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KB, MB, GB, and TB are all part of the metric system. What empirical measurements should we Free™️ Americans use for computer memory? (lemm.ee)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (7 children)

I'm surprised there aren't more suggestions which use intentionally-similar abbreviations. The American customary system is rich with abbreviations which are deceptively similar, and I think the American computer memory units should match; confusion is the name of the game. Some examples from existing units:

millimeter (mm) vs thou (mil)
meter (m) vs mile (mi)
kilo (k) vs grand (G)
kilonewtons (kN) vs knots (kn)
statute mile (m/sm) vs survey mile (mi) vs nautical mile (NM/nmi) vs nanometer (nm)
foot (ft) vs fathom (ftm)
chain (ch) vs Switzerland (ch)
teaspoon (tsp) vs tablespoon (tbsp)
ounce (oz) vs fluid ounce (fl oz) vs troy ounce (ozt) vs Australia (Ozzie)
pint (pt) vs point (pt)
grain (gr) vs gram (g)
Kelvin (K) vs Rankine (R; aka "Kelvin for Americans")
short ton (t) vs long ton (???) vs metric tonne (t) vs refrigeration ton (TR)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

We already have a confusing abbreviation: B vs b. One is bits, one is bytes.

It's a pretty drastic difference. One Gb per second is only 125 MB per second. Don't mess up your capitalization!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

It's for this reason I sometimes spell out the Bytes or bits. Eg: 88 Gbits/s or 1.44 MBytes

It's also especially useful for endianness and bit ordering: MSByte vs MSbit

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