NVIDIA Bans Reviewer for Concentrating on Rasterization Instead of Ray Tracing

My guess (and this is very speculative) is that this was a calculated play by Nvidia.

Nvidia knows that AMD is now a serious contender in terms of GPUs, even beating Nvidia (convincingly) in some cases. Nvidia also knows that, as of right now, they are the market share and mindshare leader as far as GPUs are concerned. This was a "shot across the bow" towards reviewers basically saying "Start reviewing our products in such a way that makes them look better, or else." Hardware Unboxed is a a big enough channel to be heard, but not a seriously big enough channel to hurt Nvidia's bottom line in any meaningful way (They're based out of Australia/New Zealand, so I guess Nvidia thinks the majority of viewership comes from there). Nvidia tried to be a bully, hoping that their message would be heard by reviewers, but not in a meaningful way by actual consumers.

And, as we all know, it backfired... spectacularly.

Not only did other massive review channels rally around Hardware Unboxed, but you had actual consumers saying "Well, I was going to buy an RTX 3000 card because Nvidia and reviewers sold me on RT tech, but now... I'm not sure I want to." This blew up MASSIVELY. The question is... how did Nvidia not see this coming? They should know better than to try and bully reviewers into being favorable towards them. Most readers can smell fanboy-ism (AdoredTV *cough* *cough*) from a mile away, but the big tech review channels do not play favorites, and that's why people trust them AND watch them. Attempting to control the narrative nowadays very rarely works, and more often than not, results in a lot of pain by the company which initiated it.

Let this be a lesson to any company that would try this in the future. The Internet is a living being... and if you piss it off, it will eat you alive.
 
My guess (and this is very speculative) is that this was a calculated play by Nvidia.

Nvidia knows that AMD is now a serious contender in terms of GPUs, even beating Nvidia (convincingly) in some cases. Nvidia also knows that, as of right now, they are the market share and mindshare leader as far as GPUs are concerned. This was a "shot across the bow" towards reviewers basically saying "Start reviewing our products in such a way that makes them look better, or else." Hardware Unboxed is a a big enough channel to be heard, but not a seriously big enough channel to hurt Nvidia's bottom line in any meaningful way (They're based out of Australia/New Zealand, so I guess Nvidia thinks the majority of viewership comes from there). Nvidia tried to be a bully, hoping that their message would be heard by reviewers, but not in a meaningful way by actual consumers.

And, as we all know, it backfired... spectacularly.

Not only did other massive review channels rally around Hardware Unboxed, but you had actual consumers saying "Well, I was going to buy an RTX 3000 card because Nvidia and reviewers sold me on RT tech, but now... I'm not sure I want to." This blew up MASSIVELY. The question is... how did Nvidia not see this coming? They should know better than to try and bully reviewers into being favorable towards them. Most readers can smell fanboy-ism (AdoredTV *cough* *cough*) from a mile away, but the big tech review channels do not play favorites, and that's why people trust them AND watch them. Attempting to control the narrative nowadays very rarely works, and more often than not, results in a lot of pain by the company which initiated it.

Let this be a lesson to any company that would try this in the future. The Internet is a living being... and if you piss it off, it will eat you alive.

It probably worked for them in the past. Look at [H] and GPP, it was an even bigger story than this, but [H] was very much on their own (with very few other big tech sites coming to support [H]). But now, these YT tech channels are very protective of one another (almost their own Union in a way), and the reach of their messaging is longer than the old text-only based review sites. And the fact that some of these channels have the financial girth to not need GPUs sampled to them - well, they're far more likely to not be afraid of speaking their mind against Nvidia (or AMD's) dirty practices.
 
It's what this whole thread is about? The 'denied future parts youtuber', was denied (by someone at Nvidia) because he was not covering Raytracing in his reviews. Then he did cover it, in a separate video, other tech youtubers made a fuss, [H] thread exploded (see, this thread). Nvidia apologized and the youtuber will again get future parts.

You have the order wrong.. he did cover it in another video prior to Nvidia complaining. And it was in the original review, just not enough of it to satisfy Nvidia. Also, Nvidia even used quotes from HUB in their marketing material because they have actually said good things about DLSS. If you're going to argue with others at least present the correct information in the right timeline, otherwise you just look like your purposefully misleading.

I have watched barely any of his reviews, just one or two in the last few years. My post was a TL; DR summary. Corrected:

"It's what this whole thread is about? The 'denied future parts youtuber', was denied (by someone at Nvidia) because Nvidia did not think he was covering Raytracing in his reviews (as far as we know). But he did cover it, in a separate video, other tech youtubers made a fuss, [H] thread exploded (see, this thread). Nvidia apologized and the youtuber will again get future parts."

Some will argue that Nvidia just didn't like his coverage. This may be true. It is completely up to Nvidia who gets free hardware from Nvidia. Maybe they didn't like his attitude? Maybe they didn't like his mustache? They are giving away free hardware, this is 100% in their control.

Someone else earlier in the thread said that the Journalistic integrity was compromised as soon as reviewers started accepting free hardware from vendors... We have to remember that none of these reviewers on youtube are journalists, same can be said for most written reviewers. This is not to say that there are no respectable, trustworthy reviewers, just that they crossed a line that a journalist would know better than to cross (when they accepted free hardware). The vendors also crossed the line, knowingly or unknowingly. Result? The 'trusted' written review sites have been dwindling for 2 decades, with more than one having been compromised along the way after becoming 'paid for' reviews. Free hardware was just the first taste of the 'pay'.
Tech youtubers are under even more scrutiny, and some of the 'tech-opinion' youtubers are suspicious for being paid marketing disguised as 'trusted, informed opinion'.

Then you have super popular tech-youtubers, who have so much influence that when they throw a fit (or raise a valid concern), that the hardware vendors have little choice but to capitulate. This may be what happened in this instance.
We the viewer must be careful not to conflate 'influence' with 'trustworthyness'. Always have your guard up, but watch out for being a fanboy or letting your emotions rule your choices. Peoples' emotions are easily swayed and therefore, easily controlled.

.... is it as important as Nvidia is making out that they will fire good reviewers cause they didn't say it was the most important thing to consider for consumers in the market....

You are putting words in Nvidia's mouth.
 
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It probably worked for them in the past. Look at [H] and GPP, it was an even bigger story than this, but [H] was very much on their own (with very few other big tech sites coming to support [H]). But now, these YT tech channels are very protective of one another (almost their own Union in a way), and the reach of their messaging is longer than the old text-only based review sites. And the fact that some of these channels have the financial girth to not need GPUs sampled to them - well, they're far more likely to not be afraid of speaking their mind against Nvidia (or AMD's) dirty practices.
Possibly.

I also think that it ended with other YT channels going "If Nvidia is successful with this on a successful channel, they may come after me next."

Instead of Nvidia instilling "fear" in these channels, they instilled "rage". It's a classic "Fight or Flight" human response.

Nvidia wanted the "Flight"... instead, they got the "Fight" by an angry mob. How did they not see this coming? The Internet is extremely intolerant of bullies of any kind, so when a massive company attempts to bully around a YT channel, it's not going to be pretty for said company.
 
You are putting words in Nvidia's mouth.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/725727472364290050/787156437494923304/unknown.png

I am ? Did you read their email ?

Sorry their own words ya....
"It is very clear from your community commentary that you do not see things the same way that we, gamers, and the rest of the industry do. Our founders edition boards and other Nvidia products are being allocated to media outlets that recognize the changing landscape of gaming and the features that are important to gamers and anyone buying a GPU today. Be it for gaming, content creation, or studio and streaming."

That is exactly what I paraphrased. Review our fantastic non raster performance features... cause its the only thing that matters to consumers (or it should be if you and the rest of the industry say so)... and its what we demand of the industry. Or we won't allocate shit to you... your out, your fired from our review community. Then they go on to be even slimmer and say... oh but ya talk to our board partners about review samples (like anyone is going to piss Nvidia off there... if Nvidia says these guys are no go, of course even if they do that means HUB is going to be 4-5 days late on major release reviews cause Nvidia embargos partner cards for a few more days) then they have the gull to say.... "We are open to revisiting this in the future should your editorial direction change." Holy fuck you Nvidia.
 
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Possibly.

I also think that it ended with other YT channels going "If Nvidia is successful with this on a successful channel, they may come after me next."

Instead of Nvidia instilling "fear" in these channels, they instilled "rage". It's a classic "Fight or Flight" human response.

Nvidia wanted the "Flight"... instead, they got the "Fight" by an angry mob. How did they not see this coming? The Internet is extremely intolerant of bullies of any kind, so when a massive company attempts to bully around a YT channel, it's not going to be pretty for said company.

What I find the most fucked up about the whole situation. Is after this became public. Its like all the major review sites had BS stories of their own about dealing with Nvidia. Hours long phone calls going over youtube reviews word by word.... Nvidia paying companies to transcribe them (even though youtube has automated tools for that). Nvidia reminding them they have transcripts when talking about talking points. It sounds like Nvidia is shitty behind the scenes to almost everyone million+ subs on a youtube or not. Makes you wonder how many Nvidia reviews are 90% BS cause no one wants to miss a talking point.
 
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What I find the most fucked up about the whole situation. Is after this became public. Its like all the major review sites had BS stories of their own about dealing with Nvidia. Hours long phone calls going over youtube reviews word by word.... Nvidia paying companies to transcribe them (even though youtube has automated tools for that). Nvidia reminding them they have transcripts when talking about talking points. It sounds like Nvidia is shitty behind the scenes to almost everyone million+ subs on a youtube or not. Makes you wonder how many Nvidia reviews are 90% BS cause no one wants to miss a talking point.
I think this story is providing some cover for the less reputable, but this is totally the enemy of my enemy is my friend kind of thing.

Don't think for a second that Linus hasn't calculated the benefit to doing the right thing here. It does pay dividends. Let's be clear he was talking about 8k gaming not that long ago, while everyone else called that out as some extreme nonsense.

It's really win win. Put Nvidia in its place and restore some street cred.
 
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I think this story is providing some cover for the less reputable, but this is totally the enemy of my enemy is my friend kind of thing.

Don't think for a second that Linus hasn't calculated the benefit to doing the right thing here. It does pay dividends. Let's be clear he was talking about 8k gaming not that long ago, while everyone else called that out as some extreme nonsense.

It's really win win. Put Nvidia in its place and restore some street cred.
Linus (and LMG) is such a big player that Nvidia retaliating against them would hurt Nvidia way more than it hurts LMG. Linus has a following of rabid fans that will listen to what he says and take it as gospel, and with over 13 million subscribers on YouTube, you'd better believe that Linus will survive with or without Nvidia, while Nvidia would feel a pretty big pain from LMG starting to parrot "Stop buying Nvidia products."

Linus is his own boss. Nvidia is a public corporation that is beholden to its investors and stock holders. Nvidia has way more to lose than Linus.
 
I dunno, I am using RT in several games and they are all perfectly playable at max or close to max settings, so to me, RT is viable with a high-end card, right now.

So for me, RT is important, but I can see how it may not be to all users, especially if you didn't get lucky and get an Ampere or RDNA2 card.
 
In an ideal world, people reviewing products should be buying them. This way you don’t have ANY outside influence on the review or the perception of any outside influence. I know this will never happen, but it should. And if you are reviewing a product that was given to you it shouldn’t be a review. It should be a showcase, because that is what it really is.
 
In an ideal world, people reviewing products should be buying them. This way you don’t have ANY outside influence on the review or the perception of any outside influence. I know this will never happen, but it should. And if you are reviewing a product that was given to you it shouldn’t be a review. It should be a showcase, because that is what it really is.
As Linus pointed out, the larger reviewers' income is enough that the actual cost of the GPU is a relative pittance. So even if they had to purchase the GPUs, it would really be nothing but empty virtue signaling. Besides which, goodbye day one reviews if they had to buy them like everyone else.
 
Really? A heavily sponsored Nvidia title optimized for Ampere beats AMD offerings? It's a mistery.
To stay on ZEROED IN on topic, unlike the others here that have yet to be removed (looking at you, you know who you are (yeah, the dude who deletes only some of the stuff and not the other)):

Rasterized performance for AMD or Nvidia doesn't just count on memory bandwidth. It can be helped by it depending on the game engine. Cyperpunk 2077, the one that was referenced specifically in response to your query on the topic earlier is just the latest and very obvious example.

It's not the only thing that affects rasterized performance, obviously. More CUs or CUDA cores as well as GPU frequency also increases this, die shrinks/more transistors, etc. This can be seen more than usual because of the much larger than normal gap between the 3080 and 3090 in CP2077 (greater than the % difference in CUDA cores - likely due to the much greater memory bandwidth, which was the point I was driving at, where other games don't scale nearly as much in rasterized only mode and the % difference between the 3080 and 3090 is much lower than seen in CP2077), as well as the very minimal gap between the 6800 and 6800XT, and the about right difference between the 6800XT and 6900XT.

Now toss in DXR when CDPR adds it in for the 6000 series. It'll look every bit as amazing on the AMD card as the Nvidia card, but sadly the performance will really tank - unless AMD has something even better than DLSS and not just something that matches it performance/quality wise due to roughly 2080 Ti levels of raytracing performance.

Again, to stay on topic for a very, very particular and discriminating individual, it doesn't matter to me directly that Nvidia did what they did. It doesn't directly affect me, so I don't care as much as when they tried to fuck me with geforce experience only driver updates. I'll continue to look at different reviews, and get pissed off at day-of review release dates for both manufacturers.
 
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In an ideal world, people reviewing products should be buying them. This way you don’t have ANY outside influence on the review or the perception of any outside influence. I know this will never happen, but it should. And if you are reviewing a product that was given to you it shouldn’t be a review. It should be a showcase, because that is what it really is.
Except thats incredibly harmful to consumers and honestly a very silly view. The whole point of these reviews are to help show you if your day 1 purchase is worth the money. Subjecting the reviewers to buying retail destroys the ability for the consumer to make an informed purchase. Without 3rd party independent reviews you will be throwing money at a product HOPING it's worth while, not to mention reviewers might not be able to get their hands on a card for weeks. Sure you could wait till the reviews come out but as the 3000 series shows us, you might not get one for months if you miss your chance so it becomes a gamble.

The other issue is money revenue for the reviewer, if they can't get a card for a week longer than another reviewer they stand to lose alot, they make most of their views in the first week before people can purchase and starts giving huge advantages to the big guys like LTT who can easily afford a 2-3x MSRP scalp to get their review out asap compared to the mid sized guys.
 
Except that incredibly stupid, putting it bluntly. The whole point of these reviews are to help show you if your day 1 purchase is worth the money. Subjecting the reviewers to buying retail destroys the ability for the consumer to make an informed purchase. Without 3rd party independent reviews you will be throwing money at a product HOPING it's worth while, not to mention reviewers might not be able to get their hands on a card for weeks. Sure you could wait till the reviews come out but at the 3000 series shows you, you might not get one for months if you miss your chance so it becomes a gamble.
True, but do you think it is a good idea for a consumer to make a day 1 purchase ? In a ideal world you would have a few enthusiast early adopter that get all the early drivers issue and other kinks out, and almost all regular consumer would calmly simply buy mature patched product.

Every serious review for consumer publication I know (the consumer reports, Protegez Vous, type) have a really strong policy of not a single ads, no one can use their quotes in a Ads and not accepting anything from any company in any way, including free samples. In a ideal world we would get our reviews from such type of solid organisation and not have to rush a purchase.

Reality is far from ideal like you are pointing out.
 
Ok. Nvidia wants reviewer to only review with Rt settings ON. Why ? Because they have an advantage there over AMD, when they have none on rasterization.
Fact is, maybe they are right for gaming. On the other hand Nvidia is quite better on compute now and especially when using Optics. The problem with their RTX 3080 est that it's only 10GB RAM and their 3090 lacks Titan features. So they are selling those graphics cards only for gaming, whatever other use you want to make out of them. This is where it's bad.
 
Yeah nVidia is a a bag of dicks, we all know this, but it's not like AMD would act much differently if RT was their baby. This is what happens when a market is controlled by a duopoly.

Personally I'm sick of YouTubers and their drama. People who want to buy these cards can't, but hey at least they can watch 18 different YouTubers play with them on launch day! All peddling the same crap. I need one good written review and the sentiments of people who bought these cards with their own hard-earned cash. Not entitled whiny bitches who stir up drama and make the story about themselves.

Meet the "new media", same as the old media.
 
True, but do you think it is a good idea for a consumer to make a day 1 purchase ? In a ideal world you would have a few enthusiast early adopter that get all the early drivers issue and other kinks out, and almost all regular consumer would calmly simply buy mature patched product.

Every serious review for consumer publication I know (the consumer reports, Protegez Vous, type) have a really strong policy of not a single ads, no one can use their quotes in a Ads and not accepting anything from any company in any way, including free samples. In a ideal world we would get our reviews from such type of solid organisation and not have to rush a purchase.

Reality is far from ideal like you are pointing out.
Honestly if I had the cash I would of jumped on the 3080 day one thanks to the reviews showing its huge performance jump being a worthy upgrade for my GTX 1080, the thing about GPU upgrades are you get an immediate benefit from them especially if your like me and only upgrade every 2-3 generations lol. I was tempted by the rtx 2 series but reviews just didn't show enough of a jump for the price.

You have some good points but I just see way to many benefits to consumers by having proper pre-relrase reviews.
 
To stay on ZEROED IN on topic, unlike the others here that have yet to be removed (looking at you, you know who you are (yeah, the dude who deletes only some of the stuff and not the other)):
If you have issue with forum moderation, you can always message me directly. However, the better thing to do would be to use the REPORT POST feature and help police the community. We simply cannot read every post.
 
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Yeah nVidia is a a bag of dicks, we all know this, but it's not like AMD would act much differently if RT was their baby. This is what happens when a market is controlled by a duopoly.
Well, having personally worked with NVIDIA and AMD PR for over two decades, I can tell you that one is not like the other. NVIDIA is ruthless and controlling is so many ways.
 
If I had a nickle for every one of these.. "Yeah nVidia is a a bag of dicks, we all know this, but it's not like AMD would act much differently if ..."

What a bunch of crap. I don't see AMD threats or ever heard of such in their history on how processors / GPUs are reviewed at all EVER. Plus AMD has been around a lot longer than Nv.
 
If I had a nickle for every one of these.. "Yeah nVidia is a a bag of dicks, we all know this, but it's not like AMD would act much differently if ..."

What a bunch of crap. I don't see AMD threats or ever heard of such in their history on how processors / GPUs are reviewed at all EVER. Plus AMD has been around a lot longer than Nv.
By If do you mean had for a long time and incredibly high domination of the market share ?

It is impossible to know or have even a good idea obviously, but for some thing like the proprietary vs more open source chance are good they would be similar (we could see it start wanting to have their GPU-CPU combo to have something special and not easy for other to play with)

AMD has been around longer, but they never had a 75% market share for a long time type of position.
 
If I had a nickle for every one of these.. "Yeah nVidia is a a bag of dicks, we all know this, but it's not like AMD would act much differently if ..."

What a bunch of crap. I don't see AMD threats or ever heard of such in their history on how processors / GPUs are reviewed at all EVER. Plus AMD has been around a lot longer than Nv.
Its their Canadian Roots.... half kidden. :) ATI where some good Canadians, but I doubt many are left from those days. lol

Yes overzelous / lazy / perhaps dishonest AMD driver optimizations in the past not withstanding. Nvidia seem to be the guys that will force their chip customers to hand them their top brands.... or force reviewers to defend every single word they write or utter in a video.... or stomp their feet if a reviewer doesn't spend the proper amount of time on each talking point as directed. Yes everyone knows there a bag of dicks cause they act that way in every situation always. Be it with board partners, previous console partnerships, or reviewers they operate in full dick head mode at all times. Scary that if it goes through these ass holes will own ARM. I can't imagine the level of dick headery they will achieve if they manage to wiggle a position of powering ARM windows, and if where dealing with 100% nvidia gaming systems in a few years. lol (expect full super dick head review control) I'm sure Microsoft would rather anyone else provide them Apple competing ARM chips... but it looks like its going to be Nvidia, I'm sure MS is overjoyed.
 
Just like IBM just did with RedHat by shutting down CENTOS, And there's the perfect analogy of corporate culture as Kyle mentioned. I can't wait until Nvidia fucks everyone over with ARM. Nvidia is just getting STARTED on corporate greed.
 
As Linus pointed out, the larger reviewers' income is enough that the actual cost of the GPU is a relative pittance. So even if they had to purchase the GPUs, it would really be nothing but empty virtue signaling. Besides which, goodbye day one reviews if they had to buy them like everyone else.

Except thats incredibly harmful to consumers and honestly a very silly view. The whole point of these reviews are to help show you if your day 1 purchase is worth the money. Subjecting the reviewers to buying retail destroys the ability for the consumer to make an informed purchase. Without 3rd party independent reviews you will be throwing money at a product HOPING it's worth while, not to mention reviewers might not be able to get their hands on a card for weeks. Sure you could wait till the reviews come out but as the 3000 series shows us, you might not get one for months if you miss your chance so it becomes a gamble.

The other issue is money revenue for the reviewer, if they can't get a card for a week longer than another reviewer they stand to lose alot, they make most of their views in the first week before people can purchase and starts giving huge advantages to the big guys like LTT who can easily afford a 2-3x MSRP scalp to get their review out asap compared to the mid sized guys.
Yes, but who’s to say as press they can’t get them ahead of time?
 
If AMD had a 322 billion market cap and NV was at 110, their PR attitudes might be different. AMD is still deceptive with their marketing. Maybe not straight-up bullies like NV... But they ARE the smaller dog. Hubris and a "too big to fail" attitude just envelop these mega corps. I agree and it sucks for us end users.

I still don't like YouTube drama queens who act like they're entitled to free cards when normal consumers can't buy shit.
 
If AMD had a 322 billion market cap and NV was at 110, their PR attitudes might be different.
Doubt it, culture comes from the top down and Lisa Su's attitude is very different than Jensen's. Interesting how the corporate cultures mimic the CEOs respectively. No, that;s not just a co-incidence.
AMD is still deceptive with their marketing.
The benchmarks are dead on for Ryzen and Radeon. You want to split hairs and go on, I really don't care to. Has AMD ever cut of vendors for not showing their product "as they see fit" forcing reviewers to any standards other than their own? No. Has Nv - obviously YES.

Make all the predictions and guesses as to how AMD would act if this or that or whatever but really it's just projective garbage. Try and deal with the facts and not the "what ifs".
 
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Yeah nVidia is a a bag of dicks, we all know this, but it's not like AMD would act much differently if RT was their baby.
The pricing of Ryzen 3 CPUs and accompanying motherboards is exhibit A how once AMD is on top for five minutes, they behave exactly the same as the entrenched leader their fans disdain.

To really shake up the market, 6800XT needed to be $599 and 6900XT $799.
 
The pricing of Ryzen 3 CPUs and accompanying motherboards is exhibit A how once AMD is on top for five minutes, they behave exactly the same as the entrenched leader their fans disdain.

To really shake up the market, 6800XT needed to be $599 and 6900XT $799.
Except they’re taking that money and reinvesting it. They’re not acting like intel where they take your money and do who knows what with it. They certainly weren’t making better CPUs with all that profit before zen showed up.
 
Someone needs to either break Bryan's fingers or his keyboard. No business being in any corporate leadership or communications capacity.

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Someone needs to either break Bryan's fingers or his keyboard. He really has no business being in any corporate leadership or communications capacity when he's this stupid.

View attachment 308991
Didn't like the public's and gamer's response and did a U turn. Good, but still bad that they showed their true side...
 
Didn't like the public's and gamer's response and did a U turn. Good, but still bad that they showed their true side...

Standard PR move. They probably saw how it big it was getting and wanted to head it off before it started impacting sales or their stock price. I dont think this was good I think it was just the bare minimum they could do for damage control.
 
I dunno, I thought it was a good response by Del Rizzo. It's not written like a PR piece (like the initial e-mail) and reads more like a human being. It reads more like how other outlets described Del Rizzo in their dealings ("direct and professional") and not the condescending PR blather that was the first e-mail.

I liked the theory that HUB had in their video - the initial e-mail was written by some local PR reps who had issues with HUB coverage and Del Rizzo (wrongly) signed off on it without actually reading the thing or just glossing over it.
 
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