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Stephen Hawking Looking For Personal Techie
kaptink writes "One of the great grandmasters of space, time and the history of our existence is seeking an assistant to help develop and maintain the electronic speech system that allows him to communicate his vision of the universe. An informal job ad posted on Stephen's website said the assistant should be computer literate, ready to travel and able to repair electronic devices 'with no instruction manual or technical support.' He lost his real voice in a tracheotomy in 1985, but has something based on NeoSpeech's VoiceText speech synthesizer mounted on his wheelchair that helps synthesize speech by interpreting the twitches of his face. The synthesizer's robotic monotone has become nearly as famous as Hawking himself, but the computer — powered by batteries fastened to the back of Hawking's wheelchair — isn't just for speaking. It can connect to the internet over mobile phone networks and a universal infrared remote enables the physicist to switch on the lights, watch television, or open doors either at home or at the office. It's a complicated, tailor-made system, as the ad makes clear. A photograph of the back of Hawking's wheelchair, loaded with coiled wires and electronic equipment, is pictured under the words: 'Could you maintain this? If your answer is "yes", we'd like to hear from you!'. Hawking's website says that the job's salary is expected to be about $38,500 a year."
also he will steal your girlfriend if you have one.
The significant drop in salary could well be worth it. Being able to talk to the man every day, see how he works. What an interesting job indeed!
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If you make a mistake the world will say you broke Stephen Hawking.
http://www.hawking.org.uk/
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
It's more or less the average wage in the UK.
That salary is peanuts.
The salary is for a "Graduate Assistant to Stephen Hawking".
Most Graduate Assistants don't make 38k...
How much will he pay to just on the hardware costs? If he can't pay a good rate to get a good person much will he pay on the up keep costs?
It might be fun to take the job and program in some bogus speeches for him to give. Something about him finding religion, discovering creationism to be true and so on and have it end with a comment about maybe he should pay his chair engineer a decent salary so his stuff would actually work right.
You have to admit it would be funny at least once.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
most likely goes like this:
- some genius put that original backpack computer together
- he barely made it work, but he was not sure why it worked and he never bothered to write any documentation
- he left as soon as it was up and running, out of fear that it might break any moment and he had no idea what to do then
- now it is breaking apart and the genius is gone.
- it is your job to fix it, good luck
You're probably going to need a skilled and experienced EE to maintain a system of such scale and to constantly upgrade it. ....
And an experienced EE can easily pull in double that wage a year without trying too hard. And that's not including benefits like company car, health insurance,
It's on the low-end in southern California. That's around what most grocery store clerks make out here.
"Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick any two" -- RFC 1925
This entails a lot more than just technical aspects:
Sounds like a lot of direct PR stuff is involved, including scheduling and logistics, and even graphics design, which are probably not skills the typical techie would be strong in. Also, the pay sounds kind of low considering it's a whole lot more than just maintaining his technology.
Better known as 318230.
Finding someone for that kind of pay who is able to do all of this and do it well won't be easy:
Well, then! You just volunteered right?
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results" - Winston Churchill
Good thing the job isn't being advertised in southern California then. Unless something dramatic happened, Hawking divides his time chiefly between Cambridge and Waterloo.
Seriously, what?
Sorry if I did not immediately jump for joy when I saw that "salary". If you're a janitor with that salary you might be underpaid.
Once you say "computers" and "maintain" you have to get ready to to pay a bit extra, add "without support" and "electronics" and you've just gotten a license to bleed from your wallet.
Goodluck with the search Mr. Hawking.
WTF? Really you wouldn't want to pimp his ride? I bet MTV would give you a show and shit... Dang!
The salary is for a "Graduate Assistant to Stephen Hawking".
Most Graduate Assistants don't make 38k...
Not to mention graduate assistants generally put up with anything and everything that will get them better connections and research experience, typically with little regard to pay, and Stephen Hawking is a big frickin connection. I'm sure there are dozens of graduate students who would pay him to get that job, even take on loans to do it. Hell, I'd do that for this job and I don't give a rats ass about engineering or physics.
A teaching assistant in grad school probably makes around 24k - 35k. So if you are a student, good at tech then this job will serve you well to pay a big chunk of your student loan. This is infinitely better than making Subway sandwiches at your university student center. This isn't intended to be a job for life you know. Once you graduate you move on to a real job that pays bills.
It's actually towards the higher end of average for a technical position.
The thing to keep in mind with UK vs US wages, however, is that we get a LOT more holiday time. Legally it's a 28 days/year minimum: http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/Employees/Timeoffandholidays/DG_10029788
You don't pay the average wage for highly skilled IT work. If you did, nobody would go into it.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Easy £50K for an EE? You're not talking about the the UK, are you?
So, it's totally irrelevant to a job based in the UK.
"You don't want more than $38,500." Oh, wait, sorry. :P
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results" - Winston Churchill
This is for a graduate assistant to STEPHEN HAWKING.
My stipend was 1/4 of that at best and, oh yeah, did I mention... This is for a graduate assistant to STEPHEN W. HAWKING.
I know you guys are all so F'ing incredible that you don't need resume bullets or care about other peoples' ideas, but how's about
Um, if I were eligible I'd be making them KNOW I was their man!
The job is based in Britain, so the pieces of paper won't be quite as green as you'd expect.
It's truly amazing what having to think before you speak can accomplish.
If I remember correctly he was stuck on some long discontinued TI speech synthesis chip. I remember the initial story when they first did it in particular because I also was playing with a similar part at the time in High School.
Finding parts and people has to be getting difficult.
At the same time I can completely understand him not wanting to upgrade his system, from the GUI he's used very successful for 25 years or Voice that has now become that trademark of Steven Hawking's.
Well I am thinking we should be able to emulate that whole system including the speech syntheses. Worst case it can be done as a series of recordings from the original chip.
Maybe do it as a Kickstarter project or something, do the whole thing open source. Surely there must be others with this problem.
I can imaging upgrading him to AR goggles with eye tracking, that's all off the shelf today. Then in to a little Mini PC or ARM board, and nothing but software.
With something like that we should be good till we get direct brain interfaces and quantum computing wrist watches in another 25 years, if he still even needs it.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
Junior lecturers (assistant professor in US-speak) in the UK start on about the same -- and they will normally have PhDs. It's not a bad salary for a recent graduate, which seems to be what Hawking is looking for.
Does he read /.?
That may be important to consider, before you post.
So, here we have a golden opportunity to work for one of the most brilliant humans to ever exist, tinkering with an amazing if poorly documented system, jetsetting around the globe, being paid to attend sold-out physics lectures... and all half the /. community can think to do is bitch about the pay grade.
Seems the Green-Eyed Monster (and this global recession) has ruined a lot of folks. The way I see it, the fact that Hawking is likely footing the bill for the room, board, and travel expenses of whoever gets the gig (as they would be considered a member of his 'care team'), not to mention getting to hang out with Stephen fucking Hawking, $38,000 per annum seems like a pretty damn good deal.
Now, if only I could get my wife on board... I wonder if he needs an economist, too...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The summary actually overstated the technical aspects, the actual job advert states that maintaining the speech system is only part of the position.
Managing national and international travel for Prof. Hawking and his care team. Expect to spend around 3 months per year abroad! Development and maintenance of Professor Hawking's communication and speech systems Procurement and maintenance of his wheelchairs and accessible van Preparation of lecture graphics and public speaking Dealing with the media and press Answering inquiries from the public and maintaining the website
However, gets this Job needs to change the voice to glaDOS!!!!!!
And here in central Oregon, a grocery store clerk will be lucky to make $18,000 per year for a 40 hour week with no benefits. Seeing as Mr. Hawking won't be here either, it's rather irrelevant.
If only Darth Vader had taken the same attitude with Palpatine approached him. "Well, helping you to dominate the galaxy sounds cool and everything, but $38.5k? You've got to be fucking kidding me."
And a salary in California is on the low end of a salary in Monaco. But it doesn't mean that much - the absolute value of a salary is not usually directly comparable between nations. You need to use a metric like PPP instead.
Christ you're a prick.
1. Cambridge is not California. Californian salaries - or, indeed, any other salaries - are utterly irrelevant.
2. The salary is actually about the level of a first postdoctoral position. It's not that low.
3. The salary is higher than the UK national average salary.
4. It's unlikely to be for a very long time.
5. It will increase the impact of the CV of the guy who gets the job quite impressively.
Someone who wants more money doesn't apply for the job. Someone who thinks the money is OK and thinks that two years' working as Hawking's mixture of web admin, techie and travel organiser might look good on their CV, does.
It's only temporary until you learn to make it say to give you a pay increase...
If only I were about 10 years younger (back when I had my hands into more hardware and with no house payment or wife), I'd take that job, work on improving most of his cobbled together hardware with something a little more modern (and software controlled) and open source it so others can benefit from the same thing.
Getting paid £25k/year to hang out with Stephen Hawking sounds like the geek chance of a lifetime.
> Steve H's latest scribble, that the universe just popped into existence and didn't need a creator was lame.
Agreed. Energy can not be created nor destroyed yet his explanation is something came from nothing. Riiiiight.
> "We just don't fucking know, and we may never know!"
As a Mystic that's the height of scientific ignorance right there: "I don't know, and neither does anyone else." Uh, no, you don't know what I know. At least the agnostics are _honest_ enough to admit, that _they_ don't know.
Science is NOT the only way to find answers, but for the majority of people, it is the BEST way. Science is _incomplete_, and always will be.
> At least let's discuss that the universe/multi-verse is more complex then our current understanding of physics allows for.
Agreed. Unfortunately most people are not ready to unlearn before they can learn.
Even people that sweep floors on shows that "pimp rides" on MTV earn more. Perhaps the appeal is not in the salary but rather in proximity to the godemperor of text2speech cyborgs.
Of course, most of us poor bastards work for a salary, not "for the love". Some of us have kids to feed, bills to pay, taxes, that sorta thing. The rest, that have nothing better to do with the money just wanna get paid fairly. You can maintain nails with better pay. Dang indeed.
No no you are not thinking this out. Greed has gotten in the way of what is really important in life... Think about it, you will have total control of one of the most important physicist of our time! Just install a joystick controller and you can make him do your biding and say whatever you want.
You would win the Internet. Trolling people with statements like "By my calculations the LHC has already begun breaking down the fabric of our universe as was prophesied. Soon the great mighty Cthulhu shall return. Hail Cthulhu! MU HA HAHA MU!!!
or something more simple like HAIL SATIN! or HITLER or S.H.I.T I am so wasted right now.
Have any of you that are so excited to "work with/around Stephen Hawking" considered that aside from name-dropping value, you probably won't get anything out of it unless you are somewhere near his intellectual level and are up to speed on his current work? That's assuming he's willing to take time to share/discuss his work with you (he won't be) besides just saying "fix it and gtfo". For what this rather weighty, highly skilled/experienced, multi-talented, round-the-world on-call job actually entails the money is pathetic. If you have the former qualifications wouldn't you already be working with him or doing your own research? And with the latter qualifications I'd expect you to be making a ton of money maintaining some crazy important systems.
That salary is peanuts.
The salary is for a "Graduate Assistant to Stephen Hawking".
Most Graduate Assistants don't make 38k...
You wouldn't know this, since neither TFA nor TFS bothered to link to the actual post, but most Graduate assistants also don't have to "Expect to spend around 3 months per year abroad", or all the other things on this page. You not only have to maintain his gear, but also have to be his travel agent, his press agent, his web designer, and his auto mechanic.
Why is he relying on such archaic equipment? There is far better equipment out there than what he is using. Even assuming he doesn't want to undergo some sort of implant, there is eye scanning tech, EEG devices, etc. They are even putting them in toys these days.
:)
Link the EEG from a Force Trainer into a computer with a eye scanning device and a android tablet in front of him. He could use the EEG device to let the eye scanning computer to know when to start looking at his eye movements, it would track where he's looking at on the android screen interface and using either the EEG or a twitch to let the interface know when to simulate a screen touch. He would be able to communicate on a large tablet at least as fast as normal person using their finger to touch the screen. He could even have an app setup to control the chair movements or even to control a robot.
For that matter he could even have someone implant a control device in a tiger and use an android app to control the tiger to take out his enemies.
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
First of all, I doubt that Steven would introduce the employee as "My bitch", he would certainly be more respectful than that. He would probably refer to the person as "My technical assistant" or "The genius that makes it possible for me to communicate".
The circles that he would travel in would be quite prestigious. In the science community he'd be regularly in the presence of some of the greatest minds alive today. In the political community, he's among the "Rock Stars" that politicians want to have pictures of themselves standing next to... as if the association would make them smarter.
On top of that... companies focused on making hardware/software solutions would almost certainly consider a person who worked directly with Steven Hawkings on his accessibility solutions as an ideal CTO for their company. If a person is interested in accessibility solutions as a career and would be interested in starting a business, obtaining government grants or simply raising money for the company would be simple having had that position earlier.
I'd imagine that there are even some great UN posts for someone who held this position. Technical adviser or chairman of this committee of another.
So... while the pay sucks majors balls... if a person sticks around in this position for 4-5 years... they can almost certainly gain the visibility and even a certain level of prestige which would secure their future indefinitely.
Oh... the fact that the person could in theory learn something along the way or even have the opportunity to test their system upgrades by having high level conversations about theoretical physics with a person, who though not as amazing as the press makes him, but still certainly capable of holding his own might be a big bonus for some.
If I weren't married with kids, I would seriously consider this position.
It was a perfect job because it allowed me to further my own theories on the universe, which became quite popular. The only thing I forgot to program was that the voice said: "My assistant Bert brought to my attention and proved that ....". I may miss the Nobel prize because of that.
Bert
Am I the only one thinking The Mighty Stephen Hawking is a fucking Quake master? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXLIzk_7KCE
He has seen things like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zn7-fVtT16k and what his opinion is on it :)
This is the sig that says NI (again)
First thing I'd do is replace the whole thing with an Android tablet. Reproduce the interface on-screen, front facing camera is there to observe his face, 3G connection for access to internet and make calls, USB interface to whatever IR interface you'd like. And best of all: easy to code for and make changes and test things on a backup version.
Technology progresses...
How the heck can anyone make the ends meet for 25kGBP/year is beyond me. UK has higher costs of living than US does, supposedly?
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
You're thinking backwards about it. This would be a first-rate opportunity to learn about requirements for such a system in a real use scenario. Figure out what the shortcomings of the existing design are, but also likely what is brilliant about it, and make your own product based on that.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
We don't know if energy can not be created or destroyed. We know that we don't know how to pull it off, doesn't mean it's universally impossible.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
I can do all of that, except I'm worried I might be a bit too assburgerish for the PR work :-(
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Amazing paid travel and meeting of fine minds, the freedom to know first hand the world Dr. Hawking lives in, the ability to say whatever you think to whoever you want -- ZOUNDS! all this and money, too?
Focus on finances :: troubling.
I would take this job in a heartbeat, and figure out the wires, hardware, and software interface as I go. It's obviously custom, and I m able to pickup where the former person left off. Credentials--Scientist who is comfortable setting up complicated lab equiment, learning to run and troubleshoot HPLC and PCR (piece of cake) and microarras, surf along the growing information network, as new replaces old. Experienced coder on-the-fly Perl and Java Python concatanations.
Better question is this, "Sir: Is there a person leaving who will train me?"
Forget about the money. Take the job.
Maybe Hawking is a regular guy and it's really the speech system computer coming with all the theories. That would be hard to maintain.
Jeesh, the guy who can posit on the origins of the universe and time travel gives us a job application page that submits over an unencrypted channel? He really does need a tech guy!
I chose to end my comments, not with a rim shot, but a long decaying F#7sus4
I'm talking global average wages actually for senior EEs actually...
Teaching isn't very much of a high-tech skill. Plato did it.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I'd have to. I hate to work.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Then you have him give you a raise.
I bet you can do it with regular expressions.
Replace "Stars", with "Give my IT Guy a $90.00 an hour raise."
Also "Your fired" with "good job"
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Working on his tech might be fun, but being a roady when he goes on tour to do his hip hop concerts would be a lot of work.
Advice: on VPS providers
Actually if they actually haggled over their Darth Vader salary in episode three it world probable at least add some tension of him going over to the dark side.
Vs.
Oh Crap You are the Sith Lord!
Yes. I can bring people from the dead wanna join me.
Ok Sure!
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Actually the US median salary is lower than $38k: "The overall median personal income for all individuals over the age of 18 was $24,062[4] ($32,140 for those age 25 or above) in the year 2005.[5] The overall median income for all 155 million persons over the age of 15 who worked with earnings in 2005 was $28,567." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States
The description sounds pretty bad - they're trying to combine the job of a personal assistant, PR manager and technician into one position and are pretty clear that Prof. Hawking has no interest in conversing with you about physics. You're just his bitch. I'm not overly familiar with typical salaries in the UK, but here in the states I'd consider that salary pretty low for the qualifications they're looking for.
Yep, but I'm sure you can live OK in some areas in the U.S. for much less than in U.K.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
It is being advertised on a web site, not a local newspaper. Therefore it is advertised globally.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Cambridge isn't exactly a cheap part of the country to live in, though.