Linus Sebastian

Linus Sebastian
Linus Sebastian in August 2013.
Personal information
Born Linus Gabriel Sebastian
(1986-08-20) August 20, 1986[1]
Ladner, British Columbia, Canada
Nationality Canadian
Residence Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
Occupation Video presenter, technology demonstrator, and advertiser
Spouse(s)
Yvonne Ho (m. 2011)
Website www.linustechtips.com
www.linusmediagroup.com
www.floatplane.com
YouTube information
Channels
Years active 2007–present
Subscribers 6.9 million+ (Linus Tech Tips)
2.4 million+ (Techquickie)
612,000+ (Channel Super Fun)
529,000+ (TechLinked)
192,637+ (LinusCatTips)
Total views 2 billion+ (Linus Tech Tips)
294 million+ (Techquickie)
80 million+ (Channel Super Fun)
19 million+ (TechLinked)
8.2 million+ (LinusCatTips)
Network Fullscreen[2] (Linus Tech Tips)
Associated acts Austin Evans, Marques Brownlee, Jonathan Morrison, Lewis Hilsenteger, Louis Rossmann, JayzTwoCents, Bitwit, Paul's Hardware, Dmitry Novoselov, iJustine, and formerly NCIX
100,000 subscribers 2011 (Linus Tech Tips)
2013 (Techquickie)
2015 (Channel Super Fun)
2018 (LinusCatTips)
2018 (TechLinked)
1,000,000 subscribers 2014 (Linus Tech Tips)
2016 (Techquickie)
Subscriber and view counts updated as of Aug 25, 2018.

Linus Gabriel Sebastian (born August 20, 1986) is a Canadian YouTube personality, presenter, producer, and founder of Linus Media Group.

He is best known for creating and hosting three technology-oriented YouTube channels: Linus Tech Tips, Techquickie, and TechLinked, as well as a behind the scenes channel, Channel Super Fun. These channels have a combined subscriber base of over 8 million. From 2007 to 2015, he was also a regular presenter of technology videos for the now defunct Canadian computer retailer NCIX. In 2015, Inc. magazine ranked Sebastian 4th in a list of the "Top 30 Power Players in Tech".[3] He is also the CEO of Floatplane Media.[4]

As of March 2018, Linus Tech Tips is ranked the 7th most watched Technology channel on YouTube.[5][6] In 2014, Tubefilter named the channel as being within the "top 1% of Google's preferred advertising channels" on YouTube for the technology category.[7]

Career

NCIX and Linus Tech Tips

Sebastian was working as category manager for the now defunct Canadian online computer store NCIX. He was asked by the company to be the host for its technology channel, which was created to help demonstrate products. Sebastian was assisted by an unidentified cameraman and editor, and worked with limited resources, shooting videos with a camera borrowed from the son of the company's president.[8] His first video was a demonstration for a Sunbeam processor heatsink.[9]

Due to high costs and low viewership during the early days of the channel, Sebastian was instructed to create the Linus Tech Tips channel as a cheaper offshoot of the NCIX channel, to allow for lower production values without impacting the NCIX brand. He described TigerDirect and Newegg as competitors.[8] It was created on November 24, 2008.[10]

Sebastian did not develop videos full-time at NCIX. During his time at the company, he worked as full-time sales representative, a high-end systems designer, a product manager, and a category manager.[11][12]

Linus Media Group

Sebastian founded Linus Media Group in January 2013 out of a garage, with Luke Lafreniere, Edzel Yago, and Brandon Lee.[11] The group developed the Linus Tech Tips channel as an independent venture. Sebastian also began working on Techquickie.

In September 2013, Sebastian was interviewed by Chris Pirillo. Sebastian discussed the future of his channel and answered questions that had been sent to Pirillo through social media.[13]

In a 2014 interview, Sebastian revealed he had sleepless nights under the pressure of figuring out how to support his family while also employing staff during the early days of his independent YouTube career, having had no startup capital to work with.[8]

In 2015, the company moved into a commercial office space for the first time, having previously worked out of a residential address in Surrey, British Columbia. The moving process was documented in a series of vlogs[14] that became one of the most acclaimed series of videos in the Linus Tech Tips channel history. Since then, Sebastian has infrequently created office vlogs following the move.

As of September 16, 2018, the Linus Tech Tips, Techquickie, and the Channel Super Fun channel are each home to 4284 videos, 566 videos, and 158 videos respectively, including product reviews and advice, build logs, vlogs, and original web series. Linus Tech Tips posts a video every day.

In May 2018, it was announced that Linus was aiming to purchase the NCIX Tech Tips YouTube channel, but was unable to do so. Instead, Linus Media Group decided to create a new channel, TechLinked, bringing along the former NCIX Tech Tips host, Riley Murdock.[15]

Notable projects

The WAN Show (2012–present)

The WAN Show is a regular live stream hosted by Sebastian and Lafreniere. The pair discusses topical news stories from the technology world, offering their opinion and fielding questions. There have been 226 episodes as of March 5, 2018. Since the first incarnation of the show, other Linus Media Group staff have intermittently hosted in place of either Sebastian or Lafreniere. Features of the WAN show include the live audience chat stream, the intro video failing & the show never starting on time. NitroblastDigital, one of the noteworthy chatters in Twitch, as well as a moderator on Luke Lafreniere's Twitch, is well known for his memes, such as a website for viewing short videos based on the members of Linus Media Group.

Whole Room Water Cooling (2014–2015)

"Whole Room Water Cooling" documented Sebastian's attempt to lower both the temperature of their workstations, as well as the ambient temperature of the room by hooking their workstations to a watercooling loop and dissipating all the heat out of the building. After 7 episodes over 7 months, Sebastian claimed the project to be unsuccessful, describing that the system did not adequately decrease the ambient temperature in the room. Sebastian mentioned this was mostly due to the use of copper piping, which resulted in the greater part of the heat produced from their workstations being reintroduced into their work room before exiting the building.

Scrapyard Wars (2015–present)

Scrapyard Wars is a series that follows Sebastian, Lafreniere, and occasionally guest competitors, as they compete to build the best performing computer within the confines of a specified budget, time frame, and theme.

In season one, Sebastian and Lafreniere were each tasked with building a gaming PC for $300 CAD. It concluded in three episodes after two days.

In season two, the pair were required to each build a water cooled PC for $500 CAD, without using "off the shelf" water cooling components. The season was four episodes. The budget was divided with $300 towards the computer and the remaining $200 to the DIY water cooling supplies.[16]

In season three, Sebastian, Lafreniere, and guest Austin Evans (an American technology YouTuber) were given the challenge of building the best price per performance gaming PC with an unlimited Budget. The third season spanned a total of seven episodes.

In season four, Sebastian, Lafreniere, and guests Bob Stewart and Rob Rosenberg from computer modifications company BS Mods, were given $900 CAD to build a gaming PC with custom modifications added to the chassis. The fourth season concluded with a total of four episodes with Linus and Bob winning.

A fifth season was announced on the WAN Show, aired March 24, 2017.[17] Sebastian and Lafreniere teamed up in Los Angeles, California, to compete against Paul and Kyle from Paul's Hardware and Bitwit, having the first episode uploaded on May 20, 2017. During this season, 10% extra points could be obtained by making the most clever use of the theme "RGB". The winners, at first, were Paul and Kyle. However, they were then stripped from their titles due to an external hard drive they took from Paul's personal collection of hard drives, which was not purchased with the funds of US$500 allocated for them at the beginning of the season.

Season six was aired on October 14, 2017, and featured JayzTwoCents and Dmitry Novoselov from HardwareCanucks. This time, the teams were split up as Sebastian and Dmitry vs Lafreniere and JayzTwoCents. The budget for this PC was $1337, a reference to the internet language Leet. Along with building the PC, the teams were required to use part of their budget when purchasing necessities such as food and public transport. This season ended after 4 episodes with Lafreniere and JayzTwoCents winning.

In season seven, Sebastian and Lafreniere were given the challenge of building the best price per performance gaming PC with a Budget of $2000 (CAD) without using the internet to source the parts. The season ended with Luke Lafreniere winning by a small margin.

"7 Gamers 1 CPU" (early 2016 – late 2016)

On January 2, 2016, Linus Tech Tips released a video demonstrating a US$30,000 gaming computer displayed at CES 2016 able to support seven individual players.[18][19] The video made technology news on a number of websites,[20][21][22] and was watched over a million times on the day it was uploaded. Sebastian responded on Twitter, saying "In 8 years I have never achieved 1 million views in a month let alone in a single day. Thank you for your support."[23]

The computer had eight modules of 32 GB ECC DDR4 RAM, eight 1 TB Kingston SSDs, two Intel Xeon 14 core E5 2697 v3 processors, seven AMD R9 Nano GPUs, an EVGA T2 1600W PSU, and was housed in a Caselabs Mercury S8 with an Asus Z10PE-D8 WS motherboard. The project was sponsored by Kingston Technology.[20][21][22]

On January 31, a follow-up video was released with further benchmark testing results.

On February 16, one more video about overclocking the $30,000 PC was released.

On February 23, a video was released titled "THE $30,000 7 GAMERS 1 CPU BUILD IS NO MORE! - Disassembly Stream". The system was disassembled by Sebastian during a stream on Twitch.tv.

"8/10 Gamers, 1 CPU" (2016)

On May 22, 2016, Linus Tech Tips released a sequel to their "7 Gamers 1 CPU" project.[24] In the video, a system was built to allow for eight users to play games simultaneously, using Steam In-Home Streaming to stream games in 4K resolution to eight Zotac mini computers (either B or C models) across a local area network.

The new build included a Supermicro 4028GR-TRT barebone server chassis, two Intel Xeon E5 2699 V4 22 Core processors, eight Zotac GeForce GTX 980 Ti Amp Edition graphics cards, two Zotac GTX Titan X graphics cards, ten 1 TB Kingston KC400 Business solid state drives, eight modules of Kingston 32 GB DDR4 ECC RAM and two Noctua NH-B9 CPU tower coolers.

During the video, Sebastian stated that "7 Gamers 1 CPU is all about my vision for a high-tech household in the future... a high-powered machine in the closet that can allocate computing power, ..., to where ever it is needed."

"Server Room Vlog" (2017)

On February 23, 2017, the Linus Tech Tips channel published a video in which Sebastian introduced "Server Room Vlog", a series of videos where Sebastian and a helper clean up and manage Linus Media Group's server room.

In the first video, they removed the servers and cables, dusted them off and vacuumed the room.[25]

In the second video, they added new networking cables and network switches to the room, reconfigured the positioning of the servers, installed a new power distribution unit, installed new Wi-Fi access points, and added cable management loops.[26]

In the third and final video, they installed sound insulation to the room, added dust filtration on top of the insulation, installed a custom air vent, and added RGB lighting to the rack.[27]

The series turned out to be one of the channel's most popular, with a total view count of 3.2 million.

Personal life

Sebastian has been married to Yvonne Ho since May 20, 2011.[28] They have one son and two daughters.[29][30][31][32]

In an interview with technology startup website Tech.Co, Sebastian said that his favourite YouTubers were TotalBiscuit, Marques Brownlee and Austin Evans.[33] In February 2014, Sebastian was among the YouTubers who contributed funds and support to Evans, who lost his possessions and home in a fire.[34][35]

References

  1. ↑ "Linus Tech Tips Twitter (Birthday)". Twitter. Twitter. Retrieved October 22, 2016.
  2. ↑ "linustechtips's Youtube Stats, Channel Statistics". Social Blade. Retrieved September 6, 2018.
  3. ↑ RAMPTON, JOHN. "30 Power Players in Tech You Need to Know". Inc. Retrieved January 7, 2016.
  4. ↑ Linus Tech Tips (2017-12-30), Luke's LAST WAN Show as an LMG Employee!! - WAN Show Dec. 29 2017, retrieved 2018-09-22
  5. ↑ "Top 250 YouTubers tech Channels – Socialblade YouTube Stats | YouTube Statistics". socialblade.com. Retrieved November 18, 2017.
  6. ↑ "YouTube Top 100 Most Viewed Science & Tech Video Producers". VidstatsX. VidstatsX. Retrieved January 4, 2016.
  7. ↑ "Meet The Top 1% Of YouTube's "Google Preferred" Channels For Advertisers (Exclusive)". Retrieved January 3, 2016.
  8. 1 2 3 How I Became. "How I Became: LinusTechTips (Linus Sebastian)". youtube.com. Retrieved January 3, 2016. Timestamp 0 minutes 50 seconds
  9. ↑ Sebastian, Linus (July 24, 2007). "Sunbeam Tuniq Tower (NCIX Tech Tips #1)". YouTube. Retrieved July 16, 2016.
  10. ↑ "LinusTechTips – About". youtube.com. Retrieved January 3, 2016.
  11. 1 2 "The History of Linus Media Group". Retrieved January 3, 2016.
  12. ↑ "I'm Linus Sebastian of LinusTechTips, and This Is How I Work". LifeHacker. LifeHacker. Retrieved January 3, 2016.
  13. ↑ "An Evening with Linus Sebastian (LinusTechTips)". Retrieved January 3, 2016.
  14. ↑ "Big Office Move". youtube.com. Retrieved January 3, 2016. Playlist of moving vlog videos
  15. ↑ Linus Tech Tips (May 8, 2018), HEARTBROKEN… NCIX YouTube Channel, retrieved May 9, 2018
  16. ↑ Linus Tech Tips (June 7, 2015), $500 DIY Water Cooled PC Challenge – Scrapyard Wars Episode 2a, retrieved November 18, 2017
  17. ↑ "SCRAPYARD WARS SEASON 5 ANNOUNCED! - WAN Show March 24, 2017".
  18. ↑ Richards, Rae Michelle. "EVER WANTED TO BUILD A$30,000 COMPUTER? BECAUSE THIS GUY DID IT!". Broken Joy Sticks. Retrieved January 7, 2016.
  19. ↑ "7 Gamers, 1 CPU – Ultimate Virtualized Gaming Build Log". Youtube. Retrieved January 7, 2016.
  20. 1 2 Khan, Imad. "$30,000 gaming PC defies logic, lets seven people game at once". DailyDot. Retrieved January 7, 2016.
  21. 1 2 "Youtuber spend equivalent to R $120,000 to build supercomputer". UOL. Retrieved January 7, 2016.
  22. 1 2 Utomo, Riandanu Madi. "Computer Can Be Played By 7 People Simultaneously". Metro TV News. Retrieved January 7, 2016.
  23. ↑ "Linustech Twitter". Twitter. Retrieved January 7, 2016.
  24. ↑ "8 (or is it 10?) Gamers, 1 CPU – Taking it to the Next Level!". Youtube. Retrieved December 7, 2016.
  25. ↑ Linus Tech Tips (February 23, 2017). "Fixing the DISASTER – Server Room Vlog Pt. 1" – via YouTube.
  26. ↑ Linus Tech Tips (February 26, 2017). "Everything is FINE! Thanks for ASKING.. - Server Room Vlog Pt. 2" – via YouTube.
  27. ↑ Linus Tech Tips (March 11, 2017). "SERVER ROOM VLOG FINALE – RGB SERVERS! Pt 3" – via YouTube.
  28. ↑ Sebastion, Linus (October 27, 2017). "Bixby Showcase – It does more than you might think!". Youtube. Retrieved October 27, 2017.
  29. ↑ Linus Sebastian. "Family Sunday Fun with the Cats and Children". youtube.com. Retrieved January 3, 2016. Sebastian in family vlog
  30. ↑ "Linus Tech Tips on Twitter". Twitter. Twitter. Retrieved October 22, 2016.
  31. ↑ "family". youtube.com. Retrieved December 15, 2016.
  32. ↑ LinusTechTips (November 12, 2016), Ultimate DIY Desk PC – DRILLING SO MANY HOLES, retrieved December 15, 2016
  33. ↑ "Secrets of the Most Successful Tech YouTube Content Creators Revealed". Retrieved January 4, 2016.
  34. ↑ "Surprising Austin Evans". Retrieved January 3, 2016. Time stamp 12 minutes 0 seconds
  35. ↑ "YouTube users unite to help vlogger who lost everything in a house fire". Retrieved January 3, 2016.
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