• stingpie@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I still use mb and kb as 1024 instead of 1000, because I prefer to not have units switched around from under me. 2^16 will always address 64kb, not 65.

    • Synthead@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      KB is measured in powers of 10, where KiB is measured in powers of 2:

      However, this error is so common that most folks will know what you mean. It’ll only really get you in trouble when you’re accurately comparing sizes of storage and data. There’s a good chance it won’t really matter unless you’re working with code or archiving disks.

      This is also why a “2 TB” hard drive is “smaller than 2 TB.” 2 terabytes is 1.819 tebibytes. Even Windows will incorrectly call TiB units TB and terabyte, so people have often carried a conspiracy theory that drive manufacturers “short you,” or that the missing data somehow has to do with enormous file system metadata.

      • stingpie@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        There are actually two standards here. Kibibytes was introduced later as a way to reduce confusion cause by the uninitiated thinking the JEDEC standard refered to powers of ten instead of two. That’s why I’m saying that 64 kilobytes is equal to 2^16 bytes, because that’s what the original standard was.