02.03.22
Gemini version available ♊︎When Blogs Become Marketing and Benchmarks Become Product Promotions
Video download link | md5sum 7981b8c10b1b12c9687f52aae5a48708
AMD and Phoronix
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0
Summary: Having boasted about hardware worth as much as a house (likely in breach of FTC regulations, not just the most fundamental ethical guidelines), apparently coming from AMD, Phoronix discredited itself or tarnished its image as a trusted, objective source; now it seems to be deleting the image of this epic (EPYC) gift, though only after some backlash
Techrights has linked to Phoronix literally tens of thousands of times. So has Tux Machines, which according to Alexa (the traffic analysis site) is a leading source of inbound traffic for Phoronix (highest except Phoronix itself). I’ve spent years defending Phoronix from its critics, linking to the site in Social Control Media as an act of solidarity. I routinely used it as a source so it’s very frustrating to see what it became [1, 2]. It’s part of an ongoing trend. Presenting itself as hard-working and impoverished ‘underdog’, the site has crossed over to the “dark side” and is shamelessly sharing photographs of gifts. Not a gift like a laptop or a processor but something about 1,000 times more expensive. There’s no valid explanation and none has been given.
To make matters worse, it now looks like parts of the forum are being removed (like the image posted there; I show this in the video above and I’ve verified again since) and no explanation is being given. Half a day ago I wrote (as a 15-year forum member): “What is going on here? Michael, those chips cost a fortune [sic] and are not needed in these quantities for the purpose of testing/comparing. Who sent these? Please clarify.”
It’s perfectly possible that AMD isn’t alone; AMD is one that we know about. The image on the left was posted this year as well. It is difficult to know, however, what is inside that cabinet (or the quantity). It’s not entirely unreasonable to ship something for review, but how many?
Seeing that an administrator saw and approved my post, I expected an imminent response but received none. So I followed up with: “I’ve linked to Phoronix literally tens of thousands of times and defended it a lot from its critics. I need to see the AMD contract by which this transaction was done, dated too (to avoid it being revised in a face-saving exercise).”
Half a day has passed and no reply was given. I said upfront: “I’ll give another few hours for response, seeing my posts did get approved, so they’re being read. I’ll draw my own conclusions if no response is posted soon.”
Phoronix is aware and has posted 4 or 5 articles since (as of the time of writing), so clearly my messages were seen. As the image from the forums has been removed I’m reproducing one of several screenshots below. The video above says a lot more and today’s IRC logs will add context. █
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