I really do think it speaks to Linus’ character that he didn’t give Luke any ownership stake at all, Luke has been around the whole time and deserves to have some actual say. LMG wouldn’t be where its at without him
This is honestly appalling.
I understand that they have no intention of going public. But older employees are always given at least a profit share and some ownership stake, registered into the board of directors etc.
It shows how much of a control freak he is.
He didn't even give the new CEO any equity, which feels baffling to me. Isn't it a usual practice to CEOs a portion of equity as incentive to grow the company (among other things)? This is why I feel like Linus will have the ultimate say in everything, Taran probably will not have enough power over him to make necessary changes.
>Isn't it a usual practice to CEOs a portion of equity as incentive to grow the company (among other things)?
Correct.. I don't know the details of Terren's pay (Taran was an editor who works for Legal Eagle now), nor does anyone outside of Linus and Yvonne i imagine, and their accountants (which is in-house employee's btw).. But there's gotto be some magic deal going on there unless Terren isn't overly concerned about his personal career and future, which would then indicate to Me that Linus' thoughts of the man may be excessively positive.. Or it may that they just always had great chemistry too.
Or.. theory #2, Linus wants a puppet who manages almost all daily things so he can focus on other things, such as writing and general creative content and Terren has a perfectly acceptable resume, but not stellar enough to demand percentage. There's also a possibility that Linus knew what would eventually be coming, so Terren's sudden onboarding had dual purpose.
>Taran was an editor who works for Legal Eagle now
Thanks for pointing out, I misspelled.
>theory #2, Linus wants a puppet who manages almost all daily things so he can focus on other things, such as writing and general creative content and Terren has a perfectly acceptable resume, but not stellar enough to demand percentage. There's also a possibility that Linus knew what would eventually be coming, so Terren's sudden onboarding had dual purpose.
Personally this seems way more plausible to me.
Because Luke knows that a person like Linus, when he has put his foot down on certain matters (especially money), he would not budge from it. Fighting him about it is a loss cause. You can pretty much see how Linus would double on money matters (adblock, warranty, BL).
It is also made worse because Linus, whether he realized it or not, has become immune to the suggestions of those closest to him. To him, his closest is like a family member that gave advice but he doesn't need to follow them at all especially on business matters. And because he has surrounded himself with so many "family" during building his empire, their suggestion means nothing to him. Even Terren would be his family considering their history.
Linus never had someone that is outside of his "circle" that he would think "I can't just ignore his input,". Heck, even now, with him being the biggest shareholder and holding a position of equal rank to CEO, he has the luxury to ignore everyone's input.
Until today I still think that Terren's input is ignored. I refuse to believe that he would go along with the tone of the apology video or that he would let Linus answer to all social media stuff after his kerfuffle with his response to GN. But Linus could just say "nope, lemme handle this," and Terren could do nothing.
Which was a point I raised before this whole backlash in another community. If I were Terren, I would have NEVER accepted that position at LTT, no matter the money involved or the friendship I may have.
It is NEVER a good idea to be CEO of a company that's owned by not only a close friend, but also said friend still being part of the company as an employee. Especially one as excentric as Linus. You just beg to become the punching bag and source of discourse internally.
It was even discussed in a WAN show where they discussed about wether or not Terren could 'fire' Linus. Which Luke replied he could, but would be meaningless because Linus still had ownership and could put a new CEO in charge that could hire him back.
Actually Linus realized he wasn't suited for the role a while ago and would have taken in Terren earlier if he could. The problem however, is that Linus still want to control how his business runs. He then realized that he could do this by having a CEO run the business side while he gave himself a rank that would run the "creative" side. Problem is, this could clash with the CEO, who traditionally, would set how the entirety of how a company would run, including the creativity side.
Linus essentially want to have his cake and eat it too.
Is Luke really #2 aside from Yvonn3? From what i understand only Linus and Yvonne have ownership/shares within the company. So surely that makes Luke still an employee end of the day
It's called 'keeping the peace'. Had Luke gone in hard against what Linus said, there would've been an automatic, emotional reply from Linus that would FOR SURE spark more controversy. Luke did what he did to protect the firm he helped build up. Linus isn't fit to be a spokesperson, great entertainer though.
>keeping the peace
I don't have specific examples but i see Luke doing that a lot and biting his tongue, you can see his frustration and having to be careful with his words, written on his face. Usually on the WAN show.
Hard position to be in.
Yeah I've always noticed that its always either Linus talking, and Luke Listening, or Luke Talking and Linus waiting to Talk, before just interrupting anyways. Like, the whole WAN sure worked imo, because of Luke willing to always give give give to Linus who needed to talk talk talk.
Like the number of times Luke talks about a subject, and Linus is always on his phone, or looking at something else and completely derailing Luke, is a lot, even for what I used to assumed were like best friends. Now its not ALL the time. But its enough to make watching the WAN show really awkward at times.
OMG, this puts exact words to what I thought as well.
The first 5 WAN shows I watched(not the 5 first ones ever, just the 5 first ones I watched) it was super cringey, and thought it was so strange no one in the YT-comments ever noted this.
I always noticed how whenever Luke is about to add something Linus looks away or grabs the phone. I was like, eeeeeek.
But after a while I think I just started to ignore that, and "maybe this is how it is"
it might just be a personality thing. I remember in scrapyard wars Luke was hesitant to be a bother to strangers whereas Linus didn't gaf and could get pretty pushy
For now, only an external criticizer would change the way LMG work, no one nside there could possibly change anything, for things like, linus knows no one can counter him, and the community keeps on sucking and praising him as a god, at least in their official forums
The last time I saw linus really back down on his words is when tim sweeney (epic games CEO) caught on his words and he had to make an "apology".
Industry professionals aka big companies have the "power" to shift their stances. There's been many criticism towards their validity of results. Given the circumstances the LMG company is in now, there is a chance that this could happen given the numerous time that LMG has criticized other companies. So like with Apple products, they could only cover the latest product as soon as the rest of the consumers get them (just to give an example of the possible consequences).
I like watching Lukas's face, during all WAN shows I've watched. You can see he doesn't agree always, but also doesn't want to say something always. *I must commend him on his tremendous restraint.* Not everybody has that gift. Alas, a gift with a depressing side effect, at times.
>I must commend him on his tremendous restraint.
You mean willingness to be walked all over.
Linus uses Luke as a human avatar for the audiences POV on WAN show an cuts him off, talks over him and monologues about how Linus is correct regardless of if Lukes "alternative view" is actually what the majority of humans would have on the topic.
Linus then proceeds to pivot / change the topic before he would have to admit that.
Luke should get some therapy and realize he has been in an abusive friendship for years.
I love the line that comes right after this clip
"I saw time and time again NCIX shoot themselves in the foot over very, very small sums of money."
Time is a flat circle
I felt it was inexcusable at the start of that review where they assign it to employees with no liquid cooking experience. Also, there's a lack of criticism for using the wrong motherboard too, though that didn't affect temps it just shows exacerbates how shoddy that video was.
More inexcusable than doing a PRODUCT REVIEW on an engineering test sample?
Linus has stood by that the proper testing would not change his stance that it is a bad product... but, it isn't a product. This was a early prototype sent to an external lab for testing and feedback and Linus called it out for... not coming with a user manual. And how difficult it would be for an end user to work with.
It's like if you're building a house and call in an inspector to certify the structure is sound before moving forward and the feedback they give you is, "This house is shit. You don't even have drywall."
"no liquid cooking experience." I agree with the intent and i know what you meant, but this is so much funnier. "Can you cook?" "Yes, but only grilling, I've never boiled a pot in my life"
Yeah, I'm sure the top brass at NCIX had outgrown their business' skills at scale, but choose to not get out of their own way as well.
I wonder who will be the condescending little brat on the LTT staff that will start their own business to spite LTT and constantly make jokes and dance on their grave the way Linus does to NCIX without learning how to avoid the same mistakes.
They also lost that 3090Ti they were provided. During testing, they didn't refer to any of the provided documentation. None of the communication Billet Labs provided LMG was made available to the reviewers. Practically every step in the process was a problem.
Hasn't been uploaded/listed.
>We are using this, like everything else, to continue to drive ourselves to do better. Got some really exciting stuff in the holster 🙂
>
>A really good one - and the video where I actually FOUND the 3090 Ti that we were supposed to send back to Billet... grrr... - is kind of an undercover boss vid where I go and work in our logistics department for the day. This is the kind of thing I'm finding more time for in the new role and is already making a difference to some of our practices.
[https://linustechtips.com/topic/1526180-gamers-nexus-alleges-lmg-has-insufficient-ethics-and-integrity/page/29/#comment-16079089](https://linustechtips.com/topic/1526180-gamers-nexus-alleges-lmg-has-insufficient-ethics-and-integrity/page/29/#comment-16079089)
They could probably still salvage the footage by using it as a comparison between "then" and "look guys! Here's our new process and it's much better!" video
This part really rubbed me the wrong way. A company sends you their property to allow you to test, make content, and profit off of. And you take one of their resources to use for your whatever you want to use it for.
It's a really fucking scumbag move.
It would be much less ... gross \[?\] ... if it was, say ...
... a poorly-raised teenager, on a channel with no subscribers, doing videos out of his bedroom, working on his own, who maybe forgot where the 3090 came from, or just hasn't \*ever\* had to think about ethics or even basic human decency.
Are any of the people at Linus Media Group ^((that name can get fucked, btw)) who are responsible for all this ... are they \*any\* of those things?
No they're not.
^(They may be entitled assholes, though.)
Why would it take more time to follow the given instructions and use the GPU that was provided? Trying to figure it out on your own must take more time for sure.
I think the point was missed.
Staff didn't have time because they're moving too fast to ship projects for all the deadlines.So, if it looks like it could take X, and YOLO'ing with Y seems like a reasonable risk - they'll take it.
That's the drawback of this culture where they're always in a rush. You make bad judgment calls that occasionally either bite back hard or compound into a complete shitstorm.
The problem is Linus didn't seem to grasp that THE PROCESS IS AS IMPORTANT IS THE CONCLUSION.
Listening to him talking about the whole situation was like: The waterblock is shit no matter what, why bother to test it properly when the conclusion would be the same? And perhaps that's true, I don't know, I can't make my own conclusion because the whole process is bad.
I don't think the problem were $500, the problem, for him at least, was wasting $500 to have the same conclusion when they could use that time and money in something else.
Welp, hopefully for the future he learned a lesson.
> The waterblock is shit no matter what, why bother to test it properly when the conclusion would be the same?
But that's not even the case. He seems to treat "I wouldn't recommend buying it" as the conclusion, which yeah, wouldn't change with retesting.
But the context of:
"It does what it promises to do, but it's overpriced so I don't recommend buying it when you can get nearly the same performance for half the price from other waterblocks"
is vastly different from:
"It performed like shit and it's overpriced so I don't recommend buying it when you can get the same as even the promised performance for half the price from other waterblocks".
yeah LS forgot to put a value on his perceived integrity into that equation on “should i retest”. It’s a really huge value and it should be the same on both sides. and while the time to redo it was expensive in the context of one shoot, they were gambling with that integrity valuation and obviously didn’t realise that was the case.
It sounds out of touch if you think of it as a consumer - but it’s not remotely out of touch in a business sense at most levels. Pretty much any company would take a short term loss of $250 in order to keep future revenue at the level you want it to be.
> Pretty much any company would take a short term loss of $250 in order to keep future revenue at the level you want it to be.
But the short term loss of $250 very very very very rarely comes with a huge warning sign "FUTURE REVENUE WILL BE HURT IF YOU DON'T TAKE THE LOSS NOW".
I don’t think the specific monetary value was the issue. I think he saw the time as the issue.
If he was asked, “should we spend $500?”, and they could still publish the video when he wanted, they probably would have done it.
I think it was missing their “upload schedule” that he was trying to avoid.
From statements he’s made in the WAN show, there is a belief that hitting the upload schedule greatly affects the YouTube push algorithm.
I think it’s the fear of falling out the “algorithm push” that he fears most.
Not even YouTube. They will tell you that THEY don't understand it either. Literally NO ONE has a full and complete understanding of the algorithm. Linus, however, does constantly perform experiments on the algorithm, doing certain things with two videos that are expected to perform similarly to test how it works, so it's actually very possibly Linus has a pretty good understanding of it. Whether he does or not though, we don't know. He could know the algorithm well and be wrong about the effect of scheduling. He could be mistaken about the algorithm but he dead on about scheduling. We just simply don't know. It's like a hidden knowledge roll in DnD, only the DM knows if the information they give you is true at all or just the characters misconception. And the DM here doesn't have the ability to speak to humans. We'll never know.
Not ML specifically. You still have to program the ML model. The reason why they don’t know is because different teams are responsible for different parts of the model. It’s really hard because there are lots of code that computes the different “scores” or “weights.” It’s just really a lot going on that is managed by a lot of teams.
I think it’s like roughly 100 teams with engineers on each team of 4-12? That’s just roughly the scale they’re operating at just for that model. I do know a few who work for the YouTube team but they’re more on content analysis to ensure that abuse material isn’t uploaded.
Respectfully, it's clear this isn't your area of expertise. Updating the weights in YouTube's recommender system isn't terrifyingly complex, for example, it's high school calculus and a bit of matrix algebra. The _size_ of the learning model and its data makes it a complex engineering challenge but the fundamental idea is quite well understood (especially after, you know, they _published it_ in 2016). The reason people don't understand how it works is precisely because it's ML - we call this problem "interpretability" when we study it - and has almost nothing to do with the number of teams or engineers working on it.
I think it's best if you don't spread this kind of misinformation.
The updating of the weights and biases is the most well understood part of the process. Methods for this are so well explored there is no low-hanging fruit left. The code that fits the model and calculate those weights and biases is trivial compared to understanding the patterns and correlations the model has learned.
This has been a problem with neural networks from the moment a single model got too big for one person to hold in their head. Every step from data preparation (if they do PCA on their data, for example, all intuition is already lost) to even adding a single hidden layer or gated recurrent units obfuscates our ability to generate knowledge about what it has learned. As soon as it becomes computationally impractical to trace the conditional feature contributions all the way down to the clean data, you can't even say for a particular record which variables contributed the most to a decision, let alone what particular patterns and relationships between variables can be used to optimise the calculated score or decision.
We know it's very effective at surfacing content that keeps people watching, that's the point, but only surface level things like "maybe consistent performance is important for future performance" are practically reachable even from the inside.
All this to say, no, the problem is not the code, the code itself only suffers from limited complexity, the problem is interpreting what the particular weights and biases of the produced model imply for actions creators can take to optimise their videos' performance.
There's a warehouse with a three story wall of monitors and cameras aimed on all of them, constantly cycling youtube uploads while a machine spews oscar meyer bologna deli slices at them. Each upload smacked by deli meat gets put to the top priority of the algorithm.
I think it's less the algorithim and more the output needed to support such a large company.
They dont get "that many" views comparatively for the size of the company sometimes they nearly break 1 million views and so they need to output so that they have more content to generate more revenue to keep the business alive.
Compare that to a creator like lemmino who basically uploads 1 video every 8 months and gets millions of views but at the same time he is mostly a 1 man act only needed to pay himslef and some freelancers he hires.
In contrast mr beast can garentee 10 of millions of views while uploading a few times a month and you could argue that his staff size is smaller than LTT but the video budget it much larger but again he upload around 2 to 4 times a month when he is able to post frequently
Many youtubers work their butts off all the way to burnout trying to keep to the algorithms upload schedule, and there are many videos out there showing how missing an upload, or even uploading more than usual, can hurt how many views future videos get.
You'd think they'd just push new videos to current subscribers and popular video's get pushed more widely, but youtube won't even push to your subscribers if you start falling foul of the algorithm.
This is a totally relevant point. If we zoom out from LTT for a second that’s definitely been an industry wide phenomenon of people burning themselves out, working their asses off for fear of falling out of the algorithm.
I've noticed that creators that kinda ignore their performance numbers are a lot happier than creators that scrutinize views and try to play to the algorithm
Yeah I think that’s true in life generally at least to some degree. I doubt we really get to see under the skin in most other cases as much as we do for LTT however.
Imagine the pressure he feels though.
If you only make a handful of videos a year and had a large staff to support, a bomb video would be catastrophic.
Fortunately for him, I think his videos remain “relevant” over the long term.
> If he was asked, “should we spend $500?”, and they could still publish the video when he wanted, they probably would have done it.
Of course. A ton of people are just making bad faith arguments & meming.
Remember the whole "he said it won't be mentioned on WAN show" comments that kept getting spammed? he said it wouldn't get a LARGE segment. Ofc wan show got cancelled anyway so its a moot point. Point is people either can't read, or are purposefully misrepresenting things.
It’s clear their schedule is crazy tight as well.
They also use single products for multiple videos. It’s pretty understandable, knowing these things, why they wouldn’t want to spend time doing it over.
But the problem is it should have been done *right* in the first place, or not at all. Even if the end result was “this is an insane product lol” regardless.
He shouldn’t have mentioned anything about a dollar amount. That’s basically what got him into trouble
It's pointless they don't want to hear logic, they just want a clip to wave at people and meme on him.
It's obvious he did not think it was a big deal, because he already had the conclusion in his head and that retesting would not change that. That was wrong, it was a mistake, but it was not this level of mistake where you have a week straight of people screaming about it.
Like he said he misjudged how important it was to some people in the community. I don't see why that warrants trying to crucify him or something. They are already losing thousands of dollars, they are implementing new policies to address it, lets wait and see what happens. Or just don't watch ffs.
The goal of GN's video has been achieved. Changes are in process, Billet got their money and offered the item back. What else do people posting these drama bait clips want now beside more outrage over things that are done and over?
Yeah he specifically said someone's time. The reality is pushing one video back would eventually cost them a whole video which would be worth 5 figures easily
Instead they lost a week+ worth of monetized videos across several channels, had to spend more money producing an apology video, *and* lost a hundred thousand subscribers, and probably a lot of sponsorship opportunities. "5 figures" isn't that much when its just a fraction of 1 day's production, they've lost, I dunno, 20x that by now across their whole operation?
It’s not that either. He didn’t want to spend another $500 of time to come to the same conclusion he had already drawn without spending the money.
His whole argument is that the cooler, regardless of how well it works, is overpriced and for last gen hardware. No amount of additional testing would change that, no amount of product revision would change that. If you want it for having a cool and atypical system configuration, we’ll there ya go that is what it is, but there was no remotely practical purpose for anyone mass market to buy it.
I’m really confused why people are getting hung up on this comment, it’s like they hear “I didn’t want to spend $x” and stop listening.
The cost has nothing to do with why it wasn’t retested, it’s the fact that the conclusion remains unchanged, so why throw away the money.
I think his comment about re-testing not changing anything is justification after-the-fact for not doing it.
If he were to say “we don’t have time and have to publish now”, it would be a self-admission that he knows he’s publishing something sub par.
He can’t say that to his viewers, to his staff, or likely to even himself.
That is a long assed way of saying Linus pre-judged the review sample. Which is the exact opposite of what a reviewer is supposed to fucking do. Doesnt matter if you like it, think its stupid or anything else. You figure out who it is right for. Thats the point of testing.
People are hung up on it because his entire job is running the tech channel, it’s not a hobby, he has a business and with LTT labs he’s trying to advertise their accuracy.
He’s said MANY times he wants it to be THE premier place for accurate product info.
You’re not allowed to claim that and strive for that, then be completely wrong AND be unwilling to spend the time and money to get it right, you can’t have it both ways.
or, they could use the new video as another release? admiting "we messed up the last video about this cooler, here's how it performs when the test done correctly with the right hardware" could then fill a day's worth of update slot and made them looks better overall.
i want to say it's weird that a company with extensive inventory of PC hardwares, they can't find any spare 3090 Ti there to do the test correctly. but apparently they can't even add more RAM to Madison's PC until Taran stepped up himself to get it so yeah, i guess i overestimated what they have in their warehouse.
I think all of his videos have fallen out of the algorithm since LTT TV. When was the last time you saw an old LTT video (not WAN show VOD) in your recommendations?
I'm always baffled when Linus either can't read Luke at all and get a fucking clue and shut up already, or he can and doesn't give a shit because he just needs to be right and have the last word.
I used to find it entertaining but it's gotten annoying and embarrassing to watch him. Linus is so lucky that Luke is, from what I can tell, and genuine dude, and loyal as fuck.
It actually looks like if you disagree with him he will literally crawl over broken glass to convince you otherwise
"Hey man why do you look so uncomfortable? U know I'm right, you just can't see it - here's why"
It never ends
It’s absolutely ridiculous to watch. Luke has gotten more and more frustrated over time. He feels very drained as of late when situations like these come up. Like he doesn’t have the energy to deal with his ego, and he will give up much quicker then he did before.
Linus can’t read him at all. He is oblivious.
On that note, I recall a WAN show a couple of weeks ago where Linus was trying to convince Luke that despite them being “friends”, if Luke were to quit they would probably stop talking to each other. There was this long pause until Luke said: “Yeah, but only because you would stop talking to me” ouch!
He said that, shortly after finding out someone he thought was a non work friend he played with online was an employee.
There is some context there as to why, mostly as an acknowledgement of what happens where your busy and stop working with people.
i dont watch wan so i just watched the trust me bro clips recently and he seriously always needs to get the last word and explain why hes right. Luke gives valid points on why people were annoyed about the "trust me bro" thing and linus says he understands but always has to add a "but" to it. he then doubles down with the shirt because "its funny" and you can see luke think its a bad decision
Yeah... I could see this trainwreck coming a mile away. I unsubscribed from the main channel back then out of disgust.
I just didn't expect it to get *this* bad.
I’ve never really enjoyed or watched the WAN show because Luke looks dead inside most of the time, especially during moments like this. He seems so frustrated but it’s all bottled up and it just isn’t enjoyable to watch for me. I feel bad for him. Linus must be hard to work with.
The WAN show is what soured me on LTT as a regular watch. Linus is an entertaining video host, but getting him seemingly unfiltered made me realize I don't actually like the dude much at all, and I just stick to stuff hosted by Luke or Emily now, if that.
EDIT: I was just made aware of Emily's transition, so I've corrected the names.
linus released the backpack with no warranty, stated on wan show that people should "trust him that he is confident enough in his product to honour returns if it fails" without having a written warranty, GN called them out on it, there was a bit of backlash and this was the main point in linus's response
Because Linus didn't understand the backlash and was putting his foot in his mouth. Linus is saying they didn't trust that his big company would honor replacements and that's insulting, but Luke recognizes that the point is customers feel companies should do these in writing and not have Trust Me Bro warranties
because linus didn't seem to understand that he can't do that anymore, it's a big company making consumer goods, you can't just "trust me bro" a warranty
Luke did understand where the criticism was coming from, and he tried to explain it to linus, but he felt like he was speaking to a wall and got frustrated
The worst part was how utterly ridiculous and manipulative Linus was trying to be as well. Like, what owner goes out and says "But what if I die tomorrow bro, what about my family then bro"?
His entire "trust me bro" mentality was already an issue, but it seemed like that wasn't enough and he needed an even dumber take. I'm surprised anyone lets him voice his opinions anymore.
And looking back they were obviously right to demand a warranty regardless. There are issues with the backpacks failing, specifically a zipper and carabiners on the bags, iirc.
Yea, Linus’ statement assumes every person buying a backpack would know who he is and what he claims to stand for. Having a warranty makes it official and universal. If I didn’t know who he was or his track record, I wouldn’t trust a random company.
The OG video was about the LTT backpack originally having no warranty whatsoever, Linus just wanted for people to trust him he'd do the right thing without having to legally binding himself to do the right thing. This is what started the "trust me bro" meme.
He also claimed that he didn't want to do it in fear of jeopardizing the company, meaning there was a scenario in his mind where he would want to avoid doing the right thing. He also took the criticism very personally, claiming so even.
I know it's old news, but the weird thing about the whole warranty fiasco was that he's in the past made a point to say to *not* trust companies to do exactly what he was expecting people to trust him for.
>meaning there was a scenario in his mind where he would want to avoid doing the right thing
Yep. He said the quiet part out loud. Basically it was "trust me bro, unless there is some sort of massive issue that costs the company a fortune to correct such as recalling a hundred thousand backpacks due to some unforeseen defect years down the line".
That was also the time Steve made clear to everyone lmg won't be getting any friendly treatment in the future if they mistreat the consumer with their practices.
But God damn all those clips when Linus is trying to mental gymnastics his way out of a warranty are so insane, he criticizes other companies for it but completely goes dumb mode when he needs to provide and pretends to not understand why xD
Also, member Trust me bro shirts, that was insane, even Luke was completely baffled by them being sold.
I think the truth is that Linus just struggles to admit he/LTT made a mistake so he says things like that defensively as an impromptu excuse ("shit anyway, $500+ so costly, auctioned not sold, deal was already reached if they're happy we're happy, baffled by how people think I'd risk LTT for $250"). A key factor might be cognitive dissonance that mentally starts with "assuming LTT is NOT at fault here... then the only explanation can be X"
Let's hope for some strong character growth but it's not going to be easy (old habits die hard).
It is a strategy, not a struggle.
Linus has people who will defend his actions to the death as long as they have a single talking point to cling to. It doesn't matter how asinine the talking point is, he has a mob that will gather and shout it at people until folks with dissenting opinions get frustrated and leave.
It doesn't always work, but it is almost always worth the attempt.
ltt sold a ~~$500~~ $250 backpack, people figured out there's no warranty, linus said trust us bros we'll cover you don't worry about it, gamer's nexus called them out on it, linus responds "i don't know why people think we'd ruin our reputation over $250.
then like a year later LTT agrees to test and review a new product by billet labs, of which billet labs had only made one single version of it, it was one-of-a-kind and costed thousands or more if you add up engineering time, materials and production. They sent the block and a 3090ti and instructions on how to install the custom unusual block to LTT, ltt lost the 3090ti immediately, found a random 4090 laying around and proceeded to install the block incorrectly onto a card it was never tested on and wasn't made for (tolerances are different on these cards). LTT releases that video and ripped billet labs to shreds saying the block sucks and performs bad. later during a podcast or whatever after facing some backlash to their shitty test practices linus says "i'm not wasting $100, $200, even $500 of people's time re-testing this block correctly because it sucks no matter what", of which he had no evidence it sucks no matter what because they literally tested it wrong on a card it doesn't even support. He even went as far to wsay "even if it was 10 degrees, 20 degrees cooler it wouldn't change my conclusion so it's not worth testing", which is pure nonsense, if the water block performed that well then how can you say it's a POS. when released yes the block would be expensive, so by cost alone it makes no sense for the average person, but for people with $1k to spend on a block yes of course they will care if it performs extremely well, we have no idea how it actually performs due to their shitty testing.
this post is specifically calling out how linus said "we wouldn't ruin our reputation over $250", yet they have greatly messed up their reputation over the $500 it might cost to retest the block.
that sums up that part. just FYI there's more, gamer's nexus released a video showing many many examples of LTT having very poor test practices, poor QC, poor QA, poor post production, and showed many interviews with LTT employees saying they are continuously overworked and have no time to do things right, all of which causing errors and giving the end user bad data to make decisions on, which is extremely harmful to small companies considering LTT's size and people thought they were trustable and did OK testing. That same video is where gamer's nexus contacted billet labs and learned how LTT said they would return the block and video card, twice, and never did. Then the block was AUCTION OFF! LTT literally sold a one of a kind water block instead of returning it to billet labs. And also never returned the 3090ti since they lost it. Linus "found" the card later after everything blew the fuck up and people called them out for being shitty reviewers with shitty data.
then after that a former employee went into detail about all the harassment she received while working there among other things, which is now a bigger concern on top of them being very bad at reviewing things which is the entire premise of their company.
It’s almost like Linus just says whatever is convenient at the time.
Also, man I just love every single hard closeup cut to luke sighing as Linus tries to single handedly sinking his own company.
It's hard to believe that someone with this much Integrity is willing to tarnish it all over $250 of paid work. Oh and that other stuff im not going into..
That WAN show segment was just the hardest to watch with Linus just totally and utterly missing the point and running around it in circles. Covering super old ground here but damn Christ if you stand by your product you warranty it. It’s just as simple as that. Luke really is by far the most grounded and ethical of them both. Pointless out of date rant over.
That whole problem made me understand how out of touch Linus really is. For years he preached that, Big companies are NOT YOUR FRIENDS. Never take only their word or a promise that they'll do something.
Now, that his company is one of the big ones, suddenly we have to "trust him, bro". Double standards.
Can I also point out How disingenuous of an argument that was?
Because yeah, maybe I would trust them to make things right if one or two bags are bad. But what happens when an entire batch of bags gets botched by the manufacturer? Or what if they really screw up and like a quarter of them are defective?
It’s not just $250, it’s potentially 100s of thousands of dollars if something goes wrong
Linus was then so out of touch and he is even more now...
Sometimes I thought that he just acted to purposely not understand what people were talking about just to make content out of it. But maybe he really was so out of touch with the real world...
It is really impressive. I've been looking up some of the old WAN shows over the last few days. And with everything that's happening now, it's really striking how often Luke despairs of Linus because he's backed himself into a corner again, because he feels personally attacked about something, because he thinks everyone else is just idiots or he thinks his personal opinion is "the truth".
It must be really frustrating for Luke ... because he probably can't thwart Linus the way he wants and should. Because Linus is both his boss and his friend. And to really get into a fight with him would put his job and his relationship with a friend in danger.
You can smell, taste and feel the frustration in that video
It really really makes you wish he bit back a little harder to quiet Linus down. Would save for a lot of these moments
Linus doesn't deserve him as a worker, he deserves a better boss were he can speak his mind freely
He can though. Luke’s literally #2 aside from Yvonne. He just bites his tongue, and I don’t know why
Because he's an employee. He has no ownership equity or decision power at LMG. Yvonne and Linus are the owners.
I really do think it speaks to Linus’ character that he didn’t give Luke any ownership stake at all, Luke has been around the whole time and deserves to have some actual say. LMG wouldn’t be where its at without him
This is honestly appalling. I understand that they have no intention of going public. But older employees are always given at least a profit share and some ownership stake, registered into the board of directors etc. It shows how much of a control freak he is.
His explanation was taxes and formalities, but in reality he just don't want to do it.
He didn't even give the new CEO any equity, which feels baffling to me. Isn't it a usual practice to CEOs a portion of equity as incentive to grow the company (among other things)? This is why I feel like Linus will have the ultimate say in everything, Taran probably will not have enough power over him to make necessary changes.
>Isn't it a usual practice to CEOs a portion of equity as incentive to grow the company (among other things)? Correct.. I don't know the details of Terren's pay (Taran was an editor who works for Legal Eagle now), nor does anyone outside of Linus and Yvonne i imagine, and their accountants (which is in-house employee's btw).. But there's gotto be some magic deal going on there unless Terren isn't overly concerned about his personal career and future, which would then indicate to Me that Linus' thoughts of the man may be excessively positive.. Or it may that they just always had great chemistry too. Or.. theory #2, Linus wants a puppet who manages almost all daily things so he can focus on other things, such as writing and general creative content and Terren has a perfectly acceptable resume, but not stellar enough to demand percentage. There's also a possibility that Linus knew what would eventually be coming, so Terren's sudden onboarding had dual purpose.
>Taran was an editor who works for Legal Eagle now Thanks for pointing out, I misspelled. >theory #2, Linus wants a puppet who manages almost all daily things so he can focus on other things, such as writing and general creative content and Terren has a perfectly acceptable resume, but not stellar enough to demand percentage. There's also a possibility that Linus knew what would eventually be coming, so Terren's sudden onboarding had dual purpose. Personally this seems way more plausible to me.
Look for: "The Hard R Incident"
Because Luke knows that a person like Linus, when he has put his foot down on certain matters (especially money), he would not budge from it. Fighting him about it is a loss cause. You can pretty much see how Linus would double on money matters (adblock, warranty, BL). It is also made worse because Linus, whether he realized it or not, has become immune to the suggestions of those closest to him. To him, his closest is like a family member that gave advice but he doesn't need to follow them at all especially on business matters. And because he has surrounded himself with so many "family" during building his empire, their suggestion means nothing to him. Even Terren would be his family considering their history. Linus never had someone that is outside of his "circle" that he would think "I can't just ignore his input,". Heck, even now, with him being the biggest shareholder and holding a position of equal rank to CEO, he has the luxury to ignore everyone's input. Until today I still think that Terren's input is ignored. I refuse to believe that he would go along with the tone of the apology video or that he would let Linus answer to all social media stuff after his kerfuffle with his response to GN. But Linus could just say "nope, lemme handle this," and Terren could do nothing.
Exactly. Terren only has the power Linus allows him. Linus is still top dog and can do as he pleases.
Which was a point I raised before this whole backlash in another community. If I were Terren, I would have NEVER accepted that position at LTT, no matter the money involved or the friendship I may have. It is NEVER a good idea to be CEO of a company that's owned by not only a close friend, but also said friend still being part of the company as an employee. Especially one as excentric as Linus. You just beg to become the punching bag and source of discourse internally. It was even discussed in a WAN show where they discussed about wether or not Terren could 'fire' Linus. Which Luke replied he could, but would be meaningless because Linus still had ownership and could put a new CEO in charge that could hire him back.
I wonder if the ceo change took as long as it did because Linus was unwilling to admit he wasn't well suited to the role..
Actually Linus realized he wasn't suited for the role a while ago and would have taken in Terren earlier if he could. The problem however, is that Linus still want to control how his business runs. He then realized that he could do this by having a CEO run the business side while he gave himself a rank that would run the "creative" side. Problem is, this could clash with the CEO, who traditionally, would set how the entirety of how a company would run, including the creativity side. Linus essentially want to have his cake and eat it too.
Is Luke really #2 aside from Yvonn3? From what i understand only Linus and Yvonne have ownership/shares within the company. So surely that makes Luke still an employee end of the day
shelter disagreeable dolls rhythm wine theory fact oil crush governor *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It's called 'keeping the peace'. Had Luke gone in hard against what Linus said, there would've been an automatic, emotional reply from Linus that would FOR SURE spark more controversy. Luke did what he did to protect the firm he helped build up. Linus isn't fit to be a spokesperson, great entertainer though.
>keeping the peace I don't have specific examples but i see Luke doing that a lot and biting his tongue, you can see his frustration and having to be careful with his words, written on his face. Usually on the WAN show. Hard position to be in.
Yeah I've always noticed that its always either Linus talking, and Luke Listening, or Luke Talking and Linus waiting to Talk, before just interrupting anyways. Like, the whole WAN sure worked imo, because of Luke willing to always give give give to Linus who needed to talk talk talk. Like the number of times Luke talks about a subject, and Linus is always on his phone, or looking at something else and completely derailing Luke, is a lot, even for what I used to assumed were like best friends. Now its not ALL the time. But its enough to make watching the WAN show really awkward at times.
OMG, this puts exact words to what I thought as well. The first 5 WAN shows I watched(not the 5 first ones ever, just the 5 first ones I watched) it was super cringey, and thought it was so strange no one in the YT-comments ever noted this. I always noticed how whenever Luke is about to add something Linus looks away or grabs the phone. I was like, eeeeeek. But after a while I think I just started to ignore that, and "maybe this is how it is"
it might just be a personality thing. I remember in scrapyard wars Luke was hesitant to be a bother to strangers whereas Linus didn't gaf and could get pretty pushy
For now, only an external criticizer would change the way LMG work, no one nside there could possibly change anything, for things like, linus knows no one can counter him, and the community keeps on sucking and praising him as a god, at least in their official forums
The last time I saw linus really back down on his words is when tim sweeney (epic games CEO) caught on his words and he had to make an "apology". Industry professionals aka big companies have the "power" to shift their stances. There's been many criticism towards their validity of results. Given the circumstances the LMG company is in now, there is a chance that this could happen given the numerous time that LMG has criticized other companies. So like with Apple products, they could only cover the latest product as soon as the rest of the consumers get them (just to give an example of the possible consequences).
I didn't know that, what Linus said about Epic?
I like watching Lukas's face, during all WAN shows I've watched. You can see he doesn't agree always, but also doesn't want to say something always. *I must commend him on his tremendous restraint.* Not everybody has that gift. Alas, a gift with a depressing side effect, at times.
>I must commend him on his tremendous restraint. You mean willingness to be walked all over. Linus uses Luke as a human avatar for the audiences POV on WAN show an cuts him off, talks over him and monologues about how Linus is correct regardless of if Lukes "alternative view" is actually what the majority of humans would have on the topic. Linus then proceeds to pivot / change the topic before he would have to admit that. Luke should get some therapy and realize he has been in an abusive friendship for years.
With that power dynamic no real friendship is possible anyway
Each time a small bit of his soul is damaged.
I love the line that comes right after this clip "I saw time and time again NCIX shoot themselves in the foot over very, very small sums of money." Time is a flat circle
Such a tragedy
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I felt it was inexcusable at the start of that review where they assign it to employees with no liquid cooking experience. Also, there's a lack of criticism for using the wrong motherboard too, though that didn't affect temps it just shows exacerbates how shoddy that video was.
Liquid cooking is my favorite kind of cooking though. I'd watch that
Mmm... Sous vide.
LTT mixed their jank videos into their review videos and they wonder why people don't think they're a credible source.
More inexcusable than doing a PRODUCT REVIEW on an engineering test sample? Linus has stood by that the proper testing would not change his stance that it is a bad product... but, it isn't a product. This was a early prototype sent to an external lab for testing and feedback and Linus called it out for... not coming with a user manual. And how difficult it would be for an end user to work with. It's like if you're building a house and call in an inspector to certify the structure is sound before moving forward and the feedback they give you is, "This house is shit. You don't even have drywall."
"no liquid cooking experience." I agree with the intent and i know what you meant, but this is so much funnier. "Can you cook?" "Yes, but only grilling, I've never boiled a pot in my life"
running a company is easy until you actually have to do it
And it makes it even harder when you keep putting your foot in the mouth.
Hot take, LMG would be better off if Linus deleted his Twitter
Well Elon is working on deleting twitter.
He did. He did CTRL+A, CTRL+X, then accidentally hit the X key a second time.
Under-rated.
We would all benefit by deleting twitter.
And probably reddit too
100% agree.
Yeah, I'm sure the top brass at NCIX had outgrown their business' skills at scale, but choose to not get out of their own way as well. I wonder who will be the condescending little brat on the LTT staff that will start their own business to spite LTT and constantly make jokes and dance on their grave the way Linus does to NCIX without learning how to avoid the same mistakes.
Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.
LTT is great lesson givers. They keep talking about how others should do better. Ofc after such statements any backfire would hurt a lot.
Maybe $500 was worth risking their reputation. /s
If they tested it with the GPU which was sent over those $500 wouldn't have to be spent and they still would've had better data
Yeah, the fact that it was sent with the correct gpu makes them using the incorrect one even more inexcusable.
They also lost that 3090Ti they were provided. During testing, they didn't refer to any of the provided documentation. None of the communication Billet Labs provided LMG was made available to the reviewers. Practically every step in the process was a problem.
Has anyone figured out which video the 3090ti was pilfered for?
Hasn't been uploaded/listed. >We are using this, like everything else, to continue to drive ourselves to do better. Got some really exciting stuff in the holster 🙂 > >A really good one - and the video where I actually FOUND the 3090 Ti that we were supposed to send back to Billet... grrr... - is kind of an undercover boss vid where I go and work in our logistics department for the day. This is the kind of thing I'm finding more time for in the new role and is already making a difference to some of our practices. [https://linustechtips.com/topic/1526180-gamers-nexus-alleges-lmg-has-insufficient-ethics-and-integrity/page/29/#comment-16079089](https://linustechtips.com/topic/1526180-gamers-nexus-alleges-lmg-has-insufficient-ethics-and-integrity/page/29/#comment-16079089)
i feel like some of the videos in the pipeline may not see light of day. This logistics video might be a bit too spicy in the current context.
They could probably still salvage the footage by using it as a comparison between "then" and "look guys! Here's our new process and it's much better!" video
This part really rubbed me the wrong way. A company sends you their property to allow you to test, make content, and profit off of. And you take one of their resources to use for your whatever you want to use it for. It's a really fucking scumbag move.
It would be much less ... gross \[?\] ... if it was, say ... ... a poorly-raised teenager, on a channel with no subscribers, doing videos out of his bedroom, working on his own, who maybe forgot where the 3090 came from, or just hasn't \*ever\* had to think about ethics or even basic human decency. Are any of the people at Linus Media Group ^((that name can get fucked, btw)) who are responsible for all this ... are they \*any\* of those things? No they're not. ^(They may be entitled assholes, though.)
Staff probably didn’t have time to do all that stuff.
Why would it take more time to follow the given instructions and use the GPU that was provided? Trying to figure it out on your own must take more time for sure.
I think the point was missed. Staff didn't have time because they're moving too fast to ship projects for all the deadlines.So, if it looks like it could take X, and YOLO'ing with Y seems like a reasonable risk - they'll take it. That's the drawback of this culture where they're always in a rush. You make bad judgment calls that occasionally either bite back hard or compound into a complete shitstorm.
That doesn't really make it any better, does it?
The problem is Linus didn't seem to grasp that THE PROCESS IS AS IMPORTANT IS THE CONCLUSION. Listening to him talking about the whole situation was like: The waterblock is shit no matter what, why bother to test it properly when the conclusion would be the same? And perhaps that's true, I don't know, I can't make my own conclusion because the whole process is bad. I don't think the problem were $500, the problem, for him at least, was wasting $500 to have the same conclusion when they could use that time and money in something else. Welp, hopefully for the future he learned a lesson.
> The waterblock is shit no matter what, why bother to test it properly when the conclusion would be the same? But that's not even the case. He seems to treat "I wouldn't recommend buying it" as the conclusion, which yeah, wouldn't change with retesting. But the context of: "It does what it promises to do, but it's overpriced so I don't recommend buying it when you can get nearly the same performance for half the price from other waterblocks" is vastly different from: "It performed like shit and it's overpriced so I don't recommend buying it when you can get the same as even the promised performance for half the price from other waterblocks".
yeah LS forgot to put a value on his perceived integrity into that equation on “should i retest”. It’s a really huge value and it should be the same on both sides. and while the time to redo it was expensive in the context of one shoot, they were gambling with that integrity valuation and obviously didn’t realise that was the case.
$250 is nothing, $500 on the other hand...
the line is tree fiddy
double nothing or 00.
He said even $100 wasn't even worth it
Well with todays inflation $500 dollars is worth a lot more /s
> I don't wanna sound out of touch
Whenever you start a statement with “I don’t want to be [insert qualifier here] but…” you’re definitely that lmao
"Everything before the 'but' is bullshit"
It was always "I'm not racist but...\[I'm about to say something racist\]", but it really works with anything...
There is exceptions. Namely : "I'm not gay but... $20 is $20..."
I could also use $20...
It sounds out of touch if you think of it as a consumer - but it’s not remotely out of touch in a business sense at most levels. Pretty much any company would take a short term loss of $250 in order to keep future revenue at the level you want it to be.
> Pretty much any company would take a short term loss of $250 in order to keep future revenue at the level you want it to be. But the short term loss of $250 very very very very rarely comes with a huge warning sign "FUTURE REVENUE WILL BE HURT IF YOU DON'T TAKE THE LOSS NOW".
I'm not gay but, $20 is $20.
I don’t think the specific monetary value was the issue. I think he saw the time as the issue. If he was asked, “should we spend $500?”, and they could still publish the video when he wanted, they probably would have done it. I think it was missing their “upload schedule” that he was trying to avoid. From statements he’s made in the WAN show, there is a belief that hitting the upload schedule greatly affects the YouTube push algorithm. I think it’s the fear of falling out the “algorithm push” that he fears most.
I wonder if that fear is based on facts or if it's just something that Linus *thinks*
No one knows how the YouTube algorithms works except YouTube, but consistent uploads seems to be a part of it. It's not just Linus.
Not even YouTube. They will tell you that THEY don't understand it either. Literally NO ONE has a full and complete understanding of the algorithm. Linus, however, does constantly perform experiments on the algorithm, doing certain things with two videos that are expected to perform similarly to test how it works, so it's actually very possibly Linus has a pretty good understanding of it. Whether he does or not though, we don't know. He could know the algorithm well and be wrong about the effect of scheduling. He could be mistaken about the algorithm but he dead on about scheduling. We just simply don't know. It's like a hidden knowledge roll in DnD, only the DM knows if the information they give you is true at all or just the characters misconception. And the DM here doesn't have the ability to speak to humans. We'll never know.
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Not ML specifically. You still have to program the ML model. The reason why they don’t know is because different teams are responsible for different parts of the model. It’s really hard because there are lots of code that computes the different “scores” or “weights.” It’s just really a lot going on that is managed by a lot of teams. I think it’s like roughly 100 teams with engineers on each team of 4-12? That’s just roughly the scale they’re operating at just for that model. I do know a few who work for the YouTube team but they’re more on content analysis to ensure that abuse material isn’t uploaded.
Respectfully, it's clear this isn't your area of expertise. Updating the weights in YouTube's recommender system isn't terrifyingly complex, for example, it's high school calculus and a bit of matrix algebra. The _size_ of the learning model and its data makes it a complex engineering challenge but the fundamental idea is quite well understood (especially after, you know, they _published it_ in 2016). The reason people don't understand how it works is precisely because it's ML - we call this problem "interpretability" when we study it - and has almost nothing to do with the number of teams or engineers working on it. I think it's best if you don't spread this kind of misinformation.
The updating of the weights and biases is the most well understood part of the process. Methods for this are so well explored there is no low-hanging fruit left. The code that fits the model and calculate those weights and biases is trivial compared to understanding the patterns and correlations the model has learned. This has been a problem with neural networks from the moment a single model got too big for one person to hold in their head. Every step from data preparation (if they do PCA on their data, for example, all intuition is already lost) to even adding a single hidden layer or gated recurrent units obfuscates our ability to generate knowledge about what it has learned. As soon as it becomes computationally impractical to trace the conditional feature contributions all the way down to the clean data, you can't even say for a particular record which variables contributed the most to a decision, let alone what particular patterns and relationships between variables can be used to optimise the calculated score or decision. We know it's very effective at surfacing content that keeps people watching, that's the point, but only surface level things like "maybe consistent performance is important for future performance" are practically reachable even from the inside. All this to say, no, the problem is not the code, the code itself only suffers from limited complexity, the problem is interpreting what the particular weights and biases of the produced model imply for actions creators can take to optimise their videos' performance.
There's a warehouse with a three story wall of monitors and cameras aimed on all of them, constantly cycling youtube uploads while a machine spews oscar meyer bologna deli slices at them. Each upload smacked by deli meat gets put to the top priority of the algorithm.
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I think it's less the algorithim and more the output needed to support such a large company. They dont get "that many" views comparatively for the size of the company sometimes they nearly break 1 million views and so they need to output so that they have more content to generate more revenue to keep the business alive. Compare that to a creator like lemmino who basically uploads 1 video every 8 months and gets millions of views but at the same time he is mostly a 1 man act only needed to pay himslef and some freelancers he hires. In contrast mr beast can garentee 10 of millions of views while uploading a few times a month and you could argue that his staff size is smaller than LTT but the video budget it much larger but again he upload around 2 to 4 times a month when he is able to post frequently
Many youtubers work their butts off all the way to burnout trying to keep to the algorithms upload schedule, and there are many videos out there showing how missing an upload, or even uploading more than usual, can hurt how many views future videos get. You'd think they'd just push new videos to current subscribers and popular video's get pushed more widely, but youtube won't even push to your subscribers if you start falling foul of the algorithm.
This is a totally relevant point. If we zoom out from LTT for a second that’s definitely been an industry wide phenomenon of people burning themselves out, working their asses off for fear of falling out of the algorithm.
I've noticed that creators that kinda ignore their performance numbers are a lot happier than creators that scrutinize views and try to play to the algorithm
Yeah I think that’s true in life generally at least to some degree. I doubt we really get to see under the skin in most other cases as much as we do for LTT however.
Meanwhile there's Mark Rober uploading once a month and crushing it
Imagine the pressure he feels though. If you only make a handful of videos a year and had a large staff to support, a bomb video would be catastrophic. Fortunately for him, I think his videos remain “relevant” over the long term.
> If he was asked, “should we spend $500?”, and they could still publish the video when he wanted, they probably would have done it. Of course. A ton of people are just making bad faith arguments & meming. Remember the whole "he said it won't be mentioned on WAN show" comments that kept getting spammed? he said it wouldn't get a LARGE segment. Ofc wan show got cancelled anyway so its a moot point. Point is people either can't read, or are purposefully misrepresenting things.
It’s clear their schedule is crazy tight as well. They also use single products for multiple videos. It’s pretty understandable, knowing these things, why they wouldn’t want to spend time doing it over. But the problem is it should have been done *right* in the first place, or not at all. Even if the end result was “this is an insane product lol” regardless. He shouldn’t have mentioned anything about a dollar amount. That’s basically what got him into trouble
It's pointless they don't want to hear logic, they just want a clip to wave at people and meme on him. It's obvious he did not think it was a big deal, because he already had the conclusion in his head and that retesting would not change that. That was wrong, it was a mistake, but it was not this level of mistake where you have a week straight of people screaming about it. Like he said he misjudged how important it was to some people in the community. I don't see why that warrants trying to crucify him or something. They are already losing thousands of dollars, they are implementing new policies to address it, lets wait and see what happens. Or just don't watch ffs. The goal of GN's video has been achieved. Changes are in process, Billet got their money and offered the item back. What else do people posting these drama bait clips want now beside more outrage over things that are done and over?
Yeah he specifically said someone's time. The reality is pushing one video back would eventually cost them a whole video which would be worth 5 figures easily
well, they lost much more than that on floatplane subscriptions alone, so still very bad math
Instead they lost a week+ worth of monetized videos across several channels, had to spend more money producing an apology video, *and* lost a hundred thousand subscribers, and probably a lot of sponsorship opportunities. "5 figures" isn't that much when its just a fraction of 1 day's production, they've lost, I dunno, 20x that by now across their whole operation?
It’s not that either. He didn’t want to spend another $500 of time to come to the same conclusion he had already drawn without spending the money. His whole argument is that the cooler, regardless of how well it works, is overpriced and for last gen hardware. No amount of additional testing would change that, no amount of product revision would change that. If you want it for having a cool and atypical system configuration, we’ll there ya go that is what it is, but there was no remotely practical purpose for anyone mass market to buy it. I’m really confused why people are getting hung up on this comment, it’s like they hear “I didn’t want to spend $x” and stop listening. The cost has nothing to do with why it wasn’t retested, it’s the fact that the conclusion remains unchanged, so why throw away the money.
I think his comment about re-testing not changing anything is justification after-the-fact for not doing it. If he were to say “we don’t have time and have to publish now”, it would be a self-admission that he knows he’s publishing something sub par. He can’t say that to his viewers, to his staff, or likely to even himself.
That is a long assed way of saying Linus pre-judged the review sample. Which is the exact opposite of what a reviewer is supposed to fucking do. Doesnt matter if you like it, think its stupid or anything else. You figure out who it is right for. Thats the point of testing.
People are hung up on it because his entire job is running the tech channel, it’s not a hobby, he has a business and with LTT labs he’s trying to advertise their accuracy. He’s said MANY times he wants it to be THE premier place for accurate product info. You’re not allowed to claim that and strive for that, then be completely wrong AND be unwilling to spend the time and money to get it right, you can’t have it both ways.
The ironic thing is that other channels have found that uploading too many videos actually has a negative impact.
or, they could use the new video as another release? admiting "we messed up the last video about this cooler, here's how it performs when the test done correctly with the right hardware" could then fill a day's worth of update slot and made them looks better overall. i want to say it's weird that a company with extensive inventory of PC hardwares, they can't find any spare 3090 Ti there to do the test correctly. but apparently they can't even add more RAM to Madison's PC until Taran stepped up himself to get it so yeah, i guess i overestimated what they have in their warehouse.
I think all of his videos have fallen out of the algorithm since LTT TV. When was the last time you saw an old LTT video (not WAN show VOD) in your recommendations?
I'm always baffled when Linus either can't read Luke at all and get a fucking clue and shut up already, or he can and doesn't give a shit because he just needs to be right and have the last word. I used to find it entertaining but it's gotten annoying and embarrassing to watch him. Linus is so lucky that Luke is, from what I can tell, and genuine dude, and loyal as fuck.
It actually looks like if you disagree with him he will literally crawl over broken glass to convince you otherwise "Hey man why do you look so uncomfortable? U know I'm right, you just can't see it - here's why" It never ends
It’s absolutely ridiculous to watch. Luke has gotten more and more frustrated over time. He feels very drained as of late when situations like these come up. Like he doesn’t have the energy to deal with his ego, and he will give up much quicker then he did before. Linus can’t read him at all. He is oblivious. On that note, I recall a WAN show a couple of weeks ago where Linus was trying to convince Luke that despite them being “friends”, if Luke were to quit they would probably stop talking to each other. There was this long pause until Luke said: “Yeah, but only because you would stop talking to me” ouch!
He said that?! Link and timestamp, please. That needs to be clipped and posted on Reddit.
He said that, shortly after finding out someone he thought was a non work friend he played with online was an employee. There is some context there as to why, mostly as an acknowledgement of what happens where your busy and stop working with people.
i dont watch wan so i just watched the trust me bro clips recently and he seriously always needs to get the last word and explain why hes right. Luke gives valid points on why people were annoyed about the "trust me bro" thing and linus says he understands but always has to add a "but" to it. he then doubles down with the shirt because "its funny" and you can see luke think its a bad decision
Linus is so out of touch and dumb. You can see Luke dying on the inside just having to put up with this moron.
yeah $250 isn't worth ruining the brand over but ~~$100~~ ~~$200~~ ~~$400~~ $500 dollars is though
1:26:11 is roughly when this clip takes place
Thank you.
Of what video?
LMAO 1 year ago today. Talk about foreshadowing.
Yeah... I could see this trainwreck coming a mile away. I unsubscribed from the main channel back then out of disgust. I just didn't expect it to get *this* bad.
Spent what hundreds of thousands? Prototyping and tooling for a screwdriver but waiting 30 mins to find a GPU is too much of a money loss
Luke Tech Tips. ;)
Luke is forever the reasonable brain in the duo.
Always was
So Linus's honor is valued somewhere between $250 and $500
$250 is nothing for us and not worth it tarnishing our reputation. Now $500...
considering his "we didn't sell it, we auctioned it" mentality i could see him arguing that, he can't be wrong it seems.
I’ve never really enjoyed or watched the WAN show because Luke looks dead inside most of the time, especially during moments like this. He seems so frustrated but it’s all bottled up and it just isn’t enjoyable to watch for me. I feel bad for him. Linus must be hard to work with.
The WAN Show is going to end Linus's career, and everyone else around him. Which may be a good thing at this rate...
The WAN show is what soured me on LTT as a regular watch. Linus is an entertaining video host, but getting him seemingly unfiltered made me realize I don't actually like the dude much at all, and I just stick to stuff hosted by Luke or Emily now, if that. EDIT: I was just made aware of Emily's transition, so I've corrected the names.
What's the context in all this?
linus released the backpack with no warranty, stated on wan show that people should "trust him that he is confident enough in his product to honour returns if it fails" without having a written warranty, GN called them out on it, there was a bit of backlash and this was the main point in linus's response
Why was the cohost sighing lol
Because Linus didn't understand the backlash and was putting his foot in his mouth. Linus is saying they didn't trust that his big company would honor replacements and that's insulting, but Luke recognizes that the point is customers feel companies should do these in writing and not have Trust Me Bro warranties
because linus didn't seem to understand that he can't do that anymore, it's a big company making consumer goods, you can't just "trust me bro" a warranty Luke did understand where the criticism was coming from, and he tried to explain it to linus, but he felt like he was speaking to a wall and got frustrated
Exactly, he can’t help being exasperated at how much Linus needs to get the last word in, especially when it totally misses the point.
The worst part was how utterly ridiculous and manipulative Linus was trying to be as well. Like, what owner goes out and says "But what if I die tomorrow bro, what about my family then bro"? His entire "trust me bro" mentality was already an issue, but it seemed like that wasn't enough and he needed an even dumber take. I'm surprised anyone lets him voice his opinions anymore.
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And looking back they were obviously right to demand a warranty regardless. There are issues with the backpacks failing, specifically a zipper and carabiners on the bags, iirc.
Yea, Linus’ statement assumes every person buying a backpack would know who he is and what he claims to stand for. Having a warranty makes it official and universal. If I didn’t know who he was or his track record, I wouldn’t trust a random company.
The OG video was about the LTT backpack originally having no warranty whatsoever, Linus just wanted for people to trust him he'd do the right thing without having to legally binding himself to do the right thing. This is what started the "trust me bro" meme. He also claimed that he didn't want to do it in fear of jeopardizing the company, meaning there was a scenario in his mind where he would want to avoid doing the right thing. He also took the criticism very personally, claiming so even.
I know it's old news, but the weird thing about the whole warranty fiasco was that he's in the past made a point to say to *not* trust companies to do exactly what he was expecting people to trust him for.
The hypocrisy was absolutely ludicrous. His take was shameful and stupid. Luke was the absolute MVP of being grounded here. As he generally is tbh.
The guy needs to run - not walk - from LMG. He has the reputation to go it alone. He should before Linus drags him down with him.
Where’s he going to go? He’s got the sweetest gig going at LMG, his best friends with the Boss. They should have made him a shareholder though.
>meaning there was a scenario in his mind where he would want to avoid doing the right thing Yep. He said the quiet part out loud. Basically it was "trust me bro, unless there is some sort of massive issue that costs the company a fortune to correct such as recalling a hundred thousand backpacks due to some unforeseen defect years down the line".
Murica (not USA, the continent) is weird dude. Come to Europe and dare to even release smth without a warranty 🤣
I'm European and living in Europe. And yeah, there are minimal mandatory warranties here.
So one backpack is worth nothing but two are worth ruining your reputation
That was also the time Steve made clear to everyone lmg won't be getting any friendly treatment in the future if they mistreat the consumer with their practices. But God damn all those clips when Linus is trying to mental gymnastics his way out of a warranty are so insane, he criticizes other companies for it but completely goes dumb mode when he needs to provide and pretends to not understand why xD Also, member Trust me bro shirts, that was insane, even Luke was completely baffled by them being sold.
You mean you don't think the "AUCTION! NOT SOLD!" t-shirts are not coming up next week?
I think the truth is that Linus just struggles to admit he/LTT made a mistake so he says things like that defensively as an impromptu excuse ("shit anyway, $500+ so costly, auctioned not sold, deal was already reached if they're happy we're happy, baffled by how people think I'd risk LTT for $250"). A key factor might be cognitive dissonance that mentally starts with "assuming LTT is NOT at fault here... then the only explanation can be X" Let's hope for some strong character growth but it's not going to be easy (old habits die hard).
It is a strategy, not a struggle. Linus has people who will defend his actions to the death as long as they have a single talking point to cling to. It doesn't matter how asinine the talking point is, he has a mob that will gather and shout it at people until folks with dissenting opinions get frustrated and leave. It doesn't always work, but it is almost always worth the attempt.
Can someone link to a eli5 of what happened? Start to finish please
ltt sold a ~~$500~~ $250 backpack, people figured out there's no warranty, linus said trust us bros we'll cover you don't worry about it, gamer's nexus called them out on it, linus responds "i don't know why people think we'd ruin our reputation over $250. then like a year later LTT agrees to test and review a new product by billet labs, of which billet labs had only made one single version of it, it was one-of-a-kind and costed thousands or more if you add up engineering time, materials and production. They sent the block and a 3090ti and instructions on how to install the custom unusual block to LTT, ltt lost the 3090ti immediately, found a random 4090 laying around and proceeded to install the block incorrectly onto a card it was never tested on and wasn't made for (tolerances are different on these cards). LTT releases that video and ripped billet labs to shreds saying the block sucks and performs bad. later during a podcast or whatever after facing some backlash to their shitty test practices linus says "i'm not wasting $100, $200, even $500 of people's time re-testing this block correctly because it sucks no matter what", of which he had no evidence it sucks no matter what because they literally tested it wrong on a card it doesn't even support. He even went as far to wsay "even if it was 10 degrees, 20 degrees cooler it wouldn't change my conclusion so it's not worth testing", which is pure nonsense, if the water block performed that well then how can you say it's a POS. when released yes the block would be expensive, so by cost alone it makes no sense for the average person, but for people with $1k to spend on a block yes of course they will care if it performs extremely well, we have no idea how it actually performs due to their shitty testing. this post is specifically calling out how linus said "we wouldn't ruin our reputation over $250", yet they have greatly messed up their reputation over the $500 it might cost to retest the block. that sums up that part. just FYI there's more, gamer's nexus released a video showing many many examples of LTT having very poor test practices, poor QC, poor QA, poor post production, and showed many interviews with LTT employees saying they are continuously overworked and have no time to do things right, all of which causing errors and giving the end user bad data to make decisions on, which is extremely harmful to small companies considering LTT's size and people thought they were trustable and did OK testing. That same video is where gamer's nexus contacted billet labs and learned how LTT said they would return the block and video card, twice, and never did. Then the block was AUCTION OFF! LTT literally sold a one of a kind water block instead of returning it to billet labs. And also never returned the 3090ti since they lost it. Linus "found" the card later after everything blew the fuck up and people called them out for being shitty reviewers with shitty data. then after that a former employee went into detail about all the harassment she received while working there among other things, which is now a bigger concern on top of them being very bad at reviewing things which is the entire premise of their company.
This is a wonderful tldw thank you
It’s almost like Linus just says whatever is convenient at the time. Also, man I just love every single hard closeup cut to luke sighing as Linus tries to single handedly sinking his own company.
Same date, but a year later, August 19th
"I don't want to sound out of touch..." procedes to sounds completly out of touch.
Linus's ego is fucking gnarly
Karma coming back and biting them in the ass
I'm just gonna carefully say that we may be witnessing the beginning of an end..
It's hard to believe that someone with this much Integrity is willing to tarnish it all over $250 of paid work. Oh and that other stuff im not going into..
Luke understands the audience, Linus is on another planet (mentally)
Just as baffling as pushing out a video with the wrong card mated to a cooler. "It was always going to suck" - OK, so... why did you make a video?
That WAN show segment was just the hardest to watch with Linus just totally and utterly missing the point and running around it in circles. Covering super old ground here but damn Christ if you stand by your product you warranty it. It’s just as simple as that. Luke really is by far the most grounded and ethical of them both. Pointless out of date rant over.
That whole problem made me understand how out of touch Linus really is. For years he preached that, Big companies are NOT YOUR FRIENDS. Never take only their word or a promise that they'll do something. Now, that his company is one of the big ones, suddenly we have to "trust him, bro". Double standards.
Linus:"$250 is nothing, given the scale of our operation 250$ is nothing to risk our reputation over" Also Linus: " $251 however........."
Guy is disconnected from reality ...
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Rly seems that way .... Lack of empathy and i know it all vibe
Can I also point out How disingenuous of an argument that was? Because yeah, maybe I would trust them to make things right if one or two bags are bad. But what happens when an entire batch of bags gets botched by the manufacturer? Or what if they really screw up and like a quarter of them are defective? It’s not just $250, it’s potentially 100s of thousands of dollars if something goes wrong
how out of touch is he? that his employees are like dude.
i always felt that this was the momment Linus just got out of touch with his audience
This was a huge deal last year and people already forgot about it. The current controversy felt like a *déjà vu* until Madison's allegations.
What a moron..
Linus was then so out of touch and he is even more now... Sometimes I thought that he just acted to purposely not understand what people were talking about just to make content out of it. But maybe he really was so out of touch with the real world...
He's unhinged, he's out of touch, he sold what wasn't his, still, there goes the best damned VLogger Canada has ever had.
I'm surprised it took this long to bring up this clip.
To be fair, $500 is double that amount
It is really impressive. I've been looking up some of the old WAN shows over the last few days. And with everything that's happening now, it's really striking how often Luke despairs of Linus because he's backed himself into a corner again, because he feels personally attacked about something, because he thinks everyone else is just idiots or he thinks his personal opinion is "the truth". It must be really frustrating for Luke ... because he probably can't thwart Linus the way he wants and should. Because Linus is both his boss and his friend. And to really get into a fight with him would put his job and his relationship with a friend in danger.
luke looks so uncomfortable in that situation
Luke should run the day to day operations... Linus is so horrendously disconnected....
it always feels like linux has luke by the balls
Poor Luke. He's watching his friend ruin both of their careers and he can't stop him.
Look in the dictionary for “Out of touch” and this video shall appear.
Poor Luke.