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Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

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Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#651

Post by freemint »

kadoban wrote: post #490
fartcannon wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, I have and that is where my original position comes from. Got some good alternative perspectives today though. Interesting to hear the same thing as evidence of either position. My fav part of the channel is the rest of the team. One thing you can't fault Linus for is his ability to hire entertaining characters and promote a fun environment. That is a great skill. There's at least 5 other people there who cou…

> One thing you can't fault Linus for is his ability to hire entertaining characters and promote a fun environment. That is a great skill. There's at least 5 other people there who could be YouTube empires all on their own. Yeah, agreed, it's a bit absurd to me how they've managed to collect so many actually talented, entertaining people.

By offering them a a better deal then starting from nothing as a YouTuber and then "hooking" them with things such as writing staff, filming locations, good equipment, good people behind the camera, credit for their work and editing staff as well as access to hardware they would not get otherwise. They surely spend mid 6 digits on their workshop for example. Mostly to make CNC machines create custom heat spreaders.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#652

Post by joshstrange »

dfdz wrote: post #628
joshstrange wrote: post #28

Wirecutter has gone to shit and stopped being useful about 3-4 years ago. Their move to a paid subscription was very odd to me because they had also lost all my trust by that point. There are countless examples of recommends products doing a bait and switch (changing the materials/product after the wirecutter article recommending them came out) and just cases of Wirecutter giving bad recommendations.

> Their move to a paid subscription was very odd above several people note that > the IKEA one … is the only one in the article they don't earn a commission on when someone buys it How do you want wirecutter to stay economically viable?

I'm saying that I would have paid 3-4 years ago before I lost trust in the site. I have no issue with affiliate links (if the site remains neutral which seems almost impossible) but it's clear to me WC sold their soul a while back and subscription fees are a last-ditch attempt to get some more money out of it.

I almost did pay when they announced they were going the subscription route but after being burned or almost-burned (saved by reading reviews about a bait and switch) I decided I no longer cared about WC recommendations.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#653

Post by 404mm »

hypersoar wrote: post #51

The Wirecutter is a highly flawed review site, but at least it's a real one. There are vanishingly few left for general consumer products. There's WC, Consumer Reports, and what else? They've seem to have all been killed off. When I'm researching some category of product, I feel lucky if I find any professional reviews written by people who have actually touched the thing they're reviewing. I know we've all had the e…

As somebody not familiar with Wirecutter’s history or legacy, I always considered them to be one of the paid fake review websites that pretend to offer very shallow reviews, mostly just built based on referral links and information that can be harvested from product descriptions. I just don’t agree that they are a real website that does actual testing. 0/10. Would block form Google if I could.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#655

Post by klausjensen »

fartcannon wrote: post #329
mrkwse wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be interesting if LMG can pull off what Linus is aiming for with the massive investment in a laboratory environment. There are huge parts of the tech market where the most critical reviewing you can find is anecdotal accounts of if the reviewer liked a product or not (or the more clinical reviews are drowned out by the anecdotal noise).

Do you trust Linus, though? He often promotes himself as without bias, but he very clearly hates Apple (except the watch). He also loves things he already understands (anything Microsoft). He's got heavy duty fanboyitis. And he's clearly someone you can buy demonstrated by his flip flopping AMD/Intel/NVidia praise. I don't think he outwardly lies (at least not in a way that matters), or anything, but he's got pretty…

As somebody who has followed Linus for the last couple of years, I have to say I deeply disagree with your conclusion about hating apple and being for sale.

He is not without flaws, but I think he is fair, balanced and very well-intentioned.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#656

Post by wpietri »

screye wrote: post #545
wpietri wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. How would you describe SSC's revenue model and incentives, then?

SSC spent the last decade as a blogger on the side. He had a big enough following to monetize it, but actively chose against it. It was only after the whole NYT debacle, that he actually moved to blogging fulltime. If his incentives were aligned with money, then he'd have tried to monetize his platform far sooner than he did. If anything, a portion of the new subscription money is already being invested into weird co…

That's interesting, but that does not answer my questions about what SSC's incentives are.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#657

Post by hoseja »

criley2 wrote: post #636
hoseja wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>LTT makes almost all of it's money from floatplane, youtube premium, and youtube advertisements In the recent video they did on their most profitable videos Linus explicitly said money from YouTube is only a small fraction of their revenue. I don't imagine Floatplane is much of a profit centre either...

Linus did a video on how much money they make from youtube premium/ads and the numbers can get as high as $50k-$100k/video for their most popular streams. It's not nothing. Floatplane is profitable because it's a subscription based system, and that's where the money always is. Hence patreon.

For a company with 50 employees, that is really not all that much.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#658

Post by bradlys »

modriano wrote: post #566
bradlys wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m pro-choice - does this mean that I think every fetus should be aborted?

Pro-choice != pro-abortion. Pro-choice means every pregnant woman should have the choice and a real chance to abort their pregnancy if they choose. It's kind of right there in the name.

Unless you believe children shouldn't exist - almost no one is pro-abortion. So, that's not really an argument that anyone is making, is it?

In the same way people say pro-union - they mean "pro-choice" as in you should have the choice and freedom to form and be part of a union easily.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#659

Post by etchalon »

rcoveson wrote: post #585
etchalon wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the point. The point doesn't matter. Air purifiers operate on a fraction of available air. That air supply is continually being cycled, refreshed and mixed. Particulate matter within that air is not evenly dispersed. That, for a single minute, as a percentage of total air, a 99.5% and a 99.95% purifier produce a minor difference in total air quality is deeply irrelevant to the overall performance of the…

You started this subthread with the comment: > The idea that the difference between 0.9005 and 0.90005 is "small" is … weird. When you use the author's numbers, 0.9005 and 0.90005, the implication is that you're taking the parameters of they hypothetical as given. You then go on to say that the difference between those numbers is significant. Remember that in this abstract, idealized scenario, the air filters are onl…

I started the subthread with the comment because saying the difference between those numbers is small is weird, … because it is.

Those numbers represent percentages (90.005% and 90.0005%) and those two inputs, especially when applied to a chaotic system, will produce outsized differences over time.

And the data shows that the two filters produced outsized differences over time.

I'm not broadening the scope of my contention. I'm pointing out that my contention (there is a large difference in those numbers that is hidden by the way the author presents them) is confirmed by the data.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#660

Post by newsclues »

humaniania wrote: post #546
kitsunesoba wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm hopeful for LMG's lab too. It's still a bit of a gamble, but from the sound of it the company is set up such that they can review products in an objective, data-backed way and tank any blowback from manufacturers that occurs as a result. It's much more focused on enthusiast computer hardware, but Gamers Nexus[0] is doing good things in this space too. Their style is much more dry and data-dense than LMG's though,…

Gamers Nexus is better than Linus in every way that matters.

Entertainment matters for about 10 million subscribers
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