3 ms·

This is nothing new. Just another example of corporations screwing over consumers with ambiguous/confusing measurements. See e.g.: - ISPs advertising network

by mdeck_ 6y ago

This is nothing new. Just another example of corporations screwing over consumers with ambiguous/confusing measurements. See e.g.: - ISPs advertising network speeds in megabits per second instead of megabytes (who ever uses megabits otherwise???) - Banks advertising interest-bearing accounts with APY and advertising loans with APR. Do folks have other good examples? I’m sure there are lots.

colejohnson66 6y ago
The whole megabits/gigabits thing seems like a holdover from when internet speed was measured in bits. Not kilobits, but bits. 300 baud (bits/sec) modems and the like. When 1200 baud was reached, no one wanted to be the one to switch to a “lower” number of ~150 bytes/sec. EDIT: baud is not exactly the same as bits/second. But in those times, it was pretty much the same. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20534417/what-is-the-difference-between-baud-rate-and-bit-rate https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20534417/what-is-the-dif...
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  baud and bps are not actually the same thing, although in the era of 300 baud they may as well have been.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- mdeck_ 6y ago
  This may be a historical explanation, but it also seems a tacit agreement with the point above, when it says “no one wanted to be the one to switch to a ‘lower’ number.” No one measures anything in kilobits or megabits today (nor has for decades)—except ISPs measuring the speeds they promise to customers.
  - jl6 6y ago
    Sure they do - nearly all networking gear is sold by bits/sec, e.g. gigabit Ethernet, 10Gb Ethernet, and so on. Media encoding also commonly uses bit rates, e.g. 320kbps MP3.
    - mdeck_ 6y ago
      Your networking equipment example goes to the same point. Why do I care how many bits are transferring per second? I don’t. I want to know bytes, since everything on my computer is measured in bytes. Regarding media encoding, there I’m less sure. I guess those values were originally in small enough absolute values, and have not continued to climb exponentially, such that measuring in bits maybe continues to make sense. Anyway, thanks for sharing those examples.
jl6 6y ago
I disagree that HDD manufacturers are screwing anybody over by selling in power of ten units, and bits are actually a more natural unit than bytes (the 8-bit byte is arbitrary and there have been computers with 6-bit bytes for example), but your list is fun so here are more examples: * ISPs selling “up to” speeds. * Screen sizes measured in inches-diagonal, without reference to aspect ratio. * Cost of US products advertised without sales tax. * Lots of things that “only cost X per day” to make the amount look small compared to the consumer’s monthly income. * Supermarkets purposefully showing you price-per-unit for one product and price-per-weight for another allegedly comparable product. * “Miles per gallon” still being used in countries where fuel is sold by the litre. * Purposefully hard to multiply numbers used in monthly instalments. “Only 27 payments of $79!” * Use of 9’s. “Only $999.99!” * Food and drink manufacturers which are legally allowed to describe the quantity of an ingredient as zero if it is below a certain very small amount. * CPUs sold as “up to X GHz” where that speed can only be sustained in specific and unmentioned thermal scenarios. * Any product where the price is kept the same over time by decreasing the size over time, without mentioning it. * Misdirection away from an important metric, like how AWS shouts about the great per-GB storage cost of S3 but doesn’t shout so loudly about the egress data transfer rate. * Getting really basic now: simply putting a number in the product name to imply superiority. This is why Microsoft had to call the second Xbox the 360: because “Xbox 2” would sound less than its main competitor, the PlayStation 3. Some of these probably go beyond the theme of misleading measurements and into the realm of my general hatred for the marketing profession.
- totalZero 6y ago
  I think it's more consumer friendly when the product number is comparable to competitors, especially when many buyers don't have much familiarity with the products. A parent choosing between an Xbox 360 and PS3 before Christmas is likely better off. Similarly, Samsung jumped from S10 to S20 for the 2020 model year, which makes great sense to consumers despite being nonsequential.

by mdeck_ 6y ago

colejohnson66 6y ago

The whole megabits/gigabits thing seems like a holdover from when internet speed was measured in bits. Not kilobits, but bits. 300 baud (bits/sec) modems and the like. When 1200 baud was reached, no one wanted to be the one to switch to a “lower” number of ~150 bytes/sec. EDIT: baud is not exactly the same as bits/second. But in those times, it was pretty much the same. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20534417/what-is-the-difference-between-baud-rate-and-bit-rate https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20534417/what-is-the-dif...

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
baud and bps are not actually the same thing, although in the era of 300 baud they may as well have been.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
mdeck_ 6y ago
This may be a historical explanation, but it also seems a tacit agreement with the point above, when it says “no one wanted to be the one to switch to a ‘lower’ number.” No one measures anything in kilobits or megabits today (nor has for decades)—except ISPs measuring the speeds they promise to customers.
- jl6 6y ago
  Sure they do - nearly all networking gear is sold by bits/sec, e.g. gigabit Ethernet, 10Gb Ethernet, and so on. Media encoding also commonly uses bit rates, e.g. 320kbps MP3.
  - mdeck_ 6y ago
    Your networking equipment example goes to the same point. Why do I care how many bits are transferring per second? I don’t. I want to know bytes, since everything on my computer is measured in bytes. Regarding media encoding, there I’m less sure. I guess those values were originally in small enough absolute values, and have not continued to climb exponentially, such that measuring in bits maybe continues to make sense. Anyway, thanks for sharing those examples.

jl6 6y ago

I disagree that HDD manufacturers are screwing anybody over by selling in power of ten units, and bits are actually a more natural unit than bytes (the 8-bit byte is arbitrary and there have been computers with 6-bit bytes for example), but your list is fun so here are more examples: * ISPs selling “up to” speeds. * Screen sizes measured in inches-diagonal, without reference to aspect ratio. * Cost of US products advertised without sales tax. * Lots of things that “only cost X per day” to make the amount look small compared to the consumer’s monthly income. * Supermarkets purposefully showing you price-per-unit for one product and price-per-weight for another allegedly comparable product. * “Miles per gallon” still being used in countries where fuel is sold by the litre. * Purposefully hard to multiply numbers used in monthly instalments. “Only 27 payments of $79!” * Use of 9’s. “Only $999.99!” * Food and drink manufacturers which are legally allowed to describe the quantity of an ingredient as zero if it is below a certain very small amount. * CPUs sold as “up to X GHz” where that speed can only be sustained in specific and unmentioned thermal scenarios. * Any product where the price is kept the same over time by decreasing the size over time, without mentioning it. * Misdirection away from an important metric, like how AWS shouts about the great per-GB storage cost of S3 but doesn’t shout so loudly about the egress data transfer rate. * Getting really basic now: simply putting a number in the product name to imply superiority. This is why Microsoft had to call the second Xbox the 360: because “Xbox 2” would sound less than its main competitor, the PlayStation 3. Some of these probably go beyond the theme of misleading measurements and into the realm of my general hatred for the marketing profession.

totalZero 6y ago
I think it's more consumer friendly when the product number is comparable to competitors, especially when many buyers don't have much familiarity with the products. A parent choosing between an Xbox 360 and PS3 before Christmas is likely better off. Similarly, Samsung jumped from S10 to S20 for the 2020 model year, which makes great sense to consumers despite being nonsequential.