He’s an idiot. After I saw him installing Linux I was sure about that. What a bozo.
It’s looking like Linus should have taken that $100 million offer he got and left when he had the chance.
I get that some people like working, and that business founders can be very emotionally invested in their baby.
But to imagine having $100 million waved in my face and saying “nah, I think I’ll just wake up and go to work tomorrow” is crazy to me. But I guess you can’t be a billionaire if you “settle” for nine figures and an absurdly comfortable life with nothing but free time to find new interests and see the world.
I don’t think he works “traditionally” as he is essentially the sole founder and CEO. He’s the centre piece but it’s not like you’re actually “going to work” but rather building something. That doesn’t make the $100 an escape but more as an offer for someone to take what you built all this time and saying later.
A good analogy is walking your dog, that you cherish, and someone offers to buy him right there.
Even if you like working. Taking those $100 million means you and your family will, for generations not have to worry about work. You can take the money and still work like a madman by either making a new venture or doing charity.
But I guess for some people it’s more about the power than the money.
I can imagine it is his dreamjob, in which case what the heck would money matter?
That is quite likely the main reason he refused.
That company is probably worth way more then that. Or at least could be. So if you’re even remotely prideful, you probably think that’s a slap in the face.
I doubt it is worth way more than that now.
Of course, but the offer was prior to the issues coming out.
Linus is always dropping shit, and this is no different.
Also, don’t fuck with tech Jesus
While not being directly related it might be worth noting that a former employee of lmg has now come forward on twitter to describe in gory detail the kind of treatment she received while working there. The culture there sounds utterly disgusting and based on their history it is all extremely believable. Link to the post
This post should be pinned. I went in not liking her because to be she came off on camera as unlikable (giving you this context so you know my mindset going in to the read).
By the end, I was sickened, disgusted and appalled at the treatment she got. I have obviously unsubbed. I was going to wait this out to see how LMG solved this but fuck them. I wish her all the best and as swift a recovery as possible.
The saddest thing is, reading that post, you can tell exactly when she’s quoting linus even when she doesn’t mention him.
Is there an archive of the chain somewhere? I dont have twitter/x, and it won’t let me see anything other than the main tweet
Thanks!
I think this reddit post has all of it.
Is Madison the one that became popular in the community after being snarky in a video while they were building a new PC for her? I think I remember her getting a job there afterwards. If I remember correctly, she was really funny.
Really makes me think they need a union. Also makes me wonder what all Linus learned from this guy who “taught me everything about management” if this is his style of management.
Linus is explicitly anti-union. He’s stated on camera that “if you treat your employees well, you don’t need a union.” All this bullshit coming out proves that’s a fuckin’ lie.
Can’t read past the opening tweet without logging into twitter. Could you summarise or link to an article containing the info?
Basically Madison got misled when getting hired, was expected to do way too much work, was verbally and physically sexually abused, and overall just treated like absolute shit. Not to mention that she was belittled when she complained about it
and now there stuf about sexual harasment…
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=X3byz3txpso
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
So annoying how all good tech channels now lean on drama and sensationalism to get more engagement.
Digital Foundry seems to be the last one where people are level-headed.
Understandable, but I think many people (including me) are fine with a little drama every once in a while as long as it’s warranted and doesn’t damage the substance of the content. Unnecessary drama can certainly be a problem, but unnecessarily making dramatic things boring is not necessarily the solution.
I can agree with that. It may be that ever since I no longer subscribe to the tech elite (LTT, MKBHD, Nexus, Jays2Cents, etc) - I only come across their content when there is drama!
They came from a tech journalist forum before doing reviews, covering bad practices in the industry, most notoriously MSI, and Linus being the face of PC hardware with so many inaccuracies is just another topic.
Yes, facts are drama, for sure.
I didn’t find this to be overly dramatic or sensationalized. I enjoy knowing when one of the people I regularly watch are in fact assholes. Note, he didn’t say they were assholes. He merely repeated what they did and called out issues. He said he wouldn’t be covering the channel anymore after their response. Just decent journalism in my opinion.
Yea, but ever since Nexus started doing their “investigations”, so much of their content looks like cable news. They now jump on all opportunities to drum up more drama.
If you’re more concerned with the muckrakers than the muck idk what to tell you
LMG has a lot of issues. Clickbait, and now this.
I hope the new CEO will intervene sooner or later, although a lot of CEOs only exist as de-facto mascots.
I’m not sure the new CEO has any actual power when it comes to reining Linus in.
So a yet another puppet CEO, just like the in Twitter… oh sorry, X.
Yeah, Linus admitted that himself. He still owns the majority, and Yvonne owns the rest. The CEO really can’t actually do anything that Linus doesn’t want, he’s just a figurehead and businessman there to keep Linus from being forced into the office and off the camera.
How dare Gamer’s Nexus…point out lies and widespread problems at LTT with Nexus backing every claim with evidence. The real issue is reporting on the issues!
Fuck LTT. I stopped watching their content ever since they introduced the “emoting faces” thumbnails. All I say is every time I see tech Jesus these days it’s over some drama, affair and exposé.
Exploding components, fire hazards, evil corporate practices. It often feels that if there is no drama happening, Nexus will go out of their way to make one happen. Just like cable news.
Lol ok. As someone that is actually subbed to GN I can tell just by Tech Jesus’s demeanor that he does not enjoy these so called drama videos. He looks happy when reporting actual news and info whereas in the videos where he has to call out people and corps he just looks like he can’t believe he has to do this shit again.
I have not seen the other videos you’re talking about but this one pretty clearly showed both consumers and companies why LTT should be treated with caution and skepticism. I’d say that that’s relevant information beyond just “drama”.
All I say is every time I see tech Jesus these days it’s over some drama, affair and exposé.
Do you know what algorithms are?
No they don’t. Go take a look at their list of videos. You have to scroll for a while to find any of the ones you consider drama.
I’ve never understood the appeal of Linus Tech Tips anyway. Anthony was great but Linus is just terrible as a host. “Oh no, Linux sucks because it is not Windows! Oh no I broke the system because I couldn’t read the text on the screen!”
I feel like the point of that video though was to point out how a common user using linux would just make these kind of mistakes which do happen and are legitimate. That’s one of the reasons why I enjoy Linux Mint so much really. Simple to use and not too much of a hassle while also slightly helping you understand some of the easier aspects of Linux.
Wow. When you’re supposed to wait and hear from both sides and this is what comes… Yikes. Went to check and read the whole response and any other replies that might have come from it on their forum and found ~115 pages (oops 2 more while writing this) of discussion after Linus’ post.
So let me get this straight.
- Linus screwed over a small two-person startup with his own incompetence by using the product in an unintended way and not using the GPU and instructions which were provided for him.
- Stole their prototype which they needed to develop their product further, even going so far as to sell it at auction.
- Goes on record to say “yes, we screwed up but it would cost $100-$500 to fix it so I’m not going to and no, I’m not apologizing for that”. (That amount of money is chump change to him.)
- Lies about offering to recompense the company. They didn’t do that until after getting called out.
- When he gets criticized for screwing over this company for his own mistakes, rather than owning up he tries to gaslight everybody into think he is somehow the victim?? “Today was so hard bros” oh poor wittle multi-millionaire Linus… I’ll be sure to pray for you while I struggle to pay my rent.
What a fucking piece of shit, fuck him. I hate people like this that simply can’t own up to mistakes and have to deflect all criticism.
deleted by creator
I feel what you’re saying and I feel like I should be agreeing with you. But we do have to be careful here.
What we know and what we see coming out of LMG is what they want us to know and see. When there’s a video of Linus making it right, It’s because they wanted to make a video showing him making it right. You’re not going to see videos of him making it wrong and screwing over people, (if he does) It would be bad for business.
Likewise one ex employee’s statement of bad treatment there isn’t gospel He has hundreds of people. There are plenty of people that have left and there’s not a lot of consensus that I found that things are horrible there other than pace.
His response to GN is obviously trash, written in a moment of anger. He tends to put his foot in his mouth on live streams when he starts getting angry about a subject.
Him not sending back the prototype block, honestly is probably standard operating procedure. I wouldn’t send anything to them that I didn’t expect to lose. They receive so much equipment from so many places that they don’t even open for years, that they’re probably kind of blind to it actually being a hardship on a smaller place. I see the lie about him saying he already offered to pay them back a bit more problematic.
As far as his actual reputation or his character alignment sheet, we don’t really know. I would assume that if he was chaotic evil that we would hear a hell of a lot more about that. The guy he brought in to run the place is an insulating factor. When it was pitched it seemed that he was there to insulate Linus from the company, it’s also likely that he’s there to insulate the company from Linus.
Honestly the only thing out of all this that rings unassailably true is the untrustworthy data claim. He’s placing himself and his company to be a ultimate source of truth for benchmarking. But he comes right out and says that he won’t strive to make a better benchmark for a product for $500 when the number is obviously off. There really isn’t a lot of room for that in what he’s trying to build. If you’re going to come out and prove that power supplies, video cards, CPUs and motherboards make the numbers they say they’re going to make, you’re not going to do that with incorrect testing, shrugs and accusations. He’s going to need to be honest to a fault and transparent. If he expects us to take the data seriously he’s going to have to get out of this “oh that’s good enough I’d trust it so you should trust it” mentality.
deleted by creator
I was almost ready to be with you, but after reading the tweet from Madison elsewhere in the thread, Linus is going to have to go above and beyond to fix things.
deleted by creator
See, everything’s really actually tooootally fine and Linus is a totes wonderful dude who runs a happy little family worth a hundred million dollars.
Except his employees endure various forms of abuse and are visibly afraid of him at least some of the time. So much suffering is clearly a price many are willing to accept. Companies drive people to breakdowns and literal suicide and… oh well, I guess? What are people gonna do, think a little? Care a little? Post one tweet (or Xcretion or whatever the fuck) on the way to go buy the latest from a company that just killed someone, or destroyed their mental health and ability to live, or maybe “just” (said very sarcastically) groped them a bit and caused a crapload of undue stress besides? No wonder my mind’s all fucked up: I look at the people around me and few of them would so much as skip a DLC to make this world any better. Everything is fucked and it’s only going to get worse and I feel like I’m gonna implode if I have to see one more comfortable prick explain how his precious fucking rich white guy parasocial pal only accidentally constantly screws people over. He’s really a nice guy, actually! Probably tons of fun to have a beer with! Funny on screen!
What’s some peon’s life, or a dozen, or a hundred or thousand or million of them compared to the complete comfort of someone who’s just such a good ol’ boy?
deleted by creator
FWIW, Luke was clearly trying to prod Linus into acknowledging the problem of the “trust me, bro” warranty on the WAN show instead of treating it like a joke. I think he was also making some expressions of dissatisfaction about how that cooler block review was handled, which is a major part of this.
Obviously, there’s only so far he can push things on his employer’s platform. Plus, the two of them have been friends for a long time. But I do wonder if he’s going to break in the not so distant future.
deleted by creator
If you can stop your friend/boss saying something stupid (which they may regret saying later if they change their mind) then how does responsiblity make that not worthwhile?
deleted by creator
Without Luke on the wan show Linus would be useless. It would be one guy saying whatever comes off the top of his head ranting uncontrollably about everything.
He knows when he goes off on a subject and Luke is there that Luke is going to challenge him if he’s being an ass, so you get a better quality of content from Linus than he would produce on his own.
Linus isn’t going to watch his mouth, that’s honestly his shtick.
deleted by creator
Woah woah woah woah!
I dunno how many times this has to be said!
He didn’t SELL it! He AUCTIONED it!
That’s a distinction that needs to be made!
And it was for CHARITY. Surely that obsolves him right?
I herby start the bidding on LM! Do I hear $500?
It’s not just the Billet Labs thing, GN showed a pattern at LMG of rushing out bad test data and therefore wrong conclusions to keep up the frankly ridiculous volume of videos they put out.
I used to like LTT up until their “Linux Challenge” videos which were just a pain to watch. Shit like this coming from the biggest tech channel on youtube just drives me up the wall.
That bit made me cringe. You go to the file, and can download using the Raw button or using wget. It’s not hard, it’s ignorance.
It also has nothing to do with Linux and everything to do with how Github works. I actually give him a pass on nuking X while installing Steam, that shouldn’t happen(although he did get a nice big warning, but that warning was far from user friendly). But some of the other stuff they ran into was “This doesn’t work exactly like windows, therefore is bad.” type stuff.
In that video he did everything that everyone recommends not to do when trying out Linux:
- Never copy paste and execute random code from the internet.
- Never execute commands on the terminal you don’t fully understand what they do.
- Never say yes or okay to any dialog prompt unless you understand what the dialog is asking about.
He is stupid, he paid the stupid tax. Linux didn’t do any of the things that went wrong in that video, it was his own stubbornness and ignorance.
the problem with a lot of these recommendations though is that to a non-linux user: all code is random, and no commands are understood. you only learn by doing, and if you cant do until you know, you’ll never get anywhere. you gotta make a few mistakes to learn anything, and thats what happened. yea he paid the stupid tax, but so does everyone else while they learn a new thing. that was the entire point of the challenge: how hard is it? and it turns out, quite! info is scattered, theres lots of commands and code that sounds like it’ll do what you want but is actually a bad idea (as evidenced by the recommendations you point out), and things can break easily. thats the video.
Yeah, it’s not like people can read and there are several tutorials and manuals freely available all over the internet.
How would someone who doesn’t use GitHub or linux know how to do that?
And to prove the point there was a website dedicated to taking GitHub links and turning them into download links.
GitHub shouldn’t be a method of software distribution, but a lot of FOSS devs take the easy way out. Understandably so; they’re volunteering their time. Still, Linus is in a position to show how it works rather than complaining.
I know Linus is more of a hardware guy but c’mon. You learn git freshman year into any Computer Science-related degree. Failing that, 5 seconds of Google or ChatGPT even will set you straight. Maybe it wasn’t intuitive, but I like think the biggest tech youtuber would have knowledge of something so fundamental to his field…
As I recall he was trying to use Linux as if he was a regular non-techy person. So it could make sense for him to do that knowing it’s wrong. (Which wouldn’t apply to “apt install Steam” yes do as I say issue, which a regular user probably wouldn’t have tried and ignored the warning even with jargon there).
I don’t find it completly unbelievable even a techy could make that mistake because they do not use version control software like git.
Why would a regular non-techy person need to run GoXLR on Linux
I really don’t think he was acting or anything. Like someone else said, if he knew how it worked he could have used it as a moment to teach others right? Instead he just completely fumbled everything, said it was set up incorrectly and blamed the website for it. Which given recent events is such a Linus thing to do…
After this happened, GitHub added a Download button to their for preview pages. So they themselves considered it was enough of a problem/inconvenience to not have a download button.
ohh boy, I almost forgot about that. That was super painful. It’s a website linus, not a file browser.
I loved watching him type out “yes I understand the thing that I’m about to do is going to break my computer” and then complain that the thing that he did broke his computer!
Linus shits on entrepreneurship with his continual BS with easily caught bad data. No reputable companies should touch him. Anything he pushes to his viewers should be suspicious. I’ll be wondering how much LMG gets under the table for posting positive reviews.
I’ve seen videos where he’s just basically repeating the script marketing have given him… zero difficult questions. No doubt they’re quite lucrative.
Unfortunately they’re his most accurate ones.
It’s the sort of thing that makes me really, really sad for the people working there. That crazy breakneck pace cannot be good for mental health.
They somewhat recently did a “what do lmg employees really think of working here” video, and it seemed like the #1 complaint was the pace. I really hope they take this criticism to heart and just… Slow down for a bit
But they won’t. Cos $$$.
Part of the equation here is the transparency. It’s good that they are transparent and I do think they listen. Part of the interesting side to watch is the interaction with the community.
This is the kind of thing a union (which Linus, of course, has said he’s very against) would help with
deleted by creator
he wants to run a business where a union isn’t needed.
That is code for “I hate unions and will do my best to bust them up before they start”. Same BS as when a company calls itself a “family”. Total and complete bullshit to try and emotionally manipulate you to doing more for less than your worth.
“I like unions, I just don’t think they’re right for my company” is one of the oldest tricks in the anti-union playbook
I like condoms. I looove condoms. I just don’t think they’re right for our relationship
“We want a business where a union isnt needed” is a massive red flag. Kroger said the same to me at an employee orientation in 2016, at the time their starting pay was 7.75 and working pressures massive, as I’m sure they still are.
You should read Catch 22
He’s basically saying the same thing by saying that. Wake the fuck up.
Good ol’ double speak
If a union isn’t needed form one anyway, now you only have to do the contract negotiations once instead of doing the same shtick of “This is the payraise I can offer you, please sign if you are fine with that”. There is literally no downside to having a union anyway if you are of the opinion your employees don’t need one.
Now if you actually think a union would harm you as a business owner that equation changes and you have every incentive to invent reasons why a union is unnecessary anyway and how unions only exist in companies with crap working conditions. (Cannot speak for the US but at least here some of the best companies are well regarded by employees because of the union, not despite of it.)
That’s how bosses have to phrase being anti union. “Oh we’re a family here why do you need a union” shit
Do you honestly think he’d come out directly and say “I’m against unions”? Wouldn’t it be just as easy for him to say “I’m pro union and I’d support my employees if they decide to unionize” if that’s what he believed? C’mon now
I kept thinking about that watching GN’s last video and how it’s so perfectly in line with what GN exposed.
Unions, the bane of rich people that take advantage of their workers via positions of power.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
A labs employee mouthed off and GN went full scorched earth
Steve actually said in the first video that they didn’t respond at all to the labs’ employee comment.
It was one of the first things shown in the video. I didn’t even know about the comment until watching the GN video.
Context seemed to be “this is what we let slide before, but the gloves are off after this new comment” to demonstrate that they at least showed some restraint.
And the new comment was by Linus himself. Kinda funny how one offhand comment can have such a large impact.
Now I wonder if Linus will embrace the people who love to talk about how much they hate cancel culture. Is there a fascist Linus in this timeline?
All I want is just good hardware reviews, the rest is noise…
All I want is just good hardware reviews
Same. Seems LTT and Short Circuit is out. As demonstrated, they aren’t a reliable source.
Same, that’s why i never liked that twat
I really only ever followed any tech channels for cool videos and news, reviews are nearly pointless to me until I’m trying to actually buy or recommend something.
But outside of an occasional great video or at least great topic (like the 48kW fan), LMG barely offers anything special in that space anymore, despite still being the biggest outlet. GN has news down pat (along with reviews), Storage Review and STH cover enterprise stuff that Linus has only exceeded once with the million dollar (or whatever it was) setup, and plenty of channels do guides.
Oof.
Linus is tech cancer plain and simple, now more so.
