this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2024
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Ukrainian drones now spray 4,000° F thermite streams right into Russian trenches (arstechnica.com)
submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They could have easily used base 2 which is actually connected to how the hardware works and just called it something else

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

I realized why I didn't think of base 2 in my previous reply. For one, hexadecimal (base 16) often used in really low-level programming, as a shorthand for working in base 2 because base 2 is unwieldy. Octal (base 8) was also used, but not so much nowadays. Furthermore, even when working in base 2, they're often grouped into four bits: a nibble. A nibble corresponds to one hexadecimal digit.

Now, I suppose that we're just going to use powers of two, not base-2, so maybe it'd help if we do a comparison. Below is a table that compares some powers of two, the binary prefixes, and the system I described earlier:

Decimal value Value with corresponding binary prefix Hexadecimal Value Value with prefixes based on powers of 16
2^0^ 1 1 1 1
2^4^ 16 16 10 16
2^8^ 256 256 100 256
2^10^ 1 024 1 Ki 400 1 024
2^12^ 4 096 4 Ki 1000 4 096
2^16^ 65 536 64 Ki 1 0000 1 myri
2^20^ 1 048 576 1 Mi 10 0000 16 myri
2^24^ 16 777 216 16 Mi 100 0000 256 myri
2^28^ 268 435 456 256 Mi 1000 0000 4 096 myri
2^30^ 1 073 741 824 1 Gi 4000 0000 16 384 myri
2^32^ 4 294 967 296 4 Gi 1 0000 0000 1 dyri
2^36^ 68 719 476 736 32 Gi 10 0000 0000 16 dyri
2^40^ 1 099 511 627 776 1 Ti 100 0000 0000 256 dyri
2^44^ 17 592 186 044 416 16 Ti 1000 0000 0000 4 096 dyri
2^48^ 281 474 976 710 656 256 Ti 1 0000 0000 0000 1 tryri
2^50^ 1 125 899 906 842 624 1 Pi 4 0000 0000 0000 4 tryri
2^52^ 4 503 599 627 370 496 4 Pi 10 0000 0000 0000 16 tryri
2^56^ 72 057 594 037 927 936 64 Pi 100 0000 0000 0000 256 tryri
2^60^ 1 152 921 504 606 846 976 1 Ei 1000 0000 0000 0000 4 096 tryri
2^64^ 18 446 744 073 709 551 616 16 Ei 1 0000 0000 0000 0000 1 tesri

Each row of the table (except for the rows for 2^10^ and 2^50^) would be requiring a new prefix if we're to be working with powers of 2 (four apart, and more if it'd be three apart instead). Meanwhile, using powers of 16 would require less prefixes, but would require larger numerals before changing over to the next prefix (a maximum of 16^4^ - 1 = 2^16^ - 1 = 65 535)

One thing that works to your argument's favor is the fact that 1024 = 2^10^. But I think that's what caused this entire MiB vs. MB confusion in the first place.

However, having said all that, I would have been happy with just using an entirely different set of prefixes, and kept the values based on 2^10^.