Why a kilobyte is 1000 and not 1024 bytes - eviltoast
zeta.one
zeta.one
Blog about random technical stuff.

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.

  • wischi@programming.devOPEnglish
    1016·
    11 months ago

    SI prefixes are literally just base ten and not really about human psychology.

    • Victor@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      11 months ago

      I think they mean it’s easier to refer to powers of 1000 with the SI units, rather than of 1024 as with Kibi and the lot. Especially higher up in the prefixes, because it starts to diverge more and more from the expected value.