this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2023
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144
Why a kilobyte is 1000 and not 1024 bytes (zeta.one)
submitted 9 months ago by wischi@programming.dev to c/technology@lemmy.world
159 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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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[–] gens@programming.dev 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It's the size in bytes as the os sees it (and in SMART). And i do know how to use a calculator, thank you.

There is also no benefit to using 1000. Except to hdd makers.

[–] wischi@programming.dev 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

There is a benefit in using 1000 because it's consistent with all the other 1000 conversions from kg to gramm, km to meter, etc. And you can do it in your head because we use a base 10 number system.

36826639 bytes are 36.826639 MB. But how many MiB? I don't know, I couldn't tell you without a calculator.

[–] gens@programming.dev 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

You don't have to know. It does not matter because your 8GB stick can't fit 16 512MB files anyway. Funny enough it might fit 500MB files if it is FAT32.

Being consistent with base10 systems does not matter in real world usage. Literally nobody cared before the asshats changed it.

Edit: i also understand si, down to its history. I don't live in an inch country. Computing is different then physical measurements. In computing 1024 is more "correct".