I’m not going to fault anyone for having problems with this. I definitely am not comfortable with someone who comes out of a cult that actively opposes treating mental health “replacing” Chester, a man who struggled all his life before tragically taking his own life.

But people do need to understand: The reason scientology STILL has so much power is not because tom cruise has so many thetans. It is because, like all good cults, they have MASSIVE amounts of dirt on their members. And they make it very clear that anyone who speaks out against them will be destroyed. If you thought a British PM fucking a pig’s carcass was a shock… There are similar stories with every cult and secret society.

So if the cult says jump? You jump. And while I remain very very conflicted, I do give Emily credit for being openly gay (a huge no no) and talking around regretting being part of the crew that was used to try to protect masterson. I would rather outright condemnation and apologies but… that probably won’t happen unless she is ready to be destroyed by the cult.

Leah Remini deserves mad props for how incredibly brave she has been speaking out against scientology. But she also is MASSIVELY “lucky” that she basically escaped while they were running massive damage control for tom cruise vanceing up oprah’s couch. And by the time they “recovered” she had gone from “Weren’t you on the beach episode of Saved By The Bell?” to too high profile for them to really go after. Almost nobody else is going to have that luxury.

And as purely a music fan? Not huge on The Emptiness Machine outside of that initial reveal. But I kind of loved most of the Emily covers of the hits and give mad props to the band for making it a point to change the tempo or remix the songs a bit so she isn’t just singing Chester’s part. Time will tell what the album versions are and if they touch some of the songs they REALLY REALLY REALLY should not touch

Good on the workers. But my worry is that Boeing is a sinking ship and this will end up as anti-union propaganda when they (not the doors that fall off mid-flight) are what is blamed for Boeing collapsing.

Not sure on ApeLegs but they have increasingly been disabling linux “support” for the Battlefields because of their anti-cheat.

I don’t know how popular ApeLegs actually is. But for a lot of live games? Those are making MASSIVE bank and anything that can hurt the economy can kill the game. So a lot of studios actively just disable/block linux support because the added effort of making sure everything works in Proton is too big of a risk. Because nothing would increase Linux marketshare quite like free vdollars in Fortnite.

It really fucking sucks. But I find that many studios (like Digital Extremes) are really good about making it clear that even though they don’t officially support Linux, they are very much fans of Proton (and Warframe has had a lot of bugfixes specifically FOR Proton support). Whereas EA has spent the past few months systematically disabling Linux “support” for every game they develop.

It very much sounds like ifixit are actively asking influencers/reviewers to compare it to at least one of those in the videos.

Doesn’t really change much.

You NEVER connect to sensitive resources via wifi. Different orgs and levels have different rules about whether a device capable of wifi can even be in the same room, but the key is to not connect it to the secure network. This is commonly referred to as “an airgap”. And if you are wondering how different ships can communicate with each other and The US? Don’t ask questions!

For less sensitive resources? YOLO that shit. But it is also incredibly trivial to set up a security model where users cannot connect to arbitrary networks.

So StinkyNet would, presumably, only be usable by personal devices. Which should have absolutely nothing sensitive on them to begin with. And if anything on any of the ship’s sensitive networks was even able to connect to StinkyNet then… the Navy done fucked up.

Which… might explain the rapid action to punish those who violated policy.

And if there is not immense amounts of “do not have a fucking fitbit” levels of warnings and policies, that is a problem for the US Navy itself. Because a lot of those will also cache data and send the last N days once they get back to shore.

Again, unless they were ACTUALLY doing sensitive stuff (rather than just “sensitive by default” to protect Leadership™ from having to think and make decisions) then we are looking at the same problem the russians have in Ukraine.

Otherwise? It is a policy violation, not a security violation, in and of itself. What people then share on social media is on them.

And a friendly reminder: Policy is made to minimize the risk of a security issue and you should follow it (if only because you are paid to). But it is VERY important to understand what you are actually protecting yourself from so that you understand if policy is even doing anything. Otherwise you get complete insanity as more and more bureaucrats and Leaders™ add bullshit so they can get a bonus for being “security minded”.

Itself? Not really.

If a ship is close enough to pick up an SSID they are close enough for any number of other methods. And starlink is theoretically trusted by the us government.

But if they were actually locked down for a real mission (not the stuff you do to make people feel important) then we could have seen the same kinds of telegram leaks Russian has near constantly.

Removed by mod

People bring it up because they are smart enough to understand “we investigated ourselves and found no signs of wrongdoing” is not a defense.

Already explained it elsewhere but, the super short version is: Law firms are nor mandatory reporters outside of the most extreme cases. They are not investigating wrongdoing. They are investigating liability. They are looking for what was done in writing and what can be explained in the event of a lawsuit (and discovery).

https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/15t1mzn/mandatory_meeting_the_after_madisons_departure/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 is james sexually harassing people during the seminar

Here is the verbose “We investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing” post https://x.com/LinusTech/status/1793428629378208057 with a real nice bit threatening anyone who ever dares to be a whistleblower again

At this time, we feel our case for a defamation suit would be very strong; however, our deepest wish is to simply put all of this behind us. We hope that will be the case, given the investigator’s clear findings that the allegations made online were misrepresentations of what actually occurred. We will continue to assess if there is persistent reputational damage or further defamation.

And here is Linus playing the “what about the white man” card https://x.com/linusgsebastian/status/1778165221414347053

Like almost all situations: Demonstrate growth. No, not “subscribers go up” but actually show that you are better.

• I’ll skip the anti-consumer stuff regarding merch because that has always been the brand and they at least learned to not tell people to argue against their own rights.
• Antagonistic behavior toward competitors: They are still doing the “we are the best because we are the best” bullshit in their marketing. They’ve at least started collaborating with Wendell from Level1Techs again which is nice. But just reaching out to the other channels would go a long way. Gamers Nexus and Hardware Unboxed are basically the kings of technical reviewing and would actually benefit Lab for a collab. And GN and HUB are very open about having group discords where all the tech youtubers talk to corroborate strange behavior or let people know that AMD fucked everyone over and they need to re-do all their work for the past week.
• Gross incompetence in their own tech reviews: They apparently have made it a subscriber benefit for Floatplane that people can pay to error check videos which… okay. And they’ve taken down a few videos where they REALLY cocked up basic facts and conclusions. But it is still the same mess they have always been.
• Fucking over small businesses: They eventually gave the cooler company money which I guess was nice? But it looks like they still do a “Linus is made and hates this horrible product” every few months when they want a viewership bonus and it isn’t like they are going to do that to the companies that sponsor the LMG convention…

As for the really big ones? Sexual harassment and assault allegations?

A BIG first step would have been to get rid of james streib. Fucknuts was caught, on (audio part of a ) camera engaging in sexual harassment to the entire company during the fucking sexual harassment seminar the day after his report left the company because of sexual harassment from him and others. Whine about “people out for blood” all you want but that is the kind of cock up where you lose your job. Period. And the fact that people thought to record that meeting AND that linus and yvonne didn’t do a “What the fuck is wrong with you?” to him for that says a lot about what kind of a culture the company has. And putting him front and ecenter on thumbnails shows how little LMG cares.

But also? Their response to multiple allegations of harassment and assault has been to attack and discredit the victim, sometimes through blatant threats toward other employees? Fuck 'em. The brand is tainted and this is the point where you pivot to right wing grifting.

Speaking of which. I forgot to mention the time D-Brand made really racist jokes about a customer’s name and Linus Sebastient went to bat REAL hard with lots of “this wouldn’t be a problem if he were a white man” level responses. So… I guess they already got the memo.

Yes. Everyone and their mother posted that thinking they were clever.

It is also very telling that the concerns over warranties came up when:

1. The previous owner of the company who everyone knew and trusted died
2. There was active concern over the future of the company
3. The person trying to sell them that is a deranged lunatic with a sex pest best friend
4. The company is actively under threat of a hostile takeover spearheaded by people who might have killed the previous owner.

Are warranties foolproof? no. But they give you something so that you are only deciding if a lawyer is worth it when circumstances change significantly. Rather than by default any time anything goes wrong.

I think it was mostly that Naomi dropped it after excessive amounts of harassment. And Linus’s excuse was that she misunderstood him and it is her problem for thinking that a guy saying he would only give her a business opportunity if she came to his bedroom at 3 am was sketchy. And his wife was totally CC’d to some of those emails anyway.

I recall there was a different (not going to speculate on who the timeline would line up with…) case where Linus was accused of sexual assault (possibly outright rape?) where his defense was that he was a virgin until he met his wife which… okay.

As it stands, it is basically proven that the company has severe cultural issues regarding sexual harassment and bad workplace dynamics. The sexual assault accusations are still very much in the “where there is smoke…” range. And it is why I point out that Madison’s harassment claims were corroborated by former employees but her assault claims were not.

Rossman is a different mess, but I think it is undeniable that he has been a net positive on r2r over the years. And I think he will continue to be as long as he is someone that outlets like GN and even LMG collaborate with or reference but minimally platform.

But yeah. I think Rossman is genuinely a free speech absolutist with strong libertarian tendencies. Stuff like his “I don’t care if that amazon delivery driver was racist or not, this is unacceptable” just undermines his efforts. Same with his never ending hatred of NYC because he ran a business into the ground. Also his tendency to push immediately from “ads bad” to “STEAL THAT SHIT”.

Like, I immediately think of THAT Dril quote, but I do have to give it up to LMG from like three or four years ago. The idea that people SHOULD be aware of how to run adblockers and even dns level adblockers. But to also understand that they are pirating content (whether that is bad is up to the individual) and that some sites are going to block them or not work. Because that is honest and “real”. And it provides a conversation that can be had between companies and consumers.

Whereas Rossman has increasingly been “If they aren’t going to let you block ads, fuck 'em. Pay a different company to let you access their content without ads or giving them money” which just paints everyone who cares about privacy as a childish pirate with no respect for the work of others.

The one where they hired a lawyer (that i think was infamous for protecting the Canadian logging industry)?

Yeah. That is always bullshit. Unless you are doing REALLY illegal stuff AND are documenting it to an insane level, lawyers are not mandatory reporters. Their job is not to prove there was no wrongdoing. Their job is to investigate what risk the company is at to wrongdoing that, as far as they have been told, did not exist. And their report is the risk based upon documented evidence and interviews with employees.

So when a company does a third party investigation from a law firm they paid? They are not getting a clean bill of health. They are having all potential risks identified and doing what they can to mitigate that.

A very good friend of mine who tends to be on the other side of the court room when this stuff happens likes to describe it as: Paying a law firm to investigate your company is not an STD test. It is confirming that you don’t have any weeping sores and making sure you have plausible deniability for why all your condoms keep “falling off” while you stealth people.

But people hear “We investigated ourselves and found no sign of wrongdoing” and think it means… anything.

Quick summary, probably missing a lot, but…

• Two-ish years ago they decided to sell an overpriced backpack with no warranty. This was criticized considering everything else in the same price/quality categories would have lifetime warranties. This led to Linus Sebastien going on a rant about how warranties are worthless and people should just trust him and that anyone who wanted a warranty was going to threaten his wife (the CFO and one of the major shareholders) were he to die. LMG eventually walked back and provided a pretty good warranty but this is largely considered the “masks off” moment
• One-ish years ago, during a fan tour one of the engineers in Lab (LMG’s hardware testing warehouse) criticized Hardware Unboxed and Gamers Nexus with some (actually false) nonsense claims about how LMG do their testing and why it makes them better than everyone else. After this blew up, Linus went on his podcast to say he stands by the engineer.
• Needless to say, GN and HUB took that personally and it led to GN doing one of their industry takedown videos (usually reserved for MSI or ASUS) on LMG with lots of documented examples of downright comedic levels of incompetence in how they review hardware and present results that point toward systemic issues that undermine all the orgs who actually take benchmarking and the like seriously. Look up the video, but it is stuff like not taking the plastic off a mouse (and then complaining about how it feels) or listing complete nonsense numbers for RAM that anyone with half a (computer parts) brain would have said “that can’t be right”.
• Also, GN pointed out that one of the most egregious examples was the recent one where LMG were sent a prototype GPU cooler and a GPU to review. LMG proceeded to “lose” the card they were sent and use a random different model for the test and then shit on the product endlessly while insisting it doesn’t matter that they didn’t actually test it because it was a shit product. They then sold the prototype at their convention to an unknown party. All while ghosting the company and ignoring their requests for the prototype back.
• This led to “drama” where Linus, on the LTT Forums, accused Steve (GN) of being biased and a horribly unprofessional reporter for not giving LMG a chance to get ahead of the accusations and insisted they had already addressed all the issues. Which was later revealed to be that they finally replied to the GPU Cooler company literally minutes before Linus posted to gaslight people.
• Also, as part of this, a former employee (Madison) who had left mysteriously spoke out about the sexual harassment and assault she experienced at LMG. This was consistent with vagueposting by other female former staff when referencing their time at LMG.
• The harassment was corroborated by other former staff (one has since recanted after he couldn’t find a new job in the kind of blog post that would make even John Xina himself raise an eyebrow) and audio of her manager (James Streib) making stripper jokes to the entire company during the company mandated sexual harassment seminar THE DAY AFTER MADISON QUIT BECAUSE OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT re-surfaced. Streib is still the face of one of the LMG channels.
• This ALSO reminded people of when, OG of Maker Youtube and 3d Printing, Naomi Wu spoke about how Linus had insisted she come to his hotel room at like 3 am if she wanted to do a collaboration and that it made her feel uncomfortable. Allegedly this was all a big misunderstanding and Linus only accidentally removed his wife from the email chain, but Naomi is used to that shit and had much bigger stuff (like the CCP…) to deal with when this was resurfacing.

And just general douche-baggery.

But mostly? It just means to take anything LMG does with a massive grain of salt. They have repeatedly demonstrated that they are not above manipulating their audience and influence to push anti-consumer behavior. So a video where they were “too spicy” for Google for promoting alternatives (some of which LMG themselves operate) is, to quote the children, sus. And yeah, it sounds like the issue has nothing to do with “don’t use gmail or youtube” and all to do with “use this random third party app that bypasses all the ads so you can still use youtube”.

Had suspicions with Rossman involved and a quick check of the ltt subreddit means I both need a shower and likely know why it was delisted:

The issue isn’t “how to live without google”. Plenty of those videos exist

The issue is encouraging people to use third party apps that violate the TOS and let you watch youtube without ads. That is not “living without google”. That is “You should ‘steal’ from google”

But honestly, not surprising. Rossman has pretty much always been on the “Fuck em, just pirate it” side of things for better or for worse.

Whereas LMG are still desparate to get back their viewership after all the harassment and incompetence accusations. So nothing better to make people think the company that encourages its users to advocate against warranties is pro-consumer than to pick a pointless fight with google. Which has the added benefit of advertising floatplane (see also: gun youtubers hamming it up over what youtube will let them do to advertise Ian McCollum’s latest side hustle).

Can’t speak to starlink specifically, but I know some shittier router brands would often reset to factory defaults every time you updated the firmware. Can easily see starlink doing that with a pushed firmware with the expectation some additional cell phone app would restore the correct settings.

So they very well might have turned off broadcasting but it got popped back on while they were on shift and it was detected.

Free speech has jack all to do with it.

What matters are people who suddenly can’t watch kitty cat videos… or organize military operations. They don’t care about misinformation campaigns and fines. They care that suddenly The Government has taken something away from them.

You are assuming people look at this rationally. Rather than “the politicians hate a guy and I suffer”

It is very similar to the logic by which people go out of their way to bend over backwards to support anti-consumer practices if ti is for the game or movie they want to watch.