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

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Didn't he do this back in 2013?
He did
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But still, x86 laptops and ARM laptops are two entirely separate worlds.

They really aren't. Interpreted code like Python, Java, and Javascript require zero porting effort, and unless your C/C++ code has lots of Intel intrinsics sprinkled all over it, it's just a matter of changing a single flag in your compiler instructions to get it to run. The only hard part of migrating from x86 to Arm was chasing down our third party lib suppliers and making sure they were ready to go with an Arm port when we were.

There is still a lot you can't do on ARM still

All of the major programming languages are supported on Apple platforms now. Microsoft has even ported .NET.

Are more and more developers embracing ARM as a legitimate architecture for laptops as opposed to solely being for SBCs, SoCs, phones, etc.?

100% of developers for Apple platforms have embraced Arm. They have no choice. There are no new x86-based Apple laptops being made, nor are they on Apple's roadmap.

RISC vs CISC doesn't really matter any more. Binary size in 2024 is dwarfed by data size for any application. The efficiency of Apple laptops doesn't come from using a RISC processor (reminder that Power was also a RISC ISA); it comes from an SoC design that minimizes energy losses from data movement and keeping the clock speeds relatively low.
 
unless your C/C++ code has lots of Intel intrinsics sprinkled all over it
Take this with a very big grain of salt but people way smarter and clever than I that works with low code, says that this is one of the major issues with WOA(Windows on ARM), according to them, is that the Windows kernel has a lot of assembly code from the NT days that wouldn't make a lot of sense to code in assembly nowadays, they're mainly on win32 API's, so you have a lot of code that is hard to port to ARM because no one know what it does properly but apparently they almost fixed this by now
 
Update: As of last Friday (2024-07-26), Gary is no longer listed on the LMG staff page.
Archive.is snapshot from the 21st of July https://archive.is/DycMq
Fresh archive https://archive.is/7gBUC
Wow, good catch. Gary already left? I remember there were a lot of issues with his employment from the get go. One of which being the fact that he didn't receive pay for 4-5 months due to a problem with their payroll not being able to account for the fact that he was a US citizen. He also commanded an extremely high wage, something clearly unsustainable for LMG in the long run.

I checked his LinkedIn, he hasn't updated it yet.
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There's also a reddit thread regarding this. There are a bunch of posts that were deleted by moderators from anonymous users claiming to be LMG employees spilling tea on some internal drama. Unfortunately I can't locate an archive of these comments.

Weirdly enough, this page was already archived by the time I got to it.
 
Unfortunately I can't locate an archive of these comments.
Some of the deleted comments are visible at https://undelete.pullpush.io/r/LinusTechTips/comments/1ed6h1b/gary_key/
Screenshot 2024-07-30 at 08-37-13 Gary Key.png
Really only interesting posts are:
Gary's last day was Thursday, he left LMG to become the head of Global Marketing for Logitech. Gary will be missed, but I don't think we (as in the company) were kind to him, and in the last month or so, I have a feeling that push came to shove and he took this job.
and
Following things closely as a viewer is not really the same as working here, but I appreciate that you watch all the same. I think there were a series of things that led to Gary leaving.
  1. HR had questioned his attendance despite the fact that Gary opened the building every day and was frequently the last man out every night.
  2. I think he felt like he was being stonewalled in requests to upper management for more support for his team. For example, equipment they need to do their job. Additionally, if you've ever visited the Labs building, you would know that it's not a very nice building and the Labs team is working in a corner of the warehouse space.
  3. I spoke with him before he left and he seemed disillusioned with the direction the company is going in now. Previously, the new big thing was his Labs team. Now we're a badminton company that makes videos and sells merchandise. I'm actually with Gary on this one, I don't get the badminton centre that we're putting together. It takes a lot of our company resources to do work on a building that only benefits Linus and will probably never make any money. The 30+ million dollars they've spent on it could've been better served finding us an actual campus building.
I think what was unkind to him is we set him up to fail, we wasted his years of expertise, and we made him feel unwanted enough that he left and headed back to San Jose. I don't blame him.
 

Credit to Flaming Dumpster to beating me to posting the reddit screenshots.

If Gary's actually gone, I lean towards buying this statement. It's the same kind of sentiment a lot of ex-LMG express when leaving.
Anyone who is not OG LTT gets treated like shit by all the middle managers, and for Gary who was brought in to make a "world class" consumer electronics testing lab, it feels like Linus' attention has drifted and his commitment has waned in the project overall.
 
30 million CAD is about 22 million in real money, and I can see that being what the faggot has invested in the badminton center. 10-12 million for the space in Vancouver area which is the size of one whole office park wing, then dumping the rest into renovation and contractors and that faggot Jake taking advantage of the idiot.

I forget the Labs is even a thing, and I would bet money after the Gamers Nexus beatdown Linus is looking to see how he could write the whole thing off as an extended loss on his taxes. But you're keeping the tranny and firing the competent guy, that is modern business thinking.
 
But you're keeping the tranny and firing the competent guy, that is modern business thinking.
Odds really are good that the guy quit, rather than being walked out. Taking the deleted posts at face value, it looks more like the HR stuff was setting up an excuse to avoid increasing his compensation and stagnate him and his team for 'issues' to keep those resources going elsewhere. Its super common for arrogant business owners to think their talent is stuck with them, and that they can play games with them - For bottom rung people, especially new entrants to the industry that you've underpaid and fucked with their job titles enough, it can even work. But with a resume like he has, there's no shortage of opportunities in the actual industry from companies that really do want that talent. Probably saw the writing on the wall, started looking and found a better offer within a few weeks, and fucked right off.

Of course, if he really is gone, games being played or not, its probably just killed Labs. Talent like that is EXPENSIVE, and while Gary mighta taken it on LTT salary terms for the opportunity to do good, the next guys gonna see years of fuck and all coming outta Labs and ain't gonna buy that. You'll either have to pay a premium to nail down an actual talent who's ok just going through the motions and taking home a paycheck for whatever his real passion is in off hours, or your going to get an incompetent who thinks he can just cowboy it - all passion, no skill. Either outcome is likely terminal for Labs. The former case won't ever push shit and they'll never get anywhere like how GN has with actual passion and talent (and positive industry connections) and the latter case is just asking to kill your reputation by cutting corners and making ignorant claims.

Hearing he's blown up to $30 mil on the badminton shit is wild though. All signs, including the potential buyout offer, indicate a yearly revenue around $20m - That's not even profit. This is a hugely expensive venture for LTT to take on, and considering just how bad the business model that's been proposed is, its entirely plausible this becomes a back breaker for LTT. Not instantly, I doubt they'd have to mass liquidate or anything, but it'll put such a strain on finances that corners get cut, debt financing becomes more difficult and likely more expensive, and the youtube stuff itself is, optimistically, stagnant. Video views and subscriber growth have been basically flat for the last year. Merch and sponsors makes up most of the apparent revenue stream, not views, so its not a death knell in of itself, but no growth means there's not much reason to pay more for sponsor spots, and a merch audience pool that likely isn't expanding. If I have an LTT Bag and LTT Screwdriver, I don't need another next year.
 
If I have an LTT Bag and LTT Screwdriver, I don't need another next year.
You can see how they're trying to squeeze more out of their fans with the stubby screwdriver and their iFixit ripoff kit. I doubt these new variations will be as successful though it may not matter given far fewer resources were likely put into these spinoffs. The injection of cash will stabilize finances but there is a finite number of bag and screwdriver variations you can make and eventually the only people buying them will be diehards.

The Badminton center is yet another blackhole that will vacuum up valuable cash while Labs is left to languish making low quality AI generated videos nobody is watching. LMG does a lot of things but LTT is basically the only thing that's actually successful and they must be desperate to make something which can allow the company to survive if LTT ever dies.

It's baffling that they have so much money and talent but are incapable of making anything worth watching.
 
I can't even fathom how many years it's going to take to recover a $30,000,000 CAD investment into the fancy badminton center Linus has been trying to open. Something that targeted for one specific sport, in one specific area, with a limit on how much money it can make daily due to the number of courts and the amount of time each session would take - if it's even a successful business it will take decades to extract $30,000,000 CAD from it in profit. You could open an entire gym with a lap pool for cheaper.
 
LMG does a lot of things but LTT is basically the only thing that's actually successful and they must be desperate to make something which can allow the company to survive if LTT ever dies.
LTT seemingly only exists to shill their merch. They are more of a merchandise brand than a tech brand these days.

Look at all these tech tips!

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