I agree with Linus on this, to be honest. Not that I think PT or Intel are blameless; PT was incompetent and out of their element if they are to be believed, and Intel approved it for release either maliciously or again someone who was supposed to be on top of it didn't do their job properly. Linus is again right that accepting benchmarks from a manufacturer-comissionned study, an in-house one, or marketing material is stupid since everyone in the industry has been caught doing this. NVIDIA's been caught cheating on benchmarks a bunch, the mobile manufacturers are getting into it, Intel controls innocuous-sounding benchmark organizations and contributes to benchmark development that favours Intel, AMD wildly overstates their advantages and again plays to their strengths whenever possible. Linus has seen this for his entire time in the business, I think many of us enthusiasts who have been around for over a decade or more have seen it time and time again, and this is just the same thing.

It's not that they're not at fault, or they're not being arrogant or whatever it is. They are all those things, the entire industry is, and that's why you never trust the numbers the manufacturer releases.

I understand why this blew up -- people love a good online pitchfork mob these days, more than I've ever seen -- but it's not an invalid opinion to say "you should never trust those numbers anyway".