6 ms·

Can't wait for this publicly funded research to make some private corporation billions!

by bantunes 9y ago

f4rker 9y ago
This person gets it...
jacquesm 9y ago
You mean like the internet? Or self driving cars?
- jackmott 9y ago
  or government protected at&t bell labs which invented everything we do!
- utternerd 9y ago
  The "Internet" would've happened regardless, Xerox's Parc Project and their "Parc Universal Packet" is one example. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARC_Universal_Packet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARC_Universal_Packet
- JackFr 9y ago
  The original ARPANET was a proof of concept of a network which could withstand the failure multiple simultaneous nodes, that is, survive a nuclear strike. Whether knowing you have a robust command and control network makes you more or less likely to use your own nuclear weapons in a first strike is arguable. But it did guarantee a second strike would be possible (which if you believe MAD, made the world safer.) And robust second-strike capability, in the end, is about killing people.
angstrom 9y ago
Not sure if sarcastic or sincere. You can damn near predict what will be the future tech 10 years down the line based on what DARPA is doing to make killing more efficient.
- jlebrech 9y ago
  does killing the RIGHT people count as efficient?
  - angstrom 9y ago
    That's just a formality. The implementation is trivial and left to the reader of any good DARPA project as an exercise.
    - KekDemaga 9y ago
      Killing the wrong people isn't DARPA's problem, we have bombs that we can drop out of a plane and down a chimney. Blame the elected officials that ordered the bomb dropped in the first place and the intelligence apparatus that convinced them it was good idea.
      - kingraoul3 9y ago
        And the venal election system that put them in charge, and the social order that creates vast power and wealth imbalances.
- dnautics 9y ago
  Have you actually been to a DARPA kickoff? I guarantee you that 90-95% of the stuff that they are funding will not be broadly useful in 10 years. The stuff that DARPA gets right is building stealth planes and prosthetics, arpa-net was a one-off exception in their history.
_____why 9y ago
Just keep Sarah Connor away from the lab: https://gndn.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/shot00341.jpg https://gndn.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/shot00341.jpg
Aron 9y ago
Someone stem the tide against these anti-capitalists! They are everywhere!
dropthebase 9y ago
If it annoys you that much, stop using internet, throw away your laptop and pretty much everything else in your life. No need to support these "evil private corporations". Yeah, really. I'm sure you can do it. What? Not so good idea anymore? It's funny how ironic and shortsighted these HN commies are.
- _jal 9y ago
  > It's funny how ironic and shortsighted these HN commies are. The hilarious part is that you don't appear to be complaining about the government funding of research part.
  - meri_dian 9y ago
    Government funded research played a role in the development of the Internet. Private enterprise also played a huge role. So we're reaching the conclusion that a capitalist economy combined with a functional government allocating resources to projects that hold the promise of long term potential but not short term financial gains is a good system? That both capitalism and government activity play important roles that each is better at filling than the other? And we're also realizing that a debate which reduces to 'capitalist vs communist' is idiotic? Wow. I'm proud of us.
davidiach 9y ago
You mean that private corporations can somehow just sit there and collect rent from this publicly funded research? Amazing!
- sp332 9y ago
  "Intel [assuming Intel wins] will also have the rights to productize versions for the worldwide market." This means that Intel gets exclusive license for the tech they didn't pay for, and no one else can use it even though all taxpayers funded it.
exelius 9y ago
No way; this is the kind of thing that can become a state-secret level advantage. Seriously, it's a graph processor. Graph analysis is basically the entire job of a modern intelligence agency. There's a cold-war level arms race going on in cybersecurity. Russia embarrassed us with their sophisticated cyberwarfare capability in the last election -- they were able to infiltrate both campaigns AND the FBI (they used false information to manipulate Comey into making a statement -- which required them to know how conflicted he was over interference in the Clinton e-mail thing), and undoubtedly were behind the news cycles in the months before the election. Better/more condensed graph analysis capability, at the scale that the three-letter-agencies use it? That's a strategic advantage. You can bet the Russians are working on something similar. If they haven't already -- throughout the cold war they tended to push the frontier of technology faster than the US, but had trouble mobilizing that advantage because communism was so damn inefficient.
- akiselev 9y ago
  > they used false information to manipulate Comey into making a statement -- which required them to know how conflicted he was over interference in the Clinton e-mail thing Sidenote: Comey strongly implied (damn near said it really) in his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday that this did not actually happen and the news articles were way off. Makes you wonder what did actually happen.
  - scarhill 9y ago
    If it did happen, would it be in his interest to admit it?
    - semi-extrinsic 9y ago
      Would he even know it (without the Russians coming out and saying so)?
  - tkahnoski 9y ago
    I think the comment is referring to this story: http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/26/politics/james-comey-fbi-investigation-fake-russian-intelligence/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/26/politics/james-comey-fbi-inves... I missed this exchange in the livestream, relevant bit: "BURR: Were there other things that contributed to that that you can describe in an open session? COMEY: There were other things that contributed to that. One significant item I can’t, I know the committee’s been briefed on. There’s been some public accounts of it, which are nonsense, but I understand the committee’s been briefed on the classified facts." We obviously don't know what the classified facts are. This also seems to be in reference to the announcements in late summer vs the disclosure right before the election which I haven't found anything in the transcript about. Full Transcript: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/08/us/politics/senate-hearing-transcript.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/08/us/politics/senate-hearin... (Aside: linking to NY times because it was slightly less ad heavy than other sites I could find. Couldn't find a single one without auto-play video...)
losteric 9y ago
Versus, what? No public funding? No private utilization of public research? Public research should fall in the public domain, free of IP and open for any use. If anything, we should be doing more of this... create dedicated academic R&D funding streams by taxing established or dying industries in order to publicly explore new fields, and use X Prize-style programs or NASA's COTS/CRS programs to incentivize private commercialization. America needs jobs, what's better than creating new industries? Plus, public investment in R&D has a good track record. This study from 1980 [1] indicates a $17 return over 18 years for every $1 invested in NASA - 1700% ROI. Returns depend on programs and the administration in office, but similar numbers can be obtained from other programs (NOAA and agricultural, military and medical research, etc). R&D is speculative, but most programs do much better than breaking even. [1] https://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/economics.html https://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/economics.html
- nickpsecurity 9y ago
  "Versus, what? No public funding? No private utilization of public research?" Versus the taxpayer-funded I.P. being licensed to all parties in the country that funded it with the big corporations being forced to compete on better implementations delivered faster to customers. Big players can try to make billions, small players can innovate on top of same I.P. without a lawsuit, and individuals can even attempt to homebrew their own without a lawsuit.
  - warkdarrior 9y ago
    There is no sign in the article that only Intel and Qualcomm will have rights to the new design.
    - nickpsecurity 9y ago
      It's private companies doing the wofk with a track record of patenting and suing over their tech. Quite a bit of tech funded through NSF and DARPA gets patented. So, it should be assumed and mitigated.
  - deleted 9y ago
vvdcect 9y ago
Maybe the money taxed from that said corporation could be channeled to pay for universal income.
- Aron 9y ago
  Yeah, we could take the money from a corporation that is creating jobs and value right now, and use it to create incentives for people to never figure out how to be productive citizens because hey, there's no jobs.
  - vvdcect 9y ago
    The way things are now, that corporation is probably creating jobs in china, india or SEA and storing its "value" in Ireland. Just to sidetrack for a second, I know we're still quite far from ai taking away jobs from the software industry, but oh boy when that day comes I won't feel one bit sorry for you. It doesn't take much to fall through the cracks in society and I hope you learn this the hard way.
    - Aron 9y ago
      So you start with false hyperbole before moving onto vengeful and mean-spirited hopes for my future, all while presumably trying to capture the moral high ground because to you all problems can be solved with high taxes. I don't think you are alone and we are probably doomed. Because when your system doesn't work, people will simply double-down on the same ideas and make it worse.
hinkley 9y ago
Like web browsers? Mars Andreesen started off working on an NSF grant at NCSA. One of those things Al Gore encouraged (when people misquote him as inventing the internet) Edit: also why web browsers are free. Netscape had to compete with a free browser.
IncRnd 9y ago
This is DARPA not NSF. It is meant to make someone rich, so they can supply what is under research.

Can't wait for this publicly funded research to make some private corporation billions!

f4rker 9y ago

This person gets it...

jacquesm 9y ago

You mean like the internet? Or self driving cars?

jackmott 9y ago
or government protected at&t bell labs which invented everything we do!
utternerd 9y ago
The "Internet" would've happened regardless, Xerox's Parc Project and their "Parc Universal Packet" is one example. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARC_Universal_Packet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARC_Universal_Packet
JackFr 9y ago
The original ARPANET was a proof of concept of a network which could withstand the failure multiple simultaneous nodes, that is, survive a nuclear strike. Whether knowing you have a robust command and control network makes you more or less likely to use your own nuclear weapons in a first strike is arguable. But it did guarantee a second strike would be possible (which if you believe MAD, made the world safer.) And robust second-strike capability, in the end, is about killing people.

angstrom 9y ago

Not sure if sarcastic or sincere. You can damn near predict what will be the future tech 10 years down the line based on what DARPA is doing to make killing more efficient.

jlebrech 9y ago
does killing the RIGHT people count as efficient?
- angstrom 9y ago
  That's just a formality. The implementation is trivial and left to the reader of any good DARPA project as an exercise.
  - KekDemaga 9y ago
    Killing the wrong people isn't DARPA's problem, we have bombs that we can drop out of a plane and down a chimney. Blame the elected officials that ordered the bomb dropped in the first place and the intelligence apparatus that convinced them it was good idea.
    - kingraoul3 9y ago
      And the venal election system that put them in charge, and the social order that creates vast power and wealth imbalances.
dnautics 9y ago
Have you actually been to a DARPA kickoff? I guarantee you that 90-95% of the stuff that they are funding will not be broadly useful in 10 years. The stuff that DARPA gets right is building stealth planes and prosthetics, arpa-net was a one-off exception in their history.

_____why 9y ago

Just keep Sarah Connor away from the lab: https://gndn.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/shot00341.jpg https://gndn.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/shot00341.jpg

Aron 9y ago

Someone stem the tide against these anti-capitalists! They are everywhere!

dropthebase 9y ago

If it annoys you that much, stop using internet, throw away your laptop and pretty much everything else in your life. No need to support these "evil private corporations". Yeah, really. I'm sure you can do it. What? Not so good idea anymore? It's funny how ironic and shortsighted these HN commies are.

_jal 9y ago
> It's funny how ironic and shortsighted these HN commies are. The hilarious part is that you don't appear to be complaining about the government funding of research part.
- meri_dian 9y ago
  Government funded research played a role in the development of the Internet. Private enterprise also played a huge role. So we're reaching the conclusion that a capitalist economy combined with a functional government allocating resources to projects that hold the promise of long term potential but not short term financial gains is a good system? That both capitalism and government activity play important roles that each is better at filling than the other? And we're also realizing that a debate which reduces to 'capitalist vs communist' is idiotic? Wow. I'm proud of us.

davidiach 9y ago

You mean that private corporations can somehow just sit there and collect rent from this publicly funded research? Amazing!

sp332 9y ago
"Intel [assuming Intel wins] will also have the rights to productize versions for the worldwide market." This means that Intel gets exclusive license for the tech they didn't pay for, and no one else can use it even though all taxpayers funded it.

exelius 9y ago

No way; this is the kind of thing that can become a state-secret level advantage. Seriously, it's a graph processor. Graph analysis is basically the entire job of a modern intelligence agency. There's a cold-war level arms race going on in cybersecurity. Russia embarrassed us with their sophisticated cyberwarfare capability in the last election -- they were able to infiltrate both campaigns AND the FBI (they used false information to manipulate Comey into making a statement -- which required them to know how conflicted he was over interference in the Clinton e-mail thing), and undoubtedly were behind the news cycles in the months before the election. Better/more condensed graph analysis capability, at the scale that the three-letter-agencies use it? That's a strategic advantage. You can bet the Russians are working on something similar. If they haven't already -- throughout the cold war they tended to push the frontier of technology faster than the US, but had trouble mobilizing that advantage because communism was so damn inefficient.

akiselev 9y ago
> they used false information to manipulate Comey into making a statement -- which required them to know how conflicted he was over interference in the Clinton e-mail thing Sidenote: Comey strongly implied (damn near said it really) in his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday that this did not actually happen and the news articles were way off. Makes you wonder what did actually happen.
- scarhill 9y ago
  If it did happen, would it be in his interest to admit it?
  - semi-extrinsic 9y ago
    Would he even know it (without the Russians coming out and saying so)?
- tkahnoski 9y ago
  I think the comment is referring to this story: http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/26/politics/james-comey-fbi-investigation-fake-russian-intelligence/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/26/politics/james-comey-fbi-inves... I missed this exchange in the livestream, relevant bit: "BURR: Were there other things that contributed to that that you can describe in an open session? COMEY: There were other things that contributed to that. One significant item I can’t, I know the committee’s been briefed on. There’s been some public accounts of it, which are nonsense, but I understand the committee’s been briefed on the classified facts." We obviously don't know what the classified facts are. This also seems to be in reference to the announcements in late summer vs the disclosure right before the election which I haven't found anything in the transcript about. Full Transcript: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/08/us/politics/senate-hearing-transcript.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/08/us/politics/senate-hearin... (Aside: linking to NY times because it was slightly less ad heavy than other sites I could find. Couldn't find a single one without auto-play video...)

losteric 9y ago

Versus, what? No public funding? No private utilization of public research? Public research should fall in the public domain, free of IP and open for any use. If anything, we should be doing more of this... create dedicated academic R&D funding streams by taxing established or dying industries in order to publicly explore new fields, and use X Prize-style programs or NASA's COTS/CRS programs to incentivize private commercialization. America needs jobs, what's better than creating new industries? Plus, public investment in R&D has a good track record. This study from 1980 [1] indicates a $17 return over 18 years for every $1 invested in NASA - 1700% ROI. Returns depend on programs and the administration in office, but similar numbers can be obtained from other programs (NOAA and agricultural, military and medical research, etc). R&D is speculative, but most programs do much better than breaking even. [1] https://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/economics.html https://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/economics.html

nickpsecurity 9y ago
"Versus, what? No public funding? No private utilization of public research?" Versus the taxpayer-funded I.P. being licensed to all parties in the country that funded it with the big corporations being forced to compete on better implementations delivered faster to customers. Big players can try to make billions, small players can innovate on top of same I.P. without a lawsuit, and individuals can even attempt to homebrew their own without a lawsuit.
- warkdarrior 9y ago
  There is no sign in the article that only Intel and Qualcomm will have rights to the new design.
  - nickpsecurity 9y ago
    It's private companies doing the wofk with a track record of patenting and suing over their tech. Quite a bit of tech funded through NSF and DARPA gets patented. So, it should be assumed and mitigated.
- deleted 9y ago

vvdcect 9y ago

Maybe the money taxed from that said corporation could be channeled to pay for universal income.

Aron 9y ago
Yeah, we could take the money from a corporation that is creating jobs and value right now, and use it to create incentives for people to never figure out how to be productive citizens because hey, there's no jobs.
- vvdcect 9y ago
  The way things are now, that corporation is probably creating jobs in china, india or SEA and storing its "value" in Ireland. Just to sidetrack for a second, I know we're still quite far from ai taking away jobs from the software industry, but oh boy when that day comes I won't feel one bit sorry for you. It doesn't take much to fall through the cracks in society and I hope you learn this the hard way.
  - Aron 9y ago
    So you start with false hyperbole before moving onto vengeful and mean-spirited hopes for my future, all while presumably trying to capture the moral high ground because to you all problems can be solved with high taxes. I don't think you are alone and we are probably doomed. Because when your system doesn't work, people will simply double-down on the same ideas and make it worse.

hinkley 9y ago

Like web browsers? Mars Andreesen started off working on an NSF grant at NCSA. One of those things Al Gore encouraged (when people misquote him as inventing the internet) Edit: also why web browsers are free. Netscape had to compete with a free browser.

IncRnd 9y ago

This is DARPA not NSF. It is meant to make someone rich, so they can supply what is under research.