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Why a kilobyte is 1000 and not 1024 bytes (zeta.one)

submitted 11 months ago by wischi@programming.dev to c/technology@lemmy.world

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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.

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[-] CallumWells@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago

I just think that kilobyte should have been 1000 (in binary, so 16 in decimal) bytes and so on. Just keep everything relating to the binary storage in binary. That couldn't ever become confusing, right?

[-] rottingleaf@lemmy.zip 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Because your byte is 10 decimal bits, right? EDIT: Bit is actually an abbreviation, BIT, initially, so it would be what, DIT?.. Dits?..

this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2023

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