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

No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

steveblank.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 528 posts

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#341

Post by Yoric »

ActorNightly wrote: post #155
convolvatron wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that patently ridiculous, we're just getting started

Really? What is so innovative? LLMs are just better google. In the past, you used to google shit, and copy paste from stack overflow, now you just skip the middle man and go directly to Chat GPT. Anyone that has been programming for a while can attest to that the answers aren't any better, its just more efficient to iterate on them now. AI hasn't even begun to be solved yet. Everyone is focused on feedforward transfo…

All of this is research from the 90s, with a few decades of polish.

Now maybe we could start looking at what research labs have come up with since then.

> Hell, the state the US is in currently is largely explained by the fact that most all the problems in society have been solved to the extent that people have to invent bogeymen and elect a demented felon into office on the promise of solving those problems.

That's... an interesting point. I don't really buy it, though. The same could have been said of the fascist movement in Italy, or the royalists in France in 1905.

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#342

Post by goodcanadian »

uolmir wrote: post #298
rapatel0 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I read or heard someplace that at many universities tuition paid by students in the social sciences is effectively subsidizing the STEM fields I'm very skeptical of this claim. In fact up until a recent funding method change from the Trump Administration, most grant money was subject to "overhead"--a nebulous nonsensical accounting trick that allowed the university administration to get upwards of 60% of the dollar…

> In fact up until a recent funding method change from the Trump Administration, most grant money was subject to "overhead"--a nebulous nonsensical accounting trick that allowed the university administration to get upwards of 60% of the dollars that are earmarked for grants. We're better than this here. Don't spread misinformation. First of all overhead is listed as a percentage, such as 55% or 60% or whatever but th…

I and most people agree that's it's possibly too high, but it's ignorant to treat it like a scam.

The fact that it is so high is a scam.

It really depends on the grant. For the larger grants, it may work somewhat like you describe. For the smaller grants, they literally do just take 60% of the money (and complain that it is not enough to administer the grant while providing absolutely no support whatsoever). In theory, it's paying for salary and office space and whatnot, but those are already covered by other budgets.

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#343

Post by oskarkk »

gamblor956 wrote: post #270
terminalshort wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only did SpaceX make breakthroughs considered impossible by the "experts" in the industry, they did it by hiring a guy who literally built rocket engines in his garage to design the engines. The key here is personality. And the type of person who actually wants to build things and get things done absolutely recoils at bureaucracy and the type of people who like it. When you build something to the point where ther…

It's not like they were able to use NASA's designs for reusable rockets... Oh wait..they did... Because NASA thought reusable rockets were possible decades ago. The reason they never built them was because certain Congressmen blocked the funding.

Any American company could use NASA's designs for reusable rockets... Oh wait, only SpaceX did it. And 10 years after they did it, they're still the only company that did it (not counting New Shepard of course, as it can't put anything into orbit). Are some congressmen forbidding other companies to use their own money to make better rockets?

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#345

Post by Vektorceraptor »

My brain reads “No science, no startups” — alarm bells. This kind of mono-causal oversimplification can only be anti-Trump clickbait — I ignore the post. A few seconds later, guilt kicks in — “Don’t be so ignorant!” — I click the link. Literally the ninth word is Trump. My brain: “Alright, that says it all.”

I scroll a bit — should I really read this? My brain: “No, let ChatGPT analyze it critically.” Conclusion: The same kind of simplistic linear causality is presented without substance — no sources, no data, no valid projections — uncritically carried through. Typical NPC-scripted “science,” representative of much of today’s “NPC academia.” It’s just a patchwork of general knowledge and some combinatorial creativity, pretending to be expertise, seriousness, and understanding — enumerated to suggest strange, subjective, unscientific, and mostly personal goals.

This exact kind of NPC-scripted “science” needs to be exposed and discredited as pseudo. If this is the so-called “defense” of science, then it deserves to be opposed. Simple as that.

PLEASE - for the love of god - spare me with this nonsense!

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#347

Post by Timsky »

Your article strongly consonated with the ideas I often try to communicate to those around me. I wish there were more open discussion about biases related to PhD qualifications and the growing influence of venture-capital-style practices in science. Many researchers dedicate themselves to exploring new and uncertain areas of knowledge, yet their work is sometimes undervalued by hiring managers and industrial professionals. I personally know HRs who consider the "PhD" tag in a CV a red flag.

There is also a tendency to overlook the fact that pursuing a PhD is a form of professional work, comparable in commitment and responsibility to other careers. Sometimes 699, sometimes 700. Academia can indeed be a challenging environment, and not everyone contributes in the same way—some may prioritize credentials over substance, and cases of research misconduct do exist. However, these examples definitely do not represent the academic community as a whole.

Regarding the venture-capital approach, in applied sciences, researchers are increasingly expected to present their ideas in short, pitch-style formats. At some point, this process itself becomes the goal of the work. I can imagine this encouraging concise communication. Still, it also shifts part of the management responsibilities—such as market analysis and outreach—onto scientists, which does not align with their core expertise or professional goals.

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#348

Post by graycat »

keenbrowne wrote: post #81
fidotron wrote: post #64

There's something odd in this argument. If you come at it from a Canadian perspective Canada seriously spent on neural network computer science when almost no one else did (many in AI considered the entire thing discredited and impossible), now the (financial) gains from that are almost entirely in a foreign country. The US science establishment was all about buying and utilizing Russian rocket engines until he-that-…

Research is necessary but not sufficient. Also need access to capital (and eventually capital markets) and a sufficiently sophisticated legal framework/safety framework so you can enforce contracts at least most the time. Good research is just a vehicle for producing knowledge and talent.

> Good research is just a vehicle for producing knowledge and talent.

Yup, it was surprise seeing that once have a good STEM field Ph.D., written a lot of STEM and (early) AI software, and have published some peer-reviewed papers, are then condemned as in a felony conviction from ever having money enough to buy a house or to participate in the real world. A surprise.

But so far have missed the law that actually forbids doing some good math research, writing corresponding software, starting an LLC business as a sole proprietor, self-hosting a related Web site, getting users, running ads, and making (oops, forgive the transgression of mentioning) MONEY. Horrors! Uh, that's actually the same kind of "money" that people selling food, clothing, cars, and houses and providing medical care, private K-college education talk about.

Gee, cut out a lot of middle stuff, i.e., save on management, lawyers, office space, recruiting, HR legal issues, insurance, utilities, software developers, cloud fees, server farm staff, servers (an AMD FX 8350 can send a lot of the Web pages with still image banner ads), ....

Just now evaluating Macrium Reflect. Anyone have any experience? Uh, will it copy a disk partition that has a bootable instance of Windows so that the target disk partition will also be bootable or will it copy only whole hard disks with all the partitions, ....???? Similarly for Acronis and Windows Image. E.g., if make an Image of a bootable partition, will the partition written to boot? Right, just use the TIFO method!

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#349

Post by selimthegrim »

astrange wrote: post #305
treis wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know several graduates of GA State and KSU. Including one KSU grad that works as a software engineer.

I went to SJSU (now KSU) briefly before transferring to a better school (because I slept through all of high school and didn't do any homework) and I did not get the feeling that anyone else in my classes was going to be a successful software engineer. Rather I got the feeling their parents told them to do CS because they really liked video games. I took a group project game development class and it went beyond doing…

SPSU?
Post reply on HN