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Why a kilobyte is 1000 and not 1024 bytes
(zeta.one)
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this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2023
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Short answer: It's because of binary.
Computers are very good at calculating with powers of two, and because of that a lot of computer concepts use powers of two to make calculations easier.
Edit: Oops.. It's 2^10^, not 2^7^
Sorry y'all.. ๐
FYFY
~~FYFY~~ FTFY FTFY
Yeah, I deserve that. Iโm just gonna leave my typo. Thanks for the laugh!
So the problem is that our decimal number system just sucks. Should have gone with hexadecimal ๐
/Joking, if it isn't obvious. Thank you for the explanation.
Or seximal!
Not that 1024 would be any better, as it's 4424 in base 6.
Long answer
Just to add, I would argue that by definition of prefixes it is 1000.
However there are other terms to use, in this case Kibibyte (kilo binary byte, KiB instead of just KB) that way you are being clear on what you actually mean (particularly a big difference with modern storage/file sizes)
EDIT: Of course the link in the post goes over this, I admit my brain initially glossed over that and I thought it was a question thread