5 ms·

People here keep claiming “Anything is possible with unlimited budget”. Cerns budget is 1.4 billion Euro, 50 million Euro for all IT infrastructure. https://c

People here keep claiming “Anything is possible with unlimited budget”. Cerns budget is 1.4 billion Euro, 50 million Euro for all IT infrastructure. https://cds.cern.ch/record/2888205/files/English.pdf#page18 https://cds.cern.ch/record/2888205/files/English.pdf#page18 It’s not the money, it’s the people. Update: Added source.

lokimedes 2y ago
Also, the in-kind contributions from hundreds of institutes around the world. Much can, and has, been said about physicist code, but CERN is the center of a massive community of “pre-dropout” geniuses. I can’t count the number of former students that later joined Google and the likes. Many are frequenting HN.
adev_ 2y ago
CERN was a good example of how much can be done with how little when you have the right people. For a long time, the entire Linux distribution (Scientific Linux) used for ~15K collaborators, the infra and the grid computing was managed by a team of around 4-5 people. The teams managing the network access (LanDB), the distributed computing system, the scientific framework (ROOT) and the storage are also small, dedicated skilled teams. And the result speaks for itself. Unfortunately, most of that went to shit quite recently when they replaced the previous head of IT by a Microsoft fanboy/girl coming from outside of the scientific environment. The first thing he/she did was to force Microsoft bloatware everywhere to replace existing working OSS solutions.
- wuming2 2y ago
  > Unfortunately, most of that went to shit quite recently when they replaced the previous head of IT by a Microsoft fanboy(girl?) coming from outside of the scientific environment. Painful to read so I did a short check. From a news post I don’t want to link here, but easily found searching “CERN, the famous scientific lab where the web was born, tells us why it's ditching Microsoft and helping others do the same”, direction taken in 2019 seemed quite the opposite. I am not sure how current head of IT at CERN, Enrica Porcari, fits in to the story. Insider info will be appreciated.
  - adev_ 2y ago
    > direction taken in 2019 seemed quite the opposite The head of IT changed in 2021 if it answers your question.
    - wuming2 2y ago
      Don’t see any previous experience at Microsoft [2]. Just a self taught fan then? Edit: “Partnership is the art of understanding shared value. In WFP we have a number of partnerships, not many, but the ones that we have are deep, are sustained, are long-term. And definitely UNICC is one of them. Enrica Porcari, Chief Information Officer and Director Technology Division at the WFP” [1] United Nations International Computing Centre (UNICC) is a Microsoft shop. Legit to assume, if OP statement holds true, she got the business sponsorship going while CIO at the World Food Program (WFP). This kind of attempted executive takeover is always the strategy of a team. Who sponsored and voted for her at CERN is the real person of interest. 1. https://www.unicc.org/our-values/what-makes-us-unique/ https://www.unicc.org/our-values/what-makes-us-unique/ 2. https://cgnet.com/blog/former-cgnet-employee-enrica-porcari-to-head-computing-department-at-cern/ https://cgnet.com/blog/former-cgnet-employee-enrica-porcari-...
      - wuming2 2y ago
        Joachim Mnich, Director for Research and Computing and her boss [4], holds the position also since January 2021 [1]. Mike Lamont, Director for Accelerators and Technology, also got the job at the same time [2]. Finally Fabiola Gianotti, Director-General, in 2019 extended her tenure for a second term “to start on 1st January 2021” [3]. So in 2019 the initiative to remove Microsoft began. With renewal and promotions taking in to effect it stopped. Interesting. Feeling a strong Microsoft US vs Munich DE vibe. With a twitch of IT. 1. https://home.cern/about/who-we-are/our-people/biographies/joachim-mnich https://home.cern/about/who-we-are/our-people/biographies/jo... 2. https://home.cern/about/who-we-are/our-people/biographies/mike-lamont https://home.cern/about/who-we-are/our-people/biographies/mi... 3. https://home.cern/about/who-we-are/our-people/biographies/fabiola-gianotti https://home.cern/about/who-we-are/our-people/biographies/fa... 4. https://german-dac.web.cern.ch/sites/default/files/2022.01%20CERN%20Orgchart.pdf https://german-dac.web.cern.ch/sites/default/files/2022.01%2...
- axus 2y ago
  I think the majority of the Scientific Linux software came from Fedora/Red Hat and the Linux kernel. Planning and managing the CERN computing infrastructure is a lot of work, then updating and releasing a famous distro on top of that was impressive.
- jimbat 2y ago
  Scientific Linux was originally a product of Fermilab, with contributions from CERN.
rob_c 2y ago
Yes, but that still covers infrastructure (cables) and a lot of equipment for the experiments including but not limited to massive storage and tape backup, distributed local compute, and local cluster management all with users busy trying to pummel it with the latest and greatest ideas of how they can use it faster and better... Not to mention specialist software and licences. 50M doesn't go that far when you factor all of this in
atoav 2y ago
That kind of place can draw a certain kind of employee. This finding is hard to transfer to commercial projects. Sure employees will always claim to be really motivated, especially in the marketing material, but are they we-are-nerds-working-on-the-bleeding-edge-of-human-knowledge-motivated? Probably not, but there is surely some manager out there who made themselves believe they can motivate their employees to show the same devotion for the self-made hardships of some mostely pointless SaaS product. If you want to grab that kind of spirit, what you do needs to fundamentally make sense beyond just making somebody money.
- quailfarmer 2y ago
  That’s a great observation, and I think generally correct, but there are private companies where that sort of motivation exists, for basically the same reason
  - dangitman 2y ago
    [dead]
  - guappa 2y ago
    Then they get bought by some megacorp which kills the motivation.
    - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
      Or they are the megacorp that killed it (Google, Xerox?)
- sligor 2y ago
  That's exactly how we were able to go to the moon in 55 years ago. And why it's complicated today. It was of course lot of money. But it was mostly a lot of highly skilled, motivated devoted people doing for an ultimate common goal. Money would not have been sufficient by itself.
  - dangitman 2y ago
amelius 2y ago
> Cerns budget is 1.4 billion Euro Kind of weird that a company like Uber has a valuation of $150 billion Euro.
- yccs27 2y ago
  Apples to oranges. Budget is per year, valuation is total. A better comparison would be Uber's revenue of $37 billion in 2023.
  - amelius 2y ago
    I don't see why it's Apples to oranges. Uber could pay for 150 CERN-years.
    - chmod775 2y ago
      No, they could not. Valuation is not money in the bank. It does not even represent an amount that is convertible to an equal amount of liquid currency. It's a number that is hardly useful for anything and I'm tired of people cooking up all sorts of nonsense with it.
      - amelius 2y ago
        Ok, maybe it's 75 CERN years or maybe even 10. The point still stands. PS: Sorry if you got tired, but I'm tired of people explaining what valuation isn't when we're just talking orders of magnitude.
      - exe34 2y ago
        it's only useful for getting loans that you'll pay back with a bigger loan. it's how rich people are always cash-poor but wealthy and live wealthy lifestyles.
- gwervc 2y ago
  How many people ordering a meal (often out of laziness) per day vs thinking and searching the mysteries of universe? Economically it makes sense that Uber generates a lot more of cash.
dauertewigkeit 2y ago
Good hiring managers can find the hidden gems. These are typically people who don't have the resume to join FAANG immediately, due to lacking the pedigree, but who have lots of potential. Also these same people typically don't last long because they do eventually move on. Also it helps that Europe is so behind in tech that if you want to do some cutting edge tech you are almost forced to join a public institution because private ones are not doing anything exciting.
- guappa 2y ago
  Because doing the millionth CRUD in USA is very exciting?
  - wvh 2y ago
    One wonders if things win because they really are better, or because there's sufficient financial momentum behind them. I have worked in the public sector for some years, and I don't think Europe is behind, just that the budgets are a lot smaller. If you want to capture a lot of people in an ecosystem or walled garden, you're going to need money, and lots of it. For all that's good and bad about it, most of that excess is concentrated in the US, in a few hotspots. No need to get distracted and put a flag on somebody like a Zuckerberg or Jobs or Gates though.
    - sofixa 2y ago
      > and I don't think Europe is behind, just that the budgets are a lot smaller. If you want to capture a lot of people in an ecosystem or walled garden, you're going to need money, and lots of it And the initial market you have is quite a bit smaller. Germany is the biggest EU country by population at 84 million, compared to 333 million in the US. Moving into another EU country means translating into a different language, verifying what laws apply to you, how taxes work, etc. Sometimes it's easy (just a translation), sometimes you might have to redo everything almost from scratch (e.g. Doctolib which schedule healthcare appointments, do meetings online with doctors, can be used to share test results, prescriptions - each new country they enter will have a lot of regulations on healthcare data that will need to be applied). But it's mostly the budgets.
hkwerf 2y ago
That being said, though, members contribute more than money. A lot of the work done at CERN is not done on CERN budgets, but on the budgets of member institutes.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
lmihaig 2y ago
People get this very wrong, CERN is extremely underfunded. People really don't understand how expensive running the accelerators is and most of the budget goes to that. Last years they even had to run for less months than expected because they couldn't afford the rising energy prices. The buildings are old, the offices suck, you don't even get free coffee and they pay less than the norm in Switzerland. But they have some of the top minds working on very specific and interesting systems, dealing with problems you'd never encounter anywhere else. I would like to yap more about the current management and their push/reliance on enterprise solutions but to cut it short I really do think cern is a net contributor to open science and they deserve more funding.

lokimedes 2y ago

Also, the in-kind contributions from hundreds of institutes around the world. Much can, and has, been said about physicist code, but CERN is the center of a massive community of “pre-dropout” geniuses. I can’t count the number of former students that later joined Google and the likes. Many are frequenting HN.

adev_ 2y ago

CERN was a good example of how much can be done with how little when you have the right people. For a long time, the entire Linux distribution (Scientific Linux) used for ~15K collaborators, the infra and the grid computing was managed by a team of around 4-5 people. The teams managing the network access (LanDB), the distributed computing system, the scientific framework (ROOT) and the storage are also small, dedicated skilled teams. And the result speaks for itself. Unfortunately, most of that went to shit quite recently when they replaced the previous head of IT by a Microsoft fanboy/girl coming from outside of the scientific environment. The first thing he/she did was to force Microsoft bloatware everywhere to replace existing working OSS solutions.

wuming2 2y ago
> Unfortunately, most of that went to shit quite recently when they replaced the previous head of IT by a Microsoft fanboy(girl?) coming from outside of the scientific environment. Painful to read so I did a short check. From a news post I don’t want to link here, but easily found searching “CERN, the famous scientific lab where the web was born, tells us why it's ditching Microsoft and helping others do the same”, direction taken in 2019 seemed quite the opposite. I am not sure how current head of IT at CERN, Enrica Porcari, fits in to the story. Insider info will be appreciated.
- adev_ 2y ago
  > direction taken in 2019 seemed quite the opposite The head of IT changed in 2021 if it answers your question.
  - wuming2 2y ago
    Don’t see any previous experience at Microsoft [2]. Just a self taught fan then? Edit: “Partnership is the art of understanding shared value. In WFP we have a number of partnerships, not many, but the ones that we have are deep, are sustained, are long-term. And definitely UNICC is one of them. Enrica Porcari, Chief Information Officer and Director Technology Division at the WFP” [1] United Nations International Computing Centre (UNICC) is a Microsoft shop. Legit to assume, if OP statement holds true, she got the business sponsorship going while CIO at the World Food Program (WFP). This kind of attempted executive takeover is always the strategy of a team. Who sponsored and voted for her at CERN is the real person of interest. 1. https://www.unicc.org/our-values/what-makes-us-unique/ https://www.unicc.org/our-values/what-makes-us-unique/ 2. https://cgnet.com/blog/former-cgnet-employee-enrica-porcari-to-head-computing-department-at-cern/ https://cgnet.com/blog/former-cgnet-employee-enrica-porcari-...
    - wuming2 2y ago
      Joachim Mnich, Director for Research and Computing and her boss [4], holds the position also since January 2021 [1]. Mike Lamont, Director for Accelerators and Technology, also got the job at the same time [2]. Finally Fabiola Gianotti, Director-General, in 2019 extended her tenure for a second term “to start on 1st January 2021” [3]. So in 2019 the initiative to remove Microsoft began. With renewal and promotions taking in to effect it stopped. Interesting. Feeling a strong Microsoft US vs Munich DE vibe. With a twitch of IT. 1. https://home.cern/about/who-we-are/our-people/biographies/joachim-mnich https://home.cern/about/who-we-are/our-people/biographies/jo... 2. https://home.cern/about/who-we-are/our-people/biographies/mike-lamont https://home.cern/about/who-we-are/our-people/biographies/mi... 3. https://home.cern/about/who-we-are/our-people/biographies/fabiola-gianotti https://home.cern/about/who-we-are/our-people/biographies/fa... 4. https://german-dac.web.cern.ch/sites/default/files/2022.01%20CERN%20Orgchart.pdf https://german-dac.web.cern.ch/sites/default/files/2022.01%2...
axus 2y ago
I think the majority of the Scientific Linux software came from Fedora/Red Hat and the Linux kernel. Planning and managing the CERN computing infrastructure is a lot of work, then updating and releasing a famous distro on top of that was impressive.
jimbat 2y ago
Scientific Linux was originally a product of Fermilab, with contributions from CERN.

rob_c 2y ago

Yes, but that still covers infrastructure (cables) and a lot of equipment for the experiments including but not limited to massive storage and tape backup, distributed local compute, and local cluster management all with users busy trying to pummel it with the latest and greatest ideas of how they can use it faster and better... Not to mention specialist software and licences. 50M doesn't go that far when you factor all of this in

atoav 2y ago

That kind of place can draw a certain kind of employee. This finding is hard to transfer to commercial projects. Sure employees will always claim to be really motivated, especially in the marketing material, but are they we-are-nerds-working-on-the-bleeding-edge-of-human-knowledge-motivated? Probably not, but there is surely some manager out there who made themselves believe they can motivate their employees to show the same devotion for the self-made hardships of some mostely pointless SaaS product. If you want to grab that kind of spirit, what you do needs to fundamentally make sense beyond just making somebody money.

quailfarmer 2y ago
That’s a great observation, and I think generally correct, but there are private companies where that sort of motivation exists, for basically the same reason
- dangitman 2y ago
  [dead]
- guappa 2y ago
  Then they get bought by some megacorp which kills the motivation.
  - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    Or they are the megacorp that killed it (Google, Xerox?)
sligor 2y ago
That's exactly how we were able to go to the moon in 55 years ago. And why it's complicated today. It was of course lot of money. But it was mostly a lot of highly skilled, motivated devoted people doing for an ultimate common goal. Money would not have been sufficient by itself.
- dangitman 2y ago

amelius 2y ago

> Cerns budget is 1.4 billion Euro Kind of weird that a company like Uber has a valuation of $150 billion Euro.

yccs27 2y ago
Apples to oranges. Budget is per year, valuation is total. A better comparison would be Uber's revenue of $37 billion in 2023.
- amelius 2y ago
  I don't see why it's Apples to oranges. Uber could pay for 150 CERN-years.
  - chmod775 2y ago
    No, they could not. Valuation is not money in the bank. It does not even represent an amount that is convertible to an equal amount of liquid currency. It's a number that is hardly useful for anything and I'm tired of people cooking up all sorts of nonsense with it.
    - amelius 2y ago
      Ok, maybe it's 75 CERN years or maybe even 10. The point still stands. PS: Sorry if you got tired, but I'm tired of people explaining what valuation isn't when we're just talking orders of magnitude.
    - exe34 2y ago
      it's only useful for getting loans that you'll pay back with a bigger loan. it's how rich people are always cash-poor but wealthy and live wealthy lifestyles.
gwervc 2y ago
How many people ordering a meal (often out of laziness) per day vs thinking and searching the mysteries of universe? Economically it makes sense that Uber generates a lot more of cash.

dauertewigkeit 2y ago

Good hiring managers can find the hidden gems. These are typically people who don't have the resume to join FAANG immediately, due to lacking the pedigree, but who have lots of potential. Also these same people typically don't last long because they do eventually move on. Also it helps that Europe is so behind in tech that if you want to do some cutting edge tech you are almost forced to join a public institution because private ones are not doing anything exciting.

guappa 2y ago
Because doing the millionth CRUD in USA is very exciting?
- wvh 2y ago
  One wonders if things win because they really are better, or because there's sufficient financial momentum behind them. I have worked in the public sector for some years, and I don't think Europe is behind, just that the budgets are a lot smaller. If you want to capture a lot of people in an ecosystem or walled garden, you're going to need money, and lots of it. For all that's good and bad about it, most of that excess is concentrated in the US, in a few hotspots. No need to get distracted and put a flag on somebody like a Zuckerberg or Jobs or Gates though.
  - sofixa 2y ago
    > and I don't think Europe is behind, just that the budgets are a lot smaller. If you want to capture a lot of people in an ecosystem or walled garden, you're going to need money, and lots of it And the initial market you have is quite a bit smaller. Germany is the biggest EU country by population at 84 million, compared to 333 million in the US. Moving into another EU country means translating into a different language, verifying what laws apply to you, how taxes work, etc. Sometimes it's easy (just a translation), sometimes you might have to redo everything almost from scratch (e.g. Doctolib which schedule healthcare appointments, do meetings online with doctors, can be used to share test results, prescriptions - each new country they enter will have a lot of regulations on healthcare data that will need to be applied). But it's mostly the budgets.

hkwerf 2y ago

That being said, though, members contribute more than money. A lot of the work done at CERN is not done on CERN budgets, but on the budgets of member institutes.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

lmihaig 2y ago

People get this very wrong, CERN is extremely underfunded. People really don't understand how expensive running the accelerators is and most of the budget goes to that. Last years they even had to run for less months than expected because they couldn't afford the rising energy prices. The buildings are old, the offices suck, you don't even get free coffee and they pay less than the norm in Switzerland. But they have some of the top minds working on very specific and interesting systems, dealing with problems you'd never encounter anywhere else. I would like to yap more about the current management and their push/reliance on enterprise solutions but to cut it short I really do think cern is a net contributor to open science and they deserve more funding.