Silly me thought we could go the rest of the week without mentioning Elon Musk or Twitter. I was wrong.
Jon Peddie Research has worked out that "sales of standalone graphics cards for desktops decreased to 6.89 million [in Q3 2022], or by 33.5% quarter-over-quarter, the lowest quarterly result in years". Or in other words, the market for beefy gaming GPUs has tanked. The reasons GPU makers have provided for such a drop inclde, "the shutdown of crypto mining, headwinds from China’s zero-tolerance rules and rolling shutdowns, sanctions by the US, user situation from the purchasing run-up during Covid, the Osborne effect on AMD while gamers wait for the new AIBs, inflation and the higher prices of AIBs, overhang inventory run-down, and a bad moon out tonight". It's gotta all be cryptocurrency mining right? Great time to pick up a 2nd hand graphics card!
The Victorian state election is this weekend and at the last minute the Liberals have decided they'll build "a new all-in-one app and portal, dubbed ConnectVic, to replace the existing Service Victoria offering, reportedly at cost of $300 million". Basically they're gonna copy the good stuff NSW has - digital drivers licences, public transport ticketing on your phone and a fuel price comparison service - in a new platform like Service NSW. As far as I know, the newly privatised VicRoads is already doing the digital drivers licence thing and if you've got an Android phone you can already get your Myki on there. I doubt this kinda thing will change anyone's vote (I'm a nerd and it's very low on my priority list), but a move to digitise more government services is a good thing, Victoria is so damn behind.
According to a study by the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, there's a 50% chance the person fixing your computer is a creep. They sent out 16 laptops with a very minor issue (working perfectly, they just disabled the audio driver) and found that "technicians from six of the locations had accessed personal data and that two of those shops also copied data onto a personal device". They also found that "the vast majority of repair shops provide no privacy policy and those that do have no means of enforcing them" and "repair technicians required a customer to surrender their login password even when it wasn't necessary for the repair needed". It sucks that the average person who just wants their computer fixed has to go through this dilemma of potentially having their privacy invaded.
Before I begin the 3rd deluge of bargains (never seen such a sustained rate of deals!), don't forget that you can get 15% off JB Hi-Fi and The Good Guys gift cards right now from Coles.
Byte Magazine May 1981 - Software Piracy (Jason Scott / Internet Archive)
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