Earlier quoted context omitted.
Huh... I've always described 2^10 bytes as a "kilobyte" (kB) but I've always hated the ambiguity, even if the difference between 2^10 and 10^3 is usually not important. Thanks to this comment, I learned there is an formal set of units which are distinct from their SI counterparts[0]. 1000^1 kB, 1024^1 kibibyte (kiB) 1000^2 MB, 1024^2 mebibyte (MiB) 1000^3 GB, 1024^3 gibibyte (GiB) 1000^4 TB, 1024^4 tebibyte (TiB) 100…
Notably, storage vendors and many operating system vendors use different units to describe capacity, so hard disks will always seem small as a result of this. [edit: add qualifying "many"]
[1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201402 [2]: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UnitsPolicy [3]: https://www.tarsnap.com/GB-why.html