Mozilla may be working on a voice-controlled browser
Mozilla may be working on a voice-controlled platform of its own. A listing for an all-hands internal meeting appeared about what seems like a new project: Scout. "With the Scout app, we start to explore browsing and consuming content with voice," it read. It's very unclear what the platform may or may not end up doing, as the meeting is focused on technical requirements for a "voice browser" that would, as a stated example, be able to read users an article about polar bears.
[...] CNET interpreted Scout to be a new voice-controlled web browser. With Google, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft falling over themselves refining their voice assistant technology (with Facebook not far behind), it's unsurprising that Mozilla would join the fray. Given the company's decades of web platform experience, a browser is surely simpler to implement than a new proprietary speaker. Plus, vocal navigation through a browser setup is probably easier for the average person to grasp.
So that's why they needed Common Voice.
Related: Mozilla's Common Voice Collecting French, German, and Welsh Samples, Prepping 40 More Languages
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Appalbarry on Friday June 15 2018, @10:21PM
I'm all for anything that increases accessibility, because lord knows there's still a long, long way to go.
But, and it's a big but, [youtu.be] I truly dread this. Already I have to suffer idiots walking around yelling conversations into their smartphone speakers instead of holding the thing to their ear. Now I get to also be bombarded by idiots yelling "Hey Scout, where's the best vegan donut shop in Phoenix? How do I get there? How late are they open? What's their Yelp rating? Can I get a reservation? How were they rated in the last health inspection?"