Daily Tech News 1 March 2025

• Skype will die in May. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  May 5, to be precise.
  
  Microsoft thinks you will move to Teams. I don't think anyone who isn't already using Teams is going to switch to it because the messaging app they liked is being killed off.

• AMD has officially announced pricing of the 9070 XT graphics card at $599. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The 9070 will also exist.
  
  This competes fairly evenly - if we accept AMD's numbers - with Nvidia's RTX 5070 Ti, which has an MSRP of $749, but sells for $899 and up at retail, or would do if it were available at retail at all, which it isn't.
  
  None of the new Nvidia cards announced in recent months are available to buy.
  
  So if AMD's new card is $300 cheaper, and has very similar performance, and is actually available - and reports are that cards have been shipping from manufacturers since January - AMD could do well here.
  
  It's not quite cheap enough or fast enough to make me regret buying the 7800 XT, but so far it looks very promising. It's seems to outperform Nvidia's RTX 4080, which launched in November 2022 for $1199.
  
  It's a bit annoying though seeing a $600 card described as "mid-range". That's a high-end card. $1200 is a stupidly overpriced card.
  
  
  
• Intel's $28 billion Ohio fabs have been delayed, just a bit. (Thurrott)
  
  Work started in 2022, with the first fab planned to come online this year.
  
  That date has been shifted out to 2030. Or maybe 2032.
  
  
  
• Autodesk, the market leader in design software because it bought all its competitors, is laying off 9% of its workers because it saw a year-on-year revenue increase of 23%. (Fast Company)
  
  That makes sense.
  
  
  
• Firefox is saying that its new license, which allowed the company to do whatever it wanted with your data, was never intended to say that it allowed the company to do whatever it wanted with your data. (The Verge)
  
  Remember that data is encrypted from your browser to whatever website you are using. If the browser itself steals your data, there is nothing you can do to prevent that. So the threat that a browser could do that will be taken seriously.
  
  And if Mozilla didn't mean to say this in their license agreement... Why did they?
  
  
  
• "I recommend being in the office at least every weekday", said Google co-founder Sergei Brin, without a trace of irony. (New York Times) (archive site)
  
  "Your weekends are your own", he added. "As long as you put in another twenty hours from home."

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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