Re:Kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes
by cmovq on Tuesday February 03, 2026 @12:52PM
(#46874428)
The mistake was using the "Kibi" prefix. "Kibibyte" just sounds a bit silly when said out loud.
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"Giga" was considered to sound silly until it became common and we no longer care. "Yotta" sounds silly (to me) now.
Re:Kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes
by sippeangelo on Tuesday February 03, 2026 @02:43PM
(#46876174)
"Tera" always sounded cool though.
Surely you mean Gibi ;)
1.21 Gigawatts doesn't sound silly at all!
Re:Kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes
by NetMageSCW on Wednesday February 04, 2026 @10:32AM
(#46887052)
Did you mean jigawatts?
Yes, 2**10 times this, yes.
Call me calcitrant, reactionary, or whatever, but I will not say kibibyte out loud. It's a dumb word and I'm not using it. It was a horrible choice.
They should call their stupid SI power-of-10 units kisibyte instead.
Re:Kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes
by nacozarina on Wednesday February 04, 2026 @07:11AM
(#46884903)
you'll eat your kibbles & bits and like it !
The Commdore 64 has 64 kibibytes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#Multiple-byte_units
"the C64 took its name from its 64 kilobytes (65,536 bytes) of RAM"
It has 64 kilobytes. The definition of kilobyte and megabyte (and I presume gigabyte, among people who could afford caring about them) were universally agreed to be binary.
When I read "KiB" I say "kib" and it's fine. Similar for GiB, TiB, PiB.
"I bought a two tib SSD."
"I just want to serve five pibs."
>"I bought a two tib SSD."
no you didn't, that doesn't exist, you bought 2 trillion bytes, 99 billion bytes short
Actually, it sounds very serious and appropriate.
Studio Kibi
Re:Kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes
by jihadjihad on Tuesday February 03, 2026 @02:27PM
(#46875984)
"mebi" and "gibi" aren't any better, last one in particular if you say it as "jibby-bytes"
Does it really matter if it sounds silly?
Re:Kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes
by Blackthorn on Tuesday February 03, 2026 @01:09PM
(#46874715)
Considering it meant people didn't use it, yes.
I usually just say kilobyte when speaking, and say “binary kilobyte” or “decimal kilobyte” if it’s not clear from context. I still (usually, but I forget) use the IEC symbols when I mean binary and the SI symbols when I mean decimal. The extra ‘i’ doesn’t cost that much.