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

UK to launch taxpayer-funded high-risk tech research agency exempt from FOI

thetimes.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 210 posts

Re: UK to launch taxpayer-funded high-risk tech research agency exempt from FOI

#161

Post by mcguire »

motohagiography wrote: post #12

I still don't see how any government granting committee can outperform hundreds of private venture funds competing for exposure to new opportunities. Even if you have a government dept. of 10x geniuses, they don't scale to compete with a healthy investment community. As described, the risks I see are that, it has the incentives for a patronage slush fund, there will be selection bias to hedge political risk around pe…

(D)ARPA developed the research behind the Internet and GPS. Private venture capital gave us Facebook. Are you sure you want to make this argument?

Venture capital funding is a great way for product research and development to be outsourced---nobody is going to notice if the project fails but if it doesn't there is money to be had. Near-basic research has an extremely long time horizon (internet research started in the 1970s and didn't become publicly useful until the 1990s) and may never be profitable. Further, nobody wants the results of a long term research project until they already have it and can see the utility.

Re: UK to launch taxpayer-funded high-risk tech research agency exempt from FOI

#162

Post by mensetmanusman »

pjc50 wrote: post #6
mensetmanusman wrote: post #2

That’s great. Removing a platform for people that say, in hindsight, ‘it was obvious that was going to fail’ is a step in the right direction. If western societies insist on outsourcing R&D through misguided tax laws, they have no idea the amount of harm they are doing to the next generation of young people (who will be subservient to the innovating countries that were smarter in their policies).

> the innovating countries that were smarter in their policies Such as? Are "we" now going to say the state is better at innovating than the private sector? Under what conditions? (I'm inclined to believe that it could work - it was after all the model that gave us Concorde - but there are also a lot of ways in which it could go wrong and I absolutely do not trust the government with a track record of bunging corrupt…

I mean incentivizing private companies to do R&D...

Re: UK to launch taxpayer-funded high-risk tech research agency exempt from FOI

#163

Post by hkt »

heywherelogingo wrote: post #56
hkt wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a giant pile of contracts that have been scrutinised that very clearly show the absolutely incestuous nature of procurement since covid and long before too. It isn't "all politicians", it is conservative politicians in the last eleven years. The Good Law Project is a great example of the kind of organisation that investigates this. The Guardian does good work here too. I'm surprised to say it, but even Labou…

"even Labour..." - of course Labour make a noise about it, that's their job. The opposition obviously criticise at any opportunity. Your faith in organisations (the Good Law Project, The Guardian, undoubtedly big left government too) is misplaced given that they're composed of individuals, and small groups within will sieze opportunity. The Guardian journalists show plenty of bias. Clearly the tories are dodgy, but n…

"Politicians are low, and I look forward to tech based governance without them"

Jeeee-zus.

Re: UK to launch taxpayer-funded high-risk tech research agency exempt from FOI

#164

Post by mattlondon »

emptyfile wrote: post #116
dominotw wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fund new tunnelling is this supposed to be a double entendre ? I don't see how this follows from the parent comment.

The comment is making fun of a proposal Boris Johnson once made about building a bridge from Scotland to Northern Ireland, which is considered borderline physically impossible as far as I understand.

There is talk of floating tunnels.

I believe they have done similar things in Norway when they need to go across fjords which are about 1km deep on places.

Re: UK to launch taxpayer-funded high-risk tech research agency exempt from FOI

#165

Post by DenisM »

onei wrote: post #149
rusk wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s feesible? The tunnel or the bridge? I’d heard the tunnel wasn’t possible due to the particular geography of the channel. But a bridge? Now that I’d be interesting I seeing. There used to be a giants causeway across there in mythical times ...

The bridge is unfeasible because the channel is around 200m deep in places which makes it crazy expensive. I also found a couple of references to nuclear waste in the trench, but that might have been for another site.

Floating bridge is a thing tho https://www.wired.com/2016/04/takes-keep-7700-foot-floating-....

Re: UK to launch taxpayer-funded high-risk tech research agency exempt from FOI

#166

Post by IanCal »

madaxe_again wrote: post #83
notahacker wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VC has quite specific expectations for an opportunity: the company that develops the service enjoying massive growth (or a massive strategic acquisition) within a decade or so. VCs weren't competing to fund Apollo missions or poverty reduction and not because nobody wanted them. Government can invest in projects which have different types of return: projects which are only beneficial or more beneficial if given away…

For an indication of how this will go, it’s worth looking at how the existing R&D grants system is used and abused. I have done a few “hold your nose” consultancy gigs for an outfit that specialises in the entirely legal, if morally dubious, process, of importing the family of high net worth individuals on entrepreneurship visas - and laundering their money into the U.K. I was approached in 2016, after I cashed out o…

That's about tax and R&D right? This is about a new funding agency, a very different thing.

Re: UK to launch taxpayer-funded high-risk tech research agency exempt from FOI

#167

Post by ashtonkem »

kurthr wrote: post #86
jarmitage wrote: post #63

The FOI part means this is dead on arrival and will be abused all ends up. For this to work you need the public to understand why DARPA worked. Hiding details of failures makes that impossible (and again, completely open to corruption).

Yep, seems more like a way to keep scandals like Cummings no-bid contract to his friends from coming to light. If it can be used as a slush fund, it probably will be, and eventually probably exclusively. https://www.theweek.co.uk/951989/what-next-for-dominic-cummi...

It seems unreasonably charitable to assume that it’ll be used exclusively as a personal slush fund “eventually” and not “immediately”.

Re: UK to launch taxpayer-funded high-risk tech research agency exempt from FOI

#168

Post by cameronh90 »

JeanQuille wrote: post #106
dalbasal wrote: post #58

OK so the British HNers commenting seem to be unimpressed. :) Leaving this specific agency/project aside, what would be the right way to do this? How do we do public investment in high risk projects well?

As others have commented, I think the animosity against this announcement isn't necessarily that it wouldn't be successful, just that it's a clear attempt to widen and hush up the current government's already large grift pipeline. FWIW, from my experience in UK public projects, I think the question of how to improve their varied success is complex and would take a long time to fairly cover. Though, off the top of my…

The restrictions on FOI may be an attempt to allow the government to directly pay market rates and otherwise do the things they normally have to hide via an outsourcing partner.

Look at what happens when the Daily Mail and/or opposition MPs find out that an IT boffin is being paid more than a nurse. They stoke unjustified outrage until the hospital is forced to outsource to Crapita to hide its costs.

Re: UK to launch taxpayer-funded high-risk tech research agency exempt from FOI

#169

Post by bacheaul »

rjsw wrote: post #158
emptyfile wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment is making fun of a proposal Boris Johnson once made about building a bridge from Scotland to Northern Ireland, which is considered borderline physically impossible as far as I understand.

There was a suggestion that he was trying to do a bit of SEO to distract attention from another bridge [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_Bridge

I hadn't heard of this one. That and the brexit bus/cardboard box bus SEO hacking suggestion makes something of a pattern.
Post reply on HN