Quixotic Californian Crusade To Officially Recognize the Hellabyte (theregister.com) 128
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: In 2010, Austin Sendek, then a physics student at UC Davis, created a petition seeking recognition for prefix "hella-" as an official International System of Units (SI) measurement representing 10^27. "Northern California is home to many influential research institutions, including the University of California, Davis, the University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University, and the Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories," he argued. "However, science isn't all that sets Northern California apart from the rest of the world. The area is also the only region in the world currently practicing widespread usage of the English slang 'hella,' which typically means 'very,' or can refer to a large quantity (e.g. 'there are hella stars out tonight')."
To this day, the SI describes prefixes for quantities for up to 10^24. Those with that many bytes have a yottabyte. If you only have 10^21 bytes, you have a zettabyte. There's also exabyte (10^18), petabyte (10^15), terabyte (10^12), gigabyte(10^9), and so on. Support for "hella-" would allow you to talk about hellabytes of data, he argues, pointing out that this would make the number of atoms in 12 kg of carbon-12 would be simplified from 600 yottaatoms to 0.6 hellaatoms. Similarly, the sun (mass of 2.2 hellatons) would release energy at 0.3 hellawatts, rather than 300 yottawatts. [...] The soonest [a proposal for a "hella-" SI could be officially adopted] is in November 2022, at the quadrennial meeting of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM)'s General Conference on Weight and Measures, where changes to the SI usually must be agreed upon. The report notes that Google customized its search engine in 2010 to let you convert "bytes to hellabytes." A year later, Wolfram Alpha added support for "hella-" calculations.
"Sendek said 'hellabyte' initially started as a joke with some college friends but became a more genuine concern as he looked into how measurements get defined and as his proposal garnered support," reports The Register. He believes it could be useful for astronomical measurements.
To this day, the SI describes prefixes for quantities for up to 10^24. Those with that many bytes have a yottabyte. If you only have 10^21 bytes, you have a zettabyte. There's also exabyte (10^18), petabyte (10^15), terabyte (10^12), gigabyte(10^9), and so on. Support for "hella-" would allow you to talk about hellabytes of data, he argues, pointing out that this would make the number of atoms in 12 kg of carbon-12 would be simplified from 600 yottaatoms to 0.6 hellaatoms. Similarly, the sun (mass of 2.2 hellatons) would release energy at 0.3 hellawatts, rather than 300 yottawatts. [...] The soonest [a proposal for a "hella-" SI could be officially adopted] is in November 2022, at the quadrennial meeting of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM)'s General Conference on Weight and Measures, where changes to the SI usually must be agreed upon. The report notes that Google customized its search engine in 2010 to let you convert "bytes to hellabytes." A year later, Wolfram Alpha added support for "hella-" calculations.
"Sendek said 'hellabyte' initially started as a joke with some college friends but became a more genuine concern as he looked into how measurements get defined and as his proposal garnered support," reports The Register. He believes it could be useful for astronomical measurements.
Inappropriate use. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd support use of this for things where you're not looking to measure, but compare. Science fiction movies could say "OMG, the alien computer has 15.2 hellabytes of storage... it's so advanced!" and not sound idiotic ten years later.
Just a thought.
Re: Inappropriate use. (Score:4, Interesting)
The rate of increase has not been linear. There are physical limits to storage and data processes. 18 exabytes for example is a fully populated 64 bit register.
Information theory states that once we achieve transparent reproduction of real world objects and data, then data usage growth stops.
The best example of this is audio encoding. We stopped increases when we got to 16 bit sampling at 44.1khz rates. Sure, there are 48, 96, and even higher, but the data is in an the matter settled: Nobody can tell the difference between 44.1khz at 16 bits, and anything higher.
Similar experiences are being reached in video. We're reaching the point where resolution of displays and colour accuracy exceeds the capability of human eyesight, and so once that happens, we'll stop increasing pixel counts and video data rates.
Re: Inappropriate use. (Score:5, Insightful)
The rate of increase has not been linear. There are physical limits to storage and data processes. 18 exabytes for example is a fully populated 64 bit register.
But that's irrelevant, because segments, sectors, etc.
Information theory states that once we achieve transparent reproduction of real world objects and data, then data usage growth stops.
But that's not true, because we can also have imaginary objects and data, or we can have multiple copies, or we can start looking at distant real world objects and data.
Nobody can tell the difference between 44.1khz at 16 bits, and anything higher.
But that doesn't stop us from using 96kHz/24 bit audio for mastering, because of artifacts introduced in the mastering process which would add up to something you can hear if it were done at 44/16.
Similar experiences are being reached in video. We're reaching the point where resolution of displays and colour accuracy exceeds the capability of human eyesight, and so once that happens, we'll stop increasing pixel counts and video data rates.
We will for flat video, but what about for 360 surround video? And once that becomes commonplace, what about 360*360 surround video (full sphere)?
Computers keep improving because we keep finding new things to do with them.
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A chick threw up on my feet (in sandals) at a party in Santa Cruz once, any chance that was your sister too?
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But that doesn't stop us from using 96kHz/24 bit audio for mastering, because of artifacts introduced in the mastering process which would add up to something you can hear if it were done at 44/16.
Agreed. One of the failures of engineering education is correct interpretation of the Nyquist limit. The statement that you can accurately reconstruct signals up to the Nyquist limit is true iff you have infinite signal length. The reconstruction of any finite length signal will have potential phase and amplitude errors that increase as you approach the Nyquist limit, at which point all bets are off.
A good rule of thumb is: if you want to faithfully reproduce a (finite-length) signal up to frequency f Hz
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Yet the weakest link will be us; our flawed biology. That will ultimately determine the upper limit on storage for most use cases.
Of course, once we start augmenting ourselves ( cyborgs! ), then that scale changes again. I'd guess that future is a lot closer than anyone thinks too.
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No need to be a cyborg. We've all seen infrared images re-mapped into our visual range. We can hear bat sonar by frequency shifting the audio. We can compare whale song to bird song using similar techniques.
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True, but none of those situations change our perception potential, thus the storage requirements remain fixed.
What'd be more interesting is augmenting our hearing to be able to perceive into those bat ranges while keeping our otherwise normal abilities. Or being able to see into the infrared as well as our normal vision. Total data consumed by system increases, thus increasing storage requirements.
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Even without that, the issue is more of technology than our sensory range. For example, imagine if a camera actually senses and records THz up to X-Ray. You never know what part of that you might want to examine later (using pseudo-color remapping if necessary).
Your friend shows you a video of a recent camping trip. You see something and wonder if it was a bat. Frequency shift the audio and you can find out.
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Nobody can tell the difference between 44.1khz at 16 bits, and anything higher.
https://www.aes.org/e-lib/brow... [aes.org]
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Nobody can tell the difference between 44.1khz at 16 bits, and anything higher.
That is wrong. I know plenty of people who can. Basically everyone working as Sound engineer can.
We use that sample rate as compromise: it fits on an audio CD with 45 - 60 mins playing time, and: is goof enough for the masses.
We're reaching the point where resolution of displays and colour accuracy exceeds the capability of human eyesight, and so once that happens, we'll stop increasing pixel counts and video data rates.
In pixels
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I've yet to meet anyone who can reliably spot high res audio. I've met plenty of people who say they can though.
As for sound engineers being able to - not in my experience. Sound engineers tend to sit around discussing their tinnitus. They are typically in their 40s, and can't typically hear around 15Khz. They do have great ears though, but age and damage through use limit their ability to tell this sort of thing apart, assuming you believe it is possible.
But if you do have some info on people who can tell
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I do not know about any research project, and doubt any researcher finds this topic interesting enough. After all it is a no brainer that tones that contain 2 or more overtones sound different, versus the base tone, even if you can not hear the overtones in isolation.
I know about 4 tone engineers in person, who can hear different sample rates on studio equipment. They tell me: you can learn to hear the differences.
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Then it was video, but not long after because video was not constrained by ram, it was constrained by storage and bandwidth. Enhancements in video framerate has snapped to 50hz, much like audio snapped to 44.1khz, but, just like audios 44.1khz, video is not constrained to 50hz. We just dont bother with higher most of the time.
S
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So whats the next big constraint to get busted?
I doubt it'll be the next one, but smell quite difficult to get across.
I dont think so. I just cant imagine people watching 4D productions, moving the camera around themselves, as being more than a novelty. Every home is not going to be tuned in to the 4D Oprah show on a nightly basis, because people dont want this form of entertainment to be interactive.
An interactive Oprah show would include the ability to talk and interact with Oprah. I suspect a complete download of her brain would require a decent connection.
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The limits you suggest are strongly based on application and limits of current technology. Imagine a future world where someone checking out a recording might say (reasonably), now let's here the spectrum compressed sound, I wanna check for bat sonar..., Now let's see the near infrared, render it as pseudocolor please...
The human senses are NOT the natural limit to media formats, the ability to process the data is.
Re:Inappropriate use. (Score:4, Interesting)
Agreed. "Hellabytes" or "Hella-whatever-units" should be the numerical equivalent of "Unobtainium [wikipedia.org]".
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I propose the same status as a "shake".
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Data: "I have an ultimate storage capacity of eight hundred quadrillion bits"
That's either 100 PetaBytes or 100 YottaBytes, depending on whether you use 10^15 or 10^24 for 'quadrillion'
Blue Waters runs 500 Petabytes.
Google was estimated at 15 Exabytes a few years back, so they've got a couple of years before they reach the 100 YottaByte mark.
Crap, I put together a database in the petabyte range a couple of years ago ... the thing couldn't make coffee, let alone pilot a starship!
Yeah, putting hard limits of
Indeed... (Score:2)
Particularly since fuckton-o-gigs is already used far more AND it's a bigger and betterer number.
No. (Score:2)
Stop it.
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Agree, it sounds rubbish, they should pick something with more of a ring to it, it just doesn't flow.
Hella yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's do it for the lulz.
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Let's trash any respectability that science has left, in the years when people have started believing that the Earth is flat and that 5G causes covid. Let's do it for the lulz.
Don't forget the added stupidity of this idiotic idea being proposed by California. 10^40 is gonna be known as a "Spicoli Pizza"
Re: Hella yes (Score:3)
Italy is gonna declare war.
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Let's trash any respectability that science has left
Science has plenty of respectability. Not everyone is a raging fuckwit.
Re: Hella yes (Score:1)
Re: Hella yes (Score:2)
Yeah, but if you look outside, everyone *is* a raging fuckwit though. Which is his point: Don't feed then even more.
He didn's say he didn't respect science. But that raging fuckwits don't, and there's way too many of those with way too much power already.
Ok, then again, it is very likely that it's just the media giving raging fuckwits ALL the spotlights ALL the time. They made Trump big. And now they act all #meevirtuoustoo, cutting him off five years after they should have decided not to put a spotlight on
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Yeah, but if you look outside, everyone *is* a raging fuckwit though
If it's everyone, then that includes you.
He didn's say he didn't respect science. But that raging fuckwits don't, and there's way too many of those with way too much power already.
A scientist goofing around in California isn't going to change a damned thing. People are ignoring science because they have a strong incentive to do so. Either they believe they have something to gain if it's not true, or powerful vested interests are playing to
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Re:Hella yes (Score:4, Funny)
Let's trash any respectability that science has left, in the years when people have started believing that the Earth is flat and that 5G causes covid. Let's do it for the lulz.
Agree 10^30 should be a lulzabyte.
What your iphone only has 12 lulzabytes, you should get an Android.
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But rather than have a single scale for measuring everything, perhaps we could consider forming dedicated scales for measuring different things?
For example, if I wanted to empirically measure the interest that fish were having in the bait being used by a fisherman, I could employ the not-a-byte scale...
Or, I could measure positive restaurant reviews using the tasty-byte scale.
I'm not quite sure what to name it, but we definitely need to come up with a dedicated s
Re:Hella yes (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd be more inclined to get behind it if it was a power of 2.
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They may not have explicitly defined the hebibyte, but it's clearly implied.
Blasphemy! (Score:2)
Let's trash any respectability that science has left, in the years when people have started believing that the Earth is flat and that 5G causes covid
Worse, since it presumably derives from "a hell of a lot of..." the religious right will undoubtedly regard it as blasphemous. These people already have a hard time accepting science for silly reasons. Let's not go out of our way to deliberately add another.
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Not giving a good goddamn about the opinions of the religious (left, right or buried), but there is a reasonable argument to not using a "live" language. Both ancient Greek and Latin being pretty much dead languages (outside the Vatican, their death quotient approaches one Parrot), there is very little new work published using them so they're not very likely to come up with novel, us
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Half of it is just plain stupidity, half of it is the science people being smug bastards.
People with low education tends to rely more on their emotional picking skills than their non existent education, and when they see nothing but smug and disdain, they won't trust that mofo.
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5G causes covid.
Here's my conspiracy theory: telecoms spread that one to discredit by association anyone who finds genuine issues with 5G.
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If you mean health issues, then that's not going to happen. 5G outputs frequencies very similar to a microwave oven, which had also been extensively tested for health risks. Unless we discover some new physics or chemistry, there won't be a significant effect.
People who are nervous about 5G simply don't understand what electromagnetic waves are. There's nothing special about EM waves. Certain wavelengths pass through everything you shine it at, while other wavelengths are blocked. If they're blocked, the en
Oh please... (Score:2)
Oh please, science is littered with terms that are silly or amusing when you know their background.
Of course (Score:1)
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Some people have too much time (Score:2)
Obviously.
Is it? (Score:5, Interesting)
The area is also the only region in the world currently practicing widespread usage of the English slang 'hella,'
Look, my finger is not on the pulse of popular culture because I couldn't give two fucks, but I haven't heard/read the word "hella" in literally years, until right now. Are people really still saying hella? To my mind that was a fad that happened when I was in high school, literally decades ago. I always assumed we got it from surfers, but no one is sure how it got started [kqed.org]. It definitely sounds like other surfer slang, though. (That article literally only has speculation in it, including expert speculation without any factual basis — they only assume it followed familiar patterns.)
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Yes, I am familiar with Hella the brand, but there's zero evidence either way as to whether it has anything to do with Hella the slang. It could, but then again, it might not. Consequently, I did not mention it.
Re: Is it? (Score:3)
And "Hell" is German for "Bright", and it has nothing to do with some old slang from a time whose cool doods would today have to be pathetic "Hello, fellow kids!" types, to even get a reaction from the current cool kids.
(Ok, there are no current cool kids, since it's still the failed generation, but still...)
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but I haven't heard/read the word "hella" in literally years, until right now. Are people really still saying hella?
I saw the term become popular in the late 80's in San Jose, CA. Then I moved to the east coast and never heard it again - until now. My kids watch weird youtube videos of grown men playing with legos and nerf guns, and they all say 'hella'. And they all have 25 million subscribers and are rich.
The slang that I now hear a lot from younger people is "sick". As in, "Yo, that car is sick!!". That word has an entirely different meaning to me than it does to them and I just cannot understand it.
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We said hella a lot in Santa Cruz in the 80s and 90s. And much if not most of our slang came from surf slang, because surprise, surprise. We also said "sick", though IIRC that became more of a thing in the 90s than the 80s.
Hard to say, probably have to ask a few kids (Score:2)
Hard to say, probably have to ask a few kids. I was raised in and still live in Northern California and when I was a kid in the 80's and 90's the term "hella" was certainly used frequently by kids. I don't have kids so I have no idea how previlant the term is now among them but among adults nowadays I only hear it used ironicly on very rare occasion.
As for "hella" coming from surfer slang, while it certainly does sound like that to me as well I don't think it does as surfer and beach culture isn't anywhere
Turns out it's still in use (Score:2)
I just texted my 18 year old niece who was lived her entire life in Nor Cal and she's telling me it's still frequently used.
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I'd prefer holobyte over hellabyte (Score:2)
If we're choosing, then I'd prefer the prefix holo- vs hella - at least a "holobyte" has history :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Rest of the World to US: First adopt SI units... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hellayards (Score:2)
Give us a break. (Score:4, Informative)
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Who talks like that? It's hella weird. What's the next one going to be, fucka-? "Captain's log, stardate 398727.5. My chief engineer has informed me that we've collected over one 1 fuckabyte of data so far in our survey of sector 30098..."
Well now that you mention it, there's a metric fuckton of evidence we'll devolve down this route.
Officially the people with the least of a life on (Score:2)
Also: Extremely self-centered (No surprise, if they have nothing in their lives but themselves) - (Among all of humanity, the ones saying "hella" are a negligible fraction.)
And, no, "quixotic" is not a word.
A word is something that the listener understands too.
It is a snobist inkhorn term.
And in any case, you forgot to give it a just as unpronouncable ending. Like "-aceae". No snob club membership card for you!
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So now we know. Any word that 'the foot' hasn't heard of or doesn't use is not a word.
We should get our vocabulary (sorry, wordy listy thing) from the Janet and John books, plus emojis and pointing and grunting.
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And, no, "quixotic" is not a word.
The Cambridge English Dictionary disagrees with you [cambridge.org].
So does Merriam-Webster [merriam-webster.com]. Collins [collinsdictionary.com] does, as well. Even the Oxford English Dictionary [twitter.com] sees the word as legitimate.
By the way, if you're going to be the arbiter of the English language, you may want to remember that your fourth grade teacher taught you that one does not start a sentence with a conjunction.
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By the way, if you're going to be the arbiter of the English language, you may want to remember that your fourth grade teacher taught you that one does not start a sentence with a conjunction.
Don't forget the corollary -- a preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
Did they smoke up before this decision? (Score:1)
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What? Isn't it already? Int, TinyInt, SmallInt, MediumInt, BigInt ... and (possibly) HellaInt
SI (Score:2)
Number of bytes is NOT in the SI system. (so scr* the kibi-, mebi-, gibi- system) We can use our own definition.
Stupid proposal (Score:3)
These are my suggestions... (Score:1)
How about bitch-, so we have bitchabytes; or maybe fuck-, so we have fuckabytes; or even whatthefuck-, so we have watthefuckabytes?
No (Score:2)
Butt-load-a-byte (Score:4, Funny)
10^32
"How much porn can you store on your computer?
"A butt-load"
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I prefer to calculate the amount of porn stored on my computer in boobs-load.
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The buttload [wiktionary.org] is an actual measurement unit, equivalent to 384 gallons, or ~1453.6 litres.
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10^32
"How much porn can you store on your computer?
"A butt-load"
Boatload is a good measure but may I counter with the Pant-load ?
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Idea Hellasucks (Score:1)
Dumbasses.
Really? (Score:5, Funny)
"However, science isn't all that sets Northern California apart from the rest of the world."
Yes, there's also the Metric System.
More importantly (Score:2)
What about the Triganic Pu? The Triganic Pu is a unit of galactic currency, with an exchange rate of eight Ningis to one Pu. This is simple enough, but, since a Ningi is a triangular rubber coin six thousand eight hundred miles along each side, no one has ever collected enough to own one Pu. Ningis are not negotiable currency, because the Galactibanks refuse to deal in fiddling small change.
I Propose: (Score:2)
Helluva (Score:3)
not all Californians (Score:3)
Hella is only used in NorCal. It never grew in popularity outside NorCal.
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Great, more lingo to alienate the public (Score:2)
Let's invent a stupid pidgin language to talk to each other in, so we can exclude the normies. Then later complain that the media and the public doesn't give two shits about us.
Just as academic works of the 17th to 19th century were often published in Latin. I believe we in the IT industry should switch over to Klingon as our Lingua Franca. If you want your new parallel sorting algorithm or neutral net to be taken seriously, tlhIngan maH!
Can we please get some consistency? (Score:2)
I'm not a fan of using varying methods of nomenclature for representing larger orders of magnitude of storage. How it came about, I'm not sure. But its inconsistencies are very frustrating. I can't reason my way through how this was all decided.
I think it started simple enough. Kilo- makes perfect sense...it literally means "one thousand" in Greek. I suppose when SI was first codified, they looked at the Greek word for million, saw "ekatommyrio", and said, "Hey guys, 'ekatommyrio' just doesn't have a n
Now the question is... (Score:2)
10^-27? (Score:2)
If 10^27 is going to be hella-, then what is 10^-27 going to be? I propose "hecca-".
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heckin-
lol-
rofl-
lmao-
lmfao-
jeezy-
fuggedaboudhit-
ohcomeon-
srsly-
redonkulo-
"Hella" can add to what "googol" did: Smiley bits. (Score:2)
As a kid, perhaps in third grade, I clearly remember the first time I came across the number "1 googol" and learned the name was from a mathematician's young daughter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googol). Something changed in my mind. Math, instead of being a difficult, pointless and boring subject, could also contain wit and humor. I didn't suddenly become good at math, but I became interested, and in time that was all I needed to get the ball rolling, eventually resulting in my attending college to b
Hella lame (but funny). (Score:1)
Not a real problem (Score:2)
I can see why one can get upset over the word, but should one? Most scientists will not bother about it, but they will always keep it professional. There is no reason to believe it was somehow detrimental to science. Scientists then enjoy a good joke as anyone. But more importantly have people been avoiding the naming confections on their own with plenty of colourful expressions (as one can see in the comment section itself). Instead of getting upset about the new word can one also see it as an olive branc
Typical (Score:2)
What an absolutely sendekian thing to come up with.
Only if we add an even higher prefix of "fuck" (Score:2)
see subject
Bytey McByteface (Score:2)
Octobyte? (Score:2)
Peta, exa and yotta are from greek 5, 6 and 7 since they stand for 1000^5, 1000^6 and 1000^7
Hence next unit, which would equal to 1000^8 should be the greek number for 8.
and what of its pair? (Score:2)
-24 is yucto
centi
milli
micro
nano
-27? helli?
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So, mental masturbation for Northern California, how nice...
It worked for Denmark with femto and atto.
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My wife (a PhD pathologist) thinks in base 10, and our arguments over units are never ending. In professional work, I use KiB, MiB, GiB, etc. in mixed company, although the convention of using K, M, G for base 2 is growing on me. It's really only an issue when estimating and communicating base 2 cooked storage capacity from base 10 raw values.
Firstly, base-10 is a terrible base that we got lumbered with because the French decided that they had to be able to count everything on their bloody fingers.
Secondly, the "cooked storage capacity" was a load of marketing bastards trying to justify bumping their profit by ~5%. The same people that decided that "USB2 full speed" would be an alias for "USB1.1" and that 2K video now has to be called 4K and 4K called 8K (1K remains 1K, because they got in too late).
Which brings us back to not allowing people ou