Comment on Why a kilobyte is 1000 and not 1024 bytes
wischi@programming.dev 5 months agoDid you read the post? The problem I have is redefining the kilo because of a mathematical fluke.
You certainly can write a mass in base 60 and kg, there is nothing wrong about that, but calling 3600 gramm a “kilogram” because you think it’s convenient that 3600 (60^2) is “close to” 1000 so you just call it a kilogram, because that’s exactly what’s happening with binary and 1024.
If you find the time you should read the post and if not at least the section “(Un)lucky coincidence”.
rockSlayer@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I started reading it, but the distain towards measuring in base 2 turned me off. Ultimately though this is all nerd rage bait. I’m annoyed that kilobytes aren’t measured as 1024 anymore, but it’s also not a big deal because we still have standardized units in base 2.
I do think there is a problem with marketing, because even the most know-nothing users are primed to know that a kilobyte is measured differently from a kilogram, so people feel a little screwed when their drive reads 931GiB instead of 1TB.
bigredgiraffe@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Yeah I’m with you, I read most of it but I just don’t know where the disdain comes from. At most scales of infrastructure anymore you can use them interchangeably because the difference is immaterial in practical applications.
Like if I am going to provision 2TB I don’t really care if it’s 2000 or 2048GB, I’ll be resizing it when it gets to 1800 either way, and if I needed to actually store 2TB I would create a 3TB volume, storage is cheap and my time calculating the difference is not.
wewbull@feddit.uk 5 months ago
It’s not 2000 Vs 2048. It’s 1,862 Vs 2048
The GB get smaller too.