Hi list, Here's a fun thought-experiment: suppose you're doing a port of Pd, and the graphics toolkit you're using will include functionality to hook in to Google's speech recognition API. Such an API could make the software accessible to people who would otherwise find it very hard to write Pd patches. However, the API works by shipping off your audio data to Google's servers, doing the computation on their machines, and sending you back the results. Do you use the API in your port, or not? I'm decidedly not going to use that API, for what I think are obvious security, privacy, and philosophical reasons. But I'm curious just how obvious the security and privacy implications are to others here. How many people would use a speech-patching mechanism that sends all your speech to Google? I'm also increasingly worried by the apparent gap between the usability of Google and Apple's products, and the seemingly glacial pace at which _usable_ free software speech recognition is being developed. My position won't change, but I'm afraid it's becoming more symbolic than practical as these insecure tools become a natural part of most people's lives.
-Jonathan