10 ms·

why Tarsnap pricing is defined in terms of picodollars per byte rather than dollars per gigabyte: Tarsnap's author is a geek. Applying SI prefixes to non-SI uni

by e40 13y ago

why Tarsnap pricing is defined in terms of picodollars per byte rather than dollars per gigabyte: Tarsnap's author is a geek. Applying SI prefixes to non-SI units is a geeky thing to do. I find that so amazingly annoying. To me it says "yeah, I know many people might find it hard to get their head around the units I defined, but I don't really care about that because I find it cool." We have standard units for a reason, because people can immediately get the scale of something in their mind. With this, you can't. I went to their site open to what they were selling, but I'm very turned off by this.

to3m 13y ago
But the price is also given in $/GB-month, so you can at least figure it out using units that people will probably find more convenient. I couldn't see the quoted comment on the opening page, which is probably lucky, because it annoys me more than simply giving the prices in picodollars/byte. (Pricing it like that at least reveals that the pricing is actually per byte, rather than being, say, $0.30/GByte with some kind of rounding.) More generally, I've always found it to be a good idea to be at least somewhat circumspect if you're going to have some kind of an asocial relationship with somebody (e.g., getting them to give you money). It's impossible to foretell what people will get annoyed by, so you might as well give them as few things to get annoyed by as possible. (I suppose this is the "better to keep quiet and be thought a fool..." principle, in a way, though obviously foolishness is not the precise issue here. Oh well. I don't claim to be original.)
alecdbrooks 13y ago
I get how it could seem too self-induldgent, but I think that was mostly meant tongue-in-cheek. The real reasons are right below: If prices were listed in dollars per GB instead of picodollars per byte, it would be harder to avoid the what-is-a-GB confusion (a GB is 10^9 bytes, but some people don't understand SI prefixes). Picodollars are perfectly clear — nobody is going to think that a picodollar is 2^(-40) dollars. Specifying prices in picodollars reinforces the point that if you have very small backups, you can pay very small amounts. Unlike some people, I don't believe in rounding up to $0.01 — the Tarsnap accounting code keeps track of everything in attodollars and when it internally converts storage prices from picodollars per month to attodollars per day it rounds the prices down. Plus, as others have pointed out, prices are listed in standard units (dollars per GB) just below the oddball ones.
lambda 13y ago
Note that "they" are one person, Colin Percival. That's all Tarsnap is; one person, some backup code he wrote, and data stored on Amazon S3. As the sole owner and only person working on a product aimed at a niche audience, I don't think it's unreasonable that he has a little fun with the way he runs it. If this kind of thing bothers you, this service probably isn't for you. But also, you picked out only one of the three reasons he listed (http://www.tarsnap.com/picoUSD-why.html http://www.tarsnap.com/picoUSD-why.html); the other two are also important: If prices were listed in dollars per GB instead of picodollars per byte, it would be harder to avoid the what-is-a-GB confusion (a GB is 10^9 bytes, but some people don't understand SI prefixes). Picodollars are perfectly clear — nobody is going to think that a picodollar is 2^(-40) dollars. Specifying prices in picodollars reinforces the point that if you have very small backups, you can pay very small amounts. Unlike some people, I don't believe in rounding up to $0.01 — the Tarsnap accounting code keeps track of everything in attodollars and when it internally converts storage prices from picodollars per month to attodollars per day it rounds the prices down. And finally, the price in dollars per GB are also prominently displayed, right after the price in picodollars per byte. So really, you're just being bothered that he's having a little bit of geeky fun even though it has absolutely no effect on you.
thejosh 13y ago
Yeah but on the homepage it says in brackets the cost per GB. $0.30/GB.
windexh8er 13y ago
Then don't use it if you find that a simple conversion is "annoying". The author is catering to an audience that, bar none, wants transparency and privacy in their backups. He's done a phenomenal job of this. It's no loss if he's out a user such as yourself.
veidr 13y ago
Interesting: in my browser, this comment is both greyed out and upvoted to the top of the list. Does this mean that comment placing is determined by upvotes, and comment greying is determined by downvotes, but those two processes are independent of each other?
- sp332 13y ago
  Comment placement is by both new-ness and upvotes. So a post that is downvoted immediately sinks faster, but doesn't immediately go to the bottom.
  - DanBC 13y ago
    Also average comment score of poster.
dchest 13y ago
Well, Storage: 300 picodollars / byte-month ($0.30 / GB-month) Bandwidth: 300 picodollars / byte ($0.30 / GB) right on the home page.

by e40 13y ago

to3m 13y ago

But the price is also given in $/GB-month, so you can at least figure it out using units that people will probably find more convenient. I couldn't see the quoted comment on the opening page, which is probably lucky, because it annoys me more than simply giving the prices in picodollars/byte. (Pricing it like that at least reveals that the pricing is actually per byte, rather than being, say, $0.30/GByte with some kind of rounding.) More generally, I've always found it to be a good idea to be at least somewhat circumspect if you're going to have some kind of an asocial relationship with somebody (e.g., getting them to give you money). It's impossible to foretell what people will get annoyed by, so you might as well give them as few things to get annoyed by as possible. (I suppose this is the "better to keep quiet and be thought a fool..." principle, in a way, though obviously foolishness is not the precise issue here. Oh well. I don't claim to be original.)

alecdbrooks 13y ago

I get how it could seem too self-induldgent, but I think that was mostly meant tongue-in-cheek. The real reasons are right below: If prices were listed in dollars per GB instead of picodollars per byte, it would be harder to avoid the what-is-a-GB confusion (a GB is 10^9 bytes, but some people don't understand SI prefixes). Picodollars are perfectly clear — nobody is going to think that a picodollar is 2^(-40) dollars. Specifying prices in picodollars reinforces the point that if you have very small backups, you can pay very small amounts. Unlike some people, I don't believe in rounding up to $0.01 — the Tarsnap accounting code keeps track of everything in attodollars and when it internally converts storage prices from picodollars per month to attodollars per day it rounds the prices down. Plus, as others have pointed out, prices are listed in standard units (dollars per GB) just below the oddball ones.

lambda 13y ago

Note that "they" are one person, Colin Percival. That's all Tarsnap is; one person, some backup code he wrote, and data stored on Amazon S3. As the sole owner and only person working on a product aimed at a niche audience, I don't think it's unreasonable that he has a little fun with the way he runs it. If this kind of thing bothers you, this service probably isn't for you. But also, you picked out only one of the three reasons he listed (http://www.tarsnap.com/picoUSD-why.html http://www.tarsnap.com/picoUSD-why.html); the other two are also important: If prices were listed in dollars per GB instead of picodollars per byte, it would be harder to avoid the what-is-a-GB confusion (a GB is 10^9 bytes, but some people don't understand SI prefixes). Picodollars are perfectly clear — nobody is going to think that a picodollar is 2^(-40) dollars. Specifying prices in picodollars reinforces the point that if you have very small backups, you can pay very small amounts. Unlike some people, I don't believe in rounding up to $0.01 — the Tarsnap accounting code keeps track of everything in attodollars and when it internally converts storage prices from picodollars per month to attodollars per day it rounds the prices down. And finally, the price in dollars per GB are also prominently displayed, right after the price in picodollars per byte. So really, you're just being bothered that he's having a little bit of geeky fun even though it has absolutely no effect on you.

thejosh 13y ago

Yeah but on the homepage it says in brackets the cost per GB. $0.30/GB.

windexh8er 13y ago

Then don't use it if you find that a simple conversion is "annoying". The author is catering to an audience that, bar none, wants transparency and privacy in their backups. He's done a phenomenal job of this. It's no loss if he's out a user such as yourself.

veidr 13y ago

Interesting: in my browser, this comment is both greyed out and upvoted to the top of the list. Does this mean that comment placing is determined by upvotes, and comment greying is determined by downvotes, but those two processes are independent of each other?

sp332 13y ago
Comment placement is by both new-ness and upvotes. So a post that is downvoted immediately sinks faster, but doesn't immediately go to the bottom.
- DanBC 13y ago
  Also average comment score of poster.

dchest 13y ago

Well, Storage: 300 picodollars / byte-month ($0.30 / GB-month) Bandwidth: 300 picodollars / byte ($0.30 / GB) right on the home page.