Curious, is that your first pair of phonaks? If not, is the use use of bluetooth + app hurting your soul?
My current pair are about 6 years old, working fine still, thankfully... But in a recent visit to audiologist, they had me test out a newer pair... but they had a single button instead of rocker + button, and bluetooth/app was touted.
I dread the touchscreen phase of HA as a young person with functional fingers (vs elders with dexterity issues) and a preference for physical buttons (a la my 2009 car).
The idea of autoswitching the programs outside limited cases (direct audio input cables and increasingly-rare telecoil situations are the only things I would accept) also doesn't sound great! :)
Connecting to the app takes forever and frequently fails. It seems to clash with the Android device pairing somehow. It's not great. The only workaround I've found (if restarting the things by opening/closing the battery compartment doesn't work) is to remove the pairing and set them up again.
I also would prefer to set up the programs once and then switch them with physical buttons. I had my audiologist do something like that with my old pair. New audiologist now that doesn't seem as flexible, or maybe it's not possible.
The bad app experience is honestly a reason for me to look at other brands for my next pair.
I'd like to think that a bit of a learning curve is okay for something that's basically an extension of your body, but everything seems to be getting stevejobsified these days. (I'll be driving my 2006 Saab until my mechanic either retires or runs out of spare parts!)
> I also would prefer to set up the programs once and then switch them with physical buttons. [...] The bad app experience is honestly a reason for me to look at other brands for my next pair.
While the latter is probably the preferred approach for dealing with the issue, I'll admit my mind first went to:
If you've got time for a side-project maybe consider reverse engineering the Android app's Bluetooth support... and, you know, "just" re-implement the same thing in some stand alone hardware. :)
There may even already be a project related to your device--I'm aware of multiple health/medical-tech/device related reverse engineering projects that were primarily driven people with programming/hardware experience wanting to avoid crappy vendor apps & have control of very personally relevant devices.
Maybe you're thinking about the costs of getting a cochlear implant?
Having worn hearing aids for 3 decades (in the US), and not going cheap, the high end name-brand ones have always been about 4-6k for a pair. (and most of the time growing up, health insurance didn't cover it)
From everything I've ever seen or in any conversation online, 50k is either a misremembered or made up number for BTE or in-the-canal hearing aids.
Glad to help! At my recent audiologist appointment, it escalated to being suggested that I go for a cochlear implant consultation for one of my ears (I figured why not, despite not personally thinking this was something I'd do any time soon). Apparently it's actually quite possibly mostly covered by my health insurance due to showing medical necessity...
I'm fortunate that I could reasonably plan to pay for it myself... the bigger hold-up/concern/issue has been the drastic change in "how I hear" that it would involve. (experiences are widely variable it sounds like, but loosely about a year for the brain to gradually learn and improve how it uses the new input?)
I haven't even opened the manufacturers' books given to me, or done more research on the possibility since that appointment though...
My phonak HAs have some directional noise cancellation (or biasing at least; I don't have rigorous definitions for these terms)... It helps but isn't great.
Has a problem that I think the AI headphones wouldn't solve either: in a (non-quiet) group setting you still need to anticipate who's going to speak when and look at them for best results.
The direction bit is just biasing to preferring forward stuff (via two mics on each ear's HA).
Sadly, no backwards bias option for overhearing people behind you ;)
It's a bit physically trickier than that due to curved tubing and ear molds... but I could totally "try" it with friends, e.g. rotating the BTE hearing aid 180 so it's forward, and they'd have fun too.
I think... it has to do with "start with" part of their statement (as in where to start to find what different people can hopefully reach a consensus on), as a more-likely-to-be agreeable thing than the general "killing a person".
what good will consensus on a statement everyone already agrees on help with ? nobody is ok innocents with being executed[2] . Even the Texan criminal justice system responsible for a third of the about 1600 executions since 1976 will say they don't want innocent to be executed. They just say everyone is guilty.
The methods to establish innocence or exonerate[1] in legal systems objectively are extremely difficult or impossible. People will never be able to agree on who is innocent, no matter how obvious it looks to you or me.
DNA evidences have exonerated many in the recent years, many of the executed were mentally ill, a lot of the evidence is circumstantial and based on unreliable testimony which all too frequently is racially colored, there is no certainty they did the act they are accused of, let alone deserve to die for it.
The only meaningful consensus that can actually make a difference is that death penalty should be abolished.
It is barbaric and morally abhorrent,it is also not ineffective as a punishment, is not deterrent, and also extremely expensive.
---
[1] Pardons is not one of them, pardons require admission of guilt
[2] Innocent Americans that is, we are quite fine with "collateral damage" of women and children without any due process in drone strikes or now in Gaza.
Seems like a pretty human thing to do, or at least something I (a human I think) have done. Type a bunch of sentences about a couple nouns and occasionally your brain types the other one as you're thinking ahead!
Certainly, I try to catch my own mistakes like this, but we've had years of hastily written online articles with typos/mistakes like this, that were fed right in to the various "AIs".
I only scrolled through the article, reading snippets and looking at pictures, but the pictures of yoga moves were what caught my attention of "this is hard". Specifically, interpolating between a leg that's visible and extended, to a leg that is obscured/behind other limbs... it will be impressive/magical when the AI correctly distinguishes between possibilities like "this thing should fade/vanish", and "this thing should fold and move behind/be obscured other parts of the image".
Curious: do you include Earthsea novels in that tier?
Maybe it was just me not trying hard enough at the time (a decade+ ago); I wanted to read LHoD but couldn't get my hands on it. I know it's now available as an ebook more easily, but I remain a bit peeved about how it was the one thing I couldn't buy legitimately at the time.
That combined with not enjoying Earthsea (I read two or three books?), makes me biased to keep reading any online recommendations but Le Guin.
I liked The Left Hand of Darkness and loved The Dispossessed.
I didn't like the first Earthsea novel and haven't read any others. I suspect it's a book that tends to work better for young readers, or older readers nostalgic for things they read in their youth.
Someone recommended that I skip straight to Tehanu, the last Earthsea book, and that was let me get Earthsea. I didn't actually follow that advice, I read all of the books in order, but knowing that I had Tehanu coming made it easier to get through the others.
It's not perfect, but I think where the other books are interesting but simple stories for children, Tehanu feels like it was written for those children as they've grown up - it's basically (without spoiling too much) the retirement and twilight years of characters from the rest of the series. And as a result, it feels like a more applicable or relevant story.
You may already know this, but just in case, Tehanu is no longer the last Earthsea book. It is followed by the collection Tales From Earthsea and then The Other Wind.
For anyone reading this thread, I strongly recommend The Other Wind. It's a wonderfully emotional book about loss and about the importance of everyone in the endeavor to fix the world.
I know about Tales From Earthsea but decided I didn't need to read additional sort stories set in the same world. I didn't know about The Other Wind, thanks for letting me know!
I discarded my copy of Tales From Earthsea, but thought The Other Wind was very good indeed. On the other hand, I didn't like Tehanu, so that might help you decide whether my advice is for you or not.
The stories in Tales From Earthsea are a lot closer to Tehanu than they are to the earlier books, for what that's worth. I get it if they're just not your thing, though; life is short and there's only so much time to read.
Earthsea put me off LeGuin for a while too. It was targeted at Young Adults and though it has its moments it lacks the richness and philosophical insights of her best.
Hah! Not actually a robot... but I half suspect I could convince the that wife a fold-out arm with a modest clamp (that could rotate a bit if needed) at the end would be worth mounting to a wall along the kitchen counters for holding/draining various containers like your first two use-cases.
Nice idea for helping convince! I too am for the functional stuff; I use a tension rod (like used for shower curtains sometimes) between cupboards, over the kitchen sink to hang S hooks off, and let a significant number of pots and pans hang to dry after washing.
My current pair are about 6 years old, working fine still, thankfully... But in a recent visit to audiologist, they had me test out a newer pair... but they had a single button instead of rocker + button, and bluetooth/app was touted.
I dread the touchscreen phase of HA as a young person with functional fingers (vs elders with dexterity issues) and a preference for physical buttons (a la my 2009 car).
The idea of autoswitching the programs outside limited cases (direct audio input cables and increasingly-rare telecoil situations are the only things I would accept) also doesn't sound great! :)