You know, this is some shit that I expect when dealing with some shady asshole on ebay, but LMG?
Bro… Are you ok?
I always wondered if Linus was actually a slimy POS, but this Billet Labs situation has cemented it for me. If you haven’t watched the Gamers Nexus followup video, definitely watch it.
Must nice to have all that time to care about YouTuber drama
Look, I can’t say that I don’t understand the sentiment, but people calling YouTubers out on their bullshit is strictly better than ‘Nobody ever cares about anything outside of their 60 hour a week jobs that they work to pay for an overinflated cost of living in this hypercapitalist dystopia hellscape that they don’t have the emotional capacity to care about because of said 60 hour a week jobs.’
I want to hear about this because it means somebody still cares, somebody is still paying attention to the injustice, however trivial or removed from daily life it is.
Honestly I could care less if it was just YouTuber drama. The reason I care and the reason it makes me so angry is because Billet labs is just a couple of guys trying to make a product. They aren’t some big company or anything like that, it’s just a couple guys working on a passion project. But then Mr Big money YouTube star does literally everything wrong, doesn’t even bother to use the product properly, and proceeds to take a giant dump all over Billet labs.
Yeah, I’m going to be a little pissed off about that. Not because I care about some whiny bitch on YouTube but because I feel for the poor guys who got dragged through the mud and our potentially going to take a massive hit in their business once they finalize their product.
I am not defending LTT. They are innthe wrong.
But they sent a unfinished product to one of the most influencial tech youtubers, say that a couple of times and you realize it was naive.
There is many people working on prototypes right now that we do not know off. Because they are prototypes, not products. They played and got burnt. Again, LTT did wrong with them still.With how bad it is to send an unfinished product to a reviewer, the reviewer could at the very least use the right equipment to fairly review it. If it’s such a terrible idea it surely doesn’t need the additional help of rushed incompetence to highlight any flaws in the product.
LTT have made tons of videos with prototype CPUs, GPUs, and preproduction versions of pretty much any other hardware one can imagine. I don’t think it’s naive to send such a reviewer that kind of hardware.
What LTT has done though in this case, with the making of the video, misplacing the GPU, selling the prototype, then the attempts at coverup and shifting blame… is beyond pathetic.
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It’s not just “YouTuber drama” though; LTT have positioned themselves as The Grand Knowledge on all things tech, so a good number of people turn to them for recommendations. And their recommendations are questionable.
Grand knowledge? I’ve never seen a single one of their videos that told me anything I didn’t already know about a tech item.
Mostly they make super edgelord cringe thumbnails and generally just have an idiots approach to the work they do by breaking things (the famous iMac Pro incident) or approaching things with the grace of a baby elephant.
He’s the computer guy for the 14 year old. It’s wild that the internet looks to them for anything other than shitty low effort product reviews and yammering on about whatever to fill up podcasts.
You can be dismissive and make all the quips you want but it doesn’t change the fact that his channel has 15.5mill subscribers and has videos regularly in the 10+mill plays category. He has a huge impact on people’s understanding of computers/game hardware and purchasing decisions. Critiquing him is warranted and can have a real impact on people’s tech decisions. Whether we think he’s good or not is immaterial.
You know who definitely cares about LTT? Billet Labs. Because they just got screwed hard by a youtuber with 15.5mill subscribers. That is undoubtedly going to impact their revenue in a very serious way if they haven’t seen the effects already.
Trump became the president of a nation. Hitler had record levels of approval. So does Kim.
“Popularity” means nothing in this day and age. I mean, let’s go ask the Logan bros.
What is your point? I feel like you didn’t read what I wrote lol
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We get it, you don’t know who LTT is or their relevance. You can ask directly if you want to learn.
you’ve been stalking my profile and like replied to me on 5 different posts
Projecting much? Don’t worry, I’ll block you right now.
We all have to find something that’s entertaining to us, no? If you don’t, you deserve some
Yeah, that’s not what this is. I’m relatively uninvolved, but after going through a few videos on this, they’re calling out ltt and lmg because they’re actively harming a small start-up and fairly directly misinforming consumers. Now that they’re branding themselves as professional tech reviewers instead of entertainers, the bar is a lot higher and it seems that they are NOT clearing it.
I think the parent commenter just wants to feel like they’re better than you.
The first post I saw about this I thought was something to do with Linus Torvalds because people are just assuming everyone has the same context.
Hexbear Bait Emoji.
To be fair I follow Reddit drama occasionally I’m in no position to criticise.
I’ve been seeing this news article circling around the internet all day, and I have yet to see anyone mention what the monoblock actually is. It’s starting to feel like some kind of mysterious primal artifact, like maybe the master computer from which all flavors of Linux originated.
It is a water cooling block designed for a specific graphics card. It is a new type of design and Billet Labs sent their best prototype (as in, the only one they had) to LMG for review. Linus proceeded to strap it to a video card where it didn’t fit, so bad that there was a 1mm gap (which might as well be a million miles when you’re talking about cooling). Of course the performance sucked due to it being strapped to a card it wasn’t designed to fit, linus trashed the block and the company.
And here’s the part that just fucks me off. Billet Labs SENT THEM THE CORRECT CARD WITH THE BLOCK! There is literally no valid excuse for putting it on the wrong card, Billet Labs sent them the correct one!!!
And the thing that a lot of people aren’t understanding is the Billet Labs is not some large corporation, it is two guys putting hard work into a product. Unless I’m mistaken, they have regular ass jobs. People talking about them being able to sue… With what imaginary money? LMG is a 100,000,000 dollar company (at least). Their sloppy, misinformed, shitty, shameful, video basically has the power to cut them off at the knees when they did absolutely nothing wrong.
There is so much more to this, but whatever. Linus is a garbage person. I feel as though Luke is a decent guy but afraid to give Linus the reality check that he desperately needs.
Anyway, the first sentence answered your question I think. I rambled and ranted.
I feel as though Luke is a decent guy but afraid to give Linus the reality check that he desperately needs.
I honestly don’t understand why Luke puts up with him. I’d have left years ago. Although I have never been friends with the pompous tit to begin with.
Probably because it’s the best paying job he can ever get. What’s he gonna do when he leaves? Which other podcast/YouTube channel can he work for that’s in the Greater Vancouver Area? If he leaves his live would get upended, he either needs to move or switch careers and in both cases probably takes a salary cut. This is how shitty bosses like Linus retain employees. Just look at other shitty companies where employees don’t have transferable skills that only apply to one very specific industry, like for example the gaming industry. Employees don’t leave even when the bosses behave terribly, like Riot Games
Riot Games behaves terribly?
It was basically run like a frat house. Ball tapping, farting in people’s faces, unsolicited dick pics. Basically bro culture imposed by the C-suite and that went on for years and when the company punished these men who enabled that behavior all they got was a slap on the wrist. You’d expect a company like that would have a hard time finding people, but no people stay and fresh grads are eager to work there. Basically because it’s one of the biggest employers in the gaming industry in LA. Same with Blizzard, it baffles me why people still want to work there after all the shit that happened there while Kotick and his then girlfriend, Sheryl Sandberg, even tried to cover the story up.
I get it.
Imagine you start working with your friend, and you start to get successful. He starts acting like an asshole more and more, the friend part shrinks and the boss part grows, and he’s oblivious to that.
But he also trusts you, would happily fund you building new things, and has an enormous audience. He’s only willing to share a small slice of the pie, but it’s a very big pie
Now either you leave and get a normal job, or you stay, get lots of autonomy, minor fame, and maybe a ton of money down the line, but you have to handle a narcissist.
Also by staying, you can steer the narcissist now and again - and that ripples out into the viewers
Linus has done a lot for him, that is probably the main thing.
Thanks, the context you provided was important. If it was just the first sentence I would have been left with “ah, it’s a water-cooling block… wait, why is it such a big deal that it got auctioned off and lost? Water cooling blocks aren’t unusual. I have one in my computer right now.” The rest of the comment explained why this particular block was at the heart of such a fiasco and why losing it is so harmful.
Aside from that, when people criticized the video because he was essentially bashing a small company made by 2 dudes^1 , he then went on a rant on a WAN show saying that he wouldn’t review the thing again because he is not going to waste employee time and money into doing a proper review. And that he does’t really care because, ultimately, he thinks it’s a product that nobody should ever buy because it’s too expensive, even if the performance was great.
All said by the dude that used to make the weirdest shit and pay a shit ton of money for garbage, but god forbid someone made a waterblock for water cooling enthusiasts (you know, the kind of person that likes spending money on these products just for funsies, like audiophiles).
- This is funny because he always tries to avoid bashing big corps, like when Nvidia fucks up a product release, but they still find something positive to say about it. But a small company composed by 2 dudes that is lending you a prototype, which is not even their final product? A prototype that Linus himself (because it was him and one more dude) couldn’t be arsed to review properly and decided to complain all throughout the video? Let me step on them and destroy their business if possible.
When you mentioned it was only two people, I got curious.
Turns out, it’s a small company operating out of london, and one of the directors lives two streets away from me.
If it wasn’t weird, I would absolutely take a basket of sympathy cookies or something over.Haha, I’d very much appreciate it myself if it were the case. I don’t think you are losing anything if you try to do so.
It’s not weird. I’d appreciate it if it were me.
That is a bit unfair, they call nVidia names all the time, and keep bashing its practices. They can barely talk to them, because of past beef.
Their videos are obviously bad from the technical quality point of view, their rig all kinds of crappy shit, it’s just entertainment. They also publish stuff that would benefit from more work, he has his own idea of how to be a Youtube reviewer, but it seems like it’s worked out for him so far, so I guess he knows what he’s doing.
It has worked so far because the videos used to be good and years ago Youtube wasn’t as competitive. From then on, once you amass a decent amount of subscribers it’s fairly easy to ride the wave. It is also worth mentioning that his videos are very obviously focused towards “casual” audiences, most of which won’t even know when he is showing bad data or doing a poor review.
they call nVidia names all the time, and keep bashing its practices.
Sometimes? Maybe. But let’s not pretend like they haven’t been called out by the community multiple times for being “too soft” when Nvidia pullsed some shit, even when other reviewers did complain.
Okay, would we be even talking about Billet Labs after a month if they didn’t fuck up this video and selling off the prototype? This situation has been probably the best case scenario for them. This isn’t to absolve LMG’s part in losing the prototype and selling it off but if it worked as intended we wouldn’t be talking about a 900+ waterblock for a gpu right now. It would be a long forgotten video because most consumers don’t give a shit about boutique water cooling solutions, wow what a filler ltt episode. There is a market for it but and I continue to say this what super water cooling enthusiast is going to follow the words of local idiot/“funny” youtube man who does stupid watercooling projects in the dumbest ways possible.
if it worked as intended we wouldn’t be talking about a 900+ waterblock for a gpu right now.
It does work as intended. LMG fucked up once again by using the wrong card. Billet Labs sent them a compatible card and LMG lost it.
You missing the point I was making. I’m saying if LTT shot the video right and used a 3090 TI, we wouldn’t be talking about this it would be a pointless video that most people wouldn’t have given a shit about. It was 100% a filler episode. They really should have done it on a 3090 TI but holy shit this drama about this has been going on for a fucking month now only just rekindled with the GN news.
Sure, we wouldn’t be talking about this. But also Billet Labs wouldn’t have lost their only prototype device. It’s not like they can turn this attention into new customers when they don’t have a product to sell.
It is literally up for preorder right now and set to be delivered in a month or 3. You literally don’t think they have production models or cad files for this thing? Like yes losing this prototype sucks and it can hamper further development since they will need a new one made but if they haven’t updated their page that is a bit questionable to me. Their consumers should be informed of how this may affect things seeing as this has been a problem for months now.
Losing the prototype mostly hampers their ability to send it to other review channels, showing it to potential clients, and so on, so in a sense Linus forced them to milk the controversy as much as possible.
You’re missing the point that you’re out here saying it doesn’t work as intended, when apparently it does. That wouldn’t be happening without LTT fucking them over.
Not OP, but I think the point they’re making is that LTT screwed up the video, and that the drama sparked from LTT’s screwup gave Billet a lot of publicity they wouldn’t have had otherwise.
Personally, I’d trade the publicity for my only working prototype and $2,000 GPU back and a video that didn’t shit on me, but if you believe any publicity is good publicity…
I understand they point they’re trying to make, but while attempting to do so they repeated the same false conclusion that LTT came to in the review. Someone pointed that out to OP and rather than take that comment in good faith they wanted to harp about “missing the point”.
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if it worked as intended we wouldn’t be talking about…
This is what I was referring to. I can read thoroughly, and I did so in that case, but the rest of your comment is entirely irrelevant.
That block is the internet, Jen. It’s incredibly important that you protect it or the elders will be irate
I know that reference, I upvote!
It’s a novel design of watercooler, on one side you screw a CPU, on the other side you screw a GPU, in the middle you screw the water pipes. So you get an i7-13700k + rtx 4090 in the size of an ITX motherboard, and because everything is screwed together is super rigid.
is a super niche and super expensive stuff that cater to 0.000001% of PC users, but seeing him shitting on the product like this (“it’s a shitty and expensive product that doesn’t make sense and nobody should buy it”) is painful
After all isn’t he always buying expensive and niche stuff for himself like insisting on having the monitor, keyboard and mouse cables converted to fiber optic because the PC must be in a custom rack design in the basement cooled with the water of the swimming pool. That instead is a cheap idea that everyone can do?
keyboard and mouse cables converted to fiber optic
Well now that doesn’t make any sense
Edit: format
I saw the video on it. It is an extremely overbuilt water cooling system that LTT completely fucked the review on. I don’t really know if the cooler was any good since the testing was far from complete.
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I don’t think that’s a fair assessment. Comparing to a traditional loop, it has marginally better thermals, one less set of tubing (i.e. places for leaks to spring up), and a smaller form factor. Wether or not those are “worth the money” is completely subjective. As someone interested in custom SSF builds I thought it was interesting.
…much cheaper blocks can perform the same task just as well.
We don’t actually know this since no one actually test it, just to be clear.
Unless you are going the “My minivan works just as well as Ferrari for driving to work” angle, which isn’t what the high-end tech segment is really about.
completely useless for practical purposes
So what, LTT does all kinds of impractical and extreme stuff
much cheaper blocks can perform the same task
not that anyone watching LTT could possibly know this, since they didn’t bother to test it properly
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I didn’t see the video, but it seems weird that they only have one prototype… It’s like the script from Grandma’s boy.
I didnt see anywhere that it was the “only” prototype. I believe it was their most complete or their pre-production prototype.
So likely a hand machined and finished item as opposed to something made with production tooling or in batches to reduce manufacturing cost. Something that could also be sent to reviewers as its essentially what the finished product will be. So not only are they out their best prototype, but the opportunity cost and the potential that someone like EK could have bought it and reverse engineered it to release a competing product with little to no R&D cost.
Okay firstly I just don’t understand this last point. If the preorders are up. EK and any other waterblock maker can spend 800 dollars on this. They are meant to be shipped out in a month or 3. Its a head start in theory but I doubt EK or any company is going to seriously waste the money to make solid copper watercooling blocks.
Its unlikely, but not impossible and when you’re dealing with preproduction prototypes you are holding someone elses valuable proprietary information, which in the case of this waterblock is unlikely to be something thats worth copying as its a high cost low margin niche product. But someone could.
Its not like it was just expensive or just someone elses property. It was someone elses one of a kind proprietary design prototype, they knew this and they STILL couldnt show the proper care and responsibility. Thats why this admittedly unlikely edge case is a big deal.
The monoblock was a prototype watercooling block that interfaced with the cpu and gpu simultaneously. Normally if you wanted to watercool both components one would purchase seperate waterblocks for the cpu and gpu and then use plumbing in between the two.
I keep thinking of the monoblock as the monolith from 2001. But with water cooling tubes sticking out of it.
I don’t want to look it up because I like the picture in my imagination.
The monoblock is a prototype water-cooling block, like in just the thing that actually makes contact with the thing you want to cool, not the piping, not the pump, not the reservoir, just the block. What makes this block a monoblock is that it covers the entirety of the gpu, so not just the actual graphics processors, but memory and power delivery, too.
Or so it appears to me.
It’s a cooling block for the GPU, and apparently it can knock off up to 20 degrees. However, it is crazy expensive, like 900$.
3-5 degrees compared to EK’s equivalents. Jesus people, even Billet labs says this and they are the manufacturer
Apparently it can knock off like 80-90 degrees.
Honestly the best subzero cooler on the market, just need the soul of an orphan to power it.
Apparently it can knock off the head of the Gambino crime family.
Apparently it can kill the heads of Al Qaeda/Isis and bring peace to the middle east before breakfast time.
Maybe I came to the channel late, after it’s prime, but I have never seen the value of LTT & affiliates.
The review videos have seemed sub par when cross checking against multiple reviewers.
The entertainment videos felt cringey even when they covered a subject I was interested in (PlayStation dev kits, other obscure tech)
It was a quick unsubscribe when I felt my time was getting wasted.
I’m with you here. That channel and Linus have always just seemed like clickbait clowns to me, felt scummy
Outside of blatant click bait my issue with the channels is once it starts getting interesting, the video is over. Ever played RAGE1? Like that ending. (Credits roll when you think act 3 is about to start)
I’d feel their videos would be better with 10 more minutes of content and slow the fuck down on making so many videos. Why the fuck they have 7 channels?
God, I forgot about Rage.
Longest tech demo ever.
Yep, agreed in full.
Wait they sent a 3090 too? Why Linus tried it with a different GPU then?
Because they’re a disorganized clusterfuck and he couldn’t be bothered to slightly delay filming to get the proper card. Because for whatever reason they’ve decided they must churn out content at such a high pace that everything they do is like this now.
Honestly the only videos from the last year where I remember things not being totally jank were videos with Emily, but she’s barely been in anything since coming out a few months ago.
Emily to GN!
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I would be happy with Emily and Alex starting their own channels. Maybe Dan can join one of them and make the dryest jokes possible. That’s all I really watch for, anyway.
Yeah Emily’s content was absolutely the best, very knowledgeable and informative. Hope to see more of her in the future
The reason they do shady atuff to avoid delays so they can churn out content at such a high pace is money.
Because they lost the GPU, I kid you not.
The logistics team is like four people and they have a gigantic warehouse of mess. They sometimes show it in videos, I’m surprised they can find anything.
The thing I don’t get about them is they keep going on about how they want to do all this professional grade testing. Ok cool, but that requires careful planning, and that does not go long well with their 10 million videos a day at any and all costs policy that they are currently pursuing.
The company I work at has an almost identical type of chaos and a good chunk of colleagues going in, taking something and not informing it was taken until we do inventory and have 30k of stock missing in some corner someone forgot to count.
We are currently in the process of doing it but we are only ~15 heads, 6 of which are currently not on holiday, we as 1st/2nd level helpdesk need to support our customers and it’s just a mess.
Now multiply that by the many employees has and how fast it needs to process it and I am kinda surprised how they havent folded yet in that regard alone.
People seem to constantly underestimate how important logistics and inventory tracking really is
I work in the freight industry and I’m constantly finding shit that isn’t labeled properly, packaged properly, or even put on the correct trailer. And that’s just me as one dude on a loading dock with about 150 doors and about 40 people buzzing around on forklifts.
Literally last month I found half a dozen pallets ranging in cost from $1000 - $75000 that had been pushed deep into a storage area that freight isn’t supposed to be near and had been misplaced over a year prior.
The only reason I found them was because I was investigating trying to find a pallet worth almost $200,000 that someone had misplaced the day before. It was in that area as well.
My guy, you deserve some kind of bonus!
It’s weird how people don’t care about things… I was asked to make a report of open accounts from the database for the sales team, which I did.
They didn’t ask me to filter the data, so I made them a 2nd report, open accounts who had not done business with us year to date, had no problems with payment history, and had open lines of credit.
Over a million dollars in open credit from good customers just… you know… sitting there.
Because he’s a fucking cunt. Always has been. No screwdriver on the face of the earth is worth $70 and no backpack is worth $250, but if it was it should have a goddamn warranty.
There’s a video of them reviewing email clients of all things and they shit on outlook for companies… Anyone who’s ever used outlook vs Gmail in a corporate environment knows that outlook destroys the competition because rules > tags.
Nothing they do is rooted in reality.
Hoodies should not be $100 unless they also come with a hooker who gives great head.
Fuck LTT.
No screwdriver on the face of the earth is worth $70 and no backpack is worth $250
I don’t own either of these products from them, but let me tell you, that is wrong.
I own a 200€ backpack from Samsonite and it fucking rocks, it’s a different league from Amazon crap.
Also, sports gear exists, including backpacks.lol yeah my camera bag is over $300. A good camera hiking bag is most definitely worth the money.
Yeah my dad got a macpac for a couple hundy well before I was born and is still using it daily some 30 years later - sometimes quality shit is more expensive!
To be fair, I agree with you, however I do have the screwdriver. I am a glazer and my screwdrivers get tortured to death. This screwdriver is honestly the best one I have ever owned. They did an excellent job and it absolutely is worth 70 bucks. I think they deserve some props for this, it’s very clear that they put a lot of work into it.
I do have to wonder though, they wanted to have 12 bits in the holder, but the holding area wasn’t large enough. Normal screwdriver bits are 40mm, The shorties that they use are 20mm… They designed the fucking handle… Just make it 40mm longer and then you can use regular size bits. I don’t understand why apparently literally no one thought of this.
Regardless, it is an absolutely fantastic product and it deserves phrase.
That said, fuck LTT.
Fuckin meh. A snap on is around the same price, but if the snap on breaks they’ll overnight a replacement to you. If the ltt breaks you’re sol.
Meanwhile, I can buy a kobolt from Lowes for $25 that has the same warranty as snap on but I just need to go to Lowe’s for it.
Or for $70 I can buy 10 ratcheting screwdrivers that are pretty dogshit from Harbour Freight.
For the price point it’s in the LTT screwdriver should be compatible with standard bits. How long until you’re bits break or get lost before you need to replace them? Will they be available at that time in the stupid fuckin custom size?
The warranty is a valid point.
The LTT screwdriver has very small gearing which means that it is fantastic in a lot of iffy situations. It’s honestly just a damn good screwdriver. As I said it’s the best I’ve ever owned. LTT can go rot in a box, but as much as I despise the company, I am not willing to lie and say that the screwdriver is a bad or mediocre product.
It is compatible with standard bits. Standard bits work just fine in it. However if you want to store standard bits in the handle then you will only be able to store six instead of 12. That’s the only real difference.
As far as availability of short bits, I did a good bit of research on it and found that you can order bit sets for low profile ratchets that are 19 mm. So basically all that to say that getting short bits as replacements is not difficult.
For what it’s worth, I have used the nice snap-on screwdriver, it’s honestly nowhere near as good. Of course this is just my opinion, but I’m being honest.
All that said, fuck Linus and fuck LTT.
Wont the longer bits fit but just stick a bit further out in the socket?
I believe they don’t fit in the built in tip holder.
They do fit, but you can only put half as many normal sized bits in there. I’m fine with that personally, making the whole thing bigger would negatively affect ergonomics.
Ackshually, professional grade tools are very expensive and they’re of different quality than what you get at Home Depot. Materials, thicknesses, manufacturing tolerances are different and more expensive. As a result they last longer, sometimes drastically. The MegaPro screwdriver LTT got theirs influenced by is around the same price as the LTT one.
Still fuck LTT.
…I’m fully aware of the cost of professional tools. I own a few festool products.
However, for a goddamn human powered fucking screwdriver, $70 is INSANE. My co worker is wearing the hooding rn, has the backpack and screwdriver, and will not shut the fuck up about how amazing it is, so trust me, I’ve been hands on with it. And for the price, it’s not worth it. Is it nice? Yes. Are there criticisms of it? Also YES. For $70 is should have a lifetime warranty.
We’re on the same page. MegaPro offers lifetime warranty.
Also those LTT logos better come off easily cause it might be getting a bit shameful walking around in them soon.
I thought you were joking about the screwdriver until I had a check.
Christ alive. I saw the other items you mentioned as well. I’m impressed how they’ve managed to extort their fanbase for generic items.
For what it’s worth, I can get a set of 8 screwdrivers in the UK for £5 (set of 42 for £21), a laptop backpack for £30, and hoodies for ~£30.
definitely not generic. not sure about their clothing but the other stuff is darn good quality. The laptop backpack you get for $30 DEFINITELY won’t match the quality of theirs, the screwdrivers you mentioned are 1. not professional grade and 2. probably just a regular set and not ratcheting or compact.
Just because something is cheaper doesn’t mean it’s better.
Backpack: maybe not, but as long as it doesn’t wear off. For example, I got myself an anti-theft laptop backpack (didn’t even realise it was anti-theft when I bought it lol) and it was £25. I’m not going to pretend it has the utmost premium of materials woven into the backpack or anything, but honestly? It’s not absolute crap either and it’s still going one year later. All my other bags have been the same - not the most premium materials (prob. pretty simple stuff) but it does the job and sticks around forever.
Screwdrivers: So I found a ratchetng screwdriver for £21 - which comes with the bits (unlike from what I can see in LTT store, they seem to be sold separately!!!).
As for “professional grade”, I have searched and searched online for an exact definition for what this could even mean for a screwdriver (because the implication is that other screwdrivers are Fischer Price plastic screwdrivers or something, which is absolutely hilarious to me and I kind of wish it was true) and I get wildly varying definitions (and that’s from the ones I could even find. The most I can work out is that it had more random bits - which I think my example provides (with torx etc). If it has something to do with the “materials” of the screwdriver, then I will say I cannot remember a single time in my life when a screwdriver has broke on me. Generally I buy them (no matter how cheap) and I have it for life.
And yes, just because something is cheaper, doesn’t make it better. But just because something is expensive, doesn’t mean it is naturally better too. Clothing and quite frankly the backpack is incredibly subjective, so I can appreciate we don’t see eye-to-eye on it. But the screwdriver? The LTT screwdriver is such blatant markup on standard screwdrivers that it boggles my mind how anyone could defend it. If they were something along the lines of $30-$40, i would think “yeah, they’re expensive, but it’s clear LTT has got to eat and the people who buy it are clearly supporting the channel” but at $70 it’s practically robbery as an artform.
Fun fact: When I was trying to find the words “professional grade” (hint: couldn’t find it) on the screwdriver page for the LTT store, I noticed this disclaimer text in the product description:
NOTE: Bits are a consumable item and will wear or break down over time. Visual wear to the black phosphate coating is normal and expected.
Now, to be fair, this is true with my cheap-o screwdrivers with the interchangeable bits too. However, I didn’t fork out lots of money for the privilege.
Backpack: If you want a backpack to last 2-4 years, sure. but theirs is designed to last decades.
With the ratcheting screwdriver, i do agree. I just wanted to justify (idk if that’s the right word im ESL) the price point that it’s not that far out from other brands. And by professional grade i mean stuff like snap-on, and megapro. These brands are pretty much on par with pricing and quality.
Also the prices are definitely at least slightly inflated since their shop is a merch shop first, everything else second. You buy stuff from it to support their work and get a premium product with it.
I have seen a ton of LMG videos and it’s very obvious that Linus doesn’t handle conflict very well and will just immediately dig his heels in if he feels that he is in the right.
Here is the way I see it: Regardless of who is right or wrong, this is a series of unfortunate events that happened. Small mistakes or misjudgments don’t always show themselves immediately. However, give it enough time and the floodgates will open and expose everything all at once, for better or for worse. When this happens to people who truly intended no malice, it’s a fuck of a thing to deal with and usually gets worse before it gets better.
When all of your mistakes are gathered in one place for everyone to see all at once it can seem much worse than it actually is.
Am I justifying the actions of LMG? Hell no! They need to fix their issues immediately only because they have such a large fan base that listen to their every word.
Regardless, I have sympathy for them.
These are not “mistakes”, these are willfully evil acts.
I’m just going to quote another comment here:
Billet Labs sent their best prototype (as in, the only one they had) to LMG for review. Linus proceeded to strap it to a video card where it didn’t fit, so bad that there was a 1mm gap (which might as well be a million miles when you’re talking about cooling). Of course the performance sucked due to it being strapped to a card it wasn’t designed to fit, linus trashed the block and the company. And here’s the part that just fucks me off. Billet Labs SENT THEM THE CORRECT CARD WITH THE BLOCK! There is literally no valid excuse for putting it on the wrong card, Billet Labs sent them the correct one!!!
Combine that with the image in the OP, and there’s just no excuse. These are not the actions of someone that “intends no malice”. This is not an “accident”. This is not a “learning opportunity”. This is not a “mistake”. This is a person doing everything in their power to selfishly extract every dime they can from both their viewers and this startup.
They intentionally lied to the viewers because trashing a product gets more views. They intentionally lied to the startup because they got more money from selling the prototype.
They do not deserve any sympathy.
And that is totally fair.
Except this “series of unfortunate events” appears to be entirely self-inflicted.
We’re not talking about a couple of hobbyists making YT videos in their spare time; LTT/LMG are by this point a huge media content factory whose unrelenting drive to produce the next hot slice of monetized infotainment means they are making constant (and often quite large) errors and not giving these products the time and attention required to assess them properly.
If you have the time, Gamer Nexus’ initial video critique where they matter-of-factly listed all the reasons why LTT need to seriously reevaluate how they do business is a very interesting watch.
https://youtu.be/FGW3TPytTjc?t=99
Edit: wow, it seems to have finally sunk in - LTT posted this video not two hours after I posted my comment.
(Piped link because apparently the apology video is monetized 😑) :
If they are not willing to learn from their mistakes then no I have no sympathy for them. How hard is it to just double check your shit before putting it under public eyes?
They made a bunch of mistakes that were callous and might’ve smothered a couple guys starting out.
But then the lack of empathy - “it was a bad product, no one should ever buy it, and so my fundamentally flawed testing is actually valid”, “yeah they asked for it back multiple times and we auctioned it, but it was for charity so it’s fine”, “we agreed to compensate them, but it’s been months and we did that real quick after we got called out, but we’re going to make it seem like we didn’t need a scandal to do the bare minimum”
It’s all excuses, it’s all justification for why “this looks worse than it is, and actually we’re still the good guys”. It’s narcissist mental gymnastics, he still just doesn’t understand what he did wrong - besides being mostly excuses, every “apology” is totally off base on what they did wrong
Mate, you should never think an online influencer/store is on your side. They’re not.
Not even Steve from Gamer’s Nexus is your friend.
Can you still practice safe exchange with them? Yes, just be informed of your rights.
Edit/addition: Didn’t check the link. Thought this was about the last drama.
This addresses new issues, and it’s important to solve those issues.
I feel like when Linus was still CEO, he made too many choices too fast, and that’s caused the situation LMG is in now.
They have to rush content to get bills paid in time.
An extremely impulsive CEO is never good.
I’ve always held the opinion that any celebrity or influencer or whatever is absolutely fucked up in some way. You just have to hope they’re fucked in some way that is relatively harmless
At least with Steve I get the general impression he genuinely cares about people and what he does. He also seems like a genuinely nice person
Whereas for Linus, it has felt for a while that he is basically just a business person who does this because it’s profitable (I think he used to care though).
You can care about people as a proxy of doing PR over the thing you like to do.
Not saying he’s an asshole or anything; people just need to stop having these weird as fuck personal relationships with online personalities whom they don’t even actually know.
But yeah, Linus used to care more, but it was years ago when he started saying he’ll stop being CEO soon. Started piling up from back then to where it is now.
Tl;dr: frustrations, inability to do the thing he wanted, high commercial pressure, family, impulsiveness (New houses, new cars, new projects while there were multiple still in progress or not even started), etc. Lost sight of what he was doing, and what he wanted.
Maybe that’ll slowly improve with new CEO, and the projects he started finishing.
Imma go ask Steve if he wants to be my friend.
Well to be fair, he’ll probably agree over a longer contact period, albeit it doesn’t seem he has a lot of free time.
Yea, if even 1% of their fan base were to send them a message ot would be spam for days. Even if they weren’t doing anything else it would be too much.
Still wish him all the best.
Good idea. i’ll do the same.
Linus’ fan base allegedly drove a little boy to suicide, and the mother subsequently took her own life as well.
This got dark fast.
R.I.P. mother and son.
Holy fucking shit 😳
:(
Wonder how those same fans would react to the opportunity to cancel Linus 🤔.
Oh and it seems this is not all of it, an ex-employee came out on twitter about sexual harassment, extremely bad work conditions and so much more.
The timing of it is weird to say at least but there’s a lot.The fact that these allegations come in quick succession is rather logical, I’d say. It’s much harder to come out against someone who is a generally beloved public figure, so when the allegations finally start, many people see their chance to have their voice be taken seriously.
It’s been repeatedly proven that large companies get a impenetrable wall of armour based on fear of speaking out due to fear of retribution or breaking an important connection. Once that wall is broken it allows grievances to finally pass though.
It’s like a dam.
Removed by mod
Please don’t deadname trans people, folks can figure out from context if you just say “Emily from LTT came out as trans”.
I can’t expect everyone to know who that is. Especially here where people tend to avoid Twitter which was their platform of choice to reveal to the wider internet. And Emily hasn’t been on any LTT videos since transitioning, so I don’t exactly know how people would get context without what I said.
I don’t mean to stir up anything, this is entirely respectful (remove this if it isn’t, no worries), but it is useful for someone who knew who someone named “Anthony” was, despite the fact that they don’t exist anymore. I guess it doesn’t matter, but I immediately was able to understand who they were talking about since I didn’t know she had transitioned. Is there a better way to approach providing this context?
There’s a million different ways, most trans people don’t immediately change their last name so you can use that. Or you can refer to something that Emily did to provide context. I’m sure if you stop and think about it, you can figure out a few more ways too.
At the end of the day it’s not about making it easier for you to understand what’s going on at the expense of disrespecting her. She’s asking for you to use her name, so stop calling her something else.
Thanks, I appreciate this clarification and the different perspective is helpful. I can see why I should prioritize her well-being over my ease-of-reference. I’ll be sure to avoid this in the future
You know people can harass women or be dicks to their coworkers/subordinates and not be transphobic, right? Also, as of 2022, about 65 people work at Linus tech tips. Saying “Everyone was cool with it and endorsed it” is a bit of a broad statement to make.
This incident has made me reevaluate some things. I could see this being a one off thing. Like an inventory error or a communication error. But the rebuttal was wild. Cancelled my floatplane subscription for now. Maybe they’ll turn it around down the road, but this one was a big mess up.
Damn this is really sad to see for the longest time LMG was one of the few companies I actually liked and trusted
The channel was much better when they were in the house and the backups were stored on a toilet.
Ah I remember the good old days.
Checkpoint: have you unsubbed? Unsub LTT now.
There’s plenty of good, honest content out there.
I’m not really sure how this situation makes linus a “slimey piece of shit”. Incompetent, maybe. Bad at management, sure. Linus probably had no hand in any part until the part where he was told they fucked up. I don’t think there was malice in any part of the exchange, just incompetence.
I find his on-air comments on the prototype that he literally was unwilling to test on the card it was designed for pretty slimy. But if that’s not enough for you, how about the way Madison Suop was treated?
I think his comments about the retesting were poorly thought out but not egregious in my opinion.
I’m not talking about the madison situation, which is pretty bad if true and definitely makes him seem like a bad person if he knew about it.
I mean, they sent him a specific card to use it on and he decided to just not do that and instead be as harsh as he could about the fact that he couldn’t get it together to figure out how to mount the thing properly. That tone he gets in his voice when he starts trashing it? That’s cruelty. That’s anger. He’s trying to hurt them and he’s doing it on purpose because he’s a manipulative and emotionally abusive person, and it’s easier to lash out than accept his own mistake.
I’ve dealt with too much of that shit in my own life not to call it out when I get a whiff. Make no mistake, this guy is a mean-spirited, cruel, and callous person.
I think it’s quite a leap from one thing to say he’s “manipulative and emotionally abusive”. I think he was trashing it with disregard for their feelings but not with the intent of hurting their feelings. Plus, I don’t think he actually wrote the script for that video, no? It could be possible that it was just incompetence and a lack of care/unwillingness to spend the extra time for something that in his opinion was worthless anyway. He probably sees hundreds items from other (usually much larger) companies come and go that aren’t so easily effected by a few months delay on an item being returned, a bit of bad press from a YouTuber or a missing sample. What is easier to believe: that Linus lost sight of what’s important in persuit of his own goals and didn’t stop to think about how it might effect companies smaller than his - or that he is secretly emotionally abusive and carefully calculated an attack on this specific company for having the gall to send him a prototype?
Don’t know why, but the image is not loading on my end. Anyone got a link to it on a different platform?
It’s just text, I copied it for you
June 30: “Let me know if you’d like the block back either way. And we can ship it back with the 3090 Ti.” July 6: "We’ll send back the Monoblock and 3090T
July 12: "The block and the 3090 Ti should be sent sometime next
week."
July 30: LTX Extra Life Auction featuring Billet block ends
Early August: "So, there was a communication mishap and we ended up
auctioning off the Monoblock in silent auction for charity at LTX. The
good news, is that it isn’t just sitting on a shelf."
- Linus Media Group to Billet Labs
I always wondered if Linus was actually a slimy POS
I believe you. Not everyone on here will, though.
I never liked LTT even though my friends do. He always gave off this fucking scumbo vibe to me.
Late to the news but I’m not entirely surprised. As messed up as the situation may seem, I like to remind it’s in everyone’s best interest not to jump on the outrage/cancel train. I do not have any loyalties and find the best way to judge anything is to listen to various outlets prior to constructing my own opinions. LMG f’d up in this instance but that’s not to say that their other content has no value. All these different YouTube channels work in an ecosystem of checks and balances and we need all of them to stick around to provide different perspectives. It is up to the viewers to think for themselves and don’t let the echo chambers of social media cloud your judgement. Whether it’s politics or tech reviews, let’s avoid extremism as nothing is ever black or white.
Yeah, you clearly have not been following along. Linus has already been caught in multiple outright lies.
His treatment of Billet labs alone is enough reason.
He didn’t fuck up in this instance, it has been continual over a long period and in this case he tripled down.
Have you not seen Madison’s tweets yet?
