alt Hacker NewsThis is the bit (sic) that drives me nuts.
RAM had binary sizing for perfectly practical reasons. Nothing else did (until SSDs inherited RAM's architecture).
We apply it to all the wrong things mostly because the first home computers had nothing but RAM, so binary sizing was the only explanation that was ever needed. And 50 years later we're sticking to that story.
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Literally every number in a computer is base-2, not just RAM addressing. Everything is ulimately bits, pins, and wires. The physical and logical interface between your oddly sized disk and your computer? Also some base-2.
Nope. The first home computers like the C64 had RAM and sectors on disc, which in case of the C64 means 256 bytes. And there it is again, the smaller base of 1024.
Just later, some marketing assholes thought they could better sell their hard drives when they lie about the size and weasel out of legal issues with redefining the units.
RAM having binary sizing is a perfectly good reason for hard drives having binary sized sectors (more efficient swap, memory maps, etc), which in turn justifies all of hard disks being sized in binary.