Earlier quoted context omitted.
Latin is tanned, rested and ready.
Proto-indo-european would be a better unity option so as to not show favor to Romance-speaking countries.
PIE lacks the vocabulary for certain modern things like writing.
Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation
411–420 of 562 posts
Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation
#412Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with making higher ed only a public service is you run into rationing. If all positions have to be government funded there tends to be fewer positions. There are plenty of people on HN who likely would not have made the cut in a EU country.
Supply in the USA hasn't kept pace with demand. How would you remedy that?
Unsure. Controlling university spend on administrative positions is attractive. It would be similar to mandating expenditures on claims for insurance companies.
Access to education seems higher in the US as-is though it is still in perfect. I am one of the people the US system left behind. Not sure how to get back to school.
Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation
#413Anyone else find it ironic that Google is the subject of one of the biggest anti-trust cases in recent history, and now Schmidt is blaming the US for not innovating enough? Maybe if so much of the tech industry's wealth and resources weren't pooled together into a handful of massive monopolists who have nearly complete control over whether any competitor lives or dies, the US (and really, the entire world) would have…
Just look at tensorflow. It masquerades as enabling open source ai, while really pushing people to pricey, proprietary google cloud compute. How these ppl can keep a straight face, I have no idea.
I run tensorflow on my laptop for small jobs, and AWS for big ones or in production. Not sure what the "push" is supposed to be.
Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation
#414Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you are giving far too much credit to other members of our species. Members of the media are clearly as fallible as the dysfunctional politicians they are covering. CNN and other left-of-center media organizations would do themselves a favor by at least holding their tongue on areas where they are too explicitly demonstrating their bias. The way their pundits make ad hominem remarks against the president ever…
Fox News has been doing this literally for decades, to the point where they have zero journalistic credibility anymore. CNN is rather tame by comparison.
Sure, but their goal has always been to simply appeal to their base rather than to evangelize the gospel of the GOP. They're far too partisan an institution to be attempting a shot like that.
The difference is that the left-leaning news institutions make up the bulk of the "mainstream media" and they're now just a mirror-image of fox news. And their winning strategy in 2020 is not to become the clone of the right's repugnant rhetoric. The winning strategy should be to convert the moderates or those slightly right of center; yet the more they assume the shape of Fox News the less disingenuous they appear, which makes this task ever less likely. I literally have friends who were life long liberals 4 or 5 months ago who got sucked into some strange corners of the conspiratorial right wing web and many of their grievances are against the mainstream media. Many of which are hard to argue against.
Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation
#415Anyone else find it ironic that Google is the subject of one of the biggest anti-trust cases in recent history, and now Schmidt is blaming the US for not innovating enough? Maybe if so much of the tech industry's wealth and resources weren't pooled together into a handful of massive monopolists who have nearly complete control over whether any competitor lives or dies, the US (and really, the entire world) would have…
After WW2/Korea (I forget the exact time frame) IBM was making money just fine and refused to take a risk on then modern transistor computing machines. The US Government spent the money and effectively donated trillions in profits to the rich elites of today. I find it hilarious how ignorant we are of the last 50-70 years of details of our history. Basically the lifetime of Bezos, Gates... their parents changed the r…
> The US Government spent the money and effectively donated trillions in profits to the rich elites of today.
Those rich elites being everybody who uses a computer. Basic scientific research is the paradigmatic case of where the government should be spending money. The rich don’t get better iPhones, they barely get better computers considering how fast the state of the art advances. There may be fields where something resembling your argument has some truth to it but basic research in computing and computing hardware isn’t it.
Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation
#416Earlier 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…
I like your points and agree on your conclusion. Further, I would like to add a few ideas: - innovation in Europe can only scale if we achieve a higher degree of unity in Europe, including one common language, one common jurisdiction and law framework. Localization is just too expensive in Europe and hinders scaling. - a certain degree of protectionism is good. I am a big fan of how China made it. They have a really…
> - innovation in Europe can only scale if we achieve a higher degree of unity in Europe, including one common language, one common jurisdiction and law framework. Localization is just too expensive in Europe and hinders scaling.
If that were the cost, then it would not be worth the price. Fortunately, it is completely unnecessary. It suffices to look to when Europe was at her best.
Technology is mere instrument. What you describe is Procrustean cultural destruction to satisfy some metric. Technology is not the end, but a means that has its proper place. The destruction of the various cultures that make the world rich is a recipe for monoculture and thus lack of inspiration. A diverse and decentralized Europe permits the exchange of ideas to occur in an atmosphere of diverse cultures. "Scale" is about de facto standardization and standardization is a double edged sword, not an unalloyed good. If anything, scale is what makes monopolies possible.
The solution is not to create a bland mass of rootless "citizen consumers" crafted out of the corporate pop culture, though, to be honest, Europe is practically there already, wearily drifting along, preferring to keep warm. The solution is a fundamental awakening of Europeans to the deep roots of their civilization and what made it great. That's where the life force is. The EU is in practice a form of managed decline perpetrated by delusional ideologues, petty bureaucrats, and ignorant airheads. It is antithetical to a vibrant Europe so looking for a solution there is like asking a dictator of some banana republic what makes a vibrant country.
Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation
#417Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The people of Hiroshima You know what I found most fascinating about the Hiroshima memorial in Japan? They go on about how bad the bombing was but literally have a statement to the effect that if Japan was invaded they would have fought to the last man, woman and child. Millions would have died on both sides and the country would have been a wasteland. So unpleasant as it is, sometimes ethics does require the lesser…
There are reams of scholarship about how the bomb wasn’t necessary to end the war in the Pacific Theater. This was, in fact, the conclusion at the time of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey: > Bаsеd on а dеtаilеd invеstigаtion of аll thе fаcts, аnd supportеd by thе tеstimony of thе surviving Jаpаnеsе lеаdеrs involvеd, it is thе Survеy's opinion thаt cеrtаinly prior to 31 Dеcеmbеr 1945, аnd in аll probаbility…
Saying we knew something in hindsight given information not available to the decision makers at the time is a poor argument. Amazingly Truman didn't have the honest testimony of the Japanese leaders to make his choice on in 1945.
Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation
#418Late to this thread, sorry. I have two tangental questions. #1 In general terms, what's China's commitment (investment) in higher ed? Compared to the USA and other economies? USA's tuition, loans, student debt is always good for an argument on HN. Almost no one mentions that the USA decided to privatize higher ed some decades back. So I was wondering if China and others made the same mistake. #2 How does current Chin…
The problem with making higher ed only a public service is you run into rationing. If all positions have to be government funded there tends to be fewer positions. There are plenty of people on HN who likely would not have made the cut in a EU country.
US higher ed already is a public service. Only 25% of students are in private colleges/universities, and ~every professor who does research is funded mostly by government.
I believe that what's actually happening with US higher ed supply is that we stopped founding large research universities. Many of the great public schools were endowed using federal land[1] and eventually the government ran out of valuable agricultural land.
Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation
#419Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google definitely could of created a research laboratory. Wasnt it not long ago that companies would invest a lot more money on research? That was why we got so many impressive projects out of Bell Labs and I am sure other companies. Its a shame that horse race ended. Whats worse is Google wants all their software to be as intangible as possible by forcing it all on their servers. Google hasnt had many desktop apps y…
> could of I am not a grammar nazi. I am not even a fucking native English speaker, but what the fuck??? Why is this mistake so prevalent these days?
Many people contract "could have" to be "could've" which when spoken can very easily turn to "could of"
Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation
#420> And that's one of the key reasons why China has been able to catch up... he thinks the US is still ahead of China in tech innovation, for now. But that the gap is narrowing fast. Which is awesome . Because framing it as "ahead" or a "gap" is completely backwards. Innovation isn't a competition or zero-sum game. Innovation coming out of China benefits the world , just like innovation coming out of the US does. What…
Whatever you're position happens to be, you can't pretend like we're all in this innovating together for the betterment of humankind. China and the US have very different ideologies and are opposing forces in global geopolitics. There are a lot of people, both inside the US and outside, that would prefer to see the US continue to be the most innovative country, so Schmidt's perspective is relevant and informative, not just cheap nationalism.