British teenage designer of Summly app hits jackpot • Hacker News Board

Re: British teenage designer of Summly app hits jackpot

#21

Post by citricsquid » Wed, Dec 28, 2011, 1:58 PM UTC

brador wrote: post #19

Any insight into the tech this is using?

"Summly’s patent pending technology has been evaluated by MIT Researchers and proven state-of-the-art. We utilise ontological detection and machine learning techniques in our summarisation processes.

Our core technology is language independent and produces great results out of the box for any language. In addition, specific optimisations have been made for English, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, German, Swedish, Mandarin, Russian, Japanese and Finnish."

http://www.summly.com/en/technology.html

Re: British teenage designer of Summly app hits jackpot

#22

Post by dmn001 » Wed, Dec 28, 2011, 2:06 PM UTC

brador wrote: post #19

Any insight into the tech this is using?

Opening the ipa file, and browsing the contents, there are a couple of plain text files - containing stop words, dictionaries and others on natural language processing.

The summarised results from the app are very random - pick any article other than the test case in the video and you won't get any useful output, 3 random sentences usually.

Re: British teenage designer of Summly app hits jackpot

#23

Post by chr15 » Wed, Dec 28, 2011, 2:25 PM UTC

dmn001 wrote: post #22

brador wrote: post #19

Any insight into the tech this is using?

Opening the ipa file, and browsing the contents, there are a couple of plain text files - containing stop words, dictionaries and others on natural language processing. The summarised results from the app are very random - pick any article other than the test case in the video and you won't get any useful output, 3 random sentences usually.

I thought it was a stretch that D'Aloiso taught himself the linear algebra, statistics, probability theory, NLP, and machine learning required to implement such an algorithm. Especially since he doesn't take a deep interest in programming.

Re: British teenage designer of Summly app hits jackpot

#24

Post by padolsey » Wed, Dec 28, 2011, 2:27 PM UTC

citricsquid wrote: post #17

App aside, this kid has a fantastic camera presence, although some of his words made no sense ("quickly and instantaneously") I would guess a large part of his success is down to his ability to talk so well.

It's odd you say that because the one thing I noticed was that he didn't seem be very comfortable describing the product in laymen's terms. His word usage seemed forced and his hand movements too. He had good camera presence insofar that he was bold and moderate in volume. Beyond that, I don't see what you mean.

Re: British teenage designer of Summly app hits jackpot

#25

Post by leoedin » Wed, Dec 28, 2011, 2:39 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #3

A MacBook when he was 9 ? Damn, I'm 32 and still cannot really justify one. And I'm sure his parents had nothing to do with his funding arrangements, of course. I hate to talk about privilege, and this kid is clearly smart, but the smell of upper class is hardly bearable, sorry.

In the traditional sense, it'd be hard to tell whether he's upper class or not. From the way he presents himself, he almost certainly attends a public school, but these days the majority of people at public school aren't upper class by lineage. His parents are certainly wealthy, and I'd imagine that a considerable portion of his success is due to being well funded (my parents certainly wouldn't have bought me an iPhone or macbook at the age of 12) and well supported at home.

Fundamentally, I'm sure the guy is of above average intelligence. He has very good support from home, and actually has funding for his startup. However, apart from his age there's little differentiating this from other iPhone app based startups, and I would be surprised if he manages to maintain the level of progress he's had recently once life starts to be complicated. If his life is anything like mine was at 16, school is completely unchallenging and he'll have oodles of free time. That doesn't last forever!

Re: British teenage designer of Summly app hits jackpot

#26

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 28, 2011, 2:45 PM UTC

garethsprice wrote: post #15

"D'Aloisio is by no means a typical teenager - he is polite, highly motivated and enthusiastic." Wow, wonder how many other groups they'd be able to get away with stereotyping like that. "D'Aloisio is by no means a typical (woman|Mexican|black person|obese person) - he is polite, highly motivated and enthusiastic." Ouch. Makes the BBC sound out of touch, considering that most teenagers are under a historically unprec…

[deleted]

Re: British teenage designer of Summly app hits jackpot

#27

Post by looper888 » Wed, Dec 28, 2011, 2:48 PM UTC

Good job kid. Keep it going

Re: British teenage designer of Summly app hits jackpot

#28

Post by calpaterson » Wed, Dec 28, 2011, 2:53 PM UTC

wtvanhest wrote: post #20

arethuza wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nitpick: being the son of a banker and a lawyer hardly qualifies you as "upper class", even if that was relevant.

I think it does. Less than 20% of Americans make over 100k per year. Entry level in IB makes 70+ min. After a graduate degree we are talking 100 to 300k per year. By the time that person has had kids, especially a nine year old they are probably making 500k min. I don't know British IB salaries, but I imagine they are as high. Law could be anywhere from 50k to 1mm so it really depends.

You (and the grandparent) are misapplying the American conception of class (money) to a Briton. It's about birth and schooling here - money is irrelevant. The boy seems likely to be middle class. (Upper class means a member of the aristocracy in the UK, FWIW).

Re: British teenage designer of Summly app hits jackpot

#29

Post by ticks » Wed, Dec 28, 2011, 2:55 PM UTC

garethsprice wrote: post #15

"D'Aloisio is by no means a typical teenager - he is polite, highly motivated and enthusiastic." Wow, wonder how many other groups they'd be able to get away with stereotyping like that. "D'Aloisio is by no means a typical (woman|Mexican|black person|obese person) - he is polite, highly motivated and enthusiastic." Ouch. Makes the BBC sound out of touch, considering that most teenagers are under a historically unprec…

I'm cynical when I read these sorts of articles, especially when the person involved has good links through relatives: "the son of a lawyer and an investment banker".

It should be praised that someone can show initiative like this, but I just can't help thinking it's happening too easily - especially getting free PR on the BBC website.

Re: British teenage designer of Summly app hits jackpot

#30

Post by dmn001 » Wed, Dec 28, 2011, 3:04 PM UTC

chr15 wrote: post #23

dmn001 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opening the ipa file, and browsing the contents, there are a couple of plain text files - containing stop words, dictionaries and others on natural language processing. The summarised results from the app are very random - pick any article other than the test case in the video and you won't get any useful output, 3 random sentences usually.

I thought it was a stretch that D'Aloiso taught himself the linear algebra, statistics, probability theory, NLP, and machine learning required to implement such an algorithm. Especially since he doesn't take a deep interest in programming.

It appears to be an iteration of his previous app Trimit: http://www.fastcompany.com/1772823/the-15-year-old-brain-beh... http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/15/trimit-summarizes-emails-bl...

I am guessing that he just outsourced the AI/algorithm part based on the articles content: 'we' and 'The Trimit team' and Nick just designed the UI. Overall, great concept, but poor execution (in terms of accuracy) and journalists seem to be buying the hype.