This video is not monetized. This video covers our serious concerns regarding the data accuracy of Linus Media Group, including Linus Tech Tips, ShortCircuit...
BIG EDIT: Ooof, I’m watching GN’s response that OP linked now. LMG and Linus in particular fucked up bad with Billet and have been fucking up how they test hardware and present the results of their testing; how they’re tripling down is not helping them at all here. If there’s a doctor in the house, Linus needs a double dose of humility, stat.
They decided to test Billet’s cooler on a card it wasn’t designed for and dragged the (prototype) product and the startup that made it when the results were bad, then auctioned the block off at LTX while Billet were expecting it back.
Then, Linus doubled down against the criticism on the WAN show. He said on the forums yesterday that they’ve squared the cost of that mistake with Billet, and unlike some commenters I’ve seen I do believe the auction was a mistake and not malice. However, the loss of momentum and (unjust, IMO) public humiliation from such a popular outlet no doubt did damage to the motivation of the two guys working on it that money can’t fix. And if they haven’t gotten the prototype itself back, and a potential competitor to Billet acquired it, that serious damage to Billet’s IP. No proof of that last one yet, but we’ll have to wait at least 6-8 more months to see any potential product thanks to manufacturing lead time. Luke, as always, was the voice of reason and suggested that maybe they should have tested it on the thing it was designed for. Linus felt accuracy wasn’t worth an extra few hundred bucks and said so, which didn’t sit well with me.
I’ve so far said nothing about the other issues the GN video raised, like the sharp uptick in asterisked corrections overlaid on their review videos. Some of the points made include:
a lot of people listen to the video without watching the screen, so they wouldn’t see the correction flash up (I’m one of those people, I glance at the screen while I’m making my breakfast, and have noticed it myself);
LMG clearly re-use old test data despite claiming they don’t do this, and some of that test data is so wrong it should have been caught and corrected during production, let alone after publishing;
LMG markets their Labs as allowing greater accuracy in their tests, which so far does not seem to have borne out given the number of corrections and outright wrong data in their videos;
LMG do not correct such mistakes in a sufficiently public way, and sometimes not at all;
As evidenced by their own employee interview video, LMG employees seem to pretty universally hold the opinion that they wish they had more time to work on videos, and some are unhappy with the quality of some of the videos they’re publishing.
There are others, like potential conflict of interest when covering products from close corporate partners like Noctua (how close? I dunno, but they have a cross-branded screwdriver 🤷). I felt the above to be most relevant to the question, as the crunch/quality issues underpin the problem with Billet.
If you actually know Linus (or, if anyone from LMG happens to read this), please suggest that he listen to the criticisms in the GN video, and to his own employees that they need more time on videos. Also, Luke is absolutely bang-on right in most of the opinions he espouses on the WAN Show, that I’ve seen anyway. I dunno that I’d say he has a 100% hit rate, but he seems to say exactly what I’m thinking most of the time. I feel like he’s a good bellweather for when Linus has an actually bad take.
All in all, I love their content and it’s made me very sad to see this sort of thing continuing to happen. Maybe a sound bite summary as a capstone? “Linus has always said LMG is a corporation, it’s not your friend. Longtime fans now completely believe him.”
Can you explain to me how auctioning something that they do not own is a mistake and not malice ?
They knew they are being scummy doing that. Especially after the producer asked for it back AND they agreed to send it back.
That is like robbing a bank and then saying “come on guys. was the heat of the moment. We didn’t think robbing a bank was THAT bad”
Lying to someone and selling someone elses property is not a ''mistake". That is a crime.
Absolutely I can shed some light on that - I don’t know if you’ve ever worked in a medium-sized company with over 100 employees, but it’s pretty commonplace for communications to break down, and for bits and pieces to be put on the wrong shelf or otherwise misplaced, leading to mistakes like this. This goes double when everyone is rushing around trying to hit deadlines.
In further support of the point, consider the amount of money they would have raised from the auction, vs the revenue and profits of LMG as a whole. I think it’s entirely reasonable to believe Linus does in fact care about a few hundred bucks outlay of company money; I don’t think it’s reasonable to believe he’d knowingly order what you rightly call a crime, knowing it would screw over a small company, just to make a few hundred bucks for charity.
We’d all like to believe that IT-based organisations are too professional to cock up, but they do, all the time. Dell, Google, and Microsoft are examples of large companies known for being organisational dumpster fires. It’s nearly impossible to run a company without stuff slipping through the cracks at some point. As Steve points out in his video, GN is guilty of making mistakes too (just not ones that result in them selling someone else’s prototype hardware… yet). The difference is in how those mistakes are handled.
I’m working in a company with over 10000 employees. Nobody would ever “accidentally” sell a prototype from another company. Let alone lie to that company about sending it back.
That’s easy. An item made its way to logistics, got mislabelled by someone who wasn’t concentrating or who didn’t know better, item landed in an auction. Apparently LMG needs a better system of internal communication or more micro managing from someone in marketing or communications for handling incoming and outcoming items.
An easy example would be if you forgot a personal book at the library, a librarian mistook it for donation, and then your book becomes catalogued. It doesn’t have to be malicious.
Sorry, I’m totally out of the loop. I know Linus, but can anyone summarize what is the problem with billet labs?
BIG EDIT: Ooof, I’m watching GN’s response that OP linked now. LMG and Linus in particular fucked up bad with Billet and have been fucking up how they test hardware and present the results of their testing; how they’re tripling down is not helping them at all here. If there’s a doctor in the house, Linus needs a double dose of humility, stat.
They decided to test Billet’s cooler on a card it wasn’t designed for and dragged the (prototype) product and the startup that made it when the results were bad, then auctioned the block off at LTX while Billet were expecting it back.
Then, Linus doubled down against the criticism on the WAN show. He said on the forums yesterday that they’ve squared the cost of that mistake with Billet, and unlike some commenters I’ve seen I do believe the auction was a mistake and not malice. However, the loss of momentum and (unjust, IMO) public humiliation from such a popular outlet no doubt did damage to the motivation of the two guys working on it that money can’t fix. And if they haven’t gotten the prototype itself back, and a potential competitor to Billet acquired it, that serious damage to Billet’s IP. No proof of that last one yet, but we’ll have to wait at least 6-8 more months to see any potential product thanks to manufacturing lead time. Luke, as always, was the voice of reason and suggested that maybe they should have tested it on the thing it was designed for. Linus felt accuracy wasn’t worth an extra few hundred bucks and said so, which didn’t sit well with me.
I’ve so far said nothing about the other issues the GN video raised, like the sharp uptick in asterisked corrections overlaid on their review videos. Some of the points made include:
There are others, like potential conflict of interest when covering products from close corporate partners like Noctua (how close? I dunno, but they have a cross-branded screwdriver 🤷). I felt the above to be most relevant to the question, as the crunch/quality issues underpin the problem with Billet.
If you actually know Linus (or, if anyone from LMG happens to read this), please suggest that he listen to the criticisms in the GN video, and to his own employees that they need more time on videos. Also, Luke is absolutely bang-on right in most of the opinions he espouses on the WAN Show, that I’ve seen anyway. I dunno that I’d say he has a 100% hit rate, but he seems to say exactly what I’m thinking most of the time. I feel like he’s a good bellweather for when Linus has an actually bad take.
All in all, I love their content and it’s made me very sad to see this sort of thing continuing to happen. Maybe a sound bite summary as a capstone? “Linus has always said LMG is a corporation, it’s not your friend. Longtime fans now completely believe him.”
Can you explain to me how auctioning something that they do not own is a mistake and not malice ? They knew they are being scummy doing that. Especially after the producer asked for it back AND they agreed to send it back. That is like robbing a bank and then saying “come on guys. was the heat of the moment. We didn’t think robbing a bank was THAT bad”
Lying to someone and selling someone elses property is not a ''mistake". That is a crime.
Absolutely I can shed some light on that - I don’t know if you’ve ever worked in a medium-sized company with over 100 employees, but it’s pretty commonplace for communications to break down, and for bits and pieces to be put on the wrong shelf or otherwise misplaced, leading to mistakes like this. This goes double when everyone is rushing around trying to hit deadlines.
In further support of the point, consider the amount of money they would have raised from the auction, vs the revenue and profits of LMG as a whole. I think it’s entirely reasonable to believe Linus does in fact care about a few hundred bucks outlay of company money; I don’t think it’s reasonable to believe he’d knowingly order what you rightly call a crime, knowing it would screw over a small company, just to make a few hundred bucks for charity.
We’d all like to believe that IT-based organisations are too professional to cock up, but they do, all the time. Dell, Google, and Microsoft are examples of large companies known for being organisational dumpster fires. It’s nearly impossible to run a company without stuff slipping through the cracks at some point. As Steve points out in his video, GN is guilty of making mistakes too (just not ones that result in them selling someone else’s prototype hardware… yet). The difference is in how those mistakes are handled.
I’m working in a company with over 10000 employees. Nobody would ever “accidentally” sell a prototype from another company. Let alone lie to that company about sending it back.
That’s easy. An item made its way to logistics, got mislabelled by someone who wasn’t concentrating or who didn’t know better, item landed in an auction. Apparently LMG needs a better system of internal communication or more micro managing from someone in marketing or communications for handling incoming and outcoming items.
An easy example would be if you forgot a personal book at the library, a librarian mistook it for donation, and then your book becomes catalogued. It doesn’t have to be malicious.
You got there faster than I could haha! Good summary and example though, and less verbose than mine 😂
Linus tested it on the wrong GPU, then stole one of their prototypes and gave it out at LTX