Jesus, can't companies just be the company they are y'know.
Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B
321–330 of 418 posts
Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 opened my last paycheck, the tax is 10% (Eastern Europe). There is some undeniable truth in this discussion: people with higher income pay for the people with lower income. 10% of 100,000€ is a lot more than 10% of 20,000€.
Because 20K is a smaller number than 100K.
Taxes work with the basic assumption that people need some money to live, there is a humanitarian aspect to it if you see the govt positively or you can say, people in govt dont like thier head too far away from their bodies..
Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
I switched from dragon to talon a while back... and then back to dragon :-\ Not to bash though. You've built a great product!
I'm specifically talking about the new Conformer model, available in early access as of ten days ago. What you tried was likely the previous (circa 2018) model, which is much less accurate than Conformer. This is a demo of Conformer in Talon: https://twitter.com/lunixbochs/status/1378159234861264896
Oh cool! Yeah I was using whatever the beta model was in December or so.
Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B
#324What will this mean for Apple? Aside for Siri, Nuance voice is used for the Mac TTS engine, which I use quite heavily.
In English, there are quite a few contenders for TTS, eg. Amazon. Apple can find another vendor. But in some languages it is Google voice or Nuance and there are no other games in town.
Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B
#325We only buy Nuance Dragon Naturally speaking for our lawyers. It’s the best product out there. So maybe they want the Dragon technology.
Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
And now you know why there will never ever ever be “free healthcare for all” in the US because this is how profitable sickness is. Plandemic.
>>“free healthcare for all” There never has been and will never be 'free healthcare for all' - its not free, it's only free for some people if some other people pay for it.
You pay with your taxes. Is that this hard to understand?
In France when my boss give me 1 euros, he has to give 0.33 cents to a found that goes toward my healthcare. Then most things are « free ». From regular doc appointments to oncologists.
Here I pay 500$/month, and then some co-pay and then some more.
It’s not that different.
Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 opened my last paycheck, the tax is 10% (Eastern Europe). There is some undeniable truth in this discussion: people with higher income pay for the people with lower income. 10% of 100,000€ is a lot more than 10% of 20,000€.
Considering disposable income; 10% of 100,000€ is alot less, taxes are not noticable for me as a high income earner.
Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B
#328Is 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.
Yeah, came in to say this. Google Assistant has consistently gotten better year after year. I'm surprised it understands me sometimes.
Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Because the comment I replied to mentioned nothing to do with Europe?
> 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.
That's what I replied to. I also mentioned living with one European system, and a similar Australian system that are both largely considered "effectively free (or at least, out of pocket)", and how no-one living under either system that I've been a part of, thinks that their healthcare is "literally free".
In fact, most of the tropes about "It's not really free, you're paying for it with taxes!" come from Americans bemoaning the insidious evil that they consider "healthcare for all" systems to be. It's a straw man, built up by some to decry "socialism".
Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "valid points" about how socialism will surely drive all of Europe bankrupt within the next decade have been repeated for the last seventy years. I'm sure they're right this time, though.
Of course, the European model is extremely sustainable if you can ignore the not insignificant amount of cost cutting and lack of coverage of certain drugs for orphan diseases. You can literally just talk to any doctor or nurse in the NHS system and ask them about how quality of care has declined over the past decade, while their professionals' workload has only increased unsustainably. And we're talking about one of…
> lack of coverage of certain drugs for orphan diseases
This is literally the case in the US too. It's not "right" in Europe, when it happens, nor is it in the US.
US pharma companies have, repeatedly, discontinued cheaper, and in some cases, the only effective, medications when they've deemed them not profitable enough.