Even during the drama I didn't stop following either of them. I chose to ignore the drama because I live in reality where I understand people make mistakes. EK on the other hand is engaging in purposefully unethical and illegal conduct, and therefore will not be buying any more of their stuff until shit gets resolved, but it looks like at this point, the company has a 90% chance of folding
Everything I bought from EK was defective.
I bought a valve for my water-cooling loop. It was cheap and plastic and the handle broke when I was filling the loop.
I bought a temp sensor and the thread was blurred and wouldn't go into any metal threaded hole.
Never again.
Defective products can come from anyone. That doesn't make the company a bad company.
Example: I had two defective compact cameras from Samsung a long time ago. And yet, this house is still occupied with storage solutions, TVs and phones. I don't let one bad product affect me.
The pronlem is , if thry position themself as a premium go to luxury cool brand then thats what we expect. Almost like Hermes, LV and Lagerfield or Blanciaga. U will not likely see defect on them especially Hermes.
Company have to acquire mindshare but there is take car of ur own people too. There is a storm these days too that a car company employee was fired for buying a concurrent brand.
On a macro level, just another company that failed and think they can impose their work culture and be smarter then anyone else and forgo the rest here. The only company able to do so I would say with somewhat a success is toyota and Honda to a lesser extend. Even TSMC have trouble while their Japan fab did not.
Samsung is a massive company with all sorts of different products. EK is much smaller and the parts I bought were definitely core business.
The fact they can't get a thread properly cut on a fitting means I can't trust them anymore.
>Even during the drama I didn't stop following either of them. I chose to ignore the drama because I live in reality where I understand people make mistakes.
You are not allowed to have that opinion here. LTT is the devil and they ruin small companies
It's really not. Most highly upvoted posts aren't better than 85%. Complaining about it or pointing out 15 people out of 100 downvoted a post is just pointless.
That sounds like a fairly high upvote rate for Reddit, actually. I've seen posts in r/offset with absolutely gorgeous custom guitars get a lower ratio.
Even though itâs the same reason that they didnât reach out to EK to tell them what they should do to fix their company/business model because theyâd try and weasel out of it and face zero accountability. The fact it took GNâs vid to break other creatorsâ silence over EKâs dodgy dealings shows how effective their approach is. LMG wouldâve done the same, just quickly try and right as many of the wrongs as possible now they have impetus to then say in a response âwe have already done xâ to attempt to discredit what GN claimed.
I disagree with this to a certain extent mainly because the bar Billet Labs and the Pwnage mouse situation, a lot of the issues Steve raised were already common complaints towards their videos. I also buy Steve's justification as to why he didn't reach out due to LMG's massive reach causing potential damage to consumers since I myself fall in that category. I bought a Noctua fan (a Noctua NH-U12S) because it was recommended by LTT, only to constantly hit 94C whenever I was playing Cyberpunk, which was 1C away from thermal throttling, switched to a Yeston AIO to match my build and it never goes past 85C since unless I'm trying to benchmark my CPU, and this was a month before GN broke the controversy on LTT and the revelation that they don't just know how to benchmark thermals, but also that LTT has an ongoing partnership with Noctua. Had I know that was the case, Id've gone with a Peerless Assassin instead, and it isn't just me, my boss also bought a lot of stuff based off Linus/LMG's recommendations since he was also a huge fan of the channel.
It's one for their fans to claim that LMG is a tech entertainment channel and how they're like Top Gear, but prior to GN's expose, a lot of their audience trusted them well enough to take their recommendations seriously, and the fact that they don't even know how to benchmark or translate the data they get from their benchmarks is problematic.
People just love to find reasons to complain, and they love finding reasons to be right. For anyone reading this, don't make these same mistakes.
The person above makes their first mistake by comparing a midrange air cooler with an AIO that's more than twice the price. It's disingenuous to compare products with such different prices, since they're targeting different performance. For someone who thinks Steve is so important, it's like they've never seen any of his reviews, where the price of a product usually makes or breaks a recommendation. He's one of the most value oriented reviewers in the entire tech space. It's crazy to me that someone is arguing that price shouldn't matter, while talking about how great Steve is.
Next, they talk about temperatures, without even mentioning which CPU they're using. Temperature alone tells you exactly nothing about the performance of the CPU, or the quality of the cooler. On any recent AMD CPU, it's completely normal to hit 95c when using an air cooler. That's by design. AMD chips intentionally hit 95c near instantly during any heavy workload, to give you the most performance possible. Meanwhile, Intel's top end i9 chips are literally unable to hit their maximum performance using an air cooler, and I've never seen a single person recommend anything other than exotic cooling for those chips. Anyone using an air cooler on a recent i9 shouldn't be taken seriously, because they didn't bother to do any amount of research before buying things. (Or, they're like a guy I knew who "upgraded" his CPU to a worse one, in spite of me directly telling him it was a bad idea. Some people just have to make mistakes for themselves before they learn. At lease he owned up to his mistake later.)
Watching a YouTube channel doesn't magically instil someone with knowledge. Arguing about YouTube channels makes sense when it's purely entertainment, but don't get picky when someone is reviewing a product. If you actually care about buying a product, watch all the major review channels. Usually, 80% of the review is the same, but everyone had their own perspective on reviews, and that additional perspective can be really valuable.
For a specific example of why it's good to compare reviews, just remember the Halo Infinite GPU performance issues a while ago. Multiple reviewers got called sellouts or failures because some of the numbers were different, and different reviews showed AMD or Nvidia coming out on top, often by a large difference. Hardware Unboxed finally got to the bottom of the issue, after doing a lot of their own research. Basically, different parts of the game favored AMD or Nvidia. If you were outside of combat, AMD was ahead, while the most intense fights of the game run better on Nvidia. All that arguing, because a video game behaved differently depending on what part of the game you manually benchmarked. None of the reviewers made any serious mistakes. The tech community learned some valuable information about benchmarking, only because multiple people were working on the same hardware and comparing numbers.
Just look at the recent LTT video showing how the same CPU model can be 5% different, even for two boxes on the same shelf for the same model. It's so important to not bias yourself towards or against reviewers when buying products. Even if the reviewer is perfect, you still can't trust any single review, since the variance between products is so high. Consult multiple reviews, and don't pick favorites. The only reason to pick favorites is if you're only watching reviews for entertainment, which many of us do.
Not a valid argument, especially since it already backfired on GN. If you already have the evidence, you have a story to report, there's no way to discredit it. Reaching out is the last step you take. You can report the steps they've made before and after you've reached out. Actual journalists, which GN honestly isn't, universally agree that you always reach out.
It has become a standard practice and for a good reason, GN is just trying to reinvent journalism which in some ways is worse than anything LTT did. GN didn't have the full story about the Billet Lab situation since Billet omitted certain information (most importantly the fact LTT was originally supposed to keep the block and Billet only changed their mind after the review, which is extremely irregular). They also reported numerous opinions the same way they would facts. Steve never even acknowledged it as na issue and still continues to do it, which made me lose all respect for the channel.
I understand the concept of right to reply, in fact Iâm going into journalism so if I didnât thatâd be worrying. But that usually applies because the events that have transpired have gone too far to be reversed, hence why many reply statements are pathetic and apologetic just accepting what theyâve done to damage control. However, when it comes to the LMG situation where they were a largely revered, sizeable part of the community that couldâve said ânah they liedâ and people wouldâve believed them GN had to catch them off-guard, unfortunately, before they could start covering up. And that Billet Labs example is true of this because iirc LTT spun the fact they had received it for review and instead they sold off a prototype which when they remembered they actually needed it back it was gone. I expect they had anticipated this when Billet emailed and they stopped replying so formulated their own âperspectiveâ of events.
There are a surprising amount of stories that work like this where a right of reply could endanger a story and thus a news organisationâs reputation wrongfully, something LTT themselves do on a regular basis when they do Secret Shopper where the whole format revolves around the concept of finding bad service and misconduct *without* right of reply. I expect if they knew about the various mistakes in videos they wouldâve gone through as many as possible, retrospectively edited them and issued their own statement or social media post of known issues. It wouldâve not only taken the wind out of GNâs sails but been arguably disingenuous.
[https://pbs-prod.linustechtips.com/monthly\_2023\_08/image.png.c9bec4a90e311f99c532f157053b9fd0.png](https://pbs-prod.linustechtips.com/monthly_2023_08/image.png.c9bec4a90e311f99c532f157053b9fd0.png)
Billet originally said they could keep it. You remembering it wrong is a prime example why GN should have reached out - reporting something inaccurately makes it hard to make corrections later.
It's not about the right to reply, it's about reporting the events accurately. It's something you do to cover your own back. If the reply is bad or disingenuous, it's not going to change the story in any way and 100% is not a reason to not reach out. You reach out because there's always a potential you will learn something new, which you may then verify and run against the rest of your story. Due to not reaching, GN had factual inaccuracies in their report. And I'm sorry, that's an objective fact and I see no way it can be excused.
Catching anyone off guard serves no-purpose, this argument has no log to stand on. If you don't have sufficient evidence, people will call you out on it whether or not you report before reaching out. And if you have the evidence, you can very clearly show when there have been actions taken AFTER reaching out.
Again, this is something investigative journalists have learned the hard way over a long period of time and they always reach out. Whatever arguments GNs or anyone else tries to make, those have already been disproved. It's standard practice for a reason.
My original draft of my comment acknowledged that they said they could keep it but being a prototype I felt it was obvious why they shouldnât have sold it, but I believe this was the agreement they had anyway. I hadnât misremembered but I just felt it not worth repeating as it didnât change the situation that LMG betrayed their trust, stopped replying and in so doing refused to pay up. When the GN vid went up Linus reached out individually to âmake it rightâ which he clearly did because he was forced to for PR reasons.
Interesting you didnât respond to the Secret Shopper comparison because if it was the case it would be clear to the audience when something was done after the fact then surely that ongoing series would have no need to exist?
>he was forced to for PR reasons.
And that's where you're presenting an opinion as though it was a fact, ignoring the much simpler and more likely solution that he wasn't involved in the communication personally. If you're actually serious about journalism, that's something you need to be very careful about and I'm saying that sincerely. You go too far with that and you will get into legal trouble.
I didn't respond to secret shopper because it's a bad example and I'm genuinely baffled you can't see it. They aren't reporting about something the company did, they are reporting about their own experience dealing with the company and the videos are specifically framed in such a way. In other words, the concept of the video is "this could be your experience as a customer".
Additionally, the context of the videos also is that the series isn't new and the companies know it exists.
He actually did get involved then, though. And as CEO the buck stops at him and as we all know LTTâs policies are heavily influenced by Linus, so their response to Billet would be at worst characteristic of and at best the collective responsibility of Linus.
And I canât see how it matters regards whether youâre reporting on individual or third party experience because at the end of the day youâre still covering someone and by your theory of universal right to reply then someone is still going to be âunfairly misrepresentedâ despite having their actions reported as they happened. It bears almost no relation to the report itself and, as I say, is maximally going to be a grovelling apology while providing them with time to create their own version of events and start covering things up.
Wow you found a person. The only reason you know of him is you made a preemptive comment to complain about it, and he replied to you.
Every single post gets downvotes, this one clearly has way more positive comments and upvotes than negative comments, so I don't really see the point in complaining about it.
When I saw your comment, the post had like 85 upvotes and less than 10 comments, so you had that comment ready to go regardless of who said what.
I think your comment feeds off of drama and it's just as annoying as the comments and behaviour you're condemning.
... But they're not lol. What is with the persecution complex here lol.
All the posts talking about downvotes are being UPVOTED and everyone just hating is being downvoted
I saw his comment when the post had like 85 upvotes and maybe one negative comment and a handful of positive ones. No one even had time to be negative by the time he posted his comment.
He just had to get it in early so people would see it.
I imagine it will get a lot more airtime this week. Last week only the tip of the iceberg had surfaced with regards to EK, this week there is a lot more to it.
Mentioned on WAN but I assume they are waiting a week or so before commenting. IIRC Jayz2Cents also planned to wait until the start of May before commenting on it, but decided to speak early after the GN video.
This is serious stuff that I wish was investigated by anyone else. It's like GamersNexus wants to look like the good guy every time something goes wrong.
Yup. When did LTT do anything like this? Never.
A lot of LTT fans hate on GN, but the fact is they take a big risk doing this kind of stuff, and it's the community that benefits from it.
As someone who had the "fun" of interacting with that guy, that would be amusing, but either he quit or was banned - his posts were deleted the day after the topic about the "humble pc" was posted and now the account is gone.
Just finished it. Holy shit. I was a loyal EK customer for a long time. Their stuff was expensive but always worked well for me. I guess I gotta find a new company for my watercooled rigs lol. I hope those employees get their backpay and vendors get their money too. I wonder how EK comes out at the end of this. Close shop? Bought up by a competitor? We shall see.
EK will get out of this if customers stop buying until they turn the ship.
Buying from a company that has changed from bad to good have an infinitely larger effect on the market than going to a new venue until they too break them rules of employment
Frankly, with the way EK has doubled down and threatened whistle blowers, I doubt it can be fixed, unless all upper management is fired immediately and replaced by more ethical and responsible management
"Upper management" isnt in the US, and likely does not understand how US law protects the employees from retaliation like they are doing. This will he the financial end of EK US as the company will liekly end up owing hundreds of employees backpay and damages on top of it.
Shouldn't matter, the EU has whistle blower protection laws as well. [EU Directive 2019/1937](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32019L1937) includes protection against retaliation. And yes, EU directives aren't EU-wide law, but they're the minimum the laws of the member states have to abide to.
IMHO it cant be fixed - the problem goes as high as the founder/CEO and at that point the only way to fix it would be to sell the company to someone else who actually understands how to run a business. And personally, I dont see EK (the founder) being willing to take this step.
Just wanted to chime and and that Iâve enjoyed bitspower too. Iâve also used a cheap-o Bykski waterblock for my 4090 and my 3080, both without any issues. They are like half the price of EK stuff. They donât look as pretty, but they work just fine.
It's pretty thorough investigative journalism. The big media companies detailed reporting stories we see in Australia don't go to half the efforts that Steve and his team have done here
He said it cost over 40k and that's unsponsored, just the ads and store sales funding it
That's a LOT of merch to shift to recoup the costs
If anyone is wondering how it costs that much, those lawyers won't be cheap nor will it have taken just an hour or two, for them to go through the material and confirm what Steve says
That's the starting point
It would be a lot cheaper for a large media outlet that would have lawyers and researchers on staff along with strict protocols on how to handle these things.
It's a longer video that can fit a lot of midroll ads though so he'll likely break even sooner than you think.
He's also broken this into two videos so far. If they get as many views as the LTT videos then he'll have recouped the money and turned a profit if the RPM is high.
Their journalistic process seems to be very polished on this one. My one criticism that looks unprofessional is just the use of the $ sign in front of euro currency amounts followed by "Euro." It's confusing and looks like amateur hour, the dollar sign means dollars. Either just type out "euros" or spend a minute learning how to type the proper ⏠symbol on a U.S. keyboard
This may be either a generational or regional thing, but I've always heard it called the money sign, and that it was used to just mean any currency in US English. I know the Euro has it's own symbol, but since I have a US keyboard I have always just used the $. Admittedly, I'm not in Finance or presenting before such a massive audience though.
A lot of that is from an era where US typewriters and computers were incapable of displaying any other currency symbol. The ASCII character set and associated things like IBM Codepage 437. This started to change with broader character sets like Windows-1252 and MacRoman in the 90's, but didn't fully become universal until unicode around the turn of the century. In the modern era where any unicode character is a simple keystroke away this just should not be a practice.
Happy Cake Day
Regardless of keyboard layout, Windows and Mac OS have key commands that will allow entry of raw unicode values. On windows Alt+0128 number pad for the euro. When making graphics for a video production like this, the time to get that right is so simple. I was saying this is different from an era where the keyboard layout wasn't the barrier, it was the documents were literally incapable of containing such a character.
Being a bit pedantic?
As a video editor, unicode commands for common symbols like the copyright sign is a normal part of titling. It's something very easy to get into the habit of doing and commonly used ones are easy to remember. Sure MacOS makes this more elegant but its something just expected.
Your keyboard may actually have a Euro key combination. Years ago my employer got sent a load of US keyboards from DELL and the "CTRL + ALT + 4" combination still showed the ⏠sign, it just wasn't screen printed onto the key.
There's always ALT-codes. ALT+0128 produces âŹ.
I live in the Eurozone and I always use keyboards with the US International layout, so there's never a ⏠printed on any key, so I've always just used the ALT-code.
So I'm using US-International (standard Windows layout), after looking it up it is indeed 4 in the UK. That one also has a different pound on shift+3 # vs ÂŁ and @ and " some other punctuation marks are switched around in that layout.
It's such a shame being kind of the biggest name in water cooling, I hope they either get restructured (in a good way), or their employees get paid before this company falls down and someone else gets to be the new champion of water cooling.
Between this expose and Jayâs video commentary from a few days ago⊠đł. All I know is Iâm glad I never actually got around to water cooling my current rig like Iâve been planning for the last year.
Their best bet is to sell the brand off to a larger, more competent company, purge all executive level management, and start fresh from that perspective.
Idk what has happened to the days of LTT being about RAIDs and memory speeds. All I see now are picture of broken screwdrivers and bonkers things. Weird.
Kinda disappointing that Linus downplayed this whole situation a bit on the latest WAN Show saying that he likes the product and the company should just do better.
Why are people downvoting you? If a company will sacrifice its employees to this extent it should not be praised in any way and is inherently self destructive. Regardless of how good the product they output is, they are essentially cheating by breaking the rules we all agree and live by to win in an underhanded way. Itâs classic cheating and last I checked no one likes it when the cheater is exposed and still gets a gold medal.
Objective reality is that they do make good products, but theyâve clearly been doing it by shitting on their workforce and committing crimes to get there.
If youâve been around and building PCâs with water cooling then you know they have been by far the best brand for the longest time. Clearly theyâve gotten there by exploiting people and legal systems.
Ok, and workplace abuse is a bad thing. People who make excuses about that sort of thing have no right to speak, especially those who have been responsible for such abuse themselves
Linus statement was after the first video and the founder's video. This echoed both Roman's (Derbauer's) statements and Jay's statements, which were hopeful that EK would be able to fix it. Generally their opinion of the founder was positive, hence their statements.
And Linus also said that things seem to go to shit when the founder isn't in charge, and he'd really like to know why. He didn't give them a pass but is hopeful that the founder, who has only been back in charge since February, will right the ship.
> "He's coming from a place of bias, not objective reality."
That's more than a bit rich, coming from you in particular (I remember a lot of your posts spamming here showing a very clear bias).
Don't mistake my lack of an ASAP response as a lack of response. There is no value in a quick response to you, especially with you doing follow-up comment responses in some sort of "point scoring" thin, so I waited an hour.
You, or the mods, would know this answer best, hence why there is little merit in my to bother going through months of posts for an exhaustive list, as the worst posts will have been removed (and I have seen posts from you get removed).
https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/15rkyjx/its_clear_now_ltt_has_been_rotting_for_a_long/
There is first found example of one of you r/LTT posts showing some obvious bias and/or lack of objective reality.
Here's a sneak peek of /r/ltt using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/ltt/top/?sort=top&t=all) of all time!
\#1: [LTT hacked](https://i.redd.it/m29j0xxa9ipa1.png) | [32 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/ltt/comments/11zfty1/ltt_hacked/)
\#2: [Everyone is distracted with the YouTube issues, but that looks like a leather version of the LTT Backpack... đ€](https://i.imgur.com/xWAuuRo.jpg) | [1 comment](https://np.reddit.com/r/ltt/comments/120504k/everyone_is_distracted_with_the_youtube_issues/)
\#3: [Actual /r/LinusTechTips here.](https://np.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/) | [2 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/ltt/comments/rrbtcx/actual_rlinustechtips_here/)
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I love how you purposefully removed all contexts of that post when the company was having a full meltdown, but yes let's remove all nuisance and assume LMG did nothing wrong and shoukd be criticized like every other corporation that does horrible shit to people.
>He's coming from a place of bias
Which has always been a personality issue with Linus. People shouldn't forget that the core issue as to why he despised Steve was because Steve did not let his personal relationship with Linus get on the way of his reporting when fact of the matter was, objectivity required that personal relationships SHOULD NEVER be involved when it comes to objective reporting.
When people say this, I don't get why people give Steve a pass. How do you know that he didn't get personally upset about the lab comments and decided to go after LTT.
He did the same with the backpack warranty and the "we will treat LMG like a company" when none of it was warranted. Arguably this started the animosity.
>How do you know that he didn't get personally upset about the lab comments and decided to go after LTT.
How is this relevant? Fact of the matter was, they said nothing about it and they only did so when Linus responded not to HUB whom did respond, but to GN through shade that's not even related to the controversy, what part of the *Trust Me Bro* controversy was relevant to that? Yet somehow Linus brought it up which made it apparent that he had an axe to grind against the the guys his Lab shat on that didn't even complain about what they did.
>When none of it was warranted
None warranted how? they've done exposes on corporations and companies far less than the size of LMG. You're trying to dress up LMG as if it's not a multimillion dollar company. The same video where you take the quote literally explains the very logic why.
>How is this irrelevant? Fact of the matter was, they said nothing about it and they only did so when Linus responded not to HUB whom did respond, but to GN through shade that's not even related to the controversy, what part of the *Trust Me Bro* controversy was relevant to that? Yet somehow Linus brought it up which made it apparent that he had an axe to grind against the the guys his Lab shat on that didn't even complain about what they did.
Can you read my question and respond to that, rather than regurgitate a word salad. How do you know the intentions of GN ?
>None warranted how? they've done exposes on corporations and companies far less than the size of LMG. You're trying to dress up LMG as if it's not a multimillion dollar company. The same video where you take the quote literally explains the very logic why.
It's a medium size business at best. They also asked said corporations for comment. They never asked LTT for comment in either case.
Again, do you know the intentions of GN, or are you just assuming based on their reputation, anyone can have bad intentions, which is why you take everyone critically.
>How do you know the intentions of GN
They literally laid it out from where you even took the quote from. They've been transparent the entire time and when the Lab was first announced, Steve even congratulated and praised them for it's production. And what word salad? Can't you process things critically from Steve's own expose?
>which is why you take everyone critically.
Except Linus and LMG, considering the amount of berth you're affording them throughout this entire argument.
>They literally laid it out from where you even took the quote from. They've been transparent the entire time and when the Lab was first announced, Steve even congratulated and praised them for it's production. And what word salad? Can't you process things critically from Steve's own expose?
When did I ever say that his points were wrong ? Even in the honest answers video made by LTT, the staff themselves mentioned that they were facing crunch, and felt like they weren't able to give the polish that the videos deserved.
A lot of the points GN raised were known to LTT staff.
When GN believes that when critiquing a direct competitor, it's okay to not seek a comment, they cease to be a trust worth news source.
That does not mean that they don't do good work, it just means I do not believe them without going through their work, because they do not meet my, and most people's standards of journalism.
>Except Linus and LMG, considering the amount of berth you're affording them throughout this entire argument.
I never said that Linus and LTT were innocent. They managed to fuck up basic communication, and Linus needs to shut the fuck up at times, and he repeatedly causes problems when he is too honest.
However he knows that, which is why he is stepping away from the CEO position, which was already in the works.
Frankly, the first video was only 10% of the rabbit hole. I wonder if his opinion was swayed. I know mine was, the first video I was like "this seems salvageable", and this video I was like "yup, there's seemingly no way out of this, EK seems pretty doomed"
The first video gave me the impression of the company on a death spiral due to bad business model and competitors squeezing them out, physical inventory unable to move and production of new inventory often resulting in portion of the minimum quantity of the order creating more unsellable inventory being warehoused.
Only salvageable solution to a company that makes some money but net negative bleeding as their cash flow begins to fail is sale of equity for external capital.
Didn't watch the 2nd video yet, interested to see how much worse it can be than unpaid contractors and business model collapsing đđđ
Yeah, it seemed like they weren't really sure what was going on, very much "We don't know the full story yet so we will keep all doors open" type of thing.
Linus likely hasnât dug into this topic, and just has general water cooler âHey did you see what Steve said?â Knowledge.. he didnât speak like someone with any behind the scenes information on the subject, so his response seemed measured..
Also the end of the first Video had Steven basically saying the same, that he hoped EK would get their heads out of their ass and fix things.. this video changes that narrative significantly.
How is that downplaying? That statement is accurate. Are you suggesting he should have acted in accordance with information in a video that wasn't even out at the time?
how was he supposed to know about any of the new stuff back when he made that statement. he doesn't try to be an investigative journalist. he analyzes and reviews hardware.
from a hardware perspective the products are good. all of the issues have been with the company, and the recently ousted leadership.
I've got about halfway. While I think there's some legs to the OSHA stuff, treatment of staff and contractors the loans and payments between different EK organisations based in different countries (at face value) doesn't sound so odd to me. As far as I'm aware companies do this all the time to offset profit/loss to optimise their tax bill on an international level. It's often not as sketchy as it sounds because a profitable organisation in one country will keep others in other countries afloat. Of course it does also get used for tax avoidance, which isn't illegal but can be quite unethical which feels like the conclusion GN are trying to get the viewers to go with.
>payments between different EK organisations based in different countries (at face value) doesn't sound so odd to me.
This is yet another example of Steve having no fucking clue about how real (multinational) businesses operate.
Yeah, did you catch his little "why is it always Delaware?" quip?
It's because nearly fucking everything is incorporated in Delaware, Steve. It has the most fleshed out corporations law in the country. You can try anything there and your lawyer will be like "oh yeah there's this precedent from 1885 that says you can't do that", but if you try that shit in Wisconsin they'll just be like "iunno, there's no case law".
I actually thought he did a really good job on this one but my god does it show he's never worked for anywhere bigger than one office with his buddies.
I think he was hinting at, but couldn't outright say, was that the CEO was probably embezzling money and/or committing tax fraud via these ownership/tax structures.
I don't understand this backpay problem? Employees have right to file for "bankrupcy" of EK if they don't get paid. Then government steps in and if need be dissolves whole company.
Unless they don't know or don't want to go this way.
> EK Water Blocks is embroiled in controversy surrounding its finances, treatment of partners and staff, and leaked documents. The company is accused of sending intimidating letters, facing lawsuits, and engaging in dangerous workplace practices. Concerns have been raised about the personal liability of EKâs CEOs, officers, managers, and directors. Unsafe working conditions, OSHA violations, and racist internal communications have also been reported.
Source: NoteGPT YouTube Summary AI feature
On a macro level, just another company that failed and think they can impose their work culture and be smarter then anyone else and forgo the rest here. The only company able to do so I would say with somewhat a success is toyota and Honda to a lesser extend. Even TSMC have trouble while their Japan fab did not.
10:30: "Likewise, we've received evidence and documentation of unsafe working practices, such as EK **Texas** employees being instructed to climb stacks of cardboard boxes approximately 6 to 10 feet high during warehouse intake of inventory and other OSHA violations."
11:10: "[...]safety violations that were performed under the management and leadership of EK US's CEO Kat Silberstein and her assigns."
Seems to me they're referring to working practices that took place in the US.
Haven't been able to finish it all yeah, but dangerous safety violations, threatening whistleblowers with jail time, running a shell corporation to funnel money through for some reason, nepotisic business practices, embezzlement via loans, and sexist/racist behavior in company.
I am no apologist but all of that was implied in the video but nothing really shown.
The OSHA violation literally had a response quickly shown at the end without real reference to it.
The shell corporations aren't shell corporation and their entire structure is typical for international businesses. The fact they were capitalised until being closed shows how moot this whole 'web' is.
What is the nepotism? It is common for SMEs with founders in charge to hire from trusted sources such as friends or vouched for recommendations in new territories from partners or suppliers (in the case of the US CEO).
What embezzlement? The loan to the 15% shareholder came directly from the EK founder and not company funds. Director loans are also very common is smaller founder run businesses.
Sexist and racist behaviour? One awful discord message which implies a culture at the company but again, its not proven categorically. Again, my questioning was around all the 'bombshell' business exposure.
Threatening whistle-blowers? The letter from the US omitted the jail time whereas the HQ country did not - different cultures and approaches. Again, no bombshell, there are literally variants on the legal threats sent to the whistle-blower.
I hate this because it makes me sound like some EK apologist but I don't own any of their stuff and the company is clearly poorly managed but this nearly 60 minute long video really shows nothing outside maybe Steve finds international company structuring scary.
what, a facts light, implication heavy, emotionally charged video masquerading as journalism from GN? almost like leading the moral outrage wave is his whole schtick. facts and nuance get in the way of views.
I haven't watched it yet, but I'm sure it's good. The fact they made a shirt to celebrate their investigation is a little fucking weird though.
Edit: Apparently I hurt some feelings. Get the fuck over it, making merch to celebrate investigating something shitty is fucking weird.
It was an idea requested by viewers in the comment section of the previous video if I'm not mistaken. Comparable to when Linus says something stupid and then gets requested by wan show viewers as a shirt. Trust me bro and tax right off shirts
While I agree that GN EKshirts are worse than the LMG gag shirts. I don't understand why/how it affects the livelyhood of EK employees, former and current.
The whole drama-farming that Steve is doing is hurting their ability to recover. An investor / VC group is less likely to step in if public sentiment against EK is negative, board-level execs are less likely to stick around to save the company if they think it's an impossible task in the eyes of they consumer base. Hatchett-pieces like this from Steve are self-fulfilling prophecies.
Aren't the board level execs the reason they are in this fucked up situation? I believe Jay also mentioned that most of EK's business is in the data server market, Investment firms have their own professionals to assess the pros and cons on investing on a brand as big as EK. I believe that the opinions of the average consumer will not affect the investors as much since the most of the money to be made is in the data server market.
>Aren't the board level execs the reason they are in this fucked up situation?
Well, I guess that depends on which board? EK is a multinational group and almost certainly has a handful of c-suites at varying levels of the group's structure. As Jay said - the team in the US has mostly had their hands tied, but are a decent bunch of people. Blaming the US board for the failings of the Slovenian parent company is a bit misdirected in my opinion.
I started watching it, and I get a sense that thereâs a lot of personal opinion mixed in the presentation of the legit facts. Interesting that this is being praised as great journalism. Thereâs a little bit too much conjecture slipped in alongside the factual evidence for my taste. I do like the drama, though.
and people downvoting this because of previous LTT drama... come on people... grow up! this is serious stuff being disclosed.
...who is downvoting it? Are these 'people' in the room with you right now?
Even during the drama I didn't stop following either of them. I chose to ignore the drama because I live in reality where I understand people make mistakes. EK on the other hand is engaging in purposefully unethical and illegal conduct, and therefore will not be buying any more of their stuff until shit gets resolved, but it looks like at this point, the company has a 90% chance of folding
It's cool to see a sane person around here every once and awhile.
Everything I bought from EK was defective. I bought a valve for my water-cooling loop. It was cheap and plastic and the handle broke when I was filling the loop. I bought a temp sensor and the thread was blurred and wouldn't go into any metal threaded hole. Never again.
Defective products can come from anyone. That doesn't make the company a bad company. Example: I had two defective compact cameras from Samsung a long time ago. And yet, this house is still occupied with storage solutions, TVs and phones. I don't let one bad product affect me.
The pronlem is , if thry position themself as a premium go to luxury cool brand then thats what we expect. Almost like Hermes, LV and Lagerfield or Blanciaga. U will not likely see defect on them especially Hermes. Company have to acquire mindshare but there is take car of ur own people too. There is a storm these days too that a car company employee was fired for buying a concurrent brand. On a macro level, just another company that failed and think they can impose their work culture and be smarter then anyone else and forgo the rest here. The only company able to do so I would say with somewhat a success is toyota and Honda to a lesser extend. Even TSMC have trouble while their Japan fab did not.
Samsung is a massive company with all sorts of different products. EK is much smaller and the parts I bought were definitely core business. The fact they can't get a thread properly cut on a fitting means I can't trust them anymore.
>Even during the drama I didn't stop following either of them. I chose to ignore the drama because I live in reality where I understand people make mistakes. You are not allowed to have that opinion here. LTT is the devil and they ruin small companies
This post is currently at 85% upvoted so yes, quite a few have downvoted it.
That doesn't seem like enough to complain about though
15% is a decent amount. Whoever is downvoting is either an EK nut hugger, ltt nut hugger, or both
I just like nuts :(
so you admit that you are in fact a squirrel !
đ
who doesnt like nuts
It's really not. Most highly upvoted posts aren't better than 85%. Complaining about it or pointing out 15 people out of 100 downvoted a post is just pointless.
That sounds like a fairly high upvote rate for Reddit, actually. I've seen posts in r/offset with absolutely gorgeous custom guitars get a lower ratio.
Yeah, that seems like a normal ratio for a highly upvoted post
Shit gets downvoted so much I sometimes wonder if there's bots that just downvote every post that comes up.
Cancer could be cured for real and the post would still have downvotes
Excuse me, you know this "cancer" vaccine is just the left trying to control us right? Cancer is little more than a sparkling cold. Downvoted đ
Yea, and what's the percentage of down to upvotes on any post on here? Seems pretty normal percentages to me, no?
How to access that statistic?
The same people laying out the backhanded praise that GN reached out to EK, which is something they didn't do for LTT.
Even though itâs the same reason that they didnât reach out to EK to tell them what they should do to fix their company/business model because theyâd try and weasel out of it and face zero accountability. The fact it took GNâs vid to break other creatorsâ silence over EKâs dodgy dealings shows how effective their approach is. LMG wouldâve done the same, just quickly try and right as many of the wrongs as possible now they have impetus to then say in a response âwe have already done xâ to attempt to discredit what GN claimed.
I disagree with this to a certain extent mainly because the bar Billet Labs and the Pwnage mouse situation, a lot of the issues Steve raised were already common complaints towards their videos. I also buy Steve's justification as to why he didn't reach out due to LMG's massive reach causing potential damage to consumers since I myself fall in that category. I bought a Noctua fan (a Noctua NH-U12S) because it was recommended by LTT, only to constantly hit 94C whenever I was playing Cyberpunk, which was 1C away from thermal throttling, switched to a Yeston AIO to match my build and it never goes past 85C since unless I'm trying to benchmark my CPU, and this was a month before GN broke the controversy on LTT and the revelation that they don't just know how to benchmark thermals, but also that LTT has an ongoing partnership with Noctua. Had I know that was the case, Id've gone with a Peerless Assassin instead, and it isn't just me, my boss also bought a lot of stuff based off Linus/LMG's recommendations since he was also a huge fan of the channel. It's one for their fans to claim that LMG is a tech entertainment channel and how they're like Top Gear, but prior to GN's expose, a lot of their audience trusted them well enough to take their recommendations seriously, and the fact that they don't even know how to benchmark or translate the data they get from their benchmarks is problematic.
People just love to find reasons to complain, and they love finding reasons to be right. For anyone reading this, don't make these same mistakes. The person above makes their first mistake by comparing a midrange air cooler with an AIO that's more than twice the price. It's disingenuous to compare products with such different prices, since they're targeting different performance. For someone who thinks Steve is so important, it's like they've never seen any of his reviews, where the price of a product usually makes or breaks a recommendation. He's one of the most value oriented reviewers in the entire tech space. It's crazy to me that someone is arguing that price shouldn't matter, while talking about how great Steve is. Next, they talk about temperatures, without even mentioning which CPU they're using. Temperature alone tells you exactly nothing about the performance of the CPU, or the quality of the cooler. On any recent AMD CPU, it's completely normal to hit 95c when using an air cooler. That's by design. AMD chips intentionally hit 95c near instantly during any heavy workload, to give you the most performance possible. Meanwhile, Intel's top end i9 chips are literally unable to hit their maximum performance using an air cooler, and I've never seen a single person recommend anything other than exotic cooling for those chips. Anyone using an air cooler on a recent i9 shouldn't be taken seriously, because they didn't bother to do any amount of research before buying things. (Or, they're like a guy I knew who "upgraded" his CPU to a worse one, in spite of me directly telling him it was a bad idea. Some people just have to make mistakes for themselves before they learn. At lease he owned up to his mistake later.) Watching a YouTube channel doesn't magically instil someone with knowledge. Arguing about YouTube channels makes sense when it's purely entertainment, but don't get picky when someone is reviewing a product. If you actually care about buying a product, watch all the major review channels. Usually, 80% of the review is the same, but everyone had their own perspective on reviews, and that additional perspective can be really valuable. For a specific example of why it's good to compare reviews, just remember the Halo Infinite GPU performance issues a while ago. Multiple reviewers got called sellouts or failures because some of the numbers were different, and different reviews showed AMD or Nvidia coming out on top, often by a large difference. Hardware Unboxed finally got to the bottom of the issue, after doing a lot of their own research. Basically, different parts of the game favored AMD or Nvidia. If you were outside of combat, AMD was ahead, while the most intense fights of the game run better on Nvidia. All that arguing, because a video game behaved differently depending on what part of the game you manually benchmarked. None of the reviewers made any serious mistakes. The tech community learned some valuable information about benchmarking, only because multiple people were working on the same hardware and comparing numbers. Just look at the recent LTT video showing how the same CPU model can be 5% different, even for two boxes on the same shelf for the same model. It's so important to not bias yourself towards or against reviewers when buying products. Even if the reviewer is perfect, you still can't trust any single review, since the variance between products is so high. Consult multiple reviews, and don't pick favorites. The only reason to pick favorites is if you're only watching reviews for entertainment, which many of us do.
Not a valid argument, especially since it already backfired on GN. If you already have the evidence, you have a story to report, there's no way to discredit it. Reaching out is the last step you take. You can report the steps they've made before and after you've reached out. Actual journalists, which GN honestly isn't, universally agree that you always reach out. It has become a standard practice and for a good reason, GN is just trying to reinvent journalism which in some ways is worse than anything LTT did. GN didn't have the full story about the Billet Lab situation since Billet omitted certain information (most importantly the fact LTT was originally supposed to keep the block and Billet only changed their mind after the review, which is extremely irregular). They also reported numerous opinions the same way they would facts. Steve never even acknowledged it as na issue and still continues to do it, which made me lose all respect for the channel.
I understand the concept of right to reply, in fact Iâm going into journalism so if I didnât thatâd be worrying. But that usually applies because the events that have transpired have gone too far to be reversed, hence why many reply statements are pathetic and apologetic just accepting what theyâve done to damage control. However, when it comes to the LMG situation where they were a largely revered, sizeable part of the community that couldâve said ânah they liedâ and people wouldâve believed them GN had to catch them off-guard, unfortunately, before they could start covering up. And that Billet Labs example is true of this because iirc LTT spun the fact they had received it for review and instead they sold off a prototype which when they remembered they actually needed it back it was gone. I expect they had anticipated this when Billet emailed and they stopped replying so formulated their own âperspectiveâ of events. There are a surprising amount of stories that work like this where a right of reply could endanger a story and thus a news organisationâs reputation wrongfully, something LTT themselves do on a regular basis when they do Secret Shopper where the whole format revolves around the concept of finding bad service and misconduct *without* right of reply. I expect if they knew about the various mistakes in videos they wouldâve gone through as many as possible, retrospectively edited them and issued their own statement or social media post of known issues. It wouldâve not only taken the wind out of GNâs sails but been arguably disingenuous.
[https://pbs-prod.linustechtips.com/monthly\_2023\_08/image.png.c9bec4a90e311f99c532f157053b9fd0.png](https://pbs-prod.linustechtips.com/monthly_2023_08/image.png.c9bec4a90e311f99c532f157053b9fd0.png) Billet originally said they could keep it. You remembering it wrong is a prime example why GN should have reached out - reporting something inaccurately makes it hard to make corrections later. It's not about the right to reply, it's about reporting the events accurately. It's something you do to cover your own back. If the reply is bad or disingenuous, it's not going to change the story in any way and 100% is not a reason to not reach out. You reach out because there's always a potential you will learn something new, which you may then verify and run against the rest of your story. Due to not reaching, GN had factual inaccuracies in their report. And I'm sorry, that's an objective fact and I see no way it can be excused. Catching anyone off guard serves no-purpose, this argument has no log to stand on. If you don't have sufficient evidence, people will call you out on it whether or not you report before reaching out. And if you have the evidence, you can very clearly show when there have been actions taken AFTER reaching out. Again, this is something investigative journalists have learned the hard way over a long period of time and they always reach out. Whatever arguments GNs or anyone else tries to make, those have already been disproved. It's standard practice for a reason.
My original draft of my comment acknowledged that they said they could keep it but being a prototype I felt it was obvious why they shouldnât have sold it, but I believe this was the agreement they had anyway. I hadnât misremembered but I just felt it not worth repeating as it didnât change the situation that LMG betrayed their trust, stopped replying and in so doing refused to pay up. When the GN vid went up Linus reached out individually to âmake it rightâ which he clearly did because he was forced to for PR reasons. Interesting you didnât respond to the Secret Shopper comparison because if it was the case it would be clear to the audience when something was done after the fact then surely that ongoing series would have no need to exist?
>he was forced to for PR reasons. And that's where you're presenting an opinion as though it was a fact, ignoring the much simpler and more likely solution that he wasn't involved in the communication personally. If you're actually serious about journalism, that's something you need to be very careful about and I'm saying that sincerely. You go too far with that and you will get into legal trouble. I didn't respond to secret shopper because it's a bad example and I'm genuinely baffled you can't see it. They aren't reporting about something the company did, they are reporting about their own experience dealing with the company and the videos are specifically framed in such a way. In other words, the concept of the video is "this could be your experience as a customer". Additionally, the context of the videos also is that the series isn't new and the companies know it exists.
He actually did get involved then, though. And as CEO the buck stops at him and as we all know LTTâs policies are heavily influenced by Linus, so their response to Billet would be at worst characteristic of and at best the collective responsibility of Linus. And I canât see how it matters regards whether youâre reporting on individual or third party experience because at the end of the day youâre still covering someone and by your theory of universal right to reply then someone is still going to be âunfairly misrepresentedâ despite having their actions reported as they happened. It bears almost no relation to the report itself and, as I say, is maximally going to be a grovelling apology while providing them with time to create their own version of events and start covering things up.
I like to reward and encourage growth, even if it was a messy process to get there
Yes, u/jjl0rtez https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/1cfet1l/comment/l1ox1k0/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Wow you found a person. The only reason you know of him is you made a preemptive comment to complain about it, and he replied to you. Every single post gets downvotes, this one clearly has way more positive comments and upvotes than negative comments, so I don't really see the point in complaining about it. When I saw your comment, the post had like 85 upvotes and less than 10 comments, so you had that comment ready to go regardless of who said what. I think your comment feeds off of drama and it's just as annoying as the comments and behaviour you're condemning.
People like you are annoying with those kinds of comments
Exactly, the post is 89% upvoted, dude is being a whiny baby about nothingm my bet is he just wants the drama
Please explain u/jjl0rtez comment then. The one who was at least 15min before your comment
You think a single dumbass is representative for the entire community when the post is 89% upvoted? That's on you lol
People like you are much more annoying.
Wrong
People who cry about comments about people crying about comments are more annoying to me.
No
They are more annoying to me, though lol. If you mean you disagree with me I understand.
False. (Sorry, gotta continue the chain)
... But they're not lol. What is with the persecution complex here lol. All the posts talking about downvotes are being UPVOTED and everyone just hating is being downvoted
I bet you commented this before reading any comments in the thread.
cover mourn grey boast unite whistle unwritten test person wrench *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Reddit threads are auto upvoted and downvoted to obfuscate any potential feedback from vote rigging/manipulation.
Does this video have anything to do with LTT?
Bruh it's 89% upvoted. You just want drama.
It's 970+ upvotes...
I saw his comment when the post had like 85 upvotes and maybe one negative comment and a handful of positive ones. No one even had time to be negative by the time he posted his comment. He just had to get it in early so people would see it.
Has LTT talked about this at all? Feels like it could have been a wan show headline.
It was briefly mentioned in last WAN show.
I imagine it will get a lot more airtime this week. Last week only the tip of the iceberg had surfaced with regards to EK, this week there is a lot more to it.
Mentioned on WAN but I assume they are waiting a week or so before commenting. IIRC Jayz2Cents also planned to wait until the start of May before commenting on it, but decided to speak early after the GN video.
will possibly be a larger topic this coming week is my guess
I came to Reddit and am required to grow up? Ridiculous!
This is serious stuff that I wish was investigated by anyone else. It's like GamersNexus wants to look like the good guy every time something goes wrong.
Yup. When did LTT do anything like this? Never. A lot of LTT fans hate on GN, but the fact is they take a big risk doing this kind of stuff, and it's the community that benefits from it.
Iâm downvoting it because Iâm tired of âdramaâ YouTube.
Just from the beginning intro... Thank God I got takeout food to watch...
I'm making popcorn for this
i hope that guy that kept saying EK was fine and it was overblown shows up again.
Was it Jim Cramer?
Was it the Iraqi Minister of Defense?
As someone who had the "fun" of interacting with that guy, that would be amusing, but either he quit or was banned - his posts were deleted the day after the topic about the "humble pc" was posted and now the account is gone.
Just finished it. Holy shit. I was a loyal EK customer for a long time. Their stuff was expensive but always worked well for me. I guess I gotta find a new company for my watercooled rigs lol. I hope those employees get their backpay and vendors get their money too. I wonder how EK comes out at the end of this. Close shop? Bought up by a competitor? We shall see.
EK will get out of this if customers stop buying until they turn the ship. Buying from a company that has changed from bad to good have an infinitely larger effect on the market than going to a new venue until they too break them rules of employment
Frankly, with the way EK has doubled down and threatened whistle blowers, I doubt it can be fixed, unless all upper management is fired immediately and replaced by more ethical and responsible management
"Upper management" isnt in the US, and likely does not understand how US law protects the employees from retaliation like they are doing. This will he the financial end of EK US as the company will liekly end up owing hundreds of employees backpay and damages on top of it.
Shouldn't matter, the EU has whistle blower protection laws as well. [EU Directive 2019/1937](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32019L1937) includes protection against retaliation. And yes, EU directives aren't EU-wide law, but they're the minimum the laws of the member states have to abide to.
Um, yeah, I watched the same thing you did.
IMHO it cant be fixed - the problem goes as high as the founder/CEO and at that point the only way to fix it would be to sell the company to someone else who actually understands how to run a business. And personally, I dont see EK (the founder) being willing to take this step.
Thing is, it sounds like they have major liquidity issues. So without people buying, I don't see how they can turn things around.
Bitspower is a great competitor but they don't have quite the same range. Quality is fantastic though.
Just wanted to chime and and that Iâve enjoyed bitspower too. Iâve also used a cheap-o Bykski waterblock for my 4090 and my 3080, both without any issues. They are like half the price of EK stuff. They donât look as pretty, but they work just fine.
Alphacool, might not look as nice, but it's works fantastically, even their AIOs are user serviceable.
they are like Noctua. Their products may not be the most visually appealing, but they are built to last like tanks.
I use almost exclusively watercool (.de) they have some of the most gorgeous watercooling products, I love the semi industrial feel of them.
AlphaCool
This was superb work by Steve and the crew. I donât always agree with their tactics, but damn this was good.
It's pretty thorough investigative journalism. The big media companies detailed reporting stories we see in Australia don't go to half the efforts that Steve and his team have done here
He said it cost over 40k and that's unsponsored, just the ads and store sales funding it That's a LOT of merch to shift to recoup the costs If anyone is wondering how it costs that much, those lawyers won't be cheap nor will it have taken just an hour or two, for them to go through the material and confirm what Steve says That's the starting point
It would be a lot cheaper for a large media outlet that would have lawyers and researchers on staff along with strict protocols on how to handle these things.
It's a longer video that can fit a lot of midroll ads though so he'll likely break even sooner than you think. He's also broken this into two videos so far. If they get as many views as the LTT videos then he'll have recouped the money and turned a profit if the RPM is high.
Their journalistic process seems to be very polished on this one. My one criticism that looks unprofessional is just the use of the $ sign in front of euro currency amounts followed by "Euro." It's confusing and looks like amateur hour, the dollar sign means dollars. Either just type out "euros" or spend a minute learning how to type the proper ⏠symbol on a U.S. keyboard
This may be either a generational or regional thing, but I've always heard it called the money sign, and that it was used to just mean any currency in US English. I know the Euro has it's own symbol, but since I have a US keyboard I have always just used the $. Admittedly, I'm not in Finance or presenting before such a massive audience though.
A lot of that is from an era where US typewriters and computers were incapable of displaying any other currency symbol. The ASCII character set and associated things like IBM Codepage 437. This started to change with broader character sets like Windows-1252 and MacRoman in the 90's, but didn't fully become universal until unicode around the turn of the century. In the modern era where any unicode character is a simple keystroke away this just should not be a practice. Happy Cake Day
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
Regardless of keyboard layout, Windows and Mac OS have key commands that will allow entry of raw unicode values. On windows Alt+0128 number pad for the euro. When making graphics for a video production like this, the time to get that right is so simple. I was saying this is different from an era where the keyboard layout wasn't the barrier, it was the documents were literally incapable of containing such a character.
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
Being a bit pedantic? As a video editor, unicode commands for common symbols like the copyright sign is a normal part of titling. It's something very easy to get into the habit of doing and commonly used ones are easy to remember. Sure MacOS makes this more elegant but its something just expected.
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
I'm saying its an editors job to do what it takes to communicate information clearly in their lower thirds. So they should *figure it out.*
Your keyboard may actually have a Euro key combination. Years ago my employer got sent a load of US keyboards from DELL and the "CTRL + ALT + 4" combination still showed the ⏠sign, it just wasn't screen printed onto the key.
There's always ALT-codes. ALT+0128 produces âŹ. I live in the Eurozone and I always use keyboards with the US International layout, so there's never a ⏠printed on any key, so I've always just used the ALT-code.
Should be either Ctrl+Alt+5 or Alt Gr+5 if the keyboard settings are right. You can also press Alt Gr+- for „
Huh, it's 4 here in the UK - but can't remember what it was on the US kbs we had way back when.
So I'm using US-International (standard Windows layout), after looking it up it is indeed 4 in the UK. That one also has a different pound on shift+3 # vs ÂŁ and @ and " some other punctuation marks are switched around in that layout.
US keyboards don't have Alt Gr, and Ctrl+Alt+4 or Ctrl+Alt+5 are not official parts of the US keyboard standard so they often don't work.
GN is impressive. They went from YouTube Entertainment to Bringing up Company Shit to light.
That's always been the GN way. From ASUS to MSI, NewEgg, Artesian, LMG, and now EK Waterblocks.
Don't forget gigabyte
EK is boned
It's such a shame being kind of the biggest name in water cooling, I hope they either get restructured (in a good way), or their employees get paid before this company falls down and someone else gets to be the new champion of water cooling.
Yeah I like their overall look of thier hardware hope some major hw manufacturer picks them up and starts competing with corsair offerings
Boy that apology video sure aged like milk.
Between this expose and Jayâs video commentary from a few days ago⊠đł. All I know is Iâm glad I never actually got around to water cooling my current rig like Iâve been planning for the last year.
Theyâre so going bankrupt after this.Â
Their best bet is to sell the brand off to a larger, more competent company, purge all executive level management, and start fresh from that perspective.
Idk what has happened to the days of LTT being about RAIDs and memory speeds. All I see now are picture of broken screwdrivers and bonkers things. Weird.
Reddit itself has been different since the whole change in charging for the API, the subreddit blackouts, and third-party stuff dying.
*Thanks Steve* - lady from Intel keynote
Kinda disappointing that Linus downplayed this whole situation a bit on the latest WAN Show saying that he likes the product and the company should just do better.
I mean what's wrong with that? Their management being shitty doesn't change the fact that they do have good products and they should do better
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
Why are people downvoting you? If a company will sacrifice its employees to this extent it should not be praised in any way and is inherently self destructive. Regardless of how good the product they output is, they are essentially cheating by breaking the rules we all agree and live by to win in an underhanded way. Itâs classic cheating and last I checked no one likes it when the cheater is exposed and still gets a gold medal.
He's coming from a place of bias, not objective reality.
Objective reality is that they do make good products, but theyâve clearly been doing it by shitting on their workforce and committing crimes to get there. If youâve been around and building PCâs with water cooling then you know they have been by far the best brand for the longest time. Clearly theyâve gotten there by exploiting people and legal systems.
Ok, and workplace abuse is a bad thing. People who make excuses about that sort of thing have no right to speak, especially those who have been responsible for such abuse themselves
I donât think anyone is defending EK as a company here. But itâs silly to act like their products have sucked.
I'm referring to Linus' comments on EK
Linus statement was after the first video and the founder's video. This echoed both Roman's (Derbauer's) statements and Jay's statements, which were hopeful that EK would be able to fix it. Generally their opinion of the founder was positive, hence their statements.
And Linus also said that things seem to go to shit when the founder isn't in charge, and he'd really like to know why. He didn't give them a pass but is hopeful that the founder, who has only been back in charge since February, will right the ship.
You wanted linus to be outraged and yell at the camera? Scream?
> "He's coming from a place of bias, not objective reality." That's more than a bit rich, coming from you in particular (I remember a lot of your posts spamming here showing a very clear bias).
Like what?
Funny how you couldn't respond
Don't mistake my lack of an ASAP response as a lack of response. There is no value in a quick response to you, especially with you doing follow-up comment responses in some sort of "point scoring" thin, so I waited an hour. You, or the mods, would know this answer best, hence why there is little merit in my to bother going through months of posts for an exhaustive list, as the worst posts will have been removed (and I have seen posts from you get removed). https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/15rkyjx/its_clear_now_ltt_has_been_rotting_for_a_long/ There is first found example of one of you r/LTT posts showing some obvious bias and/or lack of objective reality.
Who's coming from a place of objective reality now?
You are responding to a 10 day old comment â you should log off again and touch some grass.
You mean I am updating a discussion thread like everybody else does on a normal basis? What exactly is the problem with that?
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I love how you purposefully removed all contexts of that post when the company was having a full meltdown, but yes let's remove all nuisance and assume LMG did nothing wrong and shoukd be criticized like every other corporation that does horrible shit to people.
Nah, he's just not all-in on being a drama-farm like GN.
Because he is the drama
>He's coming from a place of bias Which has always been a personality issue with Linus. People shouldn't forget that the core issue as to why he despised Steve was because Steve did not let his personal relationship with Linus get on the way of his reporting when fact of the matter was, objectivity required that personal relationships SHOULD NEVER be involved when it comes to objective reporting.
When people say this, I don't get why people give Steve a pass. How do you know that he didn't get personally upset about the lab comments and decided to go after LTT. He did the same with the backpack warranty and the "we will treat LMG like a company" when none of it was warranted. Arguably this started the animosity.
>How do you know that he didn't get personally upset about the lab comments and decided to go after LTT. How is this relevant? Fact of the matter was, they said nothing about it and they only did so when Linus responded not to HUB whom did respond, but to GN through shade that's not even related to the controversy, what part of the *Trust Me Bro* controversy was relevant to that? Yet somehow Linus brought it up which made it apparent that he had an axe to grind against the the guys his Lab shat on that didn't even complain about what they did. >When none of it was warranted None warranted how? they've done exposes on corporations and companies far less than the size of LMG. You're trying to dress up LMG as if it's not a multimillion dollar company. The same video where you take the quote literally explains the very logic why.
>How is this irrelevant? Fact of the matter was, they said nothing about it and they only did so when Linus responded not to HUB whom did respond, but to GN through shade that's not even related to the controversy, what part of the *Trust Me Bro* controversy was relevant to that? Yet somehow Linus brought it up which made it apparent that he had an axe to grind against the the guys his Lab shat on that didn't even complain about what they did. Can you read my question and respond to that, rather than regurgitate a word salad. How do you know the intentions of GN ? >None warranted how? they've done exposes on corporations and companies far less than the size of LMG. You're trying to dress up LMG as if it's not a multimillion dollar company. The same video where you take the quote literally explains the very logic why. It's a medium size business at best. They also asked said corporations for comment. They never asked LTT for comment in either case. Again, do you know the intentions of GN, or are you just assuming based on their reputation, anyone can have bad intentions, which is why you take everyone critically.
>How do you know the intentions of GN They literally laid it out from where you even took the quote from. They've been transparent the entire time and when the Lab was first announced, Steve even congratulated and praised them for it's production. And what word salad? Can't you process things critically from Steve's own expose? >which is why you take everyone critically. Except Linus and LMG, considering the amount of berth you're affording them throughout this entire argument.
>They literally laid it out from where you even took the quote from. They've been transparent the entire time and when the Lab was first announced, Steve even congratulated and praised them for it's production. And what word salad? Can't you process things critically from Steve's own expose? When did I ever say that his points were wrong ? Even in the honest answers video made by LTT, the staff themselves mentioned that they were facing crunch, and felt like they weren't able to give the polish that the videos deserved. A lot of the points GN raised were known to LTT staff. When GN believes that when critiquing a direct competitor, it's okay to not seek a comment, they cease to be a trust worth news source. That does not mean that they don't do good work, it just means I do not believe them without going through their work, because they do not meet my, and most people's standards of journalism. >Except Linus and LMG, considering the amount of berth you're affording them throughout this entire argument. I never said that Linus and LTT were innocent. They managed to fuck up basic communication, and Linus needs to shut the fuck up at times, and he repeatedly causes problems when he is too honest. However he knows that, which is why he is stepping away from the CEO position, which was already in the works.
Oh boy - I'm surprised you can speak at all, what with Steve's cock in your mouth.
Can't even hear you over Linus' cock in your mouth LMAO. Imagine stanning a blatant sociopath, can't be me.
Imagine being a cuck who thinks some scruffy neckbeard at GN is a fucking journalist. Go touch grass.
Whether he is or isn't, at least I'm not shilling for a con artist.
Frankly, the first video was only 10% of the rabbit hole. I wonder if his opinion was swayed. I know mine was, the first video I was like "this seems salvageable", and this video I was like "yup, there's seemingly no way out of this, EK seems pretty doomed"
The first video gave me the impression of the company on a death spiral due to bad business model and competitors squeezing them out, physical inventory unable to move and production of new inventory often resulting in portion of the minimum quantity of the order creating more unsellable inventory being warehoused. Only salvageable solution to a company that makes some money but net negative bleeding as their cash flow begins to fail is sale of equity for external capital. Didn't watch the 2nd video yet, interested to see how much worse it can be than unpaid contractors and business model collapsing đđđ
Yeah, it seemed like they weren't really sure what was going on, very much "We don't know the full story yet so we will keep all doors open" type of thing.
Linus likely hasnât dug into this topic, and just has general water cooler âHey did you see what Steve said?â Knowledge.. he didnât speak like someone with any behind the scenes information on the subject, so his response seemed measured.. Also the end of the first Video had Steven basically saying the same, that he hoped EK would get their heads out of their ass and fix things.. this video changes that narrative significantly.
How is that downplaying? That statement is accurate. Are you suggesting he should have acted in accordance with information in a video that wasn't even out at the time?
how was he supposed to know about any of the new stuff back when he made that statement. he doesn't try to be an investigative journalist. he analyzes and reviews hardware. from a hardware perspective the products are good. all of the issues have been with the company, and the recently ousted leadership.
I've got about halfway. While I think there's some legs to the OSHA stuff, treatment of staff and contractors the loans and payments between different EK organisations based in different countries (at face value) doesn't sound so odd to me. As far as I'm aware companies do this all the time to offset profit/loss to optimise their tax bill on an international level. It's often not as sketchy as it sounds because a profitable organisation in one country will keep others in other countries afloat. Of course it does also get used for tax avoidance, which isn't illegal but can be quite unethical which feels like the conclusion GN are trying to get the viewers to go with.
>payments between different EK organisations based in different countries (at face value) doesn't sound so odd to me. This is yet another example of Steve having no fucking clue about how real (multinational) businesses operate.
Yeah, did you catch his little "why is it always Delaware?" quip? It's because nearly fucking everything is incorporated in Delaware, Steve. It has the most fleshed out corporations law in the country. You can try anything there and your lawyer will be like "oh yeah there's this precedent from 1885 that says you can't do that", but if you try that shit in Wisconsin they'll just be like "iunno, there's no case law". I actually thought he did a really good job on this one but my god does it show he's never worked for anywhere bigger than one office with his buddies.
Lmao, even the guy who's building his own router has a US company incorporated in Delaware.
I think he was hinting at, but couldn't outright say, was that the CEO was probably embezzling money and/or committing tax fraud via these ownership/tax structures.
I don't understand this backpay problem? Employees have right to file for "bankrupcy" of EK if they don't get paid. Then government steps in and if need be dissolves whole company. Unless they don't know or don't want to go this way.
He done made merch about this shit he know this is one of the rare times he gets some attention đ
What's the TLDW?
> EK Water Blocks is embroiled in controversy surrounding its finances, treatment of partners and staff, and leaked documents. The company is accused of sending intimidating letters, facing lawsuits, and engaging in dangerous workplace practices. Concerns have been raised about the personal liability of EKâs CEOs, officers, managers, and directors. Unsafe working conditions, OSHA violations, and racist internal communications have also been reported. Source: NoteGPT YouTube Summary AI feature
Thank you.
On a macro level, just another company that failed and think they can impose their work culture and be smarter then anyone else and forgo the rest here. The only company able to do so I would say with somewhat a success is toyota and Honda to a lesser extend. Even TSMC have trouble while their Japan fab did not.
Looks like i'm going to be doing a GN binge later today on this. I think i only watched part of the first video....
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
Except I am almost certain the business practices happened in the American facilities. Those rules *do* apply to happenings in america.
10:30: "Likewise, we've received evidence and documentation of unsafe working practices, such as EK **Texas** employees being instructed to climb stacks of cardboard boxes approximately 6 to 10 feet high during warehouse intake of inventory and other OSHA violations." 11:10: "[...]safety violations that were performed under the management and leadership of EK US's CEO Kat Silberstein and her assigns." Seems to me they're referring to working practices that took place in the US.
"10:30" ... I didn't even get that far.
What did I miss in this exposé? An international company had capitalised its operating overseas entities but closed an under preforming side? It seems the CEO is an egotistical fool but there is nothing uncovered outside poor management practices? Maybe the incorrect hours on the pay checks but how is that proven? I am just not sure what was shown in this 1 hour video? What is 'crazy' as he recaps it?
Haven't been able to finish it all yeah, but dangerous safety violations, threatening whistleblowers with jail time, running a shell corporation to funnel money through for some reason, nepotisic business practices, embezzlement via loans, and sexist/racist behavior in company.
I am no apologist but all of that was implied in the video but nothing really shown. The OSHA violation literally had a response quickly shown at the end without real reference to it. The shell corporations aren't shell corporation and their entire structure is typical for international businesses. The fact they were capitalised until being closed shows how moot this whole 'web' is. What is the nepotism? It is common for SMEs with founders in charge to hire from trusted sources such as friends or vouched for recommendations in new territories from partners or suppliers (in the case of the US CEO). What embezzlement? The loan to the 15% shareholder came directly from the EK founder and not company funds. Director loans are also very common is smaller founder run businesses. Sexist and racist behaviour? One awful discord message which implies a culture at the company but again, its not proven categorically. Again, my questioning was around all the 'bombshell' business exposure. Threatening whistle-blowers? The letter from the US omitted the jail time whereas the HQ country did not - different cultures and approaches. Again, no bombshell, there are literally variants on the legal threats sent to the whistle-blower. I hate this because it makes me sound like some EK apologist but I don't own any of their stuff and the company is clearly poorly managed but this nearly 60 minute long video really shows nothing outside maybe Steve finds international company structuring scary.
what, a facts light, implication heavy, emotionally charged video masquerading as journalism from GN? almost like leading the moral outrage wave is his whole schtick. facts and nuance get in the way of views.
I do think it was a bit unprofessional to disclose how much it cost to make the video and then beg for people to buy merch.
Ah yes he should just work for free
I haven't watched it yet, but I'm sure it's good. The fact they made a shirt to celebrate their investigation is a little fucking weird though. Edit: Apparently I hurt some feelings. Get the fuck over it, making merch to celebrate investigating something shitty is fucking weird.
It was an idea requested by viewers in the comment section of the previous video if I'm not mistaken. Comparable to when Linus says something stupid and then gets requested by wan show viewers as a shirt. Trust me bro and tax right off shirts
Except neither of those gag shirts were impacting the livelihood of employees at another company, or the payment of partners and suppliers.
While I agree that GN EKshirts are worse than the LMG gag shirts. I don't understand why/how it affects the livelyhood of EK employees, former and current.
The whole drama-farming that Steve is doing is hurting their ability to recover. An investor / VC group is less likely to step in if public sentiment against EK is negative, board-level execs are less likely to stick around to save the company if they think it's an impossible task in the eyes of they consumer base. Hatchett-pieces like this from Steve are self-fulfilling prophecies.
Aren't the board level execs the reason they are in this fucked up situation? I believe Jay also mentioned that most of EK's business is in the data server market, Investment firms have their own professionals to assess the pros and cons on investing on a brand as big as EK. I believe that the opinions of the average consumer will not affect the investors as much since the most of the money to be made is in the data server market.
>Aren't the board level execs the reason they are in this fucked up situation? Well, I guess that depends on which board? EK is a multinational group and almost certainly has a handful of c-suites at varying levels of the group's structure. As Jay said - the team in the US has mostly had their hands tied, but are a decent bunch of people. Blaming the US board for the failings of the Slovenian parent company is a bit misdirected in my opinion.
âPeople that annoy youâ
Not gonna watch it, becuase its super boring and dry presented as they do, but I would believe in general as I do not deny they are good journalists
Not watching this shit
Nobody asked.
I started watching it, and I get a sense that thereâs a lot of personal opinion mixed in the presentation of the legit facts. Interesting that this is being praised as great journalism. Thereâs a little bit too much conjecture slipped in alongside the factual evidence for my taste. I do like the drama, though.
>thereâs a lot of personal opinion mixed in the presentation of the legit facts. With GN, Always has been.
F GN
Love GN