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Comment by ffsm8 | Hacker News Reader

No, his point was that the lab isn't necessary for the content ltt is producing, so he expected them to stop the lab project to keep the profits higher

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Other than LTT continuing with LTT Labs just because they enjoy deeper dives into tech, I'd imagine it also serves a practical purpose, in that if it's a slow tech news day, and they can't think of a video concept they want to try, they have a ready-made set of labs content they can base a video on.

Linus is no longer CEO but he and Ivonne still own 100% of shares. They seem to have enough money, so can burn on projects they feel passionate about like Badminton Center or LTTLabs.

This, Linus has stated he doesn't expect either to be particularly good business decisions, though they will hopefully sustain themselves, and it seems to mostly be because it's something he wants to exist.

That's always been the case though, even when labs started.

The reason labs was started was to be able to produce different kinds of content, and to have a moat on technical data and quality of reviews that no one else can pull off.

What? Labs is the source of all benchmark and performance data they show on the main channel productions.

Labs is necessary for their content.

They had benchmarks before Labs as well and almost 100% of tech reviewers don't have this kind of equipment, so no, it's not necessary. But it definitely helps.

Now they have automated benchmarks across more test configs. This is something almost no reviewers have available. That's partially from labs investment. They also have destructive benchmarks like they did with the power supplies - again almost nobody does those in public.

That's true and I agree this is valuable for the audience, but still it is not necessary. Most successful tech reviewers put out good content without these resources.

"Good" content without data is unsubstantiated content.

Data to provide evidence of performance objectively evaluates products, benefiting everyone. For example, show me who has been verifying the quality and performance claims of computer power supplies without equipment such as LTT labs.

If you want to be reductive about it - technology and their gadgets are valuable for the audience, but not strictly necessary.

The original point in this thread was that the lab isn't necessary for LTT to produce their content as they successfully appeal to a large audience either way. Which is obviously true, given the lab did not exist for most of the channel's lifetime and growth.

You argue that it's beneficial for informing the consumer. It is, but no one here disagreed with that.

I would assume LTT does this to build and retain a clear competitive advantage over their competitors in the same space.

I don’t think LTT goal is just be another commodity YouTube review site whose entire appeal is dependent on a single personality. That not really a scalable or long term sustainable approach.

Large journalist organisations of any kind aren’t built by aiming to be mediocre.

I’ve been out of the loop, what happened?

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