krimskrams

You make a good point. After more reading on this, I change my mind. The slew of problems caused by using namespace directives far outweigh the positives of avoiding the use of prefixes for convenience sake.

Even if there are cases where they can be safely used as you've mentioned, its introduction in the book early on, especially in the examples, seems to be a crutch that could lead to an eventual footgun for beginners like me who are following along. I'll reconsider its use from now on.

Curiously, I haven't seen any mention of Google Earth Engine (GEE) in these comments so far. On top of offering a massive data repo of optical and SAR satellite imagery dating back to the 70s (LANDSAT 1-9, Sentinel 1-2 and others), it also has a Python API module (and thus can also use GIS, web integration etc.) and you can also use the in-browser JavaScript version (GEE Code Editor) all for free. With that, you can create your own indexes for whatever purpose with some image arithmetics. Its business model is that you have to pay monthly if you're sourcing massive amounts of data or using it at enterprise scale. I think the best part of the JS version (despite being slow at times) is being able to share an entire project with a link.

It seems that Nimbo is trying to offer a more analysis-ready alternative with some pre-processing like cloud removal done beforehand, which can be done yourself with some coding and with greater control on GEE. The lack of mention of the exact spatial or temporal resolution and surface coverage is an odd choice to me. These parameters are what I look for first and foremost when considering alternative data sources. With multiple data products, I think the website should atleast give a range (Minutes, days? Centimeter, meters?) of what resolutions are available. The comparison with Google Earth seen on the website is also bizarre to me as GEE is a more apt comparison because it is specifically meant for manipulating and sourcing satellite imagery. It would be more compelling to see a comparison of that instead.

I previously used GEE at university for flood mapping and mapping forest fire damage. This tool is also actively being used in peer reviewed journals with a large community around it. And yes, you can use it to see the effects of climate change and human impact on nature, I will leave it as an exercise for you to search for examples.

I'd like to bring some perspective as someone who comes from a non-programmer background (mainly academic data science with Python and R) and just starting to learn C++.

Bjarne's book seemed to be a comprehensive introduction and I'm currently going through it. I found that adding "using namespace std" at the beginning of the file reduced some of C++'s syntactic overhead that a beginner such as myself has to account for. It allows me to focus on the essential by learning the programming principles, rather than getting stuck on the syntax and having to (annoyingly) repeat std:: every line.

Nevertheless, I think every beginner should know the disadvantages of setting the namespace at the beginning of the file and that no one should use it in production code, but it does its job at keeping things simple if I'm just starting out with C++. There is a reason why Bjarne does this in his book, and I can see why.

Are you confusing electricity generation with electricity use? If we're counting off-grid electricity generation, then we're talking about A) critical infrastructure like utilities or B) off-grid homes or communities which typically use solar panels, small wind turbines or gas/biogas to generate their own power. The off-grid portion most likely make up a tiny portion of France's energy mix, which is dominated by nuclear (>50%).

Not rinsing also leaves all the food residue, germs (dead or alive) and debris that has collected in your mouth throughout the day. Not rinsing my mouth after brushing feels like showering and leaving the soap on.

What do you think about the other side of the video game industry where games are distributed digitally? Most PC games nowadays are distributed this way and even consoles are moving in this direction too. There is so much more to it than just aligning marketing and distribution with the development cycle.

Time and time again, news breaks out about terrible working conditions and crunch culture being so ingrained and standard in this industry. Many cases come from studios that mainly distribute their games digitally. So many AAA titles nowadays are released half-finished, broken and rushed for the sake of meeting next quarter's quotas at the expense of the company's employees mental health (Ubisoft for instance), and in some cases, their lives (Activision Blizzard).

The fact that some developers are unjustly taking heat, blame and pressure from their own playerbase is not the saddest part. Video game journalists are disincentivised from talking about it from fear of being blacklisted.

I find that looking at it from the traditional brick-and-mortar perspective misses a dark side of this industry that is often entirely ignored, or treated as an open secret. Crunch can be avoided. Nintendo and Mojang have delayed releases to avoid crunch, yet one of the two also deals with physical retail copies. This is a management/investor pressure/culture/people issue.

After having used Windows for over 20 years (XP to 10), I decided to switch to Linux a year and a half ago and I'm happy for it. The requirement for a Microsoft Account and nonsensical UI changes requiring more clicks to reach the settings I want was annoying but not a deal breaker at first. Microsoft has also been trying to make Windows more like MacOS, or a mobile tablet, since Windows 8 which I don't like.

What really made me worry about the future of the Windows ecosystem is the increasing amount of telemetry and Microsoft's endless attempts at trying to monetise every part of the system at the expense of my user experience, even if I paid for a license.

Making the base OS usable by disabling telemetry (and Cortana) hidden away in the settings has become a hassle. The UX dark patterns trying to make me switch from Firefox to Edge has become tiring for me. Them experimenting with ads in the file system, even if it was an experimental feature that was "never meant" for public release, made me wonder how far they were willing to push it in future Windows iterations, so I made the switch.

Edit: Worth mentioning that I switched to Fedora XFCE and I stuck with it because it doesn't get in the way of my workflow. I also noticed that it doesn't use as much background resources as W10 which is great.

I get what you're saying. Although I find that referring to humanity as a collective, or using "we" as in "we are in this together" in discussions like these runs the risk of homogenising human societies into one, even though a large part of humanity's historical impacts on the environment has been heterogeneous (i.e., industrial revolution beginning in Western societies). You can find the same criticism surrounding the term "Anthropocene" in academic and general settings.

Countries such as Pakistan and Pacific island countries that have contributed the least to climate change are among the most impacted, which is why two questions (among many others) have loomed climate politics over the past 30 years: "Where does the liability fall?" (Ex: loss and damage fund) and "How can I, as a country, be in a better position within a global crisis?" (Ex: disagreement over the global warming potential of non-CO2 emissions due to different chosen time horizons between countries; GWP100 vs. GWP*; this greatly affects carbon accounting in agricultural countries that rely on cattle for instance)