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Comment by sofaofthedamned | Hacker News Reader

BBC research are amazing. They've been doing this for decades, most recently with next gen codecs and latency issues on internet transmission. As a British person I'm actually proud of them, even though many people complain their politics are orthogonal to mine.

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Maybe. Nobody uses the BBC codecs because they aren't really next gen. They're alright, but the industry has agreed on many-vendor international consortiums to develop codecs, and their outputs are always the best codecs available. Those are the ones that get turned into hardware acceleration chips which you need these days to be adopted and competitive.

It's not really clear why the BBC spends money on duplicating this research instead of contributing its ideas to HEVC, AVC etc like everyone else does. Easy to argue that's a waste of tax money. (I'm also British).

This is a very fascinating discussion. NRK, the Norwegian national broadcaster also does this. NRK Beta, which experiments with new technology in broadcasting, launched a streaming service in 2007, which was the basis for the streaming offering they are still providing today.

It's worth mentioning that NRK and Norway has taken inspiration from BBC since the dawn of television, including the licensing system (which has just been replaced by a fixed tax).

Same with NHK (I think) in Japan. Lots of old school broadcasters doing proper engineering.

We have a few institutions that are close to being considered legendary across the planet: NHS and BBC spring to mind. Neither of those two are perfect but they are both ground breaking and a bit subversive.

I doubt anyone not from these shores (UK) would ever peg the UKoGB as a hot bed of left wing leaning types. Our stereotype abroad is pretty fixed and pretty obvious () and also encouraged by us: tourism is a bloody good earner.

We (people in the UK) now find ourselves as rabid defenders of a left wing dream, despite our political leanings. You know why as well as I do, that we love our NHS. If I want to, I can wander into a hospital ER and will be seen to, without any discussion of money. When someone needs medical assistance, metal discs or bits of paper should not be involved - they are merely pretty things and not useful.

() I should point out here that the "British Scientists" meme in Russia (int al) is one we are aware of, and also laugh at and with. There are loads more: and we still laugh with you, because we love you.

British Boffin/Scientist meme in Russia: https://siberiantimes.com/science/opinion/features/british-s...

And random internet guy says: “It's seemingly a direct replacement of the Soviet-era ‘Armenian radio reported’ type of joke. [It] gained more notability in 2006 following the British reports of the polonium poisoning of Litvinenko.“

> It] gained more notability in 2006 following the British reports of the polonium poisoning of Litvinenko

Oh, so it’s Active Measures.

Regarding the NHS: what do you base that global legendary status on? I don't have any data, myself, but I would say its status probably applies to the anglosphere (as legendary) and probably only as middling (as compared to other European countries')

The NHS was one of the first, and legends are usually set in the past.

Have you never spoken to someone British about NHS? It’s basically a religion in this country.

Yeah it's really weird, anyone who has used the health system in France, Switzerland, Belgium or many others would never praise the NHS. Don't get me wrong, it's a decent healthcare system that runs on very little money, but it's no way near the best

Probably in value for money it's the best. It's also an institution that has yet to be destroyed by capitalism, in that many people working in the NHS do so because it's a vocation and make large personal sacrifices to make it work.

that sounds terrible

It’s a noble thing to follow a vocation without being driven entirely by self interest.

In contrast, once market forces were unleashed in academia, good will built over decades was lost and a lot of great people quit. Very hard to get that good will and sense of vocation back.

Not everything in life has been to be run by markets driven by self interest. Some things do better without them.

My neighbours, who are from Germany, have praised the simplicity of the financial side of the NHS compared to the German system. I was quite surprised by this!

Very little money? It uses 9,7% of UK's GDP. It's only a very little money if compared to US system.

In comparison, Polish healthcare expenditure is 6,5%. It's obviously worse than NHS, but it's miraculous that it works that well - with only 3 years expected lifespan below UK and 1 below US.

Source: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

"Runs on very little money" is the key. The UK have comparable outcomes to other western european countries, with far less spending.

Health Spending per person

UK: $4070

Belgium: $4944

France: $4965

Switzerland: $7317

That decreased budget of course dates back decades. Increase NHS budget by 25%, and in 40 years compare France and UK systems.

That's the thing about the Anglosphere: no other countries exist. The healthcare debate is only ever between the UK option and the US option. We all know that moving the UK system towards the US would be a disaster, and yet that's the only option on the menu.

How on earth could the UK media report on the French healthcare system? It's in French! /s

That's an interesting footnote annotation.

>> NHS. If I want to, I can wander into a hospital ER and will be seen to, without any discussion of money.

And what exactly is the chance they’ll actually take care of you if you’re not in an emergency condition?

Pretty good chance. They triage, and if you're not an emergency and you're easy to treat they like to get you seen and out of the department because it helps their 4 hour targets.

Um 100%? Might take a while, but as you said, it's not an emergency.

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