30 million $$$$$$

[purecane]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/me...o-8550618.html



really???? 30 million at 17 years old????? smart kid.

[96ukssob]

thats crazy, but probably wasn't all cash -- more a stock offer deal which is worth around $8.14 now

[O MARINA]

Originally Posted by purecane73

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/me...o-8550618.html
smart kid.

Pretty smart kid. Amazing

[purecane]

the tv news report said that yahoo also offered him a job....when he finishes high school....in a year and a half.

[dyna mo]

crazy, yahoo already killed the app, they wanted the algo.

i only wish i understood math like that kid does!

[Scott McD]

Fair play to him. Wonder if he'll be smart with his cash though in the long term...

[johnnyloadproductions]

Originally Posted by purecane73

the tv news report said that yahoo also offered him a job....when he finishes high school....in a year and a half.

Which is a complete waste of time. If you have creativity (most people do not) you should always work for yourself.

[shake]

Originally Posted by dyna mo

crazy, yahoo already killed the app, they wanted the algo.

i only wish i understood math like that kid does!

Yeah, he should work in high frequency trading - probably make billions.

[SmutHammer]

Originally Posted by johnnyloadproductions

Which is a complete waste of time. If you have creativity (most people do not) you should always work for yourself.

Are you kidding? If you can Land a dream job and don't have the stresses of running your own business then take it!

[O MARINA]

Originally Posted by purecane73

the tv news report said that yahoo also offered him a job....when he finishes high school....in a year and a half.

Didn't his investors get most of that money?

[Spunky]

Smart kid,he will do well with his life

[dyna mo]

Originally Posted by shake

Yeah, he should work in high frequency trading - probably make billions.

wow, exactly eh. could you imagine?



this writer suggests buying math is the new bubble,

After Yahoo Acquires Summly, Is Buying Math The Next Tech Bubble?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechcons...xt-tech-bubble

hopefully this kid uses his powers for good instead of evil.

[BareBacked]

Originally Posted by bossku69

thats crazy, but probably wasn't all cash -- more a stock offer deal which is worth around $8.14 now

I think its 90% cash 10 stocks

[dyna mo]

this one's pretty interedasting too,

http://techonomy.com/2013/03/why-sum...rch-assistant/

But look more closely at the technological ambition behind Summly, provided in part by D?Aloisio, who seems to be a uniquely adept programmer, and the company?s partner, the scientific research firm SRI International. The heart of Summly today is still-crude natural language processing technology that ?reads? a news story and attempts to understand it the way a human might?and then generate a summary based on that understanding. This is not just extraction?which looks for key words as clues to topics and meanings?but an attempt at abstraction, which is harder. Abstraction uses software to first understand, then summarize.

The undisputed champion of abstraction right now is IBM?s Watson computer?the one that beat everybody on Jeopardy!, and is now working with doctors at the Cleveland Clinic. Watson was a whole room of computer processors that would cost tens of millions of dollars.

[johnnyloadproductions]

Originally Posted by dyna mo

this one's pretty interedasting too,

http://techonomy.com/2013/03/why-sum...rch-assistant/

IBM guys came to Iowa State and we discussed Watson with them (I'm in electrical engineering).
I've also read several pieces about news writing and machines.

I'm just waiting for the day when machines will be making all our blog posts.

Luckily as a human, if we choose, we can make an effort to find other ways to employ ourselves and make progress. Essentially that is how progress is made is when we are freed up with time and can move on to do other things.

[dyna mo]

Originally Posted by johnnyloadproductions

IBM guys came to Iowa State and we discussed Watson with them (I'm in electrical engineering).
I've also read several pieces about news writing and machines.

I'm just waiting for the day when machines will be making all our blog posts.

Luckily as a human, if we choose, we can make an effort to find other ways to employ ourselves and make progress. Essentially that is how progress is made is when we are freed up with time and can move on to do other things.

you're prolly pretty blown away by this sort of tech eh? does iowa state ee program put a heavy emphasis on math? i recall from my college days the ee program, or 1 to 2 of them, had tons and tons of math.

i maxed out at linear algebra/dif eq so i never even hit the algorithm level math courses! whew, tough for me.

[Femjoy Michael]

Originally Posted by O MARINA

Didn't his investors get most of that money?

Probably. There's always a little luck involved. He got massive amount of press when he created summly. That isn't to say press=success, but he had a good idea AND press. Bad idea + press won't go far.

Go watch the old steve jobs lost interview and be inspired

[BlackCrayon]

i gotta start making apps...

[JamesM]

never heard that app before., but good for him.

[johnnyloadproductions]

Originally Posted by dyna mo

you're prolly pretty blown away by this sort of tech eh? does iowa state ee program put a heavy emphasis on math? i recall from my college days the ee program, or 1 to 2 of them, had tons and tons of math.

i maxed out at linear algebra/dif eq so i never even hit the algorithm level math courses! whew, tough for me.

Yes, all engineering is math and science. Diff EQ (last semester)
It's only getting tougher, Electrical Engineering even has some emphasis on programming. I had to take a data structures Java class and an embedded systems class (included assembly).

Engineering is tough on the body, almost all the girls in there are beat. The other thing I don't like is the entitlement many of the students feel, sure you're smart, but it's not attractive. Many of them could use some social graces.

[O MARINA]

Originally Posted by Femjoy Michael

Probably. There's always a little luck involved. He got massive amount of press when he created summly. That isn't to say press=success, but he had a good idea AND press. Bad idea + press won't go far.

Go watch the old steve jobs lost interview and be inspired

You're right

[dyna mo]

Originally Posted by johnnyloadproductions

Yes, all engineering is math and science. Diff EQ (last semester)
It's only getting tougher, Electrical Engineering even has some emphasis on programming. I had to take a data structures Java class and an embedded systems class (included assembly).

Engineering is tough on the body, almost all the girls in there are beat. The other thing I don't like is the entitlement many of the students feel, sure you're smart, but it's not attractive. Many of them could use some social graces.

i hear ya, i ended up having to go with a minor in cs, i went in not realizing just how much and how freaking hard the math was going to be. fortunately, the uni had a way out for guys like me, the difference between a cs minor and major is the math component.

i did get a kick out of assembly though and the lower level electronics classes but, yeah, many socially awkward moments with very smart kids.

lol, one, a cs class, the projects were always group projects and so were more difficult, groups had 1 smart person, 1 dumb person and a few in the middle. the smart one in my group emailed the group several hours after receiving the 2 week project to tell us all he's finished the entire project and submitted it for the team!

[adultmobile]

This is depressing for the average engineer who work hard all the life. I was writing 3d software for Intel, Nvidia and few others in 1990's, and when I became lazy to learn more math every day I been re-selling some russian's algorithms later (got some guy who was doing soviet rocket control programs before, lost them when they moved to Canada). There was lots of math, but no one paid more than a few $1000's for any math and algo's anywhere, since you can't easily patent that... the round borders in an icons design of Apple is easier to patent than a math formula, apparently. Also you can not keep any code or math secret, since you can decompile whatever executables (java is even easier). And let you hide that in a server side, are you sure anyone don't copy the file out. Finally, with a few million as prize, you find lots of 17 year old kids rewriting whatever algorithm after you see one in action.

[The Ghost]

Wish I had that Summly to read a few replies on GFY

[rowan]

From the articles I've read, summly doesn't do much more than regurgitate the first couple of sentences an article. They licensed the 'technology' from an outside company.

[mineistaken]

Originally Posted by Ed Hammer

Are you kidding? If you can Land a dream job and don't have the stresses of running your own business then take it!

Thats why he said if you have creativity, not if you are 9-5 type regular smart person.

[mineistaken]

Originally Posted by rowan

From the articles I've read, summly doesn't do much more than regurgitate the first couple of sentences an article. They licensed the 'technology' from an outside company.

Some kid from scriptlance could have done something like that many many times cheaper?

[Vapid - BANNED FOR LIFE]

I'm more interested in the timing of such a blatant glorification of fiat currency. Some much deserved cause for concern it would seem.

[mineistaken]

Originally Posted by Monotony

I'm more interested in the timing of such a blatant glorification of fiat currency. Some much deserved cause for concern it would seem.

not also in this thread please...

[Vapid - BANNED FOR LIFE]

Originally Posted by mineistaken

not also in this thread please...

[Paul]

Originally Posted by dyna mo

crazy, yahoo already killed the app, they wanted the algo.

Seems like Yahoo is protecting it's market share much like Facebook has done with the purchase of Instagram

[adultmobile]

Originally Posted by rowan

From the articles I've read, summly doesn't do much more than regurgitate the first couple of sentences an article. They licensed the 'technology' from an outside company.

http://summly.com/technology.html

"Summly came to SRI International with a core concept to solve the information overload problem, which is especially challenging for mobile devices because of their limited screen size," said David Israel, Ph.D., program director in the Artificial Intelligence Center at SRI International. "Building on SRI's expertise in machine learning and natural language processing, the Summly team is creating a new type of content, providing understandable and relevant summaries tailored for mobile devices."

Seems real programmer here is this white bearded, bald guy:
http://www.ai.sri.com/people/israel


Sure the face of the 17yr old kid it makes better TV news.

[dyna mo]

i've read some into trying to find out how much sri international (stanford research) participated, from the best i can tell, sri's input was/in the single digit % on this project.


that could be incorrect but it's the best i could come up with, that was earlier today, i don't have the link, i might track it down later.

maybe yahoo spent $30m on hype or maybe they spent it on the algo..........hmmmm

[dyna mo]

Despite speculation on the Internet that Summly only licensed its summarizing technology from SRI International, an independent research institute, Mr. D?Aloisio said the technology was developed by Summly and that the company owned 100% of the intellectual property behind the service.

Summly's own Website says:

SRI International, with the help of the Summly team, built the summarisation technology behind Summly. They own a small share in the company and are helping us improve the algorithm.

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-1...hnology-2013-3

So let's review: Yahoo bought a startup to acquire its talent.
But that talent lives 10,000 miles away, is still finishing high school, and is not actually responsible for the startup's core technology.
This has us suspicious that they are other reasons Yahoo bought Summly.
Some possible explanations:
Summly has an impressive list of angel investors, including Brian Chesky, Mark Pincus, Matt Mullenwegg, Li-Kai Shing, and Josh Kushner. These people are influential with lots of startups that Yahoo will want to acquire some day. Maybe Yahoo has decided spending $30 million to give one of their disappointing startups a safe landing is a way to get on their good side. Certainly Yahoo has some rehabilitation to do with Silicon Valley investors and entrepreneurs.
Yahoo is getting tons of press in the mainstream media for making a teenager a millionaire. The CEO is on the Today Show this morning. $30 million is not a lot of money to spend for so much "earned media," as marketing people call mentions in the press.

[John-ACWM]

Inventive kid, good for him!

[Lykos]

Congrats to smart kid !

[dyna mo]

Originally Posted by adultmobile

This is depressing for the average engineer who work hard all the life. I was writing 3d software for Intel, Nvidia and few others in 1990's, and when I became lazy to learn more math every day I been re-selling some russian's algorithms later (got some guy who was doing soviet rocket control programs before, lost them when they moved to Canada). There was lots of math, but no one paid more than a few $1000's for any math and algo's anywhere, since you can't easily patent that... the round borders in an icons design of Apple is easier to patent than a math formula, apparently. Also you can not keep any code or math secret, since you can decompile whatever executables (java is even easier). And let you hide that in a server side, are you sure anyone don't copy the file out. Finally, with a few million as prize, you find lots of 17 year old kids rewriting whatever algorithm after you see one in action.

well, i guess the good news is that there is still hope for engineers eh, while a huge accomplishment and hat's off to the kid, he didn't write the underlying code.

in hindsight, it makes sense, at 17, i wouldn't think the kid has had enough time to take the math courses needed to write such a sophisticated algo.

i would bet though that he does have a natural ability to understand complex data structures, a huge feat itself.

nice work kid!