The amount of people who don't know the difference between kilobyte and kibibyte is too damn high. So much confusion.

TL;DR : Most people use Kilobyte ( KB ) and Kibibyte ( KiB ) wrong and i am angry about it.

When i first got involved with software as a teenager, i always wondered why we convert kilo to mega with multiplying by 1024, when we do it with multiplying by 1000 basically everywhere else. Our physics teacher called this SI unit system and told us that this is an internationally accepted statement. So why is there a different rule ? Did i miss out something ? Regrettably I didn't ask her about this.

I just didn't get fully as a teenager. Now, as I am a developer now, i understand that dealing with power or ten is troublesome. Due to ease of work, we lazily mess with SI system and use it wrongly. Isn't it the time we end this abomination ?

2 years ago i talked to a friend about this, he said that i shouldn't bother.
I talked to a teacher, he said "you are right but using different brand of unit system can be overkill, since there is not much difference anyways." I said okay and left.

1 mega = 1000 kilo
1 giga = 1000 mega etc

also,

MB = Megabyte ( 1000 Kilobyte )
KB = Kilobyte ( 1000 Byte )
MiB = Mebibyte ( 1024 Kibibyte )
KiB = Kibibyte ( 1024 Byte )

I am writing this because today i saw someone do it wrong on the internet, all of these came into mind. I wonder your approach about this, for research purposes.

Call me dick all you want, but i am the guy who always corrects uncertainty, no matter what. Things should be in place, correctly. No i don't have OCD. If you say something like "I have 1 MB of executable file, which means i have 1024 KB of it", i will find you, and i will correct you.

Reached 1 kilobyte :)

OCR (The exam board for my course) are fucking thick in the head when it comes to anything computing.

- I get a mark or two for saying open source software is worse than thier propritary counterparts
- ALL open source software forks must also be make open source. They spend so much time going over the legal stuff BUT HAVE NEVER HEARD OF OPEN SOURCE LICENCING!
- One exam paper had a not gate picture with 2 inputs...
- I have to differentiate between portable and handheld! YOU MEAN HANDHELD DEVICES ARE NOT PORTABLE!?!!?!?
- In level 2 education, OCR say 1 MB = 1024 KB - In level 3, they say 1 MB = 1000 KB, and 1 MiB = 1024 KiB, and expect you to differentiate. Why do you expect the wrong answer in level 2!?
- INFORMATION FORMATS AND STYLES ARE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THINGS! If you look up synonyms for "style", "form" is there, and if you look up synonyms for "format", "style" is there.
- When asked for storage devices, I have to say "smartphone", "tablet", "desktop PC" - I mean yeah they store data but when you ask me for storage devices I will say "hard disk drive", "solid state drive", "SD card", etc. >.>

I could probably go on an on about this...
I sure do love being asked to copy-paste existing HTML/JS/CSS and being asked to just tweak it here and there, and then wait for other people's incompetence in copy-pasting... I sure do love being stuck with this sort of "education" ._.

I had a test when i was in 9th grade for computer( not computer programming )

Q) how many KB are i an MB ?
1) 500 2) 1000 3) 2000 4) none of the above

Since its 1024 i thought its none of the above like a sane person but my teacher be like " there are 1000 KB in 1 MB." I tried to explain that i think thats wrong but well gg.

Trying to get some information about a product:
1. Opening the manufacturers webpage, gets a crawler protection page presented, 30 kB
2. The actual website opens, 600 kB + an endless amount of javaScript.
3. Tries to download a PDF, a extra download page is opened, another 600 kB and even more JS.
4 Download the Download a PDF, 3 MB
5. Read the information in that PDF which would fit into 8 kB.

Why are GIFs still a thing?!? I mean don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against short, audioless videos but why GIF?

GIF only provides a lossless per-frame compression so the performance sucks really bad. For example a 1 MB GIF converted to MP4 is only 100 KB.

So that's why they take longer to load and have so bad quality.