
2014 Thiel Fellows - clayallsopp
http://www.thielfellowship.org/2014/06/peter-thiel-announces-2014-class-of-thiel-fellows/
======
gohrt
“As student debt soars and the wages of college graduates sag"...

Thiel continues to hand out $100K grants (plus non-cash support) to
individuals to would receive full-scholarships to college and PhD placements
_anyway_ , some of whome _already graduated college_ and provides no
opportunities for average students -- the ones who take on debt.

The fellowhips are interestingm but don't help solve educational debt. The
"college sucks" libertarian political agenda is stapled to the side, making
the whole program smell bad.

~~~
analog31
Not to mention, every last one of them seems to be some kind of computer
programmer. No offense to HN, and I love programming, but I'd have hoped to
see more breadth.

Where are the biologists?

~~~
YokoZar
There have been biologists in previous classes.

Do keep in mind that the fellowship targets very very young people, and it's
exceptionally hard to show excellence in most fields by that age. Software is
a rare exception.

~~~
toufka
Not just 'show excellence' but actually know enough to contribute to the field
meaningfully. For better or worse, one can learn programming and some basic
math in order to contribute to the market in the span of a few years.
Traditionally to do good physics required a few years doing nothing but math,
and then a few years developing a good physical intuition. There have been
some great physics papers turned out by early-/mid- 20-year-olds. Modern
molecular bio requires a few years chemistry, a few years of either
math/stats/systems/programming, a few years of bio, and then a few more years
developing an intuition for biological systems. It's just a much longer route
to travel. A student - no matter how good - just isn't well suited to being
anywhere near 'useful' by the age of 20.

~~~
analog31
Agreed with all of the above points. What it suggests to me is that the idea
of bypassing college and going straight into entrepreneurship may only be
testable in a limited number of fields, notably programming.

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tstactplsignore
Looking up one of the fellows who is using "crowd-sourced mobile computing", I
came across:

[http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/21/meet-hyv-a-startup-that-
can...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/21/meet-hyv-a-startup-that-cant-wait-
for-phone-unlocking-to-be-made-legal/)

Apparently the idea is to build a pay-to-use BOINC or Folding@Home, except for
iPhones, where the startup steps in by actually *paying 3rd party app
developers to bundle their distribution code in their app, thereby allowing
them to run independent code on a user's phone using the unaware user's
computing resources, data plan, and battery life without the user's direct
permission?

Not only would this seriously inconvenience consumers, have ample security
risks, have a dubious market for legitimate customers (Such a system could
never outperform the price of AWS or a custom GPU cluster, let alone volunteer
networks like BOINC and Folding@Home), only works at a ludicrously large scale
(Are there even enough iPhones out there to reach Folding@Home's 45
petaflops?), would require those running complicated algorithms to port
optimized code to Objective-C, but the icing on the cake is it only works on
unlocked phones.

So, did Thiel just fund a ridiculous idea which is essentially malware or am I
missing something?

~~~
uptown
Sure, maybe today the concept isn't the right fit for cell phones (all sorts
of trade-offs regarding CPU usage, battery-life, data consumption, etc.) but
perhaps the concept can evolve to take advantage of the future "internet of
things" grid which is likely to connect devices that have plenty of spare
processing cycles without the same constraints imposed by a mobile phone.

Aim for where the ball is going. Not where it is right now.

------
dmix
Nice to see Vitalik Buterin the founder of Ethereum getting backing.

~~~
markmassie
I was pleasantly surprised to see him on this list.

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Killah911
This is a very interesting concept. I wonder how the previous Thiel Fellows
are doing. Probably too short of a time period for any definitive results to
come out, but it would be interesting if selection of highly qualified
individuals is more of a predictor of success than say, Harvard or MIT.

One might argue about the pedigree & network you get from college, but
couldn't motivated Thiel Fellows build equally powerful networks by virtue of
being a Thiel Fellow too?

~~~
spartango
Based on previous years, it would likely be difficult to make the comparison
with Harvard/MIT (or similar), given a good number of the fellows spent time
at either of those institutions. Those who did have had access to the
resources of both circles.

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reledi
Any news on the progress of past classes?

~~~
whitehat2k9
Illegal activities such as impersonation and fraud?
[http://bluehat.us/posts/tracking-down-the-person-who-
tried-t...](http://bluehat.us/posts/tracking-down-the-person-who-tried-to-
impersonate-me.html)

~~~
imwhimsical
You're generalizing and blaming the entire Thiel Fellow community because of
one person? If you can somehow justify that, it still doesn't make sense to
spam the entire thread with the same link over and over again. Thanks.

~~~
opendomain
I do not think he is blaming the Thiel Fellows. After reading the link, it
seems clear to me that there was someone that received a fellowship that clear
should NOT have. The person putting in the link is just trying to raise
attention to this fact - maybe to try to get the fellowship to help correct
the situation. It does come off as spam, but honestly if this happened to you,
what would you do? Please read the story of the dead link and then make your
judgment. I probably would do the same after someone ruined my reputation

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whitehat2k9
The Thiel Fellows program is a joke. Apparently, they've been accepting
lowlife, criminal script kiddies in recent years.
[http://bluehat.us/posts/tracking-down-the-person-who-
tried-t...](http://bluehat.us/posts/tracking-down-the-person-who-tried-to-
impersonate-me.html)

