this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2023
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153
Why a kilobyte is 1000 and not 1024 bytes (zeta.one)
submitted 11 months ago by wischi to c/[email protected]
219 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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[–] [email protected] 22 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

A kilobyte (kB) is 1000 bytes, that's what the prefix kilo means. A kibibyte (KiB) is 1024 bytes (the "bi" in the prefix means base 2 or binary). People often confuse them, but they're similar enough for smaller units, 10^3 ~ 2^10.

Oh and at first, kilobyte was used for both amounts, which is why kibibytes were introduced to fix the confusion, which perhaps was a bit late anyway.