this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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So let me get this straight.
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.
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.
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.
This is the kind of thing a union (which Linus, of course, has said he's very against) would help with
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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 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.
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?
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.
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.
Link for any wanderers who haven't seen it yet: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1691693740254228741.html
Oof. I'm glad she finally felt like she could speak out properly. How she was treated is simply awful. At this point I just really hope I'm not wrong about Luke, I like him 😞
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?
Sorry, was this directed at me, or more of a general comment about the reaction from the community?
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.
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.
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.