I’m just getting caught up, never watched any of their videos before either. Was hoping the drama was just over something inconsequential but juicy & amusing… but no, of course it’s something icky and depressing.
Also this is from Linus Sebastian’s email response to the Verge:
In addition to our existing report systems (both anonymous and otherwise) we’ve proactively reached out internally today to encourage members of our team to report any workplace bullying or harassment…
So they’re proactively reacting to the allegations? Am I just really stoned?
Afaik, this Maddison case started in 2021. She now came to light with all the accusations but what happened did happened in 2021. My guess is whatever she was complaining about was already solved since they got a shitload of new management people to handle those cases.
Might be, don’t know. Depends on how seriously it was taken back then. If they dismissed it, then no changes had to have been made. Since Madison quit anyway there was no urgency to do anything.
Letting this stand this way is close to misinformation.
Linus Torvalds got accused of sexism, as to be expected with a person so public, but nobody ever proved anything. In contrast he shows the opposite of sexist behaviour nearly every day by working with all people equally on the Linux kernel. Also his daughter Patricia is a feminist and he fully supports her. Honestly I am surprised that with so much of his communication being public (Mailing list discussions) nobody found any piece which sounds outright sexist. Not even a bad joke. He is a role model regarding this.
His toxic behavior is another thing. And also up for discussion I think. Firm words to discourage bad behavior regarding contributions to the kernel. He went to far at times, recognized it, and improved. He still has the stance to not use overly polite words to play around any bad statements, which many think is correct to improve communication and finding a common ground instead of secretly harboring ever greater dissent. Many discussions by many qualified people on this in the net.
Bro. The shit he talked to people on all those Linux kernel mailing lists is in a whole different league. There was an entire subreddit dedicated to all the Torvalds rants. He wouldn’t survive a day working as a CEO.
Also he and Stallman both had to back off or resign in a way.
Honestly it has been a pretty good techy channel for a while, but like many things, apparently it’s become a victim of its own success. Ive gone down the rabbit hole on LTT YouTube episodes a few times in the past - really enjoyed what I decided to watch, this news is really unfortunate to what was (in my opinion) a great channel
Gamer nexus was always great too (the few episodes I watched), that’s why this is such news. I’m going to sit down and really listen to the video GN did
I used to really enjoy watching LTT unboxing videos even if it was for a product that I wasn’t interested in. Watching Linus struggle to open product boxes while he talked about their features was just a part of my nightly routine. The videos back then were much more down to earth. There was no B roll, and hardly anything got cut out. The closest thing we have to that now is the Short Circuit channel, but even that is overproduced compared to old school LTT videos.
I was just happy to realize this afternoon that this is a different Linus than Linus Torvalds. I was very confused this morning how out of the loop I was to not realize The Linus had become a youtuber. Now this makes more sense (or at least I no longer care at all)
My first introduction to him is when he had like a PetaByte of data on a huge array that wasent backed up, and then managed to physically drop it somehow?
As i recall actual tech youtubers flew out and helped him recover data off of it.
Dropping things has been his specialty since he dropped an early prototype of the RX480 at a trade show event. I’m still not sure if he’s really that clumsy or if he intentionally drops things for entertainment value, but he drops an awful lot of things.
Youtube might as well be the whole internet at this point, there’s absolutely nothing you can’t find in there. Memes, recipes, news, sports, vlogs, tutorials, documentaries, music, you name it, it’s there. Fully degoogling my life is something I aspire to do one day but even then I’m not sure I can ever leave Youtube.
A whole lot of the disconnect has to do with age. Those of us who grew up with AOL 3.0 and earlier prefer the text based internet, but those who grew up with video are quite comfortable with it. I played MUDs and find video either too slow paced or distracting with jump cuts.
Then there's people like me, who grew up in the early days of YouTube before it was a particularly useful resource. I prefer video as an entertainment medium, but would rather stick to text when I actually need to learn something.
I concur, because I don’t have the patience to watch people blab on about their bullshit and panhandle for Likes and all that garbage. I would much rather read some detailed but concise information about the topic I’m investing my time in.
Most of it is floating around the fediverse, but a quick rundown from my superficially gleaned view:
Someone called out LTT for shitty quality videos, LTT responded publicly in a roundabout snarky way. Then a former employee called out LTT for their shitty treatment of employees, which LTT responded in an even more snarky way. Their subscriber count took a hit, and it's all been going downhill since then.
I'm sure someone will come along with more details, but that's about the jist of it.
Much worse than that - they were loaned the only working prototype of a small two-man team, along with the GPU it was designed to work with. They “lost” the GPU, tested the prototype on a GPU it was never meant to work with, publicly shit on the product REALLY hard when it didn’t work, were asked for the prototype back as, again, only working copy, gave the owners the run around for a long time, then finally admitted that they’d not just sold it but auctioned it off. Very likely to a competitor of the owners.
There’s also a whole other thing about workplace harassment of a former employee (who quit for mental health reasons), but I don’t have the link to that right now.
Edit: The Verge have put out a really good run down of all the different issues here:
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