this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2023
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"Kilo" means 1000 under the official International System of Units.
With some computer hardware, it's more convenient to use 1024 for a kilobyte and in the early days nobody really cared that it was slightly wrong. It has to do with the way memory is physically laid out in a memory chip.
These days, people do care and the correct term for 1024 is "Kibi" (kilo-binary). For example Kibibyte. There's also Gibi, Tebi, Exbi, etc.
It's mostly CPUs that use 1024 - and also RAM because it't tightly coupled to the CPU. The internet, hard drives, etc, usually use 1000 because they don't have any reason to use a weird numbering system.
Weird numbering system? Things are still stored in blocks of 8 bits at the end, it doesn't matter.
When it gets down to what matter on hard drives, every byte still uses 8 bits, and all other numbers for people actually working with computer science that matter are multiples of 8, not 10.
And because all internal systems use base 8, base 10 is "slower" (not that it matters any longer.