realistically I was at the helm for all of these errors, so I need to own it), I stressed the importance of diligence in our work because there are so many eyes on us. We are going through some growing pains - we've been very public about them in the interest of transparency - and it's clear we have some work to do on internal processes and communication. We have already been doing a lot of work internally to clean up our processes, but these things take time. Rome wasn't built in a day, but that's no excuse for sloppiness.

Now, for my community, all I can say is the same things I always say. We know that we're not perfect. We wear our imperfection on our sleeves in the interest of ensuring that we stay accountable to you. But it's sad and unfortunate when this transparency gets warped into a bad thing. The Labs team is hard at work hard creating processes and tools to generate data that will benefit all consumers - a work in progress that is very much not done and that we've communicated needs to be treated as such. Do we have notes under some videos? Yes. Is it because we are striving for transparency/improvement? Yeah... What we're doing hasn't been in many years, if ever.. and we would make a much larger correction if the circumstances merited it. Listing the wrong amount of cache on a table for a CPU review is sloppy, but given that our conclusions are drawn based on our testing, not the spec sheet, it doesn't materially change the recommendation. That doesn't mean these things don't matter. We've set KPIs for our writing/labs team around accuracy, and we are continually installing new checks and balances to ensure that things continue to get better. If you haven't seen the improvement, frankly I wonder if you're really looking for it... The thoroughness that we managed on our last handful of GPU videos is getting really incredible given the limited time we have for these embargoes. I'm REALLY excited about what the future will hold.

 

With all of that said, I still disagree that the Billet Labs video (not the situation with the return, which I've already addressed above) is an 'accuracy' issue. It's more like I just read the room wrong. We COULD have re-tested it with perfect accuracy, but to do so PROPERLY - accounting for which cases it could be installed in (none) and which radiators it would be plumbed with (again... mystery) would have been impossible... and also didn't affect the conclusion of the video... OR SO I THOUGHT...

 

I wanted to evaluate it as a product, and as a product, IF it could manage to compete with the temperatures of the highest end blocks on the planet, it still wouldn't make sense to buy... so from my point of view, re-testing it and finding out that yes, it did in fact run cooler made no difference to the conclusion, so it didn't really make a difference.

 

Adam and I were talking about this today. He advocated for re-testing it regardless of how non-viable it was as a product at the time and I think he expressed really well today why it mattered. It was like making a video about a supercar. It doesn't mater if no one watching will buy it. They just wanna see it rip.  I missed that, but it wasn't because I didn't care about the consumer.. it was because I was so focused on how this product impacted a potential buyer. Either way, clearly my bad, but my intention was never to harm Billet Labs. I specifically called out their incredible machining skills because I wanted to see them create something with a viable market for it and was hoping others would appreciate the fineness of the craftsmanship even if the product was impractical. I still hope they move forward building something else because they obviously have talent and I've watched countless niche water cooling vendors come and go. It's an astonishingly unforgiving market.

 

Either way, I'm sorry I got the community's priorities mixed-up on this one, and that we didn't show the Billet in the best light. Our intention wasn't to hurt anyone. We wanted no one to buy it (because it's an egregious waste of money no matter what temps it runs at) and we wanted Billet to make something marketable (so they can, y'know, eat).

 

With all of this in mind, it saddens me how quickly the pitchforks were raised over this. It also comes across a touch hypocritical when some basic due diligence could have helped clarify much of it. I have a LONG history of meeting issues head on and I've never been afraid to answer questions, which lands me in hot water regularly, but helps keep me in tune with my peers and with the community. The only reason I can think of not to ask me is because my honest response might be inconvenient. 

 

We can test that... with this post. Will the "It was a mistake (a bad one, but a mistake) and they're taking care of it" reality manage to have the same reach? Let's see if anyone actually wants to know what happened. I hope so, but it's been disheartening seeing how many people were willing to jump on us here. Believe it or not, I'm a real person and so is the rest of my team. We are trying our best, and if what we were doing was easy, everyone would do it. Today sucks.

 

Thanks for reading this.

1. You made a huge F-Up and should own it, not try to disown the messenger

2. No they had no reason to contact you for a comment first, did you contact them first when you spoke badly about them (without mentioning a name) even though most people knew exactly who you talked about?

3. No SoP changes even though you stole/fenced a one off proof of concept for a tiny startup company that could ruin them... WTF is wrong with you? There should be a "EVERYONE IS HERE NOW - MEETING" so this NEVER EVER happens again...

4. Have you gotten the cooler back from the illegal sale (call it an "auction for charity" again and think it makes it any better and you deserve for all the viewers to come smack you over the head...) and delivered it back to Billet Lab? I know you paid "some" compensation to them... Did you just sit back and felt all chummy then or did you actually put in some effort? Get the cooler back, pay the buyer WELL for your mistake and have it shipped to them instantly... I don't care if you need to pay a personal courier to pick it up at the buyers place and handdeliver it to Billet Labs... JUST DO IT NOW !

5. Writing this arrogant post on the forum most of your viewers never visit it not "enough" you do need to go out publicly on your main channel and fes up... With a VERY public excuse of your misconduct and illegal behaviour (and when I say you I talk about LTT) and you will explain very clearly how you will make sure this doesn't happen again and you will also (off camera) have a very serious talk with everyone in the chain of custody of the cooler and find out where it slipped and make sure they know they fucked up... I am not asking for you to fire someone... and to be honest Terren should actually do that not Linus... If there is severe lack of judgement then yes you can fire someone but we all make mistakes and firing someone isn't something to take lightly...

6. accuracy and factual facts is important when you are a tech reviewer and no a small 1 second blip on the screen is not good enough (it can be fine for a minor spec sheet thing like the cache issue) but retake a clip if needed (TAKE THE DAMN TIME) stop rushing stuff it's BAD... or do a voiceover... if there are several "oops'es" in the same video... remove it, reupload... yes it sucks... but spreading bad info is BAD INFO and BAD BEHAVIOUR and such a large company should really have someone checking the manuscript... and checking the video... because "shiz happens" but if you throw all QC out the window and just go 100Mph down the road then you will crash eventually... take GN's video as a "hey bud, wake up" and actually LISTEN do it... notice the clips from your OWN employees? Yeah? Maybe listen to them too? I stopped taking your "reviews" seriously "a while ago" simply because they were not useful, they were rushed, inaccurate etc. etc. now I watch you now and then as a "haha funny" channel just like people watches Tik Tok... but you say you want to make great stuff with the LABS and all... PROVE IT!

To all the "bla bla ignore him, he just made a new account to hate on our king" this is an OLD account... I just don't post here much... But I felt this was important enough to dust it off and voice my opinion... I am not a "fan" of any channel... I very carefully chose who I listen to when I make hardware choices... If people know they make mistakes and just brushes them off because "reasons" then I stop watching them, then they are no better than russian propaganda... If small channels can put in the time (and money) to do it properly, then a huge 100+ million dollar channel can do it too... and make it right the first time, then you don't have to do it twice...

Now come with a proper and PUBLIC response... then lets all move into the future together with a stronger and better LTT...