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The Summly deal makes no sense

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Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#171
post #13

From the article, Let's ignore the hurt feelings that our employees will have about making a 17 year-old a millionaire. The price tag for this company aside, am I the only one that detects a hint of jealousy in some of the comments that seem to imply "but he's too young to be a millionaire!"?

He can't be too young to be a millionaire, as he was born a millionaire.

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#172
post #123

For some who need perspective: Right now, somewhere in the world, a child is being born into an uberly rich family. That child will grow up to inherit millions for absolutely no work. He'll live the good life full of yachts and private jets. Right now, somewhere in the world, there is a party happening full of gorgeous wealthy people who need not lift a finger to attain the luxuries that they have. Their success is o…

Extreme levels of correct, I myself am incredibly bitter/jealous/you-name-it. However, I get a tugging sensation that it's almost all PR-minded.

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yahoo just paid $30mm for an unknown technology and a fresh face to parade around, they would appreciate it if you didn't start poking holes in the narrative. Thank you

Actually it now looks more and more like some sort of elaborate kick-back scheme for the investors. "Your YHOO stock has sunk below the waterline, so here's something to sweeten the pot."

Highly likely. The crowd sees only the tip of the iceberg and knows only what it allowed to know when it allowed to know.

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#174
The problem in a nutshell: Yahoo just indirectly but clearly told all their talented employees to quit and try to get acquired back. (The untalented employees know they have better expected returns if they just chairwarm for a few years.)

Bad for Yahoo.

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#175

In 2005 Yahoo buys Delicious, a bookmarking site, for between $15MM - $30MM. Summly was acquired for a reported $30MM. Delicious had 5MM users, and let's face it how much "CS beef" goes into a bookmark sharing site. Summly claims to have 1MM downloads. The difference between Delicious' 5MM users and Summly's 1MM is a factor of five but the order of magnitude is roughly the same. Joshua Schachter is highly respected a…

Frankly, I'm jealous and I don't see why that's a problem. Who wouldn't want $30m for an relatively-mediocre app? Is this not what a large portion of the entrepreneurs strive for: exits for inflated sums of money?

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#176
post #123

For some who need perspective: Right now, somewhere in the world, a child is being born into an uberly rich family. That child will grow up to inherit millions for absolutely no work. He'll live the good life full of yachts and private jets. Right now, somewhere in the world, there is a party happening full of gorgeous wealthy people who need not lift a finger to attain the luxuries that they have. Their success is o…

This is good perspective and i think it's good to keep this in mind, but let's not forget the other end of the spectrum:

Right now, somewhere in the world, a child is being born in a farm house with a dirt floor. That child will grow up to die in a civil war before age 14.

Right now, somewhere in the world, there are people waiting in line to get food from a charity.

Right now, somewhere in the world, someone is suffering from a disease because they can't afford the cure.

Right now, somewhere in the world, a man goes to work carrying bricks for 10 hours a day to feed his 3 children.

Right now, somewhere in the world, a woman rides her bike to work in polluted air at 6am, to a factory job where she will work 12 hours a day putting together tablets that all the "unlucky people who have to work" trying to be dot com millionaires will buy one day on a whim and then discard less than 6 months later. And this is good, because she has a job.

The real interesting thing is these people generally don't complain much, not nearly as much as we do.

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#177
post #31
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not got a good reputation for communication: http://gizmodo.com/5830076/how-i-made-a-15+year+old-app-deve...

So he's a teenager?

That is not "teenage" behavior. That is sociopathy. He outright lied to this reporter, then berated him with dozens of emails. Regular people, "teenagers" included, do not behave that way.

(I, as someone who is comparable in age to D'Aloisio, would never try this kind of shit, especially to someone affiliated with a major news organization; nor can I think of any of my peers who would. I honestly don't understand why people have such outrageous notions about how young people act, and have such permissive views about they ought to act. It doesn't matter how old he is, this sort of behavior is absurd.)

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#178
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that all of the events you've listed are probably happening somewhere in the world, but I disagree that we should all just accept this as "the world we live in" and carry on. Look back across history and consider what would have happened if at any point, the people on the losing end of any deal were to simply keep their heads down and keep working. It's worth talking about. It's worth criticizing. It may not…

It is only worth attention if that attention becomes productive action. So yeah, criticize, only if you think someone influential is listening.

A mass of dissatisfied citizens can become quite influential all on their own.

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#179
post #123

For some who need perspective: Right now, somewhere in the world, a child is being born into an uberly rich family. That child will grow up to inherit millions for absolutely no work. He'll live the good life full of yachts and private jets. Right now, somewhere in the world, there is a party happening full of gorgeous wealthy people who need not lift a finger to attain the luxuries that they have. Their success is o…

> unfair It's laughable that a programmer would worry about how unfair the industry is on the top end. Do you get how lucky we are compared even to other engineers? To say nothing of service workers who work much harder for much less.

Every now and again, if I feel I need more money, I take a look at http://www.globalrichlist.com/ and plop in my current salary. Though the numbers are probably a bit dated by now, it's quite sobering.

Re: The Summly deal makes no sense

#180
post #132
post #123

For some who need perspective: Right now, somewhere in the world, a child is being born into an uberly rich family. That child will grow up to inherit millions for absolutely no work. He'll live the good life full of yachts and private jets. Right now, somewhere in the world, there is a party happening full of gorgeous wealthy people who need not lift a finger to attain the luxuries that they have. Their success is o…

> I get down about how unfair that is from time to time, but there's nothing you can really do about it, other than focus on your work. Fairness is a fictional manmade concept. That we expect some sort of fairness in life is solely due to our social contract. It's not fair to me that someone steals my car and thus we have systems in place to address that. However, nothing in our laws, norms, ethics, or philosophy say…

At the very least in the animal kingdom, monkeys have a concept of fairness: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1292337...

So not entirely manmade.

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