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Whats your hot take on something that doesnt matter at all?
(piefed.blahaj.zone)
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this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2025
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A kilobyte is 1024 bytes. Yes, I know "kilo" means 1000 - I don't care since it's obvious from context.
Back in the day, using base-10 prefixes for base-2 stuff was considered fine. 1024 is close enough to 1000, after all. It only changed when some dickhead realised that, by insisting that a kilobyte (and the bigger units) was 1000 bytes, they could sell you less hard drive space without lowering the number on the box.
If you don't believe me, look at your RAM. Nobody's ever sold RAM by the "gibibyte".
If you want to be upset, look at internet speeds, they sell you mbps (megabits per second), but the standard measurement is mbps (megabytes per second), so they sell you a number 8 times bigger than the one you get.
That ones actually fine IMO because they advertise Mbps which is fairly clearly different from MBps (b vs B, bit vs byte), and very easy to convert between.
You've actually got that a bit twisted. Not saying the bigger number doesn't benifit the ISPs, but it actually is the industry standard to use bits per second when measuring throughput. This is because data transfer is a continuous stream, whereas data at rest is chunked so when talking about storage we use bytes. It's a bit weird but you get used to it.
thanks for the answer, it would be nice if we just used a single unit, and it is annoying that both are mbps.
Ah, I see the confusion, and it's understandable. Look for if the "B" is capitalized or not.
Mb, Gb, etc = bits
MB, GB, etc = bytes
Think the larger letter is the larger size.
yhea, once you know you know, like the difference between pyrex and PYREX.
however, is still bullshit and designed to confuse people.
See that's where I think you're still missing it. These are technical terms used by technical people. They were not designed to confuse people, they were designed to clarify the units IT people use in their work.
You might say this is confusing to the general public, and you may be right, but the people making this stuff weren't thinking about average people at all. The idea these numbers would be plastered all over ISPs and SSDs weren't even a consideration.
So it's not bullshit, it's not designed to confuse, it's just a technical unit that is not well understood by most people, yet we live in a time when tech-specs are marketed by companies to average people.
i think we both agree but differently.
my point is that if a unit is used for public facing specs. it shouldn't be confusing. doing so is confusing. experts in their field area one thing, but we can't expect the general public to know mbps and MBps are different things.
I see what you mean, but what do you propose? The units already exist and they are the industry standard. Should new units of measure be made up just for consumers, or should all numbers but on consumer devices be locked to using only one of them? Who decides what's consumer packaging and what's not?
It's a sticky situation. I think while it may be confusing, the vast majority of people aren't paying much attention and it's probably not a big enough deal to do anything about it. The units are most often used correctly as in I can't imagine an ISP or a router advertising their speeds in Bytes, likewise I don't see any RAM or storage advertised in bits, so it's usually an apples to apples comparison anyway.