7 ms·

So they need to overprovision, and compensate for effects - that is fine. However, only advertising "usable size" is truthful, everything else is misleading.

• Y_Y 4y ago
  "Up to 16GiB of storage!" It's shockingly common nowadays to advertise things with an upper limit, rather than something like expected value. They're just saying, "we won't tell you what it is, but there's no way it's more than this". Bizarre that it seems to be effective.
  • throwaway_3850 4y ago
    Bizzare that democracies can't/won't regulate this.
    • water-your-self 4y ago
      A brick through the correct window does wonders for democracy
      • zx8080 4y ago
        Probably, if by wonders you mean the wonders of a free labor in prison [0]. Otherwise, probably not wonders at all. 0 - https://news.uchicago.edu/story/us-prison-labor-programs-violate-fundamental-human-rights-new-report-finds https://news.uchicago.edu/story/us-prison-labor-programs-vio...
      • Y_Y 4y ago
        The overton window?
    • kevviiinn 4y ago
      What you call democracies are really just capitalistic governments. Why would they do that? It's bad for next quarter's profit margin
      • cormacrelf 4y ago
        Read the top comment about misleading or deceptive conduct in the EU. There is a similar regime in Australia and companies don’t do it lest they face steep fines and lawsuits with good payouts and very few defences available. Good democracies regard this kind of law as a necessary part of capitalism, because it harms not only the consumer but the entire system. Maybe yours hasn’t figured it out yet.
        • kevviiinn 4y ago
          Correct, the US has not figured that out
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • unpopular42 4y ago
      There's nothing bizarre here: there are enough people in those democracies, who believe regulating this is either not a good idea or not high enough priority
      • pbhjpbhj 4y ago
        I doubt think that's true at all. In most representative democracies (UK here) we just don't have the ability to vote on such fine-grained legislation. If you asked the person in the street "should companies be held to absolutely strict truth in advertising for quantitative claims", once you explained what it meant (!), I'd warrant the vast majority would agree, yes they should. It's anti-democratic, and anti-capitalist to allow misinformation on products. Markets can't optimise if you allow misinformation.
        • gruez 4y ago
          >If you asked the person in the street "should companies be held to absolutely strict truth in advertising for quantitative claims", once you explained what it meant (!), I'd warrant the vast majority would agree, yes they should. This overestimates support because you're vague on what the policy actually is, so everyone thinks that it's going to be their preferred variant being implemented. See: the brexit vote which got a majority vote for "yes", but in reality the none of the individual proposals got majority approval.
          • Retric 4y ago
            If hypothetically 10% of the population said A but you slice up B into specific enough buckets then A wins even if the overwhelming majority dislike A. Brexit was only a policy question if you combined two different questions. “Should we stay in the EU?” and “What kind of foreign policy should we have?” People answering Yes to the first question also had plenty of diversity in how they wanted to answer the second question.
            • niconii 4y ago
              > If hypothetically 10% of the population said A but you slice up B into specific enough buckets then A wins even if the overwhelming majority dislike A. Yes, if you're only allowed to vote for a single option. If you're allowed to vote yes/no for each option, or rank them from best to worst, then this problem doesn't happen.
    • fuzzy2 4y ago
      Not sure how this is about democracy or otherwise. Regulation exists in various countries, for example regarding internet plan speeds. In Germany, ISPs can’t just slap on “up to 300 Mbit/s” on the plan and then say “oh it’s only 50 Mbit/s at your house, tough luck”. Performance sucks (conditions apply)? Pay less or cancel immediately (without notice period).
      • account42 4y ago
        Ah, but they can slap “up to 300 Mbit/s” on the plan and then hope you won't notice, which most user's won't. If the worst that can happen to them is that you get out of long contracts (which shouldn't even be the norm to begin with) then that's hardly an argument that we have effective regulation.
    • acdha 4y ago
      They do, especially outside of the United States, but there’s also a ton of corporate money spent to promote libertarian ideology so a non-trivial number of voters believe that regulation is inherently harmful.
    • hulitu 4y ago
      The market will regulate everything.
      • brokenmachine 4y ago
        Except monopolies.
  • schroeding 4y ago
    The local telco store had an advertisement for a certain mobile phone contract in the store window with "up to 50 MB/s or more!". Sure sounds better than "some amount of MB/s"! :D
  • hackernewds 4y ago
    Uber did this early on with "Earn up to $35/hour!" when they really meant "Earn no more than $35/hour!"
  • helmholtz 4y ago
    > I saw a billboard for a lottery, it said "estimated lotto jackpot 55 million." See, I did not know that shit was estimated. That would suck if you won and they go, "oh, sorry, we were off by two zeros. We estimate that you are angry!"
    • jsjohnst 4y ago
      > I saw a billboard for a lottery, it said "estimated lotto jackpot 55 million." See, I did not know that shit was estimated. It’s estimated because they don’t know exactly how many tickets will be sold leading up to the next drawing. I’ve not tracked it, but the times I’ve seen, were under 1-2 percentage points. If it bothers you that they said “estimated $55M” and instead you win $54,333,187.42, is it really that bad?
      • Nullabillity 4y ago
        The correct answer would be to sell it as a $54M jackpot then. Or require the organizers to pay the difference out of pocket.
        • jsjohnst 4y ago
          Is this an attempt at humor?
          • Nullabillity 4y ago
            No? If you don't know the answer, underestimate and overdeliver. Or consider whether you should be doing it in the first place.
            • oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
              The problem is that underestimating will cause fewer tickets to be sold.
              • 4y ago
  • LanceH 4y ago
    Was just looking at this with internet service last night. Though I can understand where they're almost forced into that, since explaining that you can't get 1Gig speed from a random server that isn't serving that fast would be impossible to a lot of people. But, the cable company doesn't disappoint -- since I can't find the price of an upgrade without calling, nor mention of upload speeds.
    • ta988 4y ago
      Cable companies are the worst I wish politicians will have a look at their practices (and their more than likely illegal price fixing) but their lobbyists are strong.
    • brokenmachine 4y ago
      Now explain unlimited data.
  • hulitu 4y ago
    Just like streaming companies. Selling 320x240 MPG1 scaled to 1920x1080
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• laomai 4y ago
  Yet keeps legal eagles in business :-/
• jopsen 4y ago
  > However, only advertising "usable size" is truthful, everything else is misleading. Sadly, this is extremely common for smartphones. 64 GB iphone, who knows what usable storage it has? > It is sad that the legal system tolerates... Just because it's not prosecuted doesn't mean it's not illegal.
  • crote 4y ago
    That's different. An iPhone with 64GB of storage will have 64GB of storage - some of that is storing system files, but it's still storing something!
    • maven29 4y ago
      Even iPhones aren't immune to getting bad blocks. The system files category is a catch-all that includes the reserved blocks for remapping by FTL when blocks go bad. As storage tiers get bigger, so does the number of reserved cells, in absolute terms.
    • layer8 4y ago
      If you read the article, the same is true in the SanDisk case. The module is still a 16 GB module, and “A portion of the total capacity is used to store certain functions including optimizations of the memory that support performance and endurance and therefore is not available for user storage.”
      • edude03 4y ago
        I think it's slightly different in that it changed though. A 16gb iPhone always meant that there was a 16gb storage module inside the device and then some of it was used for the OS (how much of it has varied over time however, which I agree is a problem) In the sandisk case, at least from what I understand, it that 16Gb used to mean like a 17Gb module, with 1Gb used for system functions, now it's a 16Gb module with 1Gb used for system functions
        • layer8 4y ago
• quitit 4y ago
  I dare say that "actual storage less" (and other equivalent phrases) are now past the point of covering for the discrepancy. 5%+ of missing capacity is definitely large enough for the actual expected capacity to be used for marketing. This is also something that should find its way into smartphones. Samsung's are notorious for using significant amounts of the advertised storage for bundled marketing apps that cannot be removed.
  • bee_rider 4y ago
    I think they would say that technically the capacity is there, they are just using it. It is annoying though. They should just sell it as a 15GB drive.
  • gruez 4y ago
    > I dare say that "actual storage less" (and other equivalent phrases) are now past the point of covering for the discrepancy. I think the original reason for that disclaimer was due to filesystem formatting, not for the GB -> GiB discrepancy or providing less usable bytes on the block device than advertised.
• dehrmann 4y ago
  If they had a run where half the blocks are bad, would they sell it as 16 GB, but with only 8 GB usable?