This is quoted from Linus on the LTT forums:
"There won’t be a big WAN Show segment about this or anything. Most of what I have to say, I’ve already said, and I’ve done so privately.
To Steve, I expressed my disappointment that he didn’t go through proper journalistic practices in creating this piece. He has my email and number (along with numerous other members of our team) and could have asked me for context that may have proven to be valuable (like the fact that we didn’t ‘sell’ the monoblock, but rather auctioned it for charity due to a miscommunication… AND the fact that while we haven’t sent payment yet, we have already agreed to compensate Billet Labs for the cost of their prototype). There are other issues, but I’ve told him that I won’t be drawn into a public sniping match over this and that I’ll be continuing to move forward in good faith as part of ‘Team Media’. When/if he’s ready to do so again I’ll be ready.
To my team (and my CEO’s team, but realistically I was at the helm for all of these errors, so I need to own it), I stressed the importance of diligence in our work because there are so many eyes on us. We are going through some growing pains - we’ve been very public about them in the interest of transparency - and it’s clear we have some work to do on internal processes and communication. We have already been doing a lot of work internally to clean up our processes, but these things take time. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but that’s no excuse for sloppiness.
Now, for my community, all I can say is the same things I always say. We know that we’re not perfect. We wear our imperfection on our sleeves in the interest of ensuring that we stay accountable to you. But it’s sad and unfortunate when this transparency gets warped into a bad thing. The Labs team is hard at work hard creating processes and tools to generate data that will benefit all consumers - a work in progress that is very much not done and that we’ve communicated needs to be treated as such. Do we have notes under some videos? Yes. Is it because we are striving for transparency/improvement? Yeah… What we’re doing hasn’t been in many years, if ever… and we would make a much larger correction if the circumstances merited it. Listing the wrong amount of cache on a table for a CPU review is sloppy, but given that our conclusions are drawn based on our testing, not the spec sheet, it doesn’t materially change the recommendation. That doesn’t mean these things don’t matter. We’ve set KPIs for our writing/labs team around accuracy, and we are continually installing new checks and balances to ensure that things continue to get better. If you haven’t seen the improvement, frankly I wonder if you’re really looking for it… The thoroughness that we managed on our last handful of GPU videos is getting really incredible given the limited time we have for these embargoes. I’m REALLY excited about what the future will hold.
With all of that said, I still disagree that the Billet Labs video (not the situation with the return, which I’ve already addressed above) is an ‘accuracy’ issue. It’s more like I just read the room wrong. We COULD have re-tested it with perfect accuracy, but to do so PROPERLY - accounting for which cases it could be installed in (none) and which radiators it would be plumbed with (again… mystery) would have been impossible… and also didn’t affect the conclusion of the video… OR SO I THOUGHT…
I wanted to evaluate it as a product, and as a product, IF it could manage to compete with the temperatures of the highest end blocks on the planet, it still wouldn’t make sense to buy… so from my point of view, re-testing it and finding out that yes, it did in fact run cooler made no difference to the conclusion, so it didn’t really make a difference.
Adam and I were talking about this today. He advocated for re-testing it regardless of how non-viable it was as a product at the time and I think he expressed really well today why it mattered. It was like making a video about a supercar. It doesn’t mater if no one watching will buy it. They just wanna see it rip. I missed that, but it wasn’t because I didn’t care about the consumer… it was because I was so focused on how this product impacted a potential buyer. Either way, clearly my bad, but my intention was never to harm Billet Labs. I specifically called out their incredible machining skills because I wanted to see them create something with a viable market for it and was hoping others would appreciate the fineness of the craftsmanship even if the product was impractical. I still hope they move forward building something else because they obviously have talent and I’ve watched countless niche water cooling vendors come and go. It’s an astonishingly unforgiving market.
Either way, I’m sorry I got the community’s priorities mixed-up on this one, and that we didn’t show the Billet in the best light. Our intention wasn’t to hurt anyone. We wanted no one to buy it (because it’s an egregious waste of money no matter what temps it runs at) and we wanted Billet to make something marketable (so they can, y’know, eat).
With all of this in mind, it saddens me how quickly the pitchforks were raised over this. It also comes across a touch hypocritical when some basic due diligence could have helped clarify much of it. I have a LONG history of meeting issues head on and I’ve never been afraid to answer questions, which lands me in hot water regularly, but helps keep me in tune with my peers and with the community. The only reason I can think of not to ask me is because my honest response might be inconvenient.
We can test that… with this post. Will the “It was a mistake (a bad one, but a mistake) and they’re taking care of it” reality manage to have the same reach? Let’s see if anyone actually wants to know what happened. I hope so, but it’s been disheartening seeing how many people were willing to jump on us here. Believe it or not, I’m a real person and so is the rest of my team. We are trying our best, and if what we were doing was easy, everyone would do it. Today sucks.
Thanks for reading this."
LTT is trying to be reliable, but they aren’t giving themselves the time to do it. Mistakes are made and aren’t corrected or aren’t corrected in the best way.
I’m not buying that, there’s probably a little bit of truth in there, but honestly it’s pretty clear what’s happening. The higher ups require a certain amount of videos a week to be profitable, if they don’t meet that quota then they’re not making money or they think they’re not making money. They’re also pretty clearly favoring their sponsors and reviewing their products positively without showing actual credible benchmarks. It’s the sign of corporate greed creeping in once again and someone finally called out their bullshit. Linus isn’t taking it very well, and I can imagine why when someone you thought to be a friend or colleague is now calling you out with credible evidence that you’re just bullshitting around and half-assing the product you build from the ground up.
As much as I think they need to get their shit together in other areas. I don’t believe they are letting themselves be biased by sponsors. They have repeatedly ragged on their own sponsors or quit using them if they turn out bad. Like Anker with the eufy camera debacle or there recent review where they rate their sponsors.
Linus has his problems certainly. Hubris being the worst. However, bias towards sponsors is one I personally don’t believe.
That is true to some extent, but their handling of Asus contradicts that. And obvious conflicts of interest with Noctua now really makes it hard to trust anything they say at this point.
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I mean, you kinda prove my point, they probably grew too fast, realized they need more money and are now chasing profit. Linus did it to himself, now corporate greed is stepping in because his way simply wasn’t working and he recognized he sucks at running the company. Now they’re putting out rushed videos with inaccurate numbers and benchmarks to chase those profits. Like I said, it’s clear what’s happening.
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If they aren’t giving themselves the time to do it then it means they aren’t trying to be reliable. After all, these are self imposed deadlines they set themselves. Actions speak louder than words, and despite the PR attempts the presentation says quantity is more important than being correct
Which is completely fine for entertainment content like building a flying PC, but there’s different expectations for more serious pieces they are trying to sell to consumers as being trustworthy. Unless they want the stigma of the Verge of PC building when it comes to LTT product reviews. Where people say I just watch it for the jokes and product shots, but ignore the recommendations.
It’s almost like it should be split into two different channels.
No, they are not. They are trying to pump out content, and don’t want to be held accountable for their actions, period.
If they were trying ro be reliable they wouldn’t bitch about fucking up a test, then having to spend $100-$500 in employee time to properly test.
They wouldn’t blame their fuckups on everyone except themselves.
They may make shit right in the coming days, the sad fact was it took GN calling them out to get them to stop acting like assholes.