It was really obvious to me Linus was full of shit when he pretended to give Linux a try but then defied a scary error message warning him not to continue which he did anyway and it wiped his desktop environment completely.
He then basically implied if you couldn’t just randomly copy paste cli commands without understanding them AND ignoring a scary warning message, then Linux just was too sketchy for average users to use. It would be trivial to make that exact argument about windows… Because it’s a bullshit meaningless argument
Anyone with even the tiniest experience with a cli, imo, should’ve known at that point he’s full of shit. Fuck their shitty videos.
Despite how idiotic this argument sounds, but given the stupidity I have witnessed from people who are not that tech savvy, it leads me to believe that this is quite possible for them to do.
I haven’t been following LTT for more than 2 years, but as far as I remember, they were really good with the stuff they did. Got me into the whole PC building and immense knowledge on those parts.
Quite surprised to see this stuff coming out from them. Honestly, I’m disappointed with them for becoming the monster they ought to defeat.
People are dumb. They do so much dumb shit that your computer should be dummy proof enough to not delete the main OS itself with just a command and button press.
Yeah, it was the worst video about GNU/Linux I’ve ever seen. The whole idea was stupid from the beginning: let’s be ignorant and try to use a new operating system we don’t know anything about, spend 5 minutes on research and definitely don’t ask anybody for help.
Linus’s issue was caused by some new bug in Pop OS, but he ignored the warning message and even typed “DO AS I SAY”! But of course the conclusion had to be that GNU/Linux is not ready yet. I’m pretty sure he could have just downloaded Steam from their website instead.
The most annoying part was the response from the community. Instead of criticizing his ignorance and incompetence, people were praising him for finding a bug 🤦.
I’m with you completely. I also saw comments defending his idiocy at the CLI. Most people I know who don’t know software very well are afraid to try anything without checking somewhere for validation. But the comments were like “it’s fair because non-linux users won’t expect a command to destroy their os”. 🤦to the max.
I can easily find a command that will destroy (or royally fuck up) windows and for added evil, tell you it does something else. But yeah if it’s Linux then that would mean it’s an os only for experienced sysadmins.
I do kinda wonder: Pop OS told him that whatever he was doing may remove some essential stuff. Pop OS specifically said “Are you REALLY sure about that?” and didn’t let him skip the warning by pressing Y and enter.
A normie, perhaps my mom, would indeed not know what these packages mean but sure enough she would see the warning and perhaps call me to ask what this means. It takes a lot of naivety to ignore the warning.
Naivety? Nah it takes either a complete moron or someone who doesn’t care. Since he was making a video which could oppose or uphold a popular opinion, I am guessing he didn’t care…
More often than not, people who are passionate about something, such as Linux, take personal offense when someone says something incorrect or offensive about said thing. Oh, and blud is just to call someone a poser.
A bit more objective than the other guy: their lab testing seems to be inaccurate at times and the way they correct mistakes they spot is questionable (for example just adding a comment and pinning it on the video). Also it seems they sold /auctioned something that was not supposed to be theirs to begin with. Some prototype waterblock. Also it seems there are two different stories about the issue and the compensation for the company who owned what was sold. And up until now, the story that LTT gave out seems to be the dishonest/questionable one.
JTFC… It’s starting to seem like boycotting YouTube entirely is the only option anymore. If Google wasn’t bad enough, it feels like everyone that gets big has entire warehouses full of closets full of skeletons. And when they get exposed it rarely puts a dent in their fan base or bottom line.
I watched a couple of Linus videos over the years and recently subscribed. I had no idea how many videos they push out a week - that is something they should really adress. Rather make three or four good videos a week than the absolute crap content they partially put out just to get their schedule full.
After this whole thing now I unsubscribed again. You can absolutely fuck up a situation and be good in my book if you own up to it, but Linus response is childish at best and a disaster at worse.
Billet labs has come out and said that LTT has suggested they could get the cooler back for them, and billet labs declined and said they would just take the reimbursement.
They said their reasoning for that include (they said more, but just a few brief reasons) the fact that they can’t know if it’s still in the condition required, and if not, how much time and money it would take to repair it
they don’t know if it would have all the various pieces still attached, once again, not knowing how much time or money it would cost to replace those
they’ve already begun work on recreating the prototype
they’ve confirmed it didn’t go to a competitor, so less worries about ip issues
Finally and the biggest thing to me that I was unaware of before reading their statement, they sent LTT a 3090ti to along with the block to test it, LTT then proceeded to lose it (which is why they used the wrong card in the video) and just recently found it, which meant LTT had not only their block but a 3090ti for 9 weeks so they didn’t know if LTT could get it back how quickly they would send it to Billet.
How the fuck do you managed to just casually lose a 3090ti and a companies proto-type cooler design that came with it… AND THEN AUCTION IT OFF AFTER HAVING TWO EMAIL EXCHANGES SAYING IT WILL BE RETURNED!!
Like, I’ve been through some managerial fuck ups before with getting shit mixed up or sent off incorrectly…but this is on a level I’m having a very hard time understanding just what the fuck went wrong, how it went wrong, and if they even have a single rule or policy in place to keep track of items.
Then there was all the other errors they mentioned in the vid, like basic facts and specs about a component… Like how do you manage to fuck that up as well? That is the type of shit you look up in 5 seconds on Google.
LMG looks like a clusterfuck that needs some serious intervention
I think there was a video about them restructuring their company a few weeks ago. I think he wanted to employ a CEO, because the managment part was getting out of hand. Maybe that is why this shitshow happened?
They already have a CEO but it seems Linus has kept the team rushing into their usual schedule while trying to bandaid their processes. Now they’ve made a statement that they are going to stop production for a week and rethink their approach.
I know a week for a major Youtube channel putting that much content is a **huge ** cost but I doubt it’s enough time to seriously change much. Time will tell but I was already tired of half-finished antics. At least someone like DIY Perks decides to make a submarine PC to dump into his pond, he actually makes the whole thing to a satisfying conclusion and doesn’t seems to abandon the video because they rushed something and have to jump on their next rushed job.
This is what happens when you think the C-Suite is the most important part of the company but keep the (apparently) trash management between them and the actual people doing the work.
The one that gets me the most is the Billet Labs copper water cooler… Like holy shit how big of an asshole do you have to be to NOT return to them what you agreed to return, and then to just auction it off
They also made it seem like they had already come to an agreement on compensation but they clearly did not until after GN’s video and even after they had made their own claim.
I keep trying to be charitable and think of it in an “incompetence rather than malice” way, but Linus lying, twisting and tripling down isn’t making it easy.
Although good points were made, as I’ve been following this. I think its also suspicious GN is rather new with their ethics pages etc and it seems like it was a planned attack.
LTT does do corrections, but also GN alone has had 3+ in 2023 errors. Now account for the absolute size difference…
Only because of how recently they have implemented the ethics and fails pages on their website and in the video they don’t really make it clear like “We realized how important it is and recently implemented a system to make our failures as public as possible a few months ago.”. Just looks bad and makes me think it was planned, maybe not and like I said good points were made by GN. Skimming over the size difference between LTT and GN and how GN still got 3+ errors listed? I haven’t done the numbers on the failure percentage but I don’t feel it would be horrible.
Correct, as stated I agree with the good points made. But does make me question his character if his spent the last few months planning this. If it really mattered about the community being mislead it would’ve came out ASAP, not after his got his duck in a line putting together an ethics page, updating it with content for a couple months, skimming thru all content for errors and then BAM time for the kill.
Nobody will probably ever know weather that is the case, just imo I watch both pretty evenly and it’s like two parents fighting. Both imperfect and be hide closed doors just hoping the other backs down, otherwise the show must go on.
I don’t think the size difference works in the favour of lmg.
If gamers nexus puts out pretty much industry leading day one reviews out on every launch with 5-6 people and LMG with labs and 100+ employees can’t then there’s something wrong.
GN has a point LMG shits out videos without QC and it’s starting to bite them of late. The water block review is the perfect example of just being stupid. Why not just test the item with the right product and judge it for what it is as opposed to turning it into a joke review where no matter what the product is going to look bad.
The short circuit thing with the mouse is also a bit ridiculous.
But the charts are the main thing, I’ve noticed it myself over the years that lmg charts made no sense relative to gamers nexus or HUb or even jayz 2 cents which meant something was wrong with the testing.
For some great irony check out this wan show segment where linus talks about how he doesn’t like that a prototype (backpack) of theirs ended up in the hands of the public www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwgZaSYuBLc&t=3209Time 53:29, in case the timestamped link doesn’t work
How Linus publicly responds to these very fairly laid out criticisms will really affect their standing in the tech review space going forward.
Linus generally sucks at taking warranted feedback & criticism, so I can see him crashing and burning super hard in whatever post or podcast comment he makes publicly about this.
This looks like a huge issue as far as moving from a “haha wacky video” tech channel to a “hard data driven testing” tech channel, but also it’s not like they haven’t done “serious” reviews prior to the Labs stuff in the past so I’m not about to hand wave away their issues as “growing pains” or anything like that; it’s just indicative of sloppy workflow and low effort internal culture.
He already made a post in the LTT forum excusing himself and implying GM is bad journalism for not contacting him or LMG to ask for comment. Including the beautiful gem “We haven’t paid yet but we agreed to financially compensate [the heat sink company] for their prototype”. The backlash from his own community was so great they deleted the post.
GN released a followup this morning addressing his response. The bit about “already” having an agreement to compensate Billet Labs is nothing more than a bald-faced lie. He reached out after the GN video, and Billet hadn’t yet responded when GN asked them about it. Billet is not “good” as he claimed in another post.
The implication that GN did bad journalism by not contacting them is a fair point though. It is considered good practice to give a chance to the accused party to defend themselves about the allegations presented by the journalist.
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.
Yeah, well, that’s one of the main issues addressed in this video: You are not transparent about this, when you swap out videos without notice or bury corrections in a non-pinned comment.
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.
If the listing is wrong, who guarantees the lab tests on which the conclusion is based on are not wrong?
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.
Take the time it needs to produce correct reviews then. Who wants fast but false results?
How do you make “We’re too sloppy to do things the right way and too lazy to hide it” sound like a good thing?
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.
Someone has a very bright future in public relations.
I watched this yesterday and even I was cringing for both of them because i like LTT but GN’s points are valid, but also you can tell this was a very tough video for GN to make.
There’s a certain tone or cadence to the way that Steve talks that really makes him sound like an authority on the subjects he’s talking about. Like an old school radio reporter from the 30s or something. Not sure exactly how to describe it, but once you hear him say something, you know it’s a very serious topic.
Either way, I think GN made some very valid points, but also some much less so. I mostly watch LTT for the entertainment value but I’ve never taken their reviews particularly seriously. I’ve always hated how LTT handles charts and data - they just zip through the data so bloody fast. At LTT it is clear that Linus knows his stuff, but it’s also clear that he’s not trained as a scientist or engineer in the scientific method. Listening to him, yiu can tell there’s a lack of knowledge in the methodology of setting up an experiment, but on the other hand if you step back for a second, you realize how ridiculous some of the topics all these reviewers obsess over really are. 5 FPS in a game that’s already getting 150+ is utterly pointless in the real world. These are just games, guys. It’s not the end of the world here.
I’ll continue to watch LTT, mostly for TechLinked and now GameLinked because Riley, James and now Jacok crack me up.
I mostly watch LTT for the entertainment value but I’ve never taken their reviews particularly seriously.
Except, people spending hundreds to a thousand dollars on PC hardware do clearly trust him and his channel for the final “should you buy this or not” stance at the end of each review. It’s not a negligible amount of influence he has on the tech review space, and it’s explicitly because of their click-bait / algorithm friendly thumbnails and titles that they’re able to reach such wide audiences and become the top few results when someone searches for a product.
it is clear that Linus knows his stuff
Is it? I’ve been watching for years and he always exudes “content creator persona” and very rarely expresses and real technical knowledge. He’s essentially the youtube star version of that one kid who built their PC and never shuts up about it; he has certainly educated himself on consumer tech stats and comparisons, but his background and especially his current work have very little to do with actual technical know how.
And I’m not even saying that’s a “bad thing”, since he has writers and staff and now the Lab who should be able to reach that level of understanding and let him be just the face on the screen. But the fact is like Steve has said, that clearly also isn’t what’s actually happening behind the scenes.
Given how they have handled all their server hardware over the years any real IT pro is cringing how badly they are doing things. I see no signs they know what they are doing whatsoever.
Back when I first got into IT and started doing things with computers six or seven years ago I thought he was a technical guy, but as I got my certs and started into the field I slowly realized he had more of the “I build PC’s as a hobbyist and constantly shit on the co-hosts that clearly know more than I do about things” mentality.
I stopped watching a long time ago when he got into really severe click bait and clearly just wanted people to pay him to build absolutely ridiculously overpowered machines.
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