[danudey]

As an Apple fanboy, I can easily say that Linus does not hate Apple.

Linus DOES hate a lot of what Apple does; cases where they make things more unrepairable for no real reason, or various socio-political causes (like opposing Right to Repair or unions or whatever).

Regardless of that though, I would trust a Linus review of a new iPhone or iPad a lot more than I would trust a lot of other sites, because I know he's not going in with Apple fanboyism (the way I would, for example), and he gives reasons for all his opinions.

Fundamentally, he always comes across as principled. If he has an opinion he'll tell you, and he'll give you a reason. He'll admit that he was wrong when he (believes he) was wrong. He'll contextualize his thoughts so you can decide if this or that opinion is really relevant to your situation.

As far as I've seen, his AMD/Intel/nvidia opinion changes follow along with the facts. He's pretty PO'ed at Intel for basically just sitting around with their fingers up their asses for however many years, and only actually trying to make good products at good prices (and largely failing) when AMD suddenly stepped everything up.

nvidia makes great video cards, the best on the market, but he's not going to avoid calling them out for shady or anti-consumer business practices. AMD makes great CPUs and good video cards, but if they have a disingenuous benchmark or claim he's going to say something about it.

I dunno, no one is entirely unbiased, but from what I've seen over the years, I can trust Linus more than most other people.

[simondotau]

As an Apple apologist, I also concur with most of the above.

Though I do find it amusing that Linus has often commented negatively on companies that don't want their employes to unionise, when Linus does much the same thing. In the case of LMG, Linus employs emotional threats, publicly warning his employees that forming a union would represent a declaration of "personal failure". Don't get me wrong, I agree 100% with Linus here. Unionising is what you do in response to exploitation, not as a default state of affairs. I just wish he could see the parallel when commenting on other companies which aren't currently unionised.

[Edit: just noticed that this exact point was already discussed to death elsewhere in this sub-thread.]

[usednet]

Unionisation as a default state of affairs is what prevents exploitation. Join a union.

[DubiousPusher]

Not to mention that if you wait to unionize until you are being exploited, you will have far less power to resist coercion. Striking when you have some money under the mattress is a lot easier than doing so after you've eaten the last of the shoe leather.

[simondotau]

Which is great in theory, until you realise that unions can and do exploit workers too. Collectives of people (whether corporations, unions, or entire countries) tend towards corruption as they scale. History has shown that large unions are similarly prone to exploitation and corruption.

[baq]

the choice is between having no negotiating power with HR or having some at the cost of being part of an organization.

[simondotau]

If you're part of a union, you don't gain negotiating power, you trade away individual negotiating power for collective negotiating power. Sometimes this is a good trade. It depends on the context, on the industry, on the sort of work you do.

[DubiousPusher]

Yeah, just be one of .0001% of workers with a rare, highly marketable skill and you won't need a union...

[mschuster91]

> History has shown that large unions are similarly prone to exploitation and corruption.

Mostly in the US, it seems. Unions in Europe are healthy and effective. The key difference IMO is the interest people show in democracy and holding delegates accountable.

[aaa_aaa]

Here is my experience with "public" unions. When I was working at a public research institute, employees were kind of forced to enter a union. It seemed ok because union's cut was paid by government. Government just wants to look cute to public eye and EU. That union were more or less useless and just collecting huge sums of money. Where does that money goes nobody dares to check. My wife also had to enter a Teacher's union and that is a much larger scam. IMO, Most public unions are parasites living on free government money.

[DubiousPusher]

It's also somwehat moot. Unions in the U.S. get their workers better pay and better benefits pretty much regardless of corruption and did so even at the peak of their influence and corruption.

I think it's reasonable to argue against corruption but if you're argument against almost any human institution is just that it is corrupt, then you are arguing against the majority of human institutions ever. Which simply isn't practical.

[GekkePrutser]

In the Netherlands they've also become corrupted. The big union leaders have become so used to sitting at the executive table that they've lost track of the people they represent. Of course there's exceptions but I feel that they listen to corporate concerns way too much.

But unfortunately the Netherlands is the country with the most Anglo-Saxon model that is still in the EU. So it was bound to happen.

[bigDinosaur]

You also unionise to prevent exploitation, it's not just a reactionary option. Yes, it can get unnecessarily adversarial. We'd be better off if unions were the default but were only adversarial where necessary. I believe countries like Germany do a bit better at this?

[GekkePrutser]

> Unionising is what you do in response to exploitation, not as a default state of affairs.

You're not from France I can tell ;)

But yeah if people in such a small company start organising it means stuff is wrong

[fartcannon]

As someone who loathes Apple, I disagree. But I do agree that there's basically no place to get a trustworthy resource on Apple. Because, for the same reason I don't trust Linus, money is involved.

[simondotau]

It is unreasonable to expect any one source to be consistently reliable. The "trustworthy resource" is multiple sources with diverse views. Combine your LMG diet with some Rene Ritchie, Hoeg Law, etc.

[fartcannon]

Diversify your trust portfolio. I like it.

[AshWolfy]

I think the truth is you cant trust any one reviewer, you should always look at multiple reviewers.

[411111111111111]

Thats was true some time ago, but isn't anymore - for every authentic review you will find hundreds of fake SEO article/comments. This means that by simply increasing n you're basically guaranteed to be less informed.

Welcome to the age of misinformation.