this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2024
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.

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We have basic words for the numbers zero to three, so why not use them to count?

  • None (0)
  • Single (1)
  • pair (2)
  • Multiple (3+ but we'll use it as three)

So with those "digits" we can construct some numbers:

  1. Single
  2. pair
  3. Multiple
  4. Single nothing
  5. Single single
  6. Single pair
  7. Single multiple
  8. Pair of nothing
  9. Pair of singels
  10. Pair of pairs

And of course we can construct bigger numbers like:
42 = 4²×2+4¹×2+4⁰×2 = pair of pairs of pairs
128 = 4³×2 = pair of absolute complete nothinges For this last one I just use some adjectives to repeat the "nothing" as it looks really weird with multiple nothing in a row.

The distance between Stockholm and Gothenburg is a single multiple of none multiple multiples

Could I have a single multiple of bananas please?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Modern flash-based SSDs are banks of capacitors, and recent ones will usually store 8 different voltage levels per capacitor, allowing it to count in base-8 and saving physical size over counting in base-2. This is called "TLC", or "Tri-level cell", meaning it can store the equivalent of 3 binary bits of data in a single capacitor.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Is there any sort of error correction for this? Don’t capacitors lose charge over time?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Yes, of course there is error correction. Also, while the SSD is on power, it'll constantly go through all data and fix the areas that are starting to deteriorate.

But this does mean an SSD left without power will slowly lose data over months and years.

This also means that writing data is much slower and the SSD can handle far fewer writes. But the tradeoff is that TLC and QLC SSDs can handle 2× and 4× more data than MLC SSDs for the same price.

That's why MLC SSDs are primarily used for professional use and TLC and QLC is primarily used for gamers.

Some TLC and QLC SSDs even allow you to choose how much of the SSD should be used as SLC/MLC space (4× less data, 4× faster writes, 4× more endurance) and which part should be used as TLC/QLC (4× more data, 4× slower changes, 4× less endurance).