【Gamers Nexus】LTT的问题：准确性、道德与责任

Linus回应以及原文：

不会有一个大的WAN秀片段关于这个或任何东西。我要说的大部分话，我已经说过了，而且是私下说的。

对史蒂夫，我表达了我的失望，因为他在创作这篇文章时没有经过适当的新闻实践。他有我的电子邮件和电话号码(以及我们团队的许多其他成员)，可以问我一些可能被证明是有价值的背景(比如我们没有“出售”单体，而是因为沟通不端而将其拍卖给慈善机构……事实上，虽然我们还没有付款，但我们已经同意赔偿Billet实验室的原型成本)。还有其他问题，但我已经告诉他，我不会因为这件事被卷入公开的攻击战，我将继续真诚地作为“媒体团队”的一员向前迈进。如果他愿意再这样做，我会做好准备的。

对于我的团队(以及我的首席执行官团队，但实际上所有这些错误都是由我掌舵的，所以我需要承担责任)，我强调了勤奋在我们工作中的重要性，因为有很多人在关注我们。我们正在经历一些成长的烦恼——为了提高透明度，我们一直非常公开——很明显，我们在内部流程和沟通方面还有一些工作要做。我们已经在内部做了很多工作来清理我们的流程，但这些事情需要时间。冰冻三尺，非一日之寒，但这不是马虎的借口。

现在，对于我的社区，我所能说的就是我一直说的话。我们知道我们并不完美。为了确保我们对您负责，我们把我们的不完美暴露在我们的袖子上。但当这种透明度被扭曲成一件坏事时，这是可悲和不幸的。实验室团队正在努力创建流程和工具来生成将使所有消费者受益的数据——这是一项尚未完成的工作，我们已经沟通过，需要这样对待。我们在一些视频下面有笔记吗?是的。是因为我们在努力提高透明度吗?是的…我们现在所做的是多年来从未有过的。如果情况需要，我们还会进行更大幅度的调整。列出表上错误的缓存数量以进行CPU检查是草率的，但是考虑到我们的结论是基于我们的测试得出的，而不是基于规范表，因此它不会实质性地改变建议。这并不意味着这些事情不重要。我们已经为我们的写作/实验室团队设置了准确性的kpi，并且我们正在不断地安装新的检查和平衡，以确保事情继续变得更好。坦率地说，如果你没有看到改善，我怀疑你是否真的在寻找它……考虑到我们对这些禁令的时间有限，我们在最后几个GPU视频上的管理的彻底性真的令人难以置信。我对未来感到非常兴奋。

说了这么多，我仍然不同意Billet Labs的视频(不是退货的情况，我已经在上面解决了)是一个“准确性”问题。更像是我看错了房间。我们本可以精确地重新测试它，但要做得恰当——考虑到它可以安装在哪些情况下(没有)，以及它将与哪些散热器相连(再次……神秘)是不可能的……也没有影响视频的结尾…或者我是这么想的……

我想把它作为一种产品来评估，作为一种产品，如果它能与地球上最高端的街区的温度竞争，它仍然没有意义……所以从我的角度来看，重新测试它并发现是的，它确实运行得更冷对结论没有影响，所以它并没有真正产生影响。

亚当和我今天讨论了这个问题。他主张重新测试它，不管它在当时作为一个产品是多么不可行，我认为他今天很好地表达了为什么它很重要。这就像在做一个关于超级跑车的视频。看的人不买也没关系。他们只是想看它被撕碎。我错过了这一点，但这并不是因为我不关心消费者……而是因为我太专注于这个产品如何影响潜在的买家。不管怎样，显然是我的错，但我的本意绝不是伤害比尔特实验室。我特别提到了他们令人难以置信的机械加工技能，因为我想看到他们创造出具有可行市场的东西，并希望其他人能够欣赏精湛的工艺，即使产品不切实际。我仍然希望他们能继续开发其他产品，因为他们显然很有才华，我也看到过无数小众水冷却供应商来来去去。这是一个极其无情的市场。

不管怎样，我很抱歉我把社区的优先级搞混了，我们没有以最好的方式展示Billet。我们的目的不是伤害任何人。我们不想让任何人买它(因为这是对金钱的极度浪费)

There won't be a big WAN Show segment about this or anything. Most of what I have to say, I've already said, and I've done so privately.

To Steve, I expressed my disappointment that he didn't go through proper journalistic practices in creating this piece. He has my email and number (along with numerous other members of our team) and could have asked me for context that may have proven to be valuable (like the fact that we didn't 'sell' the monoblock, but rather auctioned it for charity due to a miscommunication... AND the fact that while we haven't sent payment yet, we have already agreed to compensate Billet Labs for the cost of their prototype). There are other issues, but I've told him that I won't be drawn into a public sniping match over this and that I'll be continuing to move forward in good faith as part of 'Team Media'. When/if he's ready to do so again I'll be ready.

To my team (and my CEO's team, but realistically I was at the helm for all of these errors, so I need to own it), I stressed the importance of diligence in our work because there are so many eyes on us. We are going through some growing pains - we've been very public about them in the interest of transparency - and it's clear we have some work to do on internal processes and communication. We have already been doing a lot of work internally to clean up our processes, but these things take time. Rome wasn't built in a day, but that's no excuse for sloppiness.

Now, for my community, all I can say is the same things I always say. We know that we're not perfect. We wear our imperfection on our sleeves in the interest of ensuring that we stay accountable to you. But it's sad and unfortunate when this transparency gets warped into a bad thing. The Labs team is hard at work hard creating processes and tools to generate data that will benefit all consumers - a work in progress that is very much not done and that we've communicated needs to be treated as such. Do we have notes under some videos? Yes. Is it because we are striving for transparency/improvement? Yeah... What we're doing hasn't been in many years, if ever.. and we would make a much larger correction if the circumstances merited it. Listing the wrong amount of cache on a table for a CPU review is sloppy, but given that our conclusions are drawn based on our testing, not the spec sheet, it doesn't materially change the recommendation. That doesn't mean these things don't matter. We've set KPIs for our writing/labs team around accuracy, and we are continually installing new checks and balances to ensure that things continue to get better. If you haven't seen the improvement, frankly I wonder if you're really looking for it... The thoroughness that we managed on our last handful of GPU videos is getting really incredible given the limited time we have for these embargoes. I'm REALLY excited about what the future will hold.

 

With all of that said, I still disagree that the Billet Labs video (not the situation with the return, which I've already addressed above) is an 'accuracy' issue. It's more like I just read the room wrong. We COULD have re-tested it with perfect accuracy, but to do so PROPERLY - accounting for which cases it could be installed in (none) and which radiators it would be plumbed with (again... mystery) would have been impossible... and also didn't affect the conclusion of the video... OR SO I THOUGHT...

 

I wanted to evaluate it as a product, and as a product, IF it could manage to compete with the temperatures of the highest end blocks on the planet, it still wouldn't make sense to buy... so from my point of view, re-testing it and finding out that yes, it did in fact run cooler made no difference to the conclusion, so it didn't really make a difference.

 

Adam and I were talking about this today. He advocated for re-testing it regardless of how non-viable it was as a product at the time and I think he expressed really well today why it mattered. It was like making a video about a supercar. It doesn't mater if no one watching will buy it. They just wanna see it rip.  I missed that, but it wasn't because I didn't care about the consumer.. it was because I was so focused on how this product impacted a potential buyer. Either way, clearly my bad, but my intention was never to harm Billet Labs. I specifically called out their incredible machining skills because I wanted to see them create something with a viable market for it and was hoping others would appreciate the fineness of the craftsmanship even if the product was impractical. I still hope they move forward building something else because they obviously have talent and I've watched countless niche water cooling vendors come and go. It's an astonishingly unforgiving market.

 

Either way, I'm sorry I got the community's priorities mixed-up on this one, and that we didn't show the Billet in the best light. Our intention wasn't to hurt anyone. We wanted no one to buy it (because it's an egregious waste of money no matter what temps it runs at) and we wanted Billet to make something marketable (so they can, y'know, eat).

 

With all of this in mind, it saddens me how quickly the pitchforks were raised over this. It also comes across a touch hypocritical when some basic due diligence could have helped clarify much of it. I have a LONG history of meeting issues head on and I've never been afraid to answer questions, which lands me in hot water regularly, but helps keep me in tune with my peers and with the community. The only reason I can think of not to ask me is because my honest response might be inconvenient. 

 

We can test that... with this post. Will the "It was a mistake (a bad one, but a mistake) and they're taking care of it" reality manage to have the same reach? Let's see if anyone actually wants to know what happened. I hope so, but it's been disheartening seeing how many people were willing to jump on us here. Believe it or not, I'm a real person and so is the rest of my team. We are trying our best, and if what we were doing was easy, everyone would do it. Today sucks.

 

Thanks for reading this.