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

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

#491
post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Obviously we already have English, nearly universally spoken as a second or third language in the EU. So I assume you mean English, or some other language as the first language. Which I think me…

If English becomes national language, you could forget about innovation. A big reason why China and SK are successful is language barrier. It effectively stops brain drain and thus, increase innovation. All countries with either main language or secondary language as English has already lost tech market. Just look at foreign competitors of Amazon, Google, Facebook etc. Even Russia like country have major tech compani…

> A big reason why China and SK are successful is language barrier. It effectively stops brain drain and thus, increase innovation.

This is BS. There will always be a loss of brain power to the lingua franca nation(s), regardless what that language happens to be. The research opportunities will (almost?) always be better.

That said, many people stay in China or return to China because they like it there, even if they speak English at a high level and have the option to stay in an English-speaking country. This has been true in my circle of friends and professional acquaintances since the 90s.

It might be the case that China is large enough to create its own large opportunities, so emigrating from China to an English-speaking country may not be particularly compelling. That said, I think it’s an apple-and-oranges comparison — the opportunities largely seem to be simply different from where I sit.

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

#492
post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30 years ago you would have said that Microsoft dominates and www is a niche thing. And Turing was already 50 years ago. It’s likely that something significant is going on in Europe that we don’t know about yet.

It's easy to point to hundred-billion dollar projects in the US from the last 20 years.

LHC at CERN (Switzerland), XFEL at DESY in Hamburg (Germany), ITER in France, etc. (probably all have a lot of non-EU funding though)

The EU Horizon 2020 budget is 70 billion EUR, spent over basically 6 years. Around 80 billion is now being spent as post-pandemic stimulus, but less than what was proposed by the Commission.

That said, you're probably right that US pumps hundreds of billions into "innovation" (let's say R&D) whereas it's just a hundred for the EU.

Fortunately the EU is catching up, but alas it's not because it's so aggressively allocating more for R&D, though the trend is positive, but the US' trend is at best flat, maybe even negative: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... (Of course these are GDP percentages, and since the US' economy is bigger, the absolute numbers are a lot bigger for the US. And that's why even though Japan's percentage looks best, their absolute amount is below what the EU spends on R&D.)

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

#493
post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be true but it does not address the kinds of large-scale, national policy issues Schmidt is talking about. We have lost our way in technology strategy. Instead of welcoming foreign students we chase them away. Instead of integrating tech markets globally to extend our soft power, we practice knee jerk techno-nationalism. It is not even done competently. The "advisors" pushing these policies are known for bei…

The trend against immigration was caused by a combination of unchecked illegal immigration causing economic and cultural pressure against the lower class combined with nearly unchecked immigration causing pressure on the middle class(see H1B exploitation by Disney, tech contracting companies, etc). Fix these issues, and you will fix much of the disdain towards immigrants shown by modern-day Plebs.

Well said

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

#494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yandex Maps is much better in Russia than Google Maps. I also found Yandex's image text translation capabilities to be much superior than Google

In what ways is it better? Data wise it seems thinner in most places eg New York, London. Perhaps it depends on where you are looking. Moscow does look richer yes, but outside Russia? If features, what features?

I don't think it's better outside Russia. But within Russia, the level of detail and the accuracy of data is much better. In Moscow and St Petersburg at least, you can see street level details down to individual buildings easily - I would say it's better than Google in NYC.

I do wonder if Google's poor performance in Russia, and Yandex's poor performance outside Russia are a function of data restrictions. I'm not sure western countries would be as keen to share data with a Russian company, and vice versa.

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

#495
post #231

I am always curious what people think about the following subject: Do you believe patents promote innovation or hamper it? Certainly some business models are dependent on patents and intellectual property restrictions, but do you think it actually promotes innovation? My own observation has been that with the 3D printer for example, innovation was stagnant for the 20 years that they were under patent. Once the patent…

Historically, from steam engines to 3D printing, innovation has been stifled by patents. The book "Against Intellectual Monopoly" [0] from Boldrin and Levine (two economists, Levine website has more work by other economists) gives an historical perspective on IP and offers answers to common (and less common) rebuttals ("Why would anyone invest in research if another company can just copy their work?"). [0] http://www…

Wonderful thank you so much!

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

#496
post #45

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.

Any good concurrency resources you recommend?

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

#497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what do ideologies/forces have to do with it? The article uses published scientific papers as an example. That's open . That's research results the US is getting for free, from China . Which is awesome! The only way I can interpret your comment as making sense is if we were talking solely about military innovation -- innovation in China's navies, in its air force, in its missiles, or even its ability to hack and…

At face value, everything you stated makes sense. I’m not an expert in this topic, and so I’ll share my naive view. If we were talking about a Western democracy such as the Germany becoming more competitive with the US in terms of more or valuable research, I’d have no qualms. What concerns me about China catching up with the US is my lack of trust in China - they aren’t a democracy. They control information, and my…

[deleted]

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

#498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has always had a big regional divide in skill levels as well as respect for knowledge, with the out-of-the-way places having a problem with both. The problem is political dynamics meant that the attitudes of the backward parts of the country have actually set policy for quite a while. That benefited American corporations in the short term - lots of CEO probably think for-profit, student-loan-driven education i…

> The US has always had a big regional divide in skill levels as well as respect for knowledge, with the out-of-the-way places having a problem with both. There are a lot of really good schools in flyover states. Looking at the top 10 engineering schools in the US, depending on your definition of "flyover," there's CMU, Michigan, Purdue, Illinois, and UT.

Yeah, even Alabama has high rated universities.

But it also has a broad problem of lack of quality of high school level education. Maybe a few good suburban school but the average is terrible.

Tuscaloosa is education center of Alabama, having the university of Alabama but secondary education is bad enough stop companies locating there.

"Around the late 1980s/early 1990s Saturn chose not to locate a plant in Tuscaloosa because of the performance of the public schools, and by 1993 the city leadership wanted Mercedes-Benz to build a plant there."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuscaloosa_City_Schools

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

#499
post #400

Earlier 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.

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 agricul…

The institutions themselves are mixed and the student funding is also mixed but can lean towards private, especially if you are not a first pick for higher ed but are still capable. In non-US locations there can be no private funding option.

Student tuition has replaced a lot of government funding. As we can see it has gone to administrative spending. Do you think new unis would fix that?

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

#500

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)

The US department of defense's R&D budget is over 100 Billion/year, e.g. [0]. Google's is about a quarter of that. I realize R&D money isn't a proxy for ideas, but it is a proxy for the people that have them.

[0] https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R45715.pdf

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