• Nefyedardu@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    So let me get this straight.

    1. 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.
    2. Stole their prototype which they needed to develop their product further, even going so far as to sell it at auction.
    3. 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.)
    4. Lies about offering to recompense the company. They didn’t do that until after getting called out.
    5. 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.

    • buckykat@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • fireflash38@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • buckykat@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          1 year ago

          This is the kind of thing a union (which Linus, of course, has said he’s very against) would help with

          • MonkCanatella@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            I kept thinking about that watching GN’s last video and how it’s so perfectly in line with what GN exposed.

            • bitteorca@artemis.camp
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              1 year ago

              “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

            • SinningStromgald@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              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.

            • buckykat@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              1 year ago

              That’s how bosses have to phrase being anti union. “Oh we’re a family here why do you need a union” shit

            • Neshura@bookwormstory.social
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              1 year ago

              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.)

            • Taako_Tuesday@lemmy.ca
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              1 year ago

              “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.

            • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              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

        • GravenImages@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          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

          • galloog1@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            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.

      • Nefyedardu@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • Postcard64@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          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.

        • catastrophicblues@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          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.

          • GreyBeard@lemmy.one
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            1 year ago

            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.

            • dustyData@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              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.

              • Cora! :D@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                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.

                • dustyData@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Yeah, it’s not like people can read and there are several tutorials and manuals freely available all over the internet.

                  • Cora! :D@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    to a new person, those tutorials and manuals are the “random code and unknown commands” that i spoke about in the above comment. i thought i made that very clear. nothing is known until it is learned, and things cannot be learned without practice. practice leads to initial failure, and the frustrations with that are what the linux challenge was about.

            • ours@lemmy.film
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              1 year ago

              And to prove the point there was a website dedicated to taking GitHub links and turning them into download links.

            • frezik@midwest.social
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              1 year ago

              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.

            • Nefyedardu@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              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…

              • tabular@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                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.

                  • tabular@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    Audio creation is a hidden magic I know little of, so the same reasons as on Windows but they’re sick of Windows? Do you consider an audio enthusiastic a “techy”? Perhaps I should have said “computer techy”.

                • Nefyedardu@kbin.social
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                  1 year ago

                  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…

        • Deathcrow@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          ohh boy, I almost forgot about that. That was super painful. It’s a website linus, not a file browser.

        • sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net
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          1 year ago

          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!

      • Name is Optional@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • tony@lemmy.hoyle.me.uk
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          1 year ago

          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.

    • Bobert@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      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!

    • dorkian_gray@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Solid summary, yep. I will say though that while I understand your anger and certainly share in your disappointment, Linus has a pretty good (but not spotless, not by a long shot) track record of doing the right thing and being a decent dude, and I think he deserves a bit more grace than the more vitriolic comments have been giving him. Saying he’s a piece of shit is a bit much, in my opinion.

      As a long-time viewer, it’s hard to see. I hope he sits and thinks on this whole situation, and comes around to apologise to Billet, to GN, and to the community he spent so long building. In the absence of that, I really hope someone from LMG outlines the steps they’ll take moving forward to address the points raised in the GN videos. I love LMG’s content, it would be a shame to lose them over all this.

      • frezik@midwest.social
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        1 year ago

        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.

          • RiikkaTheIcePrincess@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            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?

          • frezik@midwest.social
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            1 year ago

            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.

            • dorkian_gray@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              One hundred percent, he’s always seemed like the voice of reason (I mention that in other comments, too). In the video from today he even said part of his job is wrangling Linus, which made me wince, because how the hell is that even supposed to work? Linus can take responsibility for his own damn mouth, frankly; if he’s not sanity-checking responses with Luke that’s a failure on Linus’ part, not on Luke’s.

              • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                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.

                • dorkian_gray@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  I agree! Together, they’re a very entertaining team. I’d like to clarify though, what I mean by “Linus can take responsibility for his own mouth” is not that he has to abandon the spicy takes, but that he needs to listen more closely to what he says and correct himself if he’s being unreasonable. I don’t think it’s fair to rely on other people to do it for him.

                  That said, this does seem like one of the things they are addressing; per the video, Linus said that future crisis communication will be handled through the other executives, which strikes me as a simple and effective solution. The main problem for most people I think is letting their emotions cloud their thinking in situations like this; I’m the same way! And, lucky enough to have a few people who talk me through and keep me level. Maybe for the WAN show he and Luke can have a safe word, and Linus can simmer down if he hears it 😂

      • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • dorkian_gray@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I kinda covered it in this comment about the latest video response: https://lemmy.world/comment/2474701

          But the gist of it is that the video was a much more considered response to the situation (closer to what I expected out of them from the get), and now we will wait and see to see if they make good on it. We don’t have to “trust them, bro”; people are watching, and we will hold them to account if they don’t follow through. All that means for me is that I simply don’t watch this kind of content if I can’t trust it. What drew me to LTT in the first place was the genuinely useful information coupled with high entertainment value; if they can get that balance back, and stick to the guidelines they say they’ll publish, then I see no reason not to accept that they’re doing the right thing with regard to their testing and the accuracy of their reporting.

          Same goes for their response to Madison’s statements, and their “crunch culture” in general. I agree that Madison is just one voice of many, but that doesn’t mean she’s the only one either. What I hope is that it never happens again, but if it does I hope the support for Madison this time will encourage anyone else to speak out about such issues.

          TL;DR, Indeed, don’t take them at their word that they’ll do better. Watch, and see if they do.