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Future of DeepSpeech / STT after recent changes at Mozilla

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Re: Future of DeepSpeech / STT after recent changes at Mozilla

#51

Post by chromedev »

echelon wrote: post #30

I'm not sure about Mozilla's efforts in STT, but they were lagging pretty far in TTS. [1] Google/Baidu, universities, and an assortment of Chinese/Japanese/Korean social media companies (Line, etc.) are posting the most compelling TTS research, models, and code. Mozilla's TTS system [2] is an amalgam of some of these models, but it lags pretty far behind state of the art. Mozilla should focus on getting additional re…

Chromium is open source and you can apply policies to do the things you mention. Based on your logic Mozilla should also be forced to get rid of Firefox Sync.

Re: Future of DeepSpeech / STT after recent changes at Mozilla

#52

Post by narag »

no_wizard wrote: post #8

I don’t know what is going to save Mozilla, really I don’t. I just wish there was a way to “reach” them and discuss how we the internet community could come to an agreement about what they could do to derive value we would pay for. It’s not for a lack of trying on their part for sure, but it feels like just using their browser isn’t all there is to it any more

what they could do to derive value we would pay for

For someone that found Linux in the 90's and watched the birth of Mozilla from the ashes of Netscape, that's a very strange thing to read.

This site is not Slashdot, I know. It always had another kind of relation to business and money. But still...

I have no idea why Mozilla should need a business model. Much less I understand why should we think of one and agree on it.

How much money does it take to maintain a web browser? If it's a lot, maybe, just maybe, we should agree on a reduced feature set and refuse to use something more complex. Some people here talk about text mode browsers. I'm not so radical. Just keep it simple enough to be maintanable by a dozen of volunteers.

Re: Future of DeepSpeech / STT after recent changes at Mozilla

#53

Post by tchaffee »

floatingatoll wrote: post #35
no_wizard wrote: post #8

I don’t know what is going to save Mozilla, really I don’t. I just wish there was a way to “reach” them and discuss how we the internet community could come to an agreement about what they could do to derive value we would pay for. It’s not for a lack of trying on their part for sure, but it feels like just using their browser isn’t all there is to it any more

What would you personally pay Mozilla for?

MDN, Firefox (voice search would be nice), and anything that is a replacement for Google products.

Re: Future of DeepSpeech / STT after recent changes at Mozilla

#54

Post by bn-usd-mistake »

narag wrote: post #52
no_wizard wrote: post #8

I don’t know what is going to save Mozilla, really I don’t. I just wish there was a way to “reach” them and discuss how we the internet community could come to an agreement about what they could do to derive value we would pay for. It’s not for a lack of trying on their part for sure, but it feels like just using their browser isn’t all there is to it any more

what they could do to derive value we would pay for For someone that found Linux in the 90's and watched the birth of Mozilla from the ashes of Netscape, that's a very strange thing to read. This site is not Slashdot, I know. It always had another kind of relation to business and money. But still... I have no idea why Mozilla should need a business model. Much less I understand why should we think of one and agree on…

Why? Should we apply the same logic to Linux? Why should we arbitrarily restrict user value because something costs money?

Isn’t the main problem that users are not willing to pay for the browser they use?

Google Chrome is probably maintained by much more than 12 people, so if we restrict Firefox to that, everyone is just going to move to Chrome anyways.

Re: Future of DeepSpeech / STT after recent changes at Mozilla

#55

Post by JZL003 »

liability wrote: post #34
nshm wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recent more or less reasonable one is https://github.com/TensorSpeech/TensorFlowTTS , it implements all the latest algorithms. For simple business books it will be ok, for emotional fiction probably not there yet.

Extant TTS is already there for fiction, if you approach it with the right expectations (more an alternative to visual reading than dramatically read audio books.) I've 'read' numerous fiction books using MacOS's TTS ('Alex') and with my kindle (3rd gen 'keyboard' model from 2010.) These extant solutions require an effort-investment from the user to work up to fast speeds, but once the user becomes acclimatized they…

I agree - I've been using google's TTS api for audiobooks and it's great. I switch off between professional audio books (overdrive is amazing and free by public libraries) and TTS and, while professionals can add something, you get used to TTS pretty fast. Google's TTS gives 1 million free characters a month, which is pretty generous for a single person and it sounds pretty good. I read books with pretty weird character names (like the Wandering Inn web serial) and it never explodes. Sometimes it spells out character names but even for very non-standard names, it does fine.

I've experimented with some of tacotron TTS/espnet to do the TTS on my computer and they work alright. Sometimes you get weird edge cases and it makes some pretty weird sounds (and even if your laptop doesn't have a GPU, google co-lab works well for quick audiobook generation). I don't hit the million characters that often so it hasn't been a big deal but I'll probably move to home-made just because I like tweaking it.

The way I think about it is that the written word doesn't have much intonation anyway so as long as the audiobook doesn't offend me, it's a pretty good solution (and helps prevent eye strain after working on a computer all day)

Re: Future of DeepSpeech / STT after recent changes at Mozilla

#56

Post by echelon »

chromedev wrote: post #51
echelon wrote: post #30

I'm not sure about Mozilla's efforts in STT, but they were lagging pretty far in TTS. [1] Google/Baidu, universities, and an assortment of Chinese/Japanese/Korean social media companies (Line, etc.) are posting the most compelling TTS research, models, and code. Mozilla's TTS system [2] is an amalgam of some of these models, but it lags pretty far behind state of the art. Mozilla should focus on getting additional re…

Chromium is open source and you can apply policies to do the things you mention. Based on your logic Mozilla should also be forced to get rid of Firefox Sync.

Chrome is shoved down grandma's throat. She probably doesn't know much other than it's the "Google Internet thing". It's the default on Android and Google.com nags you to install it.

This is worrying given that Google cripples the browser and web standards to favor its own search engine and advertising platform.

Killed the semantic web and semantic markup? Check.

Disabled APIs for blocking ads? Check.

Use Google.com as the default search? Yep.

Embrace and extend the web with AMP and instant apps? Bingo.

Auto log into your Google session or nag until users permit it? Absolutely.

Trying to destroy the notion of a URL? I thought those were cool.

Google is destroying the web and is about as anti-competitive as they come.

Re: Future of DeepSpeech / STT after recent changes at Mozilla

#57

Post by treis »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #18
ralph84 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost all company-sponsored programming languages are run as loss leaders to enable selling some other profitable product of the company. What is the profitable product that Rust enables?

> What is the profitable product that Rust enables? Surely that's Firefox?

Nobody is building anything based on Firefox. It's not like Rails or .NET that gives your application a head start.

Re: Future of DeepSpeech / STT after recent changes at Mozilla

#58

Post by marcinzm »

ianlevesque wrote: post #2

Between this and Servo I guess Mozilla is just giving up on relevance. That really sucks.

That’s what got them in this mess in the first place, fifty pie in the sky projects to be relevant instead of focusing on Firefox or just saving revenue aggressively.

Re: Future of DeepSpeech / STT after recent changes at Mozilla

#59

Post by qchris »

nshm wrote: post #31
echelon wrote: post #30

I'm not sure about Mozilla's efforts in STT, but they were lagging pretty far in TTS. [1] Google/Baidu, universities, and an assortment of Chinese/Japanese/Korean social media companies (Line, etc.) are posting the most compelling TTS research, models, and code. Mozilla's TTS system [2] is an amalgam of some of these models, but it lags pretty far behind state of the art. Mozilla should focus on getting additional re…

It is explainable given that there was a single developer working on TTS. It is hard to compete with big academic teams/industry players this way. I also believe Mozilla team was restricted by a lack of computing resources. They had just a single 8GPU server or so.

This is an area that I find unbelievably frustrating. A lack of computing resources in the current day is kind of insane. You can buy an 8GB GPU for <$1000. Even with the rest of the costs, the cost of hardware like this is a drop in the bucket when your main office is housed in Mountain View! Especially on a project that ends up being public-facing, these are missed opportunities where a little can go a long way.

Re: Future of DeepSpeech / STT after recent changes at Mozilla

#60

Post by chromedev »

echelon wrote: post #56
chromedev wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chromium is open source and you can apply policies to do the things you mention. Based on your logic Mozilla should also be forced to get rid of Firefox Sync.

Chrome is shoved down grandma's throat. She probably doesn't know much other than it's the "Google Internet thing". It's the default on Android and Google.com nags you to install it. This is worrying given that Google cripples the browser and web standards to favor its own search engine and advertising platform. Killed the semantic web and semantic markup? Check. Disabled APIs for blocking ads? Check. Use Google.com…

> Killed the semantic web and semantic markup? Check.

Based on what evidence?

> Disabled APIs for blocking ads? Check

They didn't. uBlock Origin and adblocker extensions never stopped working.

> Use Google.com as the default search? Yep.

What do you think Edge does here? Easily changed via policies.

> Auto log into your Google session or nag until users permit it? Absolutely

Doesn't nag you and easily disabled in settings or via policy.

> Trying to destroy the notion of a URL? I thought those were cool.

I only get a little frustrated on Android, but just have to remember to hit the edit icon if I want to change it.

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