
He Has Millions and a New Job at Yahoo. Soon, He’ll Be 18 - hudibras
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/26/business/media/nick-daloisio-17-sells-summly-app-to-yahoo.html?hp&_r=0
======
jaysonelliot
While stories like his are interesting novelties, I feel like they are
distracting and counterproductive to the startup scene at large.

Instead of focusing on what Nick D’Aloisio has actually created, perhaps
looking at this "algorithmic invention, which takes long-form stories and
shortens them for readers using smartphones" and digging into what makes it
special, the story is all about the jackpot of millions he's lucked into.

I'd love to know more about the technical details behind Summly, or what Nick
went through to create it.

This kind of lottery mentality just gives the general public the impression
that there's a gold rush going on, and causes the kind of magical thinking
that's similar to teenagers all hoping to become the next rock star or sports
legend, or in this case, startup founder, that will make millions, focusing on
the money instead of asking themselves what they want to do with their lives.

For every teenage millionaire that hits the startup jackpot, there are
thousands of hard-working entrepreneurs that build for the love of building.
I'm not saying Nick D'Aloisio isn't doing what he does out of genuine passion
- I don't know anything about him, I expect he's very driven and geniune - but
I would rather focus on the work than the jackpot.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
I hear what you're saying but I think what you're describing is not the most
notable part of the story, in fact, possibly the least interesting part of it.
I don't know what his algorithm is; I have some doubts as to it's efficacy but
apparently Yahoo! did not. I'm more interested in how this person got
celebrities and billionaires interested in the product early on. Seems odd.

~~~
jaysonelliot
It seems like we're seeing evidence that the class system is alive and well in
the UK. Listen to his posh accent, and look at the easy way he casually hangs
out with Stephen Fry: <http://vimeo.com/52014691>

I suspect the story behind this is simply "upper-class child with family
connections finds success."

~~~
benaiah
From the video, he also seems like he's greatly overhyping the whole thing (as
is everyone else, of course). Genetic algorithms are not even remotely close
to human intelligence, quantitatively or qualitatively, so his claims to that
effect are nonsensical and misleading.

One common strain I see with child prodigies, or whatever you want to call
them, is that their accomplishments are often greatly exaggerated and they
usually don't end up contributing as much as many who make great contributions
later in life (few famous historical scientists and artists, with the
exception perhaps of Mozart, were what we would consider child prodigies, and
many were quite the opposite). I don't know if it's caused by resting on their
laurels, burning out, or them just not being as good as they claimed, but it
doesn't seem like a healthy model at all.

Summly in particular doesn't come across as being all that complicated -
genetic analysis of text is a well-researched and thoroughly trodden part of
applied complexity theory - but rather a smart business move made by investors
and businessmen mostly behind the scenes. D’Aloisio comes across more as a
poster boy than anything - he's put up as this child prodigy, but I've never
read or heard anything particularly new, profound, or even that interesting
from him.

~~~
witek
>few famous historical scientists and artists

Plenty of artists: Mozart, Chopin, Liszt, Bizet, Bieber (all right, maybe not
the last one) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_music_prodigies>

Others: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_child_prodigies>

~~~
vixen99
Not forgetting Mendelssohn as the prime example. Neither Mozart nor Chopin
wrote anything comparable in stature to the Octet written when Felix was 16
years old. It's one of the those pieces where within a minute or so you simply
'know' you're listening to a work of genius. Yes, entirely o/t especially on
this site. Sorry!

~~~
witek
Somewhat subjective :] I love Chopin myself.

~~~
clicks
I don't like that the word 'child prodigy' is thrown around for this. For
Mozart, Chopin, Liszt, etc. you simply have individuals who were all offspring
of musicians, who started at young ages, who both listened to music played by
their parents for hours and practiced it for themselves for hours more.
Likewise with mathematicians, programming prodigies, etc.

And, Chopin's later work is indeed much more mature -- compare the difference
for example between the Nocturne in E minor which he wrote when he was 19, and
Nocturne in C-Minor, No 21, which he wrote shortly before his death. The
difference is pretty stark -- and even non-musicians can sort of detect the
growth. I can say likewise for most composers, their craft honed with time --
it's difficult for me to think of any composer who composed something
tremendous in the very beginning just out of nowhere -- that kind of stuff
doesn't happen.

~~~
witek
I'm not sure calling Mozart and Chopin prodigies qualifies as throwing terms
around [lightly]. With so much recorded music being created over the millennia
(since the invention of musical notation), these two, among a few others,
stand out as undeniable geniuses of their craft. It also so happens that they
started to make waves very early, which wasn't that easy to accomplish in an
artist's lifetime back then, especially when you consider that Chopin gave
only some 30 public performances in the last 19 years of his life spent in
Paris and away from oppressed Poland. Chopin was seven years old when he
composed two critically-acclaimed Polonaises, in G minor and B-flat major.
Would you really not call him a prodigy?

------
brendano
The article makes it sound like a "whiz kid loner" sort of company, but the
summly.com website suggests there's a lot more to it than is implied by this
article. The About page shows a pretty senior, experienced team (decades of
engineering and research experience): <http://summly.com/about.html>

And the technology page says the algorithm is actually from SRI!
<http://summly.com/technology.html> (SRI language technology was also behind
Siri, of course.) There are various NLP researchers on their SRI team list,
like Appelt, Israel, Nallapati, etc. Did Summly license the technology from
SRI? Did they contract with SRI to maintain or develop the core algorithm? Who
owns it?

If the valuation includes Yahoo acquiring SRI technology, IP, and some portion
of those researchers' time for futher product development, plus the very nice
UI and marketing for it, and maybe they want to acquihire some of the team as
well, that all makes the valuation seem a bit less far-fetched than you might
think from the NYT's coverage (or the negative comments on HN).

The more interesting question than the valuation, I think, is how this company
went from a very young founder to all those investors, a pretty senior
executive team, and getting the NLP technology.

[I once worked for a startup, Powerset, whose core NLP system was licensed
from Xerox PARC; Powerset also quietly acquired an SRI spinoff and its NLP
technology, and I think IP acquisition was an important motivation. When
Powerset was acquired by Microsoft, I am told IP was at least a somewhat
important part of the valuation. I have no idea if this is actually applicable
to this situation; maybe it's an overextrapolation.]

~~~
aheilbut
My guess is that if what was reported is close to real, it was basically an
SRI spin-out, there was a real team behind it before it even started, and they
either merged with Summly or brought on D’Aloisio as 'Founder' as a marketing
tactic.

Oh, and Yoko Ono was also an investor in the series A...

------
JDDunn9
So a kid that came from money, got lucky and sold his app for more than it's
worth. I hate these types of garbage articles the media propagates.

The media always has the same story they want to tell:

\- Brush over the amount of time/work real achievement takes

\- Downplay the amount of investment taken or starting capital

\- Over-hype the selling price to give a rags-to-riches over-night success
story

~~~
niggler
"So a kid that came from money, got lucky"

Those aren't disconnected points: To a great extent we can attribute the
"luck" here to the video launch. It clearly cost some money to put together
the launch video, and that's not necessarily something most people have or are
willing to spend.

------
Dn_Ab
Okay. So based on reading the comments I can surmise that this is just a
wealthy kid who wrote an overly hyped trivial app, got his banker/attorney
parents to pay celebrities to appear in his cliched demo video and due to the
pull of his parents, was able to convince Yahoo to buy his company. Him being
a good actor was also a big help. Plus Yahoo needs to appear hip, what better
way than acquiring a startup with a nice indie video?

Written this way, it all seems over the top and gives a strong impression of
sour grapes, yet the above is a faithful summarization of this thread. It
saddens me. Here is a more balanced view.

He is well off and has parents that are able to help him pursue his goals to
enviable (as this thread can attest to) standards. You cannot begrudge them
what you would yourself do given the chance. He has this opportunity and he
used it to multiply his advantage.

It is not fair that he has this advantage and multiply not fair that he went
geometric on it, but at least he did not waste it. How many kids his age, rich
(or not) are writing interesting programs, leveraging connections and
successfully cashing out? He certainly could have done worse than get a
startup acquired by Yahoo. And If he did in fact merely sell them a plot of
moon real estate then that too is impressive. Hustling? Hacking non mechanical
systems? I don't like that he lied in that email but I'm not going to form an
opinion without knowing him. Certainly, he is a very lucky rich kid with a
posh accent but most of you are also taking for granted how lucky you are
yourselves.

He wrote an application that does _extractive summarization_. They are not
trivial to write but can, with a day or so of work get to something that is
objectively no worse than any other. This is because summaries are hard to
judge. You will spend most of your [indefinite] time polishing sharp corner
cases. At some point you hit a ceiling because any more effort requires a use
of semantics and grammar that might as well be spent on _abstract
summarization_. But now you are verging on AI completeness.

Anyhoo, he gave his not so run of the mill app a shiny coat of paint then used
the initial storm of ridiculous hype from his well financed cliched video to
attract trained talent.

He, with his parent's help was able to work out a deal and sell Yahoo a
skilled team that had possibly interesting IP? IP that they might not have had
the resources to monetize but possibly better placed resources wise to explore
at Yahoo. Trade off being the large chance that they will be thoroughly
digested by incompetent management. Whatever way they win.

Well played rich kid =)

~~~
just2n
For me, at least, the rich kid part casts doubt over everything, including
things we typically take for granted in stories about startups.

Did he actually write the software, or did he leverage his wealth to have
others build it? The fact that he started "coding" at 12 and then built
something at 15, then had it finely polished at 17 seems a bit odd. That's not
even enough time to properly learn the basics of engineering, let alone
research heavily into such a heady field that requires an enormous amount of
base knowledge to begin with.

It's not really clear here. Your average story about a garage or basement-
based hacker coming up with an independent app or game that is ground breaking
and/or makes millions is more impressive because the person didn't have the
means to hire talent to build the idea, meaning they had to do it themselves
or convince others that the idea was good enough to invest in (either with
their money or with their time in exchange for equity).

Substitute money for the talent and hard work in that scenario and it's like
coasting downhill. Just about anything considered reasonable is fairly
straightforward to get done. It makes everything seem a lot less impressive.
Building Facebook with $10,000,000,000 in the bank wouldn't be impressive
because it wasn't something you hacked up in a few weekends, instead you'd
come up with ideas and throw money at people until a product appeared. I mean
we certainly don't have that sense of awe when Google or Microsoft announces a
new project every now and then. It feels like that's what this article is
trying to build -- sensationalizing the person, his age, etc to make it feel
more awe-inducing, when the reality might just be that it's just not that
impressive at all.

~~~
berkut
I disagree - I starting learning C++ at 14, and I had shareware apps for
Windows I was making a fair amount of money with by the time I was 17 back in
the late 90s...

That included learning how the POP3 and SMTP protocols worked to write email
clients and obviously socket programming.

~~~
just2n
I started learning C at 11 and at 13-14 had software developed that assisted
in reverse engineering and debugging of applications. These days that
knowledge seems fairly trivial to me, and it isn't fundamentally complicated.
Now with more understanding of theory and algorithms, it would be a lot easier
to build much more useful tools like something that is as simple as dataflow
analysis -- something I couldn't have fathomed at 14. Or binary
instrumentation.

Similarly, I had done socket work and reversing proprietary protocols, and I
didn't consider any of that groundbreaking (nor was it substantially
marketable). To walk into a field like AI and summarization which isn't
infantile and outdo Ph.D. level experts at their own theory -- that's
something you didn't do, nor did Nick, nor does anyone. It just doesn't
happen, and hasn't in any subject with a similar depth of specialization as
far as I'm aware.

Not to say one can't make useful things and/or learn a lot very rapidly. I
tend to understand the young, inexperienced people building games that sell
well due to the frameworks available. And I understand how shareware could
sell decently in a market that's widely open with lots of low-hanging fruit.
But this situation is very different. That he built an application that
grabbed parts of text and produced a shortened version by making some very
rudimentary guesses about what's important perhaps. What's described -- not a
chance.

------
_delirium
My hunch is that this says more about Yahoo than anything else, but without
technical details it's hard to be sure. There's been good summarization tech
that Yahoo hasn't implemented for at least a decade, despite having dozens of
engineers who could be doing so. Did this startup they bought for $30m
implement something another class above that yet? Or are they buying
themselves up to the par they should've already been at?

~~~
weareconvo
Maybe they were buying a news story.

~~~
jjoonathan
Wow. I didn't think of that before, but it fits. Yahoo's reputation, at least
in the eye of the public, largely consists of being a failed competitor to
google, a has-been. Hiring Marissa Mayer certainly got the tech world excited,
but I'm not sure that excitement spread far beyond those who were already
familiar with her in the context of her work at google.

This acquisition answers the skeptical question I think many of us were asking
ourselves: how will yahoo shed its reputation as a has-been and get people to
give it a second chance? This is how. This says "we're young and exciting
again" more effectively than a high-budget series of TV ads and billboards
ever could. Maybe it doesn't send quite that message to the jaded startup
crowd, but it certainly sends it to the tech bloggers and interested
bystanders, who are the people yahoo is after in the first place. The message
is even stronger because of the timing with respect to google reader. I
haven't yet decided weather or not I want to believe that it was planned all
along.

My intent is not to diminish Nick's accomplishment, although in the name of
full disclosure I freely admit jealousy (who wouldn't?). I'd categorize it
under both deserving and lucky, with the proviso that "deserving and unlucky"
is a rather large category. Good job, Nick, although you certainly don't need
to hear it from me :)

I still have to reserve my loudest (virtual) applause for yahoo. This is a
brilliant move with brilliant timing which has already generated more hype
than I would have expected yahoo to be able to pull off had you asked me only
a week ago. Bravo. Maybe they actually do have a turn-around in their future.
Maybe.

~~~
argonaut
Stop over-analyzing things. Saying Yahoo made this acquisition for the sake of
publicity is an extraordinary claim which is completely unsubstantiated.

~~~
nilkn
That's not an extraordinary claim at all. It's called marketing. Companies
spend millions on it all the time.

And it's far from "completely unsubstantiated." Summly was objectively not
very good, and the developer appears to have more family connections than he
does raw engineering talent.

Yahoo! has tons of talented engineers working for them who could have easily
put together another shoddy summarization app (except Yahoo! isn't even using
the app--they're shutting it down). Why would they dish out (reportedly) $30
million for a kid who hasn't even graduated from high school?

~~~
argonaut
Your logic: It's not option 1 or 2 (statement is unsubstantiated - when you
say it "was objectively not very good," you really mean "in my opinion it was
not very good"). So it must be option 3 (also unsubstantiated), since option 3
is the only option left (unsubstantiated).

To answer your last question: 1) As far as I know that kid did not hold any
high-ranking role at the company anymore; the talent probably lay elsewhere.
2) There are many reasons and unless your name begins with Marissa and ends
with Mayer, you cannot know for sure.

------
chewxy
Google redirect for NYT:

[http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=...](http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CDcQqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2013%2F03%2F26%2Fbusiness%2Fmedia%2Fnick-
daloisio-17-sells-summly-app-to-yahoo.html)

------
jordn
The most nonsensical part of all of this seems to be that Yahoo's going to
kill the app and just integrate the technology into it's own products.

As far as I can tell, the reason the app was so valuable was due to the story
that came with it, not the technology. Two years ago it got it got national
coverage due to the surprisingly young age of the founder managing to create a
popular app and raise funding. At the time the summarisation technology was
highly unsophisticated. It appears that's now improved by using a combination
of machine learning and natural language processing but I'm yet to hear a
strong case that this tech is particularly innovative or protected from being
reproduced elsewhere.

By killing the app, they're losing all the users up to this point and all the
potential customers that would check it out after hearing this story. These
people don't particular care for the summarisation algorithm, they're not
going to be searching for yahoo's own version of the app in a months time.

Yahoo's either being stupid or know something we don't.

~~~
sliverstorm
You think all his users are using his app because he's young? I think that is
unrealistic; they use it because it provides value. Yahoo! just wants to
incorporate that value into their own offerings. How is this surprising? To
make something great, you have to bring lots of good things together.

~~~
jordn
No, I think they started using it because they heard of it (because he is
young) _and then_ stuck with it because it provides value. Whether that value
is strong enough to essentially start again with a whole new app is debatable.

------
mynameishere
"How to cause massive _ressentiment_ among your current employees?" Well,
maybe he's a genius but there are no examples provided, so I'm guessing this
is an expensive promotion by Yahoo!. From what I've seen, summarization
software's quality is no where near the typical tldr at the end of reddit
post, so what exactly has he done that's worth 30 million dollars? What does
the average Yahoo! employee think?

Is that the point? To get >30 million dollars worth of them to quit in rage?

~~~
just2n
For me, I think this should receive more attention.

You have a company that's trying to attract talent, but they pay market wages
for you and me and anyone else. Then there are stories like this, where they
outright throw money at some people whether it be to generate a huge story or
to acquire a team and research contracts that weren't a part of the hyped
story. Employees look at this and get jealous and rightfully so -- they are
probably not super-long-timers with valuable equity. Why would they stick with
a company that's throwing money around for things that don't appear to have a
coherent vision nor that will likely improve the company overall?

It feels like the no-telecommuting decision might've been short sighted in the
same way. Sure, there might've been bad apples abusing the system, but to
outright ban the practice would put a very bad taste in my mouth as an
employee.

I'm now quite curious about the morale at Yahoo.

------
HunterV
In my honest opinion Yahoo! acquired Summly for their launch video:
<https://vimeo.com/52014691> It's simply so cool. Yahoo! is nowhere near that
cool. The experiment now is if buying cool makes you cool.

~~~
trhtrsh
Is it cool to have the exact same "indie" ad that every other tech company
has? (<http://sandwichvideo.com/>)

~~~
HunterV
I mean, I hate to say it, but yes? "Being Cool" at its core is mass imitation
of good design.

Think of the in-crowd in high school, they looked great, but one wouldn't come
close to calling them unique.

------
jmcdonald-ut
It seems that he came from money and privilege? He attracted a very peculiar
crowd of investors to say the least, and I wonder what role (if any) his
background played. Good on him though, and congratulations. He certainly seems
brilliant.

------
ChuckMcM
And this is the stuff that dreams are made of, other people's dreams. The dark
side of this move will be dealing with his new colleagues at Yahoo, there are
dragons there and I hope he has enough introspection to understand the less
nice reactions he will get. That said, let's hope that he finds his passion
and doesn't leave us early like Aaron did. If nothing else it is difficult to
fathom the impact that will have on his psyche going forward.

~~~
gruseom
_this is the stuff that dreams are made of, other people's dreams_

This sounds a lot like René Girard: people desire others' desire. I think it's
one of the most important things to understand about human psychology. Without
it, you can really run aground in a painful way.

It's worth noting how shamelessly the article's headline exploits this. How
many people here are compulsively comparing themselves to what it depicts?

~~~
jjoonathan
> How many people here are compulsively comparing themselves to what it
> depicts?

 _sigh_

Me. I can't help myself.

~~~
gruseom
I don't think one gets rid of it _per se_. One learns to understand and
recognize it in oneself, and that causes the inflammation gradually to
diminish.

------
dakrisht
Wait a second - Yahoo! couldn't figure out how to algorithmically shorten a
long-form story for display on mobile? It took a 17-year old and $30M to make
this happen?

What is going on here..

~~~
Houshalter
It's hardly a simple problem. And by buying out another successful company
they get the consumer base it already has rather than spending resources and
pushing their own product and risk having it fail or having to compete with
the other company.

~~~
yen223
But is it really a $30,000,000 problem?

~~~
Houshalter
Do you mean is it worth $30 million or do you mean does it cost that much? I
don't know the economics behind it but I imagine if there were enough
consumers using it, it could conceivably be worth that much.

As far as taking that much to build a system like that, definitely. It's a
natural language problem. The computer not only has to process natural
language, which is a hard enough problem on it's own, but then decide what
parts are "important" or not. And then this has to be scaled up to process
hundreds or thousands of articles simultaneously, each within a few seconds or
less.

------
RougeFemme
Will he have to move from London to California or will he be allowed to
telecommute?

~~~
darshan
From the article:

 _... he will make arrangements to test out of his classes and work from the
Yahoo office in London._

------
jimzvz
Any faith I have in yahoo's recovery is definitely fading. They are either
guilty of buying hype marketing about technology (which demonstrates that
yahoo has no interest in actual innovation) or buying technology that doesn't
work very well (which shows that they do not know how to use their money
effectively).

What are they actually doing?

------
yarou
Success breeds success. There is very much a class system alive and well in
the world today, which reinforces wealth creation. While there are many
exceptions to the rule, it's undeniable that those who come from the upper
classes (not necessarily wealthy, mind you) have certain privileges the hoi
polloi don't.

------
biesnecker
"... and a new job at Yahoo."

Poor kid.

------
brucehart
I read another article about this acquisition that linked to this Gizmodo
article from 2010 that was openly mocking him after naming his app "worst app
of the week": [http://gizmodo.com/5830076/how-i-made-a-15+year+old-app-
deve...](http://gizmodo.com/5830076/how-i-made-a-15+year+old-app-developer-
cry)

Nice to see he got the last laugh. It's inspiring to think that his company
went from a joke to some people to a $30MM acquisition in a little over 2
years.

~~~
nilkn
To be fair, it seems they mocked him for a reason. He dropped lines like this:

> now I'm going to have to go without food for the next month.

His dad works at Morgan Stanley and his mom's a lawyer. Sure...

------
beerglass
Yesterday, Yahoo! was the poster child of Internet... now it is acquiring a
company founded by someone who wasn't even born when Yahoo was founded in
1994. How time flies...

------
aheilbut
If it smells like it doesn't quite make sense, the most likely explanation is
that it doesn't make sense and they are spinning a narrative that suits them.

------
keeran
Lots of speculation about how this young man managed to achieve these
accomplishments, a lot quite negative and bitchy.

Seems straight forward to me - his prototype generated interest and investment
(nepotistic or otherwise), he paid SRI to develop real technology behind the
product, Yahoo bought that technology.

------
adamio
If this is such a problem, why aren't news sites delivering executive summary
like articles for mobile customers? A 400 character summary written by the
article's author would be easier and more accurate than this.

------
drawkbox
Everything else aside, straight to the core of the product/app, the
production, execution, marketing/branding and front is beautiful and well
done. From the app to the site to the marketing. A machine that well oiled, no
matter who is the public face, should be applauded. The fact they have a real
R&D firm providing the tech even more so. This machine may produce some great
things and may inspire others. Persistence and production/quality paid off.

~~~
ozataman
I think it is remarkable that they've assembled a very qualified (looking)
executive team to make all of this happen. That is arguably the most
"unlikely" bit of the endeavor, especially given the founder's age.

~~~
taude
I agree. Who cares about the "solo engineering kid aspect" of this. More
impressed about the ability to build a company around this.

------
rcknr
Eugene Ciurana's, author of "Developing with Google App Engine", works there
in CTO role and I bet he's one of those two engineers selected by Yahoo. His
Linkedin profile [1] provides an insight on the technical stack of Summly as
well as gives you an idea of the size of the development team.

1\. <http://www.linkedin.com/in/ciurana>

------
splicer
I wonder how similar his algorithm is to that of Mac OS X:
[http://www.tuaw.com/2008/11/19/mac-101-shorten-text-using-
th...](http://www.tuaw.com/2008/11/19/mac-101-shorten-text-using-the-
summarize-service/)

EDIT: I just watched the launch video, and apparently Summly uses a genetic
algorithm. I doubt that Mac OS X does.

------
kayoone
Just saw this story on german TV... These guys sure know how to create some
hype...

------
jbrooksuk
I guess this is better than his parents forcing him to follow in one of their
footsteps, they invest tens of thousands in him and he walks away with around
$30mil, good investment if you ask me.

------
nabaraj
I remember watching his interview on Techcrunch back in the days. He is a
great guy and is really talented. Congratulations to him.

------
tuxguy
Techcrunch interview : [http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/01/summly-app-nick-
daloisio-vi...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/01/summly-app-nick-daloisio-
video-interview/)

I was just blown away by Nick's clarity of the core idea, the product & he
really seems to know what he is talking about & he is only 17. What a badass !

------
aroman
What I really want to know is why he's planning on majoring in _philosophy_.
Why not computer science?

Also, did he write this app himself? Watching the video/ad he made with
Stephen Fry, it seems like it was one hell of a lot of work... I frankly find
it hard to believe he created that all himself by hand at age 15. (Or did I
miss something?)

~~~
rdouble
Why bother with a CS degree if you've already written software successfully
and cashed out?

Regarding philosophy: in the UK, graduates of the "Politics, Philosophy and
Economics" course at Oxford are pretty much running the show.

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11136511>

------
BaconJuice
Where can I learn more about this "Genetic algorithm"?

------
metaphorm
spare me from the preening of wunderkinds

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toutouastro
when I see stuff like that I think I am too old to do anything with my life.I
am 17.

~~~
alenart
I could play "Master of Puppets" on my guitar when I was 17. But just the
rhythm guitar part. That was a big accomplishment. Seeing this, I now feel
like a failure.

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GoranM
Let's all cling to the fact that he "comes from money", so that we can cope
with our impending feelings of inadequacy.

:)

~~~
qompiler
It's a fact you can't ignore though.

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qwertzlcoatl
I can't read this article. I have to pay 99 cents for the first four weeks
first.

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gailees
Kid is wicked smart...will be interesting to see where he goes from here.

