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What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

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Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#161

Post by ruswick »

DilipJ wrote: post #154
rollo_tommasi wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If those PhD are really so smart, they should have had the foresight to be born to Morgan Stanley executives, like the Summly kid.

that's not really fair to the kid. All of us are born with advantages that others lack. Every person living in America has access to wealth and connections that the average African can only dream of. That shouldn't take away from anyone's success here or diminish any of our accomplishments

This is logically incoherent. The fact that a larger disparity exists between the ultra-wealthy in the West and impoverished people in the third world (though, to be fair, many parts of the West are beginning to resemble the third world) does not invalidate the point that inequality also exists within the first world.

Just because impoverished Africans can't get Ashton Kutcher to invest in their startup doesn't mean that you or I can.

Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#162

Post by mcintyre1994 »

rdouble wrote: post #71
OGinparadise wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have to, as they are way behind in mobile and nobody good wants to work there. Sumly is three people and they paid about $30 million for it. Start throwing million dollar /year offers and many "good" programmers will want to work there. This stinks, IMO.

Having to pay $10 million per person is how far behind Yahoo! is at the moment.

I'd agree they're overpaying because they're behind, but let's not simplify this too much. They did not pay $30m to 3 people in exchange for them 3 people working with them.

Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#163

Post by MisterWebz »

rollo_tommasi wrote: post #89
api wrote: post #74

What this really underscores is that conventional capitalism provides little incentive for fundamental innovation. All this stuff we're gluing together is the product of state-funded research, mostly from the cold war era. DARPANet, the web (CERN), DARPA research on "augmented human intelligence," etc. Stuff like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY (I bet you thought Xerox PARC invented that stuff, right? Or…

If those PhD are really so smart, they should have had the foresight to be born to Morgan Stanley executives, like the Summly kid.

I don't think I have ever seen so many people on HN be so envious of someone.

Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#164

Post by rdouble »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #162
rdouble wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having to pay $10 million per person is how far behind Yahoo! is at the moment.

I'd agree they're overpaying because they're behind, but let's not simplify this too much. They did not pay $30m to 3 people in exchange for them 3 people working with them.

Clearly, but that seemed to be the accepted HN Hater narrative about this topic so I went with it...

Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#165

Post by malandrew »

cube13 wrote: post #56
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #46

" But it's critical to keep tabs on the ratio known as 'glue versus thought.' Sure, both imply progress and both are necessary. But the former is eminently mundane, replaceable, and outsource-able. The latter is typically what gives a company its edge, what is generally regarded as a competitive advantage. " I am in finance. I am glue. I take existing people, things (read: capital), and ideas and bolt them together.…

I think that his point is that glue is only as valuable as the product in which it's used. In the case of finance, it's the fact that they operate as the middleman, getting money from one place to another. The product isn't just getting people together, it's providing a smooth way to move money around. The other examples have a product where individual technologies were melded together to produce that specific produc…

Interestingly, $30 million for the license is probably relatively cheap. I imagine that had Yahoo licensed it directly, that they'd be paying a lot more for it.

Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#166

Post by kaonashi »

MartinCron wrote: post #139
rollo_tommasi wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If those PhD are really so smart, they should have had the foresight to be born to Morgan Stanley executives, like the Summly kid.

Most of the people who don't succeed financially made a terrible choice of who there parents were. It's probably the single most important choice one can make.

Why should we be rewarding such poor decision making? What ever happened personal responsibility?

Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#167

Post by bitwize »

bitcartel wrote: post #36
pan69 wrote: post #16

This is my (pessimistic) take on this Summly thing. I think the following scenario happened: 15 year old kid does something with computers and for some reason the press is all over it. Some smart investors thinks; "hey, I can use this to make money". They invest money into this 15 year old which gives him more press coverage. Wait a few years and the investor gets his buddies at Yahoo to buy it for a substantial amou…

Surely you mean Ka-Shing ;-) The first investor was Horizons Ventures, the investment arm of Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing, who put in $300k.

That's what I call an aptronym.

Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#168

Post by nemothekid »

forgottenpaswrd wrote: post #149
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #46

" But it's critical to keep tabs on the ratio known as 'glue versus thought.' Sure, both imply progress and both are necessary. But the former is eminently mundane, replaceable, and outsource-able. The latter is typically what gives a company its edge, what is generally regarded as a competitive advantage. " I am in finance. I am glue. I take existing people, things (read: capital), and ideas and bolt them together.…

"I am in finance. I am glue." If you are glue, there is a terrible problem. When you are in finance you should be in the "Thought". You should think on who can pay the bills and who can not, so you could give loans to them or not. You should be on thinking what is going to be the future and the business strategies that makes sense, business that are sound and solid versus scams to get people's money. The fact that yo…

I don't think is the right way to think about things. How much sense does Instagram make in 2010? How much sense did Twitter make in 2006? How much sense did Amazon make after the dotcom crash? No one has perfect information, and "business that are sound and solid" aren't the ones that need loans. Sound and solid businesses don't need help from finance guys.

Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#169

Post by cpeterso »

talmand wrote: post #120
rayiner wrote: post #68

If "brogrammer" is a thing, this picture is next to its definition in the dictionary: http://hackingdistributed.com/images/egs-small.jpg

Why, because he's wearing sunglasses? Color of his shirt? He has short hair? Is near water? Which is the trigger?

Yes.

Re: What's Actually Wrong with Yahoo's Purchase of Summly

#170

Post by wmf »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #95

The decades of anything being built from absolute scratch are long gone. You can essentially say we've hit the ceiling in terms of technology.

The author of this rant created a NoSQL database that's so much better than MongoDB no one believes him. So he probably doesn't think we've hit any kind of ceiling.
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