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.[1]
Check LinusTech’s profile for further discussion and comments he’s had.[2]
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 “you and a friend” metaphor was intended to be analogous to the Linus/audience relationship, not Linus/Billet. Linus isn’t directing the “we’re human” line at Billet Labs, he’s 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, I’m 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 I’m referring to when I talk about “you and a friend”. 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 it’s not constructive and only burns bridges. But random strangers don’t have a bridge they’re caring for with Linus, because they don’t have any tangible relationship with him. That’s all I’m saying.
Second, I don’t think “no one should ever buy this” is the insult people are hearing it as. As a reviewer, LMG’s 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, it’s simply a statement of fact to say “no one should buy this”. I don’t know what line of business you’re in, but I’m sure you’d 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 people’s 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: It’s literally a limited batch prototype. It’s not relevant to say whether anyone should buy it, because they aren’t even manufacturing them to be sold yet. The supercar analogy is apt, because people don’t watch Top Gear to be told that no one should buy a Lamborghini (even though it’s true), they watch it to see the car “rip” as it were.
I think that’s the safe (arguably “right”) statement for your CEO to make, and this is why you usually get the generic, no stance, “we’ll do better” 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 “we’re human” statement I think is a normal human response to a situation where you’re being flooded with hatemail, from people you’ve never met, over a situation that there is still confusion around, and you’re just doing your best to correct your mistakes.
Linus has said he’s stepping down from the company multiple times before. I wonder if this will be his “that’s it, I’m done” moment, or if he doesn’t want this to be how he goes out. Hoping the latter, but we’ll see…
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! I’m glad that it did come off as respectful, I’m all too well used to replying to someone with a differing viewpoint/perspective than theirs on “the other site”, 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 “treat others the way you wish to be treated”, 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 I’ve been told is “silly”, but again it doesn’t cost me anything to be nice, and on the logical side at the very least maybe it’ll help the “training” 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 😅… Mainly the intent is not to try to change anyone else’s viewpoint/opinions, but as a bit of a demonstration that I’m not trying to jump on the “LTT bad” 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 “no one should ever buy this” comes off a bit… off-key to me when you then turn around and respond to incoming negative feedback as “we’re only human” (and to be fair, that does need to be said / reminded to some people) when it doesn’t 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 auction…?), but I’ll put an asterisk on that opinion since I don’t really watch LTT in general.
Now, I don’t 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 I’m not really looking for their final verdict (such as “Don’t buy this product” or on the opposite token “Go out and buy this product now!”). Instead, I’m looking for the objective markers and testing of said product. I don’t 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 doesn’t really hold a lot of weight to me. There are a ton of cases of reviews where their use case or setup doesn’t 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 doesn’t 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 you’re as large as LTT.
I’m 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 didn’t even know what that was prior to all of this, I guess its a type of cooler?) wasn’t even met for the product that this company designed so the whole premise of the review is basically “fruit of the poisonous tree” in my eyes, and is precisely the type of reason why I don’t like final judgments/verdicts.
I work in the IT industry, and since we are a smaller company I’ve “worn a lot of hats” so to speak. My main task is to provide technical support to our customers but I’ve also been a part of other roles such as our internal development team, our internal (quality control/assurance/“HR”) and external (customer escalation) supervision team. Since our target audience is a very wide audience due to the very specific IT space we’re 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 I’ve just woken up) are using it for an unintended use-case.
I think its really easy for someone on our team’s perspective to pull a classic Steve Jobs “You’re holding it wrong” type of response, and when I was more focused on our internal supervision side of things one thing I heavily pushed for was “It’s not the customer’s fault if they got the impression that our service was meant to be used this way” - instead I pushed for improving the way we advertised our services whether on the actual advertisement side of things, or the “pre-sales advertisement” side. I think that’s a core value that we’ve all generally held at my place, but when you’re 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 don’t like saying “however” here because I know that comes across badly given the prior statement - so to the potential reader, please don’t misinterpret that) sometimes you do need to take some humility for the actual mistake that was made (and often that mistake wasn’t intended or even directly your fault - but that doesn’t mean that its the consumer/customer’s fault either).
On a side note, since I mentioned Google’s LLM “Bard”, 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 don’t think they were directing that at fair, but negative criticism. Linus is very clear that he welcomes constructive criticism always. The “we’re human” 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, that’s a big portion of the discussion we’re having. Yeah, there was a “miscommunication” 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. It’s 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 wasn’t 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 wasn’t commercially viable anyway and didn’t care to retest it. The larger issue people have with them is that they’re setting too stringent of deadlines for themselves, and it’s hurting the quality of their content. This just seemed to be a recent case that had collateral damage involved.
I think they’ve 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 it’s wrong about actually “returning” 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 “only” prototype or something. Maybe they mean “only one they have for demoing to reviewers”?) I wonder if Bard is “watching” youtube videos, or just getting an auto transcription or what…
I just wanted to say, I really appreciate you taking the time to reply to me on this! It’s 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 what’s been going on in the media. Generally I (at least I like to think) that I’m not as prone to that occurring, but this situation is a bit unique as I don’t normally watch LTT/LMG’s videos so perhaps I’m subconsciously “filling in the blanks” so to speak with what is being mentioned.
In regards to Bard and whether its actually “watching” videos or not, I do think that it’s somewhat able to watch them. I asked it to identify what is the “musical term” for something that occurred at a timestamp for a song in the game Destiny 2’s OST after providing a YouTube link - it told me that the term was “tintinnabulation” 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. I’ve certainly seen Bard hallucinate answers before (such as today when it gave me an rclone command that didn’t exist) but I don’t think that was one of those cases. It’d 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 we’ll see!
Woah, I feel like no one is talking about Bard, but that’s pretty impressive. Will have to check it out. Cheers 👍