According to Billet themselves, they heard nothing about compensation or payback until about 3 hours after the original GN video went live… Which Billet hadnt even replied to before Linus made his post saying they’ve already made the deal on compensation.
I make privacy guides that thousands of people use, and long writeups I write, and it refined me so much in articulating and conveying facts to people besides having the journalistic integrity that nobody really has these days. There have been people who have used libel and slander too, giving me a complete insight into what it means to do a journalist’s work over the course of years.
Mainstream sources, not just LTT, need double or triple checks before I can even think of testing something out, and then recommend to people. Same goes for whatever a bunch of basement “experts” claim, and I only trust when I can see the transparency and integrity with not a speck of dust on the expert’s testing methodologies, plus a solid record, plus a detachment from geopolitical nonsense. (The moment I see an expert whining about China or Russia, they drop lower than LTT for me.)
I understand. I have been tasked, at times, with writing fairly simple documents to guide co-workers to complete a task; bearing in mind that my coworkers, for all intents and purposes, are very smart, experienced, and otherwise knowledgeable people doing the same job I am (more or less). Most technical jobs essentially require, as an unwritten rule, a certain level on improvisation, and the ability to extrapolate information from an incomplete dataset.
However, I generally need to run through the process 2 or 3 times before I can complete the task of writing the docs for it, the first time, I go through and mostly figure it out, make some general notes on what I’m doing, so I can repeat the process myself… The second time, I’m generally collecting screen shots, and filling in any blanks in the process I may have glossed over in my notes from the first pass, then before I’m “ready to go to print” I’m re-reviewing the entirety of my new document in an editing mindset, rephrasing and clarifying things as best as I can; then I’ll usually follow my own document to make sure that if I only do the steps listed, the process will complete successfully.
At which point, I have a draft.
I then, usually, ask my least skilled coworker to give it a once over to see if it makes sense to them, and offer any constructive criticism that they may have, with a second (revised) draft going to another low-skill coworker for final “review”.
That’s 2-3 people examining the material before it ships, and I’ve personally gone over it two or three times to check spelling, grammar, accuracy, etc.
And that’s for an internal document about a process that 90% of my team can probably half-guess their way through, even if they’ve never touched the related thing before. It’s a certain level of consistency and accuracy and I won’t accept any less from myself. I want to ensure that if my document is given to a client, or Joe worker, they can complete it without issue down the line.
This is the level of integrity that I expect, both from myself and from any organization that I would trust to provide reliable information. The blunt fact is that LTT doesn’t seem to be even double checking their work at all, meanwhile I’m putting myself to the standard of double checking, and ensuring my information gets peer reviewed before going to “print” (so to speak).
Granted, most of the stuff I do is generally less complex, usually guides and instructions on fairly mediocre technical topics, not full reviews of embargoed devices using pre-release firmware and drivers, but still, the methodology for the consistency of the information should be there. As GN had clearly demonstrated, it is not. And that’s just regarding their technical inaccuracies. I’m not going to touch the issues surrounding transparency and decisions made at the highest levels, like the recently developed issue stemming from this regarding the handling of the prototype waterblock. For me, the most recent developments there are simply deeply disappointing, and demonstrative of the fact that they’re willing to state things as fact before things become fact.