this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2023
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Technology

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148
Why a kilobyte is 1000 and not 1024 bytes (zeta.one)
submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
210 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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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[โ€“] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The mistake is thinking that a 1000 byte file takes up a 1000 bytes on any storage medium. The mistake is thinking that it even matters if a kB means 1000 or 1024 bytes. It only matters for some programmers, and to those 1024 is the number that matters.

Disregarding reality in favor of pedantics is the real mistake.

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

I dunno it makes up a few gigabytes of lost storage on a terrabyte hard drive.