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That whole video, and the follow-up, were incredible. I used to trust LTT quite a bit, but after the video, I've just chunks of respect for LTT. Dunno if i can ever trust them.
Edit:
I work in the tech industry. I work for an A tier company that makes servers, storage and more. I cannot imagine fucking up a benchmark/performance characterisation chart THIS badly even for an internal presentation.
I have spent hours double checking and re-running tests to ensure I'm getting the right numbers.
And to see a channel as big as LTT goofing up numbers so badly, which have the potential to affect thousands of purchasing decisions, i can't even.
We also work with vendors, who sometimes send hardware prototypes. And we can never be THIS unprofessional to them.
I will say this, and some may consider this my hot take; I feel like Linus needs to step back from responding to community feedback as well. I get that it's his company and he probably feels responsibility to respond, but he does not respond well to criticism. The biggest tell on how his employees feel was Luke's face during the video. It was obvious even without him saying anything that he knew the hot take response was not going to turn out well. These situations are part of being a CEO not an owner and Linus needs to show that he trusts the new CEO enough to respond accordingly. Linus continues to handle this problem in the exact wrong manner when he shouldn't be handling it at all m
Luke's face during the video.
Man I felt so bad for him. I think he should've spoken up and called Linus out.
Feels like the ADHD (and maybe autism) play a good part in that.
My personal reviews from the school days were often like that: Not responding well to criticism.Many assumptions, many ways but only a few will get it all back on track to being a trustworthy source.
And like you said: Linus needs to step back from being community feedback (lwt that the community manager handle) and let WAN show be a primarily tech talk focused live show with a community Q/A. Maybe let the CEO be a regular (once every X weeks) so community can give him targeted questions and let the other weeks be about the company/Linus/Luke/Dan and just a normal Q and A without the business talk.If his disabilities is a hindrance to him being effective in his role at the company it is time to change roles.
A disability does not excuse this kind of behavior.
I wouldnt call it a disability as more of a handicap.
It's just that the communication may be different and that may be the reason he doubles down.
I am by no means a psychotherapist so my opinion should be taken as an atom of salt at best.Fyi disability and handicap are interchangeable in this context.
Thanks for the information (sometimes I hate language).
Wasn't aware of it being the same in english nor my native language. You never stop learning, right?Yeah, handicapped is the supposedly "polite" way to say disabled, but me and every other disabled person I've really talked to about it finds it rather patronizing tbh.
I like to describe myself as legally retarded, it makes people either laugh or get so awkward that I laugh.
That's a great attitude to have my man!
As someone who probably has undiagnosed ADHD/neurodivergence (based off first hand accounts from other people) I will agree.
I talk from personal experience. Many have said, that I supposedly retreat into my "snail house" when uncomfortable or (I assume) feel threatened in my position and become defensive instead of open to the criticism.
Maybe this trait is more common around ADHD/autism folks?
But well, assuming will not change anything and I am no psychotherapist...
I'm somewhat conflicted on the entire matter. I felt like their quality was slipping for some time and it's been difficult to watch them.
Linus has handled almost every community crisis extremely poorly because when under pressure he gets defensive and speaks without thinking often pouring gasoline on the fire.
At the same time I can understand his motivations as the livelihoods of his now very large number of employees depends on it.
I think if LTT had responded officially and earnestly to the criticism addressing and laying out of roadmap for remediation it would have bought a lot of goodwill. I think Linux needs to be removed from LTT public relations but I don't think that will ever happen.
Truly a sad day, glad we have GN
Yes, for some time I felt the best videos from them where the infrastructure and server ones, just Jake and Linus united in chaos. The reviews in the other hand, as soon as you look at the graphs for more then the time they are shown, something felt off.
Totally agree about the infrastructure and server point. The house and upgrade videos are great too because of the chaos and personalities. I personally like the house videos because I have similar projects to centralize my PCs and have gone through some of those struggles. The reviews at this point are just a reminder that a new product is out and to do some research if it's something I'm interested in.
Removing him from public relations means removing him from the WAN show, which is a significant revenue source for them
The wan show is arguably one of the better content pieces they put out. You actually get a good solid few hours of opinions and stories (and the occasional justification for their latest controversy)
How much revenue will be lost because of him running his mouth?
Change up the show and don't let him address criticism, simple as.
As I said in another comment: Maybe remove a part of him from that and let WAN show be just a tech talk + community Q/A + anecdotes.
Maybe every few weeks give the new CEO the questions that accumulated about business for the transparency Linus wants to show/talks about.community Q/A
That's where a significant amount of linus' previous controversies have come from
Fair point. I meant it more in regards of anecdotes and past experiences and less in the way it evolved to.
I think my communication and lack of english skill is hindering me in what I mean.Basically less of that and more of the other stuff that will cause less controversy.
He kinda responded to it in a forum post. One paragraph about "improving processes and communication".
The rest was him doubling down on everything.
He literally said that they auctioned the billet block and didn't sell it. Like.. what?! Are we playing semantics here?
And he again emphasised that they didn't want to "waste" the money to test the billet block properly, and he actually said that he didn't want anyone to buy the billet block. In these exact words.
Gross, they need to stop letting him speak for the company, his employees don't deserve this.
Seems Linus is in love with money now.
Always has been
Exactly. How do you think it got to this point? “Growing pains” aka stretching yourself beyond your means to take more money
What video? I'm out of the loop
Is there a tl;dr? As much as I utterly respect what Tech Jesus does, I find his content utterly boring. Feels like I'm watching a presentation at work. It's the place to look at for cold hard facts and genuine reviews though.
It's really worth the watch. The main thing everyone is upset at is LTTs treatment of a small two man startup Billet Labs that sent LTT their one of a kind prototype watercooler. It would cool a cpu and gpu at the same time. LTT used a 4090, which it was not designed for, and they shit all over it.
Billet Labs sent them a 3090 ti, build guide, the cooler, and talked to an employee there about design choices that was not communicated to Linus as Linus criticized a lot that should have been covered. If you watch the LTT review video of the cooler under the context of this being a two man group startup showing off their prototype, the video comes off as very flippant and unprofessional. It was a LTT shit show video where the entertainment came from the use of metaphorical duct tape and bailing wire to make something work with no regard to how their opinions could break or make Billet Labs.
On the WAN show Linus said he didn't want to spend the $500 bucks in man hours to do the tests correctly and the results, even if significantly good, wouldn't change his opinion that "no one should ever buy this."
Billet Labs needed the prototype and video card back and was told twice they'd get it back. LTT sold the prototype at an auction for charity.
Linus put out a response, after Steve's video, making it sound like they were already in talks to pay Billet Labs back for the cost of the prototype. In a follow-up video Steve reached out to Billet, Billet says that they had not heard anything else from LTT until Steve's video.
That's just the core issue that everyone is mad about, there is a TON of stuff covered in the video and its worth watching. It's like a respectful professional nerd "Content Cop" video with the amount of depth he goes into everything.
There are basically 3 major points:
-LMG is pushing videos out too fast. Not enough editorial review to catch glaring errors and can be misleading to consumers.
-LMG was lent a custom prototype of a GPU waterblock by Billet Labs for testing and review. LMG was told it was for a 3090 specifically but decided to test it on a 4090 instead. It ended up performing terribly and was reviewed as essentially a bad product that "no one" should buy. He doubled down on this even after people pointed out he used the wrong GPU. Then to add insult to injury, he auctioned off the prototype where Billet's competitors were in attendance (not sure if they got a hold of it, but the issue still remains) instead of returning it as promised. So now Billet is not only sitting on top of a very negative review, they are missing essentially their best prototype.
-Lastly, some ethics concerns around their review process such as offering favorable reviews to certain vendors like Framework (which Linus had invested in), Asus, and a few others. As well as how they treat their employees (grind)
It's actually entertaining, but as a (rather long) summary (mind you that I'm doing this from memory)
- Clip of an LTT employee taking a jab at GN and HUB while presenting their labs by saying something along the lines of "our reviews are more precise because we retest everything everytime", which is a lie.
- Lots of stupid and big mistakes that should have been noticed by anyone looking at the data, like the 4090 being 300% faster than the 3090Ti just in one game/test, when it should not.
- Many of those mistakes not being corrected at all, and if they are, they are done in the laziest of ways and as barebones as possible. For example in the previously mentioned 4090 review, they only "corrected" the aforementioned problem in a comment (which was not even pinned until the community complained), but ignored other problems that were present in the video.
- Many other vids are so lazily done that even if they know they have made a mistake, rather than reshooting it (the whole vid or just that fragment), they will just include a callout in the vid. Not a problem if this were in 1 or 2 videos from time to time, but as of late, it is a frequent problem.
- Conflict of interests/Biases. In a video GN put out as an example, LTT implied that all Asus products are good. A more egregious example is that they like Noctua products so much, that even when their own testing shows that the CPU is thermal throttling with Noctua products, they will still recommend it over anything else.
- Delaying a review of an AMD cpu because his results weren't similar to the rest of reviewers nor AMD's numbers. He didn't want to be "the black sheep".
And now the 2 worst things:
First, they tell you about a mouse LTT reviewed in ShortCircuit, which they essentially bashed because it had very poor gliding (funny because they then chose that mouse anyway for some kind of event)... just to discover that they hadn't taken the plastic sheets off the pads. LTT, of course, rather than amending the error, decided to blame the company for making them "hard to see" (like any other mouse company does, duh).
And the worst of all. They did a review on a prototype of a waterblock done by an indie company/startup called BilletLabs. It was their best prototype so far and the only unit they had, which was going to be used to give it to other reviewers and then continue working with it themselves (this is important). This waterblock was only tested to work with the 3090Ti, but LTT, lazy as they are, decided to do it on a 4090 anyway. Surprise surprise, it didn't fit well at all, so their video was, essentially, pure bashing of the product because, as it turns out, it is hard to fit a waterblock on a card it wasn't designed to work with. And of course, it had poor performance as a result anyway. After community backlash, however, Linus decided to double down, saying that the product was, essentially, garbage anyway (not with those words, but it's easy to read that when he says that he would not recommend it to ABSOLUTELY nobody, no matter how well it would perform), Luke seemed to be... unwell during Linus' rant, btw. He also said that he would not be wasting money on having someone shoot a proper review of a review HE HIMSELF BOTCHED. So basically, he bashes a small company, all while doing a shitty as review even my grandma would do better and then he is out of fucks to give. Not content with that, BilletLabs asked a couple of times for the waterblock, so they could, as said, give it to other reviewers and then keep on working with it. LTT agrees to give it back. What does LTT do, however? They fucking sold it at an auction during the LTX. THEY FUCKING SOLD IT WHEN THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO GIVE IT BACK. The best (and only) prototype of a startup made by 2 dudes and, not content with bashing them, they fucking sell it at an event to which competitors were in attendance. The fucking audacity.
TL;DW: GN called out LMG for notoriously sloppy content recently, which is caused by LMG top management imposing high weekly video quotas. LMG team is also not happy with these deadlines and have said before it leads to rushed content.
Then LMG also did a big fuck up with a Billet Labs (small company) prototype water block. The company sent them a review prototype for a 3090ti monoblock, but LMG knowingly gave no fucks and tested it on a 4090. When it obviously didn't work as expected LMG just shat on the product and gave a bad review. Not only that, they ignored requests to return the prototype, and their negligence went as far as them auctioning the engineering prototype at LTX.
There's more incidents (like shitting on a mouse before properly unpacking it first, poor correction for mistakes, several inaccuracies in each video, etc) but you'll be better off watching the video, it's good.
Linus has responded, but he just dug a deeper grave after GN tore apart his shitty reply on their newest video.
Same. I can’t actually watch a full GN video. Though I definitely skim through their reviews to get the data I need because they are good at testing.
I never really trusted them. They were the wacky tech entertainment channel, which was fun! But their actual benchmarking has always been a mess unfortunately.
Same. Has LTT responded yet?
Linus made a post on LTTForums, but LMG/LTT, as a company, has yet to respond.
Update: Video up on LTT channel.
LTT is like Fox News - it may come off as statistical analysis of technology but it's really just there for entertainment purposes. They may call themselves fair and balanced but they offer favorable reviews to sponsors.
Am I the only one who thinks this is a little overblown? After reading all these comments I finally got around to watching the video and was honestly pretty underwhelmed and found the GN guy a little over dramatic in his framing and language of the issue.
I'm not claiming he's doing this whole thing for attention or clout. But yeah, not seeing anything world shaking or enough to change my views on much of anything.
I think the points Steve highlighted were pretty spot on. Over the past few years I've continually felt an "off" vibe from LTTs videos and now I know what it is, it's the constant corrections and edits on the content. I have to actually actively watch every second to keep an eye out for corrections and it's just not something that should be happening if they were taking their time creating content.
GN dude literally just stated facts, with the evidence.
And that too after an lmg video called them out by name. The original video literally had the guy saying that lmg was better than others like GN or hardware unboxed.
They didn't have to do it. Especially when there are multiple points of data pointing to their glaring inaccuracies.
It depends if you spend money on the information LMG provide, or in the case of billet, use them to get an honest review.
He absolutely did it for clout. He currently has more traffic than he had in months. Talking about how awkward and uncomfortable the whole thing is, yet smiling through the whole video.
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The real question is, given how he overdramatised these issues now, how much of the previous issues must have been him talking up molehills to mountains.
Essentially, pointing out mistakes in tech YouTuber videos is not a challenge. They are everywhere. Whenever GN goes into details of electronic engineering I want to kill myself just as much as when Linus does anything related to Linux, or Jay does ... well, anything really. I mean, GN clearly demonstrated in this very video that he doesn't even know what IP is.
So the only real issue is that whole Billet thing. They themselves said they only asked for compensation on the 10th and since they didn't get a reply within a day they used the weekend to help Steve with his hit piece? I don't know what they think they are doing, but they are radioactive now. Who in their right mind is going to review their stuff if there's the possibility that they will give a competitor private emails to construct a hit piece like this. They are an incalculable business risk now and ultimately they need reviewers more than the other way around.
That all being said, the really disgusting stuff is what apparently happened to Madison. That's something a company and their leadership needs to be held accountable for. Not this other petty shit.
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Honestly it's the emotional language choice he used that put me off. That's when is started to strike me as a bit disingenuous. But motivations aside, so good points were made.