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NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

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Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

#331

Post by hackyhacky »

fallingknife wrote: post #325
hackyhacky wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's not any different than it has been. Good point. Exactly like when the Biden administration decided to cancel all grants to Harvard University because they didn't allow a government takeover of the university. Oh, wait, that didn't happen.

My dad is a university researcher. During the Biden administration he was forced to add completely unscientific DEI language to his grants if he wanted to get them funded. You just don't know about it because the media you watch doesn't report on that because they support it. So yeah, the whole Harvard thing is more of the same.

I work in academia. I don't need to rely on media to know about submitting grants. Everything you just said is a lie. I'm sorry that your dad is not a reliable source of information; maybe he has his own biases.

Even if what you are saying were true, it does not compare to the grand level of academic extortion alluded to in my parent comment.

Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

#332

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

zhivota wrote: post #295

I worked at two National Laboratories, Argonne and Idaho, on NSF funded internship grants. The second one turned into a full time job, again on an NSF grant. The first one was on supercomputing, writing proof of concept code for a new supercomputing operating system (ZeptoOS). The second was on the automated stitching of imagery from UAVs for military applications (at a time when this was not commoditized at all, we…

Hard to declare that the earth is only 6000 years old with all those science hippies in the way. Gotta set priorities.

Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

#333

Post by jhp123 »

chairhairair wrote: post #43

The NSF budget is ~$10billion. That's about half of NASA's, 1.2% of the DoD's, 0.5% of the discretionary budget ($1.7 trillion). Why is this the focus of the admin? Science is one of the few things the US is doing well.

I'm not the first one to see parallels to the Cultural Revolution. Policies like purging the intelligentsia and sending educated urban people to go work in the fields weren't motivated by any thought out plan, but by an irrational sense of resentment against "elites" and a desire for "purity".

Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

#334

Post by ponow »

cmontella wrote: post #133
ddahlen wrote: post #38

I have been in and out of the academic world my entire career. I have worked as a programmer/engineer for two universities and a national lab, and worked at a startup founded by some professors. There is huge uncertainty with the people whom I have worked with, nobody seems to be sure what is going to happen, but it feels like it wont be good. Hiring freezes, international graduate students receiving emails to self d…

Yes, the entire DARPA "challenge" series has been about jumpstarting the US robotics industry. People who were involved in those went on to found driverless car companies, which then went on to create a market for driverless cars, and now America is a leader in the industry. And it needed to happened because the state of American robotics was sad in 2004; the very first challenge was a disaster when all the cars ran…

It's ironic that the much more significant ultimate success of deep learning happened despite a lack of government funding, if Hinton is to be believed. The 90s were a neural net winter, and success required faster computation, a private success.

I lose zero sleep at the prospect that there would be zero government robotics research funding. If the advantages are there, profit seekers will find a way. We must stop demonizing private accumulations of capital, "ending" billionaires and "monopolies" that are offering more things at lower cost. Small enterprises cannot afford a Bell Labs, a Watson Research, a Deep Mind, a Xerox PARC, etc.

Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

#335

Post by coliveira »

smt88 wrote: post #221
coliveira wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going with the great conspiracy of GOP as Russian assets, you should also add Elon Musk and the other tech robber barons as Russian assets as well.

What is your explanation for Trump putting tariffs on every country in the world except Russia?

It's not true that he excluded only Russia. North Korea and Cuba also are not in the list, clearly countries that are under heavy US sanctions.

Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

#337

Post by szundi »

ponow wrote: post #323
zhivota wrote: post #295

I worked at two National Laboratories, Argonne and Idaho, on NSF funded internship grants. The second one turned into a full time job, again on an NSF grant. The first one was on supercomputing, writing proof of concept code for a new supercomputing operating system (ZeptoOS). The second was on the automated stitching of imagery from UAVs for military applications (at a time when this was not commoditized at all, we…

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Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

#338

Post by pinko »

lokhura wrote: post #320
pinko wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. NSF awards are all public. If you could actually give enough examples of these "extremely large" awards to constitute 55% of the NSF budget you would have.

Here you go https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/4BD2D522-2092... It's not 55%, it's more like 25% of the budget.

So after the first simple question, we're already at less than half the original claimed figure of 55% (a bad sign for its credibility, if you're a Bayesian!).

But more importantly, I'm familiar with the linked document, and it's garbage. It was thrown together practically overnight to justify a political decision that had already been made, and in its incompetent haste, flagged proposals that had phrases like "diversity of sources" that had nothing to do with DEI and included them in the totals. Not a credible source.

Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

#339

Post by ponow »

bilbo0s wrote: post #149
cmontella wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the entire DARPA "challenge" series has been about jumpstarting the US robotics industry. People who were involved in those went on to found driverless car companies, which then went on to create a market for driverless cars, and now America is a leader in the industry. And it needed to happened because the state of American robotics was sad in 2004; the very first challenge was a disaster when all the cars ran…

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Re: NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions

#340

Post by rozap »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #114
rokkamokka wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The focus is robbing the treasury to give tax breaks to the rich.

Trump said yesterday he wants to raise taxes on people earning over $2.5MM[1] People on the left are going to be caught totally flat-footed if they don't pull their head out of their bubble. Trump is a populist president. He was elected by working class individuals and so far he has shown every intent of following through for them. People on the left don't recognize it because they don't recognize the tools that righ…

I'll believe it when I see it.

"Trump said..." is the precursor to winning the fooled me again award.

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