It's such a shame they were never able to invest the SS fund in something productive. The WSJ had an article a few weeks ago that put the lost earnings close to $1 trillion.
I have long lamented the industries change from small format paperbacks to "Trade" sized and then hardcover.
I dont want those massive expensive lumps of dead tree's they cost more, take up more space on the shelf and backpack and are harder to hold and read.
Its gotten to the point i just dont buy books anymore.
I miss the days of reading in bed my small format paperback.
Indeed. I worked there for about 4.5 years, initially on the clinical programming software (the software that makes it as easy as possible for a clinician to setup various channel levels for the hearing part of the device and how they map to electrodes). It was a fair bit of fun doing it.
I ended up wanting a change and went and worked on the TIKI (Totally Implantable Cochlear (K?) Implant). During that time, Cochlear ran into some profit problems (circa 2000 ish?) and they did the redundancy thing for nearly everyone on the TIKI project. That was my first redundancy..
A TIKI device was eventually implanted in a volunteer subject. It was found to hear too much body/blood flow noise and was deemed unsuccessful. The device was made to operate as a normal implant as well, so they simply got an external speech processor and they were able to hear.
It would be interesting to hear how and how well Med-El managed to filter out the body noise from the internal device.
Often, engineering in Australia is hard to come by. We're a small nation in terms of population. If you've got a great idea and you have good people, you can still go far. Cochlear is one example. Resmed is the other Australian medical device success story. There are failure stories too like the Telectronics pacemaker whose wire insulation perished over time...
I'm really hoping QSAT (https://qsat.au/) will be another Australian success story. QSAT have a very neat satellite ground based comms system that can track and communicate with multiple satellites simultaneously. It's derived from the CSIRO phased array project. Unfortunately CSIRO looks like it's fading away. It is also harder for QSAT (probably most Oz startups?) to find startup capital in Oz. In the US you can pick up 0.5Mill of the side of the road....
I really do wish QSAT well. They have an innovative product and excellent people working on it.
a fun fact, in Melbourne there's a lane called "bionic ear lane", located just behind the royal victorian eye and ear hospital which I believe was where the first implant was installed
It's a reach to even say that's a function of government. It's definitely not a primary function. Outside of a few relatively brief failed experiments, it's not historically something that government does at all.
>become a good citizen
these are skills.
these are what you teach your children.
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