static_noise

Here

https://matplotlib.org/api/pyplot_api.html#matplotlib.pyplot...

I count about 40 plus more which are not listed.

You surely could first make a dictionary or structure and fill it with these arguments. But then "kwargs" are just that, a dictionary.

I find the interface of the plot function pretty straightforward. There are a lot of options but it's pretty clear what they do and when to use them. Most often you use only some of them - but often different combinations. Splitting this up into multiple helper objects that need to be constructed and filled beforehand would turn the default one-liner into a ten-liner which is not better.

One thing that recently surprised me is that Rust lacks default values and named arguments for functions.

Some consider it a counterpattern or bad memory to be able to not fill out all parameters or reference them by name. However some interfaces easily require like 50 different function parameters that cannot be removed in a simple way and they all make sense in different configurations. Without default values and named parameters you're lost there. I don't get this design decision on Rust side at all.

Could it be the moral cost that is factored in when valuing companies under their cash value?

Some companies come with liabilities that are not in the books; such as having promised to guarantee their workers wages or retirement for decades. If you buy the company and close up shop, you might either be liable to cover these "soft costs" or you might cause political harm to your own operation.

Do you use ZFS? If no then you should use ECC memory.

Now the half truth becomes full-truth.

I don't see what makes workers born in America more important than workers born in any other country. Everybody should get the same chances.

It's a simple two-step process:

1. Have good genes.

2. Don't have bad genes.

If I can do it, everybody can!

Moores law has been the driving force of chip development?

Prophet Moore predicted the future and now engineers start breaking the law?

Isn't it the other way around that Moore made an observation about some effect that arose naturally? The formula was then called Moores law and its extrapolation had great predictive power for a long time.

Similar effects occur all through industries when you start scaling things up. Quality will go up and cost per unit will go down. Often following a simple mathematical formula which describes the learning curve.

In many technologies there is something called maturity where the straight line in the diagram starts to bend and approaches a technical limit. Markets overcome this a few times by changing the technological approach of solving a problem to an approach that has a better limit. This makes the general trend continue for decades... until the point where the next technology is so expensive that noone can afford it anymore.

Thus far Silicon has won every round and chip manufacturing plants cost many billions of dollars.

I'm fascinated by consensus algorithms and would love to implement one myself to synchronize unreliable systems (e.g. a network of independent sensors with a common database running on ESP8266 modules). I didn't study CS, so I didn't absorb all the underlying theory with my breastmilk. So big questions remain unanswered so far.

How exactly do I know that the algorithm is correct? (Proof, of course, but how?)

How do I know that my implementation is correct? (Unit test, of course, but how? How do I simulate/test asynchronous systems with failing communication? How do I catch all possible edge cases?)

Is there an comparative overview of consensus algorithms detailing pros and cons? (A few days ago there was a post about Paxos/Raft having abmysal worst-case performance.)

If they included a breakable USB cable, most people would have been happy. For some reason they didn't.

Variable clock frequency is something very different from being clockless.

Clockless architecture is also not about the general processor design.

Does that mean you cannot use robots, nor can you use humans, to clean up this mess? What do you do then?

Somehow it seems strange that Japan, the motherland of robots, fails to build a robot.

Money can't be the reason. There has been an investment surge into radioactive cleanup technology starting with the damaged reactors six years ago.

Six years and billions of dollars later we get a robot that gets stuck and fails after just two hours. From what I've gathered they didn't even include a proper radiation sensor but used the camera noise in order to "guesstimate" the dosage after the fact. Did they not expect high radiation in that location?

One Latté, please.

TODO: write the rest of the comment.

What about 3D acceleration; does it come with drivers which fully support OpenGL?

You can check the source code of the script.

You can not check the source code of windows.

Who of those could have something to hide?

Another modification would be:

* Allow the group to punish those who keep for themselves.

I have a little modification of your experiment.

* Divide the big group into smaller groups (where they are giving each other inside the group only).

Now individuals in the group where many give to each other get an advantage over individuals in other groups.

Individuals that keep for themselves while staying in a group that gives also keep the better advantage on cost of their group.

In reality your body could have barbed hooks which insert easily but dig into the walls when you try to pull it out. Wiggling doesn't help there.

I think you're only half-right here.

You cannot do this kind of error correction it like ECC checking in the CPU because it would require multiple clocks or too many pins.

You cannot do this kind of error correction across multiple DRAM chips on board because it would require too many pins.

But you could do this kind of error correction on-chip because you could just read 1024 bits (or more) in parallel from multiple areas (or even mutliple stacked silicon slices).

One problem, however, is that each small read would induce a high energy cost due to the many bits fed into the extensive error correction circuitry. While it shouldn't be a problem for consecutive reads, random-access would indeed lead to a high power consumption which in most cases would not be acceptable.

Beside stacking layers on chips, stacking multiple dies is also used to increase the density per PCB area. (I believe that works for DRAM and flash.) The package you see on the PCB may actually hold tens of silicon slices which themselves each hold tens of layers.

This method can be used until heat dissipation becomes an issue, which may be the reason why CPUs/GPUs are not stacked.

While your technological reasoning is valid, it explains a factor of price difference but not a change of the difference which is the original question.

The "3D" process explains an additional factor coming into play at recent times. I bet there are a range of technologies which were developed for flash and used for flash manufacturing but not for DRAM manufacturing. This explains a growing disparity between the size/price ratio.

Let's not stop there. If those technologies are useful for flash, why are they not used for DRAM?

I see not hard reason why the 3D process cannot be made useable for DRAM.

The answer, I guess, is that the market forces lead to different priorities where the size/price ratio for DRAM is not so important and more development is done in other areas like speed, reliability, power consumption. So the real reason is not technological but market driven.

I'm thinking like an MBA here because that's how you have to think in order to reason about the price something has.

Yes, those factors are important! But are they also the main driver of cost? I don't know.

Could we have speed, reliabaility and size? That is a technological question. I don't have the answer to that.

Would enough people care to pay for speed, reliability and size? That's more of an MBA question and the answer probably is no.

The example given is: People pay extra to have 1 TB of flash in their machine but they are OK with only having 16 GB of RAM. The priority is even to have a lower power consumption instead of having 32 GB of RAM.

While you are right that we maybe cannot deliver the technology on a pure technological stance, you kind of miss the point. Even if we could, we wouldn't do it because of the MBAs driving the fincances in a certain direction based on (perceived) market forces.

After reading through the answers here, I don't think the real answer has been given.

Is it the technology?

* Flash cells can store more data an be produced cheaper per cell. But they are more complex to read out and slower.

This can explain some factor, but the factor of 40 given by OP probably not.

* Flash and DRAM probably use different processes.

This could explain a bit but look at the next point...

* DRAM has a much longer history and (at least in the beginning) much higher capital investment.

...which means that DRAM should have the technological advantage. At least through economies of scale.

Is the cumulative investment in flash research already much bigger compared to DRAM research?

Is the process used to produce flash memory so much easier?

Is it the market?

* Obviously people pay the price.

* With DRAM people are hungry for performance more than they are for size.

* We already have more than enough DRAM. The latest MacBookPro demonstrates that 16 GB DRAM is enough for just about everybody but flash storage goes up to 1 TB.

* Of those 16 GB DRAM the speed and power consumption are much more important than the raw size.

Coming back to the cumulative investment. I think that the primary pain point for flash has been the price per GB. Flash could be stronger, faster, more reliable, less power consuming but those are all secondary. It is fast and reliable enough by using very complex RAID controllers. The power consumption is not as bad as HDDs already use a lot and the data mostly just sits around. The main driving point is the price per GB. This is where the money goes in flash development.

On the other hand for DRAM, after some point, it is mostly speed and power driven. Reliability has to be comparatively high as every cell must work over years. Size is mostly increased by improving semiconductor processes where flash probably uses a lot of the same technology. Using the layer stacking technologies of flash is probably not yet applicable because it is not reliable enough and not compatible with the cell layout, maybe it never will.

If we really were hungry for so much RAM we would probably get it. But we aren't. It's good enough. Progress slows down.

All things you mention combined only explain a factor up to 4 (probably much less since the complexity increases). With a factor of 2-3 already being realized years ago.

Not if the people with the degenerate version also have another mutation that interacts. If you only fix one, you run into a third kind of bug.

Are you saying because it can do A it can't do B?

Are A and B mutually exclusive per se or is that just an unfounded assumption?

We would have needed nuclear yesterday. Right now renewables are the most promising path. New nuclear probably wouldn't make a dent until it's already too late.

Of course we need storage and backup generators for renewables. It will be mostly pumped water with gas and oil. Nuclear does not fit as a backup.

In the future, the pricing must include renewables PLUS their backup plan (e.g. a gas generator on standby) to achieve level pricing and availability.

Having a large grid and moving to more flexible consumers in order to distribute and smoothen out supply and demand will also be a huge factor.

In the end I'm positive that it can be done.

It's like going to the toilet mid-meal.

How did they come up with the figure of $0.40 per minute?

I can understand why they say "per Minute" since you think in seconds (which would be too short), minutes (just about right) and hours (which would be too long).

But that $0.40 charge per minute seems odd. Why not $1, why not $0.50, $0.25 or $0.10?