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"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 sayi
by 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 agoBizzare that democracies can't/won't regulate this.
- water-your-self 4y agoA brick through the correct window does wonders for democracy
- zx8080 4y agoProbably, 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 agoThe overton window?
- kevviiinn 4y agoWhat you call democracies are really just capitalistic governments. Why would they do that? It's bad for next quarter's profit margin
- cormacrelf 4y agoRead 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 agoCorrect, the US has not figured that out
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- unpopular42 4y agoThere'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 agoI 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 agoIf 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 agoNot 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 agoAh, 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 agoThey 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 agoThe market will regulate everything.
- brokenmachine 4y agoExcept monopolies.
- schroeding 4y agoThe 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 agoUber 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 agoThe 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 agoIs this an attempt at humor?
- Nullabillity 4y agoNo? If you don't know the answer, underestimate and overdeliver. Or consider whether you should be doing it in the first place.
- oneeyedpigeon 4y agoThe problem is that underestimating will cause fewer tickets to be sold.
- 4y ago
- LanceH 4y agoWas 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 agoCable 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 agoNow explain unlimited data.
- hulitu 4y agoJust like streaming companies. Selling 320x240 MPG1 scaled to 1920x1080