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Comment by gorgoiler | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone actually have a problem with kB meaning 1024 bytes and MB meaning 1<<20 bytes, etc?

Sure, the kilo-, mega- etc prefixes might literally mean 10^x but as long as one is raised with the understanding that to do so is overly literal, then it’s never really a problem. base = 2 if context == computer else 10

Kibi and mibi feel like this generation’s centripetal force. Another popular and unsolicited explanation I get a lot is about equality vs equity. The distinction might be real but after being corrected for the nth time one feels like I am being corrected for the sake of it than for any real reason.

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> Does anyone actually have a problem with kB meaning 1024 bytes and MB meaning 1<<20 bytes, etc?

The manufacturers of memory and hard drives seem to have always had a problem with that. They’ve preferred to use KB=1000 bytes exactly, MB=10^6 bytes, GB=10^9 bytes, etc. for as long as I’ve been buying computers, which is long enough to remember when computers didn’t come with MBs.

People don't use it like you say. My SSD that says "500 GB" on the label is actually only 500e9 bytes or 465 gibibytes. If I see a file size listed somewhere, I never know which version of the unit it's using so I tend to think in terms of bytes anywhere that the difference matters.

The shrinkage is all just Sales and Marketing ignoring engineering sensibilities in the quest for a bigger number on the box.

The underlying storage cell arrangement is still (typically) 4096 bytes in size. (or 65536 (64KB) for many embedded devices).

The device probably has about 10% of it's real storage capacity dedicated to ECC and other 'administrative' uses for provisioning the user facing storage.

It doesn't matter the reason. At the end of the day, it's used inconsistently so you can't just treat GB as meaning GiB when it's to do with computers and the units have become a confused muddle.

Context is everything and I’m fine with that.

I can handle the base2 / base10 problem by using context. I don’t need a clumsy new prefix.

If someone on the street asked you how much memory your computer has, how would you answer? “Seven gigs”? “Seven gibs”? “Seven gibibytes”?

> I can handle the base2 / base10 problem by using context. I don’t need a clumsy new prefix.

I feel numbers ure a much more powerfull abstraction than any particular unit, so when there is friction like this between conventions, I prefer to favor the number. Giga is 10⁹ and Gibi is 2¹⁰⁰ whatever the actual unit behind it.

Perhaps you have a clearer picture of when GB is a power of ten and when it's a power of 2. Now I think of it, maybe it's only hard drives that use powers of ten? Hmm, what about SD cards? Internet bandwidth? Anything that might be labeled for marketing purposes? To me it's still a blur.

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