A plea for sanity Computer programmers can skip to the next sub-heading. Computers work in binary. They measure things in binary numbers internally, at the hardware level. While you are seeing letters and decimal numbers on this page, the computer just sees streams of 1s and 0s. The successive digits in binary (moving left) count 1s, 2s, 4s, 8s, and so on, just like the digits in a regular base 10 number are worth 1, 10, 100, 1000. Powers of 10, powers of 2. Way back in the mists of primordial computer history—or the 60s, as we also know it—someone decided it would be a good idea to define a kilobyte as 1024 bytes, rather than 1000, because 1024 is the closest power of 2 to 1000. That is, a 10 bit binary number can count from 0 to 1023, just like a 3 digit decimal number counts from 0 to 999. The problem is, this unusual definition of “kilo” wasn’t given its own symbol at the time; they just used the same “kilo” prefix used for the metric system. Nor was the unusual definition of “kilo