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."
As someone who has worked with enterprise servers/networking for over 10 years now, I avoid any videos where they're talking about their servers or networking. I've watched a lot of them but the mistakes and odd choices make it unenjoyable for me personally. I have always chalked it up to them dumbing it down for their audience but maybe it's inexperience.
Either way, I enjoy a lot of their content but haven't used their reviews to pick out new products for a long time.
It's 100% inexperience... it's not them dumbing it down, Linus doesn't understand it himself.
I started seeing it when I learned Linus used UnRaid... well that isn't problematic in itself, the problem was that he thought it was the best, and wouldn't consider anything else, and made fun of TrueNAS Scale or whatever Jake was trying to get him to use just because he simply didn't understand it. Having that kind of attitude is a problem... especially when you are so very confidently wrong.
Then the Linux challenge series happened, and again, Linus made a lot of complaints over things that he again, just didn't understand... and as a veiled attempt to save face, he tried framing it as, "tHiS iS wHaT aN AvErAgE uSeR DoEs." Framing it for the average user wasn't part of the challenge, he only said that to hide his laziness and incompetence. Because like most of his fans, he's a Windows power user who thinks of himself as a computer expert, and Linux makes him face the fact that he is merely a Windows power user. So instead of learning a new system, he throws salt to again save face, because it's easier... and he has his head completely up his own ass.
Then there were the adblocking videos. He equated adblocking to piracy. Do I need to say more? What a fucking douchebag.
And then he blew it on an Android TV box video that was poorly researched and full of misinformation. Yeah, a bunch of generic Android TV boxes out there have malware, but to say all of them do, and then to recommend a Chromecast is fucking hilarious.
I figured, eh, he fails anytime he steps outside of Windows and gaming, but apparently I just didn't know any better. Because apparently he also fails in his gaming benchmarks too as pointed out by the many examples given in the GN video.
He has a very narrow understanding of tech, and somehow, even with his limited understanding, believes his knowledge and ways of doing things are better than others. Combine that with his unwillingness to learn and properly research topics... and you have yourself a narcissistic douchebag that all too often is wrong but will never admit it. But only people knowledgeable in the topics he talks about sees it.