megane-kun

Not too sure if they outright lied, but I suppose we can say that they used the change to make their drives seem larger!

That’s why I wished computer people had used a prefix system distinct from the SI ones. If we’re measuring our storage devices in yeetibytes rather than gigabytes, for example, then I suppose there’s less chance that we’ve ended up in this situation.

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:

Each row of the table (except for the rows for 2¹⁰ and 2⁵⁰) 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 16⁴ - 1 = 2¹⁶ - 1 = 65 535)

One thing that works to your argument’s favor is the fact that 1024 = 2¹⁰. 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 2¹⁰.

I guess? I just pulled that example out of my ass earlier, thinking well, hexadecimal is used heavily in computing, so maybe something with powers of 16 would do just fine.

At any rate, my point is that using a prefix system that is different and easily distinguishable from the metric SI prefixes would have been way better.

I think the biggest mistake there is using SI prefixes (such as kilo, mega, giga, tera) with bytes (or bits) to refer to the power of two near a power of ten in the first place. Had computer people had used other names for 1024 bytes and the like, this confusion between kibibytes and kilobytes could have been avoided. Computer people back then could have come up with a set of base·16 prefixes and used that for measuring data.

Maybe something like 65,536 bytes = 1,0000 (base 16) = 1 myri·byte; ‭4,294,967,296 bytes = 1,0000,0000 (base 16) = dyri·byte; and so on in groups of four hex digits instead of three decimal digits (16¹² = tryri·byte, 16¹⁶ = tesri·byte, etc). That’s just one system I pulled out of my ass (based on the myriad, and using Greek numbers to count groups of digits), and surely one can come up with a better system.

Anyways, while it’d take me a while to recognize one kilobyte as 1000 bytes and not as 1024 bytes, I think it’s better that ‘kilo’ always means 1000 times something in as many situations as possible.

If the earliest sports were a way to practice skills needed for hunting or warfare, then making an e-sport out of spreadsheets is going back to the roots of sports. It’s practicing skills needed for your daily job.

Using Arch with KDE Plasma too. My only problem with KDE‌ Plasma is that I just can’t stop customizing it. I find a couple of things that “I can do something to improve upon” and the next thing I know I’m tweaking things again!

Other than the odd problem with Wayland/XWayland or something, that I usually just make a mental note to investigate further, I’m pretty happy. Now if I‌ can only stop myself from “making just one more little change…”

I’ve used Librewolf until pretty recently and I say it’s not for everyone. It’s hardened Firefox made into its own thing for people who want the benefits of hardened Firefox but don’t want to go through the effort of hardening their Firefox install.

There are some sites that wouldn’t work in the strictest settings. As far as I remember, the most problematic sites with Librewolf are those that demand way too much in terms of privacy and security, so I took it as a given that if a site doesn’t work with Librewolf (with me using the default settings), it’s not worth it to enter to begin with.

More importantly, using Firefox (or any of its forks) would mean less people are dependent on Google’s Chromium. With less people depending on Google’s Chromium, the less Google can swing its weight around, imposing its dictum on unsuspecting users.

Yeah, I remember the IT department at work back then (circa 2006) recommending Opera to me. It had features that are more or less mainstream now, like tab reloading on a timer, and all that while running smoothly than any other browser I’ve used at that time.

Since then, I’ve tried a lot of browsers like Vivaldi and Maxthon, but for some reason or the other, like being bloated, or being taken over by entities I don’t trust, had found a reason to move to a different browser. Currently using LibreWolf, and I hope I won’t have any reason to switch browsers anytime soon.

That time was when I was forced to switch from Windows 7. I switched to Linux, found that I can do there most things I usually do on a computer anyways, and never looked back. It reached to the point that someone had to give me an entire SDD with a windows installation just to coax me to use Windows 10. I rarely touch it nowadays, and every time I do, I end up being frustrated with it.