A byte was once a straightforward thing. A KB was 1,024 bytes and the world continued to spin on its access. Not so anymore.

Well, yes, the world does still spin on its axis, but the nerds have finally won the battle and there are now accepted two different terms for one thousand bytes, one million bytes, one billion bytes, and on and on.

For brevity’s sake, I’m going to stick to the term kilobyte or KB. The same nonsense I’m about to discuss also applies to megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte, and whatever-the-heck-comes-next-a-byte.

Traditionally, the term kilobyte means about 1,000 bytes. Us nerds knew that it was really 1,024 bytes, but what’s 24 bytes? It’s nothing! It’s pocket change. It’s not even enough storage for this sentence!

The kilobyte is 1,024 bytes because 1,024 is the closest power of 2 to 1,000. Nerds for years have considered it a rounding error.

The rounding error does add up, however. At one million bytes, a megabyte, the value is 1,048,576. That’s 48,576 bytes in change, which isn’t pitiful.

The left-over bytes become even greater at a gigabyte.

To solve what apparently was thought to be a conundrum, various super nerds developed the kibibyte.

You see, the term kilo means 1,000. And a kilobyte really should be 1,000 bytes, not 1,024. The the term kibibyte was manufactured so that computer scientists could say it really, really means 1,024 bytes. The kilobyte? Why, that’s been demoted to mean only 1,000 bytes.

Confusing? You bet!

Triple your pleasure with Mibibyte, Gibibyte, and Tibibyte.

So when you want to refer to a billion bytes of storage, you can use the term gigabyte. That means 1,000,000,000 bytes. If you use the term gibibyte, you really mean 1,073,741,824 bytes.

It’s just too bad that there isn’t an “English system” for computer memory. You know, an English byte would be something like 1200 bytes and would be also known as a shillingbyte. That would be sweet, but luckily for humanity it’s not going to happen.