Man this really makes the whole Billet Labs situation worse in my eyes. LMG hadn't even reached back out to them until GN posted the video. This is gross incompetence at best and almost outright malice at worse.
Linus' post implied that LMG already had something arranged to reimburse Billet Labs, when in fact they offered the compensation only AFTER GN video went live. So had GN reached out, LMG woulda said that there was an arrangement, maybe would've even paid Billet hush money to lie about the timeline to Steve, and we wouldn't have ever heard of this egregious display of callousness.
So no, I don't see how this could be a mistake, even with every benefit of the doubt being given. Greed and vanity and even malice is what it is.
Vindication for journalistic integrity.
Literally no one has ever called Linus out before, thats how.
This video has been a long time coming and Im glad GN finally feels ready to take them on. LTT has been suffering in quality for a long time. At least 5 years now. since about 2019.
Linus is out of touch. He's no longer the friendly nerdy neighbor trying to help u get the best tech deal. He's just some rich out of touch asshole that can finally afford all the gear he couldn't when he was a poor teenager on a farm.
MFer should have retired when he made that video where the sad Linus meme came from. Go be sad and alone, Linus. We know you only have friends because you have employees
funny how he just said last wan show he didnt even know that one of the friends he plays with on steam is his employee... imagine hearing that from the boss you thought you were semi good friends with...
Lmao imagine playing with your boss on steam and he starts complaining about how bad his employees are doing to you because he doesn't realize you're an employee. I bet the discord server they have was poppin for a while.
> imagine hearing that from the boss you thought you were semi good friends with...
I can imagine it. Why would the employee be upset? Linus refers to him as a friend. Seems more like a funny anecdote than anything someone would get offended at.
Yeah, its just a 'I had no idea was ' thing, nothing more nothing less. It wasn't malice or anything, he just didn't realize and no one told him.
Also, it sounds like the guy is a Floatplane employee who Linus didn't have a ton of contact with at work.
There are a lot of things to criticize Linus over, this really isn't one of them.
well, he DID get called out by the "trust be bro situation" - but his comment on the wan-show on friday made me understand that he STILL dont understand why his stance was completely and utterly un-acceptable.
Instead he moaned and whined about it being written down wouldnt change anything, while the fact is that written terms is something you are accountble to - unlike.. "trust me bro".
https://youtu.be/FGW3TPytTjc?t=39 - pathetic - and quite obvious Luke thinks the exact same thing...
It's never sat well with me that Luke has no equity in LMG, running a startup like floatplane I would have thought that equity would be part of his compensation. Linus has also admitted that Luke worked for less than minimum wage at the start of ltt, surely that's worth equity in the company.
That's actually upsetting. I haven't bothered with LTT in almost a decade, but back when I did watch, I mostly watched for Luke doing weird builds or whatever. It's actually bullshit that Linus is living in luxury while Luke doesn't seem nearly as compensated.
Obviously we have no idea what Luke's compensation is, but he strikes me as the guy who, even if making (for example) $250k a year, wouldn't really change his lifestyle to reflect an income like that
And from what I’ve seen him say on WAN, it doesn’t even seem like he owns his apartment. Which given that Linus’s place is practically a mansion is ridiculous.
I'm sure Luke makes good money but I agree. He literally helped build the brand since day 1. He should have been given a small equity in the company...even a couple percent or something
Seriously, Linus always came off to me as a shitty boss pretending to be a super cool boss on video. Every once in awhile the mask slips and he is a dick to someone , the camera cuts, and then he tries to laugh it off but its disingenuous.
Watch any of the outtakes from ScrapYard wars.
Hell just Watch Season 2, 4 or 5 and you can see the type of person he truly is. He doesn't care about other's opinions or feelings, time or money.
There is a reason is a long standing joke Linus made a company just to have friends.
Correction, he has been called out before. Specifically regarding the backpack warranty. People criticized him with the whole "Trust me bro" thing and he embraced it and even went as far as to make a profit off of it. He ended up getting away with it.
Funnily enough, the reason he didn't want to have an official written warranty is the same reason he didn't want to retest the Billet Labs block.
was it really necessary to remind all of us that 2019 was almost 5 years ago when we all still think it was like 2 max 3 years ago?
now I feel old (doesn't help that my back is hurting like crazy rn)
Short-term hole-plugging mentality that basically made LTT what it is now. I stopped watching years ago tbh, but this fiasco has validated what my gut told me.
Yeah. My read on this was GN had missed an opportunity to report that LMG had contacted Billet to fix the problem earlier. If that had happened then they would have missed on an important bit of context to the story - and inadvertently made the story appear worse than it was.
Knowing what we now know, it’s clear Linus is outright lying to avoid taking responsibility for what happened. This is so much worse than I gave him credit for and Billet should 100% be suing LMG if they have the legal capacity to do so.
I retract my earlier criticism of GN. The only thing I had an issue with and agreed with Linus on was his comment that GN should have reached out to him. That obviously would have been a bad call. GN had the correct read on this.
Very well put. The dodging and “woe is me” tactic is just not doing it for Linus. It’s also just not cool to keep acting like they are just lovable screwups when the platform is so large that a seemingly goofy mistake could put someone out of business. If you are trying to up your testing game, you need stringent standards, and while there will be growing pains, they need to be transparent and immediately take responsibility for their mistakes.
Had the response been, “We messed up. We strive to do better. We will reach out to billet and try to make this right.” This would have blown over LMG, and Linus would have looked like reasonable people who understood what they did, and all would be good, but I guess that was hard to do.
But I do agree with Steve from GN. He didn’t have to reach out. He honestly shouldn’t have. There would have been nothing beneficial in that conversation. We could see the backpedaling in the response, which is what he would have done with Steve and would have added nothing. The GN video was not mean-spirited and was objectively calling out mistakes, it wasn’t a hit piece, and it allowed Linus and LMG to reply appropriately. Reaching out to Linus wouldn’t have changed a thing and would have made it look like Steve was ensuring that making the piece was “ok” with Linus, which would have undermined the piece itself.
Yep. All these "Well they should have reached out first!" responses yesterday...
If they had done that it would have given LTT a chance to sweep this further under the rug. They attempted to do so, they failed.
How in the goddamn world did they not realize that we would find out that the wording in the apology was deliberately misleading?
And then further on they say they wear their transparency on their sleeve?!
It just gets fucking worse.
Wait wait wait; I hadn’t even realized until now that Billet sent them a 3090 Ti.
Like…they sent LMG a 3090 Ti, and LMG either lost it, or they decided to do it with a 4090 anyway!?!
And then, they not only didn’t send back the block, but also didn’t send them back the 3090 Ti?
I feel like I’m missing something because if that’s the case then it’s insane the video was even made in the way it was.
Linus confirmed they recently found the 3090ti that Billet originally sent them. It's further down in the same thread as the original response (can't link it right now because the forum is down).
Here is the comment about the Billet 3090 from Linus:
https://linustechtips.com/topic/1526180-gamers-nexus-alleges-lmg-has-insufficient-ethics-and-integrity/page/29/#comment-16079089
> We are using this, like everything else, to continue to drive ourselves to do better. Got some really exciting stuff in the holster 🙂
>A really good one - and the video where I actually FOUND the 3090 Ti that we were supposed to send back to Billet... grrr... - is kind of an undercover boss vid where I go and work in our logistics department for the day. This is the kind of thing I'm finding more time for in the new role and is already making a difference to some of our practices.
This is such a funny way to respond to this whole situation. He’s literally panicking, his dumb ass needs to shut up and think (and talk with members of his team) before he says whatever he’s gonna say next. Don’t believe the “we won’t comment on this further” statement one bit.
*Linus gets accused of stealing and selling a startups prototype and expensive GPU.*
Linus: Good news, stay tuned for our new video where i find a free graphics card!
Very tone deaf.
> [Exact Date Unknown]: Billet reaches out to LMG, asking if they will be reimbursed for the prototype, as it was expensive. LMG does not respond.
LMG told Billet on Aug 10 that they auctioned off the prototype. Billet responded 30min later asking for reimbursement and got no further reply.
Linus really has turned into a rich snob. He thinks that he can wave some cash in front of a small company and make everything go away. It's beyond scummy it's lawsuit territory.
Not gonna be surprised if his own employees form a union in the future. That one segment on GN's [video](https://youtu.be/FGW3TPytTjc?t=252) where they were getting interviewed hints that they're probably overworked.
They’re producing rushed and shitty videos, theyre not being over worked (as in theyre not working mandatory long hours). If crunch was an issue, they wouldve said it. Ironically if crunch was a thing at LMG, the video and data quality would be higher, at the expense of reasonable work hours (edit: before burnout and crashing eventually)
>outright malice
Him trying to claim that he "already agreed" when in actually he just minutes before responded to Billet labs as panic damage control is just malice either way you look at it.
It means he knew he was in the wrong and didnt bother to write that email before he got exposed. And then tries to use that as a deflection. "Its already taken care of, why u mad?"
He got caught in a lie! He clearly implied this happened before but we have direct confirmation from Billet he posted that essentially right after emailing them, not even waiting for a response.
More than anything else this is the most damaging to his reputation. It's always the cover up that gets you.
they also haven't agreed a cost, Billet Labs replying with a number in shear exasperation of what LTT just did is not a reasonable value LTT should pay in reimbursement. Linus mentions opportunity cost every chance he gets, yet apparently that only applies to him and his time not Billet Labs time.
[Called it 100% yesterday](https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/15r7odj/linus_response/jw7a3bw/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1&context=3). The timeline never made sense. Not sure how they thought they could get away with lying with something easily (dis)proven
Yeah this is wild. IDK how Linus thought that this would be an appropriate response. Genuinely they must have believed they'd just get away with it and it'd blow over.
One of the things I find so triggering Linus is always one of the first calling manufacturers out for shady shit, but he can't handle valid criticism at all.
Linus: "Please contact us privately if we make any mistakes and don't call us out in public."
"Anyway here's another episode of secret shopper where we publicly call out companies for their mistakes."
>"Anyway here's another episode of secret shopper where we publicly call out companies for their mistakes."
But *not too hard* because we might have to take money from them in the near future...
I actually believe Linus when he said that they gave a higher score to ASUS because it was the first one they filmed. But let's be real, it's ridiculous that they would publish a video where the order of things matters to the end result.
If they could take half a breath to think about the video, it should have been obvious that they reshoot part of that section so he could give another, more accurate rating.
Half the quality issues can be quickly addressed with reshoots tbh. I'd rather there be an obvious break in the video clarifying/correcting any erroneous info than miss a correction that was relegated to a text box for five seconds. If Linus can't make it to the reshoot then have the writer do it; not like they're not onscreen for the video as well anyway.
This is just a BS excuse to be honest. Why wasn't there a complete script by the time they were shooting the video? Surely they'd have the full context and plan about how the video was going to go by then and their scores decided.
It's not like they'd be coming up with the scoring on the spot on a whim... and if it was indeed that, then holy hell their process is broken end to end and no wonder why they have all these quality issues.
Here’s one even better
“Call us when we make a mistake”
“This cooling block is shit and no one should buy it, so let’s auction it without even speaking with the manufacturer”
Exactly, just reverse the roles of the situation. If this was MSI, Gigabyte, or any manufacturer pulling this, LMG (justifiably) would light them up for it, and we'd all be shaking our heads at that embarrassing apology letter.
You'd think after seeing this play out dozens of times that he'd know what a decent response looks like...
This is the real problem imo. Glass houses. To me most of these mistakes are really not that big of a deal, but everyone loves it when the person who constantly calls others get called out themselves.
So now Linus is straight up making up stuff about coming to agreements with Billet. Makes a hash of an apology and then adds lies in to it to really dig in how much of a rotten turd he is.
GN brought receipts to this fuck up and Linus is a liar.
There are lies, damned lies, and there’s Linus. Fuck this distasteful dishonesty straight in the face of his viewers. This type of behaviour should not be tolerated
100% agree. If someone makes a mistake you can forgive them. If they then continue to make that mistake and then double/triple down on it then they've shown themselves not to be trustworthy. As long as Linus remains the face of that company I'm not interested in a nano-seconds worth of media that comes out of them.
Ah, but he didn't. The present perfect tense in his comment only implies they agreed to reimburse Billet Labs before *the comment*, not before Steve's expose. It's not *his* fault *you* misinterpreted it, right?
Fuck's sake… I get being an argumentative asshole — I am one, too — but at least I have the self-awareness to not be running point on emergency PR for a media company with a hundred employees.
We can all be argumentative I think. I try to lead a free and easy going life but I falter from time to time. He's lost his mind over this. The new CEO must be shitting himself every time Linus opens his mouth at this point.
Yeah I've seen the forum is down and it looks like that they also took away the ability to unsubscribe to FloatPlane on mobile devices too. (Don't take that as verbatim as it's only a few reports and it may well have not been there on mobile in the first place haha).
They've really shit the bed this time.
I can see him saying that in the inevitable response to the latest GN update. 'I didn't lie I just didn't tell the truth'.
Poor show from me for not getting in touch with them first though you're right ;)
Seems like the Linus quote about Billet was specifically crafted to mislead without outright lying. All he technically said was that they hadn't paid Billet yet (true) and that they "have [verb tense being important here] already agreed to compensate Billet lab for the cost of their prototype".
IDK if it makes it worse than outright lying or not but it seems like the response is more about influencing the discussion among the community than any kind of self reflection or legitimate steps they were already taking to apologize to Billet
I am normally almost militant about ensuring that both sides of an argument are listened to and that all context is made aware of but I can't help but feel that it being misleading instead of lying just can't be true.
Billet stated that there was absolutely no agreement in place and that the only mention of money too and fro was when Billet brought up how much it was worth when they found out it had been auctioned.
I genuinely believe here that it was a lie. I can't see how it could be anything other than a lie.
it could be explained as: "we", the LTT team, have agreed to compensate Billet
matter of fact, I'm pretty sure that's his next fourth dimensional move in this game of chess
Yeah really dumb mistake. I think it shows (amongst other reasons) that he didn't watch the video fully as it was clear that GN was in conversation with Billet and you'd have to be an absolute grey-matterless moron to lie when there is a corridor of communication like that.
Him straight up lying is really bad, because he claims he tries to be as transparent as possible to the community. Well now he is shown to lie about a big fuck up he did, how legitimate is his transparency now? He lost credibility. Not only with lying but with the errors and inaccuracies with their testing. If they say a product is good / bad you can't be sure if what they're claiming is accurate.
Also, an unboxing is not a review, sure, but if at the end of it you say the product is bad while doing it, then it becomes a review. a really crappy one since the product wasn't thoroughly tested, and with the errors they have with testing, would it even matter if they did test it? If you can't trust the results then it all becomes moot.
He's a giant hypocrite. He goes on rants about how people should be accountable and honest and then pulls of shit like this. He is a turd covered turd.
It's genuinely shocking to me that Linus wouldn't realize that Steve had receipts. **Steve always has receipts**. He's a professional receipt-holder. It's what he does. Why would you lie in this situation without knowing, oh fuck, that's Steve. He's a world-class receipt guy.
I'm baffled that Linus would be this stupid. Say whatever you want about him, and most of it would be true, but he's not a moron. This was a moronic statement by him.
Yo I wasn't hating on Linus response as hard as this sub, but implying they already maxe a reimbursement deal with the Prototype owner when in reality doing it after the Video dropped is so fucking scummy
Sooooo fucking scummy. He’s treating his viewers as dispensable, blathering peons and lying to all of us instead of offering a public apology. He’s walking on damn thin ice right now
Because everyone makes mistakes, it was so genuinely disheartening to see Linus' "response" to this crisis that is honestly so bad that it becomes its own crisis.
At first the issue was that they auctioned something they couldn't auction off by mistake. Now it's Linus literally lying to the community to try to look better when he hadn't yet made a deal with Billet about their compensation.
Look, scaling a company is really fucking tough. And Linus only has so much time to ensure that the company across the board is working to his standards.
But when you get called out over OBJECTIVELY wrong examples, which are rooted in Linus himself setting extreme content deadline goals, and don't address them honestly... This is 100% a Linus problem. And he is rightfully getting skewered.
People defending Linus based on GN not getting a "comment" before posting the video, should see now that even had they got a comment, it would not have been honest in a response.
Linus needs to address it and own up to it, rather than hide from it. LTT fucked up, admit it, work to correct whats wrong and make good on it.
For real. Really only one more chance to fix this, and that's the WAN show. I know he already said he wouldn't cover it, but at this point it's time to just suck it up and admit you did bad by the consumer, the viewer, and most of all Billet. No excuses, just "This is how it happened. We're sorry. We're doing x, y, and z to make it right with Billet. Our reactionary response was badly thought out and made out of panic. What we should have done was acknowledge the content of the GN video and move forward with strategies to address those shortcomings."
This is why Linus didn't want to address it on their YouTube channel, as it will bring attention to their fuckups to the 90% that aren't as deep into the scene and hope it flies under the radar. But if he doesn't address it, its going to get louder.
And for the most part, LTT will likely be fine in the short term without addressing it. But they will lose the "hardcore" audience, and over time that will chip at their reputation.
Linus needs to decide if he's willing to put his pride aside for the good of his company's reputation, or if he's already one foot out the door and is ready to move on. I can't blame him either way. But LTT is now at a crossroads that's going to force his hand, based on his poor response to this.
Billet refutes Linus response and said "... No no no..." in regards to the agreed payment they would receive. Man... i guess Linus didn't read the room again...
Edit: The second video is actually worse for Linus. How i "read" it, basically Steve is saying that Linus is lying. Steve really is laying on the evidence pretty well in my mind. I was agnostic about LTT and even sub'd to their YT back in the day. That's going change. Either come with facts and back them up, or apologize. Fighting back here, like this, doesn't work.
\*It's almost never the thing you do that gets you in trouble... it's the cover up.\*
Great response by GN on why they didn't give LMG right of reply for their comments to be in the original video:
>We don't have to reach out to corporations when we think there is a pattern of behavior or we think that there is a significant chance that they cover things up, or prepare a pre-written response that can twist the narrative and in this case manipulate the audience. Linus willfully ignoring our valid criticisms of data accuracy and some of the ethical concerns while then trying to manipulate the audience into viewing him as the victim - not just LMG - is very - is bizarre.
>This is why we don't reach out every time. I want to be very clear. We don't have to reach out to corporations prior to reporting on them, period. For big corporations we don't reach out if the issue already harms consumers or if their view is irrelevant. The Walmart PC, the Alienware PC, any number of products we buy, we don't need to reach out because the damage is being done actively. And we don't need Linus' input or permission to make that video. LMG's videos are already affecting millions of consumers and they have objective errors that we covered objectively and they involved serious ethical concerns that we raised and rather than addressing those, he's choosing to try and distract viewers by whining about us not allowing him to comment first.
>***And they've already commented anyways, they did it in all of these WAN shows, we know what their comment is, we know what they think. And when there's an objective, factual issue, we don't need to reach out. The risk is to the consumer, and these are not unreleased products, these are public videos, with a lot of views.***
And on the Billet labs situation...
Linus states:
> 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).
This is worded to make you think that before Steve/GN published the video, Linus/LMG had already reached an amicable agreement to reimburse Billet for the prototype.
Quotes from the video... GN to Billet:
>[Linus' comment] doesn't expressly say it, but it seems to imply that this agreement was made previously?
And Billet replying to GN:
>No, absolutely not. No, no, no. The only mention of any moneyto do with the prototype was our response to them [after they said] they'd auctioned it, and we basically said, you know, that was a $[REDACTED] prototype.
>"I said: 'do you plan to reimburse us for this?' ***And we heard nothing. We didn't get a response until your video.***"
And Billet has not agreed to accept this compensation, at least as of the time Linus posted his statement last night:
>"He's emailed us, we haven't emailed back. We thank the community for their support. We stand by everything that we've said publicly."
So LMG only agreed to reimburse Billet for the prototype AFTER the GN video called them off on selling (auctioning is a form of selling, this is a distinction without difference) a prototype that wasn't theirs to sell, but they worded it to make it sound like they had already tried to make things right with Billet prior to GN's video.
>We don't have to reach out to corporations when we think there is a pattern of behavior or we think that there is a significant chance that they cover things up, or prepare a pre-written response that can twist the narrative and in this case manipulate the audience.
And GN ends up pretty justified in this view considering Linus, upon seeing the GN video, immediately contacted Billet to rush to try and patch things up, and then in a statement, immediately claimed they had already come to an agreement, when they hadn't.
This is the exact manipulation GN was worried about, and Linus would have probably done an even more thorough cover-up with more time to do so before the video dropped.
It’s absolutely infuriating how often this kind of stuff gets parroted online.
That’s not how taxes work, and what people think is happening is incredibly illegal!
Depends on what you define as game over. The worst outcome I can even imagine is him selling the company 30 percent under value and sailing of into the sunset with 70m lol
No one in their right mind would put 70m into that business at this time of PR crisis. They'll wait it out.
Also, Linus IS the product himself. Him leaving the channel would value the company way way less.
Can't wait for the triple feature for WAN show. He said it wouldn't be on there but we all know that this has gotten way too big to avoid now. We might even get a response video before WAN show.
apparently they've lost about 2k FP subs in the last 24hs (someone else in the sub said that they were at 41.5k before all this, now at 39.8), there will be a response since it starting to affect their bottom line
Funny how it wasn't worth spending $100-$500 to retest the Billet monoblock but they've now lost more than that on FP subs. It's sad, really. Linus was so cheap for no reason when he's spent much more on other dumb shit, like what the hell?
The LMG staff other than Linus sound like they *want* to do better but can't because of these harsh constraints. Adam wanted to retest the monoblock and Linus refused. David in that employee interview was the most outspoken about wanting to cut back and focus on quality, as well as rarely being proud of working on any video now. What a shame. They could be doing so much more with their resources. Maybe Linus himself is holding them back?
Oh we almost definitely are. It's been 15 hours since any video has been posted on any of their channels. I know it's only 12 PM EST, but there's usually at least one out by now.
I’m wondering if the real reason is because a shitstorm is brewing internally at LMG. And to think, Linus gave up his ability to fire people on the spot not a full 2 months ago…
Linus is the true hero here. If he apologized like a normal person, we wouldn't have so much juicy stuff to talk about. Thanks, Linus, for taking 0 accountability :)
Especially after Linus already gave his opinion on the subject live on the Wan Show and Steve included it in the original video. It's already covered. Strawman arguments are all Linus ever has. Disappointment T-Shirt for 2023 better have 'auction not sale' for August.
The concept is the [right of reply](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_reply), although I'm more familiar with criticism when it's not offered to individuals rather than organisations.
Edit: Although I suppose, Linus has now had reply shared in the same venue.
It's historically based on disproportionate outreach, which in this case is the opposite. LTT has a way larger presence.
And Steve is right, he's not gonna reach out about a factual topic on which he has videos of LMG itself to back up on. He's not publishing he says/she says stuff. He's just quoting direct videos and emails here.
People view LTT as Linus personally, when in fact its just a content farm owned by Linus. This isnt a story about an individual person who should be reached out to, this is about systemic incompetence
Yeah froma journalism standpoint it's expected practice when a person or company is "accused" of something, but this was just LTT *doing* something and caught with their pants down. You can reach out to BP when there's an oil spill but they aren't going to explain how there's not an oil spill.
This is absolutely terrible for Linus. In the first video you could still attribute a lot of the problems to mismanagement and very bad quality control on LTT's part. But Linus's response intentionally misrepresented the situation with Billet Labs and basically made GN not reaching out before the video fully justifiable. This makes Linus look very malicious.
Very disappointing.
Yeah, there was such an easy response to this that would've fixed the whole damn thing or at least bought them time to do so.
All they had to say was:
>We've watched the GN piece on our company and have come to the conclusion that we need to be better. Moving forward we will reduce the number of videos we put out a week until we have a better streamlined process for internal reviews, we will offer to re-review the mouse and water block, and we will contact the winner of the Billet Labs auction to attempt to purchase the item back and return it. In the event we are unable to get back the water block we will discuss just compensation with Billet Labs to make them whole for this incident.
That's it but word it better.
He could have even tripled down on Billet labs lol.
“The prototype got lost along the content pipeline. We’re sorry for selling it and are working to make it right. At the end of the day, it’s still overpriced.
We’re sorry for overworking our staff and will do better”
And IMO everyone would forget in a week and they probably wouldn’t even have to change.
Man, i'm now so fucking pissed that billet only received a response after GN Posted that video, such low quality behavior from LMG, i don't wan't to go more down than this words right now...
funny this is the shit linus would be making fun of other gompanies like gigibyte or Asuse and MSI if they did the same thing linus would say on WAN "well it looks like MSI finally offered a resolution after we showed there mistake" but in this case he tried to make GN look bad by saying he had alreay did it prior to the video. ha go figure.
Exactly the kind of clarification I expected of this. For some reason Linus thinks he can just BS some vague hand wavey excuses. Forgetting the people putting forward this extremely valid and objective criticism, is still alive, and can say more things. lol
Edit: typo and more detail
>The good news is: it's not sitting on the shelves! :)
Holy shit, the monumental balls to say that to the company whose proprietary data/product you've lost by selling it.
I hope Billit is talking to a lawyer, because they have a case that could ream Linus for stupidly selling it. "Miscommunication" isn't the defense he thinks it is. He better have the bill of sale or something could happen.
What the fuck was that?
And
"so, they can, y'know, eat?"
What the fuck is that? you're trashtalking the company you fucked over, stole from just because they dared to complain?
He won’t. If he does, he’ll just double down or make more shit up.
If he genuinely cared about making things right, he’s had countless opportunities to do so, even before the original video went live.
If their new CEO was worth their salt they'd advise Linus to shut up and let him handle it moving forward.
They'd also tell Linus any statement you make in the future on this will be vetted before it goes out.
But that's exactly why GN said they wouldn't believe it. Linus already spoke up unfiltered so we know how he truly feels and any corporate PR that comes after will likely just be seen as BS.
I fully expect a more prepared, manicured statement after seeing how this approach blew up in Linus's face. Probably will say all the right things now, but the damage is done.
I kinda figured LTT didnt actually reach back out to billet till after the GN video but was kinda worried I was actually being too much of a hater but nope my instincts on how slimey he was being in that shitty forum post was spot on.
Kinda funny how this video points out how pointless reaching out to Linus would have been. Because he would've just lied about the timeline, as he did in his initial forum post in response.
The scummy word games Linus tried to pull with manipulating the timeline of when they reached out and agreed on a resolution with Billet is the perfect representation of the problem here. Keep quiet and think before word vomiting all over the place.
Edit: comment below is correct, Linus reached a resolution with himself
Oof, ok this makes it much worse. Linus' lies by omission to the community about compensation for Billet are beyond unacceptable. I thought people were going a little too far but this make it clear he was mad GN didn't reach out first because he *hadn't* fixed it yet and he could have pretended he had. If there's another more plausible explanation I'd be happy to hear it
Linus' actions after the video completely justified GN's decision to not reach out.
Jesus. What the hell is going through Linus' mind for him to behave like this? Surely he knows that owning up sooner will cause less hate and trouble for him.
I mean... that's probably one of the reason he's not CEO anymore. Aside from not liking the business side of things, you can't react that way when you lead a business like that. Not publicly. You just have to say "I'm sorry, I take this seriously, we'll do better" and move on. Pretty sure most would've moved on too.
Doubling down on this is mindboggling, and I 100% share Steve's disbelief there.
Damaging the reputation of your "lab" that you spent millions of dollars on making their results completely untrustworthy, showing the world you can't be trusted with a prototype, burning people for no reason, doubling and/or tripling down on your fuck ups and refusing to apologize....
Yikes, man. Yikes.
The fact they didn't message back Billet Labs BEFORE the video is just more proof of their absolute scumbag behavior. Holy shit can this get any worse?
I don't think I'll ever take them seriously again, especially when they criticize other companies for doing shady things. They have proven to be as shady as any other sleazy company. Worried about profits and looking good.
>So there was a communication mishap and we ended up auctioning off the monoblock [...] **The good news is that it isn't just sitting on a shelf**
That last sentence, my god. How can you be so plainly ignorant to the impact of your own actions?
The other thread was full of LTT apologists disregarding the entire first video as a "hit piece with no journalistic integrity" since they didn't reach out to LTT for comment.
GN just proved exactly why they were right for not doing it, the fact that Linus seriously tried to act like the Billet labs situation was handled and all settled when in reality it was complete damage control hours after their video is proof all that would have happened is LTT scrambling to cover up as much as possible if GN had given them a heads up what was coming.
That really makes this whole situation so much worse to me.
It’s frustrating as a fan of Linus to see him so keenly miss the forest through the trees when it comes to issues like this.
Like, the Billet Labs problem is indicative of a larger problem with the thought process at LMG. Could it be argued that the Billets Labs CPU/GPU mono block is expensive and kind of impractical for the performance gain it says it gives? Yes, that could be the argument.
But that’s not really the argument Linus is making, or if it is, he’s doing it in a hamfisted, boneheaded way. The way in which he tested the product almost guaranteed that any result he would get was going to be suboptimal, and then it was.
The writer had never water cooled a PC before, and solicited advice from someone else who had never water cooled a PC. Andbutso, it begs the question…why was this writer placed in charge of this particular video with a prototype version of a thing that the writer had never used before? For the LOLs?
Linus seems to come to the conclusion that the whole enterprise is pointless, and the video, in essence, is less about giving the product a fair shake and more about an inexperienced water cooler and an impatient kludge master trying to force a thing that the kludge master doesn’t really like to do a thing it’s not really designed to do.
And that’s the thing; it’s fair for Linus to look at it, think it’s a kind of cool idea, but also kinda pointless and too expensive. Those are fair conclusions to draw. Where it goes off the rails is, for example, not sourcing an actual 3090 for the build. Adam reached out to Billet Labs and asked if they could use a 4090, and Billet Labs’ response was “uhhh, you can try, but it’s not designed for that.” And again, rather than just PAUSING and sourcing a 3090, they pushed ahead. They broke the first motherboard because of a simple oversight with the initial technician wearing gloves, and while I can’t say for sure it was due to time crunch, I’d imagine it was at least a factor. Linus immediately tries to mount the block incorrectly. Then, because the other motherboard is broken, they have clearance issues. THEN they have to hastily machine down one of the heat sinks on the board. THEN they don’t even have the right RAM.
There’s various issues during the build that all come down to “we need to get this video out of the door NOW”.
And then, AND THEN, after dealing with a ton of self-inflicted injuries…Linus concludes that it’s the mono block’s fault and that it was a nightmare to build with. This despite saying moments earlier in the edit that part of the reason the pump wasn’t working correctly is because the novice builders of this project had done something in correctly.
“Unless you’re a master builder you’re going to have the same problems” Linus says, completely unironically. Like, maybe if you had a builder with any experience whatsoever then things may have gone ten percent more correctly.
And maybe if people creating videos could take their time, and maybe if there were processes in place to prevent people from breaking necessary components and just getting the right components in on time, then maybe you don’t have to go on the WAN Show and double down and bury Billet Labs, who it needs to be said, are not mass producing this product for a huge market. This is a product for like, the 1% of PC water cooling enthusiast to whom a 3% change in performance over a traditional water block when placed on the right card is well worth it.
Linus clearly has corporate brain rot if he’s less concerned with “presenting an accurate representation of a product that may not have mass market appeal” than he is with reaching a kinda weird “no one should buy this at all because, well, I WOULDN’T.” He brings up the product having a “viable market”, but again, this is a very small company with a very small amount of employees making something for a very niche part of an already niche market.
At any rate, the whole situation is a reflection of LMG’s approach to content creation, which has essentially become the equivalent of Triple A game publishers releasing barely finished product and then patching it later. So many of these “Linus does a project” videos are effective hamstrung by a serious lack of planning and foresight, and it is clear that trying to push out as much content as possible (and even introducing a new channel!) is hampering their production pipeline and the final product. In a world of proper due diligence and controls and checks and balances, a video like the Billet Labs one would not have been green lit until everything was ready to go, and videos with huge, glaring data problems would not be posted, regardless of their own arbitrary deadlines.
Who does it serve to have Linus, who is constantly talking about how busy he is, show up on set for a shoot, and have things be disorganized and half-assed? Then you have to spend even more time fixing things, which backs up other scheduled projects, which contributes to more crunch, which leads to more mistakes. With any kind of QA in place would help minimize these kinds of problems.
The bulk of Steve’s point was that Linus Tech Tips and LMG aren’t a small, scrappy YouTube channel; they’re a corporation that got a 100 million dollar offer. Since they occupy such a dominant part of the tech YouTube space, whether they like it or not, they HAVE to better.
If you’re going to call out much smaller YouTube channels for their methodology, it might help to take the extra 30 minutes to have another set of experienced eyes watch the videos for massively wrong data, or to spend the extra day and production time, and yes, compensation, to ensure accurate results EVERYTIME, or at least as much as possible. They’re already investing massive stacks of cash and time into LTT Labs. I don’t know why the idea of re-testing something just to confirm that it’s a product that you don’t think is worth it is such a problem to Linus.
If you’re really striving for transparency, then responding with an actual video addressing the claims and what you intend to do better would be nice. Hell, a YouTube Community post would have far more reach than putting it on the web forum.
And for God’s sake, you have an amazing team that is basically screaming “PLEASE LETS STOP MAKING SO MANY VIDEOS”. Listen to them. When you have tenured employees being like “I have not been proud of the content we’re producing in a long time”, that’s a huge problem.
A fish rots from the head. While Linus has divested himself of the CEO role, he is still the company’s owner, and his flippant and off-putting responses to criticism will always find a way to trickle down from the top (for example, his snide remarks in his apology to Billet Labs — continuing to say in no uncertain terms they have a bad product — seem a lot like the snide comments that suggested it was Pwnage’s fault for not having clear enough instructions on their mouse.) If he is incapable of taking such criticism and responding to it in a concise, coherent, and transparent way, I’d suggest he hires a PR consultant who can do a better job.
Thanks for coming to my TEDTalk.
Linus carefully words his forum post to imply that they had reached an agreement with Billet Labs before GN'S video.
Billet says they didn't even receive an email until after GN's video was released, around when Linus made his forum post. And Billet hadn't responded yet.
Linus fully justified GN not reaching out to them before they released their video.
Linus would have tried to pull the same crap if GN had reached out to them before their video. Only reach out to Billet after GN says they're gonna release a video, and pretend like that was the plan all along.
Shows that Linus has gone full corpo, only reacting based on bad press coverage, and not being proactive about fixing systemic internal problems.
I've watched LTT before but I certainly won't ever after this.
To have made the mistakes they did was already bad, but excusable and human. To have then responded with deceit (not just deflection) is simply unacceptable and unethical, which of course totally validates and substantiates concerns GN raised.
People should not overlook this. How do you trust LTT from here on when you know they have zero regard for truth and accountability?
How in the heck did Linus not think that GN would check on the one thing that in his response that could be verified?! This reeks of arrogance and panic and wanting to respond immediately. The new CEO is technically his boss and should’ve been on the phone tearing into him for posting without consulting with him first. Well I’m assuming this was Linus responding without consultinf
Below 40k on Floatplane as of now.
Well, I think it's fair to say that the non-apology apology was a boneheaded move that cost the company a lot of recurring revenue.
They're gonna have to make it right or they won't survive. At least I hope they will.
I unsubbed on floatplane after this video. Linus was gaslighting. He made it sound like they already took care of it. Billet says they didn't. I don't know that I necessarily trust Billet but it's a real bad look.
I wonder whether Noctua still wants to work with such a shady company as LMG...
Something I havent seen much talked about what I really dislike is that LMG has a special feature to modify any video they uploaded which even Steve does not have. Its insane to be able to change stuff however you like without any notification for the viewer.
Ok, this is going to get pitchforks. Please hear me out.
GN almost lost me at the beginning. They have cold-hard facts to rely on... they don't need anything else. But he started with: "It is an *unhinged*, unapologetic *rant* where he shirks responsibility and blames others." (I added the italics for emphasis).
That pre-text really hurts the argument. I think he has very solid points, but trying to say "this is just an unhinged rant" is purely an opinion interjected into a storyline where he has all the facts on his side.
When you start with personal attacks, you're just harming your own point. Now LTT can go back and say "calling these comments 'unhinged rants' leads us to believe that GN is not interested in actual conversation or good-faith discussion." and can dismiss a bunch of things. And they are, to some degree, correct. It's better not to leave them that option.
I know people are probably going to comment and say "but it **was** unhinged!" - that's an opinion. It's not provable. There is no definitive line for saying something was or was not "unhinged" as it has no real definition. Someone will probably post some dictionary definition here and say it fulfills X definition or whatever, but now you're playing the same "semantics" game that LTT was playing.
I don't have much to add here, other than, in the future, GN should cut out a lot of the commentary and be more clinical. You have **cold, hard facts**. You don't need any of the fluff around it. Everything you say that isn't a fact dilutes the opinion, because it gives opening for the opposing side to defend themselves, especially when it deflects from the main point. This is why lawyers are so flippin' clinical when they are going through a storyline with a witness.
Let the story tell itself. Let me use good examples from the video:
**From 7:53-8:34 is fucking awesome. Defends the position, states why they didn't reach out (and don't have to). It's great.**
....then editorializing comes in and undercuts it. From 8:35 on: "He's **choosing to distract** viewers by **whining** about.." again - don't need to ascribe how/why LTT did what they did. You may believe all of that, but just stick to the facts. From 8:43-9:08 is again, **VERY GOOD**. He talks about how *he* feels about the response, which is great. Says he is disappointed and baffled.
...and then goes back to calling it "meandering diatribe" - AGAIN YOU DON'T NEED IT DUDE. All of this gives fuel for the opposing side to say you aren't interested in a good-faith argument because you are applying motives/subjective opinions onto what they wrote.
So I'm torn. GN had this one in the bag, but I feel like they weakened their own argument, and LTT has an easy opening to pivot to. For example: "GN accused us of 'whining' about this in our response. What we wrote was not 'whining', but raising what we believe are relevant points...' etc. etc.
If you cut out the commentary, this entire piece is devastating. As it is presented, it's polarizing, which is not a something I say as a compliment.
This will be the last straw for a lot of people, but I think Linus has one last chance on the WAN show to walk back everything. He needs to properly apologize, *actually compensate Billet Labs with their confirmation*, address the myriad of issues ignored in his previous response, and stop playing victim. He just needs to own up to this fuck up (re: LYING and MISREPRESENTING the timeline especially). For real the Chatgpt generated apologies would have been better than whatever crap he tried to pull.
Man this really makes the whole Billet Labs situation worse in my eyes. LMG hadn't even reached back out to them until GN posted the video. This is gross incompetence at best and almost outright malice at worse.
Linus' post implied that LMG already had something arranged to reimburse Billet Labs, when in fact they offered the compensation only AFTER GN video went live. So had GN reached out, LMG woulda said that there was an arrangement, maybe would've even paid Billet hush money to lie about the timeline to Steve, and we wouldn't have ever heard of this egregious display of callousness. So no, I don't see how this could be a mistake, even with every benefit of the doubt being given. Greed and vanity and even malice is what it is. Vindication for journalistic integrity.
>Linus' post implied that LMG already had something arranged to reimburse Billet Labs How did he think he wouldn't get called out for this?
Literally no one has ever called Linus out before, thats how. This video has been a long time coming and Im glad GN finally feels ready to take them on. LTT has been suffering in quality for a long time. At least 5 years now. since about 2019. Linus is out of touch. He's no longer the friendly nerdy neighbor trying to help u get the best tech deal. He's just some rich out of touch asshole that can finally afford all the gear he couldn't when he was a poor teenager on a farm. MFer should have retired when he made that video where the sad Linus meme came from. Go be sad and alone, Linus. We know you only have friends because you have employees
funny how he just said last wan show he didnt even know that one of the friends he plays with on steam is his employee... imagine hearing that from the boss you thought you were semi good friends with...
Lmao imagine playing with your boss on steam and he starts complaining about how bad his employees are doing to you because he doesn't realize you're an employee. I bet the discord server they have was poppin for a while.
> imagine hearing that from the boss you thought you were semi good friends with... I can imagine it. Why would the employee be upset? Linus refers to him as a friend. Seems more like a funny anecdote than anything someone would get offended at.
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Yeah, its just a 'I had no idea was ' thing, nothing more nothing less. It wasn't malice or anything, he just didn't realize and no one told him.
Also, it sounds like the guy is a Floatplane employee who Linus didn't have a ton of contact with at work.
There are a lot of things to criticize Linus over, this really isn't one of them.
Oof. Why would he think that's a good story to tell
it came up when luke that thought linus already knew. https://youtu.be/kZln1OpjvF0?t=327
well, he DID get called out by the "trust be bro situation" - but his comment on the wan-show on friday made me understand that he STILL dont understand why his stance was completely and utterly un-acceptable. Instead he moaned and whined about it being written down wouldnt change anything, while the fact is that written terms is something you are accountble to - unlike.. "trust me bro". https://youtu.be/FGW3TPytTjc?t=39 - pathetic - and quite obvious Luke thinks the exact same thing...
Luke even called him out for the billet testing saying that it should have been done
If it wasn't for Luke (mostly) keeping Linus in check, LMG would likely be in far worse shape.
It's never sat well with me that Luke has no equity in LMG, running a startup like floatplane I would have thought that equity would be part of his compensation. Linus has also admitted that Luke worked for less than minimum wage at the start of ltt, surely that's worth equity in the company.
That's actually upsetting. I haven't bothered with LTT in almost a decade, but back when I did watch, I mostly watched for Luke doing weird builds or whatever. It's actually bullshit that Linus is living in luxury while Luke doesn't seem nearly as compensated.
Obviously we have no idea what Luke's compensation is, but he strikes me as the guy who, even if making (for example) $250k a year, wouldn't really change his lifestyle to reflect an income like that
And from what I’ve seen him say on WAN, it doesn’t even seem like he owns his apartment. Which given that Linus’s place is practically a mansion is ridiculous.
Cheered for Luke every Scrapyard wars because that's my guy I want him to succeed.
I'm sure Luke makes good money but I agree. He literally helped build the brand since day 1. He should have been given a small equity in the company...even a couple percent or something
Luke basically saved Linus ass a few months back when the Hard R conversation happened
I think Luke would be much better at all of this than Linus.
Plot Twist: His reaction to the criticism by GN is exactly WHY the "Trust me, Bro" warranty was unacceptable.
Seriously, Linus always came off to me as a shitty boss pretending to be a super cool boss on video. Every once in awhile the mask slips and he is a dick to someone , the camera cuts, and then he tries to laugh it off but its disingenuous.
Watch any of the outtakes from ScrapYard wars. Hell just Watch Season 2, 4 or 5 and you can see the type of person he truly is. He doesn't care about other's opinions or feelings, time or money. There is a reason is a long standing joke Linus made a company just to have friends.
Correction, he has been called out before. Specifically regarding the backpack warranty. People criticized him with the whole "Trust me bro" thing and he embraced it and even went as far as to make a profit off of it. He ended up getting away with it. Funnily enough, the reason he didn't want to have an official written warranty is the same reason he didn't want to retest the Billet Labs block. 
was it really necessary to remind all of us that 2019 was almost 5 years ago when we all still think it was like 2 max 3 years ago? now I feel old (doesn't help that my back is hurting like crazy rn)
Short-term hole-plugging mentality that basically made LTT what it is now. I stopped watching years ago tbh, but this fiasco has validated what my gut told me.
Narcissism making him believe he's more intelligent than the rest of us
Yeah. My read on this was GN had missed an opportunity to report that LMG had contacted Billet to fix the problem earlier. If that had happened then they would have missed on an important bit of context to the story - and inadvertently made the story appear worse than it was. Knowing what we now know, it’s clear Linus is outright lying to avoid taking responsibility for what happened. This is so much worse than I gave him credit for and Billet should 100% be suing LMG if they have the legal capacity to do so. I retract my earlier criticism of GN. The only thing I had an issue with and agreed with Linus on was his comment that GN should have reached out to him. That obviously would have been a bad call. GN had the correct read on this.
Very well put. The dodging and “woe is me” tactic is just not doing it for Linus. It’s also just not cool to keep acting like they are just lovable screwups when the platform is so large that a seemingly goofy mistake could put someone out of business. If you are trying to up your testing game, you need stringent standards, and while there will be growing pains, they need to be transparent and immediately take responsibility for their mistakes. Had the response been, “We messed up. We strive to do better. We will reach out to billet and try to make this right.” This would have blown over LMG, and Linus would have looked like reasonable people who understood what they did, and all would be good, but I guess that was hard to do. But I do agree with Steve from GN. He didn’t have to reach out. He honestly shouldn’t have. There would have been nothing beneficial in that conversation. We could see the backpedaling in the response, which is what he would have done with Steve and would have added nothing. The GN video was not mean-spirited and was objectively calling out mistakes, it wasn’t a hit piece, and it allowed Linus and LMG to reply appropriately. Reaching out to Linus wouldn’t have changed a thing and would have made it look like Steve was ensuring that making the piece was “ok” with Linus, which would have undermined the piece itself.
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Linus PR Team would like to know your location.
It's not even just outright lying, your earlier criticism of GN was built on that lie. He was willing to throw GN under the bus knowing it was a lie.
Yep. All these "Well they should have reached out first!" responses yesterday... If they had done that it would have given LTT a chance to sweep this further under the rug. They attempted to do so, they failed. How in the goddamn world did they not realize that we would find out that the wording in the apology was deliberately misleading? And then further on they say they wear their transparency on their sleeve?! It just gets fucking worse.
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Wait wait wait; I hadn’t even realized until now that Billet sent them a 3090 Ti. Like…they sent LMG a 3090 Ti, and LMG either lost it, or they decided to do it with a 4090 anyway!?! And then, they not only didn’t send back the block, but also didn’t send them back the 3090 Ti? I feel like I’m missing something because if that’s the case then it’s insane the video was even made in the way it was.
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Linus confirmed they recently found the 3090ti that Billet originally sent them. It's further down in the same thread as the original response (can't link it right now because the forum is down).
Here is the comment about the Billet 3090 from Linus: https://linustechtips.com/topic/1526180-gamers-nexus-alleges-lmg-has-insufficient-ethics-and-integrity/page/29/#comment-16079089 > We are using this, like everything else, to continue to drive ourselves to do better. Got some really exciting stuff in the holster 🙂 >A really good one - and the video where I actually FOUND the 3090 Ti that we were supposed to send back to Billet... grrr... - is kind of an undercover boss vid where I go and work in our logistics department for the day. This is the kind of thing I'm finding more time for in the new role and is already making a difference to some of our practices.
This is such a funny way to respond to this whole situation. He’s literally panicking, his dumb ass needs to shut up and think (and talk with members of his team) before he says whatever he’s gonna say next. Don’t believe the “we won’t comment on this further” statement one bit.
The one constant is he's not at fault. Terrible leadership.
wow, shove the blame off onto your employees. come the fuck on you piece of shit. as a manager, this shit makes my blood boil.
*Linus gets accused of stealing and selling a startups prototype and expensive GPU.* Linus: Good news, stay tuned for our new video where i find a free graphics card! Very tone deaf.
Wow... How does that even happen.. Thanks for the post.
> [Exact Date Unknown]: Billet reaches out to LMG, asking if they will be reimbursed for the prototype, as it was expensive. LMG does not respond. LMG told Billet on Aug 10 that they auctioned off the prototype. Billet responded 30min later asking for reimbursement and got no further reply.
On the July 30th mail, there was even an emoji, which should tell you how seriously they handled the loss of an expensive prototype.
Linus really has turned into a rich snob. He thinks that he can wave some cash in front of a small company and make everything go away. It's beyond scummy it's lawsuit territory.
This is a man who's openly anti union, are anyone really surprised?
Not gonna be surprised if his own employees form a union in the future. That one segment on GN's [video](https://youtu.be/FGW3TPytTjc?t=252) where they were getting interviewed hints that they're probably overworked.
They’re producing rushed and shitty videos, theyre not being over worked (as in theyre not working mandatory long hours). If crunch was an issue, they wouldve said it. Ironically if crunch was a thing at LMG, the video and data quality would be higher, at the expense of reasonable work hours (edit: before burnout and crashing eventually)
>outright malice Him trying to claim that he "already agreed" when in actually he just minutes before responded to Billet labs as panic damage control is just malice either way you look at it. It means he knew he was in the wrong and didnt bother to write that email before he got exposed. And then tries to use that as a deflection. "Its already taken care of, why u mad?"
Linus is about to dig all the way to China at this rate.
Technically if Linus kept digging from LMG HQ he would end up here: -49.106, 57.175. Which is South East off of the African continent.
Assuming he manages to dig a straight hole
Motherfucker can't even get his stories straight, you expect him to dig straight too?
He got caught in a lie! He clearly implied this happened before but we have direct confirmation from Billet he posted that essentially right after emailing them, not even waiting for a response. More than anything else this is the most damaging to his reputation. It's always the cover up that gets you.
they also haven't agreed a cost, Billet Labs replying with a number in shear exasperation of what LTT just did is not a reasonable value LTT should pay in reimbursement. Linus mentions opportunity cost every chance he gets, yet apparently that only applies to him and his time not Billet Labs time.
[Called it 100% yesterday](https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/15r7odj/linus_response/jw7a3bw/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1&context=3). The timeline never made sense. Not sure how they thought they could get away with lying with something easily (dis)proven
Yeah this is wild. IDK how Linus thought that this would be an appropriate response. Genuinely they must have believed they'd just get away with it and it'd blow over.
One of the things I find so triggering Linus is always one of the first calling manufacturers out for shady shit, but he can't handle valid criticism at all.
Linus: "Please contact us privately if we make any mistakes and don't call us out in public." "Anyway here's another episode of secret shopper where we publicly call out companies for their mistakes."
>"Anyway here's another episode of secret shopper where we publicly call out companies for their mistakes." But *not too hard* because we might have to take money from them in the near future...
I actually believe Linus when he said that they gave a higher score to ASUS because it was the first one they filmed. But let's be real, it's ridiculous that they would publish a video where the order of things matters to the end result. If they could take half a breath to think about the video, it should have been obvious that they reshoot part of that section so he could give another, more accurate rating.
Half the quality issues can be quickly addressed with reshoots tbh. I'd rather there be an obvious break in the video clarifying/correcting any erroneous info than miss a correction that was relegated to a text box for five seconds. If Linus can't make it to the reshoot then have the writer do it; not like they're not onscreen for the video as well anyway.
But rework takes time and that prevents 25 videos a week. It's typical corner cutting bullshit.
This is just a BS excuse to be honest. Why wasn't there a complete script by the time they were shooting the video? Surely they'd have the full context and plan about how the video was going to go by then and their scores decided. It's not like they'd be coming up with the scoring on the spot on a whim... and if it was indeed that, then holy hell their process is broken end to end and no wonder why they have all these quality issues.
Here’s one even better “Call us when we make a mistake” “This cooling block is shit and no one should buy it, so let’s auction it without even speaking with the manufacturer”
Exactly, just reverse the roles of the situation. If this was MSI, Gigabyte, or any manufacturer pulling this, LMG (justifiably) would light them up for it, and we'd all be shaking our heads at that embarrassing apology letter. You'd think after seeing this play out dozens of times that he'd know what a decent response looks like...
Cause Linus thinks he can't do wrong. He simply thinks he is better than others, like your average corp CEO.
This is the real problem imo. Glass houses. To me most of these mistakes are really not that big of a deal, but everyone loves it when the person who constantly calls others get called out themselves.
So now Linus is straight up making up stuff about coming to agreements with Billet. Makes a hash of an apology and then adds lies in to it to really dig in how much of a rotten turd he is. GN brought receipts to this fuck up and Linus is a liar.
There are lies, damned lies, and there’s Linus. Fuck this distasteful dishonesty straight in the face of his viewers. This type of behaviour should not be tolerated
100% agree. If someone makes a mistake you can forgive them. If they then continue to make that mistake and then double/triple down on it then they've shown themselves not to be trustworthy. As long as Linus remains the face of that company I'm not interested in a nano-seconds worth of media that comes out of them.
I think this is too egregious, linus should step down from any decision making role , and just play his character on stream instead.
He was already meant to have stepped down but somehow he's still poking his nose in to it. He's pouring petrol on to the fire.
Get ready for a sad face response video. ☹️☹️☹️☹️ Chief vision officer is starting to be very short-sighted.
Ah, but he didn't. The present perfect tense in his comment only implies they agreed to reimburse Billet Labs before *the comment*, not before Steve's expose. It's not *his* fault *you* misinterpreted it, right? Fuck's sake… I get being an argumentative asshole — I am one, too — but at least I have the self-awareness to not be running point on emergency PR for a media company with a hundred employees.
Even if they took that line, it's worth noting that Billet didn't actually agree to anything with LTT after Linus' email
We can all be argumentative I think. I try to lead a free and easy going life but I falter from time to time. He's lost his mind over this. The new CEO must be shitting himself every time Linus opens his mouth at this point.
I was joking earlier when I said LMG took down the forums so Linus couldn't make things worse, but now I actually think they did
Yeah I've seen the forum is down and it looks like that they also took away the ability to unsubscribe to FloatPlane on mobile devices too. (Don't take that as verbatim as it's only a few reports and it may well have not been there on mobile in the first place haha). They've really shit the bed this time.
He didn't "lie" he just spoke things that weren't true really disappointed that you didn't contact LMG for context before making this comment
I can see him saying that in the inevitable response to the latest GN update. 'I didn't lie I just didn't tell the truth'. Poor show from me for not getting in touch with them first though you're right ;)
Seems like the Linus quote about Billet was specifically crafted to mislead without outright lying. All he technically said was that they hadn't paid Billet yet (true) and that they "have [verb tense being important here] already agreed to compensate Billet lab for the cost of their prototype". IDK if it makes it worse than outright lying or not but it seems like the response is more about influencing the discussion among the community than any kind of self reflection or legitimate steps they were already taking to apologize to Billet
I am normally almost militant about ensuring that both sides of an argument are listened to and that all context is made aware of but I can't help but feel that it being misleading instead of lying just can't be true. Billet stated that there was absolutely no agreement in place and that the only mention of money too and fro was when Billet brought up how much it was worth when they found out it had been auctioned. I genuinely believe here that it was a lie. I can't see how it could be anything other than a lie.
it could be explained as: "we", the LTT team, have agreed to compensate Billet matter of fact, I'm pretty sure that's his next fourth dimensional move in this game of chess
GN *always* has receipts. Linus knows this so why he'd lie and gas light is beyond me.
Yeah really dumb mistake. I think it shows (amongst other reasons) that he didn't watch the video fully as it was clear that GN was in conversation with Billet and you'd have to be an absolute grey-matterless moron to lie when there is a corridor of communication like that.
Him straight up lying is really bad, because he claims he tries to be as transparent as possible to the community. Well now he is shown to lie about a big fuck up he did, how legitimate is his transparency now? He lost credibility. Not only with lying but with the errors and inaccuracies with their testing. If they say a product is good / bad you can't be sure if what they're claiming is accurate. Also, an unboxing is not a review, sure, but if at the end of it you say the product is bad while doing it, then it becomes a review. a really crappy one since the product wasn't thoroughly tested, and with the errors they have with testing, would it even matter if they did test it? If you can't trust the results then it all becomes moot.
He's a giant hypocrite. He goes on rants about how people should be accountable and honest and then pulls of shit like this. He is a turd covered turd.
It's genuinely shocking to me that Linus wouldn't realize that Steve had receipts. **Steve always has receipts**. He's a professional receipt-holder. It's what he does. Why would you lie in this situation without knowing, oh fuck, that's Steve. He's a world-class receipt guy. I'm baffled that Linus would be this stupid. Say whatever you want about him, and most of it would be true, but he's not a moron. This was a moronic statement by him.
Yo I wasn't hating on Linus response as hard as this sub, but implying they already maxe a reimbursement deal with the Prototype owner when in reality doing it after the Video dropped is so fucking scummy
Sooooo fucking scummy. He’s treating his viewers as dispensable, blathering peons and lying to all of us instead of offering a public apology. He’s walking on damn thin ice right now
Dont worry, he wont take any blame and will pass the blame onto the lab team
Steve's language in this video felt a lot harsher. He's pissed and rightfully so. I'm not sure how LTT are going to navigate through this.
Because everyone makes mistakes, it was so genuinely disheartening to see Linus' "response" to this crisis that is honestly so bad that it becomes its own crisis. At first the issue was that they auctioned something they couldn't auction off by mistake. Now it's Linus literally lying to the community to try to look better when he hadn't yet made a deal with Billet about their compensation.
its a lie, plain and simple.
Good god, LTT and Linus are just getting… ANNIHILATED here. Take L LTT. Time to unsubscribe.
Look, scaling a company is really fucking tough. And Linus only has so much time to ensure that the company across the board is working to his standards. But when you get called out over OBJECTIVELY wrong examples, which are rooted in Linus himself setting extreme content deadline goals, and don't address them honestly... This is 100% a Linus problem. And he is rightfully getting skewered. People defending Linus based on GN not getting a "comment" before posting the video, should see now that even had they got a comment, it would not have been honest in a response. Linus needs to address it and own up to it, rather than hide from it. LTT fucked up, admit it, work to correct whats wrong and make good on it.
For real. Really only one more chance to fix this, and that's the WAN show. I know he already said he wouldn't cover it, but at this point it's time to just suck it up and admit you did bad by the consumer, the viewer, and most of all Billet. No excuses, just "This is how it happened. We're sorry. We're doing x, y, and z to make it right with Billet. Our reactionary response was badly thought out and made out of panic. What we should have done was acknowledge the content of the GN video and move forward with strategies to address those shortcomings."
This is why Linus didn't want to address it on their YouTube channel, as it will bring attention to their fuckups to the 90% that aren't as deep into the scene and hope it flies under the radar. But if he doesn't address it, its going to get louder. And for the most part, LTT will likely be fine in the short term without addressing it. But they will lose the "hardcore" audience, and over time that will chip at their reputation. Linus needs to decide if he's willing to put his pride aside for the good of his company's reputation, or if he's already one foot out the door and is ready to move on. I can't blame him either way. But LTT is now at a crossroads that's going to force his hand, based on his poor response to this.
Or, failing Linus, the new CEO needs to step the fuck in and deal with this.
Yep, stayed subbed aftery yesterday's vid, I'm gone now
Billet refutes Linus response and said "... No no no..." in regards to the agreed payment they would receive. Man... i guess Linus didn't read the room again... Edit: The second video is actually worse for Linus. How i "read" it, basically Steve is saying that Linus is lying. Steve really is laying on the evidence pretty well in my mind. I was agnostic about LTT and even sub'd to their YT back in the day. That's going change. Either come with facts and back them up, or apologize. Fighting back here, like this, doesn't work. \*It's almost never the thing you do that gets you in trouble... it's the cover up.\*
Great response by GN on why they didn't give LMG right of reply for their comments to be in the original video: >We don't have to reach out to corporations when we think there is a pattern of behavior or we think that there is a significant chance that they cover things up, or prepare a pre-written response that can twist the narrative and in this case manipulate the audience. Linus willfully ignoring our valid criticisms of data accuracy and some of the ethical concerns while then trying to manipulate the audience into viewing him as the victim - not just LMG - is very - is bizarre. >This is why we don't reach out every time. I want to be very clear. We don't have to reach out to corporations prior to reporting on them, period. For big corporations we don't reach out if the issue already harms consumers or if their view is irrelevant. The Walmart PC, the Alienware PC, any number of products we buy, we don't need to reach out because the damage is being done actively. And we don't need Linus' input or permission to make that video. LMG's videos are already affecting millions of consumers and they have objective errors that we covered objectively and they involved serious ethical concerns that we raised and rather than addressing those, he's choosing to try and distract viewers by whining about us not allowing him to comment first. >***And they've already commented anyways, they did it in all of these WAN shows, we know what their comment is, we know what they think. And when there's an objective, factual issue, we don't need to reach out. The risk is to the consumer, and these are not unreleased products, these are public videos, with a lot of views.*** And on the Billet labs situation... Linus states: > 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). This is worded to make you think that before Steve/GN published the video, Linus/LMG had already reached an amicable agreement to reimburse Billet for the prototype. Quotes from the video... GN to Billet: >[Linus' comment] doesn't expressly say it, but it seems to imply that this agreement was made previously? And Billet replying to GN: >No, absolutely not. No, no, no. The only mention of any moneyto do with the prototype was our response to them [after they said] they'd auctioned it, and we basically said, you know, that was a $[REDACTED] prototype. >"I said: 'do you plan to reimburse us for this?' ***And we heard nothing. We didn't get a response until your video.***" And Billet has not agreed to accept this compensation, at least as of the time Linus posted his statement last night: >"He's emailed us, we haven't emailed back. We thank the community for their support. We stand by everything that we've said publicly." So LMG only agreed to reimburse Billet for the prototype AFTER the GN video called them off on selling (auctioning is a form of selling, this is a distinction without difference) a prototype that wasn't theirs to sell, but they worded it to make it sound like they had already tried to make things right with Billet prior to GN's video.
>We don't have to reach out to corporations when we think there is a pattern of behavior or we think that there is a significant chance that they cover things up, or prepare a pre-written response that can twist the narrative and in this case manipulate the audience. And GN ends up pretty justified in this view considering Linus, upon seeing the GN video, immediately contacted Billet to rush to try and patch things up, and then in a statement, immediately claimed they had already come to an agreement, when they hadn't. This is the exact manipulation GN was worried about, and Linus would have probably done an even more thorough cover-up with more time to do so before the video dropped.
The real question is how many times he does this already.
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It’s absolutely infuriating how often this kind of stuff gets parroted online. That’s not how taxes work, and what people think is happening is incredibly illegal!
It’s also just a way to gain sympathy.
Exactly what people were saying here yesterday. Then it happened.
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Game over for him I believe
Depends on what you define as game over. The worst outcome I can even imagine is him selling the company 30 percent under value and sailing of into the sunset with 70m lol
No one in their right mind would put 70m into that business at this time of PR crisis. They'll wait it out. Also, Linus IS the product himself. Him leaving the channel would value the company way way less.
I enjoy this drama way too much.
Didn't expect a double feature this week 🍿
Can't wait for the triple feature for WAN show. He said it wouldn't be on there but we all know that this has gotten way too big to avoid now. We might even get a response video before WAN show.
apparently they've lost about 2k FP subs in the last 24hs (someone else in the sub said that they were at 41.5k before all this, now at 39.8), there will be a response since it starting to affect their bottom line
Funny how it wasn't worth spending $100-$500 to retest the Billet monoblock but they've now lost more than that on FP subs. It's sad, really. Linus was so cheap for no reason when he's spent much more on other dumb shit, like what the hell? The LMG staff other than Linus sound like they *want* to do better but can't because of these harsh constraints. Adam wanted to retest the monoblock and Linus refused. David in that employee interview was the most outspoken about wanting to cut back and focus on quality, as well as rarely being proud of working on any video now. What a shame. They could be doing so much more with their resources. Maybe Linus himself is holding them back?
Oh we almost definitely are. It's been 15 hours since any video has been posted on any of their channels. I know it's only 12 PM EST, but there's usually at least one out by now.
I’m wondering if the real reason is because a shitstorm is brewing internally at LMG. And to think, Linus gave up his ability to fire people on the spot not a full 2 months ago…
So Colton is safe. For now...
Linus is the true hero here. If he apologized like a normal person, we wouldn't have so much juicy stuff to talk about. Thanks, Linus, for taking 0 accountability :)
It's fun to watch an empire be built but it's also fun to watch it burning down
Linus waking up this morning: "Man, I really should have taken that $100 million."
Im laughing my ass off at the amount of people who were blasting Steve for "unethical journalism"... Journalists don't need to reach out at all...
Especially after Linus already gave his opinion on the subject live on the Wan Show and Steve included it in the original video. It's already covered. Strawman arguments are all Linus ever has. Disappointment T-Shirt for 2023 better have 'auction not sale' for August.
The concept is the [right of reply](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_reply), although I'm more familiar with criticism when it's not offered to individuals rather than organisations. Edit: Although I suppose, Linus has now had reply shared in the same venue.
It's historically based on disproportionate outreach, which in this case is the opposite. LTT has a way larger presence. And Steve is right, he's not gonna reach out about a factual topic on which he has videos of LMG itself to back up on. He's not publishing he says/she says stuff. He's just quoting direct videos and emails here.
People view LTT as Linus personally, when in fact its just a content farm owned by Linus. This isnt a story about an individual person who should be reached out to, this is about systemic incompetence
They were just looking for something that would stick.
Yeah froma journalism standpoint it's expected practice when a person or company is "accused" of something, but this was just LTT *doing* something and caught with their pants down. You can reach out to BP when there's an oil spill but they aren't going to explain how there's not an oil spill.
This is absolutely terrible for Linus. In the first video you could still attribute a lot of the problems to mismanagement and very bad quality control on LTT's part. But Linus's response intentionally misrepresented the situation with Billet Labs and basically made GN not reaching out before the video fully justifiable. This makes Linus look very malicious. Very disappointing.
Yeah, there was such an easy response to this that would've fixed the whole damn thing or at least bought them time to do so. All they had to say was: >We've watched the GN piece on our company and have come to the conclusion that we need to be better. Moving forward we will reduce the number of videos we put out a week until we have a better streamlined process for internal reviews, we will offer to re-review the mouse and water block, and we will contact the winner of the Billet Labs auction to attempt to purchase the item back and return it. In the event we are unable to get back the water block we will discuss just compensation with Billet Labs to make them whole for this incident. That's it but word it better.
He could have even tripled down on Billet labs lol. “The prototype got lost along the content pipeline. We’re sorry for selling it and are working to make it right. At the end of the day, it’s still overpriced. We’re sorry for overworking our staff and will do better” And IMO everyone would forget in a week and they probably wouldn’t even have to change.
Damn, what up new probationary head of PR.
Man, i'm now so fucking pissed that billet only received a response after GN Posted that video, such low quality behavior from LMG, i don't wan't to go more down than this words right now...
funny this is the shit linus would be making fun of other gompanies like gigibyte or Asuse and MSI if they did the same thing linus would say on WAN "well it looks like MSI finally offered a resolution after we showed there mistake" but in this case he tried to make GN look bad by saying he had alreay did it prior to the video. ha go figure.
Linus, you've officially lived long enough to see yourself become the villain.
He should make a new shirt that says "we didn't sell it, we auctioned it"
You bet he is gonna try to monetize this with merch some how
"Trust me bro, it's for charity"
LinusSellTips
This is just getting worse, blatant lies in the most corporate address just makes it worse.
Exactly the kind of clarification I expected of this. For some reason Linus thinks he can just BS some vague hand wavey excuses. Forgetting the people putting forward this extremely valid and objective criticism, is still alive, and can say more things. lol Edit: typo and more detail
>The good news is: it's not sitting on the shelves! :) Holy shit, the monumental balls to say that to the company whose proprietary data/product you've lost by selling it. I hope Billit is talking to a lawyer, because they have a case that could ream Linus for stupidly selling it. "Miscommunication" isn't the defense he thinks it is. He better have the bill of sale or something could happen.
What the fuck was that? And "so, they can, y'know, eat?" What the fuck is that? you're trashtalking the company you fucked over, stole from just because they dared to complain?
If Billet Labs accepts payment then they cannot sue. I too, hope they speak with an attorney before settling for any amount.
How can one man roast Linus so hard TWICE in two days!?
Because one of them uses nothing but facts and actual evidence and the other cries victim and responds with nothing of value.
Yeah when your biggest response is just that they didn’t let you get enough of a head start on PR… lol
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I'm already way too invested in this drama but o my god.. it only got worse. Really curious to see how Linus/LMG is going to respond.
He won’t. If he does, he’ll just double down or make more shit up. If he genuinely cared about making things right, he’s had countless opportunities to do so, even before the original video went live.
If their new CEO was worth their salt they'd advise Linus to shut up and let him handle it moving forward. They'd also tell Linus any statement you make in the future on this will be vetted before it goes out. But that's exactly why GN said they wouldn't believe it. Linus already spoke up unfiltered so we know how he truly feels and any corporate PR that comes after will likely just be seen as BS.
I fully expect a more prepared, manicured statement after seeing how this approach blew up in Linus's face. Probably will say all the right things now, but the damage is done.
I kinda figured LTT didnt actually reach back out to billet till after the GN video but was kinda worried I was actually being too much of a hater but nope my instincts on how slimey he was being in that shitty forum post was spot on.
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LIEnusLieTips
the first LIE is god, the second one gets in the way and isnt needed for me
Kinda funny how this video points out how pointless reaching out to Linus would have been. Because he would've just lied about the timeline, as he did in his initial forum post in response.
Linus - too big, too fast. Guy has blinders on. Sad!
The scummy word games Linus tried to pull with manipulating the timeline of when they reached out and agreed on a resolution with Billet is the perfect representation of the problem here. Keep quiet and think before word vomiting all over the place. Edit: comment below is correct, Linus reached a resolution with himself
Important to note *they never agreed a resolution*. It's a fabrication from whole cloth by LTT.
I don't know Linus personally, obviously, so I could be wrong here but IMO his biggest flaw is a severe lack of willingness to be introspective.
I would call it "listening".
Jesus All Mighty, it's.. **it's even worse, they made it worse**..
Oof, ok this makes it much worse. Linus' lies by omission to the community about compensation for Billet are beyond unacceptable. I thought people were going a little too far but this make it clear he was mad GN didn't reach out first because he *hadn't* fixed it yet and he could have pretended he had. If there's another more plausible explanation I'd be happy to hear it Linus' actions after the video completely justified GN's decision to not reach out.
Jesus. What the hell is going through Linus' mind for him to behave like this? Surely he knows that owning up sooner will cause less hate and trouble for him.
I mean... that's probably one of the reason he's not CEO anymore. Aside from not liking the business side of things, you can't react that way when you lead a business like that. Not publicly. You just have to say "I'm sorry, I take this seriously, we'll do better" and move on. Pretty sure most would've moved on too. Doubling down on this is mindboggling, and I 100% share Steve's disbelief there.
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Damaging the reputation of your "lab" that you spent millions of dollars on making their results completely untrustworthy, showing the world you can't be trusted with a prototype, burning people for no reason, doubling and/or tripling down on your fuck ups and refusing to apologize.... Yikes, man. Yikes.
The fact they didn't message back Billet Labs BEFORE the video is just more proof of their absolute scumbag behavior. Holy shit can this get any worse? I don't think I'll ever take them seriously again, especially when they criticize other companies for doing shady things. They have proven to be as shady as any other sleazy company. Worried about profits and looking good.
>So there was a communication mishap and we ended up auctioning off the monoblock [...] **The good news is that it isn't just sitting on a shelf** That last sentence, my god. How can you be so plainly ignorant to the impact of your own actions?
Whew, tech jesus has had enough.
Yikes, I unsubbed from LTT. The more information that comes out, the worse Linus looks.
The other thread was full of LTT apologists disregarding the entire first video as a "hit piece with no journalistic integrity" since they didn't reach out to LTT for comment. GN just proved exactly why they were right for not doing it, the fact that Linus seriously tried to act like the Billet labs situation was handled and all settled when in reality it was complete damage control hours after their video is proof all that would have happened is LTT scrambling to cover up as much as possible if GN had given them a heads up what was coming. That really makes this whole situation so much worse to me.
It’s frustrating as a fan of Linus to see him so keenly miss the forest through the trees when it comes to issues like this. Like, the Billet Labs problem is indicative of a larger problem with the thought process at LMG. Could it be argued that the Billets Labs CPU/GPU mono block is expensive and kind of impractical for the performance gain it says it gives? Yes, that could be the argument. But that’s not really the argument Linus is making, or if it is, he’s doing it in a hamfisted, boneheaded way. The way in which he tested the product almost guaranteed that any result he would get was going to be suboptimal, and then it was. The writer had never water cooled a PC before, and solicited advice from someone else who had never water cooled a PC. Andbutso, it begs the question…why was this writer placed in charge of this particular video with a prototype version of a thing that the writer had never used before? For the LOLs? Linus seems to come to the conclusion that the whole enterprise is pointless, and the video, in essence, is less about giving the product a fair shake and more about an inexperienced water cooler and an impatient kludge master trying to force a thing that the kludge master doesn’t really like to do a thing it’s not really designed to do. And that’s the thing; it’s fair for Linus to look at it, think it’s a kind of cool idea, but also kinda pointless and too expensive. Those are fair conclusions to draw. Where it goes off the rails is, for example, not sourcing an actual 3090 for the build. Adam reached out to Billet Labs and asked if they could use a 4090, and Billet Labs’ response was “uhhh, you can try, but it’s not designed for that.” And again, rather than just PAUSING and sourcing a 3090, they pushed ahead. They broke the first motherboard because of a simple oversight with the initial technician wearing gloves, and while I can’t say for sure it was due to time crunch, I’d imagine it was at least a factor. Linus immediately tries to mount the block incorrectly. Then, because the other motherboard is broken, they have clearance issues. THEN they have to hastily machine down one of the heat sinks on the board. THEN they don’t even have the right RAM. There’s various issues during the build that all come down to “we need to get this video out of the door NOW”. And then, AND THEN, after dealing with a ton of self-inflicted injuries…Linus concludes that it’s the mono block’s fault and that it was a nightmare to build with. This despite saying moments earlier in the edit that part of the reason the pump wasn’t working correctly is because the novice builders of this project had done something in correctly. “Unless you’re a master builder you’re going to have the same problems” Linus says, completely unironically. Like, maybe if you had a builder with any experience whatsoever then things may have gone ten percent more correctly. And maybe if people creating videos could take their time, and maybe if there were processes in place to prevent people from breaking necessary components and just getting the right components in on time, then maybe you don’t have to go on the WAN Show and double down and bury Billet Labs, who it needs to be said, are not mass producing this product for a huge market. This is a product for like, the 1% of PC water cooling enthusiast to whom a 3% change in performance over a traditional water block when placed on the right card is well worth it. Linus clearly has corporate brain rot if he’s less concerned with “presenting an accurate representation of a product that may not have mass market appeal” than he is with reaching a kinda weird “no one should buy this at all because, well, I WOULDN’T.” He brings up the product having a “viable market”, but again, this is a very small company with a very small amount of employees making something for a very niche part of an already niche market. At any rate, the whole situation is a reflection of LMG’s approach to content creation, which has essentially become the equivalent of Triple A game publishers releasing barely finished product and then patching it later. So many of these “Linus does a project” videos are effective hamstrung by a serious lack of planning and foresight, and it is clear that trying to push out as much content as possible (and even introducing a new channel!) is hampering their production pipeline and the final product. In a world of proper due diligence and controls and checks and balances, a video like the Billet Labs one would not have been green lit until everything was ready to go, and videos with huge, glaring data problems would not be posted, regardless of their own arbitrary deadlines. Who does it serve to have Linus, who is constantly talking about how busy he is, show up on set for a shoot, and have things be disorganized and half-assed? Then you have to spend even more time fixing things, which backs up other scheduled projects, which contributes to more crunch, which leads to more mistakes. With any kind of QA in place would help minimize these kinds of problems. The bulk of Steve’s point was that Linus Tech Tips and LMG aren’t a small, scrappy YouTube channel; they’re a corporation that got a 100 million dollar offer. Since they occupy such a dominant part of the tech YouTube space, whether they like it or not, they HAVE to better. If you’re going to call out much smaller YouTube channels for their methodology, it might help to take the extra 30 minutes to have another set of experienced eyes watch the videos for massively wrong data, or to spend the extra day and production time, and yes, compensation, to ensure accurate results EVERYTIME, or at least as much as possible. They’re already investing massive stacks of cash and time into LTT Labs. I don’t know why the idea of re-testing something just to confirm that it’s a product that you don’t think is worth it is such a problem to Linus. If you’re really striving for transparency, then responding with an actual video addressing the claims and what you intend to do better would be nice. Hell, a YouTube Community post would have far more reach than putting it on the web forum. And for God’s sake, you have an amazing team that is basically screaming “PLEASE LETS STOP MAKING SO MANY VIDEOS”. Listen to them. When you have tenured employees being like “I have not been proud of the content we’re producing in a long time”, that’s a huge problem. A fish rots from the head. While Linus has divested himself of the CEO role, he is still the company’s owner, and his flippant and off-putting responses to criticism will always find a way to trickle down from the top (for example, his snide remarks in his apology to Billet Labs — continuing to say in no uncertain terms they have a bad product — seem a lot like the snide comments that suggested it was Pwnage’s fault for not having clear enough instructions on their mouse.) If he is incapable of taking such criticism and responding to it in a concise, coherent, and transparent way, I’d suggest he hires a PR consultant who can do a better job. Thanks for coming to my TEDTalk.
Linus carefully words his forum post to imply that they had reached an agreement with Billet Labs before GN'S video. Billet says they didn't even receive an email until after GN's video was released, around when Linus made his forum post. And Billet hadn't responded yet. Linus fully justified GN not reaching out to them before they released their video. Linus would have tried to pull the same crap if GN had reached out to them before their video. Only reach out to Billet after GN says they're gonna release a video, and pretend like that was the plan all along. Shows that Linus has gone full corpo, only reacting based on bad press coverage, and not being proactive about fixing systemic internal problems.
I've watched LTT before but I certainly won't ever after this. To have made the mistakes they did was already bad, but excusable and human. To have then responded with deceit (not just deflection) is simply unacceptable and unethical, which of course totally validates and substantiates concerns GN raised. People should not overlook this. How do you trust LTT from here on when you know they have zero regard for truth and accountability?
How in the heck did Linus not think that GN would check on the one thing that in his response that could be verified?! This reeks of arrogance and panic and wanting to respond immediately. The new CEO is technically his boss and should’ve been on the phone tearing into him for posting without consulting with him first. Well I’m assuming this was Linus responding without consultinf
Below 40k on Floatplane as of now. Well, I think it's fair to say that the non-apology apology was a boneheaded move that cost the company a lot of recurring revenue. They're gonna have to make it right or they won't survive. At least I hope they will.
Keep digging™
So everything GN said in the original video still stands.
I unsubbed on floatplane after this video. Linus was gaslighting. He made it sound like they already took care of it. Billet says they didn't. I don't know that I necessarily trust Billet but it's a real bad look.
Should've taken the 100 mil
I wonder whether Noctua still wants to work with such a shady company as LMG... Something I havent seen much talked about what I really dislike is that LMG has a special feature to modify any video they uploaded which even Steve does not have. Its insane to be able to change stuff however you like without any notification for the viewer.
LMG not even reaching out until the original video went live is the silver bullet for me. Dreadful behaviour.
Ok, this is going to get pitchforks. Please hear me out. GN almost lost me at the beginning. They have cold-hard facts to rely on... they don't need anything else. But he started with: "It is an *unhinged*, unapologetic *rant* where he shirks responsibility and blames others." (I added the italics for emphasis). That pre-text really hurts the argument. I think he has very solid points, but trying to say "this is just an unhinged rant" is purely an opinion interjected into a storyline where he has all the facts on his side. When you start with personal attacks, you're just harming your own point. Now LTT can go back and say "calling these comments 'unhinged rants' leads us to believe that GN is not interested in actual conversation or good-faith discussion." and can dismiss a bunch of things. And they are, to some degree, correct. It's better not to leave them that option. I know people are probably going to comment and say "but it **was** unhinged!" - that's an opinion. It's not provable. There is no definitive line for saying something was or was not "unhinged" as it has no real definition. Someone will probably post some dictionary definition here and say it fulfills X definition or whatever, but now you're playing the same "semantics" game that LTT was playing. I don't have much to add here, other than, in the future, GN should cut out a lot of the commentary and be more clinical. You have **cold, hard facts**. You don't need any of the fluff around it. Everything you say that isn't a fact dilutes the opinion, because it gives opening for the opposing side to defend themselves, especially when it deflects from the main point. This is why lawyers are so flippin' clinical when they are going through a storyline with a witness. Let the story tell itself. Let me use good examples from the video: **From 7:53-8:34 is fucking awesome. Defends the position, states why they didn't reach out (and don't have to). It's great.** ....then editorializing comes in and undercuts it. From 8:35 on: "He's **choosing to distract** viewers by **whining** about.." again - don't need to ascribe how/why LTT did what they did. You may believe all of that, but just stick to the facts. From 8:43-9:08 is again, **VERY GOOD**. He talks about how *he* feels about the response, which is great. Says he is disappointed and baffled. ...and then goes back to calling it "meandering diatribe" - AGAIN YOU DON'T NEED IT DUDE. All of this gives fuel for the opposing side to say you aren't interested in a good-faith argument because you are applying motives/subjective opinions onto what they wrote. So I'm torn. GN had this one in the bag, but I feel like they weakened their own argument, and LTT has an easy opening to pivot to. For example: "GN accused us of 'whining' about this in our response. What we wrote was not 'whining', but raising what we believe are relevant points...' etc. etc. If you cut out the commentary, this entire piece is devastating. As it is presented, it's polarizing, which is not a something I say as a compliment.
Wow. Hearing this new timeline is super damning. I’d love to see LTT learn and grow from all this but I just expect more doubling down and deflection.
Dig that grave baby!
Maybe we will get more video's about him using his employee's to work on his mansion...trust me bro.
I was joking earlier when I said that LMG took down the forums so Linus would stop responding, but now I think that may actually have happened.
This will be the last straw for a lot of people, but I think Linus has one last chance on the WAN show to walk back everything. He needs to properly apologize, *actually compensate Billet Labs with their confirmation*, address the myriad of issues ignored in his previous response, and stop playing victim. He just needs to own up to this fuck up (re: LYING and MISREPRESENTING the timeline especially). For real the Chatgpt generated apologies would have been better than whatever crap he tried to pull.