The units were pretty unambiguous for a long time. For a long time disk storage was measured in 2^10x, at least in operating systems, then hard disk manufacturers decided the way they reported disk size would be 10^3x. Obviously the prefixes having a different meaning in a different context is not perfect, but that's nothing new, for people in SI countries kilo is used for kilogram, any other meaning is hardly related. Calories are counted in kcal without ever mentioning the kilo prefix. A lot of the confusion in IT is from adding additional binary xxbi units that feel contrived and aren't very well accepted.