Well the licence fee of matlab is pretty massive (2500€ / user, and then each toolbox is 500 or 1000 euros each..), and then you have do deal with activation issues if you happen to switch computers quite often. Octave is a good alternative to run your matlab code if you don't need the "fancy" matlab ide.
The octave interpreter is slower than matlab, but that's because there is a JIT compiler in matlab. octave is still a good tool in my opinion.
The one thing I miss from Matlab's IDE is the ability to properly rename variables. Octave lacks this (not sure about this new release) and I so far haven't found a Matlab/Octave LSP that can be used for other code editors.
OSC is just a way of packaging messages with an optional timestamp, despite its name, nothing in OSC is specialized for audio applications. There is no pre-defined convention for "Note-On" messages, "Note-Off", "Sustain Pedal" etc... If someone had taken the time to define these messages maybe it could have been a replacement candidate, but without this it offers nothing more than json.
Also OSC is typically transported on UDP messages (because it is easy to do), but that's a terrible transport since it is unreliable, and messages larger that some OS and network dependent size are just discarded, so you can only use it reliably for message bundles smaller than a few hundred bytes.
> Kinda weird that PACE works with intellectual property and licensing, and not in audio software development themselves.
A lot of their customers use JUCE, so there is a connection even if not very strong.
What is also good (in my opinion) is that they are not a big player of the audio software. If JUCE had been acquired by, for example, Steinberg, I would be very worried.
Very interesting, I was wondering why my cat was trying to chew my leg when I tried to pet him just after spraying myself with mosquito&tick repellent. It seems he just want me to share some repellent with him !
It is not intended to harm Apple or Steinberg, the aim is to be less dependent of them by having a free and non-bloated common plugin api that has basically all the features of VST/AU/AAX/LV2 etc. All these proprietary apis can then be addressed with a bit of wrapping code when needed.
Right now, the de-facto most important standard is VST3, which is owned by Steinberg/Yamaha who can decide to revoke the license of any developer at their will. They have shown these last years that they can be really aggressive with their license. If clap takes over, then they won't have the same position of power on audio developers. This is good for the industry.
Even if there wasn't this licensing issue with VST3, none of the current plugin formats deserve to be the "default plugin format" , they are all terrible: very large codebases, bloated architectures, c++ api, unclear threading specifications... (exception: VST2 which is simple, with a c api, but Steinberg is not allowing it anymore for new developers).
I'm not sure how you become less dependent on Steinberg or Apple by promoting another standard that really needs them to support it to fulfill its logical destiny. If Steinberg can revoke a developer's license at will (I've never heard of them actually doing this, though, although I'd love to know examples of such behaviour) they could therefore do just that if they smell any wrapping code needed to bridge into the VST domain. Avid used to, for example, although I don't know if it's still the case, have a clause in the developer's agreement that prevented RTAS/AAX host plug-ins... I guess I'm old enough to remember when FXpansion! had such a plug-in to host other formats within another.
I do agree with you on the state of the current plug-in APIs. But unless CLAP plug-ins are hosted natively, they will still have to piggy back on top of all the crud you describe. So unless a product comes out that truly takes the lead away from Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase, et al... I feel like this is going to be a massive uphill struggle. Plug-in developers will gravitate towards where the money is; and unless users place serious pressure on Apple (that thought is amusing in and of itself!), Steinberg, and so on... It's hard to see CLAP making a dent. On the other hand, if it aims to replace JUCE as the intermediary development platform to make life easier for developers, that could be good. Although, that would seem to diminish the long term goals...
So if you need users to apply pressure on large companies, you're doomed. Even famous Cubase users like Hans Zimmer aren't going to get onboard this fight, despite his close relationship to Urs.
CLAP does not need to supplant all other plugin formats to succeed. Its real goal (arguably more ambitious) is to expand the set of features in the "least common denominator" of plugin formats. To do that, it only needs to win a race with one other format, which, as it happens, is officially already dead.
Plugin developers don't just pursue the largest revenue streams. They also try to take the lowest-effort paths to those markets. CLAP is carefully designed to be a low-effort path for porting old plugins to an SDK compatible with modern feature sets, which can then be automatically wrapped in comparable formats such as VST3. There are other such SDKs, such as JUCE, but they almost all require a much larger investment of effort to work with old codebases. The fact that CLAP also specifies a well-defined plugin format further enables developers to write automatic test suites, or adapt such test suites that were originally designed for other formats. In a certain subset of the market, CLAP has already been adopted for these reasons, and as far as its creators are concerned, it has therefore already accomplished its goals.
As you suggest, there is a certain possibility that Apple or Steinberg would somehow prohibit the use of third-party SDKs in plugin development, but in reality this would be an absurd thing to try. It would accomplish nothing, alienate the entire market, and promptly result in a flurry of lawsuits and perhaps even an antitrust investigation.
I wonder if anybody has estimations of the contribution of anti-virus software to global warming. They run on almost all desktop computers, are generally large and bloated applications that consume tons of cpu for their continuous scans, I would not be too surprised if was far from negligible.
To be fair, they also are responsible for some reduction in carbon output. I have seen people just get a new machine if their computer gets too compromised with viruses so any level of virus protection will end up keeping computers out of landfills.
I think this is an example of the 3rd party crapware that is more frequent a reason for a user to needlessly replace hardware that would have functioned correctly, quickly and more securely with a vanilla install, but a vendor accepted payment to market some security theatre or other feature that is hard to remove. Of course the vendor is all to happy if you think you need a new computer.
A computer that is compromised with viruses is easily remedied. Anyone can just reinstall the operating system from the OEMs supplied OS installation media or the user can provide their own operating system. I don’t buy this argument that anti-virus leads to fewer people throwing their assets out. Furthermore, viruses do not affect the underlying hardware, which is what people would be throwing away. The economics don’t make sense, why would an individual dispose of an asset they bought with their personal money when there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the part of the asset that was purchased?
"Anyone can just reinstall the operating system from the OEMs supplied OS installation media or the user can provide their own operating system."
A careful examination of who that "anyone" is will reveal that as "anyone"s go, it's not very "anyone". It's certainly less than 50% comfortable doing that, and even less willing (e.g., I know how but that doesn't mean I want to).
> … and they think that malware can harm their computer.
To be fair, it actually can — there’s plenty of writable flash on motherboards and in peripherals where malware could persist across OS reinstallation.
I think that in the days before good windows security, it's true that more people threw out their assets due to malware. I've seen plenty of family members do it, reinstalling an operating system is sadly not something "anyone" can do.
It doesn't make sense to throw hardware out because of some software, but most don't have such a distinction.
> I think that in the days before good windows security,
"Before"‽ Windows still sets every file as executable by default (just an example). If it had good security you wouldn't need anti-malware tools always running in the background looking for stuff that has already broken through (to some extent). Basically, Windows security has been and probably always will be absolute garbage.
A big reason why Microsoft won't (and can't, really) fix the security of Windows is backwards compatibility... If they fixed the "everything is executable by default" problem it would 100% for sure break a ton of stuff.
The code base for Windows is both old and enormous. They don't employ enough developers to constantly review and re-write all that code all of the time. Most of it--even today's Windows 10 core code--was written at a time when Microsoft didn't really give a rat's ass about security.
Just look at the past few years of Windows 10 vulnerabilities:
Looking at last year, in 2021 Ubuntu had 29 CVE-listed vulnerabilities, four of which were "code execution" (the worst).
In that same period Windows 10 had 485 CVE-listed vulnerabilities, 112 of which were "code execution"!
Now consider for a moment that the scope of Canonical/Ubuntu CVE list includes vastly more software than what comes with Windows. I just looked (Ubuntu 21.04) and there's 6,080 packages in Ubuntu's "main" software repository which is what's in scope for those CVEs (I'm pretty sure anyway).
Whereas the scope of Windows 10 is just what comes with the OS which isn't much! If you drill down into the Windows 10 code execution vulnerabilities you'll see that it's all in the core stuff that comes with Windows like the print spooler, media services libraries, remote desktop, file system, etc. It's not obscure extras like bundled games or the snip tool or whatever.
> OEMs supplied OS installation media or the user can provide their own operating system
I haven't received install media of any kind from an OEM in over a decade. Commonly they're using a hidden disk partition to reinstall the OS. This can just as easily be compromised as the boot partition. So "just reinstall" skips a number of laborious or impractical steps.
> I don’t buy this argument that anti-virus leads to fewer people throwing their assets out
Just because you think people shouldn't behave a certain way doesn't necessarily mean they don't behave that way, though. There are definitely people out there who toss their laptops when they get cluttered with malware
My CPU fan is screaming next to me right now because of my employer's overly paranoid, inefficient scanning shitware (yep I checked the list of processes). Not only is it warming the globe, it's warming this room. If I put my hands near the exhaust ports it'll warm those as well.
Since it is winter it probably doesn't matter but if it were summer you'd probably then spend even more energy attempting to move that heat from inside to outside. (Unless you're in the Southern Hemisphere, but statistically you're probably not :) )
So, we’re doing whataboutism for this now? You don’t have some answer like “using as much electricity as Argentina to mine bitcoins is the price of freedom”?
Ugh.. do you think AVs are useless or something? Why do people think this. Shit AVs are shit, end of story. Reading memory and is not cpu intensive the disk i/o intensity if windows vs linux alone is very drastic if you want to evaluate that as a baseline instead.
It's like asking the carbon footprint of freeway guardrails. I mean, norton sucks, sure but at least turn on defender (which is really good btw). The amount if lives not ruined and money not lost due to cybercrime thanks to AVs alone is staggering imo
They would be shitty guardrails if they did just like shit AV is shit. I am not asking you to buy norton but to at least leave defender turned on windows. It stops very real and serious threats. Like i have seen attackers move laterally and they only suceed on hosts where people turned off defender or it isn't updated.
I have a challenge for any of you who disagree: write basic malware that you can use to monitor keystrokes and browser creds/traffic. Easy right? Ok, now use it in windows with defender turned on for a day and keep defender from stopping it for a week! Even better if you turn on all defender features.
I mean come on! I heard this misninformation many times before. Not once from a person whose day job is incident response. Not even once!
No, what's staggering is the number of my family members that simply cannot use their computer because it's bogged down by an AV. Also, your analogy is completely wack.
Actually, I meant a "honest" protection racket that protects against actual rival gangs. The point is that replacing something bad (malware) with something bad (AV software) isn't always a gain.
This is one of thise silly things I see only among those with just enough knowledge to shoot their own feet.
The amount malware I see stopped by defender alone is very significant. Just write mediocre malware and send email , 10-15% infection rate. Checkout the loot the emoter gang had accumulated when they got raided or any if the ransomware gangs.
A little learning does much harm!
Most people don't run Linux (Aand most Linux desktop users don't harden). I mean, I could be very lazy and make bank without AVs on windows or Mac.
Speaking to you as someone who only discovered several serious intrusions after every layer of security was defeated except defender complained!
People come up with all sorts of silly ideas rather than actually addressing the real issue.
Addressing virus software will save the world exactly 0 days.
UPDATE
Coal usage is at record usage for power generation. It emits over twice as much CO2 as natural gas
while these silly little ideas about optimizing your website to use less electricity or using a different computer language are a fun way to waste the day, all the coal we keep burning is costing us significant time.
Anything else is better. Waiting for the windmills isnt working.
Anyway, just the occasional reminder that we keep squandering valuable time and now we need a bigger miracle.
Good luck with the shaming to address the problem.
UPDATE 2
"Stop all economic growth"
No one said that. That is a right wing sound bite simply meant to add noise to the discussion.
I disagree with doing that even in the most developed countries, I've no idea how you imagine selling that to the least developed countries. Or by force?
However, I agree we aren't really able to do enough - that there's a lot of virtue signalling so we feel a little better about ourselves - and a technological solution is what's required.
Firefox is larger on macOS because it contains 2 archs (x86_64 and arm64), not because it bundles of full runtime -- also the compression algo of dmg files is typically quite bad (zlib or bzip2), which is not helping.
That still does not change the argument that file size does not matter.
In fact, this reinforces it. OSX believes file size matters so
little they’re willing to double file size simply so users don’t have to pick x64 or x86 when downloading the app (and if they’re using the App Store the App Store could do it for them, but even that Apple thinks is too much complexity).
Folks who have the money for Apple stuff have money for large SSDs and fast unmetered Internet.
Aaaand folks who live in the Apple universe have been accustomed to accept that they are holding it wrong, and that there's someone whose job is to figure out what's the official best way to do things. If it involves downloading 130 megs it's 130 megs. No problem. The UX and end result is worth it for them.
I have used Monolingual[1] on past laptops to remove unnecessary architectures from installed OS X applications when disk space was running low.
Having said that, I never bothered installing it on my current laptop which sort of reinforces the point others are making about being less concerned with application size.
I didn’t think that binaries would take up so much space, but Firefox 83 (the last x86-only release) is 73MB vs Firefox 84 (the first universal release) which is 126MB. Wow, I guess that makes sense then.
Thanks for that! I quickly poked around at my Firefox install on MacOS. Firefox.app is 353M. The largest single file in there is Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/XUL (binary) and that's 258M. Of that, lipo says 136165680 is x86_64 and 134106096 is arm64. My Firefox folder in Windows is 208M.
