dmi

I think their point was that map/filter _individually_ look identical in most languages, i.e. map looks the same across most languages, and filter looks the same across languages, not that map and filter look identical to each other in most languages.

Yes, it's amazing how often hearing assistance systems are either unusable (due to bad sound, e.g. hiss or distortion or volume issues) or just flat-out don't work here in the UK.

Not a bad option for a lecture theatre, but it's worth noting that IR is line-of-sight and can be easily interrupted by people moving or the receiver twisting as you shift position. Multiple emitters can help with some of this, but there are still challenges.

There are wifi-based systems (like Sennheiser MobileConnect or Williams WAVECast), and my experience has been universally awful. The latency is so high that if you have any ambient hearing you get an echo that makes sound impossible to understand.

If you're ever considering installing one of these systems, please think again. Or at least trial it with a real situation, so you know what the experience will be like for the users.

It's a chicken-and-egg thing. Not many devices have it, so not many venues install it. Not many venues have it (perhaps because they've invested in other systems), and there's no pressure to change until there are many people wanting to use it.

Hearing aids are at a frustrating crossroads at the moment, IMO. In my experience, a lot of the recent hearing aids don't seem to support induction loops. It often seems to be a choice between that or Bluetooth... and Auracast isn't ready yet.

I've had Phonak bilateral hearing aids for 5 years, and Starkey unilateral for ~5 years before that. None of those have supported induction loops.

> If all you want to send is an array of integers, why should you have to put it into a struct first?

If you're sure that's all you'll ever have to do, then sure. But unless you're 100% certain that the protocol will never evolve further, having a more complex structure allows it to change in a gradual way.

Ah yes, I forgot they do that. That's a really helpful idea, thanks!

I'm based in Herts/London, so a bit out of the way for a casual meet :-)

To add to this — I suffer from Ménière's disease, which manifests for me as variable hearing loss. Some days are bad, and I can hardly hear/understand speech even when someone is right in front of me and I can lip-read. Some days are good, and my hearing aids are uncomfortably loud or make things sound "weird". But most days, my hearing aids do exactly what I need them to :-)

I've had audiograms taken on moderate and bad days, and the difference in frequency response was significant (up to 30dBA difference across only the lower frequency bands).

The app for my hearing aids allows my audiologist to make remote adjustments, so I don't even need to visit their office for straightforward changes. I really want to reverse-engineer it so that I can modify some of the details of the profiles myself.