All 2013 finalists. (Photo: Erin Ashford Photography, courtesy the Thiel Foundation)

Get ready to feel like you frittered your youth away on terrible entry-level jobs!

Peter Thiel and co. just announced the latest class of "20 Under 20" Thiel Fellows. In exchange for foregoing traditional higher ed, each of these baby Einsteins gets $100,000, some mentors and the mandate to start a company.

Let's hope they also get a crash course in life skills and also how to tell their bewildered parents why they did this.

There are three locals among the honorees. New York City-raised Zach Hamed is leaving Harvard's computer science program to work on "a suite of beautifully-designed tools for K-12 teachers." Guess a post-grad Teach for America stint just wasn't his speed. 19-year-old Armonk native James Schuler has already done Y Combinator with a healthcare startup, and now he wants to build a crowdfunding platform for campaign finance.

And, out of Brooklyn, 18-year-old fashionista Maddy Maxey is peacing out of the Parsons School for Design to "focus on optimizing the clothing patterns and the enterprise software that make our current garment industry inefficient," making it possible to manufacture domestically.

Other projects in the works: "3D-depth mapping and projection of interactive holograms," software to "end the wasteful litigation epidemic" (someone's a Young Republican!), "broad-spectrum viral therapies," a desktop electronics fabricator, another funding platform, interactive software to teach technical skills, collaborative learning, and, uh, "challenging copyright."

There's also a startup to "improve how we interact with technology." We'll assume that's got something to do with the Singularity.

In the announcement, Thiel Foundation president Jonathan Cain also offered a little top-line where-are-they-now for the classes of 2011 and 2012: “Over the past two years, they have launched more than thirty companies, and raised more than $34 million in outside funding, including venture investments, company sales, revenue, grants, sponsorships, and awards."

Wonder whether any of them have returned to campus, just to visit.

This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (aka “The Guy with the Red Tie”), founder and CEO of GarysGuide and proud owner of a whole bunch of black suits, white shirts and, at last count, over 40 red ties. You can reach him at gary [at] garysguide.com.

So, 2013 is almost here. Time to break out the paper hats, the party glasses and the annoying air horns. How are you planning to spend your New Year's Eve? At home with friends and family watching TV? Partying it up (a.k.a. getting your drunk on) at an overpriced club / lounge? Or smooshed together with the rest of humanity in the bowels of Times Square? Well, wherever you are, I hope you have fun and remember that 2013 will be an amazing year!

While we're on the subject, an advisory from our friends at Uber: Surge pricing will be in effect for NYE, people. So don't be surprised tomorrow morning when ya see the bill. In Uber's own words, "NYE pricing is not for the faint of heart! The average surge multiple will likely be 2x normal prices, but during extreme spikes it could cost you $100 MINIMUM before time and mileage charges!" The most expensive times to take an Uber? Between 12:15am and 2:45am. There. You've been warned.

This Sunday is the Tesla Spirit Award Gala Benefit Reception at the New Yorker Hotel, marking the 70th anniversary of Nikola Tesla. Tesla died on January 7th, 1943 at the hotel in room #3327 on the 33rd floor, where he'd lived for the last 10 years of his life (1933-1943). Yup, he was a fan of the number three. And in case you don't know who Tesla is (god forbid), here's the Oatmeal comic celebrating the greatest geek who ever lived.

A few months ago, at the launch of the Queens Tech Meetup (complementing existing ones in Manhattan, Brooklyn and New Jersey), I wrote how cool it would be to have a Bronx Tech Meetup. Well, guess what folks--it's finally happened! The first meeting is January 16 at 901 Hunts Point Avenue. So go check it out and show your support for the community taking shape there. Any takers for a Staten Island Tech Meetup next? ;)

Want a no-strings-attached grant of $100,000 to skip college and focus on your cool projects? Of course you do. Check out Peter Thiel and his fellowship program. Applications for the 2013 class are due by 11:59 PM, December 31, 2012. That's tonight, so you'd better hurry.

The good ol' MTA finally gave us the holiday gift we'd all been craving: Subway Time!, an app providing a countdown to the next train's arrival arrives so you can slurp down one last mojito before heading home. Took them 11 years and $228 million but by golly they did it. Now, before you get all excited, remember there are a few caveats. It only works on the iPhone (for now), it does need an internet connection, the UI is bad, it only works with a third of the subway lines (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 & S) and it could take years and hundreds of millions of dollars to fully roll out. But..... it's a start! And while we're on the subject, MTA, can we haz some WiFi pleez?

It's almost the end of the year, which means everyone and their uncles have predictions for 2013. Lemme save you the time and spell it out for you: Moar cloud, moar big data, moar 3d printing, moar wearable computing, moar internet of thingz, moar collaborative consumption, apple tv (duh), moar contextual stuff, moar privacy intrusions, moar k-pop, moar grumpy cat photos (hola Tardar Sauce!), moar sexting, moar oversharing, moar mobile everything. Moar moar moar! Meanwhile, here's a video you should watch.

And now let's see what's going down in the Alley this week...

Headspace: Your Brain on Music!
Showcasing the latest at the intersection of neuroscience and new media, with a focus on music. Live demonstration of a brain-controlled environment to drive spatial control of music and real-time visual effects based on the thoughts, moods and emotions of the headset-wearer.
Monday (Dec. 31), 10 a.m. @ Dolby Theater NYC, 1350 Avenue of the Americas, Main Floor Screening Room

Startup Pitch Night
Wednesday (Jan. 2), 6:30 p.m. @ Bar 13, 35 East 13th Street, 2nd Fl.

Raising Startup Capital
With Arie Abecassis (cofounder, AppStori and venture partner, DreamIt Ventures)
Thursday (Jan. 3), 6 p.m. @ General Assembly East, 902 Broadway, 4th Fl.

Explore Social Media
Thursday (Jan. 3), 6 p.m. @ Empire State Building, 350 5th Avenue, 59th Fl.

The Product Group January 2013
With Jared Raskin (manager, site and subscriber analytics, WeightWatchers)
Thursday (Jan. 3), 7 p.m. @ MTV Networks / Viacom, NYC

Village Tech Breakfast
Friday (Jan. 4), 8 a.m. @ The Smile, 26 Bond Street, #1

Foursquare Hackathon 2012: Connect all the Apps!
The best Foursquare hacks and apps will get global glory, swag and some mind-blowingly awesome prizes including ringing the NASDAQ closing bell, rocking tickets to SXSW, partying with an action figure version of yourself, or wearing the infamous Foursquare hackathon TITLE BELT!
Saturday (Jan. 5), 9 a.m. @ Foursquare HQ, 568 Broadway

Conducting User Research
With Diane Loviglio (resident mentor at 500 Startups and former Mozilla user researcher)
Saturday (Jan. 5), 11 a.m. @ General Assembly West, 10 E. 21st Street, 4th Fl.

Tesla Spirit Award Gala Benefit Reception
Marking the 70th anniversary of Nikola Tesla. Organized by the Tesla Science Foundation and endorsed by HRH Prince Philip of Serbia. Event will include a number of prominent speakers, dignitaries, artists and others who will receive this year’s Tesla Spirit Awards.
Saturday (Jan. 5), 6 p.m. @ New Yorker Hotel, Grand Ballroom, 481 8th Avenue

More events on the horizon...
A Conversation with Adaptly Founder Nikhil Sethi on Jan. 7 @ General Assembly East
#BARK Presents: New Year New You | What Can We Learn From Brands That Pivot on Jan. 8 @ Yotel
Invasion of The Hackathons: Creating Unique Opportunities for Entrepreneurs on Jan. 8 @ NYU Poly
January 2013 NY Tech Meetup on Jan. 8 @ NYU Skirball Center For The Performing Arts
NJ Tech Meetup 32 on Jan. 10 @ Stevens Institute Of Technology
Investor Feedback Forum on Jan. 10 @ Microsoft
Startup GC Panel #2 on Jan. 10 @ General Assembly
Startup Dinner on Jan. 10 @ Central Cafe (TBA)
Enterprise Technology Meetup on Jan. 15 @ Cooley
1st Bronx Tech Meetup on Jan. 16 @ Majora Carter Group
Hearst Fashion Hackathon 2013 on Feb. 9 @ Hearst

Until next week. Stay thirsty social, my friends! And Happy New Year! :)

Ms. Kunst

Minority Report is a guest column by Sarah Kunst, who does business development and product at fashion app Kaleidoscope. She’s a black, non-engineer female in tech, but plans to IPO anyway.

Few founder origin stories capture the nerd mind like "Hacker as dropout." From Bill Gates at Microsoft to Box's Adam Levie, and of course a little-known CEO named Zuck, the allure of leaving the dorm room behind to rake in billions seems irresistible.

Recently, this middle finger to the establishment of higher education has been codified by billionaire rabble rouser Peter Thiel. This past Sunday, for the second time in three months, the New York Times found cause for a close examination of the virtues of Mr. Thiel's 20 under 20 Fellowship as a way for exceptional teenagers to pass college and collect $100,000 to spend on changing the world. Granted, participants aren't your typical undeclared freshmen at State College U. Rather, they've already exhibited Mensa-level intelligence, with a work ethic to match.

What doesn't coordinate quite as well? Their social lives. A recent night saw several Thiel fellows--all under legal drinking age--at a San Francisco house party described by one attendee as "tech hippies doing drugs and sitting in a cuddle pile."

It was an unsettling sight for guests surprised by the Summer of Love manifesting itself in 2012, but for the babes in the Redwoods it seemed disturbing on another level. A Thiel fellow who dropped out of an Ivy League college at age 17 spent most of her brief time at the party hugging her purse and asking for clarification about what, exactly, a whippet was.

Perhaps most telling, even those who've won the GED lottery don't believe it's a one-size-fits-all solution. In a recent interview, Mr. Levie, the Box CEO who dropped out of USC, told Business Insider, "Unfortunately this is going to produce a lot of people that are college drop outs that don't actually have the idea that's taking off that they can go spend time on. It's not the right sequence." Leaving school to become a billionaire seems logical, ending up sans degree or hockey stick company while former classmates field offers from hot tech, banking and graduate programs sounds less practical.

Tipping our hat to Malcolm Gladwell, we can acknowledge that most truly great engineers were coding long before their first CS course in college. But many other skills integral to growing a company are learned in and out of the classroom in ways the "real world" can't always match. Morgan Missen, who attended my alma mater Michigan State University (as did Texts From Last Night founder Lauren Leto), credits her illustrious recruiting career, which has included stints at Google, Twitter and Foursquare, to her collegiate role as recruitment chair of the Sigma Kappa sorority. "It was highly strategic and strictly choreographed. I realized then how the people you pick affect the success of every organization," Ms. Missen told an interview earlier this year.

Visiting Google, Facebook, or even Conde Nast--the similarities between work campus and college campus can't be overlooked: Cafeteria as social minefield, new recruits wearing special clothing to signal their n00b status, recreational sports leagues and gossip running amok. Assuming these cultures are so prevalent because employees enjoy them, how do people whose last experience in a classroom involved a hall monitor create a corporate culture that approximates the light oversight and high expectations of a college campus?

UPenn has become a bastion for fraternity men turned successful startup founders. Bonobos got their start there out of Andy Dunn's trunk. Adam Rich and Ben Lerer's bromance started on campus and turned into Thrillist. Cy Massoumi went there before a banking career that lead to Zocdoc. Indeed, investor about town David Tisch is one of the many former UPenn frat boys redefining Silicon Alley.

Harvard Business School has a similar pedigree among ladies. Alexa Von Tobel from Learnvest, Amy Jain and Daniella Yacobovsky of Baublebar, Go Try It On's Marissa Evans and Birchbox's Katia Beauchamp all overlapped. Birchbox is even paying it forward with an informal co-working space for HBS students in their cavernous Murray Hill offices. The shared experiences and ups and downs of these confederacies give the alums shoulders to cry on and investor referrals that just don't come from coding alone in your parents' basement.

Skipping the formative years of college might give kids an accolade advantage, but at what cost to their social lives and networks? Are they really better off on their own with enough money to pay the bills for a couple years than they would be in R&D labs at schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT and University of Michigan? Those six schools, which boasted a combined endowment of $102 billion in 2011, supply brilliant minds with world class facilities and faculty, flexibility to pursue research and degrees of their choosing. As Harvard proved with Facebook, they also will do little to interfere with profits or process should a runaway success emerge out of the dining halls and dorm rooms. Additionally, students have an alumni network, clean and affordable housing, ready access to regular meals and a safe place to spend the years between having a curfew and polishing up your public speaking for an IPO road show.

Where would Instagram be without the contacts Kevin Systrom forged at the Stanford frat Sigma Nu, where he first met Mark Zuckerberg and Adam D'Angelo? Or even Facebook without the early adopters on college campuses who were ready to sign up and tell their friends as soon as the social network arrived. Without an early job serving as campus marketing manager for Apple and working for valley mainstays like Path's Dave Morin would my personal and professional interest in technology have blossomed? Outliers always have and will forge their own paths in education and life, but for many, the network effects of college are worth checking in to.

(Photo: ThielFellowship.org)

App engineers are just like the original sheet music creators...or something. [Wall Street Journal]

San Francisco-based flirting app Skout shut down its forum for 13-17 year olds following a spate of child rapes linked to the app. Question: How did anyone think a location-based flirting app for 13 year olds was a good idea in the first place? [The New York Times]

Patent trolls had an app removed from the iTunes store. Seems like a pretty typical move--except that the app was a speech-to-text tool used by a mute little girl to communicate with her parents. Good going, assholes. [Hacker News]

But here's an app you won't miss: RIP Ping. [AllThingsD]

Meet your 2012 Thiel Fellows. These kids are probably too smart for their own good. [VentureBeat]

Hey Birchbox subscribers, don't feel bad if you get some men's products in your package this month. It's just a teaser for Birchbox Man and is in no way shape or form a cruel reminder that you're single. [TechCrunch]

And who cares if you're single anyway? Etsy is making a major effort to hire more female engineers. Perhaps Hacker School is more your style? [AllThingsD]

Peter Thiel just scooped up 22 boys and two girls under the age of 20 for a two-year fellowship at the Thiel Foundation, where the famous Facebook investors network of mentors will help them build things the world has never seen.

"Andrew Hsu started doing research in a pathology lab when he was 10. By the time he was 12, he had matriculated at the University of Washington."

"David (Jiageng) Luan... came to America when he was 6 years old, began taking college courses at Worcester State in Massachusetts in 3rd grade, and received a certificate in computer science by the time he was 12."

"Laura Deming... started working in a biogerontology lab when she was 12, matriculated at MIT when she was 14, and now at 17 plans on disrupting the current research paradigm by changing the incentives embedded in today’s traditional funding structures."

"Many applicants never went to college, had already stopped out of school, were already working, or had already launched their own company," the site says, putting pressure on hopeful entrepreneurs everywhere.

Full List is below -

Laura Deming wants to extend the human lifespan for a few more centuries—at the very least. She started working in a biogerontology lab when she was 12, matriculated at MIT when she was 14, and now at 17 plans on disrupting the current research paradigm by changing the incentives embedded in today’s traditional funding structures. Too often, researchers design quick incremental projects to please grant-making bodies instead of taking on risky, long time horizon problems. With her fund IP Immortal, Laura plans on commercializing anti-aging research, bringing therapies out of the lab and into the market sooner.

Alexander Kiselev is a 19-year-old immigrant from Moscow who is worried that scientific advances in the biosciences aren’t developing fast enough. To spark a new age of discovery, he wants to make experimentation cheaper by creating affordable scientific instruments. With help from the open source hardware community, his first project will be an inexpensive high performance liquid chromatography system, a tool that helps biochemists analyze the components of a sample.

Darren Zhu has conducted research in a wide range of cutting-edge areas, from molecular spintronics fabrication to therapeutic drug design. He is most excited about synthetic biology, a burgeoning field that engineers solutions to biological problems by using standardized genomic components. After he stops out of Yale, his first project will be to build a diagnostic biosensor, the initial step toward his goal of making synthetic biology easier to engineer.

CAREER DEVELOPMENT

Daniel Friedman, Paul Gu, and Eric McKay are passionate about equipping people with the information to make better decisions. In some markets, high noise-to-signal ratios make it hard for the best to distinguish themselves from the lemons. With a wealth of talent in mathematics, programming, and social entrepreneurship, this trio plans to create a more efficient recruiting process driven by a peer-based evaluation system.

Dale Stephens was homeschooled and then unschooled. Now he wants to build a platform called RadMatter to revolutionize how we develop and demonstrate talent in the twenty-first century. At 19, he is a non-conformist in most aspects of his life.

ECONOMICS & FINANCE

Jeffrey Lim wants to increase the amount of voluntary exchange and cooperation in the world by revamping some of our core economic and social institutions. He believes it’s time the means of exchange caught up with the Information Age. Once he stops out of MIT, Jeffrey plans on using his fellowship to create technologies that will help people self-organize to solve social problems. He’s particularly interested in helping people protect the wealth they create from the harmful effects of inflation.

Faheem Zaman has shot the moon on nearly every SAT test he’s ever taken: 5580 points across 5 tests. He wants to decentralize banking in the developing world with a mobile payment system. Because savings are difficult in poor countries—including in some regions of South Asia where many have to hoard and protect cash—Faheem believes mobile financial services will help bring prosperity to these areas. Before he introduces his technology to the developing world, Faheem’s initial plan is to gain a foothold in the U.S. market for mobile financial services.

EDUCATION

Nick Cammarata and David Merfield are working on OPEN, a project that aims to flip the industrial-scale classroom experience. Instead of wasting time lecturing (content OPEN’s online videos are better at providing), teachers using the platform will get to use class time for more one-to-one tutoring with students on the hard problems. With a decade of programming experience, Nick has worked for Microsoft, Stanford, and Mozilla and is an active contributor to several open-source projects. David has designed web interfaces used by millions of people around the world. He has lived and been educated in England, Singapore, France, and the USA.

Andrew Hsu started doing research in a pathology lab when he was 10. By the time he was 12, he had matriculated at the University of Washington. Soon after, he graduated with honors degrees in neurobiology, biochemistry, and chemistry. He was a 19-year-old 4th-year neuroscience Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University when he left early this year to pursue his start-up, Airy Labs.

John Marbach has years of experience working as an Internet marketer in customer development—he founded a vacation rental portal as a high school freshman—and he blogs frequently about emerging technologies. Now, with his start-up Ingenic, he wants to leverage web-based videos and mobile apps to bring the classroom into the twenty-first century.

ENERGY

Tom Currier developed a deep obsession for entrepreneurship, cost reductions, and renewable energy after starting his first business when nine years old. To achieve grid parity, Currier believes that the solar industry needs a fundamental balance of systems breakthrough. He co- founded Black Swan Solar two years ago to commercialize an invention that enables dual-axis photovoltaic module tracking.

Jim Danielson is working on building a more powerful and efficient motor for electric vehicles. He has already electrified a Porsche 924S, including power electronics of his own design. He is currently co-launching Makt Systems LLC, a start-up to commercialize his research and design. Before becoming a Fellow, Jim co-founded the Electric Vehicle Club at Purdue and was president of Purdue Innovations, the university’s entrepreneurship club.

Eden Full is the 19-year-old Canadian founder of Roseicollis Technologies, a solar energy start- up that deploys her patent-pending inventions in established and emerging markets. Currently electrifying two villages of 1000 citizens in Kenya, Eden’s SunSaluter is a solar panel tracking system that optimizes energy collection by up to 40 percent for only $10. She began developing her social enterprise when she was 15.

Sujay Tyle is one of the youngest students at Harvard and is passionate about hacking cellulose to create cheap biofuels. He first worked in a lab when he was 11, interned at Dupont as a teenager, and won the grand prize at the 2009 International Sustainable World Energy Olympiad in Houston. With his older brother, Sheel, he also runs ReSight, Inc., a 501(c)(3) non- profit dedicated to helping the vision-impaired around the world.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

James Proud taught himself programming at the age of 9. In his teens, he built products for companies such as Coca-Cola and Universal Music, while juggling his studies during the day. Upon graduating from the British equivalent of high school, James decided not to enroll in university and instead founded GigLocater.com, a start-up that aims to help music lovers discover more live shows.

Christopher Rueth thinks access to the entire Internet is a basic human right. When he was in high school, administrators put in place draconian Internet restrictions and also started logging all student emails. Upset by the school’s intrusion, Chris created a website that allowed students in his district to bypass this snooping. Now Chris wants to help emancipate information around the world.

Ben Yu had just returned from climbing Mount Kilimanjaro when he interviewed with the Thiel Foundation. He was about to climb another mountain in China when he learned he had won. His next challenge is to build an e-commerce start-up that will revolutionize price comparison on the web. Before climbing Kilimanjaro and taking on the current leaders in comparison shopping, Ben was a freshman at Harvard.

Sebastien Zany is pursuing a program to unify computation in a cohesive and elegant framework based around Haskell, with the goal of finally realizing the potential of computers and the Internet to enable people to work with information fluidly and creatively, especially on mobile devices.

MOBILITY

Gary Kurek has been developing mobility aids for physically-disabled citizens for the last four years. Seeing his grandmother weakened by cancer led Gary to invent a walker-wheelchair hybrid that can provide power to assist its user according to how strong she feels at any moment. This flexibility allows users to restore their strength, instead of growing dependent on a substitute. Gary is currently working on expanding the versatility of his mobility aids, making them lighter, foldable, and capable of navigating any home environment including staircases. Gary hails from Alberta, Canada, and is the 19-year-old founder of GET Mobility Solutions.

ROBOTICS

David (Jiageng) Luan plans to do for consumer robotics what the IBM PC did for computing. He came to America when he was 6 years old, began taking college courses at Worcester State in Massachusetts in 3rd grade, and received a certificate in computer science by the time he was 12. As student at Andover and Yale, he has been involved in robotics research for five years and now wants to create home robots that can handle an extensible array of low- to mid-level cognitive tasks in addition to physical jobs.

SPACE

John Burnham believes that the search for new resources has driven exploration, expansion, and innovation—from the discovery of the Americas to the California Gold Rush. Likewise, he believes the key to colonizing space is to make it possible to extract valuable minerals from asteroids, comets, and other planetary bodies. John plans on using his fellowship to develop space industry technologies to solve the problem of extraterrestrial resource extraction.