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I thought we were taking about SI units, their general meaning, and the technical details of computers. Barrels seem completely unrelated to those things, being

I thought we were taking about SI units, their general meaning, and the technical details of computers. Barrels seem completely unrelated to those things, being neither a SI unit, nor having to do with computers. Like a lot of arguments, we're arguing over the definition of a word here ("kilobyte"), nothing more. I'm asking why technical details about a computer are so important they can override the generally understood (and well defined) meaning of that word.

robxorb 2y ago
> I'm asking why technical details about a computer are so important they can override the generally understood (and well defined) meaning of that word. Because the technical details about a computer are important when describing its technical characteristics. In short, context matters, and we adapt the meaning of words by the context they're used in all the time. It's ordinary. In fact, it's so ordinary in this particular case, that all we humans did it for decades, before a weird group not representing the existing organic consensus came along and decided the terms absolutely must be changed, and presented us with extremely silly-sounding ones to replace the existing ones, that of course few adopted, leading to the situation we have today where the existing terms are used interchangably to mean both things, and there is now a greater ambiguity around them than existed before. It wasn't perfect before, but the "solution" made it worse. Therefore, it sucks in practice at meeting its goal, no matter how much sense it may make to the minority that thinks "gibibyte" is something anyone would ever want to say in public, other than in a funny voice to a dog or a baby.