Value of Linus Tech Media benchmarking / reviews *pretend spawn

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well, some of her claims might be a bit childish, like when she says they asked them to be assertive and then she tried to act like that, but LMG staff said she seemed to be too bossy. In a big corporation those are like abstract and little thoughts not one care about.

However, I insist that given how Linus seems to work she might have a point there, with many issues she detailed. I mean, I watched few videos of them, from which some are worth watching but I was a subscriber on youtube, and whether it was they wanted to transform it into some kind of TV show or other reason, many episodes come out as odd.

Linus seems to be that odd guy, and sometimes even their employees don't seem to be comfortable around him. Maybe given their technological background, they might not be comfortable around humans overall, but it's probably the former. If I worked with Linus I'm not sure how I'd feel. As a spectator, his high-pitched voice and his condescending tone, are just a huge turn off for me.

How do you humble a man like that?

Some of their staff seem okey, like that guy with the glasses and some beard telling jokes. Some others aren't also particularly likable. There is that blonde guy with a cap -sometimes- which is as expressive as a stone. He comes out as a bit of a soulless person. Then there is that Linux nerd with that sloppy aspect, that gives me the creeps but I gotta admit I sometimes learnt from him.

What worries me the most is that maybe except German people, we dont have a tech jesus christ. -excluding DF from this 'cos they are more gaming and performance oriented, not other type of hardware-, as @DavidGraham mentioned.

There are too many jayztwocents, sadly, whose channels shows lots of subtle signs that their computing knowledge doesn't really extend beyond "they installed a graphics card once and thinks they're an expert"
Agree with you.
And to add to my point, just read today that the girl left LMG 2 years ago!!! Sorry, but it raises big flags on her character...
 
watched the first two GN videos on the subject and even before I watched (ex Anand) Ian Cutress' take on the whole thing.

I had to agree with him, that GN points some very legimate problems. But they also try to sell a narative, exagerate many points, come with conclusions first. It's overall quite bad too, but the contribution to keep LTT honest is of course good ..
 
Yeah, he is a true CEO material. That from a YouTube reviewer surprises me.
But what is the flaw in the presentation?
For me it was all the deflection he did. The overly defensive attitude towards their early HR set up and the way they imply HR is to help employees. It's not, HR is there to help the company from employees.

Also the way he basically said mistakes were made but they weren't bad or intentional mistakes. I guess he just came off smarmy and condescending to me, but he's been doing that to me ever since the "trust me bro" stuff.

I'm biased, I hate what Linus has become.
 
watched the first two GN videos on the subject and even before I watched (ex Anand) Ian Cutress' take on the whole thing.

I had to agree with him, that GN points some very legimate problems. But they also try to sell a narative, exagerate many points, come with conclusions first. It's overall quite bad too, but the contribution to keep LTT honest is of course good ..

Ian Cutress's video was bizarre. Basically the gist of the critique what that since LTT is so popular and such a huge channel, GN is actually punching down by critiquing them, because they can't be expected to actually be good at this level of technical detail because they...have to produce the content. Literally the main thrust of GN's critique was that LTT is wed to churning out massive amounts of content to the point where they just can't slow down and take their time, and Ian's defense is that it's unfair to 'nitpick' them on these details, because they're so big...from churning out content. 🙄

Basically it was a hand-waving exercise, 'please don't be mean to my smol but incredibly successful friend with the largest tech channel on youtube'. The only time he actually addresses a segment of Steve's piece directly is to note how he was 'smiling heavily' when Steve was saying he doesn't want to be making this video, and subsequently shows a clip of Steve...awkwardly cracking a half-smile when saying it. Poorly argued, poorly presented - really this kind of thing should have been written out, not a stilted 90 minute piece that resembles a hostage video.

Also at the end, his 'solution' for all of this 'drama' is for youtubers to not critique other youtubers, but instead combat misinformation by just releasing their own versions of the same product reviews, and hence the correct information will then float to the top and be rewarded. This kind of naivete is laughable in of itself, but also completely impractical - we just have a dueling banjo situation where every product/tech experiment by LTT needs to be monitored by Steve and responded to with an equivalent piece, as long as he doesn't mention LTT? Like look, eventually if you continually notice one particular outlet keeps producing inaccurate content, you should be drawing attention to it, you can't expect the average consumer to be able to identify errors simply by watching hours of competing videos and then somehow coming to the right conclusion on which one is more valid. LTT is putting out a product like every other channel, it's absolutely fair for a tech reviewer to review their product.*

* - And lets not forget, what largely kicked all of this off was that Steve was commenting on LTT's crap policy with handling returns on a literal, physical product they sell!
 
For me it was all the deflection he did. The overly defensive attitude towards their early HR set up and the way they imply HR is to help employees. It's not, HR is there to help the company from employees.

Also the way he basically said mistakes were made but they weren't bad or intentional mistakes. I guess he just came off smarmy and condescending to me, but he's been doing that to me ever since the "trust me bro" stuff.

I'm biased, I hate what Linus has become.

What do you want him to say? Trow the whole company under the bus just because? Not every HR department is there solely to fuck over employees as much as they can, some actually do help from time to time.

Sames goes for the mistakes. Not sure what is wrong with his explanation. Assuming the causes he mentioned are mostly true, it doesn't sound like the mistakes were a case of malice or simply not caring.
 
What do you want him to say? Trow the whole company under the bus just because? Not every HR department is there solely to fuck over employees as much as they can, some actually do help from time to time.

Sames goes for the mistakes. Not sure what is wrong with his explanation. Assuming the causes he mentioned are mostly true, it doesn't sound like the mistakes were a case of malice or simply not caring.
I would have to say that HR is there first and foremost to protect the company , then its to protect employees but only if protecting them doesn't hurt the company
 
It's clear they are good at many things but master of none. Things seems rushed and they are, on a lot of subjects, just nibbling around the edges of themes without ever doing a deep dive. This is the problem with their tight scheduling.

Sure they have the $100 million lab now but that doesn't validate their content if they don't test the right things or have the right test methodology.

It's especially aggravating if you actually are the least bit knowledgeable on the subject and leads to a lot of cringe worthy moments.
 
It's an entertainment channel first and foremost. Whatever value they have to offer in terms of reviews, education, and consumer advocacy I don't think would be missed if it went away. People need daily 4k videos of PC hardware news and benchmarks about as much as they need 24h cable news that repeat the same drip of news every 10 minutes. I don't think techtube viewers today are any more informed than tech website readers were pre-Youtube, and there was a lot more product variety and industry churn back then and much lower frequency of articles to cover it all. Today every techtuber benchmarks against the same dozen or so games, most of which weren't made for PC and probably wouldn't fall in the top 100 of Steam player activity. There can't be that many people actually watching these videos because they're on the cusp of a purchase decision and need to know what the best $700 GPU is for Hogwarts (or whatever).
 
It's an entertainment channel first and foremost. Whatever value they have to offer in terms of reviews, education, and consumer advocacy I don't think would be missed if it went away. People need daily 4k videos of PC hardware news and benchmarks about as much as they need 24h cable news that repeat the same drip of news every 10 minutes. I don't think techtube viewers today are any more informed than tech website readers were pre-Youtube, and there was a lot more product variety and industry churn back then and much lower frequency of articles to cover it all. Today every techtuber benchmarks against the same dozen or so games, most of which weren't made for PC and probably wouldn't fall in the top 100 of Steam player activity. There can't be that many people actually watching these videos because they're on the cusp of a purchase decision and need to know what the best $700 GPU is for Hogwarts (or whatever).

I actually think we lost a lot of knowledge once Anandtech sold and what was it sharkyextreme and even though I didn't always agree with them there ws hardocp. I think loosing the long form articles was a big hit

But I don't see a huge issue with youtube channels for tech. I mean people need hobbies and people want to listen to thigns about their hobbies. Look at sports. You watch sports , read about sports , listen to sports , listen to commentary on sports , watch commentaries and so on. It's the same with books and art and so on and so forth
 
Sure -- there's no issue with their existence, but I'd likewise say there's no issue if one or some went away. If there's an audience then there will always be new ones to replace the old ones.
 
Sure -- there's no issue with their existence, but I'd likewise say there's no issue if one or some went away. If there's an audience then there will always be new ones to replace the old ones.
Yea of course. I don't care if Linus goes away. I am sure that could create a wellspring of viewers for other channels
 
learned today, by sheer chance after watching a youtube video on Windows tips, that Linus Tech Tips channel got hacked several months ago simply because of a file extension and not having enabled visible file extensions in the OS. They received an email with a PDF and it was a pdf.exe instead.

https://pokde.net/blog/linus-tech-tips-hack-explained

This is so basic stuff, wonder how they missed it was actually a typical .exe file.

 
learned today, by sheer chance after watching a youtube video on Windows tips, that Linus Tech Tips channel got hacked several months ago simply because of a file extension and not having enabled visible file extensions in the OS. They received an email with a PDF and it was a pdf.exe instead.

https://pokde.net/blog/linus-tech-tips-hack-explained

This is so basic stuff, wonder how they missed it was actually a typical .exe file.

The video says it wasn't an .exe. It was a .scr (screensaver?). Also it was over 700MB (full of junk data) so it would be skipped by AV scans. When you're opening dozens of PDFs a day I can see why it could slip by. Though I'd like to think I would've noticed a 700MB PDF but maybe not.

Surprising to me that their email host allows attachments that big. They probably set it so big because they are tech people who know what they're doing :). I think at least on this particular account they should set that down to the limit where AV will automatically scan it.
 
The video says it wasn't an .exe. It was a .scr (screensaver?). Also it was over 700MB (full of junk data) so it would be skipped by AV scans. When you're opening dozens of PDFs a day I can see why it could slip by. Though I'd like to think I would've noticed a 700MB PDF but maybe not.

Surprising to me that their email host allows attachments that big. I think at least on this particular account they should set that down to the limit where AV will automatically scan it.
you're right. Sry for the confusion. Still, .scr files are also a big warning sign, and I knew that since many years ago -along with excel macros and bla bla bla-, and I don't consider myself the most advanced computer savvy person.
 
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