The Google Chrome download link is live. - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/chrome <comment><USER2> A few miscellanea you may have missed:

* JavaScript is lightning fast. 3x faster than FireFox 3 on the Dromaeo test suite.

* JavaScript compatibility isn't 100%. Fails in RaphaelJS, apparently Facebook and probably more. I'm unsure why.

* The download bar is interesting and different. Opens a bar at the bottom, defaults to Downloads in My Documents. Can drag elsewhere when done.

* It includes sleek a Firebug-esque tag inspector. Right click and inspect element.

* Scrolling up doesn't work on my trackpad. Middle clicking and scrolling up/down doesn't work. I hope this is fixed soon

* The drop-down search bar is neat. Press Ctrl+F to open it. It doesn't work in textareas.

* You can hide the bookmarks bar via Ctrl+B.

* You can drag tabs in and out of the window to form new windows. There's also a lovely animation when you move tabs around.

* There's a task manager for Chrome alone - right click on the main bar and click task manager. 'Stats for nerds' for more info which takes you to about:memory - also shows you memory usage for IE and Opera.

* You can add keywords in the search bar by going to Options, Manage and changing the default keyword.

* Passes Acid2 test. On Acid3, gets a respectable 78/100 on the JS tests, but has a few rendering bugs and linktest failed. Both tests are currently getting hammered - I'm not sure whether this changes the result for the latter.

* You can resize textareas using the bottom-right hand corner

* It includes a spell checker. You can't seem to add new words to it though.

* It supports other search engines other than Google out of the box. It asked me what default to use on startup. It imported my info from FireFox.

* On clicking a link it only changes the status bar to indicate you've done so - other browsers make it more obvious.

* Source is available at <http://dev.chromium.org/> \- seems to be largely BSD licensed. I haven't downloaded it as it's almost 500mb.

<comment><USER3> The Tag inspector is a Webkit feature, as are the resizeable text input boxes. Webkit has been getting 100% on Acid3 for a few months now, so I'm not sure why your Chrome install isn't.

<comment><USER2> Fair enough, but Chrome does inherit them - I haven't used a Webkit browser very much before because FireFox, in my experience, has been a much superior experience on both GNOME and Windows than their Webkit alternatives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Holy shit this browser is fast.

Wow.

<comment><USER5> Not only does it feel much faster than Firefox/IE, but everything is much simpler. They stripped away all the unnecessary toolbars and menus, and the configuration options are much simpler.

<comment><USER3> Thats how these things always start.

... and then people start requesting 'just a couple' of new features.

<comment><USER6> It'll be interesting to see how plug-ins play out. Google probably does not need to provide the most feature filled browser as a core offering. Providing a simple and highly robust browser is probably more ideal. Do less but be indispensable at what you do.

I see this as a move that forces standards. Google is putting its big shoulder behind increased performance and consistency on the internet. If other people want to wrap the core offering in fancier clothes, I think Google still wins.

<comment><USER7> Although this is true and good, I really really really want AdBlock.

<comment><USER8> And gestures and google toolbar!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> *Google Chrome for Linux is in development and a team of engineers is working hard to bring it to you as soon as possible.

It does not work on Linux. :(

<comment><USER10> the source and build instructions for linux are available. checking it out now, but it will probably take a while on my laptop.

edit: [http://dev.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/build- instruction...](http://dev.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/build-instructions- linux)

<comment><USER11> _Note: If you want to use a Chromium-based browser, you should look elsewhere. Although many Chromium modules build under Linux and a few unit tests pass, nothing actually runs._

<comment><USER10> oops. right. shame on me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Haha, incognito mode.

> For times when you want to browse in stealth mode, for example, to plan > surprises like gifts or birthdays,

Riiiiight

<comment><USER13> Think it's worth it to open up the executable in a hex editor looking for strings along the lines of "pr0n mode"?

<comment><USER14> No need to open up the executable, the source is available, it should be trivial to grep it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Pretty swell, but I won't ditch Firefox just yet...I can't do without Firebug, so I'll have at least one FF window, at least during working hours.

(This comment posted via Chrome)

<comment><USER16> It has a javascript debug/console window that is pretty neat. It has auto completion as well. Go to the page menu item, then the developer menu item.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Check out the "Google Chrome Terms of Service": anything you post or transmit with Chrome can be used by Google in any way it wants, for all time. They can display your writings in public, modify it, or both.

This applies to everything you transmit using Chrome, no matter how private it may seem, no matter if it's encrypted, no matter if you're sending it to friends, family, lovers, business partners, employers, financial services planners...

What was that slogan? "Don't be evil"?

"11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

"11.2 You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services."

<comment><USER18> It is strange that up to now there have been virtually no comments about privacy issues in this thread. It is clear to me that for a company in the advertising business the prime reason to release a browser is to improve data mining.

If, say, an association of insurers generously releases a "free" browser, would people install it?

<comment><USER17> From what I can tell, there's a way around this nonsense: use Chromium instead of chrome. It's licensed under the BSD license.

<http://code.google.com/chromium/terms.html>

On the other hand, two-dozen third party software packages are distributed with Chromium, and all are released under some license.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> How hard would it be for FF add-ons to be ported onto Chrome? Is Google going to offer add-ons?

<comment><USER20> I was disappointed that it doesn't seem to offer support for user scripting a la greasemonkey. It seems like add-ons might be intentionally discouraged:

'The problem with revamping existing browsers to accommodate this concept is that they have developed an ecology of add-on extensions (toolbars, RSS readers, etc.) that would be hopelessly disrupted by a radical upgrade. "As a Firefox developer, you love to innovate, but you're always worried that it means in the next version all the extensions will be broken," Fisher says.'

\--- <http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-10/mf_chrome>

<comment><USER21> That does /not/ say that add-ons are discouraged, merely that they chose to make a browser on their own _because_ current add-ons (and backward compatibility) would restrict their power if they had chosen to revamp current browsers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Some JS tests:

<http://www.celtickane.com/webdesign/jsspeed2007.php> <http://andrew.hedges.name/experiments/speed_test/index4.html>

Needless to say, it's fast...

<comment><USER23> Notice Chrome is slower in the first test because of the AJAX declarations. But honestly, who is going to be worried about the speed of AJAX declarations? Look at this comparison:

Chrome: Array object 131 Date object 30 Error handling 7 Math object 13 RegEx object 52 String object 41 DOM 51 Ajax declarations 295 Total Duration 620

Opera: Array object 172 Date object 47 Error handling 31 Math object 47 RegEx object 109 String object 63 DOM 31 Ajax declarations 62 Total Duration 562

If we assume Google can get AJAX declaration down to 62ms just like Opera (which seems perfectly reasonable, I don't imagine they had those in mind when considering speed), ten that would bring Chrome's execution time down to:

387ms!!

Assuming it can get a few more milliseconds down (it is after all only in beta stage, now that it's been open-sourced I can imagine a good couple of improvements will stream in), that means it's 1.5x faster than Opera! (which is hailed as the absolute king of Javascript execution)

Also, Opera does some kind of caching thing I think. On some of the tests (like Array and DOM), Opera consistently scored eiter X or 2X (e.g., 90, or 180). There is no way there could be a 2x speed difference just out of thin air like that, so I imagine it's some trick that notices when it can be sped up. If Chrome did that it could have the speed gain as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Who want's to bet this browser will catch up to and get more popular than firefox? It's sleeker, looks smaller, yet does the same stuff.

<comment><USER15> The one thing it doesn't have at this point?

Extensions.

I'm guessing there are plenty of people who will dig the browser, but without the bells and whistles provided by extensions, many users won't switch.

I can live without AdBlock/FlashBlock, since I don't frequent many sites that have heavy third-party content, but as I said above, I can't live without Firebug right now.

<comment><USER25> The first thing I thought when I saw Chrome was that they want to stop/override programs like AdBlock for their search ads.

<comment><USER26> If that's the case, I go to filtering proxies at my end.

<comment><USER27> Oh yeah! I forgot about those. Now I can use Opera. Well, I could if I used Windows. Any auto-updating filtering proxies for Linux?

<http://www.proxomitron.info/> was the old standby

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The "create application shortcut" on desktop thing is truly revolutionary and could change the way people view web apps.

<comment><USER29> I agree. All the other elements are more "checkbox list" items, but this really adds to the daily use experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> There is a download link right on the Google homepage now.

<http://www.google.com/>

<comment><USER31> Direct download: <http://dl.google.com/update2/installers/ChromeSetup.exe> Wine bottle it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Worst implementation of bookmarks yet. I have over 5k of them and managing them in Chrome will be a futile process. Clicking the "Open all Bookmarks in New window" button also crashes the browser when you have that many.

It is nice and fast though.

<comment><USER33> In my opinion the bookmark implementation is the BEST yet. You essentially can have multiple bookmark menus for different topics, as any folder you drag onto your bookmark bar becomes a pulldown menu.

<comment><USER34> I think this falls in to the 'best for what?' category. Bookmarks are something that gets used differently by different people.

Some freaks (no offence) with thousands of bookmarks have radically different needs to others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I think Google might have Mozilla beat on intuitiveness of the UI.

<comment><USER36> The UI design is a step above! Bravo to Google! This is another way that this browser will contribute by stepping up the competition a notch.

Another example: When the browser window is maximized with multiple tabs, there is no space wasted on the title bar!

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> No Mac version. :(

<comment><USER38> Have any of you Mac folks tried it virtualized to see how it feels?

<comment><USER39> Running it here... very snappy, the only shame is having to look at Windows XP fonts which are _really_ ugly.

Roll on the mac version.

<comment><USER40> Can you guys run it through <http://dromaeo.com/> ? Curious to see how it performs virtualized on a Mac.

<comment><USER41> Running in an XP Guest on OS X 10.4 with VirualBox on a 1.83 GHz Core Duo MacBook gives 283.00ms (Total).

On the same system, running in Safari 3.1 in OS X gives 2749.00ms (Total).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Coool. Do you know if it is possible for Chrome to remember the font magnification for visited websites? In FF, I usually enlarge website font, and FF remembers my choice. Chrome doesn't do this automatically.

</comment><comment><USER43> I need adblocker plus!!

<comment><USER44> that's the only feature i am sure you will never see on this browser

<comment><USER45> There will be an extension API. I'm doubtful they'll blacklist extensions. I also doubt Google is worried about the extremely small minority of power users that are blocking ads. So you'll never see ad blocking built in, but I'd bet there will be an extension for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Wow. It comes with a javascript/dom debugger ... it seems roughly on par with firebug.

And the task manager is amazing, exactly what I've been wanting.

(all the good stuff is under the Page menu, then the developer submenu. Took me a while to find).

<comment><USER47> The "stats for nerds" page is also good entertainment (available from the task manager or by typing about:memory).

Not only will it tell you where all that memory is being used (Chrome isn't exactly lightweight), but it will also spy on IE and Firefox and let you know how much memory they are using.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> It doesn't appear to support proxies during the install process.

<comment><USER49> Yeah, this is a major bummer. How are we corporate-folk supposed to test? C'mon, Google, give us a regular installer like the rest of the world.

<comment><USER49> This has now been fixed. Thanks, Googlers.

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you mean ?

Are you using the standard Windows installer or the buildbot waterfall ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I love that you can drag browser tabs from one window to the other. That's just crazy cool.

<comment><USER51> So can Firefox.

<comment><USER52> Can't pull a tab out of firefox to start a new window, though. That's something I tried to do a few times because it seemed like something you should be able to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Any idea why it installs itself in "C:\Documents and Settings\User Account Name\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe"?

<comment><USER54> Vista needs you to elevate permissions to install to Program Files.

This is from one of the devs in an "off-the-record" QA session here: [http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?id=17826898#itemanchor_1782...](http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?id=17826898#itemanchor_17826898)

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Guys its rock solid and AWESOME. I just love it. Rock and roll time. I am running john resigs dromaeo on it. Lets hope for the best. Cheers!

<comment><USER55> Dromaeo results <http://dromaeo.com/?id=20571> Check it out. A lot faster than FF and Safari. I am not counting IE here...IE is outdated with the launch of Chrome.

<comment><USER28> ff: 1403.60ms

chrome: 393.20ms

leaving a browser that already felt fast in the dust: priceless

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Looks like they're making an offensive move towards Silverlight. The Silverlight plug-in loads but the way in which Silverlight loads content from the web looks like it is broken. Anyone else get past the "Loading showcase" label here: <http://silverlight.net/showcase/>

<comment><USER57> Or else they just didn't make supporting Silverlight a priority of the initial release.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I wondered how it would handle an infinite loop of javascript alerts, so I wrote a little script to test it:

<http://www.paulbutler.org/projects/chrome/test.html>

It passed! I'd be curious to know how Opera and Safari do on the test. I have a hunch Opera might pass it.

<comment><USER36> If you want to test the GC in Javascript, try out an infinite loop of unreferenced allocations. Generational GC should be able to handle this without breaking a sweat.

<comment><USER58> Actually, I wasn't trying to test the javascript VM at all, just how the browser handled an infinite loop of alert dialogs. Since alert windows steal focus, an infinite loop of them will keep stealing focus. I wanted to know how Chrome would handle this.

<comment><USER36> I didn't think you were barking up the wrong tree. It's another suggestion. You might need some kind of "yield" statement if you want to see how another Javascript program will act with a background window spamming it with allocations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I'm really diggin' this browser. My favorite feature has to be the 'Incognito Window'.

</comment><comment><USER60> The browser is amazingly fast, clean, well-designed (great Omnibox) but the comic-book-style explanation... really? That little digitomb took away whatever load-time I would have saved the rest of the week.

</comment><comment><USER61> The interface is very sleek.Speed is awesome. But font rendering is really bad.And where is the Tools,View menus? Wont be my primary browser for XP.

<comment><USER36> Fonts definitely need some attention from a graphics person. My company's intranet time reporting app looks like it was re-rendered by a techie -- the fonts are small and seem to be designed as bitmaps with no eye to anti- aliasing. It's much more functional, but it looks like crap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I never thought I'd say "hurray" to yet-another-web-browser, but Google hit it out of the park with this one. Hurray!

</comment><comment><USER62> Does not work at all on my computer (Vista). It starts up OK, but I get a window saying "The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135). Click OK to terminate the application." whenever I try to load anything.

<http://screencast.com/t/pY0dgFVCLr8>

<comment><USER62> ...but now it just works after a restart. Googling around seems to suggest that was a .NET related problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Is it just me, or does spawning a new process per tab - which makes perfect sense when the tab contains an actual web-app - seem like overkill if it's only to read a document?

That said, if Chrome provided some equivalent of Live Bookmarks, I'd reconcile myself to the profligate process spwaning.

</comment><comment><USER64> Some small pieces...

1\. The plugin interface to adobe doesn't seem like it's quite there just yet. I had some significant slowdowns with trying to get to other tabs and with responsiveness.

2\. There were a few cases where new tabs didn't seem to load in the background... has anyone else encoutnered this?

</comment><comment><USER65> One thing I'd like to see is to be able to embed some of the Google Gadgets from iGoogle into the new tab screen, down the bottom would be nice.

Would useful to be able to keep up with email/rss/news incrementally while I'm doing normal browsing, rather than having to go look for it.

</comment><comment><USER66> Anyone know which icon is Chrome using when it makes app shortcuts? For my site it used favicon but it definitely used a bigger icon. I've looked at Gmail's favicon.ico file but it's not a multirez one.. it's just a plain little 16x16 icon...

</comment><comment><USER67> * Very clean.

* Speed I didn't notice any difference yet.

* I miss the Firefox upper right corner search bar.

* Not crashing the whole browser when one tab crashes is obviously very good(why hasn't this been solved before? has been a problem for so long and a very obvious one too)

</comment><comment><USER68> Nice. The simplicity is OK, I never use the menu bar anyway. Still, I love my FireBug, the EULA sucks and there's no noticeable speed difference with Firefox on my machine, honestly. Back to Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER68> Nice. The simplicity is OK, I never use the menu bar anyway. Still, I love my FireBug, the EULA sucks and there's noticeable difference with Firefox on my machine, honestly. Back to Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER69> I wonder how they will expose functionality to extension developers and if that will even be possible.

I didn't stick to Opera nor Safari after Firefox due to lack of support for some plugins I use and wrote.

</comment><comment><USER70> This is pretty close to extraordinary. This thing is pitch-perfect. It's like the best parts of Firefox and Safari and Opera merged. I can't wait for this to come out for the Mac, now.

</comment><comment><USER71> Hm, Chrome doesn't seem to fill the _charset_ hidden input. Interesting, whether it's just that the feature is not yet implemented, or they don't consider it to be useful/good.

</comment><comment><USER72> The combined search/address bar is great -- the best ideas are often so obvious in hindsight (likewise for gmail's email organization)

EDIT: and the "new tab" button is in exactly the right spot

</comment><comment><USER73> I really liked it until I got blue screen of death. And of all sites it was one of the official Google blogs.

I couldn't reproduce the crash, but now, there is this lingering feeling ...

</comment><comment><USER74> Fast, clean interface but no way to send a link, no highlighting of search terms, redundant delete icon on every tab instead of one on the side for the tab in focus.

</comment><comment><USER75> Interesting information can be found at the about: page.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/0.2.149.27 Safari/525.13

</comment><comment><USER75> I'd like the ability to tag bookmarked pages. Right now the bookmark tool is too limited to be useful. I'll continue to have to use del.icio.us

</comment><comment><USER76> Looks like it doesn't run in Wine, guess I won't get to try it out until I go back to work tomorrow.

</comment><comment><USER77> try this: ctrl-f, enter something (say, firebug) and then take a look at the scrollbar. Nice.

</comment><comment><USER21> please, allow extensibility in this, like firefox, and I am ready to say goodbye to Firefox!

</comment><comment><USER78> Boy, does it rock :)

I'm writing this from Chrome and I must say it's clean, fast and pretty darn cool :)

</comment><comment><USER79> Can I haz Firebug in Chrome plz?

<comment><USER45> Webkit's Web Inspector is there, which I know is not Firebug, but I mention it in case you didn't see it.

<comment><USER80> does Webkit's Web Inspector allow you to view dynamically create DOM elements like Firebug's Inspect tool?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> OMG. The speed.

</comment><comment><USER44> about:memory

</comment><comment><USER51> Copy-paste of my reddit response.

Not saying it's all bad, and I realize this is a first release, but if Google wants to avoid the "MS Vista" stamp when it comes to software-making they might consider fixing up the following points:

1\. Downloading the "installer" doesn't download the complete software.

2\. Installer presents everything in Norwegian, with no choice of English. I want my software in English, end of story. There is no way to select English, so for now I assume this is based on some Windows locale-settings which I will just configure properly after install.

3\. Configuration hangs to the point of me almost killing the process. After eating a few minutes worth of 100% CPU time, Chrome launches. No feedback is given during this period that it is actually working on anything at all.

4\. Once running, Chrome is still in Norwegian mode.

5\. Options (or "Alternativer") shows no way to select a English UI language.

6\. The language-pack seems to include a spell-checking. This entire text-box is filled with red lines. Because this is not written in Norwegian.

7\. Scrolling trough this small text-box proceeds to scroll down the entire page when I reach the end. With what seems like 200 lines of scrolling per millimeter on my laptop touchpad, this renders the scrolling area basically useless for edits. This also applies to page-down in textboxes. Very, very, very annoying.

8\. Scrolling in general scrolling seems way too fast also. Like 2-3 pages on what should be 1.

Out of the box this is _not_ something I am happy with, and this needs to be improved about 100 times from second 1.

A few simple choices (like language) must be added. Better reporting to the user that something is actually being worked on needs to be present. Configurability is shit. It has a _task manager_ for web-page tabs (i.e. "geek stuff"), but wont let you configure basic stuff like if opening links in new tabs should activate them or not.

I'm going to have to _uninstall_ this now and try to get hold of a English version.

Edit: The language thingie evidently can be fixed without reinstalling. I just couldn't find it with the non computing-standard language used in the options dialog.

Edit 2: Now I find that google search always presents me the _Norwegian_ version, not the english, when searching from the url-bar. Despite having "I want google in english" cookies firmly set.

This is bloody annoying. Stop forcing localization on me damnit!

<comment><USER33> None of the issues you mentioned happened to me.</comment></comment>


US Navy limits 'whale-harming' sonar in Pacific - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34252058 <comment><USER2> Im an Ocean Engineer and thus, a big part of the curriculum was sonar and transducers. The effect of sonar on animals was often asked about in class and the response was usually that "the Navy doesnt care". Im really glad to see this finally getting more attention from the Navy after being ignored for so long.

<comment><USER3> I was a Navy surface officer for years. We had required reporting criteria for any marine mammal sighting at least as far back as the 1990s, and we had operating restrictions on the sonar as well. There are a lot of watermen in the Navy, I'm sorry people think we just don't care.

The fundamental tension is that we all love marine life, but someone has to be able to fight the war, and testing weapons and training people is an inextricable part of that.

And the other side ultimately, in a sense fundamentally, has a zero tolerance policy. There's somebody out there who feels every sonar should be dismantled and recycled, never to be used again. And in a law-abiding world, that person's opinion must also be respected, and the senior officers in the Navy take their obligations to the Constitution quite seriously, probably in a rather sophisticated way, where in they have forced society to tell them how far they should go. Unfortunately, that contra-extreme position of no sonar is not going to be realized without a durable world peace where geopolitical tensions can be definitely resolved in all cases without even the _threat_ of violence.

<comment><USER4> > There are a lot of watermen in the Navy, I'm sorry people think we just > don't care.

I think that the notion is that "The Navy", as an institution, does not care, to which I would offer, "The Navy" as an institution has no capacity to care or not care, only individuals and groups of them within it do.

<comment><USER5> I think it's reasonable to comment on whether institutions "care" or not about negative externalities by looking at the policies they have in place to mitigate them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The US navy does not care.

They have known about this for years; they have either finished the testing OR they have completed their purpose with regards to the weapon. My guess is the later

Sorry for the DMlinks but 2012 - [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2142763/U-S-Navys- so...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2142763/U-S-Navys-sonar- explosives-hurt-dolphins-whales-previously-imagined-causing-creatures-deaf- die-greater-numbers.html) 2014 - [http://www.rt.com/usa/204191-navy-whales- dolphins-military-d...](http://www.rt.com/usa/204191-navy-whales-dolphins- military-drills/) 2014 - (about a report from 2000 [http://www.wired.com/2014/07/war-of-the- whales/](http://www.wired.com/2014/07/war-of-the-whales/)

Given this has been on going for a 15 years we know about, and most likely another 5-10 years before the public noticed it does make me wonder what they were up to 20+ years of Sonar abuse towards animals. Feels more like they had a plan rather than simply testing a weapon.

<comment><USER7> > They have known about this for years; they have either finished the testing > OR they have completed their purpose with regards to the weapon.

Sonar is not a weapon; it's a sensor system intended to discover enemy submarines.

<comment><USER8> I have no idea what sonar frequencies are what, but to expand on your point, sonar is basically the only kind of sensor that works underwater. Radar and sight are basically useless.

Sonar is really all you have to see underwater, and is used heavily for scientific purposes, not only military purposes. Ocean-floor mapping is done with sonar. Active sonar of the kind that hurts whales is not in frequent use by deployed military vessels on military or surveillance missions because, while it gets you a good picture, it also announces "HERE I AM!!!" to the entire world.

<comment><USER9> According to Wikipedia, the issue is with (low frequency, active) LFA sonar.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetacean_stranding](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetacean_stranding)

I read somewhere it's about 240db. For reference, a jackhammer at about 1m (3.3ft away) is 130db and is classified as Painful for humans,

[http://www.asha.org/public/hearing/Noise/](http://www.asha.org/public/hearing/Noise/)

I am not knowledgeable on acoustics, let alone acoustic dissipation or acoustics in water - but I can see logic behind the argument that LFA sonar causes a problem for whales.

<comment><USER10> Also keep in mind that decibels are logarithmic, so 240dB is 10^(24-13) times as much sound power as 130.

<comment><USER11> No, you forgot that the d stands for deci (i.e., 1/10th).

So 240dB is 10^(2.4-1.3) times as much sound power as 130dB.

<comment><USER12> No, nitrogen's math is correct. The conversion from linear to dB is

y = 10 * log(x)

and the conversion back is

x = 10 ^ (y/10)

Every change of 3dB is a doubling or halving of power. Every change of 10dB is an order-of-magnitude change in power.

<comment><USER10> Right, I did 24-13 instead of 240-130. That's 100 billion times the power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I find it amazing that before we started polluting the sea with propeller noise and sonar, whales basically had a global communication network. Whalesong could be heard for thousands and thousands of miles.

<comment><USER14> Truly amazing. I only recently found out about the patterns of whalesong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What is the science behind this?

<comment><USER15> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_mammals_and_sonar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_mammals_and_sonar) has a nice summary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Here's a great recent article (originally from the July/August issue of Orion) on beaked whales and sonar impact study [http://blog.longreads.com/2015/09/02/whale- watch/](http://blog.longreads.com/2015/09/02/whale-watch/)

</comment><comment><USER17> There's a pretty good book called "War of the Whales" by Joshua Horwitz that discusses the work of whale researcher Ken Balcomb to convince the Navy to limit sonar operations.

</comment><comment><USER18> Nice to see the military take a pragmatic approach..

</comment><comment><USER19> Quotes in "whale-harming" are totally unnecessary. Is a well known fact that naval practices kill whales. An example; massive strandings in Canary islands were a big problem until Spain ban the use of navy sonars in its shores. Result: No more cases of entire groups of several agonizing whales in the beach since them. Not a single one.

[http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/ggoodstefani/exclude_navy_...](http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/ggoodstefani/exclude_navy_sonar_and_end_mass_strandings.html)

Is not only that the pressure wave generated will burst the inner ear and lungs of some nice animals. Humans have lungs also. There is probably a real danger of death for any human diving at many miles of distance with those practices (that normally are not disclosed to the big public in advance).

<comment><USER20> I wouldn't read those quotations as indicating skepticism that the sonar harms whales but, rather, as just another case of the BBC's odd headline-writing practices. I often find the BBC quoting things in headlines in ways that seem unnecessary and awkward. As in this case, the quotations sometimes give the amusing impression that the BBC is calling obvious or trivial propositions into doubt. Like this one:

 _BBC 'to launch personalised iPlayer'_

I think they're trying to remain scrupulously neutral by quoting as much material as possible, but they often overshoot to convey skepticism about their own article.

Here is a pretty thorough survey (and takedown) of BBC's headline quotations. [https://adrianblau.wordpress.com/2014/03/24/the-curse-of- quo...](https://adrianblau.wordpress.com/2014/03/24/the-curse-of-quotation- marks-on-the-bbc-website/)

<comment><USER21> The use of quotation marks to indicate sarcasm or doubt is pretty new, while using them to just mean "this is literal text from elsewhere" is much older. Not to say the new usage is somehow "wrong" but neither would I call the BBC's usage odd.

<comment><USER20> I don't have a strong view about this, and I certainly understand why the BBC is using quotation marks in the way it is. But if I were an editor at the BBC, I think I would be uncomfortable with the fact that the quotations communicate the wrong message to so many readers -- and, worse, mistakenly suggest that my publication is being snarky or skeptical of the claims highlighted in the headline. This seems like very much the opposite of the quotation marks' desired effect.

<comment><USER21> You're right, even if this usage may be perfectly acceptable, if it gives a lot of people the wrong idea it's probably time to change.

<comment><USER22> Kowtowing to the lowest common denominator shouldn't be done lightly. We are on a site called Hacker News, after all.

<comment><USER20> > Kowtowing to the lowest common denominator shouldn't be done lightly

Certainly not when you put it like that! But you might also call it "communicating effectively with your audience." So maybe kowtowing isn't so bad after all when it just involves responding to the linguistic conventions observed by your readers, and the goal is simply communication.

I also don't know that people who read quotation marks as connoting doubt, in the absence of any other evident reason for them, can fairly be called "the lowest common denominator."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> .. and in next episode Sea Shepherd will ram USS George Washington</comment>


The new dot com bubble is here: it's called online advertising - <AUTHOR> https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-here-its-called-online-advertising/13238920200-5fcd64b8 <comment><USER2> Prior discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21465873](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21465873)

</comment><comment><USER3> Web advertising always seemed like a losing proposition to me from a technical standpoint. Imagine if, instead of an MPEG stream, the Super Bowl was delivered to your television with instructions like "draw the field, draw the players, now put this ad here, that ad there...", and you could easily program your TV to ignore all instructions related to ads, while perfectly preserving the game content you came for. Wouldn't advertisers be losing their minds? And yet this is exactly the situation with your Web browser. Even applications that push the traditional boundaries of the Web seem easily defeated... for example, with my very basic ad blocking setup (just uBlock Origin, nothing fancy, anyone could get this setup in minutes), I have never seen an ad on YouTube, not once. So why does YouTube make money exactly?

<comment><USER4> Because the vast majority don't adblock and someone there has decided it's better to respect the wishes of the adblocking user than alienate them from their service and also they likely have other ways[0,1,2] of harvesting value from users than just showing them ads.

0: knowing what kind of users block ads, and what adblockers they are using

1: knowing how sophisticated users use the internet

2: I could go on

edit: formatting

<comment><USER5> > it's better to respect the wishes of the adblocking user than alienate them > from their service

I have a theory that this is like a pressure valve for power users who would not tolerate being forced to view ads. The majority doesn't care, doesn't understand the technicalities, doesn't know what would be possible and how. But there is a sizable portion of people who are stubborn enough that they know the background and won't put up with locked down platforms. It's better to let them have it their way rather than causing much alienation and outrage among the techie types / power users / early adopters / hackers / tinkerers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It maybe doesn't warrant a full AskHN, but have you run a successful, small scale (< $1000) ad campaign? What worked and what didn't?

I don't think it's a bubble especially when you play with your own money and you have to be very careful of the keywords and targeting settings.

<comment><USER7> or just look at who spends the most on ads and i think you'll see that those who are able to calculate their ROI, aren't the ones at the top of the ad spending pile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > It is in the best interest of a firm like eBay to know whether its campaigns > are profitable, but not so for eBay's marketing department.

Isn't this the case for basically every B2B product? The goal was always to make the purchasing manager look good, not to actually help the other company. So I don't see how this is proof of a bubble, you could say the same thing about McKinsey consultants or cloud computing.

</comment><comment><USER7> i know someone working for brand advertisement at Nike. those big brand advertisers don't actually have hard proof that it's working. all they can do is point to a few case studies that have been referenced over and over again.

There is a time and place for ads. And some ads, definately do work. For example, in the gaming industry, you used to be able to track exactly how many users your game acquired based on what ad, allowing you to calculate ROI.

Now, if you look at all the biggest ad spenders on facebook, take a look and see which one is more: the big brand advertisers (where ROI is not calculated), vs gaming companies and other businesses that can calculate ROI. You'll see, the market for ads and thus the price paid for ads, is dominated by non-ROI calculated Ad spend. That certainly seems like a bubble to me. and, let's not forget, millenials aren't attached to brands to the same degree that previous generations were.

<comment><USER9> What makes you think the big brands can't calculate ROI? They're able to target specific areas & demographics and compare that with pre-targeting levels. And that's completely ignoring all the traceability that ad platforms like Facebook provide their partners.

If anything online ads are the most traceable form of advertising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think advertising will always be something that people spend money on. The reality is that people don't care what specific product they buy when they need to buy a class of product. What's your favorite brand of toilet paper or toothpaste or whole wheat flour? You probably have no preference; so if advertisers spend money on putting their product first in the Amazon results or at eye level in the grocery store, you will probably buy that one. It matters to them, but doesn't matter to you. And for that reason, they will always spend money on it.

There are also things that I buy where I do have a preference, but could be persuaded to try something else. I have particular brands of t-shirts, underwear, socks, etc. that I re-up on from time to time, but if some evidence arrives "this is better" I would consider buying it.

Most of the ads I see on the Internet are kind of a waste, though. Here are some ads I remember from the New York Times, which is basically the only platform that I don't block ads on:

1) Delta has a lot of flights to the west coast from New York. I don't really care, I have 700,000 miles on American and unless you are going to sell me a business class seat for economy prices, I'm not going to try your product. Even though your ad literally takes up my entire screen. I'm sure you paid a lot for that, but it means nothing to me. I am aware that Delta as a company exists. Because of my awareness, I choose not to buy your product ;)

2) I could buy a wide variety of $3MM condos throughout the New York area. If I had $3MM, I would. I don't, though, so you wasted your ad money again.

3) Luxury watches are a thing I could buy; I have seen ads from both Omega and Rolex. This is actually relevant to my interests, but I don't see myself ever buying a Rolex (too many people that aren't interested in watches have them); a Grand Seiko will be next. If I ever feel like spending $6000 on something I don't need, which isn't really my style.

4) Today, the only ad I'm getting is one for "SAS for AI". If I needed AI, I would probably write it myself. Somehow that sounds easier than talking to their sales team and sorting through their probably incorrect documentation. (If you wanted to sell that to me, tell me how much it costs, and show me how good the documentation is. Instead, all they are showing is a stock photo of some guy with glasses. He has glasses so he must be smart! Wowie!)

Anyway... my point is that advertising will always exist, but I do agree that a lot of money is being wasted.

</comment><comment><USER11> Online advertising isn't a bubble, bid prices might be a bubble, but as a practice itself it's not. You have to show all of your advertising customers good ROI or they aren't going to spend. This isn't true of others like print advertising, ota, etc. If you aren't making your customers money...they are going to pull their spend. It's as simple as that.

<comment><USER12> You don't provide counterargument for the the article.

The article shows that you can show good ROI for customers, but for reasons provided in the article they are false and customers absolutely refuse to believe they are false even when shown otherwise. Just like the last time this was posted, many commenters just replplay the role of the advertising customers described in this article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > "Beliefs formed on insufficient evidence seem tough to move," Rao wrote.

That there's a gem--would have and will save me much futile debating.

</comment><comment><USER14> Advertising is not an asset, it's never a direct investment; It can't be resold. Prices are too high? Maybe, a bubble? No...

</comment><comment><USER15> OPINION: This is just propoganda - its not a bubble - its just negative press around tech companies - not helpful.

<comment><USER16> Can you refute his specific stories about eBay's misguided advertising, etc.?

<comment><USER15> This is all anecdotal - its clear that online advertising has a lot of value - ebay is a huge brand, and removing advertising for "shoes" might not be easily measureable - however, there are _tons_ of business relying solely on this form of advertising - no one would find their websites if they didn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If online advertising isn't worth the spend, it seems certain that legacy advertising wasn't worth the spend. People just couldn't prove it.

That would mean that legacy TV, Newspapers, etc. were all a bubble too.

<comment><USER18> Correct, it was a bubble for the time, but it is dying.. maybe not 100%, but there will be less money for these types.

Now there is word of mouth, or target advertising or just listening to your mic (FB, Google, NSA) to then push ads on every platform.

For example, billboards are very expensive with not much ROI. How many billboards do we drive by and not pay attention, or will never buy that product or get the message thats on it. It's rate imho.

With tech, there are less or no ads/commercials in TV episodes. We can either fast fwd through the ad, or there are none.

<comment><USER19> > With tech, there are less or no ads/commercials in TV episodes. We can > either fast fwd through the ad, or there are none.

Depends on what you mean by "commercials". Hasbro cartoon series (Transformers, Mighty Max, My Little Pony, etc. etc.) were basically money- losers designed to get kids to buy toys. The entire TV show was effectively a giant commercial.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The author of that article profoundly misunderstands online advertising. At best, he grossly misinterpreted statements made by his sources.</comment>


Please review my startup. Safe text messaging for teachers - <AUTHOR> http://classparrot.com <comment><USER2> Just wondering, but have you talked with many teachers about this? Being married to one, and having a lot in my extended family, I know how real the legal risks are for something like this. I know these risks ultimately comes down to how the teachers use the tool, but districts and other organizations are liable if, say, a teacher says something "controversial." As a result, using something like this could get a teacher fired.

If teacher/student ends up as an unattractive market for whatever reason, I'd consider teacher/parent - regular parent outreach a huge pain for teachers, and its also their number one "contact" after other teachers and district employees. I know my wife runs into a lot of headaches from the "fog of communication lag" or whatever you'd want to call it.

Alternatively, this could be used as a small business tool for managers and shift workers. No more need to go about finding a replacement by calling down a list. Of this could just be a generic communication tool with employees who may not have regular access to email (things like trades, etc.)

TL;DR: I think it's a cool tool, but teacher/student communication may be a little risky to start with.

EDIT: You do deserve a huge credit for developing a tool that helps teachers, rather than attempts to remove them from the process. I've seen too many tools developed as "teaching aids" that seem to be rooted in the belief that teachers are somehow lacking and that a massed produced video game or application could replace them. These ultimately assume that the teachers are lazy or ignorant and would hand their students over to an outsider; which is why they never succeed. Congrats for not holding those assumptions.

<comment><AUTHOR> We surveyed 50 teachers before launching (inspired by the customer discovery/validation processes). 100% of them agreed that texting students puts their job at risk. 50% of them text students anyway to remind them of stuff, and co-ordinate with them.

Our main value add, is to eliminate this 'creepy factor' and give teachers a way to communicate with students that doesn't risk their jobs.

<comment><USER2> Well, numbers don't lie :) It looks like you stumbled onto something pretty awesome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> My wife is an Elementary-grade teacher. While it wouldn't really work for her (her students don't have phones - yet), I can easily see the use case for others. However - you really need to think about this issue: the reason teachers aren't texting students (or shouldn't be texting students) isn't simply because they don't want to share their personal numbers. They're not texting students because they're not supposed to have that kind of direct access/contact with students outside of school. You might be offering it already- but you might want to think about some auditing tool. Or - make sure you keep all the records of all texts sent. As long as you make it clear to the teachers, I think you'll be fine.

<comment><USER4> Definitely agree on the auditing tool - but I'd take it further, and make it a a full-blown feature. Provide the teacher's higher-ups with it (so they can inspect, if needed) and provide it to parents as well, so they can see what the messages are.

Maybe event take it one step further and encourage parents to sign up with it as well, so they know what type of messages their kids are getting that their child's teacher considers important enough to send using this medium (perhaps include an email-delivery option for these ones).

The basic product is one-to-many double-blind logged communication; don't make it about the exact mechanics of how the conversation is delivered, make it about the logged/safety aspect of it. SMS, email, voice-drop, robo-call, AIM- bot, etc. are all communication media that could benefit from this approach.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great feedback. Thanks.

We do have an auditing tool, and keep records of all texts back and forth. We should definitely highlight this more.

Also working on a way for parents to register their kids' phone numbers and get cced on all communication.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I considered joining this industry for a little bit, it's fun technology. My research pointed me towards athletic departments instead of teachers for budget purposes, as well as a stronger desire for a coach to be connected to his/her team than a teacher to be connected to his/her students.

Please note that this was determined off a very small sample size

<comment><USER6> My wife is a teacher and completely agreed with your research. She'd never use it (fear of losing protections using anything outside school-required communications; desire to not increase coddling students with constant reminders; etc), but suggested that coaches would probably love it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I believe there is a startup from this semester's Imagine K-12 batch that is working on a similar product, albeit its more twitter like. Here it is: <http://www.remind101.com/>

Teacher/parent is definitely a more viable place to start this kind of a tool. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER8> I like the clear, easy to understand language.

To satisfy school regulatory bodies you might want to have something labled "privacy policy" which lists relevant laws and your compliance.

I'd stick the pricing somewhere more prominent. You're not sleazy or spammy, so let people know how you're funded so they don't have to think whether you're going to be selling ads. (I did have that thought until I found your pricing.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, so our little privacy link needs to be bigger clearly. Thanks.

I just changed the wording on the "Perfectly Free" area and linked to our costs. Do you think that's prominent enough?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice focused implementation of group broadcast texting.

You might want to tweak the Perfectly free message on the home page to sync up with the freemium model described in the FAQ. It will probably help with your target market to explain you do actually have a business model.

Good luck with the venture!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Just tweaked it. Let me know what you think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Congratulations! Your website design is incredibly well polished and the site is put together really well and you message is communicated really well. Did you design the site by yourself ? Please share your design tips/resources.

<comment><USER11> The design is pretty good - well above the norm. It could still be improved though.

I like the "Perfectly Safe, Perfectly Simple, Perfectly Free", but stylistically it's quite different from the infographic on top. The logo is also a bit off from the rest in style. And the call-to-action button is a bit washed out. The main menu has horrendous choice of colours.

The sign-up form has a lot of empty space that makes the page look only half done. And there is some lack of consistency on how you style forms in general. (Grey background for the whole form or just the submit-button panel?)

All minor things, but going over them a few times could really improve the finish a lot.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great feedback. Thanks! Can you help? firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER11> I'm sorry, but I really don't have the time, besides giving a few suggestions here on HN. In any case, graphical design is not exactly my main area of expertise. Keep in mind that it's a lot more craft than art, so you can do a lot even if you consider your self graphically challenged.

You might want to present your layout on forrst.com. If you don't know it already, it's a community with the focus of bringing hackers and designers together. You can usually get some good constructive feedback there. If you need an invite, let me know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The design is simple (in a good way) and attractive, I like it. The idea is fantastic. Glossing over the comments I understand the concern that it's 'risky,' but this seems less risky than direct contact via their phone number which I'm sure some teachers already do.

Giving teachers more ways to communicate with their students is something I'll always be a fan of, and I'm sure even some parents wouldn't mind being on the list for some texts (assignment reminders?).

Congrats on a cool idea and a neat startup.

</comment><comment><USER13> Avoiding the "will it solve the perceived problem" aspect that many of these reviews focused on, it doesn't really scream "good business model" to me. It's not particularly novel (it's an anonymous re-mailer with phone numbers instead of email addresses). It's not solving a problem that can't be solved many other ways already (internal school district systems, email lists, teacher blogs, written notes on the whiteboard). One of its primary sales points (protects teachers by restricting direct contact info) is only a tiny aspect of a more general problem (inappropriate communication/contact between students/teachers). Its primary sales point offers protection from a legal liability (possessing information that could be abused) but doesn't secure that information effectively (phone numbers aren't treated by most people as "strictly private information" and therefore are easily obtained from many sources). I don't see how it will be monetized effectively as neither students nor teachers are likely to pay for it (my opinion only) and it would be difficult to offer ads given that the user interface that both parties interact with is basically a text message. Technologically, it's not exactly a hard concept to duplicate now that you've presented the idea, and therefore you have a risk of competitors without the benefit of a significant "first to market" advantage. Texting is popular because it's simple. I'm not sure how much you can enhance the service beyond hiding the number. That leaves me wondering where your growth and customer loyalty will come from.

If you're still reading :) It's an interesting idea, it's a nice design, it's focused on a single problem, and congrats on shipping it! I'm not saying these things to discourage you, but I think you should be sure that you have considered issues like these.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER14> How does something like this work where not all kids have phones? Are some school districts now distributing mobile phones and access plans?

</comment><comment><USER15> I had the police show up at my house last week because a teacher called the police about a text that originated from my son's cell phone (a case of wrong phone numbers and practical jokes). I can appreciate the need teachers have to protect themselves. I can also appreciate students wanting to communicate the way _they_ communicate.

I think there is a market there. My kids would like it.

</comment><comment> ryan-allen I think the idea is great. A simple tech solution to a legitimate problem.

I don't know if you have this feature, but I would suggest logging of IPs/everything else when sending a broadcast (the number of teachers whom I saw have their password guessed or captured with keyloggers in high school was out of control, I would not put it past a student to get access to the tool and broadcast things for shits and giggles), and additionally maybe set up time windows that cannot be used for broadcast. I.e. if teacher is out with mates drinking one might think it funny to send a broadcast at 2am to all the kids, that'd be bad news.

Oh, and automated reminders maybe! Set up to send a message at 7pm 'remember to bring your permission slips for the field trip!'.

I imagine that parents might want in on the broadcast system as well, so they can also receive messages that have been sent to their kids.

Anyway, brilliant simple idea with a real use. Exactly what tech is for!

</comment><comment><USER16> I think this is a great idea. As a student right now, I know I would love to use this. But I would love it even more if teachers would use something like this to keep us updated (as opposed to the crappy school-district run sites they barely know how to use..)

</comment><comment><USER17> When I was in high school back in China, my school offered a ~$1/month subscription to receive SMS notices from school & teachers. From what I know, I didn't see any parents that refused this subscription. This is a proven business.

</comment><comment><USER18> Signed up for an account. Easy, simple, and fast, but when I tried to send a message, my test phone didn't receive the text message. So great design, but the basic functionality doesn't work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Could you ping me with the email address you used. I would love to clear this up. email@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Folks, thanks for the great feedback. I'm especially curious what you think of our business model:

The first 500 credits are free. Every month we'll add another 200 free credits. (each credit is one text message to one person)

Users can also get more credits by inviting others to use ClassParrot. Inviteer and invitee both get an extra 200 credits.

Paid plans offer unlimited credits:

For a single teacher $9/month (or $90/year) For schools up to 20 teachers $100/month (or $1000/year) For schools with more than 20 teachers $200/month (or $2000/year)

Thoughts?

<comment><USER19> I wish you the best, but getting a school to pony up for this is going to be difficult. Their budgets are extremely tight (at least in Texas). My wife is a teacher and she frequently finds her spending her personal money on classroom supplies.

<comment><AUTHOR> She's not alone. On average teachers spend $430 out of pocket per school year on school supplies.

We don't want to add to that burden, and would really really like to find a way to have the schools pay.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> @hsparikh is right. This looks an awful lot like Imagine K12-backed Remind101 (<http://www.remind101>).

</comment><comment><USER21> The site focuses on after-school usage; have you thought about in-classroom texting? For instance, in classes where 100% of kids have cell phones, this could be used as a cheap, more usable alternative for response systems.

(Definitely a version 2.0 feature, though. You would get into the whole dangerous world of visualizing feedback, integrating with interactive whiteboards, audience polling competitors, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER22> Hi, i like the simplicity of the app. It's great and i think you should not limit the scope to only teachers since there are many instances where message broadcasting is required. Doctors need to communicate with patients, church leaders with their congregation, companies and utility services with their customers. i think you are limiting the scope of the app.

</comment><comment><USER23> I actually worry about startup's that don't generate revenue, especially tools that people can grow dependent on. I know a few teachers but, I'm weary of sharing this with them if you disappear in 6 months due to lack of funding.

Text message's, although cheap, are not free.

What are your plans for revenue and why not charge $2.99/month?

<comment><USER24> It's because they are charging $9.99 instead. If you look at the FAQ you will see the pricing breakdown. It's only free to use for a limited number of texts. There should be some text on the page that says something like, "free to use for small classrooms and affordable plans for large ones."

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip. Changed it on the front page and linked to the FAQ

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think the love heart under perfectly free might be sending the wrong message to parents. The number one issue I think of when I think of teachers texting students is inappropriate student teacher relationships.

</comment><comment><USER26> Have you considered sponsorship deals with a phone company? I could see this being a way for phone companies to get their first customers:

 _"But, Mom, I_ have _to get a phone now!"_

<comment><USER14> So for the parents who are already struggling to keep their own phone(or perhaps unable to afford one) they now have to purchase one for their child(ren)?

It would seem we're into some kind of transition phase where digital education for K-12 will have to be completely furnished by school districts or this is another class divide. Many can't afford phones or laptops for their children. Where will the responsibility lie for this?

<comment><USER27> It is simply another tool to help increase communication between teachers and students, I can't dream up of a situation where phones would be required to be used in a classroom.

With that in mind it might be worth it to enable a feature that will allow teachers to also send an email to students who desire it, as to allow students who don't have phones to be included as they can access the internet at school (if they don't have the internet or a computer at home).

<comment><USER14> Replace "phone" with a channel in unified communications and you have what is already happening in the post pc era. Look at tablets that use something like Totkumi's Line2 for a soft VOIP device over 3g/4g/wireless/voice and this is where we're headed. The small, handheld device that is currently called a phone(now smartphone) will in short order be the single device we use. Plug the phone into your dock and you've got your computer(such as current Motorolas).

Laptops and tablets are already being used in certain school districts and required as such. Convincing the mobile phone providers that we only need IP access and not expensive monthly phone bills is going to be one ugly battle. Hence, my asking who's going to cover the subscription costs until this becomes settled and normal. And relying on someone like Google to make this "free" while becoming my child's identity provider is not OK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Seriously, the texting feature didn't work!

<comment><AUTHOR> seriously, I would love to fix your problem. ping me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> What happens if a kid doesn't have a phone?

<comment><USER26> They will use it as a valid excuse to finally badger their folks into getting them one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I have no idea how long this has been around, but there is another one that is exactly the same: remind101.com

<comment><AUTHOR> remind101 launched during the imaginek12 demo day. which was exactly the same day startup weekend started (when we started). They have a 3-4 month lead on us, and about 3 times our users. I haven't met with them yet, but they seem like a solid team and worth competitors.

<comment><USER29> Great. I personally know one of the founders. I think it's a great idea, but I definitely think they need competitors. Your design is definitely starting off in the right direction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> What's your plan for generating revenue?

<comment><USER31> From the FAQ:

 _How much does it cost?

We want ClassParrot to always remain useful to you at the free level. The first 500 credits (messages) are free. Every month we'll add another 200 free credits to your account.

You can also get more by inviting your peers to use ClassParrot. We'll give you 200 credits for each person you invite who starts using ClassParrot. We'll also start them off with an extra 200 credits when they accept your invitation.

If you need unlimited credits, our unlimited plan for teachers is: $9/month (or $90/year) for unlimited texts and unlimited classes.

For schools (or other groups of teachers) we offer a bundled plan: $100/month (or $1000/year) for unlimited use up to 20 teachers $200/month (or $2000/year) for unlimited use and unlimited teachers _

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> You already have a website up and running -- the market will review the idea for you.

</comment><comment><USER33> cool idea but many schools have policies where the teacher /ta cannot reach students on personal emails/phone other than school email

</comment><comment><USER34> Good idea, but this on its own may not be that successful. Modern private schools use a combination of Saas apps and email to get info to students and parents. What you need to do is to find out what those major Saas solutions are, and get in bed with them. Also, there is a potential problem if the student replies to a text and replies to everyone that was texted to, which can happen easily on some devices, so it would seem that you'd want to ensure each text is separately sent.

<comment><AUTHOR> Each text is sent separately. And replies go back only to the teacher, who can the reply directly to the student. Good point about the Saas apps out there.</comment></comment>


Too many business ideas, but lack the focus to execute on one? - <AUTHOR> if you have too many business ideas but lack of focus, Pick 1 idea, hand it over to me and ill spend one month building it and handing you over what ive created (and possibly grown) for $1000 - $2000. View some of my work at http://jibly.com as well as contact info. Ive done hardware, software and other businesses as a consultant for large firms and regularly work on side projects. Sometimes all you need is an mvp or anything that attracts your first batch of users and validates the idea. It may not be a 'finished product' in one month, but it will be launched and validated. Feel free to contact me if you're unsure if your idea fits this model. Money back guarantee btw of you're super unhappy. <comment><USER2> It would be better to give HN an idea of what are your capabilities. Of course not all ideas can be something to hand over to in 1 month:)

<comment><AUTHOR> True editid the post. Should be bit more clear. And all is open for discussion

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> not a bad idea, I think we all suffer because of this. What's your email? Vic

<comment><AUTHOR> Find my work and contact info here -> [http://jibly.com](http://jibly.com)</comment></comment>


The Emergence of a Fovea While Learning to Attend (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://bair.berkeley.edu/blog/2017/11/09/learn-to-attend-fovea/ <comment><USER2> Very interesting. And in my opinion it seems to be a more general emerging property of sensorial systems. See:

\- [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3172592/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3172592/) \- [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9336224](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9336224)

</comment><comment><USER3> Steve Mould had an interesting video on eye movement:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaC2RXBss2c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaC2RXBss2c)

The title is "How To Move One Of Your Eyes On Its Own," but the more fascinating content was his description and demonstration of the different kinds of voluntary and involuntary eye movements we make when looking around our world.

</comment><comment><USER4> Very neat! I've just been thinking about how to bring attention models into classification. (references welcome, if anyone knows existing systems...)

<comment><USER5> [https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.09925](https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.09925)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article should have a (2017) tag.

<comment><USER7> So it should. Thanks!

<comment><USER8> Nice! How do you catch these things? Do you read _every_ comment?

<comment><USER7> No, not nearly all! But we do read a boatload of comments.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


China Spying on Undersea Internet Cables - <AUTHOR> https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/04/china_spying_on.html <comment><USER2> "As I have repeatedly said, we need to decide if we are going to build our future Internet systems for security or surveillance. Either everyone gets to spy, or no one gets to spy. And I believe we must choose security over surveillance, and implement a defense-dominant strategy."

Can't agree more!

<comment><USER3> Even if you encrypt all traffic they can still spy you can't prevent physical attacks nor can you prevent government spying trought warrants or by compromising the service and content providers.

It doesn't matter if Facebook is going to be accessible trough TOR only or not if the NSA or any other capable intelligence agency can compromise Facebook.

Even if you do somehow manage to put all physical transport links in the hands of some impenetrable organization the US and China would just send a sub to the ocean and tap the cables.

And just like it's granted that AT&T cables can be accessed by US authorities China can access anything that a Chinese company lays down and likely even with more ease.

<comment><USER4> >Even if you encrypt all traffic they can still spy you can't prevent physical attacks

Yes but a vast swathe of attacks are stopped with good encryption.

Recall for example that TLS ("HTTPS") provides integrity verification, not just encryption.

<comment><USER3> Yes they are but it also doesn't have anything to do with this attack vector where the ISP/backbone is the point of compromise.

<comment><USER5> A) If the traffic going over the backbone is properly encrypted compromise of the backbone doesn't accomplish anything. B) Why can't the backbone nodes be encrypted too so that any attempt to splice the fiber would result in a break of the connection?

<comment><USER3> Some quantom cryptography can work but it's very iffy and expensive, there are ways to detect taps and even when a cable is bent.

Simply cutting the connection because the signal was interupted won't work, not to mention that many taps can be inserted without interruption and it's not like the NSA can't figure out how to work around maintenance windows.

But in this case it's not even a covert unauthorized tap it's a Chinese company ofc they'll cooperate with the Chinese government.

But again encryption doesn't prevent physical attacks of this sort they can still suck all the data out and while it maybe useless unless they can decrypt it this vector has nothing to do with building a secure internet.

The problem is that even if you encrypt everything state actors can simply go one step up the chain at the end of the day someone needs to be able to decrypt your packets besides you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They aren't spying on "undersea cables". They aren't sending subs down to split fibers or plant taps. Those days are long gone.

They are perhaps tapping at point where cables leave the shore, but even that is old hat. With everything being encrypted, and the sheer volume of traffic, intel agencies these days find it much easier to go to the source. If the NSA or China want to read your email, they don't tap undersea cables. They go directly to your email/text/cell service and siphon only the data they want. Or, for things like meta data/location tracking, they can just buy the data like any other company. That is the real future: the commoditization of espionage.

<comment><USER7> > If the NSA or China want to read your email, they don't tap undersea cables

It is naive to say that the NSA does or does not use a particular collection method. The truth is they use them all to varying levels of success.

Upstream collection (targeting the communication medium and infrastructure) has been confirmed dating back to the 70s and as recent as 2013 with the Snowden leaks. Even the PRISM program with its "direct access" to providers like Yahoo and Google was eventually discovered to be tapping the fiber optic links between the companies datacenters without their knowledge or consent.

<comment><USER4> if you build it, they will tap

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how much value there is in tapping undersea cables anymore. HTTPS is pretty well established and companies are encrypting traffic between data centers.

<comment><USER9> Metadata and DPI is still pretty informative.

<comment><USER10> it seems like the obvious solution would be to buy bandwidth on those and just send a continuous bytestream over the cable, as a transport layer, say between "2" and "3" and someone would just have to implement the standard protocols (tcp/udp) over a subscription service to the moving bytestream.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I always wonder how big the spy traffic is?

How many times is the average packet on the internet copied for surveillance purposes, and how much does it slow down the net as a whole?

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm sure all large countries are spying on undersea internet cables.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm already being spyed on by the USA, and have been for probably decades, what's the difference?

<comment><USER14> As the article says, "This shouldn't surprise anyone. For years, the US and the Five Eyes have had a monopoly on spying on the Internet around the globe. Other countries want in."

<comment><USER7> Which has a bad taste of whataboutism.

The huge difference is the NSA collects to achieve political goals. China spies for political and economic benefit. Foreign businesses are frequently targeted with the singular goals of IP theft or gaining leverage in business negotiations.

<comment><USER15> Wow. I'm always astonished by the people who think economic espionage isn't a huge part of Western intelligence services. It is.

The Americans just hide it better and it's entirely within their mandate. China couldn't care less if the world finds out. France is absolutely running wild and has been for decades. Australia has been caught planting bugs in foreign leaders offices for the sole purpose of an oil companies business deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How do they analyze the traffic? Is it possible to get something from these actions?

</comment><comment><USER17> So where in the article does it say that China is spying on the cables?

</comment><comment><USER18> much of the internet traffic is served over TLS these days, DPI and such equipment are becoming more and more useless. But hey, up to L4 is still plaintext!

</comment><comment><USER19> Security has been the red-headed stepchild of software and, in some cases, hardware innovation for a long time. And I agree that it's important to take steps to ensure that changes.

I think two simple principles should be remembered to facilitate this:

1\. Most end users will choose convenience over security

2\. Security without usability is a compromise to security

If developers of these innovative technologies take the time to implement tried-and-tested security/privacy controls while providing easy-to-undersatnd education for non-technical users, then I believe things can certainly improve.

</comment><comment><USER20> Are we just making China the Boogeyman now on hacker news? I'm not trying to be a whataboutist, but literally everything China is doing had been done for decades by everyone else capable of doing that thing. Why are we suddenly up in arms about China?

<comment><USER21> Because the US is engaged in a strategic struggle with China over ideological dominance and influence on world events.

You can see the conflict spanning the South China see to trade relations and economic investment to accusations both directions of misconduct in technology manufacturing.

China has been getting more aggressive due to perceived US weakness, and this kind of PR is part of a multi-pronged US response. As are increased prosecutions for financial crimes and kicking up a fuss over the trade deal.</comment></comment>