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WIRED
a day ago
- Health
- WIRED
I Tried Hear.com's At-Home Test for New Prescription Hearing Aids. Here's How It Works
You no longer need to leave the house to be fitted with prescription hearing aids. All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links. Putting aside their exorbitant cost, the trouble with prescription hearing aids is the prescription. Find a doctor. Get an appointment. Sit in a waiting room. Suffer through an hour of testing before getting the hard sell on a pair of hearing aids. Why, the indignity of it all is even worse than going deaf. Telehealth offers a glimmer of a solution, but as everyone who's tried to show off a concerning mole to a doctor via a smartphone camera knows: Video technology can only get you so far. Audiological testing requires significant one-on-one interaction and plenty of technology to back that up. Every audiogram I've sat for has been inside a sophisticated, soundproof chamber. company that sells prescription hearing aids online and via traditional retail channels —has a workaround. It puts all the technology needed to perform a full-on hearing test in a box and mails it to you along with a set of prescription hearing aids, then walks you through the whole thing with an audiologist via a video call. I've taken virtual hearing test twice—this is what a tele-hearing exam looks like, should you decide to take one. It's All Online The process begins with a simple discussion. If you've never had hearing aids before, this is probably a good first step; veterans will likely skip it, especially if they know what model hearing aids they want (or how much they want to spend). A salesperson will discuss your personal impressions of your hearing loss, any hearing aid devices you have tried, prior audiological testing, and your budget (along with any insurance you have). From there, they will suggest the best hearing aids (from their product line) to meet your needs, though you can also advocate for a specific product if you've already identified one. Next, you'll set a time for your testing and hearing aid fitting, and a few days later, a box will arrive on your doorstep. Open it up, and the collection of hardware and the tangle of wires connecting it all may seem daunting, but rest assured, with even a modicum of technical knowledge, it all goes together quickly, and professionals can guide you through any confusion over the phone. Despite the significant amount of gear inside, the box is about as organized as it can get. On top, you'll find a Microsoft Surface tablet that has been stripped down to do just one thing: serve as the conduit for a video-based audiology session. After plugging the Surface into wall power, you'll find a USB breakout box to connect to the Surface's USB port. Assuming all the other devices are still properly plugged into that USB breakout box (which is far from assured; it's good to check everything is snug), you are effectively good to go. The Surface has no other functionality besides initiating the call with the audiology professional, and at the scheduled time you tap a button on the screen to get the session underway. After greeting you, the audiologist will guide you through a series of tests. First is a physical exam of your ears, which is made possible thanks to the included USB-powered otoscope, which you probably know better as the lighted tool with the black, conical tip a doctor uses to look into your ear canal. There's no doctor to guide the tool by hand, so the audiologist will tell you how to position it in each ear so they can get a good look at your eardrum. And yes, you, too, can see what the doctor sees right on the Surface's screen. Spoiler: There is more wax inside your ear canal than you think. Can You Hear Me Now? Assuming you have no physical damage that would preclude hearing aid use, it's on to the traditional hearing exams. This series of tests will consume the bulk of the appointment time, and most involve wearing a pair of oversize, noise-isolating headsets like professional musicians use. The tests were very familiar to me, starting with tones played at varying frequencies and volume levels in each ear, during which you tap the Surface screen whenever you hear something. The test is then repeated with a bone-conduction appliance that attaches to your forehead with a Velcro band for another look at the way you process sound. Lastly, a third test measures your ability to distinguish various consonant and vowel sounds— sh vs. ch , for example—which is performed by having you repeat the words you think you hear back to the audiologist multiple times. From all of this data, an audiogram is synthesized and presented on the screen of the Surface. Quality-wise, my audiogram was nearly identical to the last professional audiogram I received in 2023 in an office setting. audiogram was even more detailed, because it tested my hearing at nine different frequencies, one more than the in-person visit. After going over the audiogram with me to discuss the particulars of my hearing loss, audiologist moved on to the hearing aid fitting. You'll have purchased the hearing aids you're about to put on already and will find them in the box, inside a charger that notes they are fully charged and ready to use. If for some reason these aids aren't appropriate for the hearing loss measured in the testing, will recommend an alternative at that time, but most customers should have a set in hand that will meet their needs, based on the previous intake call. The aids are programmed remotely and wirelessly via another device connected to the USB breakout box, and I was directed to put the hearing aids on and then put them back in the charging case repeatedly so we could tweak the sound profile to my liking. Again, this is a standard process identical to how things would be done in a doctor's office. The doctor will then train a hearing aid novice on how to insert, charge, and clean the aids and go over any lingering paperwork that needs to be dealt with. sells its own hearing aids under the Horizon brand, which are private-labeled Signia hearing aids in the Signia IX series. There's not an easy way to see exactly which models offers on its website, but they range from the Horizon 1IX ($1,975) to the Horizon 7IX ($4,950), the latter of which is what I was sent to try. Monthly payment plans are available for everything, and all of its hearing aids come with a 45-day money-back guarantee. When the hour-long session is up, you'll be directed to keep all the testing hardware for a while until you are certain the aids work for you. A follow-up call a few weeks later will check on your progress (there's a learning curve with all hearing aids) and, once you're satisfied, you'll be instructed to return the testing equipment via a prepaid shipping label in the box. I'll need to continue testing for longer, but so far, the Horizon hearing aids work great. Even better is the way you go about getting them fitted.
South China Morning Post
27-05-2025
- Business
- South China Morning Post
ByteDance upgrades Doubao AI app with real-time interactive video call function
TikTok parent ByteDance has upgraded its Doubao chatbot, one of China's most popular consumer-facing artificial intelligence (AI) apps , with the recent launch of a real-time video call function that turns the app into an interactive digital assistant. Advertisement The function allows users to engage in an interactive video conversation with the AI technology behind the chatbot, according to an announcement last Friday via Doubao's WeChat account. Users can activate the function by simply turning on their smartphone 's camera during a voice call. Once activated, Doubao can automatically serve in real time as a docent during a museum tour; a tutor with gardening knowledge when observing plants; a recipe master when shopping for ingredients at a grocery store; and an analyst when studying charts, graphs or videos. According to Doubao, the new function was built on ByteDance's visual reasoning AI model, which integrates visual and language inputs to support content creation and in-depth study of subject matter. It also supports online search to obtain the latest information from the internet. Doubao's real-time, interactive video call function shows the latest progress made by ByteDance in generative AI (GenAI), showcasing the advanced multimodal capabilities of products built on its own AI models. GenAI refers to algorithms used to create new content, including audio, code, images, text, simulations and videos. Advertisement Earlier this month, Doubao promoted its capabilities to turn any photo into pixel art. In February, parent ByteDance introduced its OmniHuman-1 multimodal AI model , which gained widespread attention for its ability to transform photos and sound bites into realistic videos.
Telegraph
16-05-2025
- Telegraph
City worker sacked after accidentally flashing genitals on video call
Many people have nightmares about going to a meeting only to find they are talking to the boss without wearing any underwear. For one former City worker, the horror scenario became a reality. An employee at the UK's Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) was fired from his job after he accidentally flashed his genitals on a video call, an employment tribunal heard. He was sacked from his £58,580-a-year job as a digital production manager after he stood up on a Teams call while trying to fix a cable behind his computer, without wearing any trousers. In a ruling, the employment tribunal said: 'During the call, after approximately three minutes 26 seconds, the claimant stood to adjust a cable behind the computer and revealed he was wearing nothing from the waist down. His genitals were visible.' He was fired after two people on the call, who were both Capgemini consultants based in India, complained about the incident to the FSCS the following week, leading to the launch of an internal investigation. The inquiry found that the staffer had accidentally revealed his genitalia on the call due to being 'inappropriately dressed' and 'naked from the waist down'. In seeking to explain the incident to his line manager, the FSCS staffer said in an email that he had not realised his camera was on when he stood up and that he had immediately closed his laptop when he became aware he was on video. The worker, referred to as DB in the employment tribunal's ruling, was later fired from his job at the FSCS in January 2024, for breaching rules that require employees be dressed appropriately. He subsequently filed a complaint against his former employer for unfair dismissal in February last year, while alleging he was also subject to racial discrimination while working at the City body. In his defence, the employee claimed he should not be held culpable for accidentally flashing his genitals as the incident happened on a bank holiday, when he should not have been working. The staffer, who was born in India, says he was also repeatedly rejected for internal job moves inside the FSCS due to his ethnicity. He also claimed that the fact he was forced to work on a bank holiday was further evidence of racial discrimination. The employment tribunal dismissed claims he was unfairly sacked or subject to racial discrimination. It instead ruled he was lawfully sacked from the FSCS over the incident on the video call. The tribunal said: 'We find that the claimant chose not to wear either trousers or underwear on May 8 2022. Instead he deliberately chose to be naked from the waist down. This led to an obvious risk. 'The claimant was an employee in a leadership role. He was dealing with external consultants. He should have realised that being naked was inappropriate, regardless of any policy.' The tribunal said the FSCS employee's claims of racial discrimination were factually inaccurate and not well founded, as it ruled he had, in fact chosen to work on the bank holiday, rather than being forced into doing so. The case is the latest of a series of similar incidents involving video calls, including one involving one of the New Yorker magazine's longest-standing staff writers, who was sacked for allegedly masturbating on a Zoom call. Jeffrey Toobin, one of America's most prominent legal authors and commentators, apologised for the 'embarrassingly stupid mistake, believing I was off-camera'. Canadian politician William Amos apologised in 2021 after he was spotted urinating during a parliamentary meeting on Zoom.
Washington Post
08-05-2025
- General
- Washington Post
Cuban mother deported from US pleads with Trump to reunite with her family
HAVANA — Ten times a day for the past two weeks, Heidy Sánchez has made the same two-block trek from her parents' home in Havana looking for an internet signal to video call her family and sing her daughter to sleep. And every single time she has ended up crying.
