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What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

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Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#131

Post by jancsika »

robbiewxyz wrote: post #20
boc wrote: post #9

Watching the tech community waltz into DC and pretend that they know how all the levers of government work is pathetic. Are there inefficiencies? Sure. Are there places to improve? Of course. But pretending that they can understand the intricacies of literally decades of institutional knowledge and deep connections across the globe in the course of a single weekend is asinine. We need to do better. The US government…

Small nit, but these folks 100% can not be described as the "tech community". They're owners of big tech monopolies, their VC backers, and our new oligarchs. Tech community, however, they are not.

You need to get to know your own industry.

"These folks" can absolutely be described as the tech community:

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

> In March 2014, Tunney petitioned the US government on We the People to hold a referendum asking for support to retire all government employees with full pensions, transfer administrative authority to the technology industry, and appoint the executive chairman of Google Eric Schmidt as CEO of America.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#132

Post by angoragoats »

pizzafeelsright wrote: post #119
angoragoats wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you asking about the Nazis in Germany? The first major book burning was in Berlin at the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Research) where they burned thousands of books containing information about, among other things, LGBT people. Or are you asking about the current situation? They’re trying to burn all of it —- any research papers funded by the NSF or NIH.

[flagged]

> What's being funded?

This is an extremely odd question. Are you not familiar with the NSF or NIH?

> I'm okay with the CDC being torn down. They lied and lost all trust.

You are a danger to public health.

> As for grants they are paused. Those organizations didn't earn it.

Did USAID also not earn the right to get funding to provide lifesaving drugs so that babies don’t contract HIV? Who decided that they didn’t “earn it”?

> I also understand there's a 8 month severance for voluntary vacating. This is very generous even for a tyrant.

You don’t understand correctly — the offer was for 8 months of work, from home. Then they would be separated in September. It’s also not actually clear that OPM has the legal authority to make this offer, so anyone accepting it may not actually get what they signed up for.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#134

Post by zamadatix »

alextingle wrote: post #70
cft wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time to leave HN for me. It's become a cesspool of this vitriol.

Which bit of that is vitriol?

If I were to be fair to cft the comment does really seem much different than ones which said they can't wait for people to rise up against Biden because he's a communist. I.e. just a short comment throwing charged political labels rather than discussion the actual meat under consideration.

I'm not all that big a fan of that style comment rising to the top threads like this myself, even though I likely lean very opposite of cft on political matters and what I think the impact of this will be like.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#135

Post by jcgrillo »

stonogo wrote: post #113
dekhn wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note this isn't representative of the tech industry in general. When I worked for Google I visited NIH, sat on study groups, and helped advise program managers how to move more compute to the cloud. Like many other techies in SV I have a PhD in a quantitative science and understand how NIH works. My efforts were entirely designed to help update the establishment, not tear it down, and that's true for the wide swath o…

I'm sorry, but your defense for the "not all techies" argument is that you flew to NIH and told them how to stop investing in their own infrastructure and funnel tax dollars to private hosting rentals instead? I cannot wrap my head around this as a defense of anything. Seems like the current crew is just cutting out the middleman.

Half the computers at twice the price!

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#136

Post by Dalewyn »

lanstin wrote: post #97
unsnap_biceps wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the former is most likely. The people are largely unhappy with how things have been and it's unlikely to get materially worse for the majority of people in the near term, so I don't think there will be a fire lit under enough of the population to rise up. If it gets bad enough that most people are starving, rather then just struggling, we'll see action, but I doubt it'll get there anytime soon.

The weird spanner in the works is that while people may be unhappy, they are unhappy because of things they believe that aren't true. Covid response in the US wasn't that bad; global warming really is causing the floods and fires and hurricanes and the EVs really are helping, as would methane emissions rules and so on; if people think the bi-coastal elites are looking down on them (and they are), like so what; that's…

[flagged]

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#137

Post by kenjackson »

pstuart wrote: post #126
Dalewyn wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The people are largely unhappy with how things have been This is an understatement to say the least, and the fact it's been denied and even refused by the powers that be until today is why the pendulum has swung as hard as it has. Americans wanted change, and they finally got it with ferocious retribution because it's been held back for so long.

The sentiment I get in this regards is that people are angry and want to "burn it to the ground", without any thought of what might possibly take its place.

The weird thing is these same people will tell you the US is the greatest place on Earth and if you don't like, then leave!

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#139

Post by sidibe »

Centigonal wrote: post #125
dekhn wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note this isn't representative of the tech industry in general. When I worked for Google I visited NIH, sat on study groups, and helped advise program managers how to move more compute to the cloud. Like many other techies in SV I have a PhD in a quantitative science and understand how NIH works. My efforts were entirely designed to help update the establishment, not tear it down, and that's true for the wide swath o…

There is a real schism in the SV elite community between the "tech right" and Google. You could argue that OpenAI was founded by Sam Altman and Elon Musk to deny Google exclusive access to the GenAI. "Been thinking a lot about whether it's possible to stop humanity from developing AI. I think the answer is almost definitely not. If it's going to happen anyway, it seems like it would be good for someone other than Goo…

Google has always been the company that looms over whatever next-gen hyped things the VC crowd can invest in (or whatever field Elon can pretend to be far ahead in). I even think it being perceived as so liberal has moved these people to the right instead of "libertarian" as they used to claim so they can hit it politically

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#140

Post by username223 »

lanstin wrote: post #123
username223 wrote: post #100

As Sir Ian Jacob said, the Allies won World War II because "our German scientists were better than their German scientists." Brain drain is a real problem for fascist countries.

So should we move to Thailand or Canada or ???

Canada, the EU, Australia, ...

Places with solid research institutions and less-dysfunctional governments.

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