Dude sold out forever ago. ALL INFLUENCERS ARE JUST CORPORATE MOUTHPIECES.
So is it just me or did anyone else notice how the tone of LTT videos changed after Linus stepped down from CEO? Everything seems to be on rails with 'uncanny valley’s levels of scripting.
I get it, production quality and writing getting ‘better’ but it feels like it’s being forced whereas before things were more ad-lib. You can see pretty clearly the difference in tone between the podcast and their videos… Not sure how to reconcile the two of if there really is a need… But it has been bothering me lately. They went through a similar stage a few years ago where their style really bothered me, and then it got better… so maybe it’s more the writing/direction than anything else which can change depending on who is working on a particular video.
Edit: I just got through this video and, yeah… A lot of their reporting errors seem concerning, if anything not because there are particular errors here and there but because conclusions are being drawn from errors. The frequency is pretty astounding too… Would highly recommend people watch this one, as ethical and impartial reporting is a dying art. Gamers Nexus definitely tries (although nobody is perfect, and sometimes their anal attention to detail can be frustrating) with Steve seemingly having his heart in the right place when it comes to providing information that consumers can utilize in good conscience when making decisions. I have my issues with some of Steve’s reporting at times, but I seldom question the validity of the content, whereas now LTT kinda looks like a crap shoot. No more reliable than the clickbait thumbnails you see on every other channel, LTT notwithstanding.
As Linus mentioned, he was still in charge when these two things happened.
If you care about accuracy and reporting, you won’t be using video as your medium. You use video because you can monetize via “views,” if you are trying to monetize, you don’t really care about accuracy in your reporting.
Not sure it’s the new management but it might be the schedule. Hell, the sheer amount of content they try to do per week is speculated to be the reason behind the problems GN is pointing out here. Is it when Linus stepped down? Or was it when they had to squeeze Gamelinked in?
Anytime they make a big change they have to adapt and they get rigid and then eventually they fall into the rhythm. Now they have the weight of Labs and perhaps that’s not going so well so it’s extra crunch time?
I hope they fix their problems, especially this Billet Labs thing.
Unfortunately corporations will be corporations and these things will always happen, once LMG stopped being Linus media group it became your usually shitty corporation focused purely on profit (while that was the point from the beginning at least then it was for the purpose of getting higher quality content and actually paying Luke)
The have to keep pumping out tons of videos or they take a big profit hit Linus put LMG in quite the pickle
Company is worth a smooth 100 mil. They can afford to hire more people to keep the rate of videos going while improving quality.
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That’s its estimated worth according to one potential buyer It’s not their total capital value, revenue, or profit value per year Though they likely have the liquid capital coming into hire a few more while they build out the lab The lab is going to be a money pit for a few years till they hit their ROI The issue is that the rate of growth requires a certain amount of liquid capital to spend that is dependent on pumping out videos across their YT channels They seem to need to slow their roll a bit on that growth
Anyone eles noticed that LTT (excluding LMG clips) have not dropped their usual daily videos yet. Leads me to believe they saw this GN video.
Good work Steve, they are already taking a bit more time on today’s video at least!
They just released one. Probably triple checked it before publishing it too LOL
The frequency response graph used in headphones is not an accurate/standard way to measure microphones, and LTT labs doesn’t have HVAC isolation.
Today’s videos are already in the can Unless they are going back for re-edits Can’t really change the content at this point Would they reshoot I could see them reevaluating videos currently in the pipeline Could be an interesting day for LMG Wonder if there will be a company meeting We’ll see
The most noticeable thing for me are the constant annotations. Sometimes there are so many that I’m not sure why a whole video is up if it’s half assed and they want to salvage it through bandaids.
Bot holy shit they are become sloppy and borderline corrupt. Thanks to GN for calling them out.
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PC Jesus is all knowing
Omniscient. 😈
I used to like them, but last time I saw USB C iPhone on thumbnail for news video, which turned out to be absolutely not usb related apple news. That was disappointing.
The issue with the water block is massive to me. Testing a prototype product on a GPU that it wasn’t made for, giving it a negative review, doubling down on that negative review when called out, promising to return the prototype to Billet Labs, then SELLING the prototype to the public at their LTX expo. As Steve points out, if a competitor gets their hands on that prototype, it could put Billet Labs out of business. This is wild, and LMG should absolutely be called out like this.
Not too mention totally ignoring the instructions billet labs provided
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Thanks.
I really hated him talking about wanting to review it as a product (which he thought nobody would buy). It’s a prototype. It’s specifically not a product yet. That’s the whole point of a prototype. It’s a concept and idea working towards a launch. For as often as they have videos with preproduction, engineering sample products, he absolutely knows the difference.
Until I saw that I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Even knowingly fudging numbers, while bad, is a temptation it’s easy to see someone trying to keep up with the content rat race falling into.
The corporate espionage on the other hand is fucking gross. Unless Billet Labs provides a statement that fully absolves LTT of any wrongdoing and states they OK’d the auction, I’m prepared to not engage with LMG at all anymore. Which sucks because I kinda like their water bottle.
I know we’ve only heard one side of the story so far, so I’ll reserve judgement. If it turns out as bad as it sounds though, they can get Anker’d
It wasn’t knowingly fudging numbers, they mentioned in the video that it was not designed for the gpu.
Yeah I’ve since caught up on the responses, and as far as “fudging the numbers” that was with regards to their errors in other testing; the Billet Labs situation is just flat-out shitty.
None of that was knowingly though, it was accidental and the concern is just the frequency and inadequate response.
They didn’t sell it, the auctioned it 🤡
It should be sued the hell out of it for that.
Given the level of damage done Yeah, Billet Labs should be suing LMG could end up tanking their company
I don’t know if Billet has the appetite to sue. It seems like Billet and LMG came to an agreement
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You’re right. There was a follow up video from GN with Billet’s response. LMG did indeed send them an email to reimburse the cost of the lost prototype, but they haven’t replied. It’s not as settled as I thought.
They got insanely lucky…
There should be actual, legitimate, law enforcement involvement… Cause its literally theft at best, corporate espionage at worst.
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A $100million dollar company should be able to reclaim that property even if it means paying through the nose to get it back to the rightful owner. Losing a mass production GPU is one thing, that can be fixed with a check. A one of a kind prototype though? And who would make the decision to give something like that away, especially without consent? Things like that should come with a letter of endorsement of the charity sale, or at least have a (year plus) pause before just giving it away.
They should seriously get legal repercussions for this particular fuckup
Anyone who thinks a person reviewing a product is on their side is a mark. The issues with LTT videos is so obvious in hindsight that it’s hilarious that the fans haven’t or refused to notice. I honestly thought being shitty and approachable was their schtick? The people who are incredibly upset are likely to stan Gamers Nexus until they eventually get called out by another tech outlet for similar shit. The drama is fun though.
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What’s bad is that this isn’t the first time GN has had to call out LTT / LMG.
https://inv.tux.pizza/watch?v=jsX3tUA-wJk
Hopefully this will be the last time.
Edit: Just realized I’m not the first one here posting about the earlier LTT backpack warranty controversy. Now I get the “Trust Me Bro” comment.
Will Linus watch this one or will he just read the comments?
Probably wont find out until next WAN show, and I’m sure we’ll see the same look we see in Lukes eyes every time Linus starts off being blatantly wrong and unable to admit it.
Genuinely gotta wonder how much more of it Luke has in him.
I hope the community doesn’t let him skirt past it on WAN.
I thought they already addressed the water block thing on wan
I remember the mouse, I don’t remember the water block. I don’t recall the part where they auctioned off a prototype though.
I think they discussed it before that happened. I think it was like the week after the video originally came out or something. I think they apologized, but said it still wasn’t good value?
What When he trash the product and company a second time
He already did, you can find it here:
I would quote it, but it is too long to be a reasonable comment.
This post made it even worse. First, you criticise back, saying that you’re disappointed with Steve? Steve had nothing to do calling him before publishing the video, the damage was done. Also the own company CEOs were complaining about the block and the information presented at GN was well funded.
You may as well be using ChatGPT to make the text because it’s 1000< characters worth of nothing.
Best part:
“The Labs team is hard at work hard creating processes and tools”
Didn’t even take the time to proofread his response to someone saying he needs to slow down and verify things…
Hes angry that he didnt get the chance to pressure Steve into backing down, Thats all it is.
Remember how aggressive he was on the phone to support staff with the manufacturing requiring their first-party hub for updates (they never claimed to support home assistants in the first place)?
That’s where showed his face and lost it.
I think that is generally a bad example to use.
Linus was a dick to that CSR, no arguments there. But that is going to be overshadowed because posting your public firmware really should be something manufacturers do. It is not secret sauce and can be extracted if someone cares enough to do so with ST or the apple one or whatever. It is just preventing people from using open source tools like HA.
Having done a year or so as a CSR back in undergrad: It fucking sucks. Everyone is shitty to you. “Killing them with kindness” gets you a LONG way. That said, there is also a time when the CSR explicitly cannot help you. That is when you need to make sure you get flagged as “irate”. The trick I use (that I learned from some of the more pleasant calls) is to repeatedly say “Look, I apologize. I know this is not your fault and I am sorry for taking this out on you. I am genuinely mad at your company but you don’t make those policy decisions”. Let out enough anger to make it clear you need to be escalated or retagged but apologize to the poor sod who is dealing with it.
Might be a bad example but that stuck to me: Under no circumstance, you should talk like this to customer service. Always remember that the other end is a human and being rude makes it hard to offer a solution.
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How do I deal with support? Start nicely (with good companies that’s all you need) and slowly provide hints they screwed up allowing them to keep face as well as being the one offering it instead of reacting to the demand. If they don’t understand: tell them. The last resort is the blacklist (company, date, reason) paired with DNS blocking (in case I forget about it).
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Want an example of a blacklisted company? Asus.
They don’t have any technical support unless you are an influencer or some big shot buying frequently truckloads of products. I might be able to get somewhere by being a dick but do I always want to push hard to escalate it?
Just call it a day (aka. scrap those products) and buy Asrock. This was definitely a quality-of-life improvement.
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Btw. Extracting firmware can be difficult. Nordic had a horrific bug in the NRF52, WCH has a bug in the CH552 allowing to out the firmware by software. For ST STM32F it’s complicated. They have a design flaw but exploding it requires decapping the MCU and knowing in which area of the die the readout protection bit is located. Haven’t checked if they fixed it with the newer G, U and MP series.
Linustechtips.com server is toast ATM
Wow you’re right that is extremely long. Tldr seems to be he’s saying he didn’t do anything wrong and he’s disappointed Steve didn’t just send him a quick text about it. I feel like it would have been better for Linus to own the mistake at this stage and get the prototype thingy back as it’s not like he’s short on cash or anything. I’d say he comes off like a bit of a jerk. We’ll see how this one shakes out.
I am a fan of Linus. To say he had a bad take is an understatement.
Linus wouldn’t like it that you’re a fan, he hates that whole concept of being a fan
Yeah but he already has an out. The Community are already fixated on “he never even asked me for comment. What a shitty journalist” and you can bet the WAN show chat will be half that and half “Yo, what the fuck?” so he can skip it as he said he will.
Regarding: “GN should have reached out for comment”, I generally actually agree with this. But this is closer to one of their “documentary” style videos. They already have LMG’s comments. Probably a solid 30-40% of the video is literally Linus talking in clips. And this is outright a response to some random ass shade an LMG employee threw that was then followed up by Linus standing by said shade AND throwing more at GN specifically. LMG were already asked for comment and this is a response to that.
I still think sending a “Hey, do you want to respond to these talking points?” would be “professional”, but I don’t think it is at all necessary.
And… it is worth remembering how this kind of defense usually plays out. A says that B never asked for comment. B eventually gets pissed off and explains “Yes, we did. But you wanted to see the entire article and have veto rights before you would provide any. So we just ignored your bullshit and were polite enough to not call you out for this”
Not every story requires a reaching out for comment.
I don’t feel this story did. Linus is just perturbed Steve didnt reach out and give him an opportunity to pressure Steve into not running the story.
Yeah, either that, or trying to lie to Steve aboht shit like the Billet Labs thing.
It’s ironic that he feels like he’s being bashed by Steve for not contacting him after he bashed an indie company without contacting them prior to posting the review. A review that was very poorly done and, essentially, put them in the worst of lights possible. All right before selling their product on an auction.
What a piece of shit.
He said he made those mistakes, he’s sorry, he’ll try not to do it again, but they’re not a big deal.
Several step in the narcissist prayer in his response.
That didn’t happen.
And if it did, it wasn’t that bad.
And if it was, that’s not a big deal.
And if it is, that’s not my fault.
And if it was, I didn’t mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.
Here’s an unreasonably long quote:
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.
Almost forgot that happened. Thanks for reminding.
Only comments. Some new shmuck will have to condense it down to tldr it to him. Hot take will be funny like last time this happened
Geez… Watching this now. I’ve been skeptical of LTT for a while and noticed the focus had changed a bit when they launched Short Circuit and such. But I don’t think I could watch LTT without cringing anymore.
LTT has lived long enough and grown large enough to see themselves being the villain. I suppose fame and wealth can corrupt a person easily, the arrogance in the response from Linus is disappointing.
LTT hasn’t been a serious or informative tech channel for years, you don’t watch their video for information but for entertainment. They try to right the course by creating the Lab team but miss the point when they don’t change their mindset.
It’s like Top Gear vs Fifth Gear back in the days. You don’t buy a new car base on the reviews on Top Gear, likewise if I want useful consumer advice, LTT is the last place I look.
My take on it:
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?
Holy shit lol. I can never watch another Linus video again without thinking about this criticism.
