this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2023
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Technology

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147
Why a kilobyte is 1000 and not 1024 bytes (zeta.one)
submitted 11 months ago by wischi@programming.dev to c/technology@lemmy.world
211 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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[โ€“] psud@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

TLDR: the problem isn't using base 2 multipliers. The problem is doing so then saying it's a base 10 number

In 1998 when the problem was solved it wasn't a big deal, but now the difference between a gigabyte and a gibibyte is large enough to cause problems

[โ€“] rockSlayer@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

Using kilo- in base 2 for something that calculates in base 2 simply makes sense to me. However, like I said to OP, ultimately this debate amounts to rage bait for nerds. All I ask is that I'm not pedantically corrected if the conversation isn't directly related to kibi- vs kilo-