Man Orders RTX 3090 Ti From Amazon, Receives Sand

Ah, scammers. As much as many of us hate these degenerate sub-species of the human race, they are, unfortunately, a difficult bunch to properly be rid of. Recently, a man in Brazil recently fell victim to a scam when he made an order on Amazon and got a whole load of sand, literally.

The Brazillian man, whose name is Mauricio Takeda, had posted his plight on the social media platform, TikTok. Here’s the story: Takeda had pulled the trigger and decided to purchase an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics card from Amazon Brazil. What makes this purchase extra special, though, is that the multinational brand was also having its Prime Days sale period, which in turn meant that products were being sold at a discount.

In Takeda’s case, his Palit GeForce RTX 3090 Ti GameRock graphics card was purchased for 14500 Brazillian Real (~RM12179). If we’re being honest here, that’s still a little on the high side, and that is despite the fact that the prices of graphics cards have been on a steady decline or if you’re in China, crashing hard.

 Upon receiving his newly purchased “GPU” in the mail from Amazon, red flags began to rise for Takeda when he picked up the package and realised something was very clearly off with its weight. With his suspicions already at a heightened state, he then proceeded to ask his wife to record him opening the package and, upon doing so, discovered that he was not, in fact, an owner of a new RTX 3090 Ti, but multiple jars and pots filled with sand.

But Takeda’s story doesn’t even end there. Realising that he was a victim of a very expensive scam, he attempted, attempted, to liase with Amazon, asking them for a resolution, but to no avail. Then, after repeatedly receiving calls from the centre over a course of several days, they finally sent him an email containing a link that would permanently remove the affected Amazon account.

Takeda ultimately got restitution, though, after he filed a lawsuit in the Brazillian Small Claims Court and his issue actually became a national headline. At that point, even Amazon couldn’t take the issue lightly and began to fix the problem.

Grab Singapore To Test Robot That Collects Orders From Different Restaurants In A Mall

Grab Singapore will be trialling a robot runner that goes around collecting orders from different restaurants in a mall. The robot will deposit the orders at a central location for the convenience of human delivery persons, who otherwise must collect each order separately.

The rationale for the robot is apparently driven by the growing popularity of Grab’s mix-and-match feature, which allows customers to order from different restaurants within a mall and pay only a single delivery fee. For delivery persons, this inevitably means longer times going through malls as multiple locations must be visited.

Fortunately, if Grab’s projections are right, the robot could shave off between five to fifteen minutes of this tedious multi-stop journey. Customers would enjoy faster delivery times and delivery persons could potentially fulfil more orders per day.

The robot itself is quite the marvel. Designed in partnership with Techmetics Robotics, it apparently learns about its surroundings through artificial intelligence (AI) and optimises for maximum efficiency.

It comes with built-in Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) sensors to detect incoming obstacles, an automated voice message to alert shoppers of its presence, and the ability to scan its immediate proximity in real-time to evade sudden obstacles.

To prevent tampering by passers-by, its food compartment is locked and its combination only given to participating merchants and Grab staff at the collection point.

It all sounds good, but we’ll have to see how it performs in real life. Grab has the same idea – it will trial the robot runner at Paya Lebar Quarter (PLQ) Mall in Singapore for a month, from the second week of June onwards, before considering expanding its use to other locations.

New Router Orders Hit With 60-Week Delay Due To Global Chip Shortage

Broadband and internet providers around the world have become the latest victim of the ongoing chip shortage, as global supply chains for router manufacturers are now increasing the wait time for the component to a 60-weeks period.

According to Bloomberg, that waiting period is reportedly more than double the length of previous waiting periods. To be clear, many of these carriers still have routers in their inventory, but in the case of Taiwan-based maker, Zyxel Communications, the company says that the impact of the shortage has hit close to home “several times” in the past.

Zyxel Communications also wasn’t spared from ongoing world events and mishaps; the router manufacturer had inventory stored onboard the Evergreen ship that blocked the Suez Canal last week, throwing yet another wrench into its supply chain at the time.

It bears repeating that the ongoing chip shortage has affected many major tech players and their roles on the world stage. For GPU makers NVIDIA and AMD, the critical chip shortage has put a dent in the world’s graphics card supply. Compounding that insult even further are the numerous scalpers and GPU miners that are hogging up every available GPU they can get their hands on, leaving bonafide gamers without nothing left.

Even Samsung isn’t spared from the chip shortage and it certainly didn’t help that the Korean electronic giant’s factories in Texas were forced to close, due to a freak winter storm that swept the US state and left virtually the whole state and its residents without power for days.

French Officials Accuse Google Of Breaching Government Orders In Pay-For-News Negotiations

French antitrust investigators apparently have claimed that Google violated government orders on how to hold negotiations with news publishers. This is yet another interesting twist as governments around the world have been trying to make big tech platforms like Google and Facebook pay news publishers for content.

According to Reuters who cited two sources claimed to have seen the investigators’ report (also known as a statement of objections), it described Google’s non-compliance as exceptionally serious. Google allegedly didn’t begin negotiations with publishers within a three-month deadline as mandated and didn’t provide all the data that investigators believe publishers needed.

Google responded to the news by saying it will comply with the law and pointed to the deals that it had already made with publishers in the last few months. The company also said it would review the statement of objections, and work closely with the authorities.

Some French news publishers which didn’t sign a deal with Google accused the tech firm of not talking with them in good faith to reach an agreement. The search engine giant risks being fined up to 10% of its sales for not complying with rules set by the French competition authority. Just to note, in 2020, the company’s annual sales reached about US$183 billion (~RM739 billion).

Google has been busy signing deals with news content providers around the world in face of mounting government pressure, especially in Australia. Facebook has taken a more confrontational and dramatic approach – banning all news content from Australian users which then resulted in the government reversing that ban.