There wonāt be a big WAN Show segment about this or anything. Most of what I have to say, Iāve already said, and Iāve done so privately.
To Steve, I expressed my disappointment that he didnāt 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 didnāt āsellā the monoblock, but rather auctioned it for charity due to a miscommunicationā¦ AND the fact that while we havenāt sent payment yet, we have already agreed to compensate Billet Labs for the cost of their prototype). There are other issues, but Iāve told him that I wonāt be drawn into a public sniping match over this and that Iāll be continuing to move forward in good faith as part of āTeam Mediaā. When/if heās ready to do so again Iāll be ready.
To my team (and my CEOās 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 - weāve been very public about them in the interest of transparency - and itās 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 wasnāt built in a day, but thatās no excuse for sloppiness.
Now, for my community, all I can say is the same things I always say. We know that weāre not perfect. We wear our imperfection on our sleeves in the interest of ensuring that we stay accountable to you. But itās 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 weāve communicated needs to be treated as such. Do we have notes under some videos? Yes. Is it because we are striving for transparency/improvement? Yeahā¦ What weāre doing hasnāt been in many years, if everā¦ 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 doesnāt materially change the recommendation. That doesnāt mean these things donāt matter. Weāve 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 havenāt seen the improvement, frankly I wonder if youāre really looking for itā¦ 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. Iām 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 Iāve already addressed above) is an āaccuracyā issue. Itās 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 (againā¦ mystery) would have been impossibleā¦ and also didnāt affect the conclusion of the videoā¦ OR SO I THOUGHTā¦
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 wouldnāt make sense to buyā¦ 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 didnāt 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 doesnāt mater if no one watching will buy it. They just wanna see it rip. I missed that, but it wasnāt because I didnāt care about the consumerā¦ 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 Iāve watched countless niche water cooling vendors come and go. Itās an astonishingly unforgiving market.
Either way, Iām sorry I got the communityās priorities mixed-up on this one, and that we didnāt show the Billet in the best light. Our intention wasnāt to hurt anyone. We wanted no one to buy it (because itās an egregious waste of money no matter what temps it runs at) and we wanted Billet to make something marketable (so they can, yāknow, 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 Iāve 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 thatā¦ with this post. Will the āIt was a mistake (a bad one, but a mistake) and theyāre taking care of itā reality manage to have the same reach? Letās see if anyone actually wants to know what happened. I hope so, but itās been disheartening seeing how many people were willing to jump on us here. Believe it or not, Iām a real person and so is the rest of my team. We are trying our best, and if what we were doing was easy, everyone would do it. Today sucks.
Thanks for reading this.[1]
Check LinusTechās profile for further discussion and comments heās had.[2]
Because I donāt think you or any of the people in this thread would spout the vitriol they have to his face if they recognized him as a human. Consider a friend you have that youāre close to. Now imagine they fucked up in the way linus did. How do you approach them about it? Do you say, āhey man, I think you were in the wrong there, letās talk, I want to understand where your head was atā? Or do you jump straight to, āyou never learn from your mistakes, thatās why you keep acting like a fool. I canāt be bothered with your superficial attitudeā?
Thereās a disconnect between people communicating on the internet. Most humans arenāt evolved to have sympathy for hypothetical people, much less intangible celebrities, much less communicating asynchronously. Weāre evolved to look each other in the face, read each othersā emotions, and adjust the conversation accordingly to be most effective. None of that can happen here.
I have not watched this video, nor do I really watch any of the LTT/LMGās videos so Iām just a third party observer here. However, this goes both ways - are the others correct when they said that their video directly said āNo one should ever buy thisā?
If so, using the same example Iām sure youād expect that your friend wouldnāt say āNo one should ever buy thisā when you ask them for a review on something you made. Yes, Linus and his team are human - but so are the people who made the original product. I get the feeling this isnāt the first review that LMG hasnāt exactly givenā¦ glowing reviews to, either.
Plenty of people go on tirades about those that they donāt actually have a personal connection to, itās unfortunate but as you said, is all too very common especially when youāre a person whoās in a higher position than those complaining about you. As the (previous now, as far as I understand?) CEO of a company though you donāt double down on your mistakes because that only makes the situation worse.
And of course, if you go and do something silly say, on the road - you very much are likely to get someone to speak how they truly feel about you.
My boss is the CEO of a smaller company (we are a team of about 10 people at a time, max), we were talking about the situation today - and he said āWhen we make a mistake, my job is to address the issue but at the same time, not add fuel to the fire. Because we probably were wrong, and when you have a ton of customers complaining on that scale then you probably were in the wrong.ā- I do not know how much total profit either of them make, but my boss isnāt the CEO of a massive company like Google and started off as a one-man-shop too.
Before I send you this novel, just want to preface with, thank you for your respectful response.
So to address your first point, not sure if you were intentionally pivoting the metaphor or not, but I just want to be clear that my āyou and a friendā metaphor was intended to be analogous to the Linus/audience relationship, not Linus/Billet. Linus isnāt directing the āweāre humanā line at Billet Labs, heās directing it at us onlookers responding to the situation. I assume that LMG and Billet Labs have a completely different relationship regarding this situation with completely different motives and emotions and dialogues involved, versus the relationship between LMG and their audience. The audience is currently giving a ragebait response, Iām sure LMG is getting their fair share of death threats right now, but also generally seeing a lot of the more typical toxic responses that often accompany a cancelling, and THAT is the vitriolic reaction Iām referring to when I talk about āyou and a friendā. People say things over the internet to faceless celebrities that they would never in a million years say to another human no matter how wrong they were; they know not to because itās not constructive and only burns bridges. But random strangers donāt have a bridge theyāre caring for with Linus, because they donāt have any tangible relationship with him. Thatās all Iām saying.
Second, I donāt think āno one should ever buy thisā is the insult people are hearing it as. As a reviewer, LMGās job is (typically) to measure the portion of their audience that a product is the best option for, quantify that portion, and notify them of the product. But when a product is the best option for virtually no one, itās simply a statement of fact to say āno one should buy thisā. I donāt know what line of business youāre in, but Iām sure youād agree that you should be able to have a meeting with your CEO, and say in no uncertain terms exactly who your target demographic is, and how large that group is at any given time. I have to assume Billet Labs is fully aware that the current product at the current price point is only commercially viable for less than 20 peopleās usecase. But being commercially viable is not their current goal, which leads me to the problem I have with Linus focusing on that point in the video: Itās literally a limited batch prototype. Itās not relevant to say whether anyone should buy it, because they arenāt even manufacturing them to be sold yet. The supercar analogy is apt, because people donāt watch Top Gear to be told that no one should buy a Lamborghini (even though itās true), they watch it to see the car āripā as it were.
I think thatās the safe (arguably ārightā) statement for your CEO to make, and this is why you usually get the generic, no stance, āweāll do betterā statements we often see in these situations. I do think Linus could have done a better job not coming off as defensive, because he does seem to understand that he had the wrong mindset about the product from the start. But the āweāre humanā statement I think is a normal human response to a situation where youāre being flooded with hatemail, from people youāve never met, over a situation that there is still confusion around, and youāre just doing your best to correct your mistakes.
Linus has said heās stepping down from the company multiple times before. I wonder if this will be his āthatās it, Iām doneā moment, or if he doesnāt want this to be how he goes out. Hoping the latter, but weāll seeā¦
Edit: just saw that they put out a video addressing the situation. Glad his wife and the new CEO know how to do damage control better than him.
No worries! Iām glad that it did come off as respectful, Iām all too well used to replying to someone with a differing viewpoint/perspective than theirs on āthe other siteā, and them interpreting that as me attempting to be hostile - which is never the case! For what its worth, I do agree that in general a lot of people when they post comments online have a bad habit of being incredibly disrespectful with what they say. I was raised to follow the golden rule of ātreat others the way you wish to be treatedā, and I have always felt that it costs nothing to be kind and respectful to people by default. I even have a habit of trying to be as respectful as I can to AIs/LLMs such as Bard when I talk with it - which Iāve been told is āsillyā, but again it doesnāt cost me anything to be nice, and on the logical side at the very least maybe itāll help the ātrainingā of the AIs. There is absolutely never a situation that calls for sending out death threats and personal attacks to others online.
The rest of my response will be a bit of a novel itself, so that I can further explain my reasoning behind my original comment - definitely feel free to skip over it as I do have a bit of reputation for having err, extended, responses š ā¦ Mainly the intent is not to try to change anyone elseās viewpoint/opinions, but as a bit of a demonstration that Iām not trying to jump on the āLTT badā bandwagon that seems to be occurring throughout the internet right now.
I did understand that when you mentioned the you/friend metaphor that you were specifically talking about it from a Linus and audience perspective - I do agree with that metaphor in general 100%, but I do think it should extend to Linus / LMG and the people they are referring to in their videos as well, since if the point of applying the original metaphor is to emphasize that Linus and his team/company are humans the same applies to those behind the products in their reviews. Hence why āno one should ever buy thisā comes off a bitā¦ off-key to me when you then turn around and respond to incoming negative feedback as āweāre only humanā (and to be fair, that does need to be said / reminded to some people) when it doesnāt really feel like that was kept in mind during the original video along with the actions they took in addition to it (I heard something about not giving the original company their prototype back as originally agreed upon, and instead selling it at a silent auctionā¦?), but Iāll put an asterisk on that opinion since I donāt really watch LTT in general.
Now, I donāt think that them giving their opinion on the product itself is a problem - as you mentioned, that is the purpose of a review. For me, when I watch reviews Iām not really looking for their final verdict (such as āDonāt buy this productā or on the opposite token āGo out and buy this product now!ā). Instead, Iām looking for the objective markers and testing of said product. I donāt know Linus or anyone on his team personally (or even the random people who post reviews for products on Amazon) so realistically a final verdict doesnāt really hold a lot of weight to me. There are a ton of cases of reviews where their use case or setup doesnāt really match mine which further on makes a final judgment a bit like just noise to me. However, the facts and outlines that they provide in the review does matter to me because that allows me to make an informed opinion. Sadly this doesnāt apply to everyone, and some people will take their final judgment at face value and as 100% fact, which can be really damaging to a product/brand when youāre as large as LTT.
Iām not a hardware person (my strengths are pretty much all in the software side) but as far as I gathered, the GPU that they used for this waterblock (which I didnāt even know what that was prior to all of this, I guess its a type of cooler?) wasnāt even met for the product that this company designed so the whole premise of the review is basically āfruit of the poisonous treeā in my eyes, and is precisely the type of reason why I donāt like final judgments/verdicts.
I work in the IT industry, and since we are a smaller company Iāve āworn a lot of hatsā so to speak. My main task is to provide technical support to our customers but Iāve also been a part of other roles such as our internal development team, our internal (quality control/assurance/āHRā) and external (customer escalation) supervision team. Since our target audience is a very wide audience due to the very specific IT space weāre in, there have been a lot of occasions where there is someone whose using our services that (for lack of better words right now as Iāve just woken up) are using it for an unintended use-case.
I think its really easy for someone on our teamās perspective to pull a classic Steve Jobs āYouāre holding it wrongā type of response, and when I was more focused on our internal supervision side of things one thing I heavily pushed for was āItās not the customerās fault if they got the impression that our service was meant to be used this wayā - instead I pushed for improving the way we advertised our services whether on the actual advertisement side of things, or the āpre-sales advertisementā side. I think thatās a core value that weāve all generally held at my place, but when youāre putting in your heart and soul to provide support to someone and they scream at you, its sometimes easy to lose track of that which is why I really do also feel for Linus in some of the comments that have been directed at him and his team. Vitriolic comments and death threats are by no means okay whatsoever, however (and I really donāt like saying āhoweverā here because I know that comes across badly given the prior statement - so to the potential reader, please donāt misinterpret that) sometimes you do need to take some humility for the actual mistake that was made (and often that mistake wasnāt intended or even directly your fault - but that doesnāt mean that its the consumer/customerās fault either).
On a side note, since I mentioned Googleās LLM āBardā, I asked it to review this comment and see what its thought on my comment was - I was actually a bit surprised that it seems to know about the situation that occurred here since it was so recent. If anyone is interested, here is what it said when I provided a copy of this comment. Honestly, I never thought to ask Bard to review a comment before I send it, seems like a great case for LLMs.
Yeah, I donāt think they were directing that at fair, but negative criticism. Linus is very clear that he welcomes constructive criticism always. The āweāre humanā comment is, imo, clearly directed at the people going out of their way to just call them names and generally be shitty.
Hah, I mean, thatās a big portion of the discussion weāre having. Yeah, there was a āmiscommunicationā and the item was auctioned off for charity rather than returned. They explained in the video how it happened, and that prior to any of this blowing up they had already contacted Billet Labs about covering all costs associated with their mistake. Itās an ongoing meme in the LTT episodes that the guy who fucked up sucks at his job and is always about to get fired. But in the explanation video, I got the sense that he wasnāt really joking about not knowing if he was going to be fired this time.
Yes, a waterblock is strapped onto the CPU, water passes through it and takes heat away from the CPU, thereby cooling it. It seemed like in their rush to get the video out the door, they ignored several flaws in their testing setup (like choosing the wrong GPU), and then Linus just concluded it wasnāt commercially viable anyway and didnāt care to retest it. The larger issue people have with them is that theyāre setting too stringent of deadlines for themselves, and itās hurting the quality of their content. This just seemed to be a recent case that had collateral damage involved.
I think theyāve taken better steps toward that with the followup video I put in my edit. Also, that is really interesting that Bard knows about the situation. Afaik itās wrong about actually āreturningā the waterblock, since it sold, but they have agreed to cover any associated costs. Hard to quantify those costs if it ends up ruining their company as Billet seemed to imply (they said that it was their āonlyā prototype or something. Maybe they mean āonly one they have for demoing to reviewersā?) I wonder if Bard is āwatchingā youtube videos, or just getting an auto transcription or whatā¦
I just wanted to say, I really appreciate you taking the time to reply to me on this! Itās helped me see things from a different viewpoint, and also come to the realization that perhaps part of my viewpoint has been at the very least, colored by whatās been going on in the media. Generally I (at least I like to think) that Iām not as prone to that occurring, but this situation is a bit unique as I donāt normally watch LTT/LMGās videos so perhaps Iām subconsciously āfilling in the blanksā so to speak with what is being mentioned.
In regards to Bard and whether its actually āwatchingā videos or not, I do think that itās somewhat able to watch them. I asked it to identify what is the āmusical termā for something that occurred at a timestamp for a song in the game Destiny 2ās OST after providing a YouTube link - it told me that the term was ātintinnabulationā which was correct, and gave me an opinion on what it thought of the song in general. The interesting thing of course is that since its an OST, it is highly unlikely that there was say, an article or Reddit comment that it could cross reference to get that answer. Iāve certainly seen Bard hallucinate answers before (such as today when it gave me an rclone command that didnāt exist) but I donāt think that was one of those cases. Itād be cool to see Bard and other LLMs do an actual active search rather than just referring to its training set so that the answers are more accurate, but I suppose weāll see!
Woah, I feel like no one is talking about Bard, but thatās pretty impressive. Will have to check it out. Cheers š