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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] 52 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (26 children)

KiB, MiB, GiB etc are more clear. It makes a big difference especially 1TB vs 1TiB.

The American way would probably be still using the units you listed but still meaning 1024, just to be confusing.

Either that or maybe something that uses physical measurement of a hard-drive (or CD?) using length. Like that new game is 24.0854 inches of data (maybe it could be 1.467 miles of CD?).

[–] [email protected] 37 points 7 months ago (19 children)

The American way would probably be still using the units you listed but still meaning 1024, just to be confusing.

American here. This is actually the proper way. KB is 1024 bytes. MB is 1024 KB. The terms were invented and used like that for decades.

Moving to 'proper metric' where KB is 1000 bytes was a scam invented by storage manufacturers to pretend to have bigger hard drives.

And then inventing the KiB prefixes was a soft-bellied capitulation by Europeans to those storage manufacturers.

Real hackers still use Kilo/Mega/Giga/Tera prefixes while still thinking in powers of 2. If we accept XiB, we admit that the scummy storage vendors have won.

Note: I'll also accept that I'm an idiot American and therefore my opinion is stupid and invalid, but I stand by it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (14 children)

No the correct way is to use the proper fucking metric standard. Use Mi or Gi if you need it. We have computers that can divide large numbers now. We don't need bit shifting.

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

This is such a weird take to me. We don't even colloquially discuss computer storage in terms of 1000.

The Greek terms were used from the beginning of computing and the new terms of kibi and mebi (etc.) were only added in 1998 when Members it the IEC got upset. But despite that, most personal computers still report in the binary way. The decimal is only used on boxes for marketing terms.

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

most personal computers still report in the binary way.

Which ones?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Windows reports using binary and continues to use the Greek terms. Windows is still the holder of largest market share for PC operating systems.