• Crow@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    The damn imperial system and its weird 1/16 measurements. Why do you people hate 10 step counting?

    • Saik0@lemmy.saik0.com
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      10 months ago

      You actually can’t be mad about this one. This is effectively binary which you use all the time without knowing it. And even worse, proper SI notation has jacked up binary hardcore.

      1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32… You won’t find a 1/12 or some other number.

      • Resol van Lemmy@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Maybe that’s why I couldn’t tell if a gigabyte has 1000 megabytes or 1024. People keep telling me one or the other. Others keep telling me that there’s 1024 mebibytes in 1 gibibyte, but those names absolutely suck.

            • CoolMatt@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              Hmm, never heard that before. Idk how to link to a specific section of a page, but what I’m talking about is there too, one section down.

              An alternate system of nomenclature for the same units (referred to here as the customary convention), in which 1 kilobyte (KB) is equal to 1,024 bytes,[38][39][40] 1 megabyte (MB) is equal to 10242 bytes and 1 gigabyte (GB) is equal to 10243 bytes is mentioned by a 1990s JEDEC standard. Only the first three multiples (up to GB) are mentioned by the JEDEC standard, which makes no mention of TB and larger. The customary convention is used by the Microsoft Windows operating system[41][better source needed] and random-access memory capacity, such as main memory and CPU cache size, and in marketing and billing by telecommunication companies, such as Vodafone,[42] AT&T,[43] Orange[44] and Telstra.[45]

              For storage capacity, the customary convention was used by macOS and iOS through Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and iOS 10, after which they switched to units based on powers of 10.[34]

              • ddh@lemmy.sdf.org
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                10 months ago

                Yes, you’re right that 1024 bytes was a kilobyte and in fact it was that way for several decades. However, as the differences between powers of two and powers of ten increase as we see larger sizes, it’s become common to differentiate them.

    • Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip
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      10 months ago

      Because a lot of imperial measurements revolved around being able to be divided by 4, and occasionally 3 at times.

      For instance the cooking unit of measurments are in 4’s or base 2 in a way (e.g 1 gallon = 4 quarts = 8 pints = 16 cups = 128 ounces)

      We still see 4s or 3s irl regardless of measurement system. Doughnuts are often prepared in dozens and virtually never in 10s. Do we walk around claiming why bakers hate 10 step counting?

      Time is the example of something designed around 3/4 and didn’t change. 60 is divisiable by both 4 (15) and 3 (20) and is not base 10, but people can accept that.

    • ForgotAboutDre@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Using 12 and 16 makes for easier maths (pre-calculators). It’s easier to divide and get an integer. With easy access to calculators and highly precise measurements (especially digital systems) metric makes more sense and is easier to interpret quickly.

    • Zron@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Why do you people feel the need to be able to convert between the thickness of a human hair and the distance between cities?

      Ah yes, this bolt is .000001 kilometers wide. That’s a very useful thing you guys did. Definitely need that in every day life.