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The audio is generated by Amazon Polly; see https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/give-your-wordpress-blog-a-voice-with-our-new-amazon-polly-plugin/ https://aws.amaz

The audio is generated by Amazon Polly; see https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/give-your-wordpress-blog-a-voice-with-our-new-amazon-polly-plugin/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/give-your-wordpress-blog-a-... for more info! I now use the audio version as a second form of proofreading, and find that it helps me to find places where my written transitions could be better. I agree that there's room to make the contents of the table sound better, but I am not sure what direction this should go in. Suggestions are welcome!

degenerate 8y ago
Hi Jeff, here's a suggestion: When entering a table, maybe Polly can announce the table and read each data cell followed by the <th> descriptor for that cell. Example: "Table 1: Row 1: [Instance name: z1d.large] ... [vCPUs: 2] ... [Memory: 16 GB] ... [Local Storage: 1 x 75 GB NVMe SSD] ... [EBS-Optimized Bandwidth: Up to 2.333 Gbps] ... [Network Bandwidth: Up to 10 Gbps] ... [pause] ... Row 2: [...]" This is how a human would read it, so Polly should do it that way too. What a human actually ends up doing though, is reference the preceding row for each subsequent row. Something like "z1d.xlarge has double the vCPUs, double the Memory, and double the Local Storage, with EBS-Optimized Bandwidth and Network Bandwidth the same." -- I don't think you are at that point yet with Polly ;)
- jeffbarr 8y ago
  Hmmm - cool idea, but definitely ambitious and re:Invent is almost here. The plugin is open source and we welcome PRs at https://github.com/awslabs/amazon-polly-wordpress-plugin https://github.com/awslabs/amazon-polly-wordpress-plugin . Feel free to code something up and give it a try :-)
- drb91 8y ago
  Even better would be to replicate screen reader behavior—not only does it handle tables well, but it can interface with all semantic elements (buttons, navs, links, images, etc) in a well-defined manner.
djhworld 8y ago
Would be good if the player had an option to speed up, e.g. 2x.
- jeffbarr 8y ago
  We just gave Polly the ability to ensure that a given block of text is spoken within a specified period of time: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-polly-update-time-driven-prosody-and-asynchronous-synthesis/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-polly-update-time-dr... I am messaging the team to see how we might use this for the plugin.
int0x80 8y ago
Hi. I can get a physical (bare metal in newspeak) 8-HT Xeon with 64G RAM and 1TB RAID1 SSD for ~$100/month, <strike>10GB</strike> 1GB NIC uplink. How much is the equivalent z1d.2xlarge EC2 instance?
- asah 8y ago
  Where? Asking for a friend :-)
  - int0x80 8y ago
    There are multiple providers. This is one of them, it is in Europe, but has datacenters in USA. Is not the cheapest or has the best hardware specs but is good enough. A few google searches will give you alternatives if you care. The Xeons are not the lastest or fastest models in the city but are good enough, the difference with newer models and higher clock speeds will probably be in 1-10% processing power for most workloads, unless you are _very_ CPU bound. https://www.arsys.net/servers/dedicated https://www.arsys.net/servers/dedicated Of course this is _not_ a 1:1 comparasion with EC2. This are unmanaged bare metal servers (with good http APIs and webpanels to admin though) but sometimes that is good enough and you can save a good chunk of money. You can up/down a server instantly (well - minutes) and you wont be charged if you are not using it.
    - asah 8y ago
      Ah, there's also hetzner.com which I've had a good experience with.

degenerate 8y ago

Hi Jeff, here's a suggestion: When entering a table, maybe Polly can announce the table and read each data cell followed by the <th> descriptor for that cell. Example: "Table 1: Row 1: [Instance name: z1d.large] ... [vCPUs: 2] ... [Memory: 16 GB] ... [Local Storage: 1 x 75 GB NVMe SSD] ... [EBS-Optimized Bandwidth: Up to 2.333 Gbps] ... [Network Bandwidth: Up to 10 Gbps] ... [pause] ... Row 2: [...]" This is how a human would read it, so Polly should do it that way too. What a human actually ends up doing though, is reference the preceding row for each subsequent row. Something like "z1d.xlarge has double the vCPUs, double the Memory, and double the Local Storage, with EBS-Optimized Bandwidth and Network Bandwidth the same." -- I don't think you are at that point yet with Polly ;)

jeffbarr 8y ago
Hmmm - cool idea, but definitely ambitious and re:Invent is almost here. The plugin is open source and we welcome PRs at https://github.com/awslabs/amazon-polly-wordpress-plugin https://github.com/awslabs/amazon-polly-wordpress-plugin . Feel free to code something up and give it a try :-)
drb91 8y ago
Even better would be to replicate screen reader behavior—not only does it handle tables well, but it can interface with all semantic elements (buttons, navs, links, images, etc) in a well-defined manner.

djhworld 8y ago

Would be good if the player had an option to speed up, e.g. 2x.

jeffbarr 8y ago
We just gave Polly the ability to ensure that a given block of text is spoken within a specified period of time: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-polly-update-time-driven-prosody-and-asynchronous-synthesis/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-polly-update-time-dr... I am messaging the team to see how we might use this for the plugin.

int0x80 8y ago

Hi. I can get a physical (bare metal in newspeak) 8-HT Xeon with 64G RAM and 1TB RAID1 SSD for ~$100/month, <strike>10GB</strike> 1GB NIC uplink. How much is the equivalent z1d.2xlarge EC2 instance?

asah 8y ago
Where? Asking for a friend :-)
- int0x80 8y ago
  There are multiple providers. This is one of them, it is in Europe, but has datacenters in USA. Is not the cheapest or has the best hardware specs but is good enough. A few google searches will give you alternatives if you care. The Xeons are not the lastest or fastest models in the city but are good enough, the difference with newer models and higher clock speeds will probably be in 1-10% processing power for most workloads, unless you are _very_ CPU bound. https://www.arsys.net/servers/dedicated https://www.arsys.net/servers/dedicated Of course this is _not_ a 1:1 comparasion with EC2. This are unmanaged bare metal servers (with good http APIs and webpanels to admin though) but sometimes that is good enough and you can save a good chunk of money. You can up/down a server instantly (well - minutes) and you wont be charged if you are not using it.
  - asah 8y ago
    Ah, there's also hetzner.com which I've had a good experience with.