this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2023
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Technology

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144
Why a kilobyte is 1000 and not 1024 bytes (zeta.one)
submitted 11 months ago by wischi@programming.dev to c/technology@lemmy.world
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I often find myself explaining the same things in real life and online, so I recently started writing technical blog posts.

This one is about why it was a mistake to call 1024 bytes a kilobyte. It's about a 20min read so thank you very much in advance if you find the time to read it.

Feedback is very much welcome. Thank you.

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[–] themurphy@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

I believe it's because you always use bytes in pairs in a computer. If you always pair the pairs, you would eventually get the number 1024, which is the closest number to a 1000.

The logic is like this:

2+2 = 4

4+4 = 8

8+8 = 16

16+16 = 32

32+32 = 64

64+64 = 128

128+128 = 256

256+256 = 512

512+512 = 1024