Yahoo buys Summly news app from teenager for £18m



Want to be an astronaut? Life on Mars to become a reality in 2023A company from the Netherlands is proposing to turn our dreams of reaching Mars into reality. The company, Mars One, plans to send four astronauts on a trip to the Red Planet to set up a human colony in 2023. But there are a couple of serious snags.Firstly, when on Mars their bodies will have to adapt to surface gravity that is 38% of that on Earth. It is thought that this would cause such a total physiological change in their bone density, muscle strength and circulation that voyagers would no longer be able to survive in Earth's conditions. Secondly, and directly related to the first, they will have to say goodbye to all their family and friends, as the deal doesn't include a return ticket.The Mars One website states that a return "cannot be anticipated nor expected". To return, they would need a fully assembled and fuelled rocket capable of escaping the gravitational field of Mars, on-board life support systems capable of up to a seven-month voyage and the capacity either to dock with a space station orbiting Earth or perform a safe re-entry and landing."Not one of these is a small endeavour" the site notes, requiring "substantial technical capacity, weight and cost".Nevertheless, the project has already had 10,000 applicants, according to the company's medical director, Norbert Kraft. When the official search is launched on Monday at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York, they expect tens of thousands more hopefuls to put their names forward.Kraft told the Guardian that the applicants so far ranged in age from 18 to at least 62 and, though they include women, they tended to be men.The prime attributes Mars One is looking for in astronaut-settlers is resilience, adaptability, curiosity, ability to trust and resourcefulness, according to Kraft. They must also be over 18.Founded in 2010 by Bas Lansdorp, an engineer, Mars One says it has developed a realistic road map and financing plan for the project based on existing technologies and that the mission is perfectly feasible. The website states that the basic elements required for life are already present on the planet. For instance, water can be extracted from ice in the soil and Mars has sources of nitrogen, the primary element in the air we breathe. The colony will be powered by specially adapted solar panels, it says.The project will cost a reported $6bn (?4bn), a sum Lansdorp has said he hopes will be met partly by selling broadcasting rights. "The revenue garnered by the London Olympics was almost enough to finance a mission to Mars," Lansdorp said, in an interview with ABC News in March. Bicyle or Motorbike?Dolphin or Car?A superposition of 2 different states? Welcome to the world of Quantum Mechanics!Cat or Woman?Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair?A superposition of 2 different states? Welcome to the world of Quantum Mechanics!Superman or Clark Kent?Leopard or Elephant?A superposition of 2 different states? Welcome to the world of Quantum Mechanics!Maths and ComputingMost top universities who offer computing courses want top mathematicians. Why? Well, there is a lot of mathematics involved in understanding computer theory – from working in binary, to constructing codes. Good mathematicians are also good problem solvers – and computing is all about being able to solve problems. Cryptography (code making and code breaking) is one area which combines both maths and computing skills. Young Computing SensationsAlex Tew In 2005 Tew, 21, from Swindon, was looking for a way to pay his student loan from the University of Nottingham. He came up with the Million Dollar Home Page: sell a million pixels at a dollar (or so) each. Advertisers bought on the guarantee that the site would stay up for at least five years. Hundreds of others tried (and failed) the same idea in his wake. It's still going today. Tew, meanwhile, has moved to San Francisco where he is head of , which offers online relaxation sessions.Tom Hadfield In 1994 Hadfield, 12, and his father Greg created Soccernet – a sports internet company – at a time when most people in the UK hadn't even heard of the internet, and fewer still were online. Five years later they sold a 60% stake to Disney's ESPN for ?15m. They then set up Schoolsnet, an education website, which they still control.Christian Owens In 2008, aged 14, Owens, from Corby, began Mac Bundle Box, selling discounted bundles of software for Apple computers; he said it took ?700,000 in revenue. By 2010 he had set up an internet advertising network called Branchr and was claiming to be an internet millionaire.Mark Zuckerberg In 2004, aged 19 and studying at Harvard University, Zuckerberg created "Facemash to let users vote on which of two students was the more attractive. He then developed , aimed only at US colleges; new colleges were only added once a certain level of demand was reached. That became Facebook, which opened to the wider world, went public in 2012 and is worth about $14bn (?9.2bn).Yahoo buys Summly news app from teenager for ?18mA 17-year-old London schoolboy has sold his app company to the internet giant Yahoo for an estimated ?18m. But he won't be moving to the company's California headquarters just yet … because he wants to finish his A-levels.Nick D'Aloisio, from Wimbledon, south London, created the app, called Summly – which provides bite-sized summaries of content from news and other sites – a little over a year ago from his bedroom and now joins an elite group of teenagers who have become internet millionaires.D'Aloisio, who is still too young to be a director of his own firm, said he had begun tinkering with apps for mobile devices as a hobby and had not expected to profit from it. The price tag is understood to be ?18m, 90% in cash and 10% in Yahoo shares, though other reports suggested the total could be up to ?40m. Neither D'Aloisio nor Yahoo would confirm the details of the deal.His mother, Diana D'Aloisio, appeared to still be somewhat in shock. "I knew he was a little out of the box, but I didn't expect it to happen all of a sudden like this," she said. "From a young age he displayed abilities in technologies I frankly didn't understand. He was doing 3D programming, and we bought him a book called C Programming For Dummies. My husband and I just used our computers for work, he was doing totally different stuff."D'Aloisio began using computers at the age of nine, making films, and then moved to programming at the age of 12 when Apple opened its App Store for the iPhone. The teenager's success comes less than five years after he released his first app, called Fingermill, an onscreen virtual treadmill for fingers.The student is taking maths and philosophy A-levels at King's College school, and trying to decide whether the third one should be physics or history. "He still wants to go to Oxford University," his mother said. D'Aloisio got the idea for the app in 2011 when revising for his exams and finding himself frustrated with web pages that broadly repeated the same content. He produced an early version of Summly, called Trimit, which was downloaded more than 200,000 times.Maths CareersA 2009 Survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers – which looked at American students’ job prospects after leaving university found that – “The top 15 highest-earning college degrees all have one thing in common — math skills.”“Math is at the crux of who gets paid,” said Ed Koc, director of research at NACE. “If you have those skills, you are an extremely valuable asset.”Maths CareersAccording to a comprehensive careers survey by Careers Cast – which looked at over 200 different jobs and ranked them for stress, pay, job stability and work environment – 6 of the top 10 jobs require or strongly prefer maths graduates or those with a good mathematical background. ................
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