I've also experienced this actually. Recently ordered 6 more sticks (V.34) and 2 of them show no sign of life when put in the usb tester. The same tester that runs perfectly fine with the all of the sticks from 2021 (v8.1) and most of the new ones. So it's definitely not the usb tester.
They probably have some low level support for current and only just survives with the older fractionally lower current value.
There is no difference in the old and new miner at the USB connector, other than how much power that it uses is fractionally higher.