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

[TheRaptorJesus]

I think he thought he would be able to leverage his brand name to make it wildly successful, and to be fair that would've been a reasonable assumption on his part. Unfortunately there are lots of people making similar products that churn out AI generated videos etc.

I have seen one that generates more income than that channel makes.

The problem Linus has is that his operation is fucking massive which means he moves incredibly slow. There are teams of 1 or just 3-4 people who are much younger and agile and fueled by adderall who can churn out a competing product that has much more features and interesting shit than his stuff does.

The labs CEO guy also left didn't he? I think luke is currently temp CEO. I guess them using so much AI explains why they removed the team page on the labs site.

 

[neger psykolog]

The labs CEO guy also left didn't he? I think luke is currently temp CEO. I guess them using so much AI explains why they removed the team page on the labs site.

From a ruthless cost cutting CEO faggot perspective it kind of makes sense to embrace AI, I think the tooling only really came of age quite a bit after LTT created the idea of the tech labs (I don't know about the labs CEO part though)

 

[Soggy paper straw]

he moves incredibly slow

I don't think that the issue is actually the idea or even the fact that they are clearly incompetent

The issue was the launch. Let's look how it went
1) teased about the launch for months, which stretched into multiple years, also talk big about possibly making recommendation labels that would be coveted by all companies, including giants like Intel or Nvidia
2) during this time, when people thought that it was finally time for the launch, they only delivered "unboxing" of machinery and equipment worth tens of thousands of dollars [edit: each] (even the real kind of dollar, not just the Tranada kind)
3) the first few videos had major issues, excused with "we are still learning" (+ the Gamers Nexus callout video, although that obviously wasn't planned by Linus)

Point 1 and 2 made it nearly impossible that it would become somehow popular, and then point 3 killed any hope. He aggressively rebelled against the idea of "underpromise and overdeliver"

Anyone who works in organizing events or products launches know that you have to time the announcement correctly. Too late and people don't have the time to get excited, and too early and people forget. He basically did the equivalent of Kickstarter never delivered projects: people started to hate the project as they saw it never got delivered and that they were fools for being excited.

While at the beginning it seemed a difficult thing to deliver, it also didn't seem impossible. As the unboxing videos continued, it became apparent that he was not appreciating how difficult it would be, having his classic "I know best, stfu you peasant" attitude which obviously many did not like.

I don't think he would have ever been able to reach his goal of having Intel paying for a sticker that said "LTT recommended", buuuuuutttt he is famous enough on youtube that he should have gained an audience to at least pay for staff and slowly recoup the cost of the equipment he bought (idk how much he bought vs how much was donated).

I haven't watched in ages, but he also took a long time to develop the screwdriver (and backpack). I wonder if that made him think that announcing very early would be a good thing.
Maybe it is only that the Labs videos are shit (and their analysis is substandard as well), while the screwdriver seems a good screwdriver (grossly overpriced, but it does the job, just at 10x the price). The backpack was not great, but it has limited damage in terms of cost. Now a whole team of staff? Admitting that he was wrong? His pride is invaluable

 

[neger psykolog]

If there is a possibility of a PSU exploding in a shower of sparks(without it being due to the retardation of the owner) I don't care about the fucking warranty or cables as I'd never want to buy it. Instead I as a viewer and consumer(presumably their target audience) would be curious about failure analysis considering it didn't even have a load... which they didn't fucking do with their "lab". Hell, considering that the power supply blew up, how did they actually come to the conclusion that the cables are worth a shit?

Honestly I'm wondering if "the labs" fucked up when they took the fan and cover off the PSU to film it because I'm not understanding why they would even be plugging the PSU into wall power while the case is off just for what basically amounted to a photo shoot segment, especially since nothing was plugged into it.

Dumbass probably dropped a screw into it. I've seen plenty of electronics pop, spark, smoke, etc. over the years, and yeah nothing like that fountain of sparks without some massive skidmarks and a cloud of smoke from a component. Especially considering it had no load and wasn't even turned on(the switch on the back may have been on, but the PSU itself wasn't actually switched on) However, a screw wobbling around touching things it shouldn't on the 110v side of the PSU could probably do it.

I'm seriously questioning how it can spontaneously blow up like that if the ATX connector pins weren't even shorted to turn it on.

They show the part that failed in another video btw:

(AI analysis of the photo)

It certainly looks like a surface mount resistor or surface mount fuse in which case it is probably designed to fail (like its a sacrificial component) to prevent damage to the rest of the computer or a fire. So LTT calling the power supply "unsafe" while not doing any analysis or mentioning what component specifically failed is disingenuous, just as adding a stupid spark sound effect to the video is.

 

[Pee Cola]

Has someone on staff tardwrangling the voice AI instead of just doing the fucking VO themselves? Even if they've only made the $138 on adsense, the time that the AI tardwrangler spends, presumably paid, she could have just done the fucking voiceover herself. Says the economics of humans doing it doesn't make any sense, the economics of the entire building/website/channel make no fucking sense.

Linus has thousands of ballwashers who'd happily read a script out loud for him for free. All he'd need to do is put a casting call out on the LTT Forums, and maybe throw in a sweetener such as a 2 minute voice call with whichever simp gets chosen for the gig. He'd have hundreds of suckers queuing up for the chance for their senpai to notice them, and even the most nasal-sounding autistic faggot is easier to listen to than an AI voice.

 

[neger psykolog]

Linus has thousands of ballwashers who'd happily read a script out loud for him for free. All he'd need to do is put a casting call out on the LTT Forums, and maybe throw in a sweetener such as a 2 minute voice call with whichever simp gets chosen for the gig. He'd have hundreds of suckers queuing up for the chance for their senpai to notice them, and even the most nasal-sounding autistic faggot is easier to listen to than an AI voice.

They can literally just choose a better AI voice model. The problem with your assessment is that it takes time and energy to wrangle voice actors and if you have corrections or mistakes it is expensive to deal with.

With the AI voice model shit you can basically cut out the voice actor, the wrangler, all of the contract/rights/payment bullshit and just give the script directly to the video editor to copy/paste into the voice tool. Fuck at this stage you can almost do away with an actual video editor too if you don't need to use real camera footage - just make a slideshow of product pictures.

There's thousands of YouTube channels and websites that have already been doing this for years already.

 

[1983 Opel Kadett]

I'm seriously questioning how it can spontaneously blow up like that if the ATX connector pins weren't even shorted to turn it on.

Extremely convenient too that the guy started filming right before

 

[Kuritan Deplorable]

From a ruthless cost cutting CEO faggot perspective it kind of makes sense to embrace AI,

Maybe from an ignorant one, but the problem is that you still need to take time to write the script, which has to be human-done simply because its using real world data the AI doesn't have access to, and then the output needs to be reviewed, and probably regenerated once or twice. Speaking first hand there having use AI voice generation, even the professional grade stuff will sometimes get just awful artifacts if your trying to generate longer sections, and often struggles with words and needs them to be phonetically rewritten to get it right.

Problem is, it takes about as long to listen to an AI voice as it takes to actually just read out the script yourself. The only, and likely actual reason Linus wants LTT AI is because humans are identifiable, and we already know he seemingly hates the idea of being the springboard for his staff to become known and move on to better things. Not only does that force him to spend time and effort to replace him, but it runs the risk of cratering a successful channel line if people don't like the new host. We've already seen host changes fuck with his other presenter personality products, and with the sheer amount of content he wants labs generating, the 'right' voice for it is really important, on paper. There's no risk of your established nice labs voice guy quitting to start his own ASMR channel and affecting your output if its actually just ElevenLabs providing a software as a service contract.

Of course, its a normal short sighted Linus thing as well, because anyone else can buy that AI voice to, and replace your service instantly. There's nothing stopping GN or anyone else from doing the exact same voice and content style just to fuck with you, and to the consumer it now becomes interchangeable. This has actually been a 'problem' in the reddit scraping AI youtube channels, its impossible to retain viewers because there's a dozen channels with the same voice covering the same content and none of the consumers actually care about any of them, and none of them can stand out. What was supposed to be a cheap, minimal effort way to farm ad revenue has now become an overpopulated hellscape that nobody can make money off of reliably.

In the long term, it's better to hire on a dedicated VO guy/gal, and accept that you might drop profits and viewers for a bit to replace them every few years, than to lose it all to AI slop because you became part of the great replaceable blob.

 

[p1138]

In the long term, it's better to hire on a dedicated VO guy/gal, and accept that you might drop profits and viewers for a bit to replace them every few years, than to lose it all to AI slop because you became part of the great replaceable blob.

Considering the supposed 100 staff he has, he could be able to easily find a few people to just rotate through after paying them for the half hour necessary to do the voice over. Rather than having a singular voice for the channel, as long as they don't sound like Gilbert Gottfried or Fran Drescher it doesn't matter, and the "audience" doesn't get used to a single person doing the narration for the video to risk someone trying to use his business as a springboard for their own crap.

Realistically, if he's actually got his staff paid full time there isn't a chance in hell they're actually working all day with how inefficiency he does basically everything so it wouldn't even have a cost associated with it. Instead I wouldn't be surprised that instead of paying for the AI voice service, considering he basically just made a lame shill segment for them in this video, that they're just letting him use it for free or providing some other kickback(or just paying him to use it) and that's the real reason why it's cheaper.

 

[Get the rope Macaulay!]

The problem Linus has is that his operation is fucking massive which means he moves incredibly slow. There are teams of 1 or just 3-4 people who are much younger and agile and fueled by adderall who can churn out a competing product that has much more features and interesting shit than his stuff does.

Linus doesn't really understand what his company is supposed to be, the reason it has 100 employees is to 1. act like a bigshot in his neighborhood and 2. be an immigrant scam for his wife to get extended relatives over.

From a ruthless cost cutting CEO faggot perspective it kind of makes sense to embrace AI, I think the tooling only really came of age quite a bit after LTT created the idea of the tech labs

while i agree, they still need an editor, also don't know why Linus with all his raw 8k footage and 192kb audio doesn't imput that into an AI so he can at least trick people into thinking he's doing the voice work.

but the problem is that you still need to take time to write the script, which has to be human-done simply because its using real world data the AI doesn't have access to, and then the output needs to be reviewed, and probably regenerated once or twice. Speaking first hand there having use AI voice generation, even the professional grade stuff will sometimes get just awful artifacts if your trying to generate longer sections, and often struggles with words and needs them to be phonetically rewritten to get it right.

Problem is, it takes about as long to listen to an AI voice as it takes to actually just read out the script yourself.

they have tons of videos they can use as a baseline that will help the AI know what type of output its looking for, they can even request a blank for where the output numbers are and just have an AI write the dumb jokes in the script, then a voice AI to record each bit and have the editor bring it all together.

Where AI is now, its basically a "bottom level destroyer" like it can output as well as an indian or some entry level person, and it can write as well as a guy that makes bullshit youtube videos and it can do voices as well as a guy recording everything on his phone, but you still need that manager above them doing everything else.

Its like music, you still need that guy in the studio adjusting the levels and asking for retakes and giving the feedback, and their jobs are way more valuable than the singers themselves which is why at some point you have them becoming the musicians themselves. Like Kanye West or Pharrell or Trent Reznor.

AI basically is amazing at giving you output but you still need to know how to turn the output into a workable product.

Honestly Linus can/should just use his own voice for AI audio because according to him thats what people want on the channel anyways.

 

[neger psykolog]

while i agree, they still need an editor, also don't know why Linus with all his raw 8k footage and 192kb audio doesn't imput that into an AI so he can at least trick people into thinking he's doing the voice work.

My guess is they don't want to AI his voice or "trick" their audience into thinking its actually Linus or anyone known from the company because it would be lying. If they did that without telling people, or even with telling people then people would be MATI about it.

Extremely convenient too that the guy started filming right before

I didn't watch the whole video where he explains that their testing methodology (on the main LTT channel) but they're literally gangraping these PSUs and probably pushing them right up to their limits.
I don't really think people buy a 550w PSU and then push it to 548w for 24h a day and even though its technically dishonest for them to market the PSUs as such, that is the way the market works. If people really want a super reliable PSU then you have to spend the money on it and get a good brand. I have a very large and expensive PSU that has had literally zero problems in many, many years and is under a reasonably high load at all times.

So whatever their video shows with giant explosions with fake sound effects is likely just because they're pushing the thing thermally and load wise either well past its limits or what it was designed for.

 

[Bonesjones]

Dumbass probably dropped a screw into it. I've seen plenty of electronics pop, spark, smoke, etc. over the years, and yeah nothing like that fountain of sparks without some massive skidmarks and a cloud of smoke from a component. Especially considering it had no load and wasn't even turned on(the switch on the back may have been on, but the PSU itself wasn't actually switched on) However, a screw wobbling around touching things it shouldn't on the 110v side of the PSU could probably do it.

I had a friend whose computer went up in flames because he bought the absolute cheapest power supply he could, this was also the 90s. We helped him assemble it at a Lan party, got it running, 30 minutes later boom.

 

[i440BX]

I had a friend whose computer went up in flames because he bought the absolute cheapest power supply he could, this was also the 90s. We helped him assemble it at a Lan party, got it running, 30 minutes later boom.

Man back then there were a lot of shitty psus. L&C power, DEER, FSP group (though now they have some good PSUs). I refuse to use old PSUs in my retro builds. I use Antecs and convert them to AT if necessary.

 

[Mr.Bucket]

Gilbert Gottfried

Shut your goddamn mouth Gilbert Gottfried (RIP King) narrating a tech channel would be fucking amazing.

 

[Ed Special]

I don't really think people buy a 550w PSU and then push it to 548w for 24h a day

Doesn't matter that that's not the typical use case, if you're going to call it a 550w PSU, it should be able to handle a 24/7 550w load from the day you install it to at least the end of the warranty period. If the wires in your walls were rated for 15a and they burned your house down after you ran a 15a space heater for six hours (an extreme, but not impossible or even improbable use case), you'd have grounds to sue the company that made them.

It's worth noting that even middling quality PSUs have no fucking trouble at all running their nameplate power load in perpetuity, and even overloading them by 5-10% shouldn't damage them (especially if they shut off properly under sustained overloads like they're supposed to)

 

[TheRaptorJesus]

Doesn't matter that that's not the typical use case, if you're going to call it a 550w PSU, it should be able to handle a 24/7 550w load from the day you install it to at least the end of the warranty period.

That may have been true back on the day but with nvidia seemingly uncaring about transients. Its not about running full load 24/7 its about shitty companies allowing like 3x spikes. Any PSU running ragged would eventually be run down trying to suppress that shit.

 

[Kuritan Deplorable]

It's worth noting that even middling quality PSUs have no fucking trouble at all running their nameplate power load in perpetuity, and even overloading them by 5-10% shouldn't damage them

And its not at all unreasonable to expect hardware to fail safe rather than fail deadly. Its not an unreasonable engineering expectation to identify failure points and make sure the lowest failure point is in a component that more or less neutralizes the device when it fails, rather than exploding or catching fire. Its the same basic principle as when you design something with two moving surfaces interacting such that the easier to replace, cheaper part is the softer one that is worn down by the interactions over time.

 

[Chapalapachapa]

Oh, so after a week he's got a video to address the bullshit. Claims a 23% failure rate, and that 9 out of 39 of their PSUs died during testing? I'm all for finding faults in products, but that seems so high to the point of maybe they need to determine if they're actually testing the things correctly? He doesn't mention how their testing has been validated.

i still have a 10 years old antec who powered a xeon 1236 and a rx 590. still works. just what the fuck are they doing over there. whats their testing method and what loads are they using

 

[Administrator Flotsam]

LMG is like Mozilla; its gets too much money for just for existing and its viewers don't care if it doesn't improve or even try to improve.

 

[Ed Special]

That may have been true back on the day but with nvidia seemingly uncaring about transients. Its not about running full load 24/7 its about shitty companies allowing like 3x spikes. Any PSU running ragged would eventually be run down trying to suppress that shit.

That's why hardware in the classes that have those giga transients recommend way higher power supplies than you'll realistically ever have sustained 100% loads on. Anything in the territory where it can realistically run on a 550 is still going to be relatively clamped down and absent of the 1.21 gigawatt transients of the 5090.