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.
At one point, you could leave an open <script> tag at the end of the HTML with the language attribute set to "javascript9.9" or something non-existent, and the JavaScript banner ads wouldn't load.
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.
Yes, but adults who have ADHD, but neither know it nor suspect they may have it, will look for alternative explanations to make sense of their consistent failures at things other people seem to handle fine. A common one they arrive at is character flaws. They'll see themselves as lazy or childish, and as they try and fail to correct it, they'll internalize guilt and shame.
"Surely everyone else gets distracted this much" is exactly the kind of belief that creates and reinforces feelings of guilt.
People need systems. Oh, I forgot to pay that bill on time. Oh I forgot again. And again. And again. Maybe I have ADHD? Whoops, forgot to pay the bill.
Maybe they do have ADHD, maybe they don't. Maybe they should get diagnosed so they can learn more about it and find strategies for dealing with it instead of blaming it.
But regardless, just find something that works for you and stop making excuses. I used to forget my wallet, keys, and/or employee badge. Now I keep a wooden bowl near my front door, and keep those items in there and only those items in there. When I leave, I put those items in my pockets and go. When I come home, I puts them back in the bowl. Simple routine. Prevents forgetting.
Bills go on autopay. If you can't autopay for some reason, put it in your calendar. Forget to check your calendar? Set an alarm that you have to dismiss.
> Maybe they do have ADHD, maybe they don't. Maybe they should get diagnosed so they can learn more about it and find strategies for dealing with it instead of blaming it.
Cool, I wish it was that simple but I don't think you realize how screwed up the system is. The waiting lists are YEARS long in many places, and many people with ADHD (I would dare to speculate the majority) get misdiagnosed with just anxiety and depression at some point, for women it's even harder and they're often misdiagnosed with bipolar.
The fight to even get your struggles appropriately recognized is long and exhausting, often requiring energy that people with ADHD just don't have.
> But regardless, just find something that works for you and stop making excuses.
This sort of advice is perhaps the most common form of gaslighting that individuals with ADHD experience from childhood up to present day and I don't think you understand how damaging it is.
People with ADHD should still make an effort, but these aren't just "excuses" and the fact is that the majority will never be able to consistently perform at the same level as non-ADHD people of similar intelligence. If I can't find something that works, and people who should know better say I'm "healthy", then this means I'm suffering from a character flaw like laziness.
This is the highway to guilt, self-loathing and internalized shame, which eventually leads to suicidal ideation (1 in 4 people with ADHD) and approximately half of those will attempt to take their own life at some point.
Obviously certain systems can and do work for certain people, but they're not a solution and chances are that the people you're lecturing have already tried various systems and still struggle.
How are you accommodating people who you think are using ADHD as an excuse?
> put it in your calendar. Forget to check your calendar? Set an alarm that you have to dismiss.
Autopay is a valid tactic, but other suggestions just don't work consistently. Even if there's an alarm that has to be dismissed, there's a chance that you'll dismiss the alarm, go to pay the bill and then get sidetracked by a random chore and completely forget about it again.
That's why ADHD is a disorder and a disability, not just a personality quirk. I hope that you mean well, but you're spreading very unhelpful and potentially damaging commentary on the topic.
Sorry, I probably shouldn't have said it like that but I do want to clarify one thing. When I said "excuses" I meant for themselves not for other people. As in folks with ADHD do deserve some affordances or understanding from others (myself included), but I think it's more healthy to look for solutions than to consistently blame all your problems on whatever you have going on in life (ADHD or otherwise) and avoid dealing with the situation head on. Don't beat yourself up about either, of course, but try to find some creative solutions if possible.
> How are you accommodating people who you think are using ADHD as an excuse?
There are two people in my life with ADHD. I think so anyway. My good friend was diagnosed, my wife hasn't been but we think she is. Neither really use it as an excuse. My friend talks about it occasionally, it affects some aspects of his life, but it's just never been a problem for our friendship. If we let him, he will keep talking into the wee hours of the night even when it's time for him to go. We just drop more and more obvious hints that it's time to go home until he gets the idea or his wife drags him out. My wife OTOH forgets all her belongings when we leave the house, and when she gets to talking I can't say a word to her, just in one ear and out the other, she has to finish her story. I just go about my day and do what I need to do while she keeps talking. I'll cook, put the food right in her hands, whatever needs to happen because she won't be able to fulfill simple tasks when she gets going. And when I leave the house I just ask her if she has this, this, this, this and this. She'll still forget something but it is what it is. So that's how I "accommodate" them. I recognize when they're hyper-fixated on something and I just work with it. I don't blame them and I don't think it's a personal failure on their part.
My friend, by the way, works with me at FAANG. I say this to give people hope. I certainly don't want anyone to feel shame or have thoughts of suicide. Y'all can do great things and live great lives.
I have plenty of money in the bank. I work for myself and set my own schedule. Yet my bills, fines, and letters pile up and accrue late fees constantly. I've filed my taxes late like 7 out of the last 10 years.
Maybe I'm naive, but the thought has never occurred to me, "Maybe it's because I have ADHD."
This is achieved using Acoustic Echo Canellation (AEC). This essentially subtracts the output of the speaker as well as reverberations from the room from the microphone input. Here's a youtube video explaining the basic principle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJKGrheOoY4
This is also the reason you can (sometimes) video conference on your laptop without headphones plugged in. The software does not (or at least tries not to) record its own output.
You only notice it if you try to use different devices for speakers and microphone - you'll get a feedback loop, since the AEC only works on the same device.
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.
That was my favorite feature. And the random match part, way earlier than ChatRoulette. I remember talking to some kid in the Philippines about the history of her country and mine (Spain). Mind-blowing at the time.
I only use the phone to send messages when I'm not at home, otherwise I use the computer. One of the best things about Telegram is their good desktop client, they even have online indicators like ICQ.
This was true for ICQ as well, in a way. I used some java app on my Sony Ericsson phone back in the day to read and send ICQ messages, but of course back then you had to connect to the internet explicitly, phones weren't always online so it was of limited use but still cool.
don't forget they had terrible security even for the time. In their client you could do text customizations like bold, italic, etc. and they did it by just sending HTML over the wire.
This meant that if you used a custom client (which they didn't allow), you could just send HTML which got evaluated so you could force users to download stuff or send HTML forms or iframes
When this became semi public (in hacker circles) they went after the people talking about it with legal action instead of fixing their stuff
Eww, I wasn't even aware of that. I thought the filename UI issue was actually kind of a subtle fail and I was proud to find it, but that one is terrible.
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 ;)
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 :)
That isn't a good development at all. Problem is that this distance isn't realized for large interest groups. This bill is an example. It is still on the menu despite numerous lobbying attempts have been made public.
The EU shifted power from voters to larger groups with particular interests. Those groups have the resources to address people in Brussels, while voters have more or less no voice or impact.
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.