Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#171

Post by ocdtrekkie » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 3:32 PM UTC

kkielhofner wrote: post #127

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #13

This is really, really unfortunate. One of the last on-device speech companies is being bought out and moved into Microsoft's cloud division. Expect nobody to be willing to sell you speech recognition without a cloud subscription now.

Not quite "on device" but Microsoft Azure provides Speech Cognitive Services as containers that you can run in your local environment: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/sp... I believe Google Cloud Platform has something similar available (not sure about AWS).

I use desktop PCs as my "device", so hardware power isn't really an issue here, but the fact that it's still usage priced would be the big issue.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#172

Post by fakedang » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 3:33 PM UTC

FireBeyond wrote: post #150

xwolfi wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

When I left Australia, which is now 14 years ago, so grain of salt: you paid 1% income tax for Medicare, unless you were above a certain income level, in which it became 1.5%. If you opted out of the system, you could purchase private insurance, and would not be subject to this tax. There was a floor, where below or near "minimum income" levels, you were also not required to pay this tax. > For instance, you can use…

I don't know why you want to draw comparisons to the Australian system here. We're comparing European to American, and the vast amount of ignorant thought in Europe about how healthcare is free.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#173

Post by gogopuppygogo » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 3:33 PM UTC

somethingAlex wrote: post #167

I'm not super deep into the world to NLP, but from what I have kept up with, it seems that the state-of-the-art is almost constantly open-sourced. I understand certain companies have personal relationships already built which may be what MS is after more so than the IP, but isn't there a "canonical" way of building a, for example, speech to text system for your phone? Is there really a lot of NLP IP hidden behind cor…

The hardest part of running a 10 mile marathon for most people is the last mile.

Lots of amazing open source out there but the difference between 90% accuracy and 99.7% accuracy can be very difficult to obtain.

Not to mention, quantified data sets, especially medical ones, can hold immense value.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#174

Post by fakedang » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 3:34 PM UTC

andybak wrote: post #151

xwolfi wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> before fleeing communism to move to China Is there some level of humour here that I'm missing? (and yes I know all the subtleties around the Chinese system. But still - that's a heck of a sentence to throw out uncritically)

He makes a lot of valid points about the unsustainability of the European system, but yeah couldn't help a chuckle at that line.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#175

Post by bentcorner » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 3:35 PM UTC

mattowen_uk wrote: post #161

idiotsecant wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that in-car infotainment systems should be nothing but a dumb terminal into your phone. We already have devices with voice recognition, navigation, multimedia, etc. Why don't we have a way to just use that?

I've been looking for a single DIN car audio device that is nothing more than an amplifier with Bluetooth, but such a thing does not exist. My phone already does Music/Radio/Maps - all I need is the car head unit to connect to it and playback the audio through the car speakers. I've even started thinking about some sort of home built version using parts from a cheap Bluetooth speaker system (minus the actual speakers…

There's plenty of old-school single DIN devices that have bluetooth in them. You'll usually find they have a radio and other junk (e.g. mp3 over usb) but most are fairly simple and it shouldn't be hard to find one that stays in bluetooth mode all the time.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#176

Post by luke2m » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 3:35 PM UTC

16bytes wrote: post #63

For those confused, this acquisition is due in large part by Nuance's dominance in healthcare related products. From Nuance's last earnings release[1]: “We are very pleased with the strong start to the fiscal year, as we delivered revenue and EPS above our guidance range expectations,” said Mark Benjamin, Chief Executive Officer at Nuance. “We continued to advance our strategic initiatives, accelerating our cloud tra…

Yes, that makes sense

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#177

Post by rand49an » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 3:35 PM UTC

ejb999 wrote: post #97

samstave wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And now you know why there will never ever ever be “free healthcare for all” in the US because this is how profitable sickness is. Plandemic.

>>“free healthcare for all” There never has been and will never be 'free healthcare for all' - its not free, it's only free for some people if some other people pay for it.

America spends the highest amount per capita & the most in total terms by a large margin and they aren't able to cover 100% of their citizens.

Nobody thinks that healthcare is magically free in the rest of the world, but at least in countries with socialised medicine people pay into a system that covers everyone in society.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#178

Post by gambiting » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 3:36 PM UTC

DrBazza wrote: post #33

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Siri is brain-damaged. I am constantly disappointed with how stupid she is compared to Alexa and the gap is widening. I try to keep things as simple as possible with her because she always disappoints me. I wish Apple would open up a tiny bit of those 200 billion in cash reserves on improving Siri.

You clearly haven't had the pleasure of trying to use voice control in a Mercedes-Benz. It makes Siri and Cortana seem telepathic by comparison.

Got a 2020 volvo. The voice controls are insanely bad. I can 100% reproduce a situation where saying "hey volvo, switch off the seat heating" turns it up to max.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#179

Post by i_have_an_idea » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 3:39 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #7

Is it just me or have speech recognition platforms like Siri actually gone backwards in the last few years (roughly coinciding with the AI/ML craze)? It feels (anecdata) that Siri is doing a bit better on voice to tex when sending messages but much worse on simple commands like “turn off living room lights”.

Siri is terrible, but have you tried Google Assistant? I find it very accurate at recognizing my speech and very fast. It feels like a vastly superior product and I definitely find myself using it on my Google devices.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#180

Post by Jcowell » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 3:39 PM UTC

Grimm1 wrote: post #103

cletus wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t it more likely that the quality of the voice assistant isn’t that important to most buyers?

Anecdata but I've never even bothered to try Siri on mine. I think you're on the money there.

In the flip side I use Siri everyday to turn on lights , timers , custom iOS Shortcut commands , Intercom, play music, and to find my phone when I can’t locate it I’m my house.