EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
General => General Technical Chat => Topic started by: EEVblog on May 25, 2023, 02:44:17 am
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Linus turned down a $100M offer for Linus Tech Tips. 60% cash, 40% equity.
And he (plus his wife) are the sole owners.
Repect :-+
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vuzqunync8 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vuzqunync8)
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we would like to possess your work for use as a marketing vector
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He managed to create quite a big business just with "tech enternainment". Whether we find it interesting or not, that's amazing.
Given how his business must be making, selling it at this point wouldn't make much sense. He's too young for that. He gets way enough money as it is, and selling it would probably mean half of his employees getting fired too. So yeah. But yes he's looking for a CEO.
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Admire him and his vision :-+
His comments about "Selling Out" are spot on :clap:
Best,
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Admire him and his vision :-+
His comments about "Selling Out" are spot on :clap:
Don't think so. As a business owner it is better to sell out and cash in when the chance arrives. I know quite a few who didn't sell and saw their 'fortune' evaporate to zero. As a business owner, number one is yourself. Learn not to care about people in the sense that they are family of some sort. Qualified people will always find a good job (and are likely to leave at some point anyway) and there is also the possibility to start something new with members of the team that don't like the new management and/or are laid off. One of my former employers sold the company for good money and nowadays he employs many of the old staff.
As Linus is stepping down as CEO, there will be new management so from a functional perspective he should cash in anyway. With 40% in equity, he'd still own a major part of the company, be able to influence how the company is being run AND have money in the bank.
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Linus turned down a $100M offer for Linus Tech Tips. 60% cash, 40% equity.
And he (plus his wife) are the sole owners.
Repect :-+
Only time will tell, if this was a good move.
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With 40% in equity, he'd still own a major part of the company, be able to influence how the company is being run AND have money in the bank.
He would have received $40M worth of equity in the buyer company. Since we don't know how big that company is, we have no idea whether that share would have bought him any influence.
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Admire him and his vision :-+
His comments about "Selling Out" are spot on :clap:
Don't think so. As a business owner it is better to sell out and cash in when the chance arrives. I know quite a few who didn't sell and saw their 'fortune' evaporate to zero. As a business owner, number one is yourself. Learn not to care about people in the sense that they are family of some sort. Qualified people will always find a good job (and are likely to leave at some point anyway) and there is also the possibility to start something new with members of the team that don't like the new management and/or are laid off. One of my former employers sold the company for good money and nowadays he employs many of the old staff.
As Linus is stepping down as CEO, there will be new management so from a functional perspective he should cash in anyway.
Obviously you've never been there and done that, we have :-+
We sold out in 2006 for $25M, and should have held out for more (long story). The SoC RFIC technology we had that was the core reason for our acquisition was attractive to a few high tech companies, the company that acquired us then destroyed such, as we found out later, was more about keeping their competitor from acquiring the technology than utilizing such (very poor short term thinking senior management).
So selling out may not be the best case in many situations, as Linus correctly mentioned being controlled my short term thinking management. Where "best" isn't always about $, been there done that and suffered the consequences :P
Best,
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Don't think so. As a business owner it is better to sell out and cash in when the chance arrives. I know quite a few who didn't sell and saw their 'fortune' evaporate to zero.
Only a risk if they didn't run a substantial profit or reinvested everything and gave themselves a pittance for salary.
He said he was already rich so presumably that was not the case for him. If it goes tits up he will have lost the chance of being filthy rich and will have to settle with being plain rich.
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interesting topic, but is it a technical topic for a technical only general chat section?
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I get no understanding what is the value of this channel. If it disappears tomorrow there will be Zero impact on technology or relevant computer skills. Kudos to Linus managing to build such Nothing Burger.
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Admire him and his vision :-+
His comments about "Selling Out" are spot on :clap:
Don't think so. As a business owner it is better to sell out and cash in when the chance arrives. I know quite a few who didn't sell and saw their 'fortune' evaporate to zero. As a business owner, number one is yourself. Learn not to care about people in the sense that they are family of some sort. Qualified people will always find a good job (and are likely to leave at some point anyway) and there is also the possibility to start something new with members of the team that don't like the new management and/or are laid off. One of my former employers sold the company for good money and nowadays he employs many of the old staff.
As Linus is stepping down as CEO, there will be new management so from a functional perspective he should cash in anyway.
Obviously you've never been there and done that, we have :-+
We sold out in 2006 for $25M, and should have held out for more (long story).
You mean you have 8) But your claim is that you sold too early. Ofcourse you can always debate valuation of your company and hope for more (which may never come). Good investors however, set predefined targets for when to buy / sell shares in order not to get carried away and start to make emotional instead of rational decissions. On top of that, it looks like you valued the technology you have developed much higher than what the market was willing to pay for it. Otherwise it would have been used in products instead of being pulled from the market as a precaution.
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Don't think so. As a business owner it is better to sell out and cash in when the chance arrives. I know quite a few who didn't sell and saw their 'fortune' evaporate to zero.
Only a risk if they didn't run a substantial profit or reinvested everything and gave themselves a pittance for salary.
He said he was already rich so presumably that was not the case for him. If it goes tits up he will have lost the chance of being filthy rich and will have to settle with being plain rich.
Yep, not everyone aspires to be a Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, or Bill Gates!!
Interestingly we all discuss about how short term thinking is what's it's all about in business today, few if any CEOs are long term thinkers and most adhere to Wall St and Share Holder values, like quarterly returns and stock value!!
Yet many of us here, ourselves included, worked our way thru college flipping burgers, mowing yards, painting houses, repairing TV & Stereos, whatever it took to stay in school and survive. Now what kind of thinking was that? We all could have got better paying 8-5 jobs and forgo college! We didn't, we were all long term investing in our future, not short term pocketing more $ with less life stress!! Yet some of these same folks that made that long term investment for college now are making the short term decisions in most companies.
Long ago when we were proposing for investment $ in a local university lab we had a projector slide preparation (yes, that long ago, PP wasn't around then!!), we looked around the room of executives, from MIT, Stanford, Cornell, Columbia, USC, RTI and so on and realized the presentation was hopeless, so we didn't present the slides and used the above long term college investment as a challenge to each and everyone in the room!! Ironically this resonated (at least for awhile) and we got the substantial funding requested :-+
Best,
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You mean you have 8) But your claim is that you sold too early. Ofcourse you can always debate valuation of your company and hope for more (which may never come). Good investors however, set predefined targets for when to buy / sell shares in order not to get carried away and start to make emotional instead of rational decissions. On top of that, it looks like you valued the technology you have developed much higher than what the market was willing to pay for it. Otherwise it would have been used in products instead of being pulled from the market as a precaution.
These weren't investors, but major tech companies. There were 3 majors involved after a failed attempt by IBM to acquire us (long story about disgruntle employee trashing the deal). The sale involved the 1st to offer the minimum acceptable bid, without allowing the others to submit a "Best and Final", as we found out after the sale, there were some back scene shenanigans going on with some of the principles (another long story).
As Mulder and Scully said, "Trust No One"!!
Best,
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Yep, not everyone aspires to be a Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, or Bill Gates!!
Speaking of which, we are going to the Cinema tonight to watch "Blackberry", about the rise and fall of Research In Motion company, the manufacturer of Blackberry devices.
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He found a hole in the PC entertainment market and used it to get to the top.
Well done.
However what goes up can come down so maybe selling while at the top is a good idea.
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I'm not convinced that the deal is so fantastic. It sounds like a lot of cash but it really isn't.
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:-+ Both him and his wife are highly skilled so even if the company implodes he'll be fine.
If anyone near Vancouver wants to meet Rossmann, electroboom, or der8auer, should be at his event July 29th: https://www.ltxexpo.com/creators (https://www.ltxexpo.com/creators)
Yep, not everyone aspires to be a Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, or Bill Gates!!
Speaking of which, we are going to the Cinema tonight to watch "Blackberry", about the rise and fall of Research In Motion company, the manufacturer of Blackberry devices.
Start your own thread instead of shitting all over this one.
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I'm not convinced that the deal is so fantastic. It sounds like a lot of cash but it really isn't.
It IS a lot of cash. It is at least an order of magnitude more than what vast majority of people on this planet will earn over their entire life.
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I'm not convinced that the deal is so fantastic. It sounds like a lot of cash but it really isn't.
It IS a lot of cash. It is at least an order of magnitude more than what vast majority of people on this planet will earn over their entire life.
But not Linus' and Yvonne's life. That's a whole different scale by itself, you've made my point for me. These lump sum amounts go fast, especially if you have the mindset that it's an unbelievable amount.
Statistics don't lie. When you've come into a lot of money without being born into money, there is a very high risk that it all gets blown within just a few years, statistically speaking. So much so that the phenomenon had caused some lotteries around the world not to award the winnings to you in a lump sum (one of ours does here).
I think L & Y have done a smart move. Essentially, make the company pay them a wage, at least until that CEO can teach them how to handle money without being distracted by all the admin of having it. That said, he -could- always let-go the CEO and still attract an even bigger sale in a few years anyway. The company will be better for it.
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I'm not convinced that the deal is so fantastic. It sounds like a lot of cash but it really isn't.
It IS a lot of cash. It is at least an order of magnitude more than what vast majority of people on this planet will earn over their entire life.
But not Linus' and Yvonne's life. That's a whole different scale by itself, you've made my point for me. These lump sum amounts go fast, especially if you have the mindset that it's an unbelievable amount.
Statistics don't lie. When you've come into a lot of money without being born into money, there is a very high risk that it all gets blown within just a few years, statistically speaking. So much so that the phenomenon had caused some lotteries around the world not to award the winnings to you in a lump sum (one of ours does here).
The alternative is that the company's value drops significantly resulting in the same monetary loss. Building wealth by cashing out & re-investing every now and then spreads the risk and solidifies the foundation. IOW: spread your eggs over several baskets if you can. Where it comes to blowing all the money: you can't fix stupid.
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I'm not convinced that the deal is so fantastic. It sounds like a lot of cash but it really isn't.
It IS a lot of cash. It is at least an order of magnitude more than what vast majority of people on this planet will earn over their entire life.
But not Linus' and Yvonne's life. That's a whole different scale by itself, you've made my point for me. These lump sum amounts go fast, especially if you have the mindset that it's an unbelievable amount.
Statistics don't lie. When you've come into a lot of money without being born into money, there is a very high risk that it all gets blown within just a few years, statistically speaking. So much so that the phenomenon had caused some lotteries around the world not to award the winnings to you in a lump sum (one of ours does here).
The alternative is that the company's value drops significantly resulting in the same monetary loss. Building wealth by cashing out & re-investing every now and then spreads the risk and solidifies the foundation.
In this climate? Who knows? We'll find out together.
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But not Linus' and Yvonne's life. That's a whole different scale by itself, you've made my point for me. These lump sum amounts go fast, especially if you have the mindset that it's an unbelievable amount.
That's because it is. Even if you blow 100k$ a month, 60M$ will last 50 years, ignoring any interest which can be made. Even at 2%/year you can be blowing 100K$/month forever, as it will bring you 1.2M$ a year in capital gains.
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You all forget tax.
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You all forget tax.
Yep. True.
And anyway, which I guess was the point of Dave's "Repect :-+", not to lecture anyone at all, but just saying, not everything is about making a pile of cash and then burning it while having nothing else to do.
Someone running a successful business they have built from scratch and that they enjoy, with tens of employees that they like working with, why would they want to get rid of all this just for a pile of money (that as Bud said you'll burn in tax in probably a ton of stuff you don't really need, while suddenly finding yourself with no occupation), unless they had no choice (like huge debts)?
:popcorn:
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You all forget tax.
They don't materially change the overall picture.
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You all forget tax.
No. The shares are typically owned by some kind of Ltd which receives the sum of money from which the share holders (the business owner) are being paid a salary. If you setup a limited company, you typically setup 2: one as a financial vehicle (pension fund and so on) and one in which the actual work is done. The financial vehicle owns the shares from the 'worker' limited. Sometimes there is even a third ltd to hold any IP.
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$60mn cash invested well ought to derive an annual payment of about $2-3 million in average to low risk investment funds. I don't know what Linus's cost of living is, but I'm sure he could have managed quite nicely on that.
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You all forget tax.
Do you pay tax on selling a business in Canada?
EDIT: seems like you do in same way.
So let's say you didn't how the current government was spending your taxes, another reason not to sell and have them take a huge chunk now. That sort of stuff can keep you up at night.
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But not Linus' and Yvonne's life. That's a whole different scale by itself, you've made my point for me. These lump sum amounts go fast, especially if you have the mindset that it's an unbelievable amount.
That's because it is. Even if you blow 100k$ a month, 60M$ will last 50 years, ignoring any interest which can be made. Even at 2%/year you can be blowing 100K$/month forever, as it will bring you 1.2M$ a year in capital gains.
You hear about huge lotto winners becoming broke within like 5 years or something.
https://www.google.com/search?q=lotto+winner+who+blew+it+all (https://www.google.com/search?q=lotto+winner+who+blew+it+all)
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As Linus is stepping down as CEO, there will be new management so from a functional perspective he should cash in anyway. With 40% in equity, he'd still own a major part of the company, be able to influence how the company is being run AND have money in the bank.
He didn't say equity in what exactly did he? Could be equity in the cash equivalent of shares in whatever company bought him out. e.g. he'd own $40M worth of Microsoft shares or whoever.
Why would a company buy it and still give him a 40% stake in the company? Sure you might buy the controlling share, but usually you'd want to buy it all.
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I can tell you likely what would happen if he had sold.
There would be some deal to keep him contracted on as talent for at least a few years. The new owner will absolutely do things that make him angry and miserable and he'll have to suck it up. That's going to suck big time. And the channel slowly dwindles over a few years as new managment have no clue what actually kept it going, they'll milk it like a cash cow until the wheels fall off the billy cart. The viwers will feel like Linus Tech Tips isn't LTT any more and will slowly fade away too even if the ship is run well.
The fallout is that he's still young and he'll be miserable and angry at himself that he sold out. The money won't be any consolation. This was his life and passion.
Might be a very different equation if he was in his 50's or something.
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You all forget tax.
No. The shares are typically owned by some kind of Ltd which receives the sum of money from which the share holders (the business owner) are being paid a salary. If you setup a limited company, you typically setup 2: one as a financial vehicle (pension fund and so on) and one in which the actual work is done. The financial vehicle owns the shares from the 'worker' limited. Sometimes there is even a third ltd to hold any IP.
Here in Australia you pay capital gains tax on the sale of a business unless:
https://business.gov.au/finance/taxation/capital-gains-tax-for-business#:~:text=Small%20business%2015%2Dyear%20exemption,re%20retiring%20or%20permanently%20incapacitated
Small business 15-year exemption
You won‘t have an assessable capital gain when you sell a business asset if:
your business has owned the asset for at least 15 continuous years
you're aged 55 years or over
you’re retiring or permanently incapacitated
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His whole channel, the whole concept is based on himself. It's even in the name. There might be some marketing worth in a name and a concept, for a little while, but as soon as people forget about him as a person then it's just a random channel among a million others.
I'm thinking on web sites like Tom's Hardware and AnandTech that were famous and reputable in the past. They were founded by Thomas Pabst and Anand Lal Shimpi, respectively. When they sold their web sites, the names of the sites really don't matter anymore and they are just some random web pages nowadays among a million other. They could change the names of the sites and anyone wouldn't care.
So basically, sell it, retire and live some good days or start something new. If you still enjoy it, no reason to sell. Because when it is sold, it will be run to the ground hard, pressing every penny out of what is left of worth.
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You all forget tax.
No. The shares are typically owned by some kind of Ltd which receives the sum of money from which the share holders (the business owner) are being paid a salary. If you setup a limited company, you typically setup 2: one as a financial vehicle (pension fund and so on) and one in which the actual work is done. The financial vehicle owns the shares from the 'worker' limited. Sometimes there is even a third ltd to hold any IP.
Here in Australia you pay capital gains tax on the sale of a business unless:
https://business.gov.au/finance/taxation/capital-gains-tax-for-business#:~:text=Small%20business%2015%2Dyear%20exemption,re%20retiring%20or%20permanently%20incapacitated
I suppose this only applies if you sell a business as a person. Not as a company.
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This thread is about Linus the Person to cash out the deal, pocket the money and retire to a remote island, isn't it.
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This thread is about Linus the Person to cash out the deal, pocket the money and retire to a remote island, isn't it.
AFAIK only an idiot would pocket the money. A wise person leaves the money in a personal holding / ltd and receives a paycheck every month. Consult a tax lawyer and you'll likely be surprised why you wouldn't want money in your pocket. Simple example: do you think rich people own yachts? Well, they don't. Yachts are typically put in holding companies (special purpose vehicles) that take care of liabilities and paying the crew.
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100M sounds like a lowball to me. They have somewhere like 20M revenue from Youtube and they've been hinting that the store could bring just as much.
I mean they have I think over 100 employees.
But stepping down as CEO is probably a good idea. I got the impression he hates spending money, and you have to to that to be able to make money.
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But stepping down as CEO is probably a good idea.
Yep, smart move.
And it's not just some rando, it's his former boss that he knows well and has a lot of trust in, and has been trying to get him to work with him for years.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/terren-tong-62b5a44/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/terren-tong-62b5a44/)
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Linus spent years building up his following. Selling out is good for the money but mentally not good for him as he watches someone else take the brand off in another direction with the faithful followers messagung him in thier complaints etc etc.
Meanwhile if he get someone to take over the day to day business side of stuff he can focus in making videos or spending it with the family. Though he is still able to control the general direction of the business.
Plus he gets to make a video about it.
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Linus spent years building up his following. Selling out is good for the money but mentally not good for him as he watches someone else take the brand off in another direction with the faithful followers messagung him in thier complaints etc etc.
That is called 'empty nest syndrome'. But nothing would stop him from starting something new. Every parent knows that at some point they'll have to let their kids go and live their own lives.
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Why would a company buy it and still give him a 40% stake in the company? Sure you might buy the controlling share, but usually you'd want to buy it all.
I think you answered that yourself in your very next post:
There would be some deal to keep him contracted on as talent for at least a few years.
Make his remuneration dependent on the company future.
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Why would a company buy it and still give him a 40% stake in the company? Sure you might buy the controlling share, but usually you'd want to buy it all.
I think you answered that yourself in your very next post:
There would be some deal to keep him contracted on as talent for at least a few years.
Make his remuneration dependent on the company future.
IMHO wrong on both accounts. Paying in equity is like printing your own money. Say your company is worth 1 billion at this moment. 40 million in equity is 4% of the shares you can use to pay a takeover without needing any cash.
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Why would a company buy it and still give him a 40% stake in the company? Sure you might buy the controlling share, but usually you'd want to buy it all.
Its quite common in takeovers of startups to keep the founders very committed to remaining and ensuring a solid future for the business. However, its so common that within months they are driving out those same founders that this is most people's expectation these days.
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I must admit to Linus. Those (the offer and CEO swap) seem like 2 excellent decisions.
I don't think rich people hardly keep 'much' cash on hand, or companies that make huge profits, as those are typically very highly taxed. They try to find investment vehicles to put it in. Real estate, rare metals, stocks, investments in startups, etc. I'm not going to name controversial stuff as I think any investment carries some kind of risk.
I can understand how his ADD "superpower" (as he describes himself), also creates his own worst enemy when it comes to admin stuff. He likes to play with tech and bring that story. He gets bored quick so that keeps his adventures refreshing, instead of producing the 10th video on the same shit topic. He packages it well in a sensationalized YT channel. They have experimented with other hosts, but that often didn't work unless it showed the same kind of jankeyness (like all the cringy cooling and server stuff they do). So that seems do them well.
Now I do think that they will face some serious challenges in the years to come though. I've been following the channel since start, and now I mostly watch them for entertainment. But some of their "entertainment" with the overly sexist jokes is getting unbearable to watch. Most of his review videos are clickbait, by including many sarcastic jokes without a punchline, and where I feel they are forcing divergent headlines and/or conclusions to stay interesting from the otherwise saturated YT tech industry (where other channels do actual proper reviews). Ugh. I miss the more genuine vibe from the old days. I hope that giving him more time to focus how to deliver their message will result in improvements, but I also fear (judging by some of his WAN shows) that he is getting somewhat detached from reality due to being (hyper)focussed on running a company and a successful YT channel. I think his last 2 GPU videos from this week combined with response to critics ([urging to] shadowbanning) has not gone down well.
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Why would a company buy it and still give him a 40% stake in the company? Sure you might buy the controlling share, but usually you'd want to buy it all.
I think you answered that yourself in your very next post:
There would be some deal to keep him contracted on as talent for at least a few years.
Make his remuneration dependent on the company future.
IMHO wrong on both accounts. Paying in equity is like printing your own money. Say your company is worth 1 billion at this moment. 40 million in equity is 4% of the shares you can use to pay a takeover without needing any cash.
https://youtube.com/shorts/igENXZRECOs ;)
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I think the new lab is a really great idea (albeit they are spending a metric crapload on it), and branching into testing consumer stuff that requires very specific test gear and setups.
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Why would a company buy it and still give him a 40% stake in the company? Sure you might buy the controlling share, but usually you'd want to buy it all.
I think you answered that yourself in your very next post:
There would be some deal to keep him contracted on as talent for at least a few years.
Make his remuneration dependent on the company future.
Only a fool would sell their business and enter into that golden handcuff slave agreement.
Either you take the big money and wipe your hands of it and go onto something else, or you keep control of it yourself.
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if you wanna work after selling your business do some community service/outreach. I think you will find that much more satisfying.
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There is more to life than money.
Few people equate success beyond money and power. In the area where I live, many people equate success to making money and flaunt it and it helps them save face. "To Be Rich is Glorious" is their mantra. Success should be much simpler: Achieving a goal. Whether it be laying out a circuit board and having it work, getting rid of the mortgage, or finding a wife.
I have a mate who got divorced and his wife took everything, leaving him with a car and $3,000 to his name after 20 years as a good electronics engineer. He later went on dates with various women he met on the internet. He discovered as soon as they find out he has no money, they run a mile. This might represent the type of women found on the internet who seem to be gold diggers. I suggested he join a church, hobby club or community organisation, instead of using the internet. Another ex-manager of mine married a Russian me met on the internet. She took everything from him... about $1 million in total. The love of money is not the root of all evil. but it is the root of all kinds of evil.
Those who look beyond money deserve respect.
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The ideal amount of money is enough. 8)
Too little or too much is problematic.
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Lets see what happens from here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMO52N2vfk0 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMO52N2vfk0)
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Its a typical Linus publicity stunt.
He did same saying he was leaving the youtube show.
Turned out he was just giving the crap work to someone else and just doing the shows on youtube.
$100M ? for what a youtube channel ? While youtube channels make money its not worth any where near $100M.
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Its a typical Linus publicity stunt.
He did same saying he was leaving the youtube show.
Turned out he was just giving the crap work to someone else and just doing the shows on youtube.
$100M ? for what a youtube channel ? While youtube channels make money its not worth any where near $100M.
Well, LTT has like 7 YT channels, a merchandise store, a brand and runs LAN parties.
All together the main YouTube channel has 15.6 million subscribers over 7.2 billion views. In terms of YouTube revenue alone that's probably some $5 million per year. Add in sponsorship money and store sales and you're looking at least around $10 million per year.
So a $100 million valuation does sound pretty fair. Obviously it requires the buyer to take care of the channel and the brand to make it worthwhile, but it seems eminently reasonable.
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Linus's company is not just about the YT channel, even though it's one of its main vectors. It has surprisingly over 100 employees. It's a pretty big business.
I've seen tech companies designing and selling pretty advanced products, with about the same number of employees, sold for less than this, but $100M is not as unrealistic as you make it sound.
Definitely not your average "YT channel".
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$100M ? for what a youtube channel ? While youtube channels make money its not worth any where near $100M.
Yes, it is.
They would easily be bringing in $20-$30M/year in sponsorship money, merch, and ad revenue.
So a 3-5 times revenue multiple is pretty standard stuff in valuing a business.
$100M is actually rather low.
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$100M ? for what a youtube channel ? While youtube channels make money its not worth any where near $100M.
Sounds a lot at first sight, but I read the other day that the top TikToker is running at $250M per annum.
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Sounds a lot at first sight, but I read the other day that the top TikToker is running at $250M per annum.
Does TikTok even mave monetisation?
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Sounds a lot at first sight, but I read the other day that the top TikToker is running at $250M per annum.
Does TikTok even mave monetisation?
Seems they do. It's not much, just like Youtube.
https://www.nfi.edu/how-much-does-tiktok-pay/ (https://www.nfi.edu/how-much-does-tiktok-pay/)
So it would be direct brand deals that bring in the real money.
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Lets see what happens from here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGW3TPytTjc (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGW3TPytTjc)
(https://www.dexerto.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1080,quality=75,format=auto/https://editors.dexerto.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/15/Full-Linus-Response-984x1024.jpg) (https://linustechtips.com/topic/1526180-gamers-nexus-alleges-lmg-has-insufficient-ethics-and-integrity/page/16/#comment-16078641)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3byz3txpso (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3byz3txpso)
In case anyone cares. Its been 6 weeks, this rage not looking pretty. It all started at LTX where some member of their Labs team made some clumsy statement about their testing methodology where they dont reuse data between multiple product reviews, unlike sites "like GamersNexus or Hardware Unboxed" (which statements are partially false). You could say both are not entertained, as both have now responded on their YT channels.
I think GN (the first video I posted) has made a pretty risky step from posting that video. But from the tone and length its clear they had enough.
LTT's response is classical: deflect, gaslight, minimize the issue and also not apologize. Quite disappointing. I like their goofy videos and was interested to see how they were expanding, but this seems like a huge PR disaster.
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I watched Steve's video the other day and was quite shocked at LTT's behavior here. I don't think Steve/GN did anything wrong by calling it out. I've liked Linus and LTT over the years, but I think it's obvious they've grown into the 800# commercial gorilla in this space and are driven more by the dollars than the creator passion they started with. Even their own employees were on camera saying they wish they could take more time to produce quality content, but are constantly pushed for quantity over quality.
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I like their goofy videos and was interested to see how they were expanding, but this seems like a huge PR disaster.
Majority of his audience won't care.
Yeah he's good at entertainment and goofy videos, not 100% reliable data and in depth reviews. The whole "labs" idea as presented didn't really fit with his mentality.
If it was shown as a place where tech nerds can screw around with cool equipment, unscientifically, then almost none of this criticism would have been justified.
I watched Steve's video the other day and was quite shocked at LTT's behavior here. I don't think Steve/GN did anything wrong by calling it out. I've liked Linus and LTT over the years, but I think it's obvious they've grown into the 800# commercial gorilla in this space and are driven more by the dollars than the creator passion they started with. Even their own employees were on camera saying they wish they could take more time to produce quality content, but are constantly pushed for quantity over quality.
You can argue not asking LTT for comment is the one mistake GN made, they almost always ask for a comment before releasing a video.
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The errors in their videos are more forgiveable than the monoblock fiasco. Linus can claim that it was sold in error (sorry, auctioned for charity), but the fact that it crossed anyone's mind to pawn off something like that rather than giving it back to the original owners speaks a lot to the mentality of the culture there. I think once they get big enough and get accustomed to large corporations throwing free stuff at them left right and centre, they lose perspective of the time and effort involved in other peoples products and labour.
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Majority of his audience won't care.
Yeah he's good at entertainment and goofy videos, not 100% reliable data and in depth reviews. The whole "labs" idea as presented didn't really fit with his mentality.
If it was shown as a place where tech nerds can screw around with cool equipment, unscientifically, then almost none of this criticism would have been justified.
As awesome (and automated?) as the new labs are, processes for software testing are still very manual and I imagine it's easy to make mistakes. I've done it in my own videos when comparing stuff. I did it just yesterday in a CPU vs GPU speed test video, but luckily I caught it and could reshoot that bit.
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The errors in their videos are more forgiveable than the monoblock fiasco. Linus can claim that it was sold in error (sorry, auctioned for charity), but the fact that it crossed anyone's mind to pawn off something like that rather than giving it back to the original owners speaks a lot to the mentality of the culture there. I think once they get big enough and get accustomed to large corporations throwing free stuff at them left right and centre, they lose perspective of the time and effort involved in other peoples products and labour.
I don't get the intense citicism here. They made a mistake, one time :-//
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The errors in their videos are more forgiveable than the monoblock fiasco. Linus can claim that it was sold in error (sorry, auctioned for charity), but the fact that it crossed anyone's mind to pawn off something like that rather than giving it back to the original owners speaks a lot to the mentality of the culture there. I think once they get big enough and get accustomed to large corporations throwing free stuff at them left right and centre, they lose perspective of the time and effort involved in other peoples products and labour.
I don't get the intense citicism here. They made a mistake, one time :-//
I can't speak to what it's like getting free stuff sent in, but does it really cross your mind after a review to sell items like that?
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Its maybe not a single individuals fault.
They have writers. They have accounting/business relationships, inventory, procurement, social media, and even a single individual (or is team already?) that organizes events such as LTX.
It may be one half of the staff knows the value of that block, but someone else just YOLO'ed it.
They did have a sign up describing what it is. So it is still a bit beyond me.
From what I understand, review items can be shipped in OEM or retail packaging. Someones manufacturers ask for it back, but a bigger channel can ask to hold onto it as they may need it for future videos.
If they may keep it and have retail packaging, it should have full retail value. In OEM packaging it obviously be a bit different. But that is to say they were confident it was a keeper. Seeing as it was a one of a kind prototype, it seems unlikely.
I've scrolled through LTTs reddit today. Apparently all auction winners were emailed (https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/15sa4nu/real_coincidence_that_lmg_sent_this_email_out_to/) to reply what they had won, because they lost their winners sheet and they it need for "tax reports".
BilletLabs then posted later (https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/15s2ggs/the_plot_thickens/) that Linus had found the auction winner, and they should be able to get the block back. Billet refused, because they were already building a new one, and basically lost confidence in LTT and a private individual(which can't really be faulted) for getting it back in a timely manner and good shape.
And someone made a live FloatPlane sub tracker. Apparently it was up as high as 42k before all this: https://grafana.elizabeth.codes/public-dashboards/10023c4c479744e191760225708c0124?orgId=1&from=now-24h&to=now (https://grafana.elizabeth.codes/public-dashboards/10023c4c479744e191760225708c0124?orgId=1&from=now-24h&to=now)
:popcorn:
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The errors in their videos are more forgiveable than the monoblock fiasco. Linus can claim that it was sold in error (sorry, auctioned for charity), but the fact that it crossed anyone's mind to pawn off something like that rather than giving it back to the original owners speaks a lot to the mentality of the culture there. I think once they get big enough and get accustomed to large corporations throwing free stuff at them left right and centre, they lose perspective of the time and effort involved in other peoples products and labour.
I don't get the intense citicism here. They made a mistake, one time :-//
I can't speak to what it's like getting free stuff sent in, but does it really cross your mind after a review to sell items like that?
AIUI, Billet contacted LTT half an hour after he said the heatsink had been sold (it was their prototype so irreplaceable and certainly not disposable at a profit). LTT ignored them for four days, and then 10 minutes after GN had blown it open Linus personally contacted them to say it was auctioned and they would sort out recompense for Billet.
Doesn't sound like a mistake to me. Sounds more like a freebie sink and fuck the vendors.
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So, here's the damage control response.
https://youtu.be/0cTpTMl8kFY
I have to say, I was having a very good feeling from everyone in the video -- the new CEO, Yvonne, the new lab head, business development head, head writer, etc. Everyone was contrite, acknowledging their issues, and talking about changes to make it better, starting with an immediate pause on producing content until they have new processes in place. Nobody deflected or made excuses... until it was Linus' turn, and then while acknowledging that he responded out of emotion, immediately went emotional again and started deflecting and excusing their behavior.
I get it, it's his baby, and he built it up from nothing to this media "empire." So I don't blame him for being emotional about it. But recognize that you're emotional about it, and just... step back and shut up. Stop digging the hole deeper. Acknowledge you were wrong and then stop talking, let your team help you to make things right.
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The errors in their videos are more forgiveable than the monoblock fiasco. Linus can claim that it was sold in error (sorry, auctioned for charity), but the fact that it crossed anyone's mind to pawn off something like that rather than giving it back to the original owners speaks a lot to the mentality of the culture there. I think once they get big enough and get accustomed to large corporations throwing free stuff at them left right and centre, they lose perspective of the time and effort involved in other peoples products and labour.
I don't get the intense citicism here. They made a mistake, one time :-//
I can't speak to what it's like getting free stuff sent in, but does it really cross your mind after a review to sell items like that?
AIUI, Billet contacted LTT half an hour after he said the heatsink had been sold (it was their prototype so irreplaceable and certainly not disposable at a profit). LTT ignored them for four days, and then 10 minutes after GN had blown it open Linus personally contacted them to say it was auctioned and they would sort out recompense for Billet.
Doesn't sound like a mistake to me. Sounds more like a freebie sink and fuck the vendors.
Auction money has gone to charity. However the gist of the Billet situation and the rest that was discussed is a gross negligence which happens because LMG made a business decision to push out more videos and maximizing profit than they can reasonably do whiteout knowingly making cutting corners as the normal way to do things. And the double down that Linus made about Billet before the GN video is outrageous. Linus yet again shat on a 2 guy startup and said he cannot be bothered to spend a few hundred bucks worth of labor to test it properly. Yet totally ignoring the fact that the effort that has gone into making this thing is worth way more than. And he just trashed the thing with no due diligence whatsoever, and doubled down on top of that. And then effing sold their prototype which must never happen for a prototype of not yet released product even if it's not one of a kind, which only makes it worse. Not to say Billet apparently provided their own 3090 Ti (correct GPU) for testing which got lost somewhere at LMG.
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The errors in their videos are more forgiveable than the monoblock fiasco. Linus can claim that it was sold in error (sorry, auctioned for charity), but the fact that it crossed anyone's mind to pawn off something like that rather than giving it back to the original owners speaks a lot to the mentality of the culture there. I think once they get big enough and get accustomed to large corporations throwing free stuff at them left right and centre, they lose perspective of the time and effort involved in other peoples products and labour.
I don't get the intense citicism here. They made a mistake, one time :-//
Nope, losing their RTX 3090 Ti and selling the prototype water block was just a cherry on top after shitting on their product after improper testing and doubling down on that. They were totally aware they cannot do it properly at the moment right from the start but did not bother to halt recording of the video and do it properly afterwards. Besides that, their review videos are an error fest. Not just subtle mistakes but so blatant and frequent that it's ridiculous it ever got released. And not properly fixing extremely blatant errors after the fact as wall.
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The errors in their videos are more forgiveable than the monoblock fiasco. Linus can claim that it was sold in error (sorry, auctioned for charity), but the fact that it crossed anyone's mind to pawn off something like that rather than giving it back to the original owners speaks a lot to the mentality of the culture there. I think once they get big enough and get accustomed to large corporations throwing free stuff at them left right and centre, they lose perspective of the time and effort involved in other peoples products and labour.
I don't get the intense citicism here. They made a mistake, one time :-//
I think that's a gross oversimplification. First, they didn't make one mistake, one time. They are looked at as an "authoritative" source by their huge audience, and have been far too cavalier and careless with some of the incorrect information they've been putting out, mainly in an effort to flood the world with their content. Quantity over quality. Not to mention the Billet Labs fiasco which was handled poorly.
While I've never been a fan of the pitchfork-and-torches cancel culture that likes to publicly crucify others for their mistakes, unless they're just clearly evil (and I don't believe LTT is), what's far more important than screwing up is how you acknowledge and address the mistakes, and that's where LTT has failed miserably.
Again, their latest video I posted above is a step in the right direction, but would have gone over even better if Linus hadn't even been in the video. Or just started out contrite as everyone else did, and not try to explain or justify his reactions (again). He's just been tone deaf through the whole thing.
I like Linus and respect his accomplishments, I'm just being candid about where he's dropped a major ball here.
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The errors in their videos are more forgiveable than the monoblock fiasco. Linus can claim that it was sold in error (sorry, auctioned for charity), but the fact that it crossed anyone's mind to pawn off something like that rather than giving it back to the original owners speaks a lot to the mentality of the culture there. I think once they get big enough and get accustomed to large corporations throwing free stuff at them left right and centre, they lose perspective of the time and effort involved in other peoples products and labour.
I don't get the intense citicism here. They made a mistake, one time :-//
I can't speak to what it's like getting free stuff sent in, but does it really cross your mind after a review to sell items like that?
AIUI, Billet contacted LTT half an hour after he said the heatsink had been sold (it was their prototype so irreplaceable and certainly not disposable at a profit). LTT ignored them for four days, and then 10 minutes after GN had blown it open Linus personally contacted them to say it was auctioned and they would sort out recompense for Billet.
Doesn't sound like a mistake to me. Sounds more like a freebie sink and fuck the vendors.
Auction money has gone to charity. However the gist of the Billet situation and the rest that was discussed is a gross negligence which happens because LMG made a business decision to push out more videos and maximizing profit than they can reasonably do whiteout knowingly making cutting corners as the normal way to do things. And the double down that Linus made about Billet before the GN video is outrageous. Linus yet again shat on a 2 guy startup and said he cannot be bothered to spend a few hundred bucks worth of labor to test it properly. Yet totally ignoring the fact that the effort that has gone into making this thing is worth way more than. And he just trashed the thing with no due diligence whatsoever, and doubled down on top of that. And then effing sold their prototype which must never happen for a prototype of not yet released product even if it's not one of a kind, which only makes it worse. Not to say Billet apparently provided their own 3090 Ti (correct GPU) for testing which got lost somewhere at LMG.
A few questions: Why would you ship your only prototype to LMG for review? Seriously, who does that?
Why would LMG spend their time testing and reviewing a product that they don't intend to make in quantity? Remember, LMG is an entertainment company making Youtube videos, not an independent testing house. They have a production schedule.
Have you seen the contract that they had before agreeing to make a video? Probably it had a lot of lawyer text that describes the situation, and places no fault on Linus if he accidentally drops it, or sells it.
It may be one half of the staff knows the value of that block, but someone else just YOLO'ed it.
Or even, someone went through the inventory, seeing what can be sold and what cannot, and made a decision in 2 seconds. It was probably listed "GPU waterblock, terrible, 800 USD"
But yes, they could have handled it better.
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A few questions: Why would you ship your only prototype to LMG for review? Seriously, who does that?
A two guy startup with no deep pockets and which had a great opportunity to gain exposure.
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A few questions: Why would you ship your only prototype to LMG for review? Seriously, who does that?
A two guy startup with no deep pockets and which had a great opportunity to gain exposure.
This.
LTT is the largest tech channel on YouTube. 15.5M subscribers. Their reach is enormous. Much larger tech companies than Billet Labs fall all over themselves to get that kind of exposure. So I'm sure they were hoping this would launch interest, attract investors, etc. The cavalier attitude towards testing it OUTSIDE OF ITS SPECIFICATIONS and then crapping on it when it didn't work is simply egregious. Then being told by his people, including his wife and his on-air co-host/CTO, that maybe they should retest it as designed, but him blowing it off and saying it's not worth the few hundred dollars in labor to retest it, just makes it even worse. Then finally, the cherry on top: auctioning it off.
To reiterate, it's not the mistakes made that bother me. It's the response to them (mainly from Linus).
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$100M ? for what a youtube channel ? While youtube channels make money its not worth any where near $100M.
Sounds a lot at first sight, but I read the other day that the top TikToker is running at $250M per annum.
There is very little money at TikTok, top 7 TikTokers combined supposedly earn about $50M annually. And the money TikTok itself pays per view is like 2% of Youtube.
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Technically speaking, MKBHD's channel is larger in terms of subscribers, but less views because they don't chase the 7 videos a week target (just 6 in the last month). But anyhow, in terms of organization, video output and channels (LMG as whole), they are by far the biggest.
The way they treat errors is also my biggest problem.
I don't even think the other tech channels are perfect neither. GN also has a certain "trust me" vibe, but not in a deflective way, but more like "we [kinda] know what we talk about". I particularly cringed at GN's post-mortem of AMD's AM5 chips a few months ago (because too high VSOC was applied by some mainboards). Paid for expensive lab post-mortem... 20minutes of philosophy class.. skips basic electronics knowledge or treats it as rocket science (no mention or grasp of SCR latch-up). And then when the lab was asked what they thought: could be anything, here are a few dozen reasons.
But at least we got some cool pictures.
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no mention or grasp of SCR latch-up
And why should it be mentioned when there is no any evidence of it being related to the issue?
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You're right, GN Steve isn't perfect. I too rolled my eyes a bit at some of their "electronics theory" and felt the degree of criticism towards Asus was exaggerated and unfounded. Like when they really stretched the truth saying that Asus claimed updating BIOS fixed the voltage issues, but also voided warranty, thereby leaving users in a catch-22 situation. No mobo company has EVER claimed that updating BIOS voids their warranty. GN/Steve walked back the criticism after Asus carefully spelled out that warranties would not be voided.
But again, I expect mistakes. Just own them and correct them. Don't patronize or insult the intelligence of your viewers, and disrespect small businesses that were looking to you for a fair test, if not endorsement.
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aren't we all humans ??
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no mention or grasp of SCR latch-up
And why should it be mentioned when there is no any evidence of it being related to the issue?
Because it shows all the symptoms of one. Overvolting a voltage rail, then seeing it draw tons of current regardless of operational state, then see the chip go burn itself up in a thermal runaway.
Documentation of the runaway is clear but won't reveal anything. That's why their lab gave a listen of a few dozen reasons. The actual value in the post mortem is a bit exaggerated IMO, as a simple latch-up would be a prime suspect. But the comments section is full of praise of "next level testing" and "raising the bar". C'mon. It's cool to see the pictures, but I still don't know why the chip failed.
aren't we all humans ??
Yes.
But that's not how social media works I think
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Like when they really stretched the truth saying that Asus claimed updating BIOS fixed the voltage issues, but also voided warranty, thereby leaving users in a catch-22 situation. No mobo company has EVER claimed that updating BIOS voids their warranty. GN/Steve walked back the criticism after Asus carefully spelled out that warranties would not be voided.
Asus released it as beta bios. And it came with terms are that using it can void the warranty. I somewhat rolled my eyes too because in practice it won't be very likely that they will actually void the warranty if motherboard fails, however GN was correct at least technically.
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no mention or grasp of SCR latch-up
And why should it be mentioned when there is no any evidence of it being related to the issue?
Because it shows all the symptoms of one. Overvolting a voltage rail, then seeing it draw tons of current regardless of operational state, then see the chip go burn itself up in a thermal runaway.
Documentation of the runaway is clear but won't reveal anything. That's why their lab gave a listen of a few dozen reasons. The actual value in the post mortem is a bit exaggerated IMO, as a simple latch-up would be a prime suspect. But the comments section is full of praise of "next level testing" and "raising the bar". C'mon. It's cool to see the pictures, but I still don't know why the chip failed.
SCR latch-up does not happen because you run the chip at voltage somewhat higher than normal. It generally happens with large transients on I/O, like ESD discharge. Not due to running the chip at 0.15V higher than its safe maximum or exceeding its thermal limits as was with faulty BIOSes. You cannot fix an SCR latch-up susceptibility by applying a BIOS update.
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SCR latch-up does not happen because you run the chip at voltage somewhat higher than normal. It generally happens with large transients on I/O, like ESD discharge. Not due to running the chip at 0.15V higher than its safe maximum or exceeding its thermal limits as was with faulty BIOSes. You cannot fix an SCR latch-up susceptibility by applying a BIOS update.
That's a rather old school view of SCR latchup. On modern devices with multiple voltage rails you can find some fairly complex pin protection circuitry that may be possible to get into a latched up state if various voltage levels sequence in an unfortunate manner. I'm not saying that is what happened here, but its an ongoing design topic for making things like fine geometry MCUs as robust as possible.
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Asus released it as beta bios. And it came with terms are that using it can void the warranty. I somewhat rolled my eyes too because in practice it won't be very likely that they will actually void the warranty if motherboard fails, however GN was correct at least technically.
Steve was correct for questioning it and seeking clarification from Asus, but the whole pearl-clutching way it was played for dramatic effect was over the top. Asus released the BIOS as an emergency response to the overvoltage issue, which was killing brand new boards+CPUs costing $1000+. The warranty voiding verbiage was likely either some overlooked boilerplate or dropped in by an overzealous product manager already gunshy over possible legal liabilities from this issue. But it makes little sense to believe they'd void the warranty for an emergency fix to prevent a destructive fault that would have resulted in a warranty repair. Knowing what the problem was, they had to know they'd be opening themselves up to class action litigation, especially in the US, if they played such games. And I say that as someone who's had issues with Asus over the years.
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SCR latch-up does not happen because you run the chip at voltage somewhat higher than normal. It generally happens with large transients on I/O, like ESD discharge. Not due to running the chip at 0.15V higher than its safe maximum or exceeding its thermal limits as was with faulty BIOSes. You cannot fix an SCR latch-up susceptibility by applying a BIOS update.
A transient such as ESD is certainly not the only cause. Try to blow up a chip just from applying some power onto a chip with ill defined LV inputs :-/O CMOS chips specify all inputs to be e.g. VCC+0.3V max. If VCC=0V, then keep everything below 300mV. I did with a FT4232H some time ago.
Modern multi-rail chips that operate near 1V still demand 3-5% tolerance, including ripple. Max may be only a few hundred mV over. 150mV is 12% of Vsoc nominal, which is a mile length. Give some latch-up path a small push, and it will be self-sufficient till something fails. I don't expect you need 700mV of an ancient 1N4148.. could be way less.
I agree you cannot fix a susceptibility of the silicon, but you can fix the issue by enforcing a more strict SOA in e.g. BIOS or VRM firmware. That's what AMD did and their quick fix was a hard voltage cap, but I suspect there was also some sequencing timing/ramp up violation somewhere that was compounded by the high DC voltage. I also cannot say for sure what happened, but the failure mode of the CPU consuming an enormous amount of power while being "off" and then burning itself up in a runaway situation does exhibit a lot of the symptoms of a latch-up.
Anyhow, this is quite off-topic so I will leave it at that.
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I also cannot say for sure what happened, but the failure mode of the CPU consuming an enormous amount of power while being "off" and then burning itself up in a runaway situation does exhibit a lot of the symptoms of a latch-up.
If you're talking about the GN video, they fried it by running at high SOC voltage for a prolonged time. What you're talking about was not while being off, it was motherboard partially shutting down once failure happened but still applying SOC power to already dead CPU. And that's not a latch-up situation, it's already fried silicon. By such definition of a latch-up, any failure with a shorted die would qualify as such. That runaway with socket pins frying was not due to CPU though but due to motherboard still pushing power into a shorted CPU even though reasonably it should trip OCP protection.
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All the Youtubers are piling on now. Never miss a chance for views.
And the ex social media manager has come out again with a massive rant....
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There is very little money at TikTok, top 7 TikTokers combined supposedly earn about $50M annually. And the money TikTok itself pays per view is like 2% of Youtube.
That's because the views aren't real. Shh, don't tell anyone, you aren't supposed to know.
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And the ex social media manager has come out again with a massive rant....
For those playing along at home:
https://twitter.com/suuuoppp/status/1691693740254228741?s=20
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There has to be two sides to this story. If true (particularly the harrassment etc) then that's terrible.
The original video that kicked off the whole hiring of her was quite the trainwreck.
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There has to be two sides to this story. If true (particularly the harrassment etc) then that's terrible.
The original video that kicked off the whole hiring of her was quite the trainwreck.
Link?
No idea who she is, I don't follow LLT that closely. But yeah, always take claims with a grain of salt.
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Link?
No idea who she is, I don't follow LLT that closely. But yeah, always take claims with a grain of salt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8NFhjj0bUk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8NFhjj0bUk)
The title of the video applies to watching it as well.
I don't really know how they went from that to hiring her. I pretty sure the hiring came after the video. She won some competition I think which resulted in the video. Then they hired her.
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She was really good on camera and the audience loved her.
The response was lots of people saying "when your going to hire her" etc..
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She was incredibly annoying from my memory. I may be wrong but it has some how stuck in my mind.
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I get the impression that LTT is a very "blokey" high pressure nerd environment (no surprise?), and she seems to be completely incompatible with that environment?
Perhaps there was some resentment by the other nerdy employees that she was hired without the required nerd skills?
Are there any other presenters that don't have the nerd chops? Maybe that's why she was quickly shunted from that to handling the social media account?
Not excusing any of the serious sexual harassment claims of course, but apart from that it seems like a non-compatibility thing I've seen countless times.
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They halted videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cTpTMl8kFY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cTpTMl8kFY)
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There is very little money at TikTok, top 7 TikTokers combined supposedly earn about $50M annually. And the money TikTok itself pays per view is like 2% of Youtube.
That's because the views aren't real. Shh, don't tell anyone, you aren't supposed to know.
Dunno how much of them are fake but TikTok is certainly not favored by advertisers. Anecdotally my wife watches that garbage like half of her free time.
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0.02$
LTT made mistakes and there's nothing wrong with calling them out. But I'm not sure if, from all the possible ways to highlight this, this was the best.
GN also has a tendency to set high bars for themselves and everybody else and seem to be willing to burn everything below that bar to the ground. Per example: they burn LTT for not reshooting sections of a video when the host makes an error or misspeaks. Is overlaying a not as good as reshooting? Obviously not. But should Linus lick Steves boot to appologise? Erh, no. Same with the Asus thing. Was the warranty disclaimer saga good? No. Did they plan to shaft everyone that used the bios and bricked their PC? Probably not. I also remember the burning PSU thing. As per usual, they had a point but their definition of how a PSU should or should not behave were extremely strict.
Finally, regarding the non-monetization of their video I'm gonna leave this here...
(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/linus-sebastion-turned-down-$100m-offer/?action=dlattach;attach=1853353;image)
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they burn LTT for not reshooting sections of a video when the host makes an error or misspeaks. Is overlaying a not as good as reshooting?
Doesn't this depend solely on production values? If you are aiming for Hollywood movie slickness then reshoot as a matter of course, but overlays should be fine and even add value (because you see how it really is as well as how it's meant to be).
Of course, too much of that is tedious and hard to follow, but still massively better than 95% of Youtube videos churned out be amateurs who think they are something.
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But not Linus' and Yvonne's life. That's a whole different scale by itself, you've made my point for me. These lump sum amounts go fast, especially if you have the mindset that it's an unbelievable amount.
That's because it is. Even if you blow 100k$ a month, 60M$ will last 50 years, ignoring any interest which can be made. Even at 2%/year you can be blowing 100K$/month forever, as it will bring you 1.2M$ a year in capital gains.
You hear about huge lotto winners becoming broke within like 5 years or something.
https://www.google.com/search?q=lotto+winner+who+blew+it+all (https://www.google.com/search?q=lotto+winner+who+blew+it+all)
It would be seriously hard work to blow all that much money.
If you bought houses, they would still be there, as would a Lamborghini or a Rolls Royce.
All of them are assets you could sell & if you were a Lotto winner, still be far better off than you were prior to the win.
Of course, if it went on booze, or up your nose, I guess that could do it.
I'm too old for fancy cars, drugs, yachts or Mistresses, but I've always fancied a Money Bin like Scrooge McDuck.
I suppose for a lousy $100,000000 or so, I could make do with a Money Garden Shed"! ;D
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GN also has a tendency to set high bars for themselves and everybody else and seem to be willing to burn everything below that bar to the ground. Per example: they burn LTT for not reshooting sections of a video when the host makes an error or misspeaks. Is overlaying a not as good as reshooting? Obviously not. But should Linus lick Steves boot to appologise? Erh, no.
Agreed. LTT has unfortunately bought into the drama with the huge new apology tour from every layer of management, even halting videos.
They also bought in to the whole 8K RED camera massive production value thing. Nothing I've ever seen them do warrants anything remotely close to this.
Just have fun making videos, try and get them right, and an overlay correction of voice over is fine if needed.
The example of the graphics cards metric chart is something you have to get absolutely right though, as those are screen shoted and shared everywhere, it's the money shot of the review videos.
Mis-speaks here and there, nah, just overlay it.
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Just have fun making videos, try and get them right, and an overlay correction of voice over is fine if needed.
The example of the graphics cards metric chart is something you have to get absolutely right though, as those are screen shoted and shared everywhere, it's the money shot of the review videos.
Mis-speaks here and there, nah, just overlay it.
It isn't fine to just use an overlay correction if it's a clusterfuck type of an error (LTT made plenty of those lately) and makes a hardware review video fundamentally misleading.
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I get the impression that LTT is a very "blokey" high pressure nerd environment (no surprise?), and she seems to be completely incompatible with that environment?
Perhaps there was some resentment by the other nerdy employees that she was hired without the required nerd skills?
Are there any other presenters that don't have the nerd chops? Maybe that's why she was quickly shunted from that to handling the social media account?
Not excusing any of the serious sexual harassment claims of course, but apart from that it seems like a non-compatibility thing I've seen countless times.
Totally does seem that way.
I took about 2 seconds considering whether or not I'd want to work there when I saw their local EE postings, hell no, it looks like a startup level environment. Lots of time pressure, stress, unpaid overtime, lower pay, etc. Fit for some people but not me.
Finally, regarding the non-monetization of their video I'm gonna leave this here...
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/linus-sebastion-turned-down- (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/linus-sebastion-turned-down-)$100m-offer/?action=dlattach;attach=1853353;image
That is his desk, the stuff is always on there. Would you spend 30mins cleaning up just to put the stuff back the next shoot?
TBH don't really care if either one monetizes the video or not.
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Nothing burger. I though the sky was falling when this thread exploded.
The channel name is "Linus Tech Tips" . Can anyone remember last time when Linus gave you a tech tip?
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Can you remember the last time Microsoft wrote some micro software?
Blimey, Bud - you're scraping the barrel with that one.
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Nothing burger. I though the sky was falling when this thread exploded.
The channel name is "Linus Tech Tips" . Can anyone remember last time when Linus gave you a tech tip?
I think thats more in the techquickie (https://www.youtube.com/@techquickie/videos) channel now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Media_Group#List_of_YouTube_channels (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Media_Group#List_of_YouTube_channels)
But yes there are definitely tips in a few of the main channel videos.
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Nothing burger. I though the sky was falling when this thread exploded.
The channel name is "Linus Tech Tips" . Can anyone remember last time when Linus gave you a tech tip?
Ironically I just released a Tech Tip video this morning ;D
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I think thats more in the techquickie (https://www.youtube.com/@techquickie/videos) channel now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Media_Group#List_of_YouTube_channels (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Media_Group#List_of_YouTube_channels)
But yes there are definitely tips in a few of the main channel videos.
Yes, it's not uncommon for channels to branch off like this and improve focus on the main channel when they get bigger. Thunderf00t is another channel that did it. I've kinda done it with my 2nd channel.
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Quite the cluster**** this. When something is so emotionally charged like these two, it is best to look from a distance.
For one side, Gamers Nexus seemed to be quite stable in views and subscriptions and, according to Social Blade, the last week saw quite a dramatic increase in subs, which could be cast as a shadow on their motivation. Besides, I think he was butthurt with the comment against his channel regarding re-using data and decided to unleash the dogs, including appealing to emotionally charged terms such as disonhest, etc.
On the other hand, Linus' emotional and deflecting reply forum post to the first video put gasoline to the fire - especially in the light of so many receipts brought by Gamers Nexus. The follow up PR-pasteurized video does some damage control, but it indeed looks forced at times. Besides, by their own team's admission they have been rushing and slacking on production and quality of tests.
All in all, two kids fighting in the playground. One seems to have better reasons than the other to be in the fight, but the emotions will still make me watch from a distance. Fortunately the influence this brouhaha will have in my life is close to nil. I will still keep watching, though. :popcorn:
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For one side, Gamers Nexus seemed to be quite stable in views and subscriptions and, according to Social Blade, the last week saw quite a dramatic increase in subs, which could be cast as a shadow on their motivation. Besides, I think he was butthurt with the comment against his channel regarding re-using data
I don't get this, what's wrong with reusing data if it's still valid and you can verify it's the same test procedure? :-//
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I don't get this, what's wrong with reusing data if it's still valid and you can verify it's the same test procedure? :-//
Steve/GN loves a good drama and then getting full effect from it. e.g. the PSU thing and other stories.
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I don't get this, what's wrong with reusing data if it's still valid and you can verify it's the same test procedure? :-//
I don't follow this area closely so I may be wrong...
The GPU makers have a tight grip on the reviewers that receive cards early. They are required to use the supplied drivers and specific configurations with specific games to generate the performance numbers that the GPU companies expect.
To set themselves apart, reviewers try to test with additional configurations and additional games (new and old) to generate useful comparisons. They compare these results with higher and lower grade cards and the cards from the other GPU company. They also compare historically with older generation GPUs.
The problem is that there are significant changes in performance on every GPU whenever the drivers are updated. If you compare the numbers from the latest card to six-month old results from an older card, you might be making an unfair comparison. The older cards are likely to be better performing now on the new drivers.
This inflates the apparent improvement of the new cards, which is exactly what the GPU makers want. Early access to cards is tightly time constrained so that reviewers are unable to do extensive testing before the embargo date.
LTT Labs' initiative is trying to quickly automate testing on multiple systems in parallel so that they can deliver meaningful comparisons to older GPUs in the few days of testing possible before the embargo date of a new GPU.
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That is his desk, the stuff is always on there. Would you spend 30mins cleaning up just to put the stuff back the next shoot?
TBH don't really care if either one monetizes the video or not.
Give me a break. You sound like my daughter. Clean up my room? That's gonna take hhoouuuuuurrssss!!! It takes one minute and a small box to dump it in.
I don't get this, what's wrong with reusing data if it's still valid and you can verify it's the same test procedure? :-//
I don't follow this area closely so I may be wrong...
Well put. LTT made a bit of a stink that they would retest everything all the time and then Steve "caught" them reusing data. But it were two cards that launched within days and that were tested together. So, more drama over nothing.
EDIT: and by well put I don't mean the part about you being perhaps wrong but just to say it was a good recap 8)
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For one side, Gamers Nexus seemed to be quite stable in views and subscriptions and, according to Social Blade, the last week saw quite a dramatic increase in subs, which could be cast as a shadow on their motivation. Besides, I think he was butthurt with the comment against his channel regarding re-using data
I don't get this, what's wrong with reusing data if it's still valid and you can verify it's the same test procedure? :-//
New games and cards appear. Need new drivers and game patches to work properly. So the tests with older versions could be invalid. Some games are heavily patched, such as Microsoft Flight Simulator, which saw dramatic (100%+) increases in performance over its lifespan, but also erratic behaviour (poor performance only fixed by a system reinstall).
I honestly believe its not easy to properly benchmark. Steve from HardwareUnboxed said its not rocket science, but it is very tedious.
LTT wants to boast about automations, but then still is able to post wrong benchmark data. Some of the benchmark numbers swapped (e.g. Intel Arc A750) could be with raytracing on or off, which also has dramatic increases.
The other components from GN I don't agree with at its core. Forcing an experiment outcome is IMO still a wrong approach to testing. Because that's the vibe I got from their video. Each test should be ran under the same conditions.
E.g. a 300% increase between 4090 en 3090 is dramatic, but we have seen HardwareUnboxed test 8GB cards on high resolutions, and they show greater-than-expected performance retardation because of VRAM limits. Now VRAM limits cant be at fault in the 4090 benchmark (as a 3090 en 4090 both have 24GB VRAM), so that point is still valid.
But for other cards.. I don't necessarily agree. The seemed to have been pointing to different charts for their GTX1060 example ("Max settings" vs "Ultra + Vulkan"). GN forced a conclusion "none of the other cards really moved" => Yes, that could be because Ultra is probably Max settings, BUT choosing between DirectX(industry standard/default) or Vulkan rendering could favour manfacturer A,B or C more.
I think every reviewer would do benefit if they will write down the project and test run on each chart.
And then there is the issue the part variance is huge: https://youtu.be/dGbW7orZS-A
TLDR. 13x AMD Ryzen 7600 tested. CB23 MT runs in range 13.6k-14.4k. Clocks 4825MHz - 5075MHz. Load temperatures 79C - 88C. Load power 112W - 126W. Game FPS 60 to 86(!). FPS/W: 2.89 to 4.26
That latter has a 41% improvement on the same hardware bill of materials.
Representing a tight cluster of measurement data based on just 1 (or even a handful) CPU or GPU under test is also misleading. That's what GN advertizes in all their charts.
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The other components from GN I don't agree with at its core. Forcing an experiment outcome is IMO still a wrong approach to testing. Because that's the vibe I got from their video.
And I did not. It's like you don't agree with a straw man (vibe) you created in your head but blame GN. Double checking suspicious test results is not forcing experiment outcome at all. Even medical labs with much more standartized test procedures often redo analyses that had out of ordinary results.
TLDR. 13x AMD Ryzen 7600 tested. CB23 MT runs in range 13.6k-14.4k. Clocks 4825MHz - 5075MHz. Load temperatures 79C - 88C. Load power 112W - 126W. Game FPS 60 to 86(!). FPS/W: 2.89 to 4.26
That latter has a 41% improvement on the same hardware bill of materials.
That is not FPS but power consumption in W with power limits disabled. Not to say FPS/W is not your usual benchmark metric. Actual performance difference between samples will be a few %. LMG let slip GPU test results which were like 2.5 times off.
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Is there any reason or problem to make a discussion personal again? If there is, please let me know, otherwise it's not so cool.
Vibe is my poor and imprecise choice of wording. I don't have anything specifically towards any channel. But I do think that the stated demands is striving towards an utopia of predictability and tight clustering of data. If CPU performance can vary by e.g. 5% then it is questionable how representable any review data is without testing dozens of units. All these tests are samplesize N=1.
Outliers can be removed or retested, or maybe a retest a complete chart while you're at it (e.g. the 4090 might not be an outlier, but all other cards were). But picking bad data only on outliers is still a biased by expected results (its called survivorship bias). The underlying issues all hinge around failed qualifications of test/part conditions under test. A bad cooler mount, mixed data with different quality settings or not checking if a CPU is thermal throttling. But potentially also other mistakes, such as parallelising tests with identical (bill of materials) test benches.
So I think the critics of GN is somewhat simplified. Now granted, their general statement is still valid, and GN is perhaps the better of all channels out there as they do show some qualification of parts (e.g. clocks) before performance data. HUB does that for VRAM usage in certain game tests.
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Outliers can be removed or retested, or maybe a retest a complete chart while you're at it (e.g. the 4090 might not be an outlier, but all other cards were). But picking bad data only on outliers is still a biased by expected results. The underlying issues all hinge around failed qualifications of test/part conditions under test. A bad cooler mount, mixed data with different quality settings or not checking if a CPU is thermal throttling. But potentially also other mistakes, such as parallelising tests with identical (bill of materials) test benches.
The best is doing multiple rounds of tests by switching samples of say GPUs on a test stand on each round yet again and verifying settings each time. Not just setting it up once and running multiple times in the same possibly wrong configuration. However it would require much more time and effort, so double checking suspicious results is a bare minimum of due diligence.
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I can't help but think the TLDR from this is that Linus overreacted and dug his own hole here.
First mistake was taking the GN bait. He should have just Tweeted "Yeah, we'll do better" or some such and left it at that.
As for the former employee Tweet storm, it was clearly oportunistically timed to hammer home the pile-on, as it was 2+ years ago, and most of the stuff is just griping about a job she didn't like.
If he hadn't reacted to the GN thing it wouldn't have blown up, and it's likely the former employee tweet storm wouldn't have happened.
Next mistake was the apology tour video. Although it was a texbook fine corporate response video, and was genuine, again, it was not needed and won abolsutely no one back and it just drives the media frenzy more. As does halting video production.
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Kinda disagree. Some of the criticism is valid. They might a well have a look at it. And if they can afford to shut down for a week that would probably work better than asking your already overtasked workforce to cobble something together in between everything else.
Never waste a good crisis ;-)
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The 24/7 stream of old episodes they are running is getting a lot of down votes. Last I looked it was about 50:50.
Not sure if or how that affects "the algorithm" but they might have been better off just laying low for a week and then coming back with a proper plan. Socialblade reports a (edit) now 0.2M drop in subscribers. I guess that's plus or minus 0.1M but it's there.
This is entirely a pile on that probably wouldn't have blown up without much of the LTT response. GN and his holier than thou attitude irks me though. The fact he started picking on them for using on screen corrections I thought was pretty lame.
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I haven't watched LTT for years now. I found their videos shifted over my personal line from 'informative fun, by the way we have some merch over there' to 'we're trying to get you to spend as much money on our merch as possible and that is our main goal'. They seemed partisan, instead of impartial, in their reviews, and that's another line for me. There has also been a gradual development of a dislike for Linus on a personal level, he just seems like the sort of boss that would shout at you for either something that they messed up or for not keeping up with unreasonable time constraints on a job that could otherwise have been easy. I've had that sort of boss in the past, and when I see their traits in another person, I don't like them.
As time goes on, my opinion is reinforced instead of being shown to be wrong.
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I can't help but think the TLDR from this is that Linus overreacted and dug his own hole here.
Precisely. The emotional reaction is something that would have never passed the BS test on a board of peers. The fact it happened gives the impression there is indeed a top dog that deals most (or all) the cards and its minions that are either too afraid, too lenient or simply disengaged. In these times that's where a good PR professional comes in and tames these emotional outbursts.
First mistake was taking the GN bait. He should have just Tweeted "Yeah, we'll do better" or some such and left it at that.
This attitude and response was done in the past, but this time I suspect the cooler block auction/sell and the claims of dishonesty really wound up Linus this time. Of course his first response was disastrous.
As for the former employee Tweet storm, it was clearly oportunistically timed to hammer home the pile-on, as it was 2+ years ago, and most of the stuff is just griping about a job she didn't like.
Indeed. She is very young and really did not figure out the entire ramifications of her actions. These pile ups rarely work in favour of the person doing the piling.
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The 24/7 stream of old episodes they are running is getting a lot of down votes. Last I looked it was about 50:50.
At this point they better buckle up and weather the storm... It is still too fresh in people's minds.
GN and his holier than thou attitude irks me though. The fact he started picking on them for using on screen corrections I thought was pretty lame.
Indeed the attitude is an emotional (but tamed) reaction to the spark that ignited this whole thing. And the rant about screen corrections is quite odd. Sure, a massive production team could re-shoot things but everybody does corrections in the Youtube tech space. However, Linus' channel is big enough that they can probably replace a video or two with a new one without having to re-upload the entire thing.
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The 24/7 stream of old episodes they are running is getting a lot of down votes. Last I looked it was about 50:50.
At this point they better buckle up and weather the storm... It is still too fresh in people's minds.
GN and his holier than thou attitude irks me though. The fact he started picking on them for using on screen corrections I thought was pretty lame.
Indeed the attitude is an emotional (but tamed) reaction to the spark that ignited this whole thing. And the rant about screen corrections is quite odd. Sure, a massive production team could re-shoot things but everybody does corrections in the Youtube tech space. However, Linus' channel is big enough that they can probably replace a video or two with a new one without having to re-upload the entire thing.
I sometimes work in video to help out a small production company. It is the rare shoot where we don't have to do pickups (reshoot shots or shoot missing shots) once editing has started because someone spotted an error or missed shot. It is inconceivable that we would not do them simply due to budget constraints, which is the reason LTT gave. Sometimes you just have to suck it up, especially if the error is your fault. If you are a small YouTube channel, it's understandable you might just post the odd correction, but for a company as large as LTT it's a bad sign that they are publicly saying that they are accepting testing errors rather than test properly or reshoot a shot because they don't want to spend the money it would take to do things properly.
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I think the former employee probably was on the receiving end of some verbal sexual statements.
However, I find it interesting that in her LTT PC build video she herself said a few verbal sexual things to Linus. I remember she made a sexual innuendo joke to his face about him having small hands. It was funny and no one considered that harassment, but it may have set her up to be on the receiving end of that sort of stuff too. Since it may have set coworker expectations on where her 'ok' 'not ok' line was.
To be clear I'm not defending or excusing any sort of SA if that did occur. I don't know what really happened. I'm just saying she came across in the video as someone you could joke around with, who would be fine with it, and who would give as good as she got. Which may have not been the case and could easy end in accusations of inappropriate behavior
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I think the former employee probably was on the receiving end of some verbal sexual statements.
However, I find it interesting that in her LTT PC build video she herself said a few verbal sexual things to Linus. I remember she made a sexual innuendo joke to his face about him having small hands. It was funny and no one considered that harassment, but it may have set her up to be on the receiving end of that sort of stuff too. Since it may have set coworker expectations on where her 'ok' 'not ok' line was.
To be clear I'm not defending or excusing any sort of SA if that did occur. I don't know what really happened. I'm just saying she came across in the video as someone you could joke around with, who would be fine with it, and who would give as good as she got. Which may have not been the case and could easy end in accusations of inappropriate behavior
That's always a tricky situation.
I'm on the older side, not to say I'm stuffy or stodgy or anything. I'm ex-military and can make a sailor blush when I'm in the right company. However I'm old-fashioned enough to respect the professional workplace. Perhaps I'll say such things during water cooler talk with one of my best male work friends, but never in a group setting. I've worked with a female for a few years now, she grew up an Army brat, and has said things at work that made ME blush if you can believe it. She has quite an "inappropriate" sense of humor that I find hilarious. However I'm not taking the bait and reciprocating. All it would take is some falling out with her, or someone sensitive to overhear, then I'm in HR saying "yeah but she said that" kind of back and forth. Which might result in us both being fired (our HR dept has a zero tolerance policy for harassment, I've seen good, long-tenured people fired on the spot before for saying stupid things). So I'm not about to even put myself in that situation.
Younger generations today seem to take a more aloof view of these things (the "blokey environment" mentioned earlier) and I agree that's likely at play here.
To be clear, I'm not suggesting she didn't receive some undeserved hurtful and unprofessional comments. That said, based on what I'm hearing, I'm much more inclined to blame the harsh working conditions at LMG (as others have noted) for her misery.
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This is entirely a pile on that probably wouldn't have blown up without much of the LTT response.
Yep, almost certainly none of this would have happened if Linus didn't respond. Everyone smells blood in the water now.
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Cool drama.
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WAN show cancelled this week.
https://twitter.com/LinusTech/status/1692593238908301316
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I think they are very optimistic at taking a week break to fix/address all company procedures and systems.
2 months maybe, but not a week. Maybe a week just to build a good list of things to fix.
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I wonder after all this if Linus is rethinking that $100M offer...
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My suggested videos feed apparently showed a video from them about the ex-employee drama but it might have been pulled - that or many of the other channels made thumbnails that seemed to be official... Can't say for sure as I just glanced.
All that said, they will only sink if Linus himself decides to call it quits due to the piling up. Many other people/channels recovered from much worse.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuTsTjFZf5M (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuTsTjFZf5M)
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I wonder after all this if Linus is rethinking that $100M offer...
Most likely, the 100M$ would include a clause that would keep him at LTT for x (or xx) years after the purchase. Probably wouldn't have helped him much.
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I wonder after all this if Linus is rethinking that $100M offer...
Most likely, the 100M$ would include a clause that would keep him at LTT for x (or xx) years after the purchase. Probably wouldn't have helped him much.
Also likely came with some kind of phased payout, e.g. $20M per year or requiring Linus to maintain an equity share in the parent company for some time.
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Not to mention the purchasing company would probably have some clause about pre-existing issues that would affect the value of the company.
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If your business model is stagnation, I would have sold out.
Que the Danny Devito, Other People's Money speech.
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LTT will almost definitely come out of this fine and probably get higher offers than 100M in 10 years.
At least that is my guess.
It's just a once in 5-10 year f-up that every company goes through from time to time.
I think a short break/re-think was necessary though, they need to address issues and start doing things with structure/oversite that better matches with the size company they have become.
The bigger you get as a company the more man-hours it takes to get the same work done. Just a byproduct of the additional time overhead that comes with having more and more people required to produce more and more complicated things. Extra meetings etc..
Companies that grow bigger but keep trying to function the same way they did as a small company is a common issue in business.
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I think they are very optimistic at taking a week break to fix/address all company procedures and systems.
2 months maybe, but not a week. Maybe a week just to build a good list of things to fix.
2 months is suicide.
They should not have even stopped IMO.
What's done it done, it's not like they are going to win any of the haters back.
It's not rocket science to just technically check videos more thoroughly now. They have 100+ staff, they could afford to devote one or two people full time to QA'ing content so to speak.
And not just at the end process before release, but have them walk around and check in on current videos being produced to make sure they aren't skimping.
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It's a tough call. I don't even think 2 months is enough to make lasting changes, especially at the speed they were running at. I think their 1 week hiatus was more in thanks to Linus emotional response. If he had slept a night over it, had some meetings with other chiefs, or possibly let the CEO do the talking, I think they might have gotten away without a hiatus. People would be mad, but some people will find any reason to twist words and create personal attacks.
I was also going through some social media stuff, and found this: https://twitter.com/TimHolowachuk/status/1654291480494899200
The linked video is on the large comments posted on inconsistent CPU cooler testing, with large deltas and and missed CPUs thermal throttling on their own reference platform with Noctua coolers, and finally, a lack of understanding how to pick up on errors and outliers.
Not to say interns work is bad, but a students learning experience should be prioritized above delivering production ready materials. I wonder if some errors went undetected since guiding students properly requires a lot of time and patience to get them to do it right. Plus then to check their work anyways.. which is hard to do if this student spent literal weeks in the lab swapping coolers and running stress tests.
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It's a tough call. I don't even think 2 months is enough to make lasting changes, especially at the speed they were running at. I think their 1 week hiatus was more in thanks to Linus emotional response. If he had slept a night over it, had some meetings with other chiefs, or possibly let the CEO do the talking, I think they might have gotten away without a hiatus. People would be mad, but some people will find any reason to twist words and create personal attacks.
There is no "getting away with it". Those who want to be pissed off will be pissed off regardless of what you do.
No response at all I'm sure would not have resulted in the 200k loss in subs in 2 days.
This all happened because they "tried to fix it", and then doubled down trying to fix it. And the trippled down by halting production. Now everyone smells blood in the water.
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It's a tough call. I don't even think 2 months is enough to make lasting changes, especially at the speed they were running at. I think their 1 week hiatus was more in thanks to Linus emotional response. If he had slept a night over it, had some meetings with other chiefs, or possibly let the CEO do the talking, I think they might have gotten away without a hiatus. People would be mad, but some people will find any reason to twist words and create personal attacks.
There is no "getting away with it". Those who want to be pissed off will be pissed off regardless of what you do.
No response at all I'm sure would not have resulted in the 200k loss in subs in 2 days.
This all happened because they "tried to fix it", and then doubled down trying to fix it. And the trippled down by halting production. Now everyone smells blood in the water.
Agreed. And it was already a tricky time for LTT with the turned down offer (which made a lot of people talk), the new CEO, etc. So they should have thought twice before reacting.
I've watched the "What do we do now?" video - looks like something that won't help either.
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I think they are very optimistic at taking a week break to fix/address all company procedures and systems.
2 months maybe, but not a week. Maybe a week just to build a good list of things to fix.
2 months is suicide.
I wasn't actually suggesting they should have taken 2 months. I was just commenting that them saying they will take 1 week off to fix things seemed silly because that would actually take ~2 months.
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2 months is suicide.
Would it be? Sure, views and subscriptions might go down but for something as well known and with such a massive footprint as LTT, just think of the news and views when they did come back. I reckon views would be off the chart, since even the detractors would want to see what's changed (maybe so they could pick holes, but so what).
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You're at the mercy of an algorithm with no idea how it works.
If they stopped uploading anything for a few months it could set their YT income/reach back years, or not at all.
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So no-one knows how it works but nevertheless can say that it would stuff them unless they keep on doing.. something.
OTOH, a huge spike might get them on the virtual front page and lead to more views leading to algorithm love. No-one knows, yet they can say that's a bad move. :-//
[Edit: How does the algorithm work for subscriptions? I mean, if you subscribe the algorithm isn't going to unsubscribe you, is it? So after however long the LTT channel should still have roughly the same subscribers as now and it's non-subscribers who may be affected. So the channel won't suddenly die but will get subscriber views as soon as it starts output again. Plus the new viewer who just want to see wtf it's all about and how they're still screwed up. And I suspect the algorithm isn't immune to some boss saying "that's a channel it would be worth promoting" (or even demoting if it's mouthed off about Youtube).]
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Update.
An MXO4 scope spotted at 6:02
I still don't think this video was needed. It's trying to appease everyone and it can never do that. Haters will still hate, fans will still watch.
As he said toward the end with regards to empoyee turnover, it's vanishing small (1.9% medium, excluding fired people).
Having to justify their company work culture by having to show security footage of the parking lot just seems desperate. I feel sorry that they felt pressured so much that they had to do that, you can see it in Linus's eyes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAE5KoyFEUo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAE5KoyFEUo)
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Yeah, seen it. At least it wasn't as bad as the two previous ones IMHO, so they're certainly "learning" to handle this better as far as communication goes.
I don't think being exposed to such a wide audience worldwide is a sane thing overall, but that's the crux of these businesses, so that's an integral part of them. You can get very successful but can also be shot down in a matter of a few hours. You get more exposure (and most of all, scrutiny) than even the most famous stars would just a couple decades ago.
Not something I would personally enjoy. But if you base your professional life on it, I guess you better get seriously used to it.
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Yeah, seen it. At least it wasn't as bad as the two previous ones IMHO, so they're certainly "learning" to handle this better as far as communication goes.
But hey haven't learned the real lesson, futility.
https://www.youtube.com/clip/Ugkx9d37Pv_8n500zkveunp9iscTl1p1NY8f (https://www.youtube.com/clip/Ugkx9d37Pv_8n500zkveunp9iscTl1p1NY8f)
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I'm not a LTT hater but I wouldn't willingly watch any of their videos (and I don't like the way Linus treats the kit, without respect or apparently any mechanical sympathy). But that video you just posted would otherwise encourage me to look forward to their new output and I can see it easily making their fans salivate and the can't-quite-decide crowd fall on the side of renewed interest.
Whether they needed to do it or not, or however the whole thing started, I think they've scored a plus if for no other reason than they've shown they are actually a professional outfit with big boy procedures behind the scenes, as opposed to a bunch of kids in long trousers in an overgrown bedroom. (Although whether they actually are is beside the point - the video lets them show what they want to be and which most viewers wouldn't think about).
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Linus turned down a $100M offer for Linus Tech Tips. 60% cash, 40% equity.
And he (plus his wife) are the sole owners.
Repect :-+
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vuzqunync8 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vuzqunync8)
But he doesn't care about auctioning off a prototype of a cooler to competitors right after he makes a video about how terrible it is because it didn't work so great for an unsupported setup
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But he doesn't care about auctioning off a prototype of a cooler to competitors right after he makes a video about how terrible it is because it didn't work so great for an unsupported setup
They totally screwed that up to the nth degree yes, but we can't really look at one bad thing and judge the company or the person on that alone. Or let that define them.
We have to look at all the good and all the bad as a whole and then decide....Is LTT a force for good, or a force for evil, and/or where does it stand in between those.
I think it's pretty high up on the 'good' side, but no-one is perfect and this recent situation has definitely lowered them a little.
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Update.
An MXO4 scope spotted at 6:02 ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAE5KoyFEUo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAE5KoyFEUo)
At the same scene there are also a LeCroy scope, Chroma power meter and DMM on the top shelf and 2x 5 mainframe 63600 series loads below it.
Any idea what is the chamber behind Linus?
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But he doesn't care about auctioning off a prototype of a cooler to competitors right after he makes a video about how terrible it is because it didn't work so great for an unsupported setup
They totally screwed that up to the nth degree yes, but we can't really look at one bad thing and judge the company or the person on that alone. Or let that define them.
We have to look at all the good and all the bad as a whole and then decide....Is LTT a force for good, or a force for evil, and/or where does it stand in between those.
I think it's pretty high up on the 'good' side, but no-one is perfect and this recent situation has definitely lowered them a little.
What about clearly bad reviews. when new cpu's come out some of his reviews show like 5x better performance than any other cpu and they just roll with it, like there clearly hasnt been some benchmarking error.
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At the same scene there are also a LeCroy scope, Chroma power meter and DMM on the top shelf and 2x 5 mainframe 63600 series loads below it.
Any idea what is the chamber behind Linus?
The rack is the PSU test station
They are also installing an automated keyboard tester, RF chambers, temp chambers, acoustic chambers etc. Huge operation.
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But he doesn't care about auctioning off a prototype of a cooler to competitors right after he makes a video about how terrible it is because it didn't work so great for an unsupported setup
They totally screwed that up to the nth degree yes, but we can't really look at one bad thing and judge the company or the person on that alone. Or let that define them.
We have to look at all the good and all the bad as a whole and then decide....Is LTT a force for good, or a force for evil, and/or where does it stand in between those.
I think it's pretty high up on the 'good' side, but no-one is perfect and this recent situation has definitely lowered them a little.
What about clearly bad reviews. when new cpu's come out some of his reviews show like 5x better performance than any other cpu and they just roll with it, like there clearly hasnt been some benchmarking error.
So that happened how many times? I think that was a GPU.
If you're going to continue to fixate on one previous mistake then it doesn't matter what they're going to do from here in your mind. You've never made a mistake right?
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So that happened how many times? I think that was a GPU.
If you're going to continue to fixate on one previous mistake then it doesn't matter what they're going to do from here in your mind. You've never made a mistake right?
Yeah, I don't understand why so many people are fixating on literally a couple of mistakes.
I'm starting to see the signs of a Linus Derangement Syndrone developing.
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So that happened how many times? I think that was a GPU.
If you're going to continue to fixate on one previous mistake then it doesn't matter what they're going to do from here in your mind. You've never made a mistake right?
Yeah, I don't understand why so many people are fixating on literally a couple of mistakes.
I'm starting to see the signs of a Linus Derangement Syndrone developing.
I wish people were as strict when judging the actions of their political leaders.
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But he doesn't care about auctioning off a prototype of a cooler to competitors right after he makes a video about how terrible it is because it didn't work so great for an unsupported setup
They totally screwed that up to the nth degree yes, but we can't really look at one bad thing and judge the company or the person on that alone. Or let that define them.
We have to look at all the good and all the bad as a whole and then decide....Is LTT a force for good, or a force for evil, and/or where does it stand in between those.
I think it's pretty high up on the 'good' side, but no-one is perfect and this recent situation has definitely lowered them a little.
What about clearly bad reviews. when new cpu's come out some of his reviews show like 5x better performance than any other cpu and they just roll with it, like there clearly hasnt been some benchmarking error.
So that happened how many times? I think that was a GPU.
If you're going to continue to fixate on one previous mistake then it doesn't matter what they're going to do from here in your mind. You've never made a mistake right?
So him possibly destroying a company when he was specifically told to give the prototype back to them, is just "oh well, no biggie"
After such an action, nobody will ever trust linus again, and for good reason.
Did he ever apologize even?
So that happened how many times? I think that was a GPU.
If you're going to continue to fixate on one previous mistake then it doesn't matter what they're going to do from here in your mind. You've never made a mistake right?
Yeah, I don't understand why so many people are fixating on literally a couple of mistakes.
I'm starting to see the signs of a Linus Derangement Syndrone developing.
I wish people were as strict when judging the actions of their political leaders.
Not to bring conspiracies into this but it's pretty well known that political leaders buy out media companies and other people to make it so their PR isnt destroyed by their actions.
Money sure does buy immunity
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So him possibly destroying a company when he was specifically told to give the prototype back to them, is just "oh well, no biggie"
After such an action, nobody will ever trust linus again, and for good reason.
Did he ever apologize even?
If he had intended to destroy the company or sold the product intentionally then your statement.. "After such an action, nobody will ever trust linus again, and for good reason" would make sense. But it was a mistake. It was sold due to poor internal communication and management. It should have been set aside to be returned but was not and so ended up being sold with a lot of other stuff.
He gave them the cash value they asked for to replace it. So they can continue development.
You could argue that he only gave them the money after this all blew up. But that doesn't prove anything.
I'm pretty confident he would have given them the money regardless, but we will never know.
We have no idea if he apologized to them or not. It's not like we have any right to know if he did or did not apologized. It's between him and them, not us.
The whole "selling their prototype' thing isn't that bad, it was just a mistake and they have money to replace it now. by far the worst thing was their review of the product itself. It didn't get a fair review, and Linus did admit that.
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So him possibly destroying a company when he was specifically told to give the prototype back to them, is just "oh well, no biggie"
After such an action, nobody will ever trust linus again, and for good reason.
Did he ever apologize even?
First, lets not confuse their business development, account managers and procurement with just the presenter on screen. Although Linus is owner, was CEO, still chief executive, that doesn't mean he can be involved in absolutely everything and was aware of handling that external communications. It was also shown in these last 2 videos what happened with the communication breakdowns.
Once it was known that thing was auctioned off, I think he did apologize on WAN show. But previously he also doubled down on their review stance.
I'm sure people will say "coincidence, think not", but I don't really have the information to conclude their intent fully. From their evidence, its clear that communication breakdown happened and thats on them to fix, but its something completely different to paint someone as an evil villain because of their visibility or current position.
Not to bring conspiracies into this but it's pretty well known that political leaders buy out media companies and other people to make it so their PR isnt destroyed by their actions.
Money sure does buy immunity
Eh, I'm not going to deny that this is how it works in some jurisdictions for sure.
I'm also sure none media outlet which is unbiased, free of any propaganda (even if it is copy-pasting anxiety-inducing gov statements) or stuff like that.
But I'm also not going to drag everyone which against my views into some kind of conspiracy.
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Not to bring conspiracies into this but it's pretty well known that political leaders buy out media companies and other people to make it so their PR isnt destroyed by their actions.
Money sure does buy immunity
So maybe Linus should buy out Youtube. ;D
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Not to bring conspiracies into this but it's pretty well known that political leaders buy out media companies and other people to make it so their PR isnt destroyed by their actions.
Money sure does buy immunity
So maybe Linus should buy out Youtube. ;D
That doesn't really work because youtube doesn't report on you, the viewer does.
That's why you don't see many political leaders making youtube videos, it's bound to be a PR nightmare, and you can't stop it because youtube doesn't do any reporting like for example CNN "does" ;D
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After such an action, nobody will ever trust linus again, and for good reason.
LOL, nope. The vast majority of viewers either don't know nor care what happened. Not everyone follows the LTT forum that closely or watches drama videos etc.
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This is a petty drama, a tragedy only to those who .... i will leave it at that.
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For those still interested: good take from Ian Cutress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez9uVSKLYUI (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez9uVSKLYUI)
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The problem with tech media and media in general, to be fair, is as much with the media creators themselves than with the viewers.
It takes two to tango, as they say.
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It takes two to tango, as they say.
Which is why IMO Linus should never have engaged. Let GN have his whinge video, that's on him. Even if there were plenty of valid points, a simple blog post "Yeah, we hear you, thanks, we'll try and do better".
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They just released their first "normal" video since the whole drama. It's been a few hours and they already have almost 1M views on it.
I'm not too worried for them.
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They just released their first "normal" video since the whole drama. It's been a few hours and they already have almost 1M views on it.
I'm not too worried for them.
fyi, engagement and trust aren't the same thing
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What about the time they "not-reviewed" a gaming mouse and said how dissapointing it is because it has a lot of friction.
Then when the company that made the mouse contacted them and told that they didn't remove the protective feet, and that's the reason it had so much friction.
They responded with "we did remove it"... the company sent them a screenshot from the video showing how clearly they didn't remove it. And all linus did was post a comment in the video.
So linus has been a PR nightmare for 2 companies now.
You are supporting someone who cares more about his own PR than others. If he didn't, he would go out of his way to correct both mistakes in something like a re-review.
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They just released their first "normal" video since the whole drama. It's been a few hours and they already have almost 1M views on it.
I'm not too worried for them.
I see zero comments about the hoopla, that seems strange, are they deleting them?
Anyway it was a fun video, Linus seemed to be having fun. But maybe this was shot before the hoopla started?
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They did mention that they had a few in the pipeline when the "hoopla" started.
Then again, they had the WAN show and didn't mention it either. Seems like the right things to do. "We got slapped around a bit, took corrective actions, now we forge forward".
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They just released their first "normal" video since the whole drama. It's been a few hours and they already have almost 1M views on it.
I'm not too worried for them.
fyi, engagement and trust aren't the same thing
Sure, they are not. But does it matter all that much for the content creator? From what i know about Youtube, only engagement matters.