dmi

It's a phrase that's been around for years to mean "poor quality" (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/recorded-with-a-potato). One theory behind the term is that the recording device was so bad/low-tech, it could be powered by a potato battery.

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.

FWIW, it is also possible to get standalone induction receivers that you can plug headphones into, which can be useful for "is this working" checks (for example https://www.ampetronic.com/products/ilr3-audio-induction-loo...). However you really need someone with hearing aids to tell if it's useful or not.

I visit the theatre a lot: ~50 West End visits in 2025, plus several regional venues. It's amazing how many times I've had to abandon the hearing assistance system because it doesn't work well... too quiet, distorted, delayed, poor balance between voices and instruments. Sometimes it just isn't functional at all, and nobody's noticed.

While I'm on the subject: saying "it's a loud show, you'll be able to hear fine" is a bit like telling someone who's short-sighted but has no glasses that "it's a bright show, you'll be able to see". It's not just about volume, but clarity and understanding.

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.

I've been using Ctrl-[ instead of Esc for so long that I forget that a lot of people don't know about it. This may not be convenient on non-English keyboard layouts.

More alternatives: https://vim.fandom.com/wiki/Avoid_the_escape_key

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 :-)

Is anyone aware of similar resources for learning BSL (British Sign Language)?

I've done a couple of in-person courses, but I'd really like to learn more vocabulary at my own pace. So far I haven't found much other than a couple of dictionaries (e.g. https://www.signbsl.com/ and https://bslsignbank.ucl.ac.uk/dictionary/), but it's not been hugely helpful in learning which signs are common in my region. I also find that just looking up examples of signs I don't know never really helps me learn.

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.

My (Phonak) hearing aids had a multi-week ramp-up to full power, in order to give my brain time to slowly adjust. Dealing with things like the occlusion effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occlusion_effect) just takes time, and getting used to something being in your ear for a large number of hours per day.

Interesting; I learned a slightly different set of associations with mnemonics for the sounds as well. 0, 2, and 3 were the same as this system:

  0 = the word zero has an s/z sound
  1 = a single line, like lower-case "L"
  2 = two lines, like lower-case "N"
  3 = three lines, like lower-case "M"
  4 = the word "four" ends in an "R" sound
  5 = the word "five" contains "F" and "V"
  6 = the digit looks like a lower-case "B", and lower-case "D" is its mirror image
  7 = the digit looks like a badly-written upper-case "T"
  8 = the "gh" in the word is weird, and reminiscent of "CH"/"SH" (and "J" is similar)
  9 = the digit looks like a lower-case "G", which is similar to lower-case "Q", and lower-case "P" is its mirror image

It's kind of like the "correct horse battery staple" thing (https://xkcd.com/936/); words are easier to memorise, especially if you can create a narrative, however tiny.

I think it's important to highlight that it's definitely about context rather than ownership when adding a name or bug number to a TODO comment.

"// TODO(dmi): update after moving to Java8" doesn't necessarily mean that it's _me_ that has to fix it, but that someone can come to me and say "Tell me more about this". This took me a while to learn/remember, but it's very helpful. The hardest part for me to keep in mind was that someone else's name on a TODO shouldn't mean I ignore it.

I had exactly the same situation while at a startup, which got spotted by myself ("Woah why did my taxes jump?") and my employer ("What's this weird tax code?"). Getting it fixed with HMRC was almost trivial, and the refund was very nice.

Years later, I moved to the US. I'm sure it's probably less bad if you've grown up with this system, but I still have no idea what to change (or by how much) to make sure I don't owe taxes next year. I don't understand how to play the tax game, so I'm pretty sure I'm paying much more than I should.

However, a friend has an interestingly different approach: pay as little as possible in taxes throughout the year, set aside what you estimate your tax burden will be, keep the interest, and pay it all in one lump sum at tax time. They refer to this as "not giving the government an interest-free loan".

Edited to add: I never thought I'd say this, but... I miss HMRC.