- The truth is I am not happy
with the current state of Linus Tech Tips.
To be clear, my team's amazing
and we've basically perfected our gateway drug formula.
It's that taste of hardcore tech that goes down smooth
and has been turning young gamers into comp sci majors
by the thousands for over a decade.
The good news is that all changes today.
I'm about to show you my plan
to radically change the face of Linus Tech Tips,
but it's gonna take time
and it's going to be extremely expensive,
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(upbeat music)
Welcome
to LTT Lab One.
This has been a dream of mine for a long time,
but due to a number of factors,
including the white hot real estate market
here in Vancouver, I have found myself waiting
and waiting for the right time,
when what I should have done was just pull the trigger
ages ago, regardless of the cost.
We're hiring a couple of writers this time around,
including one for Mac Address.
You can apply down below.
But that's not what this is.
The vision for this lab is pretty simple.
In the time I've been doing this job,
tech journalism has suffered blow after blow after blow.
Nearly every publication that I followed
as a young enthusiast has either folded
or been bought out by a soulless corporate interest.
And most of the journalists who guided me
through my early years have retired
or, more likely, moved over to the manufacturing side,
where there's still money to be made.
That ends now. The gloves are coming off.
Are you an expert on mobile gaming performance
or displays who needs a second day job to survive?
Are you stuck in marketing for a major board manufacturer
and hate every minute of it?
Do you think I can't afford you? Try me.
When I'm done, every square foot of Lab One
is gonna be filled with engineering personnel
and equipment that will take our content to the next level,
starting behind this door,
and you're gonna wanna be part of it.
Oh, look, it's a Luke.
- Hey guys.
You probably already know that, for the last four years,
I've been working on floatplane.com,
our early access video platform that's full
of behind the scenes and video extras for our supporters.
What you might not know is that, more recently,
we've been hard at work expanding our development team
to tackle other projects, not just floatplane.com.
Like these cool browser quizzes and games
for the Verified Actual Gamer program
and our merch message notifier for orders on LTTstore.com
for our live streams.
We're expanding our team even more.
This time, we want to throw some dev muscle
behind the writing team by integrating or creating tools
for automated benchmarking processes and data collection.
I also want a data scientist for some unrelated stuff.
So at the moment, I'm only actually personally hiring
2 of the 15 positions we've got listed,
but if we get the right applicants, who knows,
maybe three of you will be sitting here.
- [Sebastian] After a paint job
maybe some new floors. - Maybe some new lights.
(Luke laughs)
- Yeah, this is pretty oppressive.
Okay, look, we just took the session on Friday, okay.
Anyway, this is where the real action is going to be.
Before you can really appreciate it, though,
you got to hear the vision, so let me lay it out.
This corner at the back of the room here,
that's where we're gonna have
our thermal and acoustic combo chamber.
"Why a combo chamber?" you might ask.
Well, because it doesn't matter how cool your laptop runs
if it sounds like a heli taking off
and it doesn't matter how quiet it is
if the CPU is drowning in a pool of its own sodder.
So the plan for this is pretty simple.
We'll be DIYing it, naturally,
and we're going to put the indoor side
of a mini-split heat pump along
probably this side over here,
along with some kind of smart damper
that will allow the airflow to either go into the chamber
or redirect out of the chamber
with exactly as much granularity as we need
to maintain an exact temperature inside the room.
Once that target is reached and our loaded devices,
let's say I'm a desktop PC running blender
have reached equilibrium,
we'll hit a kill switch
that'll disable the HVAC and any circulation fans
that we have inside the chamber for some time period,
let's say 10 seconds, while we take an acoustic reading,
assuming a large enough internal air volume
and a low enough noise floor,
clearly this room is going to need to be treated.
(hands clapping)
We should be able to measure acoustics
under various conditions,
say at room temperature versus on a very hot day,
both accurately and precisely.
Now the exact size and layout of the chamber
is definitely subject to change.
But what I know for certain is that
we're going to have a station right out here,
probably along this side,
That's going to be for recording the
performance of the device
at each of our target temperatures as well.
Since on a modern device,
it's more a question of when it throttles
as opposed to if it throttles.
Also along this wall is going to be
the gear that we need to seriously amp up
our thermal testing game.
We already have the manufacturing capabilities
in the workshop to build super precise
thermal load generators.
So here,
we're going to use a combination of
internally designed tools
and real-world CPU's to run through as many coolers
as we can get our hands on.
That is why the staffing aspect is so important.
This isn't even about making videos anymore.
It's about cutting through the BS in order to decide
what to make videos about,
which means that most of the testing that we do in here
is going to be published more in the form of
white papers on a written website,
as opposed to, you know,
behind me making a big thumbnail face like.
This whole space
will need to be climate controlled, obviously.
There goes 15 grand.
Thankfully, I've got this.
Blank check
Oh, and I've got a new and improved accounting team.
We're looking for an accountant and a bookkeeper,
and we'll have links to all the new positions
in the video description.
Now, Kyle, most of our audience hasn't really met you.
- I'm an engineer for Create a Warehouse.
I'm designing the portable battery bank
slash shoe dryer thing, an RGB housewares item
that is currently under wraps,
And I also took over Alex's early development
on the screwdriver.
I'm a big, I'm not reading that.
- [Sebastian] You know, you have to.
- I'm a big no.
- Excellent.
So then tell me, what would you put along this wall?
- I actually think it'd be really cool if we had a
thermal camera set up for time-lapse capture
so we could see the heat soak into a cooler.
It could actually tell us the efficiency of the heat pipes,
for example, as for other things,
truthfully it's anything that can be objectively measured.
It's just a question of equipment, budget, and time.
- Man, I'd love to test stuff like
PCI express signal integrity,
or we could look at the performance of VRMs
on like every budget motherboards
so we could figure out not just who's cheaping out,
but like, does it matter?
Right?
We did a video recently looking at a whole bunch of
different motherboards and found that
the performance differences
were actually quite significant from one board
to the next.
I mean, is that something that you could
conceive of us being able to test here?
- [Luke] Absolutely.
- I mean, what about power supplies?
- [Luke] For sure.
Power supplies are one of the most important parts
of a system.
If that goes, it could take other things with it.
- [Sebastian] But it's not just whether it goes or not
like could we meaningfully evaluate them
so we could tell people, okay,
at $99, this is the best one.
- Yeah. Like the stuff like efficiency,
how much power you're putting in versus
how much you gain out,
is the voltages stable,
are you getting 12 volts
where you need 12 volts?
- [Sebastian] How much is that going to cost me?
- Could be more than 15 grand.
- [Sebastian] Cool.
On the subject of power,
I think this would be a great place to set up
for something like a test bench for phone thermal
throttling and charging rates and stuff like that.
Not every thermal test needs acoustic measurements.
And it'd be nice to have a second smaller thermal chamber,
maybe over on this side where we could evaluate things
like phone performance degradation over time
while gaming.
Man, the software guys are going to have their work
cut out for them.
Like in my perfect world,
I'm imagining that we just put the phone in there.
We run a 3D mark benchmark, right?
We use machine vision to take the results, log them,
obviously we capture an image every time for safety.
Then we use a robotic hand to run the benchmark again,
right away we detect when the performance bottoms out,
then we run five more for safety.
And then it turns on a light on the outside of the chamber
to say, it's done.
I mean, can it be done?
- Whatever you say Linus. Absolutely.
I mean, you're paying for it.
- Let's go this way.
I think displays are one of the areas of technology that we
can do a way better job of evaluating with just a little bit
of gear and know-how.
I mean, pretty much everything about them can be
objectively measured with high-speed cameras
and easily available devices like
input latency testers and colorimeters
or spectrophotometers.
And I would imagine something like that would go here.
Oh, obviously I'm not going to let Steve
be the only tech media outlet with a fan tester, by the way.
I've been jealous of Coursera's for many years.
So I guess we could put that,
I don't know, here or something.
Or maybe we'll just leave fans to Gamers Nexus.
Hard call.
I guess it depends what our priorities end up being.
I want to hear from you guys,
what you want to see us take to the next level.
Speaking of next level,
let's head to the next level, upstairs.
It's time to talk about how we're going to pay for
all of this.
As I already mentioned,
not all of the new positions are LTT labs.
One of the biggest growth areas for our business right now
is in merch.
So that's right,
you guys are going to pay for it.
- You guys paid for all this.
- By buying beanies desk pads, water bottles, hoodies,
you guys are funding.
You're already doing it.
The biggest reinvestment into our content
that we have ever made and we are going to need more.
So if you or someone you know is in the fashion industry,
or if you're an engineer who's more interested
in product development rather than
product evaluation, check out the link below.
We've got those positions,
as well as a product manager
to handle ordering and logistics
to add to the creator warehouse team.
As for this space,
I know neither what it was intended for before.
See these weird power outlets
that are up along the ceiling, Brendan?
Super, super weird bunch on the floor as well,
nor do I know what I'm going to put in here later.
It could be another sound treated room,
but maybe this time for evaluating soundbars or
home theater, speakers and projectors.
It could be a small lab for testing
active noise cancellation
or headphone frequency response curves,
or battery life claims or touch be an input responsiveness.
It's hard to say.
The only thing I know for sure right now is that you guys
are still here watching this video,
which means that you're as excited about
this new direction as I am.
And maybe you want to get involved.
So feel free to put your hat in the ring,
but don't be disappointed if we don't take you.
This time around,
we're looking for industry professionals
and it is not going to be easy to get into the lab.
But don't be discouraged because
we actually have even more positions available
that I haven't mentioned yet.
So make sure you check out the jobs page,
linusmediagroup.com.
so you can be part of our next chapter
and also check out our sponsor, Jackery.
We still need sponsors.
Thanks Jackery for sponsoring this video.
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And you can check out the Explorer 1500 at the link below
and get 10% off with code LinusTechTips.
If you guys enjoyed this video,
maybe you want a blast from the past.
Why don't you go check out our first studio tour
back when we were still working out of a house in Langley.
It's a bit of a contrast.
Wow, back then,
I would've given anything for this as our main studio,
let alone as a dedicated lab.