So I bought a “64GB USB FLASH DRIVE USB 2.0 PEN STICK MEMORY 64GB” from eBay for $23 shipped from China a few weeks ago, and it just came today. I was skeptical, because I’ve had experience with getting incorrectly sized flash memory from those Chinese eBay scammers.

I found this guide, which says

It’s one thing to be sold the wrong size drive, but these “hacked” drives which appear on your computer to be the right size, actually corrupt your valuable data to make it look like it fits on a much smaller capacity memory chip.

I followed their guide, and sure enough, my 64GB drive is closer to 20GB, or 21,850,329,088 bytes. The first file after this amount looks like this:

So I filed a claim on eBay, hoping to get this refunded. Turns out the seller’s account “no longer exists”. Meh. Moral of the story (which I should have already known): if it looks to good to be true, it probably is.

Edit: Ebay gave me a full refund. Hoorah.

I’ve been thinking of doing some iPod/iPhone app store development, and the only two things that have kept me back are 1) no test unit and 2) no development machine. That, combined with the fact that my old ipod recently died, I figured it’s time to upgrade.

So I’ve been looking out for deals on iPod Touches. Found a 2nd generation 8 GB iPod touch with a cosmetic crack on the screen (digitizer, not LCD) for $80 with a load of accessories. Picked it up as well as a replacement digitizer (and tool to open the front) from eBay for $14. I am happy with this deal so far. As far as I’m concerned, the iPod touch is all of the good things about the iPhone and none of the bad.