However it's a great way of proving that we are not ready for computers to read to us yet.
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!
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 ;)
The plugin is open source and we welcome PRs at https://github.com/awslabs/amazon-polly-wordpress-plugin . Feel free to code something up and give it a try :-)
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.
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
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.
It may also be an attempt at making the content accessible to blind or otherwise visual-reading-impaired users.
It is a cool way to demo their tech though
How would Human read a table though? I think table is mainly for the eyes, reading tables seems wasteful.