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.[1]
Check LinusTech’s profile for further discussion and comments he’s had.[2]
Which meaningless drama did I miss here?
In a video on a different channel (not from Linus media group) a LTT employee criticized other YouTubers like gamers Nexus saying they’re not as thorough as them, so gamers Nexus made a 40 minutes video (not monetized, Linus wouldn’t have done that) with a compilation of some of the biggest errors LTT made in the last year.
Mostly the issues that were pointed out is that
After being sent a prototype of a water-cooling block that will be on sale in November 2023, he didn’t follow the instructions and attempted to install it on a wrong GPU, and that meant there would be a 1 mm gap between the die and the block and wouldn’t work at all. The conclusion of that video was that it was a shitty product and nobody should buy it. For a start-up with 2 people is a death sentence. Later in his hours long wan show (that I never see because too long) he doubles down saying “why I should spend $500 in salaries to test it with the right equipment, it’s a shitty product and nobody should buy it”. The sample was not returned even if it was requested back and instead they sold it at an auction
For a mouse review they said it had terrible gliding and it was awful, but they didn’t RTFM and didn’t remove a protective film on the bottom (but IMHO it should arrive to the customer without protective films)
Various instances of the hosts that says something but then it’s corrected by just an asterisk on the screen
Various instances of clearly wrong tests (coolers that suddenly in a single test perform significantly worse than the average, newer GPU models that run much faster than the average)
And he didn’t point another problem with a video published a few hours earlier: LTT reviewed a virus removal Stick and the conclusion was that even if the ads are misleading and the website is scammy, the product itself isn’t that bad. But he tested on a diy computer. Any prebuilt computer released in the last two years has secureboot and automatic bitlocker encryption with keys in the Microsoft account, meaning that this antivirus removal USB drive wouldn’t even boot, and if it could, it couldn’t access any file on the computer
I was disappointed this issue was not addressed at all during its review. The type of person this product is aimed at wouldn’t have a clue this was potentially the case.
Thank you for your detailed reply! I personally view LMG videos as purely entertaining, they shouldn’t trash other people for data quality or accuracy, since they are rather weak in that field as well. Rather they should focus on entertainment for entertainment’s sake, where they are - at least in my opinion - stronger than a lot of the rest.
Linus is responding to this video from Gamers Nexus: https://youtu.be/FGW3TPytTjc
It’s a long video, but the tl;dr is that LTT are getting sloppy in their reviews, making mistakes, and not fixing them in a clear manner. Additionally, there are some larger issues around a recent review of a gpu heatsink.
Worse than that. LMG may have killed the startup behind the GPU water block. They sold off their one and only functioning prototype, despite being asked to return it before they sold it. This could result in the block being cloned by a competitor
Why is it that Billet Labs themselves haven’t spoken publicly about this? At this point, the story is being told second hand. I’m not saying it’s not true, I’m just saying that taking it at face value is a bit iffy considering it’s coming from someone else. Maybe I missed it, and they DID say something, but I literally have to take it at face value that Steve is telling the ENTIRE story, or that he even got the ENTIRE story.
I’m not against accountability, but a lot of this could have been handled privately. Again, not taking sides here, but Steve gets most of his attention from just going after other companies, whether deserved or not. I rarely hear about GN unless there is SOME kind of controversy going on (hardware issues and him having very valid input on it, or basically company drama). I just feel like this is pointlessly dividing a community in to Team LMG vs. Team GN thing, and it’s dumb.
No really, hear me out on this. Steve has said in the past he wants to be treated like he is doing journalism, and intends to hold himself to journalistic standards (he said this during the NewEgg thing). It’s pretty standard when doing a story to get commentary from the party your story is about. Because journalism is, at least supposed to be, about telling the WHOLE story. Both sides. Instead, it’s more of a hatchet job. There are ways to go about “calling out” a company that doesn’t involve telling what is ultimately a one-sided story with the veiled challenge of “prove me wrong.” That’s not journalism. That’s drama for views.
Billet Labs have spoken out about this (GN shows YT comment they made on the LMG vedio). They are not being very vocal about this. GN shows a video of items LMG has on display to be sold at the auction. You can clearly see the GPU water block on the table. Everything GN reported on is public record, including LMG responses. Nothing GN said is speculative. The video is just a report on public facts. Contacting LMG is superfluous.
Calling out BS doesn’t make you the bad guy. GN made it quiet clear, that point of the video was not for drama but help LMG do better for the sake of the industry and the consumer.
I’m not on team LMG or team GN. I’m on team a larger company has no right to hurt a smaller company because they don’t think their product has merit.
I mean it is common journalistic courtesy to allow the criticized side to give you a statement when you’re doing a piece on them, but it’s also reasonable to not do it in some cases.
I’d be worried that Linus would (unknowingly/“accidentally”) prime his fan base against this critique if he talked about it, say, on the WAN show, and often the first to come out with something seems more “trustworthy” so it might’ve been a shitstorm for GN too.
I also doubt he’d have anything reasonable to add, which he clearly doesn’t, judging from what he posted since the video released.
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Same here, I feel like I’m missing a lot of context.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGW3TPytTjc