Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation • Hacker News Board

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

#301

Post by unix_fan » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 11:43 AM UTC

533474 wrote: post #206

lgleason wrote: post #69

"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.

And let the brain drain go to Europe or China instead?. Or is it statistically possible that the best innovators and skilled individuals are only born in the US? I do not mind a little competition if we bring people who might improve our technological edge. China is going to surpass the US eventually and oh lord, we are in denial!. This is my opinion, I am not claiming to know the absolute truth or facts.

mandarin and German are not exactly easy to learn in my country. maybe French, but I’m still culturally exposed to English. I live in a Spanish speaking island in the Caribbean, and really, being drawn to the US is inevitable. With that being said, most people are drawn to the US for the reasons highlighted above. That will not change any time soon.

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

#302

Post by 0xfaded » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 11:43 AM UTC

menybuvico wrote: post #290

zegl wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU doesn’t even agree on which alphabet to use, Latin is the most common one but the Greek and Cyrillic alphabets are also official in the union. English is my second language, and while I wouldn’t mind changing the official language of my country, I can’t see that ever happening, there’s just so much culture attached to the language, that would be forgotten together with our language.

Yep. A common European first language would start a process which would result in a terrible loss of local cultural tradition. Cultural suicude for the common good has been suggested before, but I can't imagine that there would be a lot of people who'd agree with it.

I disagree, I live in Denmark where the majority speaks very good English. There's no shortage of Danish media.

On the other hand, economic suicide is assured by insisting on a high standard of living while doing everything possible to prevent innovation.

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

#303

Post by EmilioMartinez » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 11:44 AM UTC

gigatexal wrote: post #230

Xenophobia and nationalism sure don't help. We used to import the smartest most capable people from all across the world to develop and market their inventions and ideas and maybe even become rich in the process. Now, not so much.

The process you describe nostalgically is called braindrain on the third world, and if it's wavering it's due to changing economic and geopolitical landscapes. The process itself created an outflow of scientific and technological knowledge, which paired with industrial outsourcing strenghtened even America's geopolitical rivals. Actual xenophobic and nationalistic attitudes might have protected American hegemony, but you can't put that genie back in the bottle.

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

#304

Post by TheBobinator » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 11:45 AM UTC

ulfw wrote: post #202

dfee wrote: post #72

Eric Schmidt is a household name around here. Doesn’t mean I give a damn about what he thinks. > Dr Schmidt, who is currently the Chair of the US Department of Defense's innovation board, said he thinks the US is still ahead of China in tech innovation, for now. “Invest in my next project now, before it’s too late!” is what I read it as. Edit: let me clarify. Innovation isn't zero-sum. I believe America is the most f…

Weird examples. The US has demonstrated an ability to develop nuclear weapons (deep technical advancement) as well and it has developed datasets on millions of people (see the Snowden revelations). How and why are you dismissing the ethical costs in this case?

The cost of innovation in crude governments of faith (Dictatorships, Tyrranies, etc) is measured in starvation, famine and deaths in the population. The cost of innovation in modern governments built on systems (socialist or capitalist democracies) is a lot of squaking about the innovation and its uses.

The cost of the NORK's replicating nukes and China's profiling their citizens contrasts with the US in that those costs are much lower in the US. The US isn't carting off undesirables to re-education camps (there's a prison system with a lot of people in jail but every single one of them was put there by a jury) or starving its citizenry to make innovations (although there is a point to be made there). This, in turn, tends to increase the rate of innovation (people don't come to associate the change with bad things and because they are discussing them more people are exploring them).

China or Europe can be #1 in scientific paper publishing but until I see robots that can do what General Dynamics is doing or even what Honda was doing 5 years ago, it's all just copying the leader and the development cycle for those countries to product decent copies is quite long and tends to be inconsistent due to people developing bad cases of I-don't-give-a-shit-itus. E.G. China has problems innovating for the same reason they have problems making an aircraft carrier and maintaining a navy; their steel mills churn out inconsistent crap.

The BBC article is trying to deliver a message using Schmidt's name, and isn't coming to any conclusions or providing any data. It's pure propaganda and a total waste of time to read or comment on really.

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

#305

Post by usrnm » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 11:45 AM UTC

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #225

fvdessen wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was still not that long ago an incredible amount of innovative companies and products in Europe. But at that time companies were still built for their home markets first and on that regard the USA is big and unified. Since software is mostly winner takes all it means that when the USA companies came to Europe they had already won the USA and could steamroll the local competition There is for example no way a sw…

> There is for example no way a Swedish mapping company could have competed with google maps An Israeli one did.

In Russia we have several successful competitors to Google Maps and even a search engine that's actually good. Competing with Google is extremly difficult, but possible

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

#306

Post by 0xfaded » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 11:49 AM UTC

AsyncAwait wrote: post #221

emsy wrote: post #195

Tangential, since this article is about the US and China. But if the US has dropped the ball, then Europe (or the EU specifically) didn't even bother to go to the game. The only thing we're innovative at is coming up with regulations. And I say this as someone who thinks the US tech sector should be under much heavier regulatory scrutiny.

The EU is nowhere as culturally unified as the U.S is. So the pool of resources available isn't as large. I'd also not be so quick on the regulation front. Looking at the (lack of) environmental regulation in the US right about now or the absolute astonishing cost of any medical emergency, I'd say they went too far in the other direction.

The lack of cultural unity thing is a curtain to hide behind. There's no reason Europe can't have a powerful federal government, other than it would result in transfers from the "export based economies" to the others.

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

#307

Post by notwatching » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 11:49 AM UTC

Schmidt has the typical perspective of someone who knows nothing about China.

For ease, I've singled out this one point:

> For example, Chinese telecoms infrastructure giant Huawei spends as much as $20bn (£15.6bn) on research and development - one of the highest budgets in the world.

Any member of Chinese society knows that budgets like this are announced to look impressive, and that the money itself goes through so many layers that siphon off 20% that when the project(s) are finally delivered, it was done on a shoestring and the deliverable looks like a rough approximation of what was in the scope. Just don't look under the hood.

Then there are all the other grand initiatives where the money is quietly put into the stock market and again the deliverable is a "driverless car" etc. that in reality doesn't work.

Obviously, there's a lot more nuance than this, but if I went around refuting all these "China experts", I'd have no time for anything else. The point is: don't believe the hype. Just because a lot of low-hanging tech fruit is highly visible and China has a lack of ethical and legal oversight does not mean the country is innovative.

The US I can't comment on.

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

#308

Post by 0xfaded » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 11:51 AM UTC

tnolet wrote: post #287

emsy wrote: post #195

Tangential, since this article is about the US and China. But if the US has dropped the ball, then Europe (or the EU specifically) didn't even bother to go to the game. The only thing we're innovative at is coming up with regulations. And I say this as someone who thinks the US tech sector should be under much heavier regulatory scrutiny.

I’d say the EU and euro zone is one of the biggest and boldest innovations in the postwar Western world.

Maybe, but it's also been totally spineless for the last 30 years.

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

#309

Post by harryf » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 11:53 AM UTC

amai wrote: post #270

Not the 'US' people and government are to blame for this. It is more that the big tech monopolies in the US certainly lead to less innovation.

Yeah this could be titled “Ex-CEO of D-o-D incubated monopoly, that actively stifled innovation through products they later cancelled and anti-competitive search practices complains about lack of innovation”

Not saying that’s the whole picture but there’s certainly some “pot calling the kettle” going on here.

Edit: Perhaps a real issue would be looking at how big-tech lobbies government and its impact on innovation

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

#310

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 11:56 AM UTC

throwawayinfo wrote: post #299

tnolet wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d say the EU and euro zone is one of the biggest and boldest innovations in the postwar Western world.

But it's still terribly fragile and Brexit risks the whole thing collapsing. Not necessarily an innovation if it won't stand up to time.

> Brexit risks the whole thing collapsing

I know it's off topic, but could you clarify how you could see this happening?

I mean the only issue I can see is that the EU will end up with multiple, smaller finanical centres, hindering scale. But other than that, I can't see the problems of EU with respect to Brexit.

Now, the euro without transfers, that's a bloody problem, but that's been a real problem for 20 years, and no amount of ECB bandaging will fix it.