5 ms·

I don't want to minimize the awesomeness of the YCR proposal, but $10m isn't really very much in the scheme of research. NIH alone funds to order of $25bil a ye

by aroch 11y ago

I don't want to minimize the awesomeness of the YCR proposal, but $10m isn't really very much in the scheme of research. NIH alone funds to order of $25bil a year in science research. Public-private funding schemes probably fund an order of magnitude more every year. $10m is pretty much just enough to fund one reasonably sized group, doing advanced research, for about a year to a year and half. Seems to me that Sam is hedging so YCR can do its first round in about a year and get a bigger ask by pointing to the starting groups achievements.

jecel 11y ago
Alan Kay's group got $5M from NSF to "reinvent computing". The money lasted 6 years, in which they produced a reasonable prototype (called "Frank") of a complete personal computing system in only 20K lines of code.
- aroch 11y ago
  Money in theoretical CS research goes pretty much entirely to overhead, not much goes to reagents / processes. Paying a little under a million a year in expenses isn't surprising there.
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  http://cs.calstatela.edu/wiki/images/archive/7/7f/20070505235023!SelfExploratorium.ppt http://cs.calstatela.edu/wiki/images/archive/7/7f/2007050523... http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2011004_steps11.pdf http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2011004_steps11.pdf Holy crap, that was some kind of read! Thanks for telling me about this as I had never heard of it. My proposal, similar to what Racket and REBOL/RED attempt, was to combine simple DSL's on top of a LISP and low-level 3GL (eg high-level assembler) with optimization, safety, etc built into translation process. Seems like Kay already did most of that with way more clever abstractions and techniques. Gives me hope my smaller proposal might go somewhere esp as I wanted to build components & servers not desktops. Thanks again for the link!
  - corysama 11y ago
    If you watch any presentation from Alan Kay from the past few years, it looks like he's using PowerPoint or something similar. But, occasionally he does something PP can't do, like run a physic simulation or have all the letters in the text do a swarm animation. He's using Frank.
    - nickpsecurity 11y ago
      Thanks for the tip. I'll try to watch for that. Confirms it's already practical for at least graphic presentations. Meanwhile, I wonder what the odds are of getting a hold of Frank to play with it or build on it. Might have to try to contact him. Note: I thought about doing something similar in first secure desktop I construct where I do my presentation on it, let people counter the methods probably won't work, and then tell them after that. Always priceless faces when that happens. Also helps tell the contrarian bullshitters apart from those who think hard on your claims. Saves time in future. ;)
tempestn 11y ago
It may not be a lot in terms of research, but it's certainly a lot in terms of a voluntary personal donation to anything, however much money someone has.
Amorymeltzer 11y ago
>$10m isn't really very much in the scheme of research. NIH alone funds to order of $25bil a year in science research Sure, but the NIH is funding near to 50,000 competitive grants a year. Some googling online gives median/average grant size at $300k/$350k. Even $25bil over 50,000 projects is $500k a project a year. An academic institution will take 50% or more straight off the top, so you're looking closer to $150k to $250k a year. $10 million is a lot of money. Science can be expensive but that $10 million can last a long time.
- jrochkind1 11y ago
  I agree it's real money, enough to do some real stuff. But: > An academic institution will take 50% or more straight off the top, so you're looking closer to $150k to $250k a year. Well, that 'overhead' is paying for things like lab space, electricity, health insurance (at least for the faculty, good luck grad students), liability insurance, etc. Not to mention the actual salary of the PI and/or other researchers -- which universities in STEM schools increasingly expect to be covered by grants too. The academic institutions would argue all the 'overhead' they take is legit funding of things necessary for the research to take place, but even if you think they are spending it inefficiently or 'stealing' money for unrelated things... I think as a rough napkin calculation, the $500K is probably still closer to that same $500K when YC Research spends it too, not twice as much.
  - Amorymeltzer 11y ago
    Maybe, maybe not. I debated bringing it up, and honestly YCR is likely to have a large, up-front facilities cost (regulations, certifications, etc.). It would make sense to start easy - don't start off with infectious diseases of humans - and build from there. But still, I'd wager that YCR will run far more efficiently than your average university. Someone above brought up the UC system: management-level positions have grown over 200% the last few decades (http://universityprobe.org/2011/03/new-data-on-management-growth-at-uc/ http://universityprobe.org/2011/03/new-data-on-management-gr...). Even if we limit the scope to department administrators and staff, YCR won't need nearly the same sort of personnel infrastructure.

by aroch 11y ago

jecel 11y ago

Alan Kay's group got $5M from NSF to "reinvent computing". The money lasted 6 years, in which they produced a reasonable prototype (called "Frank") of a complete personal computing system in only 20K lines of code.

aroch 11y ago
Money in theoretical CS research goes pretty much entirely to overhead, not much goes to reagents / processes. Paying a little under a million a year in expenses isn't surprising there.
nickpsecurity 11y ago
http://cs.calstatela.edu/wiki/images/archive/7/7f/20070505235023!SelfExploratorium.ppt http://cs.calstatela.edu/wiki/images/archive/7/7f/2007050523... http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2011004_steps11.pdf http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2011004_steps11.pdf Holy crap, that was some kind of read! Thanks for telling me about this as I had never heard of it. My proposal, similar to what Racket and REBOL/RED attempt, was to combine simple DSL's on top of a LISP and low-level 3GL (eg high-level assembler) with optimization, safety, etc built into translation process. Seems like Kay already did most of that with way more clever abstractions and techniques. Gives me hope my smaller proposal might go somewhere esp as I wanted to build components & servers not desktops. Thanks again for the link!
- corysama 11y ago
  If you watch any presentation from Alan Kay from the past few years, it looks like he's using PowerPoint or something similar. But, occasionally he does something PP can't do, like run a physic simulation or have all the letters in the text do a swarm animation. He's using Frank.
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
    Thanks for the tip. I'll try to watch for that. Confirms it's already practical for at least graphic presentations. Meanwhile, I wonder what the odds are of getting a hold of Frank to play with it or build on it. Might have to try to contact him. Note: I thought about doing something similar in first secure desktop I construct where I do my presentation on it, let people counter the methods probably won't work, and then tell them after that. Always priceless faces when that happens. Also helps tell the contrarian bullshitters apart from those who think hard on your claims. Saves time in future. ;)

tempestn 11y ago

It may not be a lot in terms of research, but it's certainly a lot in terms of a voluntary personal donation to anything, however much money someone has.

Amorymeltzer 11y ago

>$10m isn't really very much in the scheme of research. NIH alone funds to order of $25bil a year in science research Sure, but the NIH is funding near to 50,000 competitive grants a year. Some googling online gives median/average grant size at $300k/$350k. Even $25bil over 50,000 projects is $500k a project a year. An academic institution will take 50% or more straight off the top, so you're looking closer to $150k to $250k a year. $10 million is a lot of money. Science can be expensive but that $10 million can last a long time.

jrochkind1 11y ago
I agree it's real money, enough to do some real stuff. But: > An academic institution will take 50% or more straight off the top, so you're looking closer to $150k to $250k a year. Well, that 'overhead' is paying for things like lab space, electricity, health insurance (at least for the faculty, good luck grad students), liability insurance, etc. Not to mention the actual salary of the PI and/or other researchers -- which universities in STEM schools increasingly expect to be covered by grants too. The academic institutions would argue all the 'overhead' they take is legit funding of things necessary for the research to take place, but even if you think they are spending it inefficiently or 'stealing' money for unrelated things... I think as a rough napkin calculation, the $500K is probably still closer to that same $500K when YC Research spends it too, not twice as much.
- Amorymeltzer 11y ago
  Maybe, maybe not. I debated bringing it up, and honestly YCR is likely to have a large, up-front facilities cost (regulations, certifications, etc.). It would make sense to start easy - don't start off with infectious diseases of humans - and build from there. But still, I'd wager that YCR will run far more efficiently than your average university. Someone above brought up the UC system: management-level positions have grown over 200% the last few decades (http://universityprobe.org/2011/03/new-data-on-management-growth-at-uc/ http://universityprobe.org/2011/03/new-data-on-management-gr...). Even if we limit the scope to department administrators and staff, YCR won't need nearly the same sort of personnel infrastructure.