richarme

Cool to see the Invoke getting mentioned!

I was the engineering lead on that product, and built a SW platform from scratch for it (Microsoft provided an SDK to Cortana which they developed in parallel.)

The internal build could actually run Cortana, Alexa and Google Assistant simultaneously and you could e.g. set an alarm with one of them and query it with another, and they could interrupt each other based on priority. Obviously nobody wanted that feature, but it was hella cool that it worked. Oh, and you could make Skype calls from across the room, and the microphone array lived up to Skype's tough certification requirements which took weeks of testing in Microsoft's anechoic chamber for the DSP/algorithm team to fine tune.

I tried to push for open-sourcing the platform but it was tricky because 1) the director of engineering in Harman didn't know what open source meant and for a hardware focused business to understand the value was a hard sell, 2) it used a HW module that came with a SW stack I mostly got rid off but a few parts were remaining that would need to be replaced which would require additional resources, 3) I was burned out at that point and had limited energy left to fight the good fight. Really too bad, it could have been a cool voice agent development platform, and I honestly think it would have sold in large volumes as a developer-friendly device.

Glad you like it, sorry about the remaining Bluetooth bugs nobody got around to fix, since it basically flopped instantly.

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Disagree. I think adults with ADHD are well aware that they are not "normal" with respect to many of the symptoms, even if they don't know it's due to ADHD. At least that's my personal experience.

Few examples off the top of my head:

- being unable to pay bills/fines on time even with plenty of money in the bank.

- being physically unable to keep sitting in a chair after a while in meetings.

It's easy to see that most people around you don't exhibit such traits.

Nit: Google's project was called Soli.

Good memories from a more innocent time. The ICQ client truncated long filenames in the UI, so you could send "image.jpg (50 spaces) .exe" which would open an embedded picture and install a back-door while just seeming like regular picture.

I do miss casually texting with people on the computer rather than the phone, and I don't think it's only due to nostalgia or having more leisure time back then:

- If someone was online, it would typically be a good time for a casual, interactive chat. Texting someone on the phone is (at least for me) rarely "live", because it usually happens at an inconvenient time for one of the parties.

- Much faster to type, and easier to copy-paste stuff from other places. Can communicate almost as effortlessly as a spoken conversation.

- Easier to multi-task in case of a slow reply.

I don't enjoy texting on the phone. Millennial logging out for the last time. AFK BRB.

Is your mother tongue Finnish? I always found Japanese to have somewhat similar sounds. And as a bonus hint, you're missing a "the" in your first sentence ;)

Ah yes, absolutely agree. You were referring to the EU as a whole, and I was specifically thinking about the parliament.

I think you're probably right, but sometimes I wonder if a bit of distance can be a good thing. Perhaps a slight distance can make populism less viable while still being effective at representing the low-pass filtered will of the people in a sense.

And perhaps the lower public mindshare might help insulate against people with ambitions but not people's best interest at heart. Or this is crazy talk, not sure which one it is :)

I'm building something that solves this exact problem, and I'll have an alpha version ready soon. Drop me a mail at marc@ my username .net, if you're interested. I'd also really like to have a chat about your use cases if you're up for it.

Cheers, Marc