Linus Tech Tips

There should be actual, legitimate, law enforcement involvement.. Cause its literally theft at best, corporate espionage at worst.

Until I saw that I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Even knowingly fudging numbers, while bad, is a temptation it’s easy to see someone trying to keep up with the content rat race falling into.

The corporate espionage on the other hand is fucking gross. Unless Billet Labs provides a statement that fully absolves LTT of any wrongdoing and states they OK’d the auction, I’m prepared to not engage with LMG at all anymore. Which sucks because I kinda like their water bottle.

I know we’ve only heard one side of the story so far, so I’ll reserve judgement. If it turns out as bad as it sounds though, they can get Anker’d

The Linux thing I don't find egregious. Replace Linus with a sizeable majority of the population and they would have done the same thing. I probably would have as well.

If you want to move people from Windows to Linux, Discord to Matrix, Whatsapp to Signal or even Reddit to Lemmy, it needs to be as painless as possible.

Everything that GN points out though is pretty damning.

That bit was important to include in the video in my opinion because of the circumstances.

He didn't break his computer while messing around with the kernel, changing system settings by recklessly copy&pasting random commands he found on the internet. It happened while trying to install a very popular software from the distro's official package manager, following what's otherwise standard installation procedure. A lot of people broke their systems the exact same way until that bug was fixed.

We all like to pretend Linux is "there", but it was a clear and important example of how it's not really. Because the user is dumb and the user has no idea what they're doing. At least that's the core assumption an OS should operate under if it is to be used by anyone and everyone. You can't claim even your grandma can run Arch when trying to install Steam can bork your system. And no, warnings are not a valid defense in this case. You will never teach the average user to not ignore those. Unfortunately it's the OS's job to protect the user from their own recklessness, and again, warnings are not always enough. Especially when you're getting warnings while doing something so mundane.

But that's how the typical user behaves. I love Linux and what you can do with it, but it's so tone deaf to think oridanry people are going to behave any diffeent than Linus did. People just don't have the time to take that effort you expect of yourself, only enthusiast have this kind of time. Other people are enthusiastic about other things. We need to all respect this.

Ugh, it's so frustrating. Linux will continue to be irrelevant to consumers as long as this attitude of "just put in the effort to understand" persists.

His series on linux got me interested in linux and a few weeks before the first ep came out I made the switch. I had been using linux as a brand new user for 4 weeks when watching his "review" of linux and I thought it was unfair. But linux made a good first impression on me and I am still daily driving it and now all my machines run linux.

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Ugh, Hes trying so hard to double down on his comments, while giving plausible deniability to his doubling down, especially with the Billet block.

And its so fucking stupid to complain that the billet waterblock is expensive and stupid, considering ALL the stupid, expensive, wasteful bullshit hes done on his channel.. Its double stupid that hes still using his basis on using the wrong card that didnt fit it as his argument.

I've got to say, I've noticed a lot of the things Steve mentioned in his video, and I agree with the vast majority of what he said, but I still do watch LTT occasionally because it's still often entertaining, but man Linus' response rubbed me the wrong way. Aside from addressing the auctioning the water block thing, he didn't really address anything and most of it came off as woe is me. It sounded like he thinks the GN video is why people are upset rather than the countless mistakes and corrections they've had to do in the past just 6 months. It seems to me like he's missing the issue most people have.

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This comment is where LTT started going down for me.

Bro, the simple fact that Linus failed to recognize that ads are most of the time forced on you, with no paid opt-out alternative, had me cursing at him.

It's not piracy if I can't pay to get the product unaltered. PERIOD.

I use DeArrow basically exclusively for LTT.

For those who don't know it, that's a crowd-sourced youtube title replacement script, intended to purge the platform from clickbait. Made by the same devs behind the SponsorBlock addon.

https://dearrow.ajay.app/

LTT used to be fun because they'd get a bit more creative than other youtubers and weren't to cringewrothy (I'm talking back in the house with the kitchen set) and occasionally would go on some bonkers home engineering projects that were just stupid fun. But as my IT career grew I learned just how disconnected they are from enterprise IT and just how focused on gaming hardware they are (and just how boring gaming computers are) and now that I have a degree in networking and they've been struggling to level up their networking game I really just shake my head.

I watch them for entertainment purposes but anytime they look at server-y stuff I'm more watching to see how bad they are than to learn anything or see anything cool.

Its fine that they have their niche, its fine that they're trying to expand out of it, and I wish them the best, but they've got a concerning cultural problem that needs to be addressed before they can effectively grow more

Edit: wow this seemed so big when it was just a accuracy and integrity issue but now that seems so small with the new revelations from Madison. I wish everyone working the grind at LTT the best and hope everyone who sexually harassed and groped can find a nice thorny cactus as their new office chair

I get the feeling Linus is just gonna double down on his bullshit on the wan show to justify it.

The part that struck me was Linus talking about how he hopes Billet does well because it's a harsh industry. It's a harsh industry for Billet because the biggest reviewer in the space took their prototype, mis-tested it, panned it, and then sold it at auction. Trying to paint that as a one-off is difficult, because it wasn't a mixed bag on the quality of the experience. It was awful start to finish.

If I'm a small company trying to get a name in the space, I'd never go to LMG. "Trust me bro, we dunk on stuff, so you know we're honest," is a bad take if you're the one getting dunked on due to lazy journalism and R&D.

I agree that a large chunk of LMG content is vapid and surface level, and I was put off by them years ago because of it. Ironically though, I've found much of their newer output more appealing, not because of it's informational value, but because where else am I gonna see someone build a hacked together water loop with a car radiator?

I enjoy their content involving jank or overengineered solutions, their merch feels good (I would buy it even if it was just another brand like nike or adidas) and they arent as bone dry as GN, MKBHD is too mobile focused, Dave2D too regular consumer tech (like Laptops) focused, LTT has a bit of all.
The controversy he creates himself is surely valid but I enjoy the content more and the integrity he wants to stand for.

If you disagree or want to discuss my opinion, feel free to ask why I enjoy it.