Linus Gabriel Sebastian & Linus Media Group / Linus Tech Tips - Narcissistic corporate shill YouTuber driving his media empire into the ground. KILL COUNT: 2

[1999 prick]

Yep, just keeping the boss complacent with the appearances so he can be left in peace to do the floatplane shit, which he at least seems to enjoy. If I were Luke, I'd be prepping some floatplane plans. The financials are pretty foggy so its hard to say which way it leans, but if it is profitable, I'd be pooling some of my own funds together to be ready to make an offer to buy out the rest of Linus/LMG's stake in the company in the event that LTT tanks. If its not making a profit, I'd be watching for signs of a final upswing in LTT's fortunes, to offer to 'retire' and sell off the stake in floatplane while Linus/LMG can still afford to buy it at a reasonable price.

Either way, I'd be looking at exit strategies and making sure I have what I need to act on them when the opportunity arises.

Here is their revenue breakdown from 2020. thanks to @Jeff Q. Anime

Basically Floatplane is around because their boss forgot about it and doesn't give a shit about it.
Honestly I have no idea wtf Luke is doing with Floatplane, because checking the Version history of the app on IOS many of the updates have been insignificant for the longest time. And if I were LTT I would try to invest a bit more on Floatplane as both Rumble and Kick demonstrated that both viewers and creators really do want to fuck off YT and Twitch.

 

[Kuritan Deplorable]

Basically Floatplane is around because their boss forgot about it and doesn't give a shit about it.
Honestly I have no idea wtf Luke is doing with Floatplane, because checking the Version history of the app on IOS many of the updates have been insignificant for the longest time.

As far as I'm aware, its just coasting - But it also doesn't seem to be tanking, which is why I'd be looking at slipping it out from under LTT. Its a small sliver for a company of a hundred people, but floatplane itself is just a handful of devs and Luke, and if its making up 6% of all of LTT's revenue, its probably making enough to keep its people afloat. The fact that Linus probably barely cares about it is what makes it plausible to run off with it.

Either way, Luke should be looking at an exit strategy - he doesn't really do any of the other LTT stuff anymore, and if Linus feels squeezed in a few years when the badminton starts bleeding them dry, carry alongs like Luke are juicy targets to 'decide to retire'.

 

[GosuGopher]

Floatplane is stagnant because both of their publicly stated growth plans fell through.
They initially wanted to onboard video uploaders and streamers regularly, as well as selling a white label version of the software as a service to interested companies. Neither panned out.

Part of my overall confusion with Floatplane being a thing to begin with was that there are commercially available options to providing hosted video and livestreaming for businesses. I've used Wowza as far back as 2014, but there are dozens of others who sell similar services. When they started Floatplane and decided to not fork any of the popular open source offerings like PeerTube. AVideo, or OSP, I assumed they were in fact trying to compete for this white label market. They'd use it publicly for LTT as a showpiece and the real angle was to have it be enticing for companies to pay large sums of money for ongoing use. Had they actually done anything novel or interesting with Floatplane it might have worked, but from what I have seen and heard regarding the project, it's 3-5 devs building their resumes and developing features without a real end vision for the site. (In-between being tasked by Linus/Luke to develop software and publish websites for other LTT projects)

The angle of attracting 3rd party YouTubers/streamers also would have worked, had Linus not gotten cold feat due to needing to arbitrarily wanting to moderate their catalog of videos and not risk unsavory content being uploaded. Linus publicly expressed concern over Twitch thots and OnlyFans girls causing them issues related to sponsors/advertisers. So in the end they allowed on a small number of personal/professional friends who Linus self-vetted, none have large audiences and using Floatplane for them is entirely superfluous to their actual channels. It's the same hang-up Linus had with running a VPN, if he didn't have total control over every aspect of the users, he didn't want to "risk" the potential bad publicity or associated drama.

As for revenue overall,
I think merch is a much bigger deal for them now, but for every stellar product of theirs like the screwdriver, there are many that have issues or have not generated significant revenue. They run the risk of needing reliable repeat customers to keep buying products, but there are a finite number of shirts/waterbottles/mousepads that people need. A lot of their product lines have been axed: pillows, women's clothing, jackets, home decor, etc. and their current big product; magnetic cable management accessories, haven't had stellar sales numbers so far. I believe this is the biggest risk for LTT, because once the overhead eclipses profit from their merch, it will drag them down.
Linus has talked about opening his supply chain up to others, as an alternative to shitty YouTuber merch sites, but this goes back to him needing total control and being unwilling to onboard random YouTubers that could reflect negatively on him in the future.

 

[Nabeshin]

Had they actually done anything novel or interesting with Floatplane it might have worked, but from what I have seen and heard regarding the project, it's 3-5 devs building their resumes and developing features without a real end vision for the site. (In-between being tasked by Linus/Luke to develop software and publish websites for other LTT projects)

On the early days of FP, I was thinking that Linus and Luke was trying to build some kind of Patreon of videos, if they went to that route, it could be an amazing and profitable tool instead of trying to do a paid youtube. Patreon, subscribestar and alike are sites that don't let you upload hours longs videos while in FP you can.

I'm someone who used to like Jack Conte(one of patreon founders) before he went full commie, he was back them someone like LTT, a big youtuber wanting to create something for the community to profit from that a everyone was ignoring but unlike LTT he didn't stopped at the MVP like they did with FP.

Linus could easily monetize and profit a lot from FP if he opened the platform and improves it.

There's the 80-20 rule on programming where 80% of the work takes 20% of the time and the rest 20% takes 80% and Linus seems to have forgotten that as FP android/ios client are still in beta and lack a lot of qol

 

[Kheapathic]

They're the IBM of the computer review space - Old, well known, and capable of leveraging their old business connections to do cool shit, but nobody actually cares for 90% of what they do anymore, its just showpieces and more of the same.

The one thing I can give IBM that I can say without a Google search; is they still keep their AS400 up to date. Lots of places still use it as it's lightweight and easy enough to use if you have a 5th grade reading comprehension.

As for LTT, I wouldn't be surprised if their are parts of the company that are guaranteed money makers while others eat money. I remember seeing how they advertise... ... Professional Camera/Editing work, can't think of a more proper term right now. But that type of stuff they can do that work for others. I wouldn't be surprised if they have any CAD Chad's who can properly use machinist shop stuff and do that on the side as well. Linus gets to stay the quirky IT video guy who has hopes and dreams of being respected in the tech field; while he finances it by doing video and machinist work for others.

As time goes on, I also ask how much of the Badminton thing is Yvonne or social awareness; because apparently, Mainland Chinese enjoy it, and I doubt there's enough preppy whites to carry a Badminton center. I wouldn't be surprised if Yvonne told him it makes financial sense, but then he had to go and want it to also be a LAN center.

 

[BlueSpark]

This video is a month old, but does anyone else think that this guy looks and sounds completely trashed?:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/WnoOR5G0orU

 

[A Cat in a Minefield]

He

This video is a month old, but does anyone else think that this guy looks and sounds completely trashed?:

View attachment 6282419

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/WnoOR5G0orU

He is just Canadian.

 

[Kuritan Deplorable]

This video is a month old, but does anyone else think that this guy looks and sounds completely trashed?:

View attachment 6282419

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/WnoOR5G0orU

He sounds like his usual self, maybe a bit more downbeat than usual, but he looks like he's been through hell the last few years. I guess he's been under a lotta shit after all the money Linus dumped into his workshop to get absolutely fuck and all outta it, now he's a mid tier junior engineering grad at a media company that doesn't really need any engineering work done. They've long since moved past pretending they'll make anything for cool videos, and just bodge together off the shelf stuff for maximal product sponsorships. I'm honestly surprised he still has a job.

 

[GosuGopher]

This video is a month old, but does anyone else think that this guy looks and sounds completely trashed?:

Bizarre to me that Linus seems to be the only tech influencer that took the Qualcomm money, no one else is shilling their products and it makes LTT stand out that much more.

 

[tehpope]

Why did Linus dye his hair blonde?

 

[TheRaptorJesus]

Why did Linus dye his hair blonde?

Something to do with d brand. Linus is a whore and will do anything for a sponsor.

 

[John Ligma]

He sounds like his usual self, maybe a bit more downbeat than usual, but he looks like he's been through hell the last few years. I guess he's been under a lotta shit after all the money Linus dumped into his workshop to get absolutely fuck and all outta it, now he's a mid tier junior engineering grad at a media company that doesn't really need any engineering work done. They've long since moved past pretending they'll make anything for cool videos, and just bodge together off the shelf stuff for maximal product sponsorships. I'm honestly surprised he still has a job.

Oh my god I forgot about the expensive ass, huge engineering space they set up for him. I only see him do Short Circuit videos as a host now. Do they use any of that gear at all anymore? I feel like it's been years since I'd seen it

 

[Kuritan Deplorable]

Oh my god I forgot about the expensive ass, huge engineering space they set up for him. I only see him do Short Circuit videos as a host now. Do they use any of that gear at all anymore? I feel like it's been years since I'd seen it

I don't watch enough to say for certain, but considering I haven't seen a peep of them doing anything that's really engineering, I'd err on the side of "No". At best, maybe he made a few holes in the server rack for the pool watercooling project, but I'm not sure I'd want to claim that as a victory in his position.

Kind of surprised he hasn't managed to convince Linus to let him set up a 3d print farm. Could print their own plastic tat merch, and could finance ten good machines selling just one of his CNC toys.

 

[biggacracka]

because they are WOMEN dont you see? every one knows that women are messy and leave shit around he he he. in reality i had to told a bitch to chill out because she was giving me shit because i had some ps3 controllers laying around in my living room

Also, from my observations, messy guy rooms are full of stuff while messy girl rooms are full of clothes

 

[HootersMcBoobies]

There are 2-3 notable open source projects on GitHub that I expected Linus' HexOS to somewhat resemble CasaOS and UmbrelOS (and to a less extent ArozOS)
I was never expecting them to roll out psuedo-enterprise-grade NAS software like FreeNAS/TrueNAS, or even something simpler like OpenMediaVault or Unraid.

Seems like HexOS is being brought up again. It was announced in the TrueNAS forums this month and on the WAN show (skip to 1:08:10)

Judging by the blog post (archive), it's a frontend for FreeNAS for non-tech people and it's "managed," meaning you're also allowing people to be able to remote in for support (I'm assuming from FreeNAS or, God I hope not, LTT staff). So the company going on about being privacy aware and think their audience is tech people is developing a non-tech, non-private solution. There's no price listed anywhere, but I can only assume it would be some type of perpetual subscription license.

 

[GosuGopher]

So the company going on about being privacy aware and think their audience is tech people is developing a non-tech, non-private solution.

I thought you were kidding... you really can't even provision your own server, they do it for you remotely and make the "best" decisions for you:
"it's very important that when we provision the server, we first create the storage pools, then the folders, then the users, and then apply the permissions. And based on the use-case for the folder, different settings may be applied as well."

With their description of 'queuing' changes, it also sounds like any user-end changes you make, get routed to their company and someone then pushes that requested change to your server. This skin might genuinely barely interface with the underlying OS at all.

Best/worst line from their blog post:
"In an emergency, local admin access is always available through the TrueNAS UI and CLI." lol. LMAO even.

This is not a NAS, this is some weird distributed cloud concept where you can lease your own server hardware back from this company. My interest in even trying it has dropped now too.

 

[Burnt Effigy]

With their description of 'queuing' changes, it also sounds like any user-end changes you make, get routed to their company and someone then pushes that requested change to your server.

I don't think it would be that dumb, that would require way too much effort for no real value

I think this is more like just TrueNAS SCALE with an agent that communicates to a botnet c2 central server, and interacts with the TrueNAS API.
They probably don't provide more services than giving all your shit to some randos, a simplified setup (that does not seem to support multiple pools), a shitty web UI, automatic updates (Which SCALE already provides) and support.

The WebUI file management performance is also likely to be disappointing, since you're proxying everything you do through their service, but hey, at least you don't have to open ports.

This is the kind of shit you could throw together with a small team at a hackathon, but I highly doubt anybody is gonna pay for it lmao it's LTT of course kids are gonna fucking buy it

 

[TheRaptorJesus]

Another H1B (or whatever it is called in canada) hire with a thick indian accent gets a $5000 upgrade. Sam Bhatia a nice canadian name.

Nice kitchen, i've been better kitchens in a trailer


He keeps his apartment at a sweltering temperature to remind him of his homeland. I'm failing to see where this 5 grand went other than spending who knows how much to air ship a big ass TV. He's lived in his apartment for 7 months with his fiance with no couch. ~$2k on a camera to film "music videos".

 

[biggacracka]

Sam Bhatia

Wasn't that an NPC's name in Mass Effect 1? Or was it his wife?

Edit: I FUKING KNEW IT

 

[jogging1530]

Another H1B (or whatever it is called in canada) hire with a thick indian accent gets a $5000 upgrade. Sam Bhatia a nice canadian name.

Nice kitchen, i've been better kitchens in a trailer
View attachment 6287689

He keeps his apartment at a sweltering temperature to remind him of his homeland. I'm failing to see where this 5 grand went other than spending who knows how much to air ship a big ass TV. He's lived in his apartment for 7 months with his fiance with no couch. ~$2k on a camera to film "music videos".

Also, that is almost certainly not his fiance but probably just a girlfriend. Unmarried couples living together is looked down upon in Indian communities and I can't help but suspect that that "fiance" was thrown in to avoid some family drama shitstorms.