Technology

59374 readers

7834 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Why a kilobyte is 1000 and not 1024 bytes (zeta.one)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

168 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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (4 children)

I know it's already been explained but here is a visualization of why.

0 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 1024

[+] [email protected] -34 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Did you read the blog post? If you don't find the time you should at least read "(Un)lucky coincidence" to see why it's not (and never was) a bright idea to call 1024 "a kilo".

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Dude you're pretty condescending for a new author on an old topic.

Yeah I read it and it's very over worded.

1024 was the closest binary approximation of 1000 so that became the standard measurement. Then drive manufacturers decided to start using decimal for capacity because it was a great way to make numbers look better.

Then the IEC decided "enough of this confusion" and created binary naming standards (kibi gibi etc...) and enforced the standard decimal quantity values for standard names like kilo-.

It's not ground breaking news and your constant arguing with people in the thread paints you as quite immature. Especially when plenty of us remember the whole story BECAUSE WE LIVED IT AS IT PROFESSIONALS.

We lacked a standard, a system was created. It was later changed to match global standard values.

You portray it with emotive language making decisions out to be stupid, or malicious. A decision was made that was perfectly sensible at the time. It was then improved. Some people have trouble with change.

Your writing and engagement styles scream of someone raised on clickbait news. Focus on facts, not emotion and sensationalism if you want to be taken seriously in tech writing.

Focus on emotion and bullshit of you want to work for BuzzFeed.

And if you just want an argument go use bloody twitter.

load more comments (2 replies)