Tuesday, September 22, 2020

The Resources of Good Buy Versus the Bad Guys

The Nvidia RTX 3080 launch was a disaster. 

Not the announcement, mind you. The card performs on the scale of superheroes and mythical beasts, even though it takes up three slots and consumes enough power to heat the entire state of Michigan in winter. 

Still, though, those performance numbers. Sexy. 

When pre-orders opened up, though, they were immediately consumed by bad actors who just want to buy cards to resell them on Ebay. When large numbers of these bad actors succeed (narrator: they did), actual consumers can't get the cards through actual retailers. 

This is a bad thing. 

It used to be fun, getting a new card or console on the day they launch. Now, though, it's a miserable and frustrating experience. 

This happens all the time now, and it makes me wonder: why do the bad guys always seem to have more resources than the good guys?

You'd think that huge companies would be able to build order systems that could detect this kind of activity. But no matter what kind of security they add, it's defeated in a trivial amount of time.

I don't like the implications for the future--in general--if the bad guys can always defeat the good guys.

The other thing I wonder is why some white hats can't write their own programs to immediately bid on RTX 3080 auctions, driving up the prices into the thousands, then simply not pay. Over and over again.  

It would be nice to see the bad guys get their comeuppance. For once.

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