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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Linus decides to build a computer from the top result, usually a sponsored one, for every search (i.e. "graphics card") on Amazon. Overall, they get decent results with the only huge red flags being the graphics card, from a Chinese (?) brand called SHOWKINGS, for an RX 580 and the monitor being from a brand called Viewedge. In total, the cost was $880.90 USD.

Shockingly, it's not a good build. $880 could get you a lot better of a setup than this but Linus has to throw away money. It would cost more but I would be more interested in a video like "Judging 3-5 Prebuilt Gaming Companies Computers", which would actually have a lot more value to the average person than this bullshit of purposefully buying bad or poor results off Amazon. The people who would follow Amazon's "Sponsored Choice" are more likely going to go on YouTube and look for "Best Prebuilt Gaming PC" than try to build one by themselves. Would they even know how to put together a computer?

I'm surprised that there's not much in the way of testing the machine aside from a few minutes at the end. From the videos I've watched, LTT spergs about specific FPS numbers, benchmarks, etc, but this video feels kind of lazy considering they didn't do that.
 
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Jay has been relatively decent in business expansion, I just still find it weird he's still in California where there's probably 40% overhead he could remove immediately moving to AZ or TX. He seems to just have 3 employees including himself, he's got steady sponsors, and he seems to expand correctly, renovating his office space and then taking a larger one in the same space when that tenant left.
 
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Burnt Effigy said:
People cope by thinking that "investing" into their channels is the right thing to do, but they don't actually think the "investment" through, instead, they just buy whatever they think is fancy, and retroactively justify their retarded expenses.

Common retardation includes:
- Having a gigantic office and using 10% of it to film
- Hiring a fuckton of employees, but no way to justify the output
- Buying obscenely expensive cameras, to output 1080p60 at best
- Getting per-video set dressing that you will never use twice
- Branch off into a random additional venture you know nothing about

I just wrote all of this and realized afterwards that linus checks all the boxes.
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This also results in a negative feedback loop. Once you've got all those people doing shit for you, you need to increase revenue to keep paying them. Which means chasing trends, clickbait, YouTube min-maxing and the complete death of all original ideas.
 
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Linus receives an email from a viewer complaining about their Framework laptop after buying one because of Linus' deal with them. Linus "freaks out" and decides to make a video where several of his employees buy Framework laptops to see if there are any defects and how good the customer service is. In total, Linus spent $2400 for 2 laptops. One costing $800, the other costing $1600.

Employee #1 Natalie is tasked with building one of the laptops from scratch, with no prior knowledge. After a few minor hiccups, everything works. Employee #2, Alex, sets his laptop up very easily with there only being one hardware issue (the numpad keys) that Framework sends a replacement copy for.

While the video seemed to be objective, I can't help but think that this was some sort of PR move in disguise for Framework. I mean, ultimately, everything turned out good for them, but their sample size was literally 2 laptops and LTT still has a deal with Framework. If they had done a collab and given the reigns to another channel for the investigation, I think it would've looked more objective.
 
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Dante Alighieri said:
Didn't Linus actually invest some money into Framework?
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Yeah, 3 years ago he made this video where he discloses he invested $224,998.37 into Framework. While searching for the exact number, I found this YCombinator thread where there's a bunch of Linus shilling with one gem:

Linus has shown his flagrant disregard for impartiality or any form of integrity over and over again. Look through the LTT back catalogue and you’ll see that Intel is big sponsor of theirs. The fact that he gives “honest” reviews of Intel products doesn’t magically make it okay.
You’d never see Dr. Ian Cutress of AnandTech or Steve from GamersNexus pulling this shit.

Of course he makes much more money than both of them combined. Make no mistake that he is an entertainer and a businessman.
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The problem with producing anything, is, somehow, no matter how hard you try, you're gonna have things that are gonna be defective. Sure it may be a small failure rate but a viewer did get one, but it seems more like damage control or something else for Linus's investment. While you want as close to 0 as possible, even a 1% failure rate is impressive; but even if it stays at 1%, the more you put out into the wild, the larger that number will be. And if things start failing at an alarming rate, the manufacturer, not a investment shill, is gonna need to look at their processes to figure out if it's something that requires a change, faulty parts, or like that one ASUS screw up where motherboards were getting the wrong voltage and frying themselves. If I was a more suspicious man, I'd say Framework asked/told Linus to get in front of something for damage control.

While we're talking about Linus's investments; don't forget leaked papers of their employment contract stated employees weren't allowed to invest in companies, as it might be seen as a conflict of interest... while Linus is proper in saying he invested in Framework, he's also doing the "I'm the boss, I do what I want."
 
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mandatorylurk said:
Jay has been relatively decent in business expansion, I just still find it weird he's still in California where there's probably 40% overhead he could remove immediately moving to AZ or TX. He seems to just have 3 employees including himself, he's got steady sponsors, and he seems to expand correctly, renovating his office space and then taking a larger one in the same space when that tenant left.
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Look at his output, and look at his new studio your. He does not need that much space. Why is he storing cases, he doesn't retest things.
 
I recently got a Framework 13 to replace a dead work laptop. I do like how I could get it without an OS (I use Linux) or NVME/Ram (used existing supplies) and the UEFI/firmware is pretty solid and developer friendly. It still runs hot though. It doesn't throttle as bad as some other laptops I've used (The Intel Lenovo ultrathins are really bad for throttling/cooling; almost unusable) but it's not a great thermal solution either.

I started reading stuff on our forums like Level1 teach and realized how lucky I got. The Framework 16s had a bunch of defects. The theory is an entire pallet probably got shipped incorrectly and bent? Framework has been replacing them whenever customers ask, so the RMA process is good. But it seems like they're still trying to not lose a bunch of money on damaged supply.

I hope Framework succeeded because in the Linux space, System76 has always been behind a generation on specs and Purism are a bunch of fucking scammers whose founders should all be raped in prison. I want to see better options out there, so I guess I'm glad LTT dumped a bunch of money into the company. Hopefully they won't get the stigma of LTT rub off on them or start becoming scum.
 
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The Great Milenko said:
Can you elaborate? After my Windows laptop gives up the ghost I am looking at System 76 or Framework.
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I pre-ordered one of the Purism phones back in 2019. It wasn't read to ship until 2022. I knew people were asking for refunds in 2021, but I decided to hold out. Bad decision. When I did ask for a refund, they told me it wasn't possible due to the terms (they have constantly changed their terms. The original was not a "crowd-funding," it was absolutely a pre-order and had a refund option).

I told them I don't want the phone (it's overpriced and worthless now) and still, in 2024, I still can't get a refund. I would take all my e-mails and go to small claims court, but that's more work than it's worth at this point for like $699 or however much it was. Oh and on top of that, while they refused to give me a refund or ship me a device, they were shipping devices immediately to people who paid liked $1000+ for their new flagship.

Absolutely scum company.

I don't know anything about System 76, except I had a co-worker who swore by them. I really the Framework 13. It has some thermal issues and does throttle a little, but the easy of assembly/disassembly/repair is incredibly good. It has the 13th gen Intel in it, and I've got 64GB of RAM. It runs two fully Ruby stacks (including Redis, Postgres, Vite), RubyMine and all my other tooling. It works with my existing Thunderbolt dock and drives two 4k displays, plus its internal display, without any issues.

I'm on 13 days of uptime right now, but I was at over 100 before rebooting.
 
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Seeing the CompTIA stuff is funny, I'm so old I remember when those certs were for life. Very entry level, but good to introduce someone to the concepts before they go into the work force of IT.

The biggest problems I see is that people get false confidence from passing the exam, when it should (and really those goes for most certs in the industry) be used as a guide for ongoing learning outside of official exam material.
 
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Linus buys motherboards to fix to "save money". Of course they were all easily bent pins. While its in interesting tech tip for once its weird to me he filmed it at home and not the office, or is that an office set? I don't watch the other ltt channels.

 
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LTT backpack leaks dye when it gets wet, something that every brave user of their subreddit knows is to be expected with a backpack. Those don't get wet and anyway even any other backpack you buy would leak dye when wet, chud. Why would you even expect a backpack to get wet in the first place? Did you seriously put your water bottle in the backpack not expecting a catastrophic failure? Yep, that's all on you buddy.
 
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Pol Poggers said:

LTT backpack leaks dye when it gets wet, something that every brave user of their subreddit knows is to be expected with a backpack. Those don't get wet and anyway even any other backpack you buy would leak dye when wet, chud. Why would you even expect a backpack to get wet in the first place? Did you seriously put your water bottle in the backpack not expecting a catastrophic failure? Yep, that's all on you buddy.
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Are you some kind of NPC? Some wagie? You leave the house because...? The blame is really on you, you expect a high quality dye to withstand the relentless forces of mother nature. And then you expect an honest father, a small (does it even qualify as small still?) business owner to pay for your careless adventures?

Ok, I ran out of steam. Sorry for the shitpost, but I had a moment of inspiration.
 
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TheRaptorJesus said:
Imagine spending $250+tax+shipping for a ltt backpack.
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"A fool and his money are soon parted." Who the fuck are these people who are just throwing money at this unfunny lucky cunt who is essentially a Chinese reseller who happens to market through YouTube. How do they have so much disposable income? Are they all just midwit trust fund kids?
 
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jogging1530 said:
"A fool and his money are soon parted." Who the fuck are these people who are just throwing money at this unfunny lucky cunt who is essentially a Chinese reseller who happens to market through YouTube. How do they have so much disposable income? Are they all just midwit trust fund kids?
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If there's anything I learned watching the rise of online content creators; yes, there are a lot of sheep with disposable income. Whether it's Desert Bus, AGDQ/SGDQ, or other communities, there seem to be an abundance of ballers and whales who will blow money on shit they don't need.
 
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