Daily Tech news 19 March 2022

• Weekends are Question and Answer time. Skip your questions gaily across the comment section like a stone across a pond full of frogs, and I'll serve up what answers I can tomorrow.
  
  
  
• When are we likely to see graphics cards at anything approaching reasonable prices again? (WCCFTech)
  
  Well, here in Australia, the answer seems to be today:
  
  

  GPU pricing is falling off a cliff right now. Locally the "ASUS GeForce RTX 3080 TUF Gaming OC" was $2299 yesterday, today a few retailers have slashed it to $1499 AUD. That's 35% off over night.
  
  (kick in the capacitors if you bought one yesterday)

  — Hardware Unboxed (@HardwareUnboxed) March 15, 2022

  
  
  I've confirmed this with a couple of retailers here; prices are down close to 40% since last week. If I wasn't in the middle of buying a house I'd be buying a new desktop. (Despite the fact that I already have two laptops with RTX 3060 graphics.)
  
  AMD prices have not adjusted nearly as much, so instead of the 6700 XT competing against the RTX 3060, it's now facing the RTX 3070 Ti. Which is not a good matchup for Team Red.
  
  Pricing on the top-of-the-line RTX 3090 has also barely moved, still marked up by about 100% over MSRP. But from the RTX 3060 up to and including the RTX 3080 there's been a seismic shift. (Which also leaves the recently re-introduced RTX 2060 more expensive than the much better 3060.)

• How Zillow lost $881 million investing in real estate. (Full Stack Economics)
  
  They fucked up. They trusted Zillow.
  
  
  
• More on the latest Node.js / NPM debacle. (Krebs on Security)
  
  Node.js programmers are mostly young and stupid. Being young is a problem that cures itself, one way or another. I'm not sure what the direction of causality is on Node.js programmers and stupidity, but the significance of the correlation is undeniable.
  
  Even if Node.js hadn't thrown away sixty years of computer science because someone wanted to scale up a chat server - which is precisely what it did, even if NPM wasn't the worst package manager in human history - which it is, the very idea that we should write server software the same way we write client software is fundamentally retarded, and has led to an avalanche of retarded code written by retarded programmers.
  
  This wasn't a case of somebody doing something that was obviously stupid and dangerous to anyone with more than a casual understanding of software development methodology, this was deliberate malice amplified by years of people doing things that were obviously stupid and dangerous.
  
  Stop it.
  
  
  
• The Vue.js CLI was directly affected by this nonsense. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Because they didn't pin the versions of their dependencies despite a long list of Node ecosystem catastrophes.
  
  Fortunately you can use Vue.js perfectly well without the CLI tools, without venturing into Node.js at all, and that is how I would recommend you use it.
  
  
  
• A look at the passively-cooled 48GB Nvidia A40 server GPU. (Serve the Home)
  
  This one has not come down by 40% overnight; it's still selling for A$9499 if you can find one at all.
  
  
  
• The OSI secured a win for open source software in the Ninth Circuit case of Neo4j vs ONgDB. (The Register)
  
  
  
• No it fucking didn't. (/dev/lawyer)
  
  Having read both articles the lawyer seems to be correct.
  
  
  
• Brazil has banned Telegram for - basically - completely ignoring Brazilian court rulings. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Which seems reasonable on both sides.
  
  
  
• Chinese state hackers are now targeting Ukraine. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  And Europe. And, uh, basically everyone else. So this might be aid to Russia, or it might just be the ongoing low-level warfare we've come to expect from them.
  
  
  
• Tech company executives could face jail time under the new UK Online Safety Bill. (ZDNet)
  
  Good.
  
  
  
• A proposed Minnesota law bans the use of recommendation algorithms by social networks for users under 18. (Ars Technica)
  
  Mike Masnick of TechDirt who I have mostly stopped linking because he spends half his time of his meds thinks this is bad.
  
  This is part of YouTube Kids.
  
  
  
  I mean, that one is relatively innocuous (the video, not the food, which is apparently what she regularly ate when she was stranded in Australia for a year due to travel restrictions), but Haachama doesn't stop at cooking and eating tarantulas; she has a lengthy and hugely popular psychological horror series and, um, reviews porn fan art of herself.
  
  
  
• Anti-piracy outfit MarkMonitor requested leave to file evidence under seal specifically to keep piracy news website TorrentFreak from reporting on it. (TorrentFreak)
  
  Which is kind of like being name-dropped by Victor Davis Hanson.
  
  
  
• Android 13 has a desktop mode. (Liliputing)
  
  This and other recent updates (the ability to run Linux VMs, for example) would make Android a very promising operating system - year of Linux on the desktop and all that - if Google were not run by the clinically insane.
  
  
  
• Internet Explorer ends in June. (Liliputing)
  
  It will no longer be supported, and a subsequent Windows update will kill it if you already have it installed.
  
  IE compatibility mode for Edge will continue to be supported through 2029.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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