My opinion is different: I had one and I found it a poor platform, construction quality if sufficient to be generous. Then, I had hardware problems and the assistance was a Kafkaesque nightmare. I got rid of it and I took an old Pixel 3A on which I installed Ubuntu Touch: I'm not totally satisfied but, waiting for better Linux platform, IMHO it's another planet.
Hi, professional C++ developer here, I find this post casually and, for curiosity, I watched the video. The example used by the guy is wrong beyond recovery and I'm about to detail why after the premise that, yes, exception are slow:
1. exceptions have that name because are intended to handle event out of normal , error and not to returns value or information to the caller. No skilled C++ developer will write functions like those, never !
2. In that kind of function exception are useless, in fact that should be write like this, with exception disabled:
int calc(int a, int b) noexcept {
if(... omissis ...) return 1;
return 0;
}
3. In case the function had some more complex errors, the correct form for the use of exceptions should be:
int calc(int a, int b) {
try{
// More complex logic here
if(... omissis ...) return 1;
return 0;
} catch(myexcept& ex){
// do something
// possibly other catch for different except here
} catch(...){
// do something
}
}
So, not to return information but for error handling.
3. From a skilled developer , from a financial company, I expected a real life example , with correct exception use and a real case in which their presence can slow down a critical section of a program. That could be an interesting lesson;
4. Moreover, the examples are particularly bad because could induce people to think that in other contexts, where performance are not so important, the use of the exceptions in that way is justifiable ! I guess that could be a reason the article was downvoted.
5. I hate "dogma driven programming", IMHO to demonise whole class of features of a language without critical sense is wrong: yes most application has critical sections that are performance sensitive but, also frequently, large portions of them are not. So why make programmer's life miserable banning without think features like exceptions or polymorphism "because is written"? Moreover, if some little parts is justified that are written even in Assembly, maybe large chunks could be written in Go or Python without influence on the general performance of the system.
I just finished to read the article and I find it hilarious:
- Author: "They can also operate in many environments, making them particularly attractive for wireless sensors in locations where changing BATTERIES is inconvenient or expensive, such as an underground pipe system or interior aircraft cable ducts";
- CEO: "There is broad demand across the electronics industry to shrink form factors and decrease dependency on BATTERIES and wired power. We believe Graphene Energy Harvesting will have a profound impact on both.”
We really live in a "bullshit amplified by social" society, they took a scientific publication about a phenomenon that needs peer reviews , verifications, etc and transform it in "We have the technology to recharge your phone WITH THE HEAT of YOUR HAND, licenses available !"
IMHO this article is garbage because moving internet backbone in space isn't a sustainable choice in the short, medium and especially long period. Starlink knows that, they are operating in loss, burning money of investors, hoping that some kind of new sci-fi tech will change the game, but honestly that won't happen. Image if the current cellphone network was in space, every time the tech has a generational step forward you should burn all the satellites and re- launch a new constellation. Moreover, you need to reach consumers (the last mile ) on Earth and you can't do that with lasers. Customers will rely in radio communications, that in this case have low quality compared to other alternatives, when they are available. In fact the point of satellite Internet is to cover a niche market: you use that solution if there are no alternative and if you can afford the costs. So you can accept lower connection speed, variale QoS, etc , hoping in a better alternative in the future and, when that alternative arrive in form of a wired traditional connection, instantly the customers migrate there. So that market constantly decrease, not increase. If competitors realise that exist clusters of satellite customers in some rural zones and they are willing to pay more for Internet connection they will take over completely and , anyway, in times of remote working, someone should invest in providing fast internet in remote places that are characteristic of better quality of life for remote workers want a better life, instead of invest in satellite internet. Laser telecommunications are already a thing but in optic fibre and there in fact they have more sense than in a fragile and expansive satellite constellation.
Nowadays I feel like a fool , why should I do open source contribution? To enrich these big corporation that thank you with that behaviours and pissing a you professional category ?
- They stole your code embedding it in close commercial crap without credits for the authors nor source code publishing;
- They stole your code using it to create AI appliance that are absolutely not intelligent but act like indirection layer to nullify the license and than they say that developer can be substitute but those "AI" appliances;
- As Mr. Geerling point out, now they shamelessly pass on the GPL license without fear of retaliation;
I hope that the community will do its move, first of all updating the GPL to explicitly forbid this loophole, I'm talking about paywall and illegal restriction of the source code distribution.
Moreover , I think some kind of open source licence enforcement organisation should exist. Licenses without enforcement are hot air. For plenty of that organisation Open Source programmers are only simpletons , not dedicated peoples building their fortune. IMHO, I would like to see the possibility to bill for commercial use of open source code easily with license that explicitly cover this area and, again, organisation doing enforcement. Time is a priceless resource and IMHO is inconceivable that corporation etc reduce open source programmers to the role of slave workers of third world countries.
I just saw the video, I think that's plausible and notably the test flight seems last only few minutes without the magic "hybrid technology" they mention in the presentation, as expected. I agree with one think the guy says in the video, the only purpose of that machine is to make people enjoy the thrill of flight, aka amusement parks.
If this isn't a scam it's bullshit, for a number of reasons:
- in the cities of developed countries is forbidden to fly drones so big almost everywhere;
- in the same cities is forbidden to fly or landing ultralight plane ;
- this vehicle falls in both the previous categories, so that photos in urban areas are bullshit : you can't use that to go to the office and no cities will give the authorisation to rent that stuff as electric bike to everyone. That will never happen !
- How you can possibly guarantee the security with that kind of vehicle around, against criminal and terrorist ? Providing Stinger Missiles and Apache helicopters to the police ? Shooting down drones with machine guns inside the city in WWI style duels ? Oh, please ! :-)
- I imagine flock of this toys, piloted by drunken pilots, raining down Saturday night ! :-)
That admitting that this project is feasible: observing the photos of that vehicle, I can not see space for the batteries because, as described in the specs, it should float, so the landing support should be empty to guarantee buoyancy, they say batteries are far from the pilot to guarantee thermal protection, so they can't be under the seat and above the cabin should be the "ballistic parachute". So where are they ? In the pylons of the motors ? But in that case they won't be easily interchangeable are declared in the specs ! And that magic "hybrid technology" that should solve all the autonomy problems? No details at all , another red flag. So the photos of the "prototype" IMHO are more a Photoshop exercise than reality.
programmer and open source contributor here. Because you aren't the only one to tell this "alternative facts" in order to do marketing for your products ( i.e. the Microsoft guy told "we can literally double your programmer overnight, read "an half of your programmer in redundant" ), because I read here on HN that companies are firing people also because subjects like you do these kind of affirmations, because I also read big companies are reducing salaries also because apparently there are those "instant programmers" they can unfreeze when they need them, I have some consideration:
- what if you piss off a large part of the open source community and we stop to publish our code, like the screenwriters' strike in progress ? No more patches for six months, for example.
- What if all the public code is removed from on-line repositories: no new code is added anymore ? What will you use to training your AI stuff ? Your internal code? So we can finally have Nvidia drivers equivalent to the closed source :-) ? Time ago, I read about a "Endgame" initiative, I forgot the reason but then people started to remove code from Github.
- I was reading here a twit of a guy , open source contributor, who realised that copilot ( or other equivalent, I have to look up ) was copying his code 1:1, I don't like if that this AI stuff became a layer of indirection where the license disappear. Our software is open source but that don't authorise anyone to steal the work of people spending their time ( often they free time ) to contribute to community projects. Stuff like that is convincing me to change my level and modalities of contribution!
So, mr Nvidia chief, sir, you are spitting in the plate where AI is training, I don't think it's a good policy.