The norm used to be that memory/storage used powers of 2 and data throughput used powers of 10. It was clear in the sense that everyone was following that norm.

The norm used to be that memory/storage used powers of 2 and data throughput used powers of 10. It was clear in the sense that everyone was following that norm. I suppose that the practice to use powers of 2 for memory came to be because binary data buses can address a power of 2 number of memory cells whereas an arbitrary number of bits can be transmitted per second over a channel. This changed when hard drive manufacturers decided to market products using powers of 10...