Just now I downloaded the maximum resolution available of 21696x21696 pixels of the GOES-16 satellite full disk snapshot on to my desktop. The actual size of this jpeg file is 42,101,799 bytes. But when I click on the properties tab of the icon on the desktop it shows only 327,240 bytes. Why is this so far off?
Hi - just to double-check, are you getting to the Properties tab through an icon on the desktop itself? Does opening Dolphin and navigating to the ~/Desktop folder give a different value for the size?
If so, then I’d guess you’re running into the following issue: 454473 – In properties dialog for item in the desktop:// IO worker, file size is sometimes not accurate (shows something like "48B") - it’s a confirmed bug, and looks like something that will just require someone with the time, ability and interest to jump in and figure out how to fix 
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I’m glad I’m seeing this, I was copying files to an external drive (also formatted ext4) and when I was comparing the files using Dolphin, sometimes the file size would not match, sometimes the file appeared even larger on the external drive, I retried a few times and gave up. I started to suspect the external drive was dying since it’s getting old. But opening the files appeared fine.