Pretty damning review.
I watched LTT for Top Gear of computer hardware videos. This commentary from GN made me wonder when was the last time they did one. I couldn’t remember and unsubscribed.
I’d be interested in videos by Alex, Nicholas and maybe few others. Hope they go their own way some day. Alex videos are probably quite expensive to do so he’s probably stuck there :/
Dan is absolute legend, and would deserve his own channel if he wanted to do videos.
I largely stopped watching the LTT main channel after it became the All Linus Hour. I used to watch because you’d get to see more of the crew sharing things they enjoy and are passionate about. (See: Alex’s car reviews) Now it seems like all they put out on the main channel are Buzzfeed listicles with Linus squeaking about the newest color of screwdriver. Also, I miss Emily’s retro gaming content a lot.
I watched LTT for Top Gear of computer hardware videos.
I think that perfectly describes LTT…if they weren’t trying to be taken as a serious facts and figures review channel.
This is a’ spicy meatball
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.
Linus has always been childish. Can’t stand him.
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What the fuck are you doing, LTT? Go get the fucking prototype back and return it.
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
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.
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.
Could someone ELI5 the problem and what’s going on? (I don’t have good enough internet to watch videos ATM)
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.
LTT isn’t making sure their info is correct. They also can’t be trusted to give stuff back.
They have been misleading people for years with inaccurate test results and reviewing products when they have a conflict of interest.
I filtered out ltt on yt a long time ago bc they were clickbait tech trash, like the journalistic equivalent of people magazine
This is why I feel only mildly outraged, compared to other comments here. LTT/LMG was only ever entertainment to me so gross factual errors neither surprise nor frustrate me personally. Any graphs or data presented couldn’t be trusted because they were the product of what you saw on screen, which was a buncha dorks bashing around equipment with a running gag of dropping expensive tech on the floor.
Linus justifies his frantic video production pace in terms of budget and finance. He should at least be able to reflect on the monetary harm to the small businesses that his botched reviews caused. To me, that’s what needs to be remedied ASAP because the two case studies presented (Billet and Pwnage) are not huge Nvidia corporations. Getting knocked around in the market can spell doom for everyone who works there.
I unsubscribed from LTT years ago when the silly content ramped up.
YouTube kept suggesting LTT and I had to block the channel so I’m not really familiar with their content anymore, looks like they only got worse.
This is shameful.
I love LTT, but Linus has always been a marketing guy first. The whole purpose of the Tech tip videos was to move product, and with the seventeen ads per video it sorta still is.
Well he’s not exactly known for taking warranted criticism well…
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.
I love this comment so much. “You crossed Linux? Now you’ve crossed me, blud.”
I don’t get what you’re referring to
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.
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.
So if your computer said “press Y to possibly brick your shit” it’s in any way reasonable to blame the computer if that happens after you press y?
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.
That’s not what happened though.
And I submit someone that stupid would toast windows in no time also.
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.
He could actually still log in and use terminal (https://youtu.be/0506yDSgU7M?t=760). So couldn’t he have just reinstalled the desktop environment? :D
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Well yes but his point was that an average user would need to figure it out. He demonstrated that his argument was not in good faith though
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…
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
LTT’s response was that they did not sell it, they auctioned it. As if that somehow makes it better?
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.
Excuses and spin. Nobody claimed they sold it, just that they didn’t return property that didn’t belong to them.
We didn’t sell it, we just sold it. Dude knows what an auction is.
It’s so idiotic that it can’t be malice.
It’s just Linus overworking his employees.
I think anyone working in a bad company can tell you that people just stopped to care
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.
Their issues are:
- Bad data - major errors in review videos
- Ethical concerns - conflicts of interest, Billet review, Pwnage review
Seemed like fair criticism to me, honestly. I enjoy watching LTT, but if they want to be a reliable source of data with “The Lab”, they can’t continue acting purely as an entertainment company.
Yeah, it was very measured and specific. You could tell he took no pleasure in doing it, the disappointment felt very genuine. It was also a classy move to avoid monetization
I mean for sure he just got a ton of viewers, but it didn’t feel like YouTuber beef or a takedown.
I think he hints at the real issue a few times when he calls them “the company”. It’s the issue why I haven’t been into Linus for a while - he talks like a capitalist now. He’s got plenty of technical opinions, but you can tell he’s not keeping up to speed on the tech (he’s always getting help from someone off screen) - instead, he’s always talking about business.
He talks about making products, the challenges, plans to expand, the sometimes hard to watch reccounts of changing relationships with his friends turned staff.
Which is still content, and I am led to believe he genuinely has a commitment to making good products and standing by them. But I’m not into that. I don’t find it interesting, and I find myself skeptical of his technical judgement and less able to identify with him
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I think that their point that it’s an $800 product for a last-gen card, there really isn’t anyone out there that should buy this, and therefore it’s a bad product is valid. They could have handled the whole thing better and honestly should’ve just scrapped the video before release.
Auctioning off the prototype when the company asked for it back is pretty inexcusable. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that it wasn’t malicious, but they clearly have problems with internal communication of things like this are happening.
At any rate, it’s going to be a spicy WAN show this week. Linus needs to actually watch the video and address this point-by-point. If he “reads the comments” or cherry picks some of GN’s weaker arguments he’s just going to end up throwing fuel on the fire.
It’s pretty normal for water blocks to come out well after a GPUs release. Also it looks like it was a new product/company so it makes sense the design took longer than the competition.
I dont think it was malicious, but it is incredibly negligent. It puts a huge stain on the company that’s expected to honor embargos for unreleased products.
I feel that if LMG looked at this product and thought “hey this is really dogshit”, the decent thing to do would have been to go back to billet and tell them we can’t cover it at all (and cop the loss of few hours as part of running an ethical business)
Then they shouldn’t have reviewed it if their decision was made before even holding the product in their hand.
They could have reviewed it from the point of view of an R&D curiosity with the potential future iterations and cost reductions as the new startup finds their feet. Because, you know, that’s what it was. But they decided to shit all over it for dishonest reasons instead.
What the fuck, that’s deplorable
I don’t understand why he won’t just own up to the wrong gpu thing and move on. It’s like getting pissy that the f150 exhaust sounds like shit on your ford ranger.
LTT should be getting the pants sued off of them for that kind of behavior. No way this whole cooler prototype thing was not nefarious.
At the very least it appears incredibly reckless.
If LMG gave out a prototype for their latest screwdriver to be reviewed and it was onsold, I highly doubt it being called a “mistake” would have sufficed, heads would be rolling
Feel terrible for Billet and how they were treated here
Billet was treated very bad here and i’m not trying to defend anyone, but i didn’t saw the video and only heard from them because of this shitshow
Ltt is certainly not innocent here but this one I’ll disagree with since it basically just happened to them with an early sample of the backpack.
what they did to billet is goddamn evil
Evil - least sheltered redditor, just an ass
ruining a prototype product, talking shit about it, and then selling it is a lot worse than being “just an ass”
K hes hitler the evil twins
the dictionary definition of evil is “morally reprehensible”. you don’t need to overreact by going straight to a godwin
So what we call hitler then
Damn, I thought we had a while before the 14 yr olds showed up on Lemmy.
Ad hominems, buddy projecting find an argument next time
Bad data is not the issue when they’re the ones generating it. Rushed reviews are the issue.
LTT needs to make sure quality catches up to quantity wrt their yt videos. Essentially, they need:
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More technical experts/researchers to find and filter news/info before it goes into the script.
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Quality control after shooting a vid, i.e. they must be willing to reshoot segments with wrong info, not just put a note on the screen or in the yt comments
Both requires a huge investment in manpower and studio space. As it is, they are short staffed and juggling sets for shoots. If Linus wants to go on this path of business growth, he has no choice in this matter. They can’t go on like a small garage operation anymore.
He did invest in getting a new huge workspace and hired a bunch of experts. Remains to be seen if it’s enough and if they are used effectively.
-
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Anyone watching LTTs server videos hopes it is only for entertainment as following what they do other than for your home lab would be a disaster.
However they are building up the LAB and are selling it as serious detailed reviews… This would be a shift from their current content.
Flip side Gamers Nexus is hard core serious and I always have to skip through their videos as they put me to sleep.
Gamers Nexus makes extremely detailed videos, but after 10 Minutes of non-stop fact firework my brain just starts to fade away
Either i’m not that into tech or it is my brains fault
ya I jump to the chapter then scrub to the graphs.
I would never follow what they do in server videos exactly, but I learned a ton from their server video backlog. Also find their server shenanigans very fun. Think server and the occasional actually useful tech tip video are still their best stuff.
Most else feels half baked or falls into the GN video criticism.
As someone who’s been running unRAID out of a tower and like 5 drives; it’s weird watching like four people who are definitely more tech savvy than me just bumble fuck their way through all this server stuff with enterprise level gear. Like I do more research for myself and I’m not jumping on video. Ultimately I like the videos, I enjoy seeing the approaches, but they try to come off like authority figures. Then they don’t even know how to properly parity swap and make unRAID look harder than it is.
it’s weird watching like four people who are definitely more tech savvy than me just bumble fuck their way through all this server stuff with enterprise level gear.
As someone who is very technically savvy, let me assure you that these guys are clowns. They are tech entertainers, not experts. Give yourself some credit.
They have people knowing their stuff, it’s just Linus playing around and figuring out. Anthony with old hardware and Linux and Jake does know a thing or two about server stuff
Anthony with old hardware and Linux
Anthony isn’t with LMG anymore. Their name is Emily now. Also, while Emily knew about Linux, having just a single person knowledgeable in that topic isn’t enough. In any case, it’s moot because she isn’t there anymore.
Jake does know a thing or two about server stuff
Have you seen the storage server video? The one where they lost petabytes worth of data because they had zero clue how to configure a ZFS storage pool for proper redundancy? Even before this whole thing went down they’ve been heavily criticised for how they set it all up. As though it was done by an amateur who never configured a ZFS system before.
Edit: NM, Emily is on vacation, she didn’t leave.
it’s weird watching like four people who are definitely more tech savvy than me just bumble fuck their way through all this server stuff with enterprise level gear.
Exactly, bumble fuck is what every one of their server videos or home automation videos seems to be about.
This pretty similar to why I stopped watching their vids. I always thought they were a trusted authority, until they covered a product that I had some familiarity with. I wasn’t even an expert at it, I was just interested so I read some articles, visited some forums and subreddits about it for a week or two. Their video on it had a couple of mistakes and they omitted a couple of minor features, but were important to me. There was nothing egregious but it was pretty surprising to me that in this one thing, I knew more than them, despite not doing much research.
Yeah they’re good for keeping aware of what’s new in the tech world mostly. Their actually reviews of products are so poor and out of touch. If I hear them nitpick the bevels on a display without actually framing things into the cost and value sentiment one more time I’m buying a farm
They have zero consistency in platform or hardware and don’t seem to setup any monitoring as well.
Other than building gaming PCs I would not look to LTT for technical advice.
I just watch the videos where they do silly stuff… Cooling a server with a pool is something I would never be able to do, that’s the kind of shit I want to watch, them building their thousandth gaming PC is just meh.
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But that’s the goal of those videos for the audience they’re trying to reach. For the people that will only ever use the hardware with windows, then that’s really is the most practical metric to look at.
To be fair, GN provides excellent Chapter selection to encourage you to skip to whatever you want to know. You don’t have to watch the whole thing if you don’t want to. I’m more annoyed by them using those idiotic clickbait thumbnails. Complete no-go for me.
There’s an extension you can get that removes the clickbait thumbnails. I think this the right one. It really makes YT browsing so much better.
I’ve started consciously avoiding clickbait looking thumbnails for a while. While this addon looks great on paper, I do prefer to support creators who don’t treat me like a kid in a candy store. That being said, I had no idea this addon existed, that’s pretty cool
Yeah, but then I’d support the practice through my click. I’d rather block 90% of YT content.
Even with the chapters they yammer on in every section. They could say the same thing in half the time and their videos would STILL be long.
Totally agree. Glad someone said this.
This is painstakingly well thought and put out. Stuff needed to be said, and let us hope the community voices it as well.
Linus has already responded on his forums, blamed GN, blamed the community and did everything possible to avoid addressing the issue. Too big to change. Too arrogant to admit fault.
I read the reply. Sounds like feelings were hurt. Let us hope reason wins out in the end, one can dream.
