this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
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Well, acshually, bit doesn't have a metric symbol and 'b' is defined as barn. So Mb would be a megabarn.
Edit: And to be even more nitpicking: If the image size is defined as binary, it should be MiB (mebibyte) since "mega" is defined as base 10.
No. "Mi" is just a different prefix than "M" and it doesn't matter what units you attach them to. Why would it? It's just a multiplication with 2^20 or 10^6, respectively.
Where's the contradiction? Yes, it's just a different prefix but it results in a different number. What I meant to adress is that very often people write MB/megabytes (10⁶ = 1,000,000 bytes) but actually mean MiB/mebibytes (2²⁰ = 1,048,576 bytes). RAM vendors possibly most prominently.
There is no contradiction. But there is also nothing contradictory or wrong with the unit MB. If I say "this is 100MB", maybe I just... mean that? No reason to correct me.
And I didn't say that. Admittedly, the constraint "If the image size is defined as binary" probably could've been expressed better (I'm not a native speaker). File sizes are usually calculated in binary units (at least by Windows and the Linux distros I know - even though Windows continues to claim those are megabytes and Linux adopted the standardized units) and I'd bet that's the case for file.coffee, too.
Oh, well, I'm pretty sure we're not really disagreeing anyway. So let's conclude with the obligatory relevant xkcd.
2^20 = 1.048.576 ≠ 1.000.000 = 10^6
Ki Mi Gi Prefixes are for powers of two, K M G for powers of ten.
Of course you can choose whatever prefix you prefer, but when talking about storage or anything digital, we usually mean the power of two series. For that matter it's better to be explicit instead of assuming everybody knows.
I never claimed that 2^20 is the same as 10^6. In fact, I explicitly said that they are different. But if I use M on purpose, it is not a correction to just replace it with Mi, for that same reason.
True, i misread your first post.
I know about binary prefixes, but file.coffee website uses mega prefix, not mebi
Oh you mean MiB as in mebibel?
Ha, good one! Got me interested, how the standards bodies handle something like that. Found this in the Wikipedia article for byte:
Somewhat disappointing. "There's a conflict but it's fine".