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Comment by nmca | Hacker News Reader

> Object storage is an amazing technology. It provides highly-durable, highly-scalable, highly-available storage at a great cost.

I don’t know if this was intended to be intentional funny, but there is a little ambiguity in the expression “great cost”, typically great cost means very expensive.

Very cool and useful shim otherwise :)

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That's funny actually - 'great cost', great takes meaning of large; 'great price', great takes meaning of very good (i.e. small in this context).

Always that way around, ESL's a minefield!

Is there an alternate meaning that you first took it as? Monetary cost was my take as well hah.

The other meaning it could have is that it's a good price/deal.

Monetary cost in both cases, but it's the two meanings of “great”, which can either mean “large” or “good”.

A large cost can be good for the person selling it.

Native English speaker here. "At a great cost" means "at a good price". "At great cost" would mean "expensive".

you 100% correct not sure why this is downvoted away

Can you be more specific than native English? I've never heard or read 'great cost' be anything other than large cost, it's the use of 'cost'. If you say 'a great price', sure, but 'cost' is already implying something negative I suppose.

(Native BrE, SW UK.)

Rarely trust native English speakers.

At a great cost is exactly at a very high cost, not "at a good price".

Any actual sources for your claim except for being a "native" speaker.

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