Comment on Why a kilobyte is 1000 and not 1024 bytes

• logicbomb@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It’s true that the actual “story” is very short. 1 kB is 1000 bytes and 1 KiB is 1024 bytes. But the post is not about this, but about why calling 1024 a kilobyte always was wrong even in a historical context and even though almost everybody did that.

  Yes. But it does raise the question of why you didn’t say that in either your title:

  Why a kilobyte is 1000 and not 1024 bytes

  or your description:

  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.

  The title and description were your two chances to convince people to read your article. But what they say is that it’s a 20 minute read for 10 seconds of information. There is nothing that says there will be historical context.

  I get that you might want to make the title more clickbaitey, but why write a description out if you’re not going to tell what’s actually in the article?

  So, that’s my feedback. I hope this helps.

  One other bit of closely-related feedback, for your writing, in general. Always start with the most important part. Assume that people will stop reading unless you convince them otherwise. Your title should convince people to read the article, or at least to read the description. The very first part of your description is your chance to convince people to click through to the article, but you used it to tell an anecdote about why you wrote the article.

  I’m the kind of person who often reads articles all the way through, but I have discovered that most people lose interest quickly and will stop reading.

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  • wischi@programming.dev ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I tried to make the title the exact opposite of clickbait. There are no unanswered questions on purpose. No “Find out if a kilobyte is 1024 bytes or 1000 bytes”. I think people are smart enough that I not just reiterate for 20min why a kilobyte is 1000 bytes but instead go into more details.

    The main problem is probably that people won’t sacrifice 20min of there time on something they are not sure if it’s a good read but the only thing I can do is trying to encourage them to read it anyway.

    There are not ads, no tracking, no cookies, no login, no newsletter, no paywall. I don’t benefit if you read it. I’d like to clear up misconceptions but I can’t force people to read it.

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    • logicbomb@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I don’t benefit if you read it.

      You don’t benefit financially, but there are other benefits. For example, you specifically asked for feedback, and you have received some.

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      • wischi@programming.dev ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I don’t get feedback just because you read it. I’m thankful for feedback but my sentence was accurate. I don’t benefit if you read it.

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• sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  But that’s also a simple answer: kilo is a metric prefix that means 1000, so kilobyte means 1000 bytes. The historical context is the history of the metric system, which is much older than modern computers.

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