I've only watched the video, so I don't know a lot about the tool. But from what I can tell, it's a really neat way to view text as it's streaming through a pipe, _and_ it keeps a line at the bottom, for you to be able to type a line, which when you press return, sends your text to the STDIN of the program that is streaming the text.
This can relieve a pain point if you ever need to work on a serial port, and as you are typing in a command, the other side sends text, which overwrites the characters you were typing (depending on how the local echo is configured). It reminds me of a line based serial terminal emulator, where the input is a separate text box, and the output is a larger box above it.
Oh, and it also seems to have methods of sampling the data as it comes in, so that it can be configured to only show the messages you are looking for, and also counting them?
Interestingly enough, there has been a community project dedicated to keeping the last Winamp version alive (last version from the original creators), and it really great to use.
It includes a skin that allows it to work on modern display resolutions. It's really interesting to see just how low-res screens were when it was in it's hey-day, given that they are nearly unusable on a 4k monitor.
Edit: I was too young to remember the releases, but replies are indicating that version 5 was in fact, not the most popular :P
My memory is fuzzy on this but didn’t most consider Winamp 2.x the best. Winamp 3.x was considered bloated. So to help rectify the problems of 3.x, Winamp release version 5.x (the best of 2 + 3). Though I recall many still used version 2.x even after the 5.x release.
Question: so when you say folks are trying to keep the "last version" alive, which version are you referring too since later versions weren’t loved.
Winamp 2 was generally preferred. If I recall correctly, it skipped version 4 not because v2 + v3 = v5 but because nobody would want to download a Winamp 4 skin. Not kidding.
> What happened to Winamp 4? You're not imagining things. Yes, we skipped a version number for the following reasons: a) Winamp 5 combines the best aspects of Winamp 2 and Winamp 3 into one player. Hence Winamp 2 + Winamp 3 = Winamp 5! b) Who the hell wants to see a Winamp 4 Skin :P c) We think that a Fibonacci sequence for versioning might be pretty damn cool. d)We improved so much in Winamp 5 that we figured it warranted skipping a version. ;)
Supposedly they're still going to call it Winamp v6 assuming it happens. They've lied a number of times over the past 8yrs so don't hold your breathe but the new site is somewhat indicative of their disregard about why those still using Winamp (or clones of it) do so.
> Accents that have resisted the merger include most Scottish, Caribbean, and older Southern American accents as well as some African American, modern Southern American, Indian, Irish, and older Maine accents.
If my understanding is correct, in some accents that don't pronounce their "R"s at the end of words, the vowel shape changes slightly while pronouncing "four," but "fore" is pronounced with a simple vowel.
Wiktionary sometimes comes handy in such musings, because it has IPA spellings and recordings of pronunciations, and marks the dialects—not always but frequently for more popular words.
Just dug a little deeper, and I've arrived at this conclusion:
In accents with the merger, "four," "for," and "fore" are all always homophones.
In accents without the merger, "four" and "for" are never homophones.
And in some subset of these non-merged accents, "fore" may be pronounced identically to "four" (as listed in the IPA guide in your first link). In another subset, it may be pronounced identically to "for" (as implied by the "Homophones" section in that same link).
It is extremely hard for me to even _imagine_ this, as apparently my native accents both contain this merger. This is a rare experience for me, but a previous occurrence was discussing the rhotic-R phenomenon.
Thank you. This is what it took for me to realize why version 4 might be an issue. If I just saw "4 skin" I certainly would have gotten it. Somehow adding Winamp in front made it hard for me to interpret it the alternative way.
5.x is just the 2.x base continued with newer plug-ins & newer apis for those plug-ins. Unchecking things during installation (e.g. choosing the lite install) or just removing the unwanted plug-ins was always an option to make a 5.x into a comparable 2.x install.
IIRC, Winamp 3 introduced the new skin engine which supported transparency and was slow as molasses on contemporary machines. Moreover, 2.x switched to the new MP3 decoder at some point, and many people didn't like it, either ripping the old decoder from the old versions or stopping upgrading past a certain 2.x version.
Winamp 3 was a complete rewrite from the ground up, built around the new skinning engine and the "Wasabi" scripting language. But as you say, it wasn't very performant, and it was also super buggy.
I believe there was some drama which resulted in the lead dev for 3 getting fired, and then the skinning engine (which was the most popular part of 3) was grafted onto the 2.x base for version "5".
If memory serves, the update from 2.x to 3.x was the one were suddenly skins no longer worked and they decided to base the program around a db instead of the file system. Which is not that bad (though still strictly inferior to file based) in modern cell phones, but at a time when computers were a lot slower and everybody had organized their music library around files instead of metadata it was a bloody disaster.
I dunno... Libraries were a revolution for me. If I remember correctly, that was around the time I briefly switched to iTunes for its library features. The ability to start typing and instantly see a list of song matches was great. The problem with the WinAMP library was that it wasn't that good. If course iTunes turned into a bloated mess too, and I ended up on foobar2000 for years.
JWZ's hate of HN is long-running and due to a combination of factors, but I reckon his real annoyance is the amount of traffic this site can send to his little servers.
Fairly certain that fb2k has never been FOSS or can you point to where that's not the case as that'd be far more interesting than the point of this thread.
I use Foobar on my PC daily but didn't even know it was available on Android, so thanks! Musicolet is also a great Android player without all the BS (ex: can run mp3 files copied to the device with no internet connnection)
"McDonalds is a place to rock, It is a restaurant where they buy food to eat, It is a good place to listen to the music, People flock here to get down to the rock music." - Rock 'N Roll McDonalds
"Batman beat the hell out of me and knocked me to the floor, I got back up and knocked him to the floor, He was being such a jack off" - I Whupped Batman's Ass
"This beast killed as many as 100,000 people / It's wings can flap like a bird / It can break a glass / It can also stab you in the ass" - The Chicken Cow
Same here, using Winamp 2.95 on a HiDPI screen as my main audio player.
The best feature that it seems no other player has reproduced yet is being able to hit the J key to do an instant search for a song, with 0 latency: the search narrows down the songs as fast as you hit the keys.
But I've noticed that there are now a few files that sound scratch when played, perhaps they're 48 kHz or something...
Same thing in Clementine, except you don't even have to press J. Just type your search when the window is focused and the filter bar will catch the keys.
I just installed 2.95 last night after uninstalling 5.x. 5.x doesn't have [Q] to enqueue within a playlist. I have no idea why anyone would remove such a basic feature... maybe the advent of the "media library" management (at the time a new concept) made them decide to remove it.
I had to install milkdrop separately to WinAmp, but honestly, after reinstalling Windows 98 every 72 hours back in the bad old days, it kinda felt natural. Nostalgic.
Winamp is highly modular. Most functionality is in plugins, and you could only install the plugins you want. For example you could exclude the media library, modern skins, and video playback. So, 5.x doesn't have to be bloated.
I'm actually not too familiar with it, I was too young to use the original Winamp back when it was released, and can only remember playing around with the skins, along with RealPlayer on Win98
I'm guessing they went with version 5, since it looks like versions after that might have been a full rewrite?
If you want a fun read that wastes a few hours, poke around the interwebs for the story of Justin Frankel and WinAmp. There's been some recent posts on HN about how "the Internet is played out". Not sure if I agree, but this guy definitely belongs in the mythos of web 1.0
Yes I loved Winamp 2.x - the transition from tapes to mp3 was great for me. My car had a tape player and not a CD player and it was more fun to make tapes that’s cds imo
It's just... the complete opposite of what Winamp was all about, and it's horrible and leaves a bad taste in your mouth (-100 points for the atrocious "modern" website which loads MBs of Javascript, screams BIG TEXT at you, hijacks your scroll wheel, and still tells you nothing about the actual software other than it will probably suck. Oh and another -100 points for that cookie popup.)
For all that lag, I was expecting a lot more than some simple animations. And that scrolljacking is by far the worst I've ever experienced. I have to scroll three times to switch to the next section. Can't even manually drag the little scrollspy thing. Atrocious.
Here’s the developer https://www.laniche.com .
Their other websites don’t seem to be as laggy but there is a theme of animating *every* element and embedding videos.
Wow, that's a first. Clicking the URL hung Brave, completely unresponsive for 2-3 mins, now it's loaded but shows nothing but a dark blue background. Same for every refresh, too!
This is my pet peeve. Browsers should not allow any websites to hijack all computing cycles. This was already clear a few years ago during the Monero hype. The fact that most adblockers will detect such attempts today doesn't change the fact that any website can almost prevent you from doing other work just because you opened it. The current strategy of dealing with this problem ("this tab has become unresponsive") is inadequate because it is reactive, not proactive. I'd like to be able to blacklist everything and whitelist only chosen websites I trust. Loading for too long because of tracking code? Too bad, choose another loading strategy or I just close the tab. Making my fans spin faster? Begone.
There is another thread going on about bringing back web 1, but here is something I have been advocating for a while, make 2 different new web profiles, along the lines of:
1.) A subset of modern HTML / CSS, custom Javascript. Remove anything that isn't needed and especially anything that affects rendering negatively for no good reason.
1.1.) Possibly: Provide versioned, vendor neutral versions of js to allow for autocomplete.
2.) Same as 1, but with custom JS. All js must complete in a specified number of cycles. User interaction gives extra cycles.
The point of 1 is to:
- for companies: massively lower the barriers for new browsers (remove lots of backwards compatibility and the huge problem of JS)
- for security conscious users: provide a safer way to browse the web
- for users generally: provide a way to browse the web faster and more comfortably
- the point of 2.) is to provide an approximation of what we have today but in a way that automatically limits developers from abusing JS.
I've actually taken to using a Javascript toggle extension that defaults to off. Makes the web a far better experience when it comes to venturing into unfamiliar territory (going to a site you haven't been to in a while, if it all, or following some shortened url that leads who knows where, or just clicking through something on a news aggregator for example). And if it breaks the website? 9 times out of 10 that's your "It's not worth it" signal to just close the tab and move on. If they can't even deprecate gracefully, they almost never use javascript competently and unobtrusively.
My point is, I'd like to give some basic cycles to unknown websites. The NoScript solution is good but radical. If you visit new websites often, you spend some time clicking "temp trusted." In my scenario, websites do have some power, but not much. They should never be allowed to make my fan turn faster - unless I allow it. I don't believe this can be done at the plugin/extension level.
At the bottom of their site, they have about 30 open full time positions, including Sales, Legal, and Finance. Seems strange for a 25 year old media player. Did they just close a big funding round or something?
I don't recall the full tumultuous journey, but highlights I recall were Nullsoft (original Winamp creators) towards the end were bought by AOL who did them dirty and then AOL forgot about Winamp as a property entirely for something like two decades through the Time Warner merger then divorce then the Yahoo! merger into "Oath" under Verizon. At some point in spinning Oath back out of Verizon and putting Oath's IP on the chopping block someone found Winamp in an old closet somewhere and sold the "brand" to whoever this new company is that so far as any can tell has zero relationship to the original Nullsoft in any capacity.
The pure Nullsoft Winamp was from 1997 to mid-1999 with AOL having Winamp under it's ownership until 2013 (technically until mid-January 2014) when it was sold to Radionomy (who then were bought by Vivendi but then bought themselves back under the guise of Audiovalley).
So that time with AOL covers v2.5 when it became free after starting out as shareware through to v5.666 along with the maligned WinAmp3 period. So that's whole a lot of not doing much but still producing releases for almost 15yrs. Winamp (& SHOUTcast) were sold before Verizon did it's thing with AOL.
Interestingly in contrast to the others it loads up fine on both my laptop and my S9 with Firefox, even after disabling my adblocker and unblocking all scripts in NoScript.
Add me the the list of people who thought you were exaggerating about how bad the website was and then immediately noticed how it made my browser stutter.
Not only froze my entire browser (ALL firefox tabs, including youtube playing in another window), but it locked up my entire system for a few seconds, I couldn't alt-tab or anything.
That's... almost impressive in how bad that is. I didn't know a website COULD lock up an entire system in this day and age.
That site's unusable; I see [Decline][Accept] buttons, with no explnation of what I'm being invited to decline or accept. No choice but to close the tab.
Winamp 2.xx was generally the favorite. And there's no reason to talk about it in the past tense -- you can still just use it even now.
I do. 2.95 works fine right up to Windows 10 and probably 11, and still plays any MP3 and pretty much any other format with a plug-in. It even has a double-size display option built right in which makes it perfectly usable on modern 4k resolution.
> I's really interesting to see just how low-res screens were when it was in it's hey-day, given that they are nearly unusable on a 4k monitor.
This reminds me of the realization that modern MacOS apps can have icon sizes larger than the original Mac's screen- 512x512 icons vs. 512x384 monochrome screen.
The max size for file an app icons on macOS was bumped to 1024x1024 some years ago actually, I think around the time the first retina MBPs appeared. So your point is even more true.
Somewhat worrying that I can't seem to find the source code for WACUP listed anywhere, checked their website, discord, and github. I'd feel a lot better about using it if I could see the source code. Currently using Audacious with a Winamp Classic skin.
Then don't use it if you only want to use 100% OSS.
I'm making something that I want to use (essentially a compatible implementation for my plug-ins to run under) & if it's of use to others then that's a bonus.
At no point has WACUP claimed to be 100% OSS nor should I be expected to do that when I'm the only one working on my Winamp reimplementation. Aspects that need to be done that way are done so accordingly.
I trust Justin Frankel, I don't know you, previous team or not.. The world can go on using Winamp 2.x forever and be just fine, its GRAS. If you're bringing something that isn't that, previous dev history or not, you're going to have to differentiate yourself from the folks who are also putting out winamp-alikes.
I'm not trying to be a jerk, that's just the reality.
Knowing what the code I'm running is doing is helpful in swaying me to your direction, even if that's not what you claim to be aiming for.
> should I be expected to do that when I'm the only one working on my Winamp reimplementation
Let us know when you want to change that. We're talented, and generally nice. Maybe some day you'll want some help.
I'm also not trying to be a jerk either but when I'm constantly being told by random people that I have to be OSS when it comes to WACUP that's also not particularly helpful other than introducing more potential work for me to do when there's absolutely no guarantee of a return to that effort. So maybe I'm more terse than I should be about such things but that's also just how I am.
It might make more sense for other projects especially those starting out fresh but that's not ever been my mindset with how I've been doing Winamp plug-in related development since 2003 along with the 5yrs I worked on Winamp & if that means people will avoid WACUP then so be it as they're more likely to be sticking with the AOL provided 2.x releases anyway.
Also it goes both ways on the trust aspects & maybe when the likes of fb2k, aimp & musicbee go OSS I might eventually reconsider my dinosaur like approach to development but there has to be a tangible benefit for me to do it.
I've already asked for help over the 5yrs or so I've been trying to make WACUP but the things that need help with doing are also the things that no one really wants to do (e.g. a new good midi input plug-in).
-dro (assuming this reply ever gets posted as I've been trying for over an hour)
> Also it goes both ways on the trust aspects & maybe when the likes of fb2k, aimp & musicbee go OSS I might eventually reconsider my dinosaur like approach to development but there has to be a tangible benefit for me to do it.
Forgive me for asking, but if the reason for you releasing WACUP to the public at all isn't purely personal benefit (if it was only about that might as well keep it to yourself right?) but to help people and share something that you deem useful and let others benefit from it, why would the source code be any different? Put another way: why is releasing the binaries publicly acceptable even if it doesn't benefit you directly, but doing the same thing for the source itself isn't?
Releasing a project as open source is associated with a lot of work and responsibility. People get quite entitled over open source projects and get quite upset when developers don't do what they want. I can see why he's unwilling to undergo all that stress and pressure if he feels it doesn't benefit him.
He can do what I do with my own personal projects: if you install something I wrote, you get the source code whether you want it or not. Setup.exe basically dumps a copy of my development directory into the specified installation folder.
That way, if I get hit by a bus, it's fine, The Source Is Out There. If someone wants to send a bug fix or improvement, great, thanks, I'll be glad to take a look. Otherwise, don't bug me.
The idea that "open source" is necessarily a full-time maintenance job with formal processes and expectations is something somebody made up.
> if you install something I wrote, you get the source code whether you want it or not. Setup.exe basically dumps a copy of my development directory into the specified installation folder.
This is really cool, can you share a bit about how you do this? Are you using a makefile and putting a gzip as an embed into the setup? Is this a function of the installer you're using? Thanks for any insight.
Not a whole lot to it. I just add the makefile, .cpp and .h files, Windows resource script, and other sources to the .iss file that Inno Setup uses to generate the setup program. They all get dumped in the same directory at installation time, for better or worse.
In the case of one commercial application, there are also binary blobs in the form of DLLs that support custom hardware.
It's not one of those practices that scales particularly well, but it works for me...
Seems to me like the fact it doesn't scale is why you do it. It's a decent way to avoid the responsibilities of having to lead an open source project while still giving others the benefits of having the source code available and modifiable. I wish more devs would do this.
Or he could just do it FamiTracker style: make no mention of source code on the website/communications, include a zip named "SOURCE" on the normal download which contains the source code, license, and a simple text file with build instructions.
Which is definitely just that, an assumption. Some people write things just because they want to or can, and don't care whether anyone else finds it useful for their own purposes. It might just be something for a portfolio, to inspire others, etc, or again, just because. Lots of things are created "just because".
The decision is left to the end user, use it, or don't.
Reading that blog and not being familiar with winamp's history after winamp2 (which was the best), it felt like there is a good story there about "dro" and the current owners. Can someone point me to it?
The fact that he points out what is and is not in the leak, might come back to bite him if the owners get very litigious. He should not have looked at it.
The thing that I liked about Winamp that stopped being cool were visualizations. net Audio player nowaday are so bland and featureless (including Spotify, Tidal, Deezer and others I've tried).
> It includes a skin that allows it to work on modern display resolutions. It's really interesting to see just how low-res screens were when it was in it's hey-day, given that they are nearly unusable on a 4k monitor.
Monitor size/resolution has gotten larger which is some of the factor but I think people downplay the shift in common effective DPI which leads to a much bigger perceived change in UI sizing design than there really has been. In the late 90s to early 2000s an effective DPI of 75-85 for a typical home user was not uncommon. Nowadays an effective DPI of 125-135 is pretty standard, many tech folk using an effective DPI of 150 because it gives the effect of having more workspace.
So what may have looked like a half physical inch wide UI element on a standard user's display in the late 90s might look like a quarter inch wide UI element on many HN reader's screens today because nobody likes to set their DPI properly :p.
> It's really interesting to see just how low-res screens were when it was in it's hey-day, given that they are nearly unusable on a 4k monitor.
When WinAmp was big, typical resolution was 1024x768 (XGA). Wikipedia has a nice comparison image to give you a sense of how tiny that was compared to 4K:
hm, forgotten about that one. I get why it exists/independent/opensource whatever..... but why does it exist? Far as I can tell the 'official' v5.8 version that's been around for download on the main site and still is for a long time works great. Maybe I've just been using it for so long I don't notice any oddities (or don't need them, it's a music player for godssake), and I guess they've improved interface etc on wacup but....
Well, reading the release notes may answer that question. Some highlights:
- running WACUP on Windows 10 for ARM on a Raspberry Pi 4 is now a known to work configuration
- Changed the shared metadata handling to do a better job in skipping trying to process requests for metadata requests that are always going to fail before triggering relatively time consuming calls
- Changed how the CD playback plug-in initialises itself to minimise the delays on loading that it can cause
- Fixed a crash when retrieving the raw lyrics data from a file's metadata tag on opening the Alt + 3 / View File Info dialog
The inability to find joy in things you normally do, feeling tired all the time, even when there is no reason for it, over an extended period of time, are all red flags for depression requiring intervention.
As far as I've seen, there is no physical (i.e. blood/fluids) test that can detect depression, it is diagnosed based on behaviors and history. A common feeling is that you want to make sense of these feelings by attributing it to a more understandable health issue.
Depending on what your mind ruminates on, it can be impossible to talk to others about what your thinking (as they may be dismissive, or alarmed). That's where you need someone who's qualified to talk to, like a doctor or counselor.
I'm surprised by the amount of criticism of medication in this thread. Although it is by no means a cure, it is an extremely powerful tool that can allow your brain to break out of feedback loops, and give you some control over your emotional regulation.
Reach out to your doctor, and be frank. Tell them exactly how low your feeling, and don't sugar coat it. They'll have questions to ask you. Also note that you can get doctors who are not a right fit. If you feel like your doctor is not helping, or you feel worse off from seeing them, then find a new one.
Depending on the severity, know that you can always push the issue, regardless of what friends/parents/teachers/colleagues tell you. If you are in crisis, call a cab, an emergency line, whatever, to get yourself to a clinic or hospital.
This kind of thing takes time and effort to solve, and you're the only one who knows how, you, personally feel. It's not like a broken bone, or infection, you have to do your best to describe to doctors how you're feeling.
Does anyone have access to the reports from the scientists? I'd be really interested to see the kinds of stuff they predicted, in case there are any events that haven't occurred even on a small scale yet
Debating it is difficult, its a really nuanced topic. It's way too easy for it to devolve into a "you're with us or you're against us" type of argument.
And of course, like you said, deeply entrenched industry leaders have their own interests to protect.
The article isn't meant to be for or against nuclear energy, but rather the pros and cons of deploying a miniature plant
In the case of a ship or sub, in the event of both catastrophic failure, or even a material leak, its likely going to end up in the ocean. Water is an excellent radiation shield (though I guess it doesn't matter much, since no one would be around), and even a materials leak gets diluted until its not an immediate risk. RIP ocean microbes though
Fun fact, Bhopal was so egregiously horrible, that it is what led to the create of the CSB (Chemical Safety Board). A lot of their investigation videos are on youtube, and absolutely worth watching
That's a really good point. Something like that could be used to make a "dirty bomb" which aims to disperse material, rather than try to make it react as in a typical nuclear warhead
I don't think you can really compare the poisonous emissions of diesel exhaust leaked materials from a reactor.
I see your point, any nuclear excursion tends to get blown out of proportion, but it does have some unique dangers.
In particular, diesel fumes eventually dissipate, whereas radioactive materials will settle and continue to be a problem for decades. Which may not be a problem if it's left alone, but anyone unlucky enough to interact with it could end up with it on their body/clothing unaware that they're absorbing an unsafe dose over a period of days or weeks.
But yes, I agree, we do need to move away from fossil fuel sources one way or another.
I don't think you can really compare the poisonous emissions of diesel exhaust leaked materials from a reactor.
Sure you can, you just need to agree on the comparison criteria, like, for example, the total number of illnesses/death from normal (and predicted abnormal) operation of the device. Burning fossil fuels still leads to deaths even if they are spread over a large area and/or time.
I am afraid I don't have the numbers to back up my claim but when I was at university, my thermodynamics lecturer showed us a calculation that background dose from radioactive material at a coal powered fire station is higher than that of a nuclear power station. This is because of the shear amount of coal power stations burn through, and in that fuel, there is a trace amount of radioactive material that eventually gets out into the atmosphere.
I've previously worked on a nuclear licenced site and we were not even allowed to throw smoke alarms in the general rubbish due to there being radioactive material inside.
Yes, absolutely! Coal is pretty much the worst of the worst.
My concerns are solely with how fuel would be managed, so that it isn't lost, and subsequently broken. One example was scrap workers taking a radioactive source to a scrap yard to be melted down, not realizing what it was.
This can relieve a pain point if you ever need to work on a serial port, and as you are typing in a command, the other side sends text, which overwrites the characters you were typing (depending on how the local echo is configured). It reminds me of a line based serial terminal emulator, where the input is a separate text box, and the output is a larger box above it.
Oh, and it also seems to have methods of sampling the data as it comes in, so that it can be configured to only show the messages you are looking for, and also counting them?
The source file is also tiny: https://www.kylheku.com/cgit/pw/tree/pw.c
Very Unix