5 ms·

All words are made up. They weren’t handed down from a deity, they were made up by humans to communicate ideas to other humans. “Kilo” can mean what we want i

by tombert 9mo ago

All words are made up. They weren’t handed down from a deity, they were made up by humans to communicate ideas to other humans. “Kilo” can mean what we want in different contexts and it’s really no more or less correct as long as both parties understand and are consistent in their usage to each other.

ablob 9mo ago
I find it concerning that kilo can mean both 10^3 and 2^10 depending on context. And that the context is not if you're speaking about computery stuff, but which program you use has almost certainly lead to avoidable bugs.
- ralferoo 9mo ago
  That latter part is only true since marketing people decided they knew better about computer related things than computer people. It's also stupid because it's rare than anyone outside of programming even needs to care exactly how many bytes something else. At the scales that each of kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte etc are used, the smaller values are pretty much insignificant details. If you ask for a kilogram of rice, then you probably care more about that 1kg of rice is the same as the last 1kg of rice you got, you probably wouldn't even care how many grams that is. Similarly, if you order 1 ton of rice, you do care exactly how many grams it is, or do you just care that this 1 ton is the same as that 1 ton? This whole stupidity started because hard disk manufacturers wanted to make their drives sound bigger than they actually were. At the time, everybody buying hard disks knew about this deception and just put up with it. We'd buy their 2GB drive and think to ourselves, "OK so we have 1.86 real GB". And that was the end of it. Can you just imagine if manufacturers started advertising computers as having 34.3GB of RAM? Everybody would know it was nonsense and call it 32GB anyway.
- kazinator 9mo ago
  The "which program you use" confusion was instigated by the idiots insisting that we should have metric kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes (cheered on by crooked storage manufacturers). Before all that nonsense, it was crystal clear: a megabyte in storage was unambiguously 1024 x 1024 bytes --- with the exception of crooked mass storage manufacturers. There was some confusion, to be sure, but the partial success of attempt to redefine the prefixes to their power-of-ten meanings has caused more confusion.
  - fc417fc802 9mo ago
    Now that RAM prices have spiked perhaps manufacturers should try marketing it in power of ten seven bit bytes.
    - account42 9mo ago
      Since DDR5 has on-chip ECC bits they could just include those in the marketing number.
- fc417fc802 9mo ago
  Not as far as I can tell. There's power of 10 bits and power of 2 bytes. I've never seen the inverse of those in an actual real world scenario outside of storage manufacturers gaming the numbers but even then the context is once again perfectly clear.
throw0101c 9mo ago
>> It doesn't matter. "kilo" means 1000. People are free to use it wrong if they wish. > All words are made up. Yes, and the made up words of kilo and kibi were given specific definitions by the people who made them up: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix > […] as long as both parties understand and are consistent in their usage to each other. And if they don't? What happens then? Perhaps it would be easier to use the words definitions as they are set up in standards and regulations so context is less of an issue. * https://xkcd.com/1860/ https://xkcd.com/1860/
- tombert 9mo ago
  I don't think that the xkcd is relevant here, because I'm arguing that both parties know what the other is talking about. I haven't implicitly changed the definition because most people assume that kilobyte is 1024 bytes. Yeah, sure, it's "wrong" in some sense, but language is about communicating ideas between two people; if the communication is successful than the word is "correct".
- timschmidt 9mo ago
  > Yes, and the made up words of kilo and kibi were given specific definitions by the people who made them up Good for them. People make up their own definitions for words all the time. Some of those people even try to get others to adopt their definition. Very few are ever successful. Because language is about communicating shared meaning. And there is a great deal of cultural inertia behind the kilo = 2^10 definition in computer science and adjacent fields.
  - moi2388 9mo ago
    That also makes your comment unreadable, no idea what the definition of any word in your comment means anymore. Can’t use a dictionary, those bastards try to get us to adopt their definitions.
    - timschmidt 9mo ago
nixpulvis 9mo ago
That's a terribly nihilistic outlook on language. We agree to meaning to communicate and progress without endless debate and confusion. SI is pretty clear for a reason.
- tombert 9mo ago
  > We agree to meaning to communicate and progress without endless debate and confusion. We decidedly do not do that. There's a whole term for new terms that arbitrarily get injected or redefined by new people: "slang". I don't understand a lot of the terms teenagers say now, because there's lots of slang that I don't know because I don't use TikTok and I'm thirty-something without kids so I don't hang out with teenagers. I'm sure it was the same when I was a teenager, and I suspect this has been going on since antiquity. New terms are made up all the time, but there's plenty of times existing words get redefined. An easy one, I say "cool" all the time, but generally I'm not talking about temperature when I say it. If I said "cool" to refer to something that I like in 1920's America, they would say that's not the correct use of the word. SI units are useful, but ultimately colloquialisms exist and will always exist. If I say kilobyte and mean 1024 bytes, and if the person on the other end knows that I mean 1024 bytes, that's fine and I don't think it's "nihilistic".
  - schoen 9mo ago
    You could think of the SI as a form of language planning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_planning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_planning (Then you could decide what you think about language planning.)
  - nixpulvis 9mo ago
    I didn't say all language is planned and agreed on. But we absolutely do plan and agree on things.
- tuyiown 9mo ago
  > That's a terribly nihilistic outlook on language. I'm pretty sure any linguist will agree with this definition. All language normalisation is an afterthought.
NewJazz 9mo ago
Yes! (And by that I mean "what the fuck, no...")
bigDinosaur 9mo ago
All you've done is created a homonym for no good reason at all.
SturgeonsLaw 9mo ago
> “Kilo” can mean what we want in different contexts Fair enough. 1000 watts is a kilowatt 1000 hertz is a kilohertz 1000 metres is a kilometre 1000 litres is a kilolitre 1000 joules is a kilojoule 1000 volts is a kilovolt 1000 newtons is a kilonewton 1000 pascals is a kilopascal 1024 bytes is a kilobyte, because that's what we're used to and we don't want to change to a new prefix
- OJFord 9mo ago
  It's not even inconsistent if we consider kilo as meaning 10^3 in base 10 and 2^10 in base 2, rather than just '1000 times' always.
  - bhokbah 9mo ago
    Translation: It's not inconsistent if we consider the deviation from the rule as a second rule. Any future deviation will get their own rule. Perfectly consistent
    - OJFord 9mo ago
      I don't think that's fair, I'm just saying considering kilo to mean 1000x in all bases is too narrow as a definition. Is 'car' a 'petrol-powered four-wheel transportation device with human-operated left-hand control'?
      - deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
- 1718627440 9mo ago
  Watt, hertz, meter, joule, volt, newton and pascal are all SI units, a byte is not.

by tombert 9mo ago

ablob 9mo ago

I find it concerning that kilo can mean both 10^3 and 2^10 depending on context. And that the context is not if you're speaking about computery stuff, but which program you use has almost certainly lead to avoidable bugs.

ralferoo 9mo ago
That latter part is only true since marketing people decided they knew better about computer related things than computer people. It's also stupid because it's rare than anyone outside of programming even needs to care exactly how many bytes something else. At the scales that each of kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte etc are used, the smaller values are pretty much insignificant details. If you ask for a kilogram of rice, then you probably care more about that 1kg of rice is the same as the last 1kg of rice you got, you probably wouldn't even care how many grams that is. Similarly, if you order 1 ton of rice, you do care exactly how many grams it is, or do you just care that this 1 ton is the same as that 1 ton? This whole stupidity started because hard disk manufacturers wanted to make their drives sound bigger than they actually were. At the time, everybody buying hard disks knew about this deception and just put up with it. We'd buy their 2GB drive and think to ourselves, "OK so we have 1.86 real GB". And that was the end of it. Can you just imagine if manufacturers started advertising computers as having 34.3GB of RAM? Everybody would know it was nonsense and call it 32GB anyway.
kazinator 9mo ago
The "which program you use" confusion was instigated by the idiots insisting that we should have metric kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes (cheered on by crooked storage manufacturers). Before all that nonsense, it was crystal clear: a megabyte in storage was unambiguously 1024 x 1024 bytes --- with the exception of crooked mass storage manufacturers. There was some confusion, to be sure, but the partial success of attempt to redefine the prefixes to their power-of-ten meanings has caused more confusion.
- fc417fc802 9mo ago
  Now that RAM prices have spiked perhaps manufacturers should try marketing it in power of ten seven bit bytes.
  - account42 9mo ago
    Since DDR5 has on-chip ECC bits they could just include those in the marketing number.
fc417fc802 9mo ago
Not as far as I can tell. There's power of 10 bits and power of 2 bytes. I've never seen the inverse of those in an actual real world scenario outside of storage manufacturers gaming the numbers but even then the context is once again perfectly clear.

throw0101c 9mo ago

>> It doesn't matter. "kilo" means 1000. People are free to use it wrong if they wish. > All words are made up. Yes, and the made up words of kilo and kibi were given specific definitions by the people who made them up: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix > […] as long as both parties understand and are consistent in their usage to each other. And if they don't? What happens then? Perhaps it would be easier to use the words definitions as they are set up in standards and regulations so context is less of an issue. * https://xkcd.com/1860/ https://xkcd.com/1860/

tombert 9mo ago
I don't think that the xkcd is relevant here, because I'm arguing that both parties know what the other is talking about. I haven't implicitly changed the definition because most people assume that kilobyte is 1024 bytes. Yeah, sure, it's "wrong" in some sense, but language is about communicating ideas between two people; if the communication is successful than the word is "correct".
timschmidt 9mo ago
> Yes, and the made up words of kilo and kibi were given specific definitions by the people who made them up Good for them. People make up their own definitions for words all the time. Some of those people even try to get others to adopt their definition. Very few are ever successful. Because language is about communicating shared meaning. And there is a great deal of cultural inertia behind the kilo = 2^10 definition in computer science and adjacent fields.
- moi2388 9mo ago
  That also makes your comment unreadable, no idea what the definition of any word in your comment means anymore. Can’t use a dictionary, those bastards try to get us to adopt their definitions.
  - timschmidt 9mo ago

nixpulvis 9mo ago

That's a terribly nihilistic outlook on language. We agree to meaning to communicate and progress without endless debate and confusion. SI is pretty clear for a reason.

tombert 9mo ago
> We agree to meaning to communicate and progress without endless debate and confusion. We decidedly do not do that. There's a whole term for new terms that arbitrarily get injected or redefined by new people: "slang". I don't understand a lot of the terms teenagers say now, because there's lots of slang that I don't know because I don't use TikTok and I'm thirty-something without kids so I don't hang out with teenagers. I'm sure it was the same when I was a teenager, and I suspect this has been going on since antiquity. New terms are made up all the time, but there's plenty of times existing words get redefined. An easy one, I say "cool" all the time, but generally I'm not talking about temperature when I say it. If I said "cool" to refer to something that I like in 1920's America, they would say that's not the correct use of the word. SI units are useful, but ultimately colloquialisms exist and will always exist. If I say kilobyte and mean 1024 bytes, and if the person on the other end knows that I mean 1024 bytes, that's fine and I don't think it's "nihilistic".
- schoen 9mo ago
  You could think of the SI as a form of language planning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_planning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_planning (Then you could decide what you think about language planning.)
- nixpulvis 9mo ago
  I didn't say all language is planned and agreed on. But we absolutely do plan and agree on things.
tuyiown 9mo ago
> That's a terribly nihilistic outlook on language. I'm pretty sure any linguist will agree with this definition. All language normalisation is an afterthought.

NewJazz 9mo ago

Yes! (And by that I mean "what the fuck, no...")

bigDinosaur 9mo ago

All you've done is created a homonym for no good reason at all.

SturgeonsLaw 9mo ago

> “Kilo” can mean what we want in different contexts Fair enough. 1000 watts is a kilowatt 1000 hertz is a kilohertz 1000 metres is a kilometre 1000 litres is a kilolitre 1000 joules is a kilojoule 1000 volts is a kilovolt 1000 newtons is a kilonewton 1000 pascals is a kilopascal 1024 bytes is a kilobyte, because that's what we're used to and we don't want to change to a new prefix

OJFord 9mo ago
It's not even inconsistent if we consider kilo as meaning 10^3 in base 10 and 2^10 in base 2, rather than just '1000 times' always.
- bhokbah 9mo ago
  Translation: It's not inconsistent if we consider the deviation from the rule as a second rule. Any future deviation will get their own rule. Perfectly consistent
  - OJFord 9mo ago
    I don't think that's fair, I'm just saying considering kilo to mean 1000x in all bases is too narrow as a definition. Is 'car' a 'petrol-powered four-wheel transportation device with human-operated left-hand control'?
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
1718627440 9mo ago
Watt, hertz, meter, joule, volt, newton and pascal are all SI units, a byte is not.