fran.fernandez
Member
I like Linus, is funny. But I never buy stuff from utubers review.
All for fun
All for fun
what a tone deaf response. Double downs on his bad takes with more deflections.Linus responded on the LTT forums:
Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity
linustechtips.com
"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."
GN and HUB are about the most trusted hardware reviewers....if you care about hardware you should care about these reviewers.
LTT is "the biggest" PC hardware reviwer but I wouldnt say people in the know are very trusting of him and his group.
So yes it is relevant if you care about hardware at all, because if sources are giving you bad data, while also disparaging you from listening to site/people that give more correct data, its a big deal.
Misinformation can alter peoples purchasing habits.
P.S If you dont care about PC hardware at all, why would you even enter a thread about PC hardware reviewers?
You can tout how thorough your testing methods are without dragging somebody else name into it.PR person or not, he has poor etiquette. What's even more telling is that this was broadcasted, people are usually more tactful in the public eye, but not him.What you're saying is they should suffer him because they hired him, that's madness. No one is blindly blaming anybody, this man said something publicly he probably should not have. Incompetence would be allowing him to stay. At best he has displayed a lack of social awareness and business etiquette, at worst he's plain rude. You don't have to be a PR person to have interpersonal skills.Only an extreme incompetent person would say something like this.
Accountability only goes up, never down. The guy is a nerd engineer he's not a pr person.
It is responsibility of the higher ups to hire the right people for the right jobs, if you put a pr guy to do engineering things he will definitely shit the bed as well.
Blindly blaming people bellow your pay grade and calling for layoffs the type of thing that only an extreme incompetent manager would do.
Optimum Tech is pretty cool . Small and relatable kind of channel , doesn't screams adverts all the time and generally a very chill vibe . He also called out the terrible power consumption on RDNA 4 vs Ada Lovelaceif you like slick tech videos, i find geekerwan is doing a good job. no youtube faces and putting themselves up the pedestal.
geekerwan has 2 yt channels, they started in Chinese (use yt subs) and seems they're making English videos now
I don't have much reason to believe that LTT was doing bad toward the community, unless they started schilling??
This is a good resume of what is happening in my opinion
This response smells like Linus is high from huffing his own farts. Also his LTT forum avatar is appropriate for this situation.Linus responded on the LTT forums:
Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity
linustechtips.com
"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'll let you know my opinions on that issue right after this Segway, to our sponsor!I don't have much reason to believe that LTT was doing bad toward the community, unless they started schilling??
If I had the time and the inclination, I think I’d start a YouTube channel solely dedicated to exposing the shady practises a lot of content creators engage in. None of them have had to pass any kind of journalistic bar to become YouTube ‘experts’. None of them have had to learn any kind of rules or laws around the commercial industry before punting out their first vidya to the masses.
…actually, there must be some sort of channel like that out there somewhere, surely?
When is Linus NOT shilling?I don't have much reason to believe that LTT was doing bad toward the community, unless they started schilling??
Out of all the non-mainstream channels that I'm aware of, whose schtick is to stick it to the mainstream channels, Frame Chasers backs it up the most with actual data and what seems like a genuine desire to deemphasize the commercialization of the tech business and re-emphasize bang for your buck value with respect to what you want out of your PC (And a lot of snark. Some might say too much.)
To give you an idea:
Of course not a single one. I usually watch several, but i place the most weight what those guys think. Amazingly GN and HU seem to very much align with their opinions most of the time.Really not. There are plenty information sources on the internet and your decisions should never be made based on one single one of them.
Also it was enough for me to watch Linus purposely made poor use of Linux during "testing" to realize that everything coming out of these kinds of shows should be interpreted as entertainment and no more than that.
First a guy that post stupid meme, then I go to check his last video and is called "7800x3D is UNUSABLE".
I'm not gonna bother wasting my time watching videos with such retarded names.
They review products at the end of the dayI don't think LTT are really meant to be taken seriously. There videos are more about fun and weird shit rather than "this motherboard does this".
Gamers Nexus do seem to be actually properly testing stuff but I can't watch there vids. The guy comes off as so arrogant to me and seems to hate everything lol
Yep, they cant seem to be able to find the right balance of fun and entertainment and professionalism.They review products at the end of the day
some people are taking clues from it regardless of the tone
I don't think LTT are really meant to be taken seriously. There videos are more about fun and weird shit rather than "this motherboard does this".
yeah im surprised chubby jebus loved so much honestly.I don't think LTT are really meant to be taken seriously. There videos are more about fun and weird shit rather than "this motherboard does this".
Gamers Nexus do seem to be actually properly testing stuff but I can't watch there vids. The guy comes off as so arrogant to me and seems to hate everything lol
I get what you say about Steve (Gamers Nexus). For a long time I didn't watch the videos because he irritated me. Maybe that was me just judging him too quickly and I don't mean this in a bad way at all but it seems that's just his personality. I like that he "hates everything" because you know he's not going to be gushing over this product or that brand. He "hates" everything equally so in a way I think he holds everything to the same standards and is just hard to impress. If he does praise something then you know he means it. I can't even remember what it was but one of the videos I watched he was really impressed with a product and it felt odd that he was so positive about it lol.I don't think LTT are really meant to be taken seriously. There videos are more about fun and weird shit rather than "this motherboard does this".
Gamers Nexus do seem to be actually properly testing stuff but I can't watch there vids. The guy comes off as so arrogant to me and seems to hate everything lol
The issue here is they built a review lab, started putting out benchmarks, and then took a shot at GamersNexus in a video on it. Come at the king etc. etc.I don't think LTT are really meant to be taken seriously. There videos are more about fun and weird shit rather than "this motherboard does this".
Gamers Nexus do seem to be actually properly testing stuff but I can't watch there vids. The guy comes off as so arrogant to me and seems to hate everything lol
Let's go, Cage Fight between Gaming Jesus and Linus, broadcast it on a neutral channel.I watch all these guys so I’m kinda glad they are somewhat keeping each other in check, it’s good for the overall community. I hope they just don’t get too personal about it and keep it professional.
Problem is that people who are new to the space often go to the most popular sources expecting accuracy. With LTT, this has been proven to be incorrect but newbies would not know it. LTT needs to be better, especially for a company worth $100million.Really not. There are plenty information sources on the internet and your decisions should never be made based on one single one of them.
Also it was enough for me to watch Linus purposely made poor use of Linux during "testing" to realize that everything coming out of these kinds of shows should be interpreted as entertainment and no more than that.