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[return to "1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?"]
1. waffle+pC[view] [source] 2026-02-03 19:24:06
>>surpri+(OP)
The author decidedly has expert syndrome -- they deny both the history and rational behind memory units nomenclature. Memory measurements evolved utilizing binary organizational patterns used in computing architectures. While a proud French pedant might agree with the decimal normalization of memory units discussed, it aligns more closely to the metric system, and it may have benefits for laypeople, it fails to account for how memory is partitioned in historic and modern computing.
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2. ozozoz+mY[view] [source] 2026-02-03 21:05:19
>>waffle+pC
It’s not them denying it, it’s the LLM that generated this slop.

All they had to say was that the KiB et. al. were introduced in 1998, and the adoption has been slow.

And not “but a kilobyte can be 1000,” as if it’s an effort issue.

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3. kevin_+Uv1[view] [source] 2026-02-04 00:06:15
>>ozozoz+mY
They are managed by different standards organizations. One doesn't like the other encroaching on its turf. "kilo" has only one official meaning as a base-10 scalar.
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4. dietr1+oP1[view] [source] 2026-02-04 02:15:15
>>kevin_+Uv1
I don't think of base 10 being meaningful in binary computers. Indexing 1k needs 10 bits regardless if you wanted 1000 or 1024, and the base 10 leaves some awkward holes.

In my mind base 10 only became relevant when disk drive manufacturers came up with disks with "weird" disk sizes (maybe they needed to reserve some space for internals, or it's just that the disk platters didn't like powers of two) and realised that a base 10 system gave them better looking marketing numbers. Who wants a 2.9TB drive when you can get a 3TB* drive for the same price?

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5. manana+612[view] [source] 2026-02-04 03:59:56
>>dietr1+oP1
Buy an SSD, and you can get both at the same time!

That is to say, all the (high-end/“gamer”) consumer SSDs that I’ve checked use 10% overprovisioning and achieve that by exposing a given number of binary TB of physical flash (e.g. a “2TB” SSD will have 2×1024⁴ bytes’ worth of flash chips) as the same number of decimal TB of logical addresses (e.g. that same SSD will appear to the OS as 2×1000⁴ bytes of storage space). And this makes sense: you want a round number on your sticker to make the marketing people happy, you aren’t going to make non-binary-sized chips, and 10% overprovisioning is OK-ish (in reality, probably too low, but consumers don’t shop based on the endurance metrics even if they should).

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6. userbi+8a2[view] [source] 2026-02-04 05:33:31
>>manana+612
you aren’t going to make non-binary-sized chips

TLC flash actually has a total number of bits that's a multiple of 3, but it and QLC are so unreliable that there's a significant amount of extra bits used for error correction and such.

SSDs haven't been real binary sizes since the early days of SLC flash which didn't need more than basic ECC. (I have an old 16MB USB drive, which actually has a user-accessible capacity of 16,777,216 bytes. The NAND flash itself actually stores 17,301,504 bytes.)

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