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

81–90 of 562 posts

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

#81

Post by millbraebart »

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 "…

I love reading these pretentious responses, which amount to: "Oh why don't these silly midwesterners just listen to us with our prestigious degrees". You fail to see your own bias, by worshipping at the classist alter of institutionalized "higher education", while snubbing your nose at anyone that didn't attend your elitist universities.

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

#82

Post by Qwertious »

bashinator wrote: post #66
Taek wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Computer science needs renaming - like you said, computer science is not about computers, and it's obviously not about science either (it's closer to maths).

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

#83

Post by moneytide1 »

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...

Not sure what they had in the back, but the boxed units normally stocked under the displays were all gone. Employees in electronics confirmed mass exodus of TVs during Stimulus Week. Frozen vegetables gone for a few days, 1lb beef was dwindling most times (I wasn't visiting when they expect high traffic so maybe they were just being really efficient and what I saw was what was left without passing expiration date - no reason to set out a full shelf of beef at 8pm closing).

My sample size is... 2 Walmarts in Reno. But that was the forethought - "where is all this sudden money about to go now that everyone has 'free time at home'?"

The article prompt is ex-tech-leader pointing out reduced R&D budgeting, so I wanted to test the connection that there's an obsession with "watching" or "observing" pre arranged activity [via screen] instead of participating.

Everybody got the individual choice to purchase "what's already produced and available in storage" instead of being offered state money to build a few huge projects (spanning many provinces).

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

#84

Post by akiselev »

natmaka wrote: post #71
fiblye wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Isn't it an effect of a feeling caused by governments using experts in a way letting (too often and a too large part of) the public think that they, at worst, are all (gov & experts alike) pushing their own short-termed and only self-beneficial agendas or, at best, nearly always devise some "Grand Plan" which then appears to cost much more than budgeted, gives less than promised and has unwanted unexpected side-effec…

It's a self fulfilling prophecy that's been ongoing since the 80s. An entire political party's ideology is based on the idea that government doesn't work and when in power they set out to prove it by making government dysfunctional by defunding agencies and confusing their mandates.

That same party politicized clean air regulations, climate change, and wearing masks. This has crippled expertise because if one side can just pay anyone to say anything, whats the point?

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

#85

Post by unishark »

adamnemecek wrote: post #37

The problem starts with culture. In high school, people want to be athletes and pop singers or idk actors. Social skills are over valued. Also the way science is taught in the US discourages exploration and encourages "draw indide the circle". Not to method how hostile academia is.

Not sure what you mean by this. I'd say the US way of teaching in STEM prioritizes solving problems, which is an excellent way to do it, and exactly what an entrepreneur or researcher most needs from school. School systems in other countries are far worse about this, basing school on rote practice and memorization.

Though also class projects strike me as a good way to encourage exploration and creativity, and seems to be something emphasized much more in the US versus other countries in my experience.

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

#86

Post by Ccecil »

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?…

"OpenHardware is engineering on an artist's business model" -Logxen (at least the first person I heard say it :) )

Openhardware is more than about being the cheapest...it is about free modification of anything and everything involved in the project and the ability to share, innovate, sell (as long as GPL is respected) and create. I would actually argue that what makes OSHW projects weaker is the race to the bottom. I watched this happen in more than one OSHW community so far that I have been involved in. Largely, the core devs abandon projects once they get big enough to bring in the cloners since typically you end up getting a lot of "You need to fix this because we are using it, we don't care if we buy your hardware, you are responsible for making it work to my needs". I know this is very common in OSS as well. It is very frustrating to watch happen knowing that the cloners (in our case) do not respect GPL of the project, do not handle their own customer support and sell at a rate which makes it so the "real devs" cannot afford to maintain the project.

Even knowing all this though...I still have a focus on OSHW over patents. My personal belief is that patents only are valuable if you can defend them. I also feel that if I have something valuable enough to want to patent it is probably something the world may need...why not give it away and help everyone.

The real benefit of OSHW is the same thing that can make it very difficult as well...everything is open, so you leave yourself open to all compliments as well as criticisms...there are times where some people with very high level training are willing to help by contributing but more importantly by trolling. If you can fix the issues that they are complaining about, it shows that you are interested in helping the community (and at times they are also very high level people who are not intending to help but they are pointing out issues which may be opaque to the devs).

As far as OSHW robotics. Look into Moveo for a hardware example (there are others) and ROS for control software.

Background: I have been working directly with Reprap since 2011 (Long time member and Op in #reprap@freenode) and working with the Smoothieware/Smoothieboard project since ~2013 doing QA/Inspection/Test/Rework/Hand building protos.

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

#87

Post by conductr »

temporalparts wrote: post #67
Taek wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 permanent…

I can get behind most of what you said except the idea that tax policy should match the economic situation of the day. We need stable tax policies that normalize for the booms/busts.

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

#88

Post by Qwertious »

softwaredoug wrote: post #24

Why do we persist in this old fashioned notion that Nation States are the axis on which “innovation” turns? The brainpower, resources, and motivation for innovating increasingly lie with huge multinational tech companies, not nation states. And they largely don’t care where you live - if you’re smart they want to hire you (unlike nation states with their Byzantine immigration policies)

Corporations only put money into things they can monetize. Anything that works best as commons will be neglected like it's OpenSSL.

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

#89

Post by conductr »

ultramundane8 wrote: post #63
Taek wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Need an unemployment check? Help build a bridge, road, dam, etc.

In my mind it’s super simple. Money for labor. Problem is, most Americans would revolt if you asked them to break a sweat.

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

#90

Post by searchableguy »

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 "…

China’s funding for science and research to reach 2.5 per cent of GDP in 2019: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/2189427/chin...

A documentary by WIRED UK done in 2016 explains many cultural and legal reasons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGJ5cZnoodY

China has hardware industries that work similar to how open source software works.

An article on effects of expiring patents on 3D printing (2013): https://qz.com/106483/3d-printing-will-explode-in-2014-thank...

90 Minutes a Day, Until 10 P.M.: China Sets Rules for Young Gamers: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/business/china-video-game...

Many Asian countries have already taken strong steps for digital addiction (which will be the next important problem to tackle after covid, I bet).

China’s sustainable urban transport revolution: https://dialogochino.net/en/infrastructure/11025-chinas-sust...

https://www.citymetric.com/transport/no-hong-kong-has-best-t...

> Overall, 79% of people between the ages of 12 and 24 in Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, and Russia say they feel optimistic about the direction of the world, compared to only about half of those in far more well-off places like Australia, France, Germany, Great Britain, and Sweden. In the United States, the number is 63%.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90241302/where-in-the-world-are-...

> Of the top countries on our survey, China has developers that are the most optimistic, believing that people born today will have a better life than their parents. Developers in Western European countries like France and Germany are among the least optimistic about the future.

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019

China is also much larger country than US. It has 3x more people than US. Those individuals are going to be at par with people in west at some point. There are so many interesting things to discuss and question.

Post reply on HN