I've spent a whole bunch of time on CoolBeans (now OpenBeans http://www.openbeans.org), a "distribution" of NetBeans.
I assumed it would be possible to do a lifestyle business out of catering to a subset of the over 1M NetBeans users. Turns out it is not so easy.
I spend some money for a Windows machine to digitally sign builds, the macOS dev certificate and hosting. But the bulk of the cost was the time it all took.
PS: The .xyz domain in combination with the Windows antivirus solutions (looking at you ESET) was a major annoyance. Switched to .ORG just in time for the whole debacle there.
> I think that’s the reason the “hype” for RISC-V is “so big”. It’s not because it’s going to be everywhere, but because it’s quite literally hacker news.
I agree that the site might have an angle and I don't believe their alternative solution (agroecology) is any good. Still, the article seems to showcase some questionable points about the AGRA initiative.
The whole idea of introducing IP law for seeds to improve yields then show a 17% increase, just like the baseline, seems a monumental mistake.
The fertilizer situation is questionable too. If they put so many conditions then they should also guarantee some outputs. Otherwise there's no risk for them, only the farmers. But I grant you that whole section seems a bit shallow.
You set a pretty high bar to criticise such huge initiatives. They can fail based on the externalities they create, not only as a model that guarantees an output given some assumptions.
I learned something, thank you! Considering how performant modern phones are I hope all adhere to SBSA or similar so I can install any OS on my phone just like I could on my 100Mhz PC way back.
Seems fair enough. Still, the hype is so big on HN it does seem like the hope is for RISC-V everywhere. It's like saying soon enough we will all program in Haskell.
The program is supposed to improve agricultural yields and they claim it did not. Is the program just about helping Western investments? So the investments result in unchanged yields?
I had no clue about this situation but it doesn't look very well. Introducing continent-wide IP-law for seeds, getting farmers into debt by having them used only approved fertilisers and then showing virtually no productivity increase against the baseline shows no redeeming quality to the program.
But hey, Gates will be declared a saint in the next 10 years so who is this little mag site to comment?
Are we talking about RISC-V as an abstract idea, the same way we would talk about the benefits of functional or object oriented programming here?
Or is the end goal to have hardware in stores that people can buy?
Wasn't SPARC a RISC architecture? (Wikipedia says so, but I'm no expert).
> What do you mean by "We barely have a decent ARM ecosystem". Are you talking about the tools to build for those processors? Or the tools to build new ones of those processors? Or the actual chips that are available?
I remember the early OpenWRT / RPi days when many packages weren't even compiling for ARM. Now I think we are in a much better shape. The chips were available, but the software ecosystem was way behind.
> At worst, RISC-V could be equivalent to ARM, without many of the parts that suck about it.
What I do know about ARM sucking is that the whole board design makes each product need a customer kernel more or less. Which is why we still don't have a "Linux for your phones". What I've read about RISC is that it's going to be roughly the same: encourage a lot of co-processors which mean custom boards to me and probably custom kernels.
This seems relevant if my corporation wants to put some $M into producing a thing. But I paid like $200 for my CPU and I would love a $500 Ryzen. Either way, I don't really care if 1% goes to royalties -- my price fluctuates more than that just because of our national currency.
I don't understand the hype for RISC-V at all. It's an instruction set that would... just require a new backend for clang/gcc/Java and mean nothing to me unless somebody makes something that just obliterates a Ryzen.
Why should developers care? We barely have a decent ARM ecosystem after years of ARM routers and Raspberry Pi. Now we are supposed to be enthusiastic we will do that yet again for RISC-V?
Is it because it's somehow more open? But ARM wasn't that closed afaik - lost of folks produced it.
And Sun Microsystems open sourced a 64 thread CPU, the OpenSparc and nothing happened.
Now that we are producing and injecting industrial quantities of Ψ, any chance this will get incorporated in actual viruses or maybe teach the immune system not to ignore it (or maybe even go crazy about it)?
I would have bet the move would be towards Lenovo + Linux but no, it was a Lenovo running Windows.
Apple gear is nice, but you can't compare the price of a Lenovo having a fast Ryzen with the latest MBP. I bought the Lenovo at 1/3rd the price. Considering the difference I think the bumps I encountered are worth the $$$$ saved.
That's not the market way of looking at it. How will a bankrupt company retain their world class employees? They are one missing pay-check and counteroffer away from moving elsewhere.
Not sure what the angle should be here. The founders didn't manage to raise the company; it was soon to be bankrupt. Of course the founders would be wiped out.
Still, they have $300,000 worth of shares and "the buyer has agreed to pay US$10-million to key employees and consultants including Mr. Gagne and Dr. Bengio as part of a retention plan".
Business doesn't always work out. Getting a cool $1M after trying and failing is not the worst thing that could happen.