Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 562 posts

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#61

Post by mycall »

fiblye wrote: post #47
didibus wrote: post #19

> "America does not have enough people with those skills." Seriously, I feel the US has a big education problem, with part of it being cultural I think. Seems being educated, knowledgeable, having expertise, learning about science and technology, medicine and law, just isn't valued anymore, in fact it's almost being denigrated and shamed. What I see instead is people pushing for anti-intellectualism and valuing the "…

> in fact it's almost being denigrated and shamed. "Almost" really isn't necessary there anymore. There's a growing group that believes virtually all doctors, scientists, and professionals within certain fields are "in on it" and part of some big conspiracy to do some vague, undefined thing that'll take down America and corrupt their children. These used to just be a fringe group. Now it feels like about half the peo…

The best I can think besides the usual suspects is a more rare one: "the more you know, the more you know you don't know" which is being read incorrectly as "why bother learning when everything is always wrong [describes 20 major problems with human race]". At that point, it is hard to follow.

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#62

Post by eanzenberg »

didibus wrote: post #19

> "America does not have enough people with those skills." Seriously, I feel the US has a big education problem, with part of it being cultural I think. Seems being educated, knowledgeable, having expertise, learning about science and technology, medicine and law, just isn't valued anymore, in fact it's almost being denigrated and shamed. What I see instead is people pushing for anti-intellectualism and valuing the "…

Not surprising considering big public school districts are dropping gifted education to support equality through lowest common denominator learning.

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#63

Post by ultramundane8 »

Taek wrote: post #48
jeffbee wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really, you "checked local walmarts" to inventory all their televisions? That's the biggest bunch of horse shit I've ever read, even on HN. According to the government, only 7% of recipients used any part of their stimulus money to buy household items. https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-9/receipt-and-use-of-sti...

I think it remains a valid question though. What if we had handled the unemployment by creating infrastructure jobs instead of universal handouts? That has the added benefit of increasing the productive output of our economy.

Could you elaborate on a plan (of course a really rough sketch) for "creating infrastructure jobs" during a global pandemic?

I agree with the premise, but I would like to know how to accomplish something like this. Especially if you have domain knowledge, it could be enlightening to the HN readership. There are a lot of accomplished people who read these forums, and it would be cool to see a seed get planted.

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#64

Post by pessimizer »

Taek wrote: post #48
jeffbee wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really, you "checked local walmarts" to inventory all their televisions? That's the biggest bunch of horse shit I've ever read, even on HN. According to the government, only 7% of recipients used any part of their stimulus money to buy household items. https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-9/receipt-and-use-of-sti...

I think it remains a valid question though. What if we had handled the unemployment by creating infrastructure jobs instead of universal handouts? That has the added benefit of increasing the productive output of our economy.

For the same reason we weren't creating infrastructure jobs before coronavirus. I'm not specifying what that reason is, and not for rhetorical reasons. I'm not specifying it because the need for infrastructure investment was just as acute before covid as after, and it wasn't being done then, and won't be done now.

Universal handouts weren't to handle unemployment. They were to pay people to stay home.

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#65

Post by sfifs »

jeffbee wrote: post #32
moneytide1 wrote: post #6

I saw a "Just Have A Think" YouTube channel video recently describing the 1MV HVDC line being built across China. It is part of Belt&Road infrastructure project and will allow them to distribute excess loads to different time zones without skin effect losses of an AC line. This is a part of their COVID stimulus injection. When American $1.2k per citizen landed in accounts, I remember checking local Walmarts in the we…

Really, you "checked local walmarts" to inventory all their televisions? That's the biggest bunch of horse shit I've ever read, even on HN. According to the government, only 7% of recipients used any part of their stimulus money to buy household items. https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-9/receipt-and-use-of-sti...

You think that people are going to tell a government survey that they used the government check to buy televisions? :-)

Similar to will people who support either political candidates disclose it in an interview - especially if they live amongst a social circle that leans the other way.

This is one of the main reasons survey techniques are being replaced by observational and inferential techniques in market research.

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#66

Post by bashinator »

Taek wrote: post #45
WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because people being educated has become 'being elite'. Even in our own profession, I find it difficult to communicate with smart people who lack foundational knowledge, falter, ask for help and then ask me how I knew the right answer. I've had more than person tell me that there's no way this was taught at a university (threading, OS knowledge)

I have a BS in CS. 90% of the concurrency I know is self taught, 98% of the I/O I know is self taught , 85% of the networking I know is self taught. I went to RPI, which is not an ivy school but it is a good engineering school.

Is some of this a failure to distinguish between software engineering and computer science? Some famous CS person quipped that "CS is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." That's fine for studying applied information theory and whatnot, but it seems like maybe the time has come for a formal bifurcation of the fields.

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#67

Post by temporalparts »

Taek wrote: post #48
jeffbee wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really, you "checked local walmarts" to inventory all their televisions? That's the biggest bunch of horse shit I've ever read, even on HN. According to the government, only 7% of recipients used any part of their stimulus money to buy household items. https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-9/receipt-and-use-of-sti...

I think it remains a valid question though. What if we had handled the unemployment by creating infrastructure jobs instead of universal handouts? That has the added benefit of increasing the productive output of our economy.

The problem is that bankruptcies, starvation, inability to maintain your car/house/children/job, and businesses collapsing due to the sudden demand shock are all extremely expensive for the economy in the long run. Those types of losses which these universal handouts are intended for are quick to inflict and long to recover from. As an example, if your normally profitable restaurant goes under and forced to permanently close due to insolvency, it'll take years to build back up a similar restaurant with a similar rapport, client base, efficiency and success. The long term economic impact of these handouts would easily outweigh the infrastructure investments you are proposing.

When times are good though, we should be increasing taxation and investing in infrastructure. Instead, the US Republican party sought to create a massive tax cut during economic boom, which means that we are in a worse financial situation when times have become rough.

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#68

Post by catherd »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #18
lobotryas wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is on who you expect to innovate more: big corps that can afford to file, defend, and acquire patents or individual makers? America will win only when we can support both use cases.

Can you elaborate on what you mean when you say "America will win"? What do you mean win? Open source hardware is really good at making things low cost, because whoever can offer the best value (low cost, reasonably quality) will succeed. So what if we did that with big stuff like MRI machines and semiconductor fabricating equipment and robotics? Wouldn't that make all that stuff cheap, thereby making us better off?…

Open source hardware is also really good at allowing whoever can produce something cheapest to capture all the profits.

Unless the designers are careful about controlling the results of their labor they won't be the ones "thriving", or even benefiting. It only works in certain niches where the technical aspects of production or market naturally exclude most other manufacturers.

Or what about designers who don't necessarily want to be in production just to make money?

Ask someone who has spent years and thousands of dollars developing something only to have a copy shop in Asia start selling their widget for half the cost a month after the design files get posted if they think that's a sustainable business model.

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#69

Post by lgleason »

"This high skills immigration is crucial to American competitiveness, global competitiveness, building these new companies and so forth," he said. "America does not have enough people with those skills."

Translation -- US software engineer salaries are still too high for his liking, so he wants to dilute the market with more to lower the overall cost.

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#70

Post by bsanr2 »

Taek wrote: post #48
jeffbee wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really, you "checked local walmarts" to inventory all their televisions? That's the biggest bunch of horse shit I've ever read, even on HN. According to the government, only 7% of recipients used any part of their stimulus money to buy household items. https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-9/receipt-and-use-of-sti...

I think it remains a valid question though. What if we had handled the unemployment by creating infrastructure jobs instead of universal handouts? That has the added benefit of increasing the productive output of our economy.

We could do both. The GND and Freedom Dividend were both aimed at ameliorating major structural impediments to 1) infrastructure investment and renewal, and 2) grassroots-level innovation, respectively.

Of course, since they're apparently anathema to all but the leftiest lefties, we're back at square one trying to figure out what to do.

Post reply on HN