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People are quick to criticize Facebook here on HN, but this release is awesome. I believe open source speech recognition is still lacking, and any contribution

People are quick to criticize Facebook here on HN, but this release is awesome. I believe open source speech recognition is still lacking, and any contribution is very welcome. CMU Sphinx and Kaldi are great, but it feels like the most recent advances in the field are still hidden behind paid services.

oliwarner 8y ago
What worries me —very much in-keeping with existing criticisms— is what Facebook wants to do with this tech. Voice is not a core business for them. Yet. They are demonstrably very good at using technology and their omnipresence against their users (to monetize them without their knowledge).
pbalau 8y ago
You would be amazed about how little comments does an article about FB doing "this tech thing" attracts, vs a generic FB is bad. There are terribly few people that can comment on a tech subject, but everyone and their dog has an opinion about how FB destroys humanity
- stevenjohns 8y ago
  So what you're saying is that there are more people who can associate with social ethics vs. specialised areas of programming? And this is a revelation? Perhaps it might help you if you look at it from the perspective that what Facebook has open-sourced here isn't affecting a billion people's privacy and it's not being willfully used as a tool of intimidation and propaganda by governments. That's just a couple thoughts on why other posts might attract more comments.
- mempko 8y ago
  People confuse Facebook the org with Facebook the workers. Don't confuse the great work it's workers do with the what management decides.
  - chrisbrandow 8y ago
    That logic doesn’t generalize too well.
  - steve_musk 8y ago
    Just as we shouldn’t confuse the great work of German train engineers during the early 1940s, who developed a state of the art, scalable rail network to efficiently transport people from all over Europe to specific areas in Poland, with the atrocities their Nazi leaders committed.
StreamBright 8y ago
People have evey right to criticize Facebook and open sourcing some software won’t make the bad stuff go away, just like criminal charges are not deopped just because you donated some to a charity.

oliwarner 8y ago

What worries me —very much in-keeping with existing criticisms— is what Facebook wants to do with this tech. Voice is not a core business for them. Yet. They are demonstrably very good at using technology and their omnipresence against their users (to monetize them without their knowledge).

pbalau 8y ago

You would be amazed about how little comments does an article about FB doing "this tech thing" attracts, vs a generic FB is bad. There are terribly few people that can comment on a tech subject, but everyone and their dog has an opinion about how FB destroys humanity

stevenjohns 8y ago
So what you're saying is that there are more people who can associate with social ethics vs. specialised areas of programming? And this is a revelation? Perhaps it might help you if you look at it from the perspective that what Facebook has open-sourced here isn't affecting a billion people's privacy and it's not being willfully used as a tool of intimidation and propaganda by governments. That's just a couple thoughts on why other posts might attract more comments.
mempko 8y ago
People confuse Facebook the org with Facebook the workers. Don't confuse the great work it's workers do with the what management decides.
- chrisbrandow 8y ago
  That logic doesn’t generalize too well.
- steve_musk 8y ago
  Just as we shouldn’t confuse the great work of German train engineers during the early 1940s, who developed a state of the art, scalable rail network to efficiently transport people from all over Europe to specific areas in Poland, with the atrocities their Nazi leaders committed.

StreamBright 8y ago

People have evey right to criticize Facebook and open sourcing some software won’t make the bad stuff go away, just like criminal charges are not deopped just because you donated some to a charity.