Google's business model

Posted Jan 16, 2026 17:25 UTC (Fri) by pizza (subscriber, #46)
In reply to: Google's business model by Wol
Parent article: A 0-click exploit chain for the Pixel 9 (Project Zero)

> I've had devices that actually want a "genuine SD" 4GB card. [...] I believe the spec does actually permit that

To quote the actual SD spec:

* Standard Capacity SD Memory Card (SDSC) supports capacity up to and including 2 G bytes (2^31 bytes). All versions of the Physical Layer Specifications define the Standard Capacity SD Memory Card.
* High Capacity SD Memory Card (SDHC) supports capacity more than 2 G bytes (2^31 bytes) up to and including 32 G bytes and is defined from the Physical Layer Specification Version 2.00.

According to the spec, there is no such thing as a "4GB SDSC" card.

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Google's business model

Posted Jan 17, 2026 11:58 UTC (Sat) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link] (2 responses)

> According to the spec, there is no such thing as a "4GB SDSC" card.

Nobody disputes that – but silly reasons like not-quite-adherence to some spec or other never stopped people from making semi-compliant gadgets. Like, ever.

At the time, when the SDHC standard was new and not quite well supported, these things did exist. I think I had one of them too.

Today, with less than zero market for these cards (given that in a SDHC-compliant host they'd probably advertise a capacity of either two or zero GBytes)? Not so much.

Google's business model

Posted Jan 17, 2026 12:10 UTC (Sat) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (1 responses)

> Nobody disputes that – but silly reasons like not-quite-adherence to some spec or other never stopped people from making semi-compliant gadgets. Like, ever.

Sure. But when that happens they get to keep the pieces when things inevitably break.

And deliberately seeking out something that intentionally non-spec compliant tends to not go well.

Google's business model

Posted Jan 17, 2026 13:05 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

The device in question was a Garmin Satnav, which took SDSC cards. When the map data went over 2GB you were supposed to use a 4GB card ...

Not so bad in that they said the largest card my Father-in-law's Olympus would support was 128MB, I wanted to put a bigger one in, and it clearly could not address all the available memory. Quite why they limited the camera (or card, I think it was an MMC) to 128MB I don't know.

Nowadays, of course, capacity is so huge it's hard to fill up a chip (my DSLR has 100GB, which it tells me is enough for 1100 photos - I can't see me getting through that in a day out ...) but back then I wanted to make sure their cameras had a decent amount of storage ...

Cheers,
Wol