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.
There should be actual, legitimate, law enforcement involvement… Cause its literally theft at best, corporate espionage at worst.
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.
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.
I don’t know if Billet has the appetite to sue. It seems like Billet and LMG came to an agreement
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.
I’ve had beef with LTT since his series of videos where he tried to use Linux as a daily driver while making absolutely zero effort to understand any of the differences between it and Windows, then proceeded to whine about how it’s not Windows. The part where he broke his system after it explicitly warned him he was about to break it and asked for rather thorough confirmation that he wanted to do so was where I stopped watching him for good.
There’s being ignorant and then there’s being stupid. I fault nobody for being ignorant of how something works when they first encounter it. I do, however, fault them when they demand changes be made without actually understanding the implications of those changes.
The Linux thing I don’t find egregious. Replace Linus with a sizeable majority of the population and they would have done the same thing. I probably would have as well.
If you want to move people from Windows to Linux, Discord to Matrix, Whatsapp to Signal or even Reddit to Lemmy, it needs to be as painless as possible.
Everything that GN points out though is pretty damning.
Billet labs incident is very very troubling. I can’t see other youtubers not getting roasted over doing something like that, and could easily see a LTT video drawing attention to another channel doing something like that. So to find out LTT pulled such a move is a hit to their integrity.
Thats the thing that irks me.
Linus is so free with the criticism when he’s calling out other companies (At least ones that aint paying him off coughASUScough), but legitimate criticism against him is treated like the most awful thing anyones ever done.
I’m glad to hear that the experience was relatively smooth for you.
I don’t mean to imply that average computer users are dumb. It’s just that your positive experience came thanks to the numerous improvements made over the years, and I just feel like there’s still a bit of ways to go.
For the last 20 years I have installed linux 1-2x a year to see whats new, do some rice and leave it like that. My work is tied to the adobe/capture one and it’s much easier to have windows than use other solutions. I installed linux on my mom’s pc that i maintain and it works like magic.
Yes! The Linux coverage from LTT is positive and encourageing UNLESS Linus is in the video then he looks for any excuse to raise his voice and yell “this is stupid” or “its going to break on me in 5 minutes”. Emily’s very good coverage of PopOS back in 2019 ish got me into Linux and I have not looked back. Its disappointing to see how with many things (not just Linux) how Linus will change the direction of a video to be more entertainmenting/clickbaity at the cost of good information and quality.
I think what becomes clear when watching a lot of videos is that Linus is more of a tech fanboy that is good at all the high level stuff and can sell it in an entertaining way. He is not however someone who is super into the weeds of a specific technology, tool or system beyond applying his „I’ve worked with technology before“ knowledge.
They have other folks on the show for that.
It that being said. I wouldn’t fault him for his experience with PopOS!. That was totally on the OS and not his fault.
PopOs fucked up a bit leaving that iso live for so long with the steam cache issue, but Linus has to take responsibility here to. It was not “totally on the OS” there where many off ramps that where missed.
For example:
- On the pop shop GUI if he first installed the system updates that would have run a background apt update avoiding the issue. There was a red bubble indicator you can see in the video that should have drawn his attention if he was not in a rush.
- On the pop shop steam page there was a list box that would have allowed him to install the flatpak version of steam, its not like it was hidden or anything it was right next to the install button and its was in fact bigger than the install button.
- Most people googling the terminal way of installing apps in linux would have also run apt update but he either skipped this bit or just ran the first thing he saw on google… He probably would have also typed in “rm -rf /*” if google told him to without a second thought.
- He could have also just read what the OS was trying to tell him, pause, have a think and maybe ask some one like emily? But no he was in a rush so no time for that.
He got into this issue mainly because he was rushing, it was more entertaining and created drama.
That bit was important to include in the video in my opinion because of the circumstances.
He didn’t break his computer while messing around with the kernel, changing system settings by recklessly copy&pasting random commands he found on the internet. It happened while trying to install a very popular software from the distro’s official package manager, following what’s otherwise standard installation procedure. A lot of people broke their systems the exact same way until that bug was fixed.
We all like to pretend Linux is “there”, but it was a clear and important example of how it’s not really. Because the user is dumb and the user has no idea what they’re doing. At least that’s the core assumption an OS should operate under if it is to be used by anyone and everyone. You can’t claim even your grandma can run Arch when trying to install Steam can bork your system. And no, warnings are not a valid defense in this case. You will never teach the average user to not ignore those. Unfortunately it’s the OS’s job to protect the user from their own recklessness, and again, warnings are not always enough. Especially when you’re getting warnings while doing something so mundane.
I think he was using Manjaro for those videos. It’s a bad distro and I would know because I used it for years. It’s more the fault of Manjaro than linux itself.
But that’s how the typical user behaves. I love Linux and what you can do with it, but it’s so tone deaf to think oridanry people are going to behave any diffeent than Linus did. People just don’t have the time to take that effort you expect of yourself, only enthusiast have this kind of time. Other people are enthusiastic about other things. We need to all respect this.
Ugh, it’s so frustrating. Linux will continue to be irrelevant to consumers as long as this attitude of “just put in the effort to understand” persists.
That’s what I hate about the open source crowd’s “everyone can check the source code” argument! How many users actually do that? It must be pretty fucking close to 0%! A dev with malicious intent could easily introduce shit in an update that no one would notice for an extended period of time if ever!
That’s what I hate about the open source crowd’s “everyone can check the source code” argument! How many users actually do that?
It’s still a decent argument. While many/most may not be able to read it and understand it it is still better to have some (outside the project) that can look at the code and check it independently.
It must be pretty fucking close to 0%!
It certainly depends on the project and how much it is used. A library someone threw together on an afternoon will unlike a bigger project like NGINX, have little to no external eyes on it.
Though it’s not just about reading it. Open source projects (depending on their size) can usually react faster when a bug or problem is found within it.
A dev with malicious intent could easily introduce shit in an update that no one would notice for an extended period of time if ever!
The same can be said with closed source applications. A dev or the entire company (if they where to go down such a path) could also easily introduce something nasty. In that case there would be no way at all to confirm that anything bad or upright malicious was introduced (unless it gets so bad that it would trigger an Anti-Virus or is easily noticeable).
Is Open Source alone making software more secure (or prevent malicious actions)?
No. But it can be a sizable improvement. Just like security through obscurity1/2 (when given as an isolated argument) is not making software more secure (dare I say it decreases its security; when used in isolation).
His series on linux got me interested in linux and a few weeks before the first ep came out I made the switch. I had been using linux as a brand new user for 4 weeks when watching his “review” of linux and I thought it was unfair. But linux made a good first impression on me and I am still daily driving it and now all my machines run linux.
Yeah, this irked me too. I get trying to be the average person (and Pop! was also bugged at the time), but I find it really hard to believe that the average person would approach linux and completely ignore serious warning messages.
I work in IT. Average people tend to fall into one of two categories when presented with big scary warning messages.
Category 1: They freak out and immediately ask for help, and tend to be very skeptical of anything you tell them to do until the message goes away.
Category 2: They ignore the message and YOLO it like Linus did, then call for help hours or days later when something inevitably breaks.
It’s rare for either group of people to read an comprehend the message in it’s entirety.
I find it really hard to believe that the average person would approach linux and completely ignore serious warning messages.
Have you met people? They do this with Windows.
Good God that was infuriating. Watching the prompt pop up when he was installing Steam or whatever asking him to confirm if he really wanted to remove the GUI was awful. He just said yes and felt like Linux was the issue. Nope.
In the years I have spent IT adjacent, the primary difference I have noticed between Windows and Linux has nothing to do with drivers, OS, UI, or anything like that. It’s that Windows has long conditioned users to hit OK on anything that pops up. Linux expects you to read it and make a choice, and it’s usually not that difficult of a choice. Linus pulled up a web page, blindly followed instructions without reading, and borked his install. Predictable. It’s the same behavior that gives grandma a computer virus.
I started the video shocked that GN would do a video like this at all. I was 100% ready to blame GN for being petty. As I watched and listened, though, he made really good points, and I can’t help but agree. Especially on the points where Linus doubles down on really bad takes instead of doing the right thing, insisting it doesn’t matter (there are loads more examples than just Billet).
The one thing he didn’t say that I wish he had, though, is to remind people that he’s focused on industry journalism, not just hardware itself. This isn’t a hit piece, it’s an information piece, where he holds industry players accountable. Not unlike his journalism on Newegg and Asus. No, it’s not positive, but it’s honest, and it informs and benefits consumers.
I got the sense that he didn’t really want to have to do a video like this. He kind of said as much a couple of times. And in one section he mentioned he has kind of tip-toed around directly calling out LTT on specific screwups for some time. Like posting his results that contradicted theirs with the hope that people would notice but without directly going “looks at LTT’s bogus numbers wtf”
I kind of felt like he got to a point where he couldn’t in good conscience ignore it any longer because the pile of fuckups had gotten too big and too egregious with this billet labs fiasco.
I’m glad he did the vid because, yeah, he has done a good job of holding others accountable as you said, and this is exactly the same ethos. It’s tough because I imagine you don’t want to be seen as just doing hit pieces against the competition. There’s an inherent conflict of interest at play. But given sufficiently good evidence and enough of it, I think that puts those concerns almost entirely to rest.
The kind of person to be doing reviews is someone who values the truth – accurate results and sound conclusions – over money, ego, fame and popularity, etc. Someone with a great deal of curiosity, skepticism, mental flexibility, and humility. Sounds like that is the near polar opposite of Linus.
I find it hard to believe, sometimes, that fully grown adults exist who cannot admit their mistakes which just reminds me of how damn lucky I am to work where I do, with a culture that encourages fessing up and fixing rather than covering up and blaming. Where the overwhelming majority of people I have ever worked with is about doing the right thing with an eye primarily on the goal rather than their own ego and ambition.
Yeah, he didnt do a video to roast LTT and he also didnt insult him.
He just stated what he sees as going wrong at LTT and how it could be fixed.
I stopped watching LTT a long time ago because of similar reasons, it was just so frustrating to see them start a project, barely finish it, release the video and the not finish it.
Other times they made a big mistake in the middle and continued with the video “because we dont have time to fix it”.
I prefer Youtubers that may have months between videos, but when a new one is out, I nkow its going to be a good one.
And if they do a project, when it has an issue, they either continue the video until it is fixed, or they read it in the comments and someday we will get a follow up.
Linus’s response.
I honestly fully stand by GN in this and while I think LTT should have had the opportunity to respond to the allegations before the video went live, since this is the proper Journalistic thing to do, it should be considered that ltt has a huge audience and influence in the tech sphere so I can only assume GN didn’t want them to get ahead of the curve? It’s sad if it has come to this.
I also don’t know how exactly ltt could respond to the observations GN made since it’s a piece about what happened in videos they posted. They can’t really deny what happened. All they could do is lower their head and promise to do better.
Ugh, Hes trying so hard to double down on his comments, while giving plausible deniability to his doubling down, especially with the Billet block.
And its so fucking stupid to complain that the billet waterblock is expensive and stupid, considering ALL the stupid, expensive, wasteful bullshit hes done on his channel… Its double stupid that hes still using his basis on using the wrong card that didnt fit it as his argument.
It’s a bit conceited off him to assume he knows what’s best for his viewers. A review is supposed to give unbiased, timely, and accurate information about a product and let the customer decide if it’s worth their money. A reviewer can give opinions, of course, but only after the concrete numbers. Linus has no idea what $800 is worth to any given viewer; I bet there are many who would happily pay that much for a custom water block if it was the best on the market. To bad we don’t know how good it is because ltt didn’t adequately test it.
800 is probably one of the cheapest “omg this is expensive and no one will ever buy this thing ever” things he’s ever showecased/made/used/etc.
Which just makes the whole argument stupid, and bunk.
Dude spent thousands of dollars to make a shitty desk with a computer in it, ffs.
I’ve got to say, I’ve noticed a lot of the things Steve mentioned in his video, and I agree with the vast majority of what he said, but I still do watch LTT occasionally because it’s still often entertaining, but man Linus’ response rubbed me the wrong way. Aside from addressing the auctioning the water block thing, he didn’t really address anything and most of it came off as woe is me. It sounded like he thinks the GN video is why people are upset rather than the countless mistakes and corrections they’ve had to do in the past just 6 months. It seems to me like he’s missing the issue most people have.
Server capacity exceeded Thankfully I got to read it before their forum server took a dump for some reason
I don’t feel Linus could have said anything to Steve to stop the video Really, Linus/LMG needed the wakeup call They have been making bigger and bigger stumbles and it’s not just due to growth as Linus uses it as an excuse He also said nothing would change as a result of the Billet debacle, just a tightening of documentation but it a sign of bigger issues It was the result of multiple levels of failure He should have stopped the video when he knew they didn’t have the right GPU there and even pointed out quite authoritatively to is employee his mistake in not identifying the GPU A symptom of rushing out videos on a very tight schedule possibly
The big reason Steve didn’t go through Linus first, and he mentions it a few times in the video, is because LMG is no longer a small company or a one man YouTube show. They’re s big company. I know Linus works hard to hit that YouTube grind, but he still sees himself as a small YouTuber.
I mean Steve would have done this same piece had it been gigabyte, Newegg, or whomever on that larger scale.
Follow up on Linus’ response from GN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3byz3txpso
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?
Not fully LTT related, but man is it hard to write an apology, everytime I read one online I’ve never seen people think that the person was truly apologetic.
Fully LTT related, Personally seeing the character, I’d say he is indeed apologetic, I can fully see how this error could be made from what was written in his response and hell a lot of people could have done so I’d say personally. I personally think he would be apologetic and wants to do better, this guy wants to go far to do well, he’s a guy that wants to do a lot
Edit: Yeah I can understand, if you’d like to share your point of of view with me feel free to do so, I’m a chill person, just wanted to share my point of view and it’ll be a pleasure to read others
Writing this 12 Horus later. Decides to rewatch the GN video, some of those errors are really big and have to absolutely be fixed or be repaired as much as possible, and some definitely come from the size of the company which is becoming really big creating communication errors, which the bigger a company gets, the bigger the projects 5hey can work on and the slower it goes, if, it wants to keep the same quality. Seeing the Waterblock being in auction is a really really big error, and can definitely come from not enough communication between a person that knows it has to be sent back and a person that’s thinking of a charity
Not fully LTT related, but man is it hard to write an apology, everytime I read one online I’ve never seen people think that the person was truly apologetic.
Its only hard when you’re a narcissistic egomaniac that finds it clinically impossible to admit even the smallest amount of fault without blaming the entire world for it .
Its no wonder why most internet apologies are written like this, because most people having to write them end up being in the position because they are narcissistic egomaniacs that think they can do no wrong to begin with.
I don’t know Linus personally the way you do, but he ran LMG as if it was still a small company running out of a house instead of a midsized one. The vibe I got was that the mistake of putting the Billet item on auction wasn’t made by Linus personally, but my a staff member, that would explain that apology with Linus not taking personal responsibility because he felt like it wasn’t on him to manage the movement of this one item.
I have no horse in this race. Will still watch Techquickie and the occasional GN video.
I like GN and LTT for casual watching. But I’m very disappointed Steve opted to not do the proper thing and provide the accused party the opportunity to respond to his allegations. It comes off really hypocritical when he’s calling out one media group for lack of ethics/integrity/accountability and rushing videos out without proper checks and procedure in place and then rushes a video out and doesn’t give them a chance to respond first. And I don’t say this just because it’s GN and LTT. Could have been J2C and Hardware Unboxed or something and I’d still have this same opinion. I highly respect GN for the work they put in l, the content they make, and their quality, but this is a bit disappointing to see. Hopefully LTT cleans up their QC pipeline and thinks their actions through, and hopefully Steve at GN does too.
A bad day all around in my book.
I don’t agree.
and then rushes a video out
I don’t think this felt rushed. I think, as he said in the video, this has been brewing for months, and it felt thought through and thorough.
Steve opted to not do the proper thing and provide the accused party the opportunity to respond
I think if it was one mistake they would have done exactly that. But as it’s been a consistent trend over months or even years of sloppiness and mistakes and rushed videos, you can’t just have a word with someone and fix that overnight. I think publishing the video and their thoughts, and rallying the community to raise awareness and force them to improve, is the right move.
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.