
Show HN: Starling – Wearable to measure number of words spoken to your child - mbesto
http://www.versame.com/
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pavel_lishin
I'm also concerned about the privacy implications, but think it would be neat
to hack this thing into a personal Robot9000 machine - though I don't know how
it would punish you.

[http://blog.xkcd.com/2008/01/14/robot9000-and-xkcd-signal-
at...](http://blog.xkcd.com/2008/01/14/robot9000-and-xkcd-signal-attacking-
noise-in-chat/)

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tegansnyder
From their website:

    
    
      "...Starling doesn’t record anything you say – it simply counts words as they pass by." 
    

For privacy concerned among us it would be nice to see them elaborate a bit
more on privacy. That being said, this device looks amazing.

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gaboelizondo
It is quite amazing how the founders were able to translate serious Stanford
research into a simple and affordable product.

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chrisboggiano
Hi I'm Chris, one of the creators of the Starling. Here's a link to the
Stanford research on early childhood language processing if you or anyone else
is interested:

[https://web.stanford.edu/group/langlearninglab/cgi-
bin/publi...](https://web.stanford.edu/group/langlearninglab/cgi-
bin/publications.php)

There's more from other research institutions, but Anne Fernald from
Stanford's Language Learning Lab is has been an advisor of ours since the
beginning.

On affordability, it's not lost on us that the Starling costs less than a
single day's tuition at Stanford. We hope to make it more affordable still.

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x1798DE
Is the analytics on the phone or would the user be trusting you with a
recording of every private moment of their lives?

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pavel_lishin
The graphic says that the microphone picks up words without recording:
[http://www.versame.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/10/exploded-s...](http://www.versame.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/10/exploded-star-final3.jpg)

So I'm guessing they have some algorithm that can identify breaks between
words and count based on that.

~~~
x1798DE
Awesome. That'll teach me for just being cynical after just skimming over the
front page of the mobile site.

That said, I'm still pretty skeptical about the grandiose claims about the
number of words a child hearing per day and IQ. I _strongly_ suspect that
hearing large numbers of words before the age of 4 is not causing increases in
intelligence. My guess is that it's just a strong correlate to a bunch of
harder to measure factors.

Still, the fact that I wouldn't be buying this at the cost of my privacy makes
me _way_ more likely to get this thing. Whenever I'm learning a language, I do
wonder about how long it takes to hear most of the words you need to get along
in daily life, and how often you hear them. Even if it doesn't give you any
kind of list (shamefully I still haven't looked at the details), it'd be
interesting to just know the raw number.

~~~
nicki_versame
Hi there, I'm one of the creators of the Starling and I can reassure you that
privacy is as sacred to us as it is to you - nothing is recorded. The entire
focus is on volume of words. That's not to say quality (diversity, length,
conversation) isn't important but research has found them to be very highly
correlated. Correlation or causation, encouraging more language and engagement
between parents and children in a world of distracting electronic devices
can't be a bad thing? That's what our Beta testers have told us (you can
listen to the video of testimonials on the site), that they are more engaged
and focused on their children and their families are happier as a result.
Can't complain about that!

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abricot
It should be able to distinguish words. I bet that on some days, the half of
the words my 10 month old hears are "No!".

~~~
chrisboggiano
Hi I'm one of Starling's creators. We decided to err on the side of privacy.
The good news is that research has shown that quality and quantity are really
highly correlated - if you choose to talk more to your child's you're highly
likely to say positive things.

~~~
eecks
That's a really interesting fact. Thanks for sharing!

