This is quoted from Linus on the LTT forums:
"There won’t be a big WAN Show segment about this or anything. Most of what I have to say, I’ve already said, and I’ve done so privately.
To Steve, I expressed my disappointment that he didn’t go through proper journalistic practices in creating this piece. He has my email and number (along with numerous other members of our team) and could have asked me for context that may have proven to be valuable (like the fact that we didn’t ‘sell’ the monoblock, but rather auctioned it for charity due to a miscommunication… AND the fact that while we haven’t sent payment yet, we have already agreed to compensate Billet Labs for the cost of their prototype). There are other issues, but I’ve told him that I won’t be drawn into a public sniping match over this and that I’ll be continuing to move forward in good faith as part of ‘Team Media’. When/if he’s ready to do so again I’ll be ready.
To my team (and my CEO’s team, but realistically I was at the helm for all of these errors, so I need to own it), I stressed the importance of diligence in our work because there are so many eyes on us. We are going through some growing pains - we’ve been very public about them in the interest of transparency - and it’s clear we have some work to do on internal processes and communication. We have already been doing a lot of work internally to clean up our processes, but these things take time. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but that’s no excuse for sloppiness.
Now, for my community, all I can say is the same things I always say. We know that we’re not perfect. We wear our imperfection on our sleeves in the interest of ensuring that we stay accountable to you. But it’s sad and unfortunate when this transparency gets warped into a bad thing. The Labs team is hard at work hard creating processes and tools to generate data that will benefit all consumers - a work in progress that is very much not done and that we’ve communicated needs to be treated as such. Do we have notes under some videos? Yes. Is it because we are striving for transparency/improvement? Yeah… What we’re doing hasn’t been in many years, if ever… and we would make a much larger correction if the circumstances merited it. Listing the wrong amount of cache on a table for a CPU review is sloppy, but given that our conclusions are drawn based on our testing, not the spec sheet, it doesn’t materially change the recommendation. That doesn’t mean these things don’t matter. We’ve set KPIs for our writing/labs team around accuracy, and we are continually installing new checks and balances to ensure that things continue to get better. If you haven’t seen the improvement, frankly I wonder if you’re really looking for it… The thoroughness that we managed on our last handful of GPU videos is getting really incredible given the limited time we have for these embargoes. I’m REALLY excited about what the future will hold.
With all of that said, I still disagree that the Billet Labs video (not the situation with the return, which I’ve already addressed above) is an ‘accuracy’ issue. It’s more like I just read the room wrong. We COULD have re-tested it with perfect accuracy, but to do so PROPERLY - accounting for which cases it could be installed in (none) and which radiators it would be plumbed with (again… mystery) would have been impossible… and also didn’t affect the conclusion of the video… OR SO I THOUGHT…
I wanted to evaluate it as a product, and as a product, IF it could manage to compete with the temperatures of the highest end blocks on the planet, it still wouldn’t make sense to buy… so from my point of view, re-testing it and finding out that yes, it did in fact run cooler made no difference to the conclusion, so it didn’t really make a difference.
Adam and I were talking about this today. He advocated for re-testing it regardless of how non-viable it was as a product at the time and I think he expressed really well today why it mattered. It was like making a video about a supercar. It doesn’t mater if no one watching will buy it. They just wanna see it rip. I missed that, but it wasn’t because I didn’t care about the consumer… it was because I was so focused on how this product impacted a potential buyer. Either way, clearly my bad, but my intention was never to harm Billet Labs. I specifically called out their incredible machining skills because I wanted to see them create something with a viable market for it and was hoping others would appreciate the fineness of the craftsmanship even if the product was impractical. I still hope they move forward building something else because they obviously have talent and I’ve watched countless niche water cooling vendors come and go. It’s an astonishingly unforgiving market.
Either way, I’m sorry I got the community’s priorities mixed-up on this one, and that we didn’t show the Billet in the best light. Our intention wasn’t to hurt anyone. We wanted no one to buy it (because it’s an egregious waste of money no matter what temps it runs at) and we wanted Billet to make something marketable (so they can, y’know, eat).
With all of this in mind, it saddens me how quickly the pitchforks were raised over this. It also comes across a touch hypocritical when some basic due diligence could have helped clarify much of it. I have a LONG history of meeting issues head on and I’ve never been afraid to answer questions, which lands me in hot water regularly, but helps keep me in tune with my peers and with the community. The only reason I can think of not to ask me is because my honest response might be inconvenient.
We can test that… with this post. Will the “It was a mistake (a bad one, but a mistake) and they’re taking care of it” reality manage to have the same reach? Let’s see if anyone actually wants to know what happened. I hope so, but it’s been disheartening seeing how many people were willing to jump on us here. Believe it or not, I’m a real person and so is the rest of my team. We are trying our best, and if what we were doing was easy, everyone would do it. Today sucks.
Thanks for reading this."
For me, this is the main point, GN has prided itself in integrity and making sure meticulous detail is done on every benchmark, LTT doesn’t do that and only worries about pumping out 7-10 videos a week to keep up with the YouTube algorithms (which may or may not be a real issue). I’m inclined to be behind GN on this one.
LTT is trying to be reliable, but they aren’t giving themselves the time to do it. Mistakes are made and aren’t corrected or aren’t corrected in the best way.
I’m not buying that, there’s probably a little bit of truth in there, but honestly it’s pretty clear what’s happening. The higher ups require a certain amount of videos a week to be profitable, if they don’t meet that quota then they’re not making money or they think they’re not making money. They’re also pretty clearly favoring their sponsors and reviewing their products positively without showing actual credible benchmarks. It’s the sign of corporate greed creeping in once again and someone finally called out their bullshit. Linus isn’t taking it very well, and I can imagine why when someone you thought to be a friend or colleague is now calling you out with credible evidence that you’re just bullshitting around and half-assing the product you build from the ground up.
If they aren’t giving themselves the time to do it then it means they aren’t trying to be reliable. After all, these are self imposed deadlines they set themselves. Actions speak louder than words, and despite the PR attempts the presentation says quantity is more important than being correct
Which is completely fine for entertainment content like building a flying PC, but there’s different expectations for more serious pieces they are trying to sell to consumers as being trustworthy. Unless they want the stigma of the Verge of PC building when it comes to LTT product reviews. Where people say I just watch it for the jokes and product shots, but ignore the recommendations.
LTT is trying to be reliable, but they aren’t giving themselves the time to do it.
No, they are not. They are trying to pump out content, and don’t want to be held accountable for their actions, period.
If they were trying ro be reliable they wouldn’t bitch about fucking up a test, then having to spend $100-$500 in employee time to properly test.
They wouldn’t blame their fuckups on everyone except themselves.
They may make shit right in the coming days, the sad fact was it took GN calling them out to get them to stop acting like assholes.
Linus is so wrong here.
“I expressed my disappointment that he didn’t go through proper journalistic practices in creating this piece. He has my email and number (along with numerous other members of our team) and could have asked me for context that may have proven to be valuable”
It’s exactly the opposite, by not giving Linus a preview of the material, and allowing him input on it. Steve has secured the journalistic integrity of the content.
Linus had a chance to address the content publicly and is opting not to do it.
“Most of what I have to say, I’ve already said, and I’ve done so privately.”
He clearly thinks we are not worth keeping informed so I’m going to be unsubscribing and no longer consuming any LTT content.
Overall this response sucks. No accountability, plenty of deflection and missing the point. Vague talk of being more accurate in the future, so I’m supposed to just wait and consume inaccurate content in the mean time? No thanks.
There forum is down from so many people posting. Crazy. The internet is so unstable right now, first with twitter, then reddit, and now a massive youtube company.
“my bad. …anyways about them screwdrivers!”
I don’t personally feel this is the correct response, but what do you think?
like the fact that we didn’t ‘sell’ the monoblock, but rather auctioned it for charity due to a miscommunication… AND the fact that while we haven’t sent payment yet, we have already agreed to compensate Billet Labs for the cost of their prototype
That’s kinda not better or a defense. Or even a clarification.
Also, I don’t know why he felt the need to put ‘sell’ in quotes, as if auctioning isn’t a form of selling. Plus GN mentioned it was auctioned, many times.
Agree. Interesting point made at 33m 25s.
Billet is telling GN that they asked for the product back but was ignored. When they asked a second time Billet was told it was gone (aka they auctioned it) and finally, that they are now stalled developing the system because they loaned out their best prototype to Linus and he sold it.
https://i.imgur.com/BFYsmdb.pngl
It looks like they are paying it back which was my biggest concern, and billet is defining the price here. Although according to his earlier response, LMG has yet to repay it.That fuck up is still massive, downplaying it as a “charity auction” is shitty and makes this 120~ person company look like amateur hour.
additional context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3byz3txpso
I was mislead and because how linus worded it, thought this was at least arranged prior to the whole situation and that this was not a quote or invoiced. According to billet lab this was not the case and they had yet to set a price as of that second videos recording.
This also isn’t the “gotcha” LMG tried to make it seem at the intro in their response. They basically said “GN didn’t get our side of the story so they are making us bad, they didn’t know we repaid Billet Labs!”
It’s inexcusable how they tested, handled, and then auctioned the block, doesn’t matter that they agreed something at the end, what GN said still stands.
The biggest fault that was committed is that Linus didn’t just take the L and admit they fucked up and they would fix the problem instead of doubling down. Blaming GN for not telling him about it personally is not how journalism is supposed to work. Friend or not.
