All posts by lkalif

Misc

Former TWiT Hosts: Backup Your Content Now!

10 Comments

We have recently reported that Leo Laporte and TWiT CEO Lisa Kentzell in a fit of rage have ordered immediate removal of all content made by Tom Merritt, Brian Brushwood and Justin Robert Young from the internet. During yesterday’s The Tech Guy show Leo showed his GMail account. The main story from that screenshot was apparent planning of firing Shannon Morse, but there was also another conversation visible. There Patrick Delahanty reports back to Lisa Kentzell saying “Hi Lisa, Knowing that you wanted the files inaccessible ASAP, I renamed the directories because…” She responds with “Thanks Patrick, I figured this out after talking to Bear. With all the chaos going on I wanted to be…”

Today, there we have two new developments. First, Leo showed us his GMail again:

leo_shows_gmail_again

Here we can see another email from Lisa Kentzell reporting that “cachefly deletes are now complete.” This was so urgent, they made people work over the weekend to remove all traces of the hosts they have banned from the network.

The other development is that the dissent seems to be harder to contain, even in heavily controlled #twitlive chatroom. After several question about the removal of NSFW from the twit.tv website, Leo Laporte went there to try to explain

12:10 <~Leo> yeah cache fly has complained about the amount of storage we're using
12:10 <~Leo> we''Leo Laporte be deleting other old show

I guess ll got autoreplaced with Leo Laporte in the second line there so it likely should have read: “we’ll be deleting other old show.”

It’s probably the embarrassment of having acted so petty, that is forcing Mr Laporte to be caught in another lie. Surely, the removal of NSFW, Frame Rate, Tech History Today and others from YouTube wasn’t caused by Google emailing their concerns about disk space. And lets not forget that Cachefly, long time TWiT sponsor, would not be to happy with Leo claiming their product can’t handle large quantity of data. Caching huge amount of data is their core business.

The lesson that a content creator associated with TWiT should learn here is: backup your content now! Your work might be deleted at any moment. Even if you are on best terms with TWiT they might delete your show, just to justify their vindictive purge as “removing old shows” due to “disk space shortage”.

News

TWiT to Fire Shannon Morse During Her Honeymoon

30 Comments

The full scale purge at the TWiT seems to be continuing. During the live stream of Leo Laporte’s The Tech Guy show, less than an hour ago, he showed his Gmail inbox. It shows an email conversation with subject “Re: Shannon” where TWiT CEO Lisa Kentzell seems to be discussing a new co-host for “Coding 101” programme with Robert Ballecer, show’s other co-host.

As it was the case with Amber Macarthur’s show cancellation, Ms Morse is probably going to be the last person to know. Kentzell is most likely waiting for an opportune moment when Shannon is not around to drop the news.

Our best wishes to @snubs in this difficult time.

Update 1:

Unsurprisingly, Shannon Morse is not privy to the conversation about her:

Update 2:

I might be difficult to see from that video, but our forensics team has been able to decode the part of conversation visible on screen:

Oct 10 Robert Ballecer, SJ
RE: Shannon
We've got some runway because I had already altered the schedule to account for Shannon's (honeymoon)

Oct 10 Lisa Kentzell
RE: Shannon
I don't want to lose the audience we have but I think the content needs to be relevant to grow

Oct 10 Robert Ballecer, SJ
RE: Shannon
Lisa & Leo, Understood on all points. 1. Will ask Lou to co-host 2. Will work over the weekend to
News

Setting the Record Straight

16 Comments

As Leo Laporte continues to escalate the conflict with most every former TWiT host, it is important to take a step back and and set the record straight about what exactly has happened.  And this is exactly what the hosts of the Night Attack show, Brian Brushwood and Justin Robert Young have done last night in the Episode 32 of the programme.

The events unfolded in the following order:

  • Robert Ballecer wanted to invite Brian Brushwood and Justin Robert Young to his TWiT show “Padres Corner”. Lisa Kentzell, the TWiT CEO said “no”, they are not allowed back on the network.
  • Ballecer asked one of the following days and was told “no” again, and to not bring this issue again.
  • At this point there was only one source confirming that they were banned from TWiT.
  • Baratunde Thurston got an invitation to appear on the “flagship” TWiT show, and as Brian and him have always been a good match on that show, a suggestion was made to invite Mr Brushwood. Show’s producer Chad Johnson went to Leo Laporte with this idea and was told that, no, the hosts of Night Attack are not allowed to appear on TWiT shows.
  • Having heard the exact same thing from two different TWiT staffers, during Night Attack 31, the hosts expressed their sadness (butthurt in their own words), that despite their best efforts to maintain a good relation with TWiT, this was the treatment that they were getting.
  • Returning from one of his numerous vacation, this time in London, Leo Laporte hears about the mention and goes into blind rage. He sends a series of messages to Brian and Justin, that we have covered earlier. Judging by the level of rage we can only conclude that he didn’t actually see the Night Attack episode in question but that he was told a much exaggerated version by one of his minions.
  • Night Attack 32 is published that features “The Statement to End All Statements”, which outlines this series of events.
  • Leo Laporte in another fit of rage, orders his staff to erase any trace of Tom Merritt, Brian Brushwood and Justin Robert Young ever having been part of the network.

Here is the clip from the Night Attack 32 where Brian and Justin explain what happened in two minutes,

News

TWiT Trying to Erase History

18 Comments

Following our disclosure of his stream of rage triggered profanities, it would appear that Leo Laporte has ordered a full scale history rewrite. Shows featuring Tom Merritt, Brian Brushwood and Justin Robert Young are being deleted from every location on the internet under control of TWiT.

This morning, visitors to twit.tv/nsfw page were greeted with a big “access denied” warning, and every attempt to look at the archive of the show on that site failed.

Denied by TWiT

Further investigation showed that the NSFW show was not the only victim of this purge. Frame Rate, Current Geek Weekly, Tech History are also gone from the twit.tv web site. The attempt to erase these people from the internet did not stop there. TWiT staffers were ordered to delete all Youtube uploads of this content as well.

Efforts are under way to restore archives of these shows. Mr. Laporte is probably regretting his decision to release TWiT network content under a Creative Commons license as that makes it impossible for him to take a legal action and prevent the restoration of the show’s archives.

News

The Real Laporte

54 Comments

As it has become his custom, Leo Laporte went to his chatroom to to vent. Early this morning he posted this:

05:18 <~Leo> shoow and JuRY spent an hour on Night Attack last week (while we were on vacation note) slamming me and Lisa
05:18 <~Leo> *shwood
05:19 <~Leo> It was particularly hurtful because we have bent over backwards to accomodate them, and I've never said a word against either

He’s referring to episode 31 of the Night Attack show. It is clear that he has not listened to the episode in question and that he probably got trolled by one of his minions, telling him how they were being “attacked” and “slammed”. Mr, Laporte then goes on to demand an apology:

05:21 <~Leo> and it was particularly hurtful to Lisa - they called her Yoko and other stuff
05:21 <~Leo> shwood seems to be getting a lot of mileage out of it and although we've written to him neither he nor JuRY has apologized.

The investigative team here at Total Drama managed to obtain what exactly it was that Mr. Laporte was writing. Here is his message to Brian Brushwood:

Leo Laporte's conciliatory message

To Justin Robert Young he had similarly kind words:

leo_to_jury

You see how in the chatroom he pretends he was civilized and demanded an apology, while in fact he was spewing insults left and right without even knowing what he was talking about. But that has unfortunately become Mr. Laporte’s modus operandi.

But this is not where the insults stopped. No, Laporte went on to Twitter to tell his half a million followers that Brian Brushwood was “a drunk” and an “asshole” and that he was attacking him and his family. Those “attacks” never happened.

And another public attack on Brian Brushwood:

This just adds to mounting pile of evidence that Leo Laporte is one of the worst kinds of cyber bullies, using his great number of followers to spread lies and baseless accusations without bothering to check any of his facts. And if you point out this, you are being called a “troll” and he will send his army of minions against you.

For the internet to thrive, we need to find a way to stop bullies like Laporte from contaminating the public discourse.

Misc

Leo Laporte is a Big Fan of TotalDrama

15 Comments

It turns out that Leo Laporte follows our news site closely. Just a few minutes ago he stopped by #twitlive chatroom to share his thoughts. It’s important to note that the language Laporte uses is not always that precise, so a translation guide is in order. When he says “troll” he means someone who criticizes him, points out the falsehoods he spreads. Laporte said this explicitly during the height of backlash over his destruction of the TNT show at the end of 2013. “Trolling is criticizing in public”, he said adding “if you want to send feedback, put it in an email to me, don’t say it publicly”. Keeping this in mind, this is what he said in his chatroom:

<~Leo> I think there’s another server where the trolls hang out
<~Leo> At least two of the most active users are mentally ill. It’s disturbing but I don’t believe they’re operating normally.

Not only does he follow #TotalDrama closely, he even know the mental health status of our contributors (this probably violates about half dozen statues about disseminating medical information). Our Google Analytics confirms his regular following as we have 10-15 users from Petaluma, CA and now we know one of them is Mr. Laporte.

News

New Feature: DVR

3 Comments

#TotalDrama is proud to announce our latest feature: DVR functionality for the TWiT live stream. Select DVR option from the top menu and you can go over the past couple of days of the live stream, see thumbnail previews of the video, watch it, and download it in convenient 30 minute segments.

Never again miss that super funny moment that you just saw. Uploading clips to YouTube has never been so easy.

Misc

War Against Us

5 Comments

Telling #Truth is not popular in all quarters. To see just to which length some sick individual will go, you don’t have to look much further than Robert Ballecer’s twitter account. Our previous article documents his lies and intimidation attempts where he mistakenly thinks that photoshopping my face out of a picture (although very creepy) would prevent us from exposing his perverted ways.

Others tried more direct approach. This is an email that has been sent to our hosting provider in an apparent attempt to take #TotalDrama down:

I stumbled upon this post when looking up a colleague: 

Get yourself together, girl


I clicked around the website and noticed some posts were harassing: 

Lisa wears a skirt for one reason only


Others are defaming. 

Lights Curiously Out on One Particular Dropcam
 

Petaluma is not the picturesque paradise that Laporte purports


The WHOIS shows the site hosted on a Digital Ocean server at 178.62.62.239.

Is this allowed?

Concerned,

Susan Peterson

Good thing our hosting provider values free speech more than an attempted by a random internet troll to shut us down.

Misc

Robert Ballecer Issuing Twitter Threats Now

6 Comments

A regular #TotalDrama reader alerted us to the following tweet by Robert Ballecer:

First, lets clarify some of the language here. At TWiT “troll” means “person who disagrees with us in public”. This according to the company owner and soup connoisseur – Leo Laporte.

Ballecer should know that some employers can be very  tolerant, so his attempt at extorting the truth teller in question might not work. He is working for one of them. At his workplace child abuse and pedophilia is dealt with by protecting the offenders, moving them around to new safe locations, where other children are in jeopardy of being abused.

For someone who as a priest has jizz more often on his lips than Jesus, Ballecer should really be careful about throwing stones in his glass house. Upcoming “Pervert Robert” Youtube supercut will document the sick things this tormented soul has said live on air, and in various IRC chatrooms, over the past couple of years.