Comment on smh
porous_grey_matter@lemmy.ml 13 hours agoOnly for data and that’s a quirk of organising binary data in bytes. Factors of whatever your base is are better. Don’t think we’re going to be moving away from base 10 for volume or distance or power.
CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
I dunno, a half cup is 8 tablespoons, quarter cup is 4 tablespoons, an eighth cup is 2 tablespoons. A half liter is 5 deciliters, a quarter liter is 2.5 deciliters, an eighth liter is 1.25 deciliters. In cooking I’m much more likely to use binary arrangements than decimal, and the fact that metric users would use milliliters instead of deciliters makes me think that ten isn’t really the magic number it’s cracked up to be.
porous_grey_matter@lemmy.ml 6 hours ago
If you’re used to cups and teaspoons of course you’re more likely to use binary divisions. I’m more likely to use steps of 20% for that purpose. And if you want to actually tailor your proportions to match the one egg or whatever the indivisible object in your recipe is, then you end up with 241 mL or 13.57 Tbsp anyways. Anyway, ten isn’t the magic number, it’s just the one we use for almost everything, and already did when we had imperial measurements.
CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
You and I, I suspect, agree here. I prefer 2; you prefer 5. But what matters about weights and measures is communication with other humans and everyone has decided to use a 10 bases system and what matters is not your personal preference but interoperability. Mebibytes might be better than megabytes but you use megabytes in your documentation because that’s what everyone else uses.