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To Keep Track of World's Data, You'll Need More Than a Yottabyte (wsj.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: In 10 or 15 years, Dr. Brown, who is head of metrology at the National Physical Laboratory in the U.K., anticipates the amount of computerized data worldwide will exceed 1 yottabyte in size, and without expanding the list of prefixes, there will be no way to talk about the next great chunk of numbers. Even worse, dilettantes could fill the void by popularizing glib prefixes such as bronto or hella -- terms that have already won fans. Without professional intervention, Dr. Brown fears, the next numerical prefix could become the Boaty McBoatface of weights and measures.
[...] For the record, there is an argument to be made for adopting a prefix like bronto: giga and tera are based on the Greek words for "giant" and "monstrous." Why not make bronto, named for the brontosaurus, official, perhaps along with tyranno, stego, colosso or even yeti? Dr. Brown is sympathetic to the argument but unconvinced. Instead, he proposes four prefixes that adhere to recent naming conventions [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; an alternative source was not available.]: ronna and quecca for octillion (27 zeros) and nonillion (30 zeros), along with ronto and quecto for their fractional counterparts, octillionth and nonillionth. Like the latest sanctioned prefixes, Dr. Brown's proposals are loosely related to Latin and Greek words for numbers (in this case, nine and 10). And like most of the prefixes, his suggestions end in "a" or "o." But the process of expanding, or even amending, the official measurements is lengthy.
[...] For the record, there is an argument to be made for adopting a prefix like bronto: giga and tera are based on the Greek words for "giant" and "monstrous." Why not make bronto, named for the brontosaurus, official, perhaps along with tyranno, stego, colosso or even yeti? Dr. Brown is sympathetic to the argument but unconvinced. Instead, he proposes four prefixes that adhere to recent naming conventions [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; an alternative source was not available.]: ronna and quecca for octillion (27 zeros) and nonillion (30 zeros), along with ronto and quecto for their fractional counterparts, octillionth and nonillionth. Like the latest sanctioned prefixes, Dr. Brown's proposals are loosely related to Latin and Greek words for numbers (in this case, nine and 10). And like most of the prefixes, his suggestions end in "a" or "o." But the process of expanding, or even amending, the official measurements is lengthy.
JiggaBytes
It has always seemed a bit arbitrary to label something as "the world's data". You could always add the history of every cache on every processor on the planet to your definition of "data" and have a much larger number.
Buttloada and Assloada
NSA and GCHQ spending per year?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Yottabyte? That's a lotta byte!
Why make a new prefix for each power of ten unless (and until) it really is used often? Just make a generic term, such as "24th order of magnitude". In fact, I believe that's already used. We can even have a shorthand: "24 oom bytes". To remember it, think of a cow mooing in reverse.
Table-ized A.I.
What's wrong with that? The rejection of "Boaty McBoatface" was a stuffed-shirt reaction. Going with that name could have helped increase funding even via increased awareness.
BoatyBytes, McFaceBytes, sounds fine with me. The existing names are already silly, or at least magnets for jokes.
Table-ized A.I.
Some method of scientific notation that could be use?
Nah nobody ever thought of that.
Anyway I am not impressed until we are talking about Googol® bytes
and without expanding the list of prefixes, there will be no way to talk about the next great chunk of numbers
Well, other than using powers of 1,024 (or powers of 1,000 for the pedantic types who are unfamiliar with base 2.)
... ancient languages.
When we define the words and terms that are yet undefined, we can start fresh. We don't need to be chained to the past. And why not have numbers that sound cool to say that we can associate with things people know about it? This cult of ancient and dead languages is pretty disturbing. Since the naming convention is based on latin words for numbers is arbitrary in and of itself.
A third of the population is comprised of morons who are objectively ill suited to life in a modern society. Whatever data they produce or is gathered on them is useless.
The Hellabyte.
In honour of the great profit... Eric Cartman.
First law of people: People are generally stupid.
There's a reason we created terms like "ton" to describe considerable weight. Childrens electronic toys can hold multiple Libraries of Congress these days, so let's stop pretending that "mega-ultra-giga-bazillion" is going to impress anyone.
Hell, if we're gonna get stupid about this, then why not measure each individual bit? I'm sure Mathy McMathface can get piss drunk on new number names with an 8x power factor.
Yes, there's a lot of data in the world. We get it. Now perhaps we can grow up and create a reasonable unit of measure.
Muthafuckabyte
Damn much storage my basement has!
We don't need a new prefix until we get to 1000 yottabytes, and that will take a little while :-)
I like the suggested prefixes because they abbreviate nicely into R and Q for the big ones, and r and q for the small ones. These haven't been used yet.
They messed up with the original prefixes, using kilo (abbreviated k) and milli (abbreviated m) for 1000, because that meant they couldn't use m for micro. We don't want to make that mistake again, do we? So that wipes out tyranno (clashes with tera) and hella (clashes with hecto).
Yottitatard? Yottard? Yottetard?
The names must apply to all forms of measures and metrics.
But, if the Bureau of Geeks and Nerds has its say, the names will be:
whata-byte
abigga-byte
onthisa-byte
myassa-byte
heybitchdont-byte
On the serious side, the current system requires us to remember three names or prefixes for each triad (each 10^3).
For example:
one-million or one-millionth, versus one mega-meter versus one micro-meter. Million-mega-micro-.
one-thousand or one-thousandth, versus one kilo-liter or one milli-liter. Thousand-kilo-milli-.
For Europeans and others speaking Latin or Romance languages, the cardinal number names may be closer to the multiplier-divider prefixes, but it is still a cumbersome system.
For the higher order new numbers, why not make them with a uniform naming convention.
For instance, the common root name, then tillo- and tetto-.
Examples:
10^27 = one octillion trees, one octillo-meter, one octetto-meter.
10^30 = one nonillion beans, one nonillo-newton, one nonetto-joule.
10^39 = one dodecillion electrons, one dodecillo-farad, one dodecetto-ohm.
Instead of having unique initials as abbreviations, such MB, mm, cm, km, Gb, etc., try this, using "D" for "decade":
My new computer has 4 of 10^27 byte chips = 4-D27B of memory.
The distance to so and so galaxy is one nonillion meters away, or D30m away.
Or, something like that.
It just seems too cumbersome to remember too many contrived names and disparate prefixes for ever bigger numbers that no one can really comprehend or has the time to recall in the middle of a sentence that is meant to be fluent.
No data is better than big bad data... unless you're into fake news, in which case you can massage the big bad data any way you want to make anything seem true.
Bill got caught lying 12-25 times repeatedly stating "Blood plasma is sterile" and then later that "The Chinese Govt does not directly censor Chinese citizens" and other absolute bullshit head-in-ass retard-level lies. You're not trustworthy.
You are not a source of information that anyone should or even could trust, knowing your dishonest history. Sorry. That's what accountability means when you get caught lying repeatedly, over and over, even after directly corrected.
You're a liar, Bill.
1.21 jiggawatts, at 88 mph.
I thought that, after exabyte, SI basically went to using letters of the alphabet in reverse. They already have zettabyte and yottabyte, so xonobyte is up next?
How about the proposal of "tooie" bytes to help increase the confusion? 10 "tooiebytes" is 2 to the 10th decimal power, 2e10, or 1 kilobyte. Bonus points for SI vs binary conflation on multiple fronts!
Great Scott! This is heavy. :P
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Here's my suggestions for the next as-yet-unnamed level after yottabyte
fuckton-byte
ds-byte (in honor of the death star bc it was pretty fuckin' big)
and of course can't help but mention bytey mcbyteface
Bronto means thunder.
By forgetting things that aren't important. Is where I ate 10 years ago on a Thursday in April really important or can they drop that row from their database? Part of big data is knowing when the data has become too big.
I thought they'd Done The Right Thing defining the zetta before the yotta, so you could count down at need. You know, X..., W..., V..., etc. Funny how this "scientist" hasn't caught on to that.
Using the same scale is wrong approach. Scale must be changed. Eg. a Zetta Byte (ZB) could become a unit. Then you have a kilo ZB. Mega ZB. Giga ZB, etc... Let's call them quads! Giga quads! :)
Meanwhile... isn't energy required to store that much data (YB) enough to boil the worlds oceans a thousand times over?
https://hbfs.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/to-boil-the-oceans/
NSA: "Hold my beer."
What's wrong with Octilabyte and Nonilabyte?
Besides nothing.
Hang on, Doc Brown wants a new term for something large? How about a "Great-Scottabyte"
...Yodabyte
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
BRONDO-byte?
As a kid I read books that used the english quantity of a billion, i.e. one billion == one million million. I realized then that the common usage for names for quantities was arbitrary and sucked.
I felt a more rational system would be like this:
1 - One (fine)
10 - Ten (fine)
100 - Hundred - Fine - we use a new word when you have X of X quantity
1000 - Wrong - it should be ten hundreds
10000 - Should be the real thousand - meaning one hundred hundreds. - Use a new word for X of X quantity
100000 - Ten "real thousands"
1000000 - Hundred "real thousands"
10000000 - Ten hundred "real thousands"
100000000 - Million Following the rule new word for X of X quantity - where X is 10000 * 10000
100000000 100000000's would be the new word "billion"
I know that looks weird, but it is way more logical and makes sense.
We should just switch to base-10 computers, it might be easier than getting computer science majors to agree on a naming convention.
kaijubytes ... because they do!
just goes to show the vast chasm between the classified high-side world, and the public open source low-side world. according to certain documents written by the NSA's Chief Research Scientist back in 2012, he projected the data from the Internet and all "sensors" would reach 1 Yottabyte by 2016. and his documents clearly expressed the NSA's intention to record all of it.
Bluffdale operates at Yottabyte scale. 16 Yottabytes to be more precise.
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