For those who don't know it, that's a crowd-sourced youtube title replacement script, intended to purge the platform from clickbait. Made by the same devs behind the SponsorBlock addon.
I tried it but it slows down loading YouTube in Firefox too much ale it's not as kept up as I would like it to. Out of my subscriptions only LTT and Tom Scott videos are ever maintained in there.
I used to watch the wan show, but stopped because Linus was frankly becoming pretty unrelatable. It's sad to see them lose the plot like this, but I'm not surprised. I think Lmg has been growing far faster than they could keep ahead of, and the train is off the rails now...
I feel like growth is poison for content companies, especially niche content. I get where a million-view video and the associated cash is great reward. I get that people can consume content so much faster than it's created that a known creator's revenue is limited only by the rate they produce. Gotta be tempting to squeeze just a little more, cover a less interesting topic, or skip a difficult detail to get that extra bit of revenue. It's the fundamental process of enshittification, and it works on everything from LTT to EA to walmart.
Expecting people to give up money, rewards and fame - to stay a small dedicated provider with ideological purity - when there are crowds outside the door begging for just a little compromise, just this one time, is a big ask. But it's also why there's so much churn in media. Young turk comes in with great content, gets an audience, gives in to enshittification, and gets replaced by the next young turk.
Stopped since 2017 when they started using dumb thumbnails and titles, I knew it was just going to be another clickbait channel and I was right. This channel started my hobby since 2011, I even made LTT forum account on day 1. But I found GN since, so that's nice.
Stopped when Linus showed his continued ignorance towards Linux, his Stockholm Syndrome towards Windows and his general lack of geekiness. He is an ignoramus playing "Legos" and wants to see results, that's it.
Them actually running Windows Servers was always a big "Da fuq?" moment that led to a lot of laughter in my circles. Speaking of, did they (so Wendell) ever do a proper writeup of how LTT fucked up their NAS/SAN?
But I think the slavish focus on windows for the majority of their content was the correct move. They pretend they care about MORE POWAR!!!! in the various "I built a million dollar PC in my closet" videos, but LTT (and, to a lesser extent, the rest of LMG) mostly targeted "gamers" in terms of hardware. And (as someone who has been trying to shift to Linux as a daily driver on my personal computer for close to 30 years now but only succeeded this past year) Linux has not been viable for "gamers" until... basically this year. The WINE team and then later Valve have been putting in the work, but it really took The Steam Deck to make it something that major publishers would, at the very least, not actively sabotage.
And then there is just the nuance to it. If you listen to half the folk in any given linux gaming forum: AMD is the best there is and nvidia is dogshit and evil. And the other half... just don't care enough to pick that fight or explain why running closed source drivers is maybe not that big of a deal if it is to play closed source games or how slightly lower performing drivers for a massively overperforming card is "fine". Best case scenario? Every build leads to massive flame wars in the comments. But if the host is not able to even have an argument for why they chose one over the other?
Emily is usually cited as THE linux expert and what few videos she did on the topic were good. But she very much struck me as someone in a similar boat to me over the past decade or so: I love Linux and any device in my life that is not gaming-centric runs it. But my gaming PC runs Windows because i just can't be bothered to switch back and forth every time I want to get in a few rounds of Tekken or whatever. And... that is not useful to people who want to make the switch.
And now that the switch is viable? Other channels have grabbed that niche. Maybe LMG could do a pivot/spin up a channel but it would likely be closer to their mac channel in terms of "This exists...". Because the core audience are still fine with the ever increasing bloat and spyware that is windows.
And just from a sponsorship/monetary side of things. I haven't checked since Yves can go fuck himself for enabling so much abuse, but I want to say Ubi games still actively sabotage Proton and use non-compatible anti-cheat? And Ubi are one of the bigger sponsors in the influencer space. Switching to Windows for those videos might not be a good vibe. Similarly, AMD have done some amazing work in the GPU space over the years but... nvidia still gonna nvidia. It is already kind of shit that they are usually the "Look, price to performance... this is a good choice" option. But further getting a reputation for "If you are going to make your life hell and run linux, buy AMD" is probably not something their marketing reps would like.
I stopped watching a few years ago when he went full-on Communist in a lengthy political rant on the WANshow
Hopefully, he and the new CEO will take Steve's GN video as a wakeup call to right their ship Though his LTT forum post seem to indicate he's in denial anything is overtly wrong overall
It was a shame at how underutilized Anthony was Linux and BSD plus retro would have been a good topic area to expand into or start a new channel for Seems Linus is horrible at reading the market
Now he's moving LMG in a direction that is trying to make it the Canadian GN I can see Steve seeing that as a threat and encroachment on his business Thankfully, LMG has no clue what they are doing and are not looking for one but they have some really cool testing toys
Billet Labs has a good case for a lawsuit given how badly LMG has damaged their business
Oh, it was far more than that
As in the Government should pay for everything down to housing and clothing
Odd for someone that runs a company and has to pay employees Maybe it's that he doesn't want to pay them but one big payment to the government
I stopped watching when they got a Tuxedo laptop to review it, and instead of actually reviewing it the entire video was a shitpost because the laptops can have the keyboard font customized and the dumbass set it to wingdings.
I liked the LTT Translator twitter account before it got sold off / hacked / whatever. It was fun trying to guess what the fuck their stupid title even meant. At this point why even bother with a title, might as well just call each video "click me pls"