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
    03·
    8 months ago

    It’s not as simple as that. A lot of “computer things” are not exact powers of two. A prominent example would be HDDs.

    • Lmaydev@programming.devEnglish
      1·
      8 months ago

      In terms of storage 1000 and 1024 take the same amount of bytes bits to represent. So from a computer point of view 1024 makes a lot more sense.

      It’s just a binary Vs decimal thing. 1000 is not nicely represented in binary the same as 1024 isn’t in decimal.

      Edit: was talking about storing the actual number.