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.
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we didn’t ‘sell’ the monoblock, but rather auctioned it for charity due to a miscommunication
I don’t think you’re making the point you think you’re making
Also, Linus is technically wrong on several counts. GN said where it was sold (at an event auction).
also auction == sell: webster definition of Auction: “a sale of property to the highest bidder”
GN even starts by saying it was “auctioned”, only later it says it was sold at an auction.
If that’s how Linus is going to defend “proper journalistic practice”, by ignoring the material he’s criticizing, then he’s lost his North.
Absolutely no excuse that this happened, but I believe the point he is trying to make is that they didn’t make any money on it. Still a shitty thing to let happen, and it should simply never have happened at all, but it’s still better than if they had sold it and made a profit, I guess.
That point didn’t need to be made in the first place because Steve already specifically noted that it was auctioned for charity in his video.
To me, this is just evidence that Linus didn’t even watch the video.
Why would he? You can get most of a videos information by just reading the comments. And those probably all said he sold it.
Wow. I felt so stupid just writing this. I still cant believe he unironically says shit like this
Well, not watching the video would mean not doing due diligence, which would be on-brand for him.
The point isn’t the profit, the point is that a new, maybe secret prototype could have fallen into competitors hands. LMG made a thousand on it? The small, indepedent company that made the water block just lost their main product
Selling it for clout rather than money doesn’t make it better in any way.
Linus does this all the time, he makes excuses based on some technicality that only he understands. He’s said in the past that “it’s only a review if we explicitly say it’s a review, and if it’s not a review we don’t have to be held to the same standards”, despite the fact that most of their viewers won’t assume that distinction, and it’s not exactly obvious with their nonsense clickbait titles on all videos. His ego is way too big and he cares more about being right than making good content.
When organizations mess up, why is their first response to the critique to say “Why didn’t you come to us first?” when they really mean “Why did you make this public so we actually have to do something?”
I get really frustrated with the response because it doesn’t come across as a company actually interested in improving, but just throwing accusations back and trying to beg off the responsibility of actually holding themselves accountable.
we didn’t ‘sell’ the monoblock, but rather auctioned it for charity
Jesus. It doesn’t matter whether you sold it or auctioned it. It doesn’t matter if it was for charity. What matters is that IT WAS A ONE-OF-A-KIND PROTOTYPE THAT DIDN’T BELONG TO YOU AND YOU AGREED TO RETURN IT (and the RTX3090 they sent with it), and you didn’t do what you promised.
Everything wrong with LTT is summed up in this response. Instead of going to the company’s CEO and composing a response on behalf of the company, we get a bunch of over-personalized complaints about hurt feelings and imperfection, fired off only 3 hours after the GN video, that make it 100% clear this is all about Linus’ personality rather than a dispassionate review of the facts.
Even better is that GN did say “auctioned” and not “sold”. Can’t even get that right.
Besides - isn’t the term typically used “sold at auction”?
Typically followed by whatever exorbitant amount someone paid for something that’s only that valuable because too many people have too much money, but that’s a topic for another day.
“my intention was never to harm Billet Labs”
Kid, you said “nobody should buy it”
I think the end conclusion wasn’t great. He said
It wouldn’t matter if it dropped 20 degrees
It absolutely would matter. Just like how a 4090 costs an absurdly high amount but people will still buy it. For the right person getting 20 degrees knocked off might be worthwhile regardless of how expensive it is.
I mean it is a $800/900+ waterblock. No reasonable consumer should buy it. Its a cool project to show Billet Lab’s ability to fabricate and mill custom parts but this is such a niche thing.
The average consumer wouldn’t buy a block to begin with. I know quite a few guys that have spent thousands on their hardline setups, adding another $1000 CAD is a drop in the bucket to them. There is a market for it, just not a large one
I do wish they would have tested it properly, because it was like watching a Top Gear episode where they drive a lambo around a gridlocked city and then say, “not worth the money, sucks”. You’re right, there is a market for it, just not a large one. But also as the other guy said, no reasonable consumer should buy it. All of this is irrelevant to the larger discussion at hand, of course.
And they wouldn’t watch Linus video on it going on the wrong gpu. Those insane people can do what they want but its clear Linus is typically catering to tech “normies” they will do the occasional commercial tech but those are typically using them in ways they weren’t meant to in a rather silly/pointless deployment. I’m not here to say what Linus did to the prototype was great since really auctioning it off is pretty abhorrent but I think people are over exaggerating about him going to be the “death of a startup” when local youtuber “funny” man makes a stupid video on it installing it on the wrong gpu, which has been clearly pointed out to death in the comments even before this controversy popped up.
From Billet lab’s own website, it seems custom parts may be their bag and even though the video was negative on the monoblock (as we already established the reasons why) LTT seemed rather positive about the company, just not the product.
If you’ve got an idea for your next PC, let us know. If anyone can make it happen, we can.
Think this is a case of damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Where I can see where Linus is coming from since he is quite frequently told he is out of touch as shown with his recent “house” videos. I think this could have easily swung the other way of “Wow Linus, of course the techtuber who gets free shit would advertise a 900$ waterblock, we can barely afford the gpus to put these on but he wants us to buy something that cost half the price of the already overpriced gpu its being put on”. Like custom water cooling loop are fucking cool but you get to a huge point of diminishing return. Like if we believe Billet Lab’s own results, the difference between Monoblock and EK quantum magnitude & EK-Quantum Vector is only about 3-5 degrees. People can burn their money how they want but I am pretty certain LTT has made a video saying they actually don’t encourage consumers to watercool their PCs since while its better its typically just a worse user experience (This is me paraphrasing).
Myself and the guys I was referring to with crazy hardline loops are on first name basis with Linus, we all played left 4 dead together way back when before he even had a YouTube channel (ClosetGamer, anyone?) so his influence with these type of enthusiasts is still pretty strong, at least here in Canada. However he definitely lost a lot of respect with this response of his but honestly I didn’t expect anything different from him
It’s his job to say who should buy it. That doesn’t mean he wants to take food off the tables of manufacturers. A review is useless if the reviewer cares more about not hurting the manufacturer than being straight about the product. That said, the review should obviously be done with a responsible level of thoroughness and competence, but that’s a separate issue.
A decent reviewer would present the data/facts and would let people make their own conclusions. It’s not wise to outright say do/don’t buy this. People aren’t very smart and are extremely easily lead to make decisions based on their feelings towards the speaker instead of something sound like logic/morals/ethics.
“Nobody should buy it” is probably true, but it’s not the problem here. LTT did not do their due diligence before publishing that conclusion. Even a product that no rational consumer should buy deserves a fair review that explores why you might buy it anyway.
How am I not surprised this is how he would respond. This is the same guy who said “AdBlock is piracy,” he doubles down on every shitty take he has.
I still don’t get his fame and how deeply embedded ge is in the pc/gaming community.
Haha he’s so funny because he drops expensive things and pushes expensive products.He’s the CEO of Linux, it’s even named after him.
TIL
Satan’s making a joke. Linux was developed in 1991 by Linus Torvalds of Finland. LTT is Linus Sebastian of Canada.
I was just following the joke. Linux, the kernel and Linus Sebastian are probably the same age, from my point of view (yeah, I’m old).
Yeah I mean it’s kind of wish fulfillment innit? Like Scrapyard Wars, or Whole Room Watercooling, or building 5-figure rigs, or his tech’ed out data collection mansion, that’s all stuff most people won’t be able to do themselves, but they want to watch someone do it.
His fame, like most fame, is the duality of a carefully curated persona as cool and hip, and an arrogant micromanaging back half. Most people are only going to see Wish Fulfillment Linus, and Egomaniac Linus only comes up rarely (and mostly on his podcast).
Reddit always had such a boner for him. Maybe it’s because I’m old, but I clicked on one of his videos a decade ago, when people were posting gifs of him dropping things. I found the grating and annoying, and never went back. It also really looked like all of the drops were for quick popularity via Reddit gifs. It worked well.
Man, I’ve had a feeling that LTT and LMG’s content more generally has been less and less about consumers and more about selling things to people. I guess it’s called “advertainment” - but it’s just so intolerable now. I don’t feel connected to, or like any of the content is relevant anymore to a regular person.
When your employees are complaining that they can’t create the content to the standard they want to because of time, it really sounds like a management problem. One they Linus seems determined to ignore so that they can keep raking in big sponsorships and sales of their overpriced over hyped merch so they can buy ever bigger mansions.
The whole tone of the enterprise is off and the vibes are bad.
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I don’t even think he’s pulling it out as an intentional tactic, I get the feeling he legitimately wants to be a good guy and is barely able to handle the suggestion that he isn’t acting like one. Just a fragile ego and self-image.
Because I don’t think you or any of the people in this thread would spout the vitriol they have to his face if they recognized him as a human. Consider a friend you have that you’re close to. Now imagine they fucked up in the way linus did. How do you approach them about it? Do you say, “hey man, I think you were in the wrong there, let’s talk, I want to understand where your head was at”? Or do you jump straight to, “you never learn from your mistakes, that’s why you keep acting like a fool. I can’t be bothered with your superficial attitude”?
There’s a disconnect between people communicating on the internet. Most humans aren’t evolved to have sympathy for hypothetical people, much less intangible celebrities, much less communicating asynchronously. We’re evolved to look each other in the face, read each others’ emotions, and adjust the conversation accordingly to be most effective. None of that can happen here.
Linus has always struck me as someone who thinks he knows what he’s talking about, acts like he does, and can sell it. When, in fact, he’s nothing but veneer on top of a moron. This, to me, proves it. I’m so glad I never got caught up in his cult of personality.
Same, I never liked his content. He’s so “hype guy” cringy to me. I have friends that are somewhat techie that love him and think I’m just hating on him but he’s always been very annoying and came off as fake, like the fake persona that a cars salesman has. I’ve never watched a whole one of his videos, just can’t stand them.
Edit note: The recent Twitter thread from the former employee eclipses either of the situations in this comment in terms of needing response/corroboration. I think it largely stems from the same problem: overwork and mismanagement.
The Billet situation appears to be a genuine fuckup that LMG has to make right with them, but outside of that I don’t care tbh.
The data integrity situation is the one that needs to be properly addressed for the sake of their channel.
Sorry Linus, I’m not buying the “you should have told us” line. The fact that you and your staff were well aware of the problems of rushing to release content (to the point of releasing public video on it), means it’s not that people weren’t telling you.
You have two basic options to fix it.
Option A: You need more staff to vet the accuracy and more hosts to have time to cut/re-shoot parts that were incorrect. Clearly you and your staff each have too much on your plate.
Option B: You need to slow the rate of your content releasing right down, to ensure you can double and triple check benchmarks, staff that bring up concerns aren’t brushed off or put in a footnote/comment.
GN or anyone could tell LMG this, but especially option B isn’t something a company with a “growth-mindset” would want to hear.
The communication re: the auction of the billet product appears to be a genuine fuck up, and LMG needs to do as much as it can to own that.
The review, and subsequent doubling down on WAN of [sic] “do not buy this product” , however, is down right negligent. Billet are a start up and every review or demo of their product is absolutely critical to their success. To say “we want you to eat” is borderline offensive. LMG must recognise the majority who watch LTT are often casual and will forever just remember “Linus said no” and not question it further.
While I commend the attitude of not being drawn into an online pissing contest with GN, I think the least they could do is remove the video, retest and evaluate, and offer a sincere apology for the previous efforts.
Everything else is a QC issue. Do less with more, and you won’t have to spend so much time putting out very public fires such as this.
While Linus’ handling of the situation is terrible, I agree there is nothing this waterblock could do to change that conclusion for the price that it costs, so the drama around that does seem silly to me.
But that’s missing the point of the product isn’t it? I agree with the super car analogy here. Linus was reviewing the thing like it was a car to bring the kids to school or go grocery shopping. Yes it’s wildly impractical, the kids don’t fit and the gas mileage is terrible. But that’s not the point of the product.
They should have tested it properly, praised it for the extreme engineering and beauty and then added as almost a footnote it’s super expensive and impractical.
And this coming from the guys that made a $100,000 dollar desk recently. I’m sorry Linus your desk sucks, it’s way to heavy, way too expensive and super impractical. But they didn’t say that, instead showing off how beautiful it turned out and what an awesome thing it is.
LMG must recognise the majority who watch LTT are often casual and will forever just remember “Linus said no” and not question it further.
So they are casuals primarily but you expect some subset of them to be willing to buy a $900+ waterblock? I feel I’m going through brainrot right now with this shit. Any enthusiast is probably not going to take the youtuber “funny” man, who thought it would be a good idea to watercool his PC rack with his pool with no heat exchanger in between said rack and the pool installation or really any other dumb watercooling project they have done (that typically end in failure), as a person you should go to for your boutique custom water cooling needs. Like even in the video they were pretty blatant on how its going on the wrong gpu.
As Linus said, think of it like watching a Top Gear/VIN Wiki video about a super car. I just want to see it at its best, and going fast.
Yeah, talk about some downsides but recognise this isn’t a product for everyone. His attitude of “don’t buy it at all” was really bad faith.
3-5 degrees is the difference between this and its ek equivalents as posted by the manufacturer. This drama has been going on for a fucking month now. In a fucked up way, LTT covering this waterblock in the worst way possible has probably landed more eyes to Billet Labs than a proper one. Whoopie fucking doo a new custom boutique waterblock that cost nearly half the price of the card its meant to cool. I’m not here to defend the recent thing with the auctions since that is horrible and there is really no defense for it (I can understand how it could have happened but it should never have happened). I just think if there wasn’t drama this would have just been a filler episode everyone would have forgotten about since there is nothing to this block beyond it basically being made of solid copper and cools both the cpu and gpu at the same time. Its a nice work of milling and I applaud Billet Labs on their workmanship. This beyond the most recent revelation feels like such a nothing burger that has continued to grow pointlessly.
Edit: Which has only continued to grow because Linus never figured out to stop putting his fucking foot in his mouth.
not a good look, Linus. If he were actually serious about handling mistakes and issues head-on, none of this would’ve happened because he would’ve publicly corrected his employee when he claimed their testing methods are superior to others’
Pretty sure he did that on the WAN Show
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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).
So, you did sell it; an auction sale is still a fucking sale. And the fact that you sold it for clout rather than money doesn’t make it better. What kind of ridiculous farce is that denial?
And, [we’re going to compensate them for it. Trust us, bro.] How long does it take to send a check?
Such a dishonest weasel.
We need “Linus Responds to GN Responding to Linus Responding to The Problem with LMG” 🍿
Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cTpTMl8kFY
There are some steps mentioned that they will take, like not making any videos for a week and reviewing internal processes. Getting some Southpark-y “I’m sorry” vibes there, at least it’s something though.
But the video (at least its creation if not its release) seems to predate the Twitter/X thread of a former LTT employee alleging sexual harassment and other toxic workplace behaviour: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1691693740254228741
So not very surprisingly most Youtube comments I’ve seen refer to that bomb dropping.
This isn’t “something”. This is a “we’re sorry (not really)” video. If you watch it in the context of “I have no favorites in this game” and look it it pretty objectively, it feels like just a bait to try to stop the bleeding.
A week? To refine all the processes in that size of a company? No. I’ve gone through these processes before and it takes months to evaluate, talk to employees, get processes down properly, especially when you need to really start over from the standpoint of “this isn’t working”. They even mentioned they are still having scheduled videos coming out… Did they check those for errors first? I doubt it.
A week to get their inventory control back on track? With the size of their warehouse? No way.
The fact that they let Linus get on there and make the tone deaf statement he did, still backtracking on the billet labs fiasco. He acted like a petulant child who doesn’t have remorse.
They are going to post their updates to their processes on floatplane? What. The. Fuck. So no communication through YouTube. You have to pay in order to see how they will do better.
And. They monetized the apology video. They knew they would get the most views ever out of that one. And they monetized it.
I’ve watched quite a bit of their content and had trusted it in the past… but I have the same feeling about them now that I had when I found out about Jared from adventures with purpose and his whole “I’m just here to make as much cash as I can” attitude, aside from the fact that he’s a child rapist. It just feels scummy to me.
This isn’t “something”. This is a “we’re sorry (not really)” video. If you watch it in the context of “I have no favorites in this game” and look it it pretty objectively, it feels like just a bait to try to stop the bleeding.
Yeah that’s what I meant with “Southpark-y ‘I’m sorry’ vibes”. For reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HTd4Um1m4
P.S.: And that’s… “something”.
A week? To refine all the processes in that size of a company?
No, a week without videos to get started with reviewing processes. I agree with you in general though, if it stops there it’s nothing more than PR. Remains to be seen what will come of it, but the allegations by that former employee are certainly a dampener on an optimistic view of the situation.
One week will get nothing done, but for the people who buy it - it works.
Linus is an entertainer foremost, but his personality is … well, yeah.
Not a huge fan of LTT and their setup, but they seem to reach a lot of people.
Not at all surprised to hear that it’s a toxic workplace. Matches the vibe of the “we’re sorry” video, and the “trust me bro” warranty shit.
All true, and maybe I have been understating my negative estimation of the whole ordeal a bit, but we are like five levels of escalation deep at this point, and all I’m saying is it’s getting harder and harder to gain a nuanced understanding of the situation. Which is important.
Anyway, given the totality of what I have seen so far LTT has either always been or just devolved into an entirely toxic work environment. Their reaction so far doesn’t inspire any confidence in the slightest. On the contrary, it reinforces all of the accusations.
On the contrary, it reinforces all of the accusations.
Definitely
Lol I never saw that episode of South Park. That’s hilarious.
Oh boy, here we go
Did he respond to the response to his response to the controversy?? His forum account at least hasn’t posted in 23 hours.
Nope
The critiques that Steve laid out in this video were perfectly fine, highlighting the shortcomings of LMG when it comes to actually reviewing content (which is what they’re pivoting to, away from 100% entertainment content). A typical Linus arrogant take where he’ll learn nothing.
I mean the answer here is simple. Listen to your employees. They are your content, Linus.
