LTT called out

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Linus responded on his forum.

There won't be a big WAN Show segment about this or anything. Most of what I have to say, I've already said, and I've done so privately.

To Steve, I expressed my disappointment that he didn't go through proper journalistic practices in creating this piece. He has my email and number (along with numerous other members of our team) and could have asked me for context that may have proven to be valuable (like the fact that we didn't 'sell' the monoblock, but rather auctioned it for charity due to a miscommunication... AND the fact that while we haven't sent payment yet, we have already agreed to compensate Billet Labs for the cost of their prototype). There are other issues, but I've told him that I won't be drawn into a public sniping match over this and that I'll be continuing to move forward in good faith as part of 'Team Media'. When/if he's ready to do so again I'll be ready.

To my team (and my CEO's team, but realistically I was at the helm for all of these errors, so I need to own it), I stressed the importance of diligence in our work because there are so many eyes on us. We are going through some growing pains - we've been very public about them in the interest of transparency - and it's clear we have some work to do on internal processes and communication. We have already been doing a lot of work internally to clean up our processes, but these things take time. Rome wasn't built in a day, but that's no excuse for sloppiness.

Now, for my community, all I can say is the same things I always say. We know that we're not perfect. We wear our imperfection on our sleeves in the interest of ensuring that we stay accountable to you. But it's sad and unfortunate when this transparency gets warped into a bad thing. The Labs team is hard at work hard creating processes and tools to generate data that will benefit all consumers - a work in progress that is very much not done and that we've communicated needs to be treated as such. Do we have notes under some videos? Yes. Is it because we are striving for transparency/improvement? Yeah... What we're doing hasn't been in many years, if ever.. and we would make a much larger correction if the circumstances merited it. Listing the wrong amount of cache on a table for a CPU review is sloppy, but given that our conclusions are drawn based on our testing, not the spec sheet, it doesn't materially change the recommendation. That doesn't mean these things don't matter. We've set KPIs for our writing/labs team around accuracy, and we are continually installing new checks and balances to ensure that things continue to get better. If you haven't seen the improvement, frankly I wonder if you're really looking for it... The thoroughness that we managed on our last handful of GPU videos is getting really incredible given the limited time we have for these embargoes. I'm REALLY excited about what the future will hold.

With all of that said, I still disagree that the Billet Labs video (not the situation with the return, which I've already addressed above) is an 'accuracy' issue. It's more like I just read the room wrong. We COULD have re-tested it with perfect accuracy, but to do so PROPERLY - accounting for which cases it could be installed in (none) and which radiators it would be plumbed with (again... mystery) would have been impossible... and also didn't affect the conclusion of the video... OR SO I THOUGHT...

I wanted to evaluate it as a product, and as a product, IF it could manage to compete with the temperatures of the highest end blocks on the planet, it still wouldn't make sense to buy... so from my point of view, re-testing it and finding out that yes, it did in fact run cooler made no difference to the conclusion, so it didn't really make a difference.

Adam and I were talking about this today. He advocated for re-testing it regardless of how non-viable it was as a product at the time and I think he expressed really well today why it mattered. It was like making a video about a supercar. It doesn't mater if no one watching will buy it. They just wanna see it rip. I missed that, but it wasn't because I didn't care about the consumer.. it was because I was so focused on how this product impacted a potential buyer. Either way, clearly my bad, but my intention was never to harm Billet Labs. I specifically called out their incredible machining skills because I wanted to see them create something with a viable market for it and was hoping others would appreciate the fineness of the craftsmanship even if the product was impractical. I still hope they move forward building something else because they obviously have talent and I've watched countless niche water cooling vendors come and go. It's an astonishingly unforgiving market.

Either way, I'm sorry I got the community's priorities mixed-up on this one, and that we didn't show the Billet in the best light. Our intention wasn't to hurt anyone. We wanted no one to buy it (because it's an egregious waste of money no matter what temps it runs at) and we wanted Billet to make something marketable (so they can, y'know, eat).

With all of this in mind, it saddens me how quickly the pitchforks were raised over this. It also comes across a touch hypocritical when some basic due diligence could have helped clarify much of it. I have a LONG history of meeting issues head on and I've never been afraid to answer questions, which lands me in hot water regularly, but helps keep me in tune with my peers and with the community. The only reason I can think of not to ask me is because my honest response might be inconvenient.

We can test that... with this post. Will the "It was a mistake (a bad one, but a mistake) and they're taking care of it" reality manage to have the same reach? Let's see if anyone actually wants to know what happened. I hope so, but it's been disheartening seeing how many people were willing to jump on us here. Believe it or not, I'm a real person and so is the rest of my team. We are trying our best, and if what we were doing was easy, everyone would do it. Today sucks.

Thanks for reading this.
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I don't have much interest for entertainment tech channels, so I seldom watch a LTT video anyway, though I have enjoyed the occasional one, now and again.
However, they certainly wouldn't be among the channels I'd check out if trying to learn more about a particular product.

I did enjoy this GN video, as lately the product releases have been so uninspiring, so it made a nice change to view something else.
 
kieran_read said:
only 20mins at 2x
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Yeh I just watched it at 1.5 speed curiosoty got the better of me. In all honesty, I think he could have said everything that needed to be said with about 1/3 the word count but that's a typical GN video.

A lot of very fair criticism on the accuracy of some of their content, particularly the number of annotations in post for some really basic stuff.

Although I do think GN opened themselves up to a bit of criticism themselves for a couple of points in their own video.
kieran_read said:
TLDW a small start up lent LTT their prototype heatsink, they **** all over it and when the company asked for it back, they said yes several times, then sold it at auction at their LTT Expo profiting off their best prototype potentially ruining their company to competitors.
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The bold part - they themselves drifted into the speculation with no evidence that actually happened, he could have framed that much better. They also speculated that the hires with industry connections resulted in favourable coverage and not actually having evidence of that either.

I'm all for calling out shoddy work and there has been a lot of shoddy work from LTT recently but if you are doing the calling out of said shoddy work, filling in some gaps with speculation because you don't have the evidence isn't exactly journalistic best practice either.

The TLDR, his correct for calling out shoddy work but he shouldn't have let himself be drawn into speculation about things he didn't have evidence of.
 
I wonder how much of a "not a big deal" the billet labs thing would have been if they had done the same thing to say cooler master or Noctua and not two guys in a shed, and how much the payment he would need to find would be to make it right.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
Yeh I just watched it at 1.5 speed curiosoty got the better of me. In all honesty, I think he could have said everything that needed to be said with about 1/3 the word count but that's a typical GN video.

A lot of very fair criticism on the accuracy of some of their content, particularly the number of annotations in post for some really basic stuff.

Although I do think GN opened themselves up to a bit of criticism themselves for a couple of points in their own video.


The bold part - they themselves drifted into the speculation with no evidence that actually happened, he could have framed that much better. They also speculated that the hires with industry connections resulted in favourable coverage and not actually having evidence of that either.

I'm all for calling out shoddy work and there has been a lot of shoddy work from LTT recently but if you are doing the calling out of said shoddy work, filling in some gaps with speculation because you don't have the evidence isn't exactly journalistic best practice either.

The TLDR, his correct for calling out shoddy work but he shouldn't have let himself be drawn into speculation about things he didn't have evidence of.
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This is true, his critisism was fair, but he put 1 and 1 togethet to get 3, the conclusions are both feasable, probable and could have negative impact however they are not at this point proven so it is speculative like you say.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
The TLDR, his correct for calling out shoddy work but he shouldn't have let himself be drawn into speculation about things he didn't have evidence of.
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Yes, this is why it sit awkwardly for me. Steve is the first people to wax lyrical about journalistic integrity but while he made a lot of valid points, there is way tooo much speculation thrown in there around them. That and deciding not to contact LTT first..i don't know, it feels like Steve went straight to 'tube for the drama despite telling everybody it's not about the drama...
 
Raiden85 said:
Linus responded on his forum.
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"We didn't sell the water block... we auctioned it."

Glad that's cleared up. Although one wonders why a company as large and ridiculously wealthy as LMG would even need to auction off a supposedly-useless prototype water block in order to make a charitable donation.
 
I haven't watched LTT for a while, i think Linus is obnoxious and narcissistic.

This proved it IMO, a small start up company gave him a water block to review, the only one they had as it cost many thousands to make < i'll get back to that, he assembled it incorrectly, inevitably that gave it a bad result, he then utterly humiliated these poor people for the result it gave, because that's fashionable to do in Youtube land now... after his own misassembly was pointed out to him he doubled down on it, saying it wouldn't have made any difference anyway and you shouldn't buy it.
How can you have an ounce of empathy for your fellow human and do that to someone just to save face?!?!?!?! ####### disgusting.

Now i'll get back to the fact that this was the only block they had, this company asked for it back so they could send it to other tech journalists and then continue research on it, Linus promised to send it back to them, twice, before selling it in an auction and then told this company it was gone, development on this product is now on hold as they no longer have the block.

I feel for these guys and i'm not even involved.

What a ##### ####.

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I've never liked Linus even going back to the NCIX days as it's clear he will do anything for money, He's very fake and as a person makes my skin crawl and the majority of his employees look and sound like they're on a day trip from the local special psych ward.
 
Lol Linus' response is that Steve should have contacted him privately to settle the matters?

No.

Linus made LMG/LTT's issues public, he on his very own dirtied Billet's brand image on a very public platform, he then said on the same platform that a few hundred $ is too much to spend to re-do the testing his team wanted to do on the actual GPU the cooler block was designed for, because LTT tested it on a GPU that it wasn't made for.

And that's just all the stuff about that particular cooler review...

Linus is basically up his own ass and doesn't accept when he's been wrong, and cries about it when called out publicly.

He made the problem a public one, it should be settled as a public one. Don't like it? Don't make such obvious errors and then try to hide it.
 
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mrk said:
Lol Linus' response is that Steve should have contacted him privately to settle the matters?

No.

Linus made LMG/LTT's issues public, he on his very own dirtied Billet's brand image on a very public platform, he then said on the same platform that a few hundred $ is too much to spend to re-do the testing his team wanted to do on the actual GPU the cooler block was designed for, because LTT tested it on a GPU that it wasn't made for.

And that's just all the stuff about that particular cooler review...

Linus is basically up his own ass and doesn't accept when he's been wrong, and cries about it when called out publicly.

He made the problem a public one, it should be settled as a public one. Don't like it? Don't make such obvious errors and then try to hide it.
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I still think it's truly amazing that Billet loaned him the concept piece, He used it incorrectly, They ask for it back, He ignores them and then auctions it off, What ? XD
 
mrk said:
Linus is basically up his own ass and doesn't accept when he's been wrong, and cries about it when called out publicly.
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Pretty much this, plays victim in his comment along with passive aggression of "we won't stoop so low to make a video response on this" is that because it's off brand to admit you're wrong to your own viewers and instead prefer to just "apologise" to your hardcore whiteknight forum users who will take any **** you throw at them and beg for more from papa linus ?
 
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