Comment on Thanks. That was what I was looking for.

thesmokingman@programming.dev ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• sgh@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I don’t think that’s the issue, OP also changed from 1 to 2, so I believe they basically want to know the result of 2 * 1024 * 1024, but the issue is that the result is written in scientific notation.

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  • thesmokingman@programming.dev ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    When you search “megabytes to bytes” the units are correct and the number is one. If you edit the form, the number might not be one and the units might not be correct. Changing units highlights the unit input.

    OP’s ostensible point posting on this community is that searching “megabytes to bytes” gave “mebibytes to bytes” in the calculator but OP’s image shows OP has changed the calculator.

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    • sgh@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I don’t see any reply from OP so I’m growing confident that what you’re talking about is not OP’s point.

      Often times when coding you may want to quickly write down 2MB but you may need to type it in bytes, so either you calculate 210241024 while coding, or you remember the number 2097152.

      Now, since 2097152 is not such a common number that one would remember, you may quickly turn to the globally acclaimed oracle search engine to get such an answer, but all you get is a number in scientific notation, without an option to read it in standard decimal base. So you have to open the calculator and ask the same question again to get the answer you need.

      If it helps, try to ignore what’s in the search bar and tell me if it makes more sense.

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      • jas0n@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Yeah. This was the problem. i just wanted to copy and paste it quickly but they rounded it off. It’s a useless conversion. And I switched it to mebibytes as well since that’s what everyone really means when they say megabytes unless you’re making storage devices. =]

        Indeed, I should have just used my calculator program.

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      • thesmokingman@programming.dev ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        If I ignore what’s in the search bar, I remember that the prefix “mebi” means 2^20 and use a calculator. Your point doesn’t make sense because you’re asking us to get mad at a tool intended to convert scientific units for using the bog standard scientific notation. Byte math uses powers of 2 ergo we should use a calculator that isn’t explicitly set up for rounding.

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  • Carighan@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    the issue is that the result is written in scientific notation

    Which honestly is never an issue, only people having forgotten how to fluently read it. 😛

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    • sgh@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It is an issue for two reasons:

      1. It’s an approximation, which might be completely useless to you when coding (ie. Read a 2MiB chunk from a file is different from reading a 2097000 byte chunk)
      2. It’s written down longer than the original value, which makes it useless to use such a notation in this case.

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