this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2023
148 points (70.0% liked)

Technology

59292 readers
3884 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (9 children)

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.

1024 = 2^10^

Edit: Oops.. It's 2^10^, not 2^7^
Sorry y'all.. ๐Ÿ˜…

[โ€“] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (2 children)
[โ€“] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

Yeah, I deserve that. Iโ€™m just gonna leave my typo. Thanks for the laugh!

load more comments (6 replies)