3 ms·

kibibyte, mebibyte, and gibibyte are terms I refuse to use, period.

repiret 4y ago
I refuse to say them outloud, but I also refuse to misuse the Si prefixes, and so I'll write KiB or MiB or GiB when I mean 2^10/2^20/2^30 bytes, and file bugs against anybody using KB as 1024 bytes.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
  kB. 1000 bytes is 1 kB
wyldfire 4y ago
It sounds silly or pedantic sometimes but if you are specifying how a storage subsystem must behave, it's best to use unambiguous units for things like capacity and throughput. That way suppliers aren't confused and can't game the units.
- selfhoster11 4y ago
  Storage shouldn't be counted in SI units in the first place. Throughput is arguably semi-legitimate to count in SI, but for storage? There is literally no reason other than marketing.
  - noSyncCloud 4y ago
    Counterpoint: everything should be measured in SI units.
    - selfhoster11 4y ago
      Counterpoint: disk sector sizes are not multiples or clean fractions of 1000, and it's unlikely to change anytime soon because we'll likely store files as octets of binary information (binary digits) for the rest of time. It makes no sense to count it in 1000-based SI units. You'll perpetually mis-align the data in whichever underlying storage technology you're using, and it's bad for performance and resource consumption.
      - diroussel 4y ago
        As much as i dislike the names, kibibytes etc, it makes sense not to re-use SI unit prefixes. SI did comes first and it broadly applicable. Ask for disk sector alignment; we don’t have disk sectors any more, we use SSDs with blocks. And the sizes don’t need to have a neat number of kilobytes. Just the same as a litre of water doesn’t have a neat number of H2O molecules in it.
    - wyldfire 4y ago
      Except for unfortunately because of popular conventions the SI unit names are ambiguous with the power-of-two unit names. Maybe your point is that no one should have used "kilo" prefix to describe 1024. And yes that would've been great. But they did and now it's very much standard and expected to describe kilobytes as 1024 bytes. So now we are stuck with the ambiguous terms that the SI standardized on. Those are consistent with the meanings of other Greek prefixes, but if the standard unit can be easily confused with another standard, it's not as useful.
Joker_vD 4y ago
Just call 1024 bytes a "K", 1024 Ks an "M", and 1024 Ms a "G" :)

I refuse to say them outloud, but I also refuse to misuse the Si prefixes, and so I'll write KiB or MiB or GiB when I mean 2^10/2^20/2^30 bytes, and file bugs against anybody using KB as 1024 bytes.

8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
kB. 1000 bytes is 1 kB

wyldfire 4y ago

It sounds silly or pedantic sometimes but if you are specifying how a storage subsystem must behave, it's best to use unambiguous units for things like capacity and throughput. That way suppliers aren't confused and can't game the units.

selfhoster11 4y ago
Storage shouldn't be counted in SI units in the first place. Throughput is arguably semi-legitimate to count in SI, but for storage? There is literally no reason other than marketing.
- noSyncCloud 4y ago
  Counterpoint: everything should be measured in SI units.
  - selfhoster11 4y ago
    Counterpoint: disk sector sizes are not multiples or clean fractions of 1000, and it's unlikely to change anytime soon because we'll likely store files as octets of binary information (binary digits) for the rest of time. It makes no sense to count it in 1000-based SI units. You'll perpetually mis-align the data in whichever underlying storage technology you're using, and it's bad for performance and resource consumption.
    - diroussel 4y ago
      As much as i dislike the names, kibibytes etc, it makes sense not to re-use SI unit prefixes. SI did comes first and it broadly applicable. Ask for disk sector alignment; we don’t have disk sectors any more, we use SSDs with blocks. And the sizes don’t need to have a neat number of kilobytes. Just the same as a litre of water doesn’t have a neat number of H2O molecules in it.
  - wyldfire 4y ago
    Except for unfortunately because of popular conventions the SI unit names are ambiguous with the power-of-two unit names. Maybe your point is that no one should have used "kilo" prefix to describe 1024. And yes that would've been great. But they did and now it's very much standard and expected to describe kilobytes as 1024 bytes. So now we are stuck with the ambiguous terms that the SI standardized on. Those are consistent with the meanings of other Greek prefixes, but if the standard unit can be easily confused with another standard, it's not as useful.

Joker_vD 4y ago

Just call 1024 bytes a "K", 1024 Ks an "M", and 1024 Ms a "G" :)