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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Well it’s because computer science has been around for 60+ years and computers are binary machines. It was natural for everything to be base 2. The most infuriating part is why drive manufacturers arbitrarily started calling 1000 bytes a kilobyte, 1000 kilobytes a megabyte, and 1000 megabytes a gigabyte, and a 1000 gigabytes a terabyte when until then a 1 TB was 1099511627776 bytes. They did this simply because it made their drives appear 10% bigger. So good ol’ shrinkflation. You could make drives 10% smaller and sell them for the same price.
Pretty obvious that you didn’t read the article. If you find the time I’d like to encourage you to read it. I hope it clears up some misconceptions and make things clearer why even in those 60+ years it was always intellectually dishonest to call 1024 byte a kilobyte.
You should at least read “(Un)lucky coincidence”
A lot of people are replying as if OP asked a question. It’s a link to a blog post explaining why a kilobyte is 1000 and not 1024 bytes (exactly as the title says!). OP knows the answer, in fact they know it so well they wrote an extensive post about it.
Thank you for the write up! You should re-check the spelling and grammar as some sections had some troubles. I have a sentence I need to go to the post to get, so let me edit this later!
Edit: the second half of this sentence is a mess: “The factors don’t solely consist of twos, but ten are certainly lot of them.” Otherwise nothing jumped out at me but I would reread it just in case!
I also assume that people are answering that way because they thought it was a question.
However, it’s also possible that they saw it described as a 20 minute read, and knew that the answer actually takes about 10 seconds to read, and figured that they’d save people 19 minutes and 50 seconds.
It’s true that the actual “story” is very short. 1 kB is 1000 bytes and 1 KiB is 1024 bytes. But the post is not about this, but about why calling 1024 a kilobyte always was wrong even in a historical context and even though almost everybody did that.
It’s true that the actual “story” is very short. 1 kB is 1000 bytes and 1 KiB is 1024 bytes. But the post is not about this, but about why calling 1024 a kilobyte always was wrong even in a historical context and even though almost everybody did that.
Yes. But it does raise the question of why you didn’t say that in either your title:
Why a kilobyte is 1000 and not 1024 bytes
or your description:
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.
The title and description were your two chances to convince people to read your article. But what they say is that it’s a 20 minute read for 10 seconds of information. There is nothing that says there will be historical context.
I get that you might want to make the title more clickbaitey, but why write a description out if you’re not going to tell what’s actually in the article?
So, that’s my feedback. I hope this helps.
One other bit of closely-related feedback, for your writing, in general. Always start with the most important part. Assume that people will stop reading unless you convince them otherwise. Your title should convince people to read the article, or at least to read the description. The very first part of your description is your chance to convince people to click through to the article, but you used it to tell an anecdote about why you wrote the article.
I’m the kind of person who often reads articles all the way through, but I have discovered that most people lose interest quickly and will stop reading.
I tried to make the title the exact opposite of clickbait. There are no unanswered questions on purpose. No “Find out if a kilobyte is 1024 bytes or 1000 bytes”. I think people are smart enough that I not just reiterate for 20min why a kilobyte is 1000 bytes but instead go into more details.
The main problem is probably that people won’t sacrifice 20min of there time on something they are not sure if it’s a good read but the only thing I can do is trying to encourage them to read it anyway.
There are not ads, no tracking, no cookies, no login, no newsletter, no paywall. I don’t benefit if you read it. I’d like to clear up misconceptions but I can’t force people to read it.
I don’t benefit if you read it.
You don’t benefit financially, but there are other benefits. For example, you specifically asked for feedback, and you have received some.
You asked for feedback, so here is my feedback:
The article is okay. I read most of it, but not all of it, because it seemed overly worded for the sentiment. It could have been condensed quite a bit. I would argue the focus should be more on the fact that there should be a standard in technical documentation, OS’s, specification sheets, etc. That’s the part that impacts most people, and the reason they should care. But that kind of gets lost in all the text.
Your replies here come off as pretty condescending. You should anticipate most people not reading the article before commenting. Just pay them no attention, or reiterate what you already stated in the article. You shouldn’t just say “did you read the article” and then “it’s in this section of the article”. Just like how people comment on youtube before watching the video, people will comment on the topic without reading the article.
Maybe they didn’t realize it was an article, maybe they knew it was an article and chose not to read it, or maybe they read it and disagree with some of the things you said. It’s okay for people to disagree with something you said, even if you sincerely believe something you said isn’t a matter of opinion (even though it probably is). You can agree to disagree and move on with your life.
Thank you for taking the time to read it and your feedback.
Your replies here come off as pretty condescending.
That was definitely never my intention but a lot of people here said something similar. I should probably work on my English (I’m not a native speaker) to phrase things more carefully.
You shouldn’t just say “did you read the article” and then “it’s in this section of the article”
It never crossed my mind this could be interpreted in a negative way. I tried to gauge if someone read it and still disagreed or if someone didn’t read it and disagrees, because those situations are two different things, at least for me. The hint with the sections was also meant as a pointer because I know that most people won’t read the entire thing but maybe have 5min on their hand to read the relevant section.
I feel bad for you OP, I get this a lot and I’m totally gonna go there because I feel your pain and your article was fantastic! I read almost every word ;p
This phenomena stems from an aversion to high-confidence people who make highly logical arguments from low self-confidence people who basically make themselves feel unworthy/inadequate when justly critiqued/busted. It makes sense for them to feel that way too, I empathize. It’s hard to overcome the vapid rewarding and inflation in school. They should feel cheated and insolent at this whole situation.
I’ll be honest in front of the internet; people (in majority mind you, say 70-80% of Americans, I’m American) do not read every word of the article with full attention because of ever present and prevelant distractions, attention deficit, and motivation. They skip sentences or even paragraphs of things they are expecting they already know, apply bias before the conclusion, do not suspend their own perspective to understand yours for only a brief time, and come from a skeptical position no matter if they agreed with it or not!
In general, people also want to feel they have some valid perspective “truth” (as it’s all relative to them…) of their own to add and they want to be validated and acknowledged for it, as in school.
Guess what though, Corporations, Schools, Market Analysis, Novelists, PR people, Video Game Makers, Communications Managers and Small and Medium Business already know this! They even take a much more, ehh, progressive? approach about it, let’s say. That is, to really not let them speak/feedback, at all. Nearly all comment sections are gone from websites, comment boxes are gone from retail shops, customer service is a bot, technical writers make videos now to go over what they just wrote, Newspapers write for 4th graders, etc., etc.
Nothing you said is even remotely condescending and nothing you said was out of order. Don’t defend yourself in these situations because it’s just encouragement for them to do it again. Don’t take it personally yourself, that is just the state of things.
Improvise, Adapt, Re-engineer, Re-deploy, Overcome, repeat until done.
TL;DR?
“I am smart.”… “Most people have an attention span the length of a yo mama joke.”… “Ramble ramble yada yada yada.”
