neuromute's comments

The renderer (visual) has to be made by someone that knows how to build/code such a thing, yeah. Then once presented to the end user via the Hydra web app, that user may or may not have various UI components to influence and adjust the renderer output (sliders, buttons, etc). The app supports MIDI, and various UI components can be assigned to MIDI controls.

I was about to ask if it would be ok to do the same for my web-based VJ app Hydra, but it looks like you found it already! Thank you, it’s most appreciated!

Interesting! In my spare time for the last couple of months I’ve been working on a web-based VJ tool/toy. Nearing v1.0.0, which I hope to release in a week or so.

I was considering submitting a Show HN post too when it hits that point, but didn’t know if there was much interest on here. Turns out there is!

For anyone who is interested, the app I’ve been working on can be found here -> https://hydra.virusav.com

It’s FLOSS and the repo is here -> https://github.com/n3uromanc3r/hydra

Weirdly earlier today (prior to seeing this post) I considered starting a sister project to hydra that allows you to build a mixer and visual pipeline using a node-based system instead of the more rigid standard mixer setup.

This was a very unwelcome surprise this morning when I sat down to work.

For what it's worth, I first switched to Insomnia from Postman, years ago, when they pulled a similar stunt.

Rest assured, although I created an account earlier (to gain access to my collections which simply seemed to disappear overnight), I'll be switching away from your product, so don't count that account creation as a win in your metrics. Not impressed with how this has been handled at all. It seems there are very few trustworthy companies in tech anymore.

I can fully relate with the author on this one.

For a bit of background, I initially started out using Linux with Slax in 2005, moving on to Fedora Core 5 and then installing Ubuntu when Feisty Fawn was released. For a long time, Ubuntu just felt right. Don't get me wrong, in those days there was plenty of work to do to get a system working well (getting working drivers, configuring xorg, etc), but overall it seemed like Canonical had a real focus on delivering an easy to use, stable Linux desktop OS for people that didn't want to build everything from scratch.

Since then I’ve occasionally run other bare metal installed distros/derivaties (elementary, mint, pop, debian) for a while, but I always found my way back to Ubuntu. I’ve tried dozens of other distros through VMs and live disks over the years, just to see what they have to offer too. The world of Linux is vast and wonderful, and there's always the potential for temptation on the horizon.

That said, I've been running Ubuntu 18.04 on my main desktop PC for about 5 years now and it's been a relatively reliable daily driver OS during that time. However, snaps leave a very bad taste in my mouth. Canonical seem dead set on force-feeding this crap down users' throats too, which is another trait that doesn't sit well with me. With 18.04 reaching the end of its shelf life, I decided—like the author of the article—to part ways with Ubuntu (and, by extension, Canonical).

I spent a good while searching for the right replacement OS and finally came up with the following shortlist: Fedora, Nobara, OpenSuse Tumbleweed and Arch.

I wanted a decent low-latency experience for audio production, and to be able to run the Bitwig digital audio workstation software. I wanted Steam, BTRFS, Pipewire, and various other relatively standard packages like Firefox, Kodi, Inkscape, Blender, Spotify, Bitwarden, etc. Initially, I was thinking of using KDE Plasma too. I tried out all of the shortlisted distros above, and finally went with Arch. So far it's been an incredible experience.

There were too many niggles in the end, with KDE, and I decided to give the latest Gnome (44) a shot, once it landed in the Arch repos. That was a surprise, as I wasn't expecting it to be anywhere near as great as it is. So far this is probably the best desktop Linux experience I've ever had. There's close to zero chance I will ever install another Ubuntu OS on any of my machines.

So long, Ubuntu, and thanks for the good times.

Canonical really seem to have lost their mojo. They've had a long-running tendency to forge on ahead regardless with fingers in ears, instead of listening to their userbase about what they actually want. Forcing snaps on users being a prime example of this behaviour. As a consequence, many users are jumping ship to other distros, and who can blame them?

In fact, I'm in the same camp. I'm imminently replacing a very nearly EOL 18.04 install with Arch. I've tried a non-trivial amount of distros over the course of my Linux days (since Fedora Core 5) and Ubuntu has probably seen the most install time over that period, but my time with Ubuntu is now at an end. Snaps suck.

Overpopulation isn’t really about running out of space or feeling cramped, it’s about not having enough resources to sustainably support the population.

They’re implying that Mozilla are milking Firefox for all it’s worth. Exploiting it and at the same time not treating it very well.

I can't seem to find any information on the BIOS for this machine. I'd like to see something like this come with coreboot.

I did not downvote you, but I figured I’d let you know that based on what you said I’m pretty sure you were downvoted because your comment brings nothing to the conversation. People on HN tend to prefer informative contributions to the discussion, just for future reference.

It hasn’t been mentioned in this thread yet, but OpenToonz seems like another fantastic piece of FLOSS software for 2D animation. If it’s good enough for Studio Ghibli and Matt Groening (Futurama), then I dare say it’s good enough for a great many other animators.

Thanks, I'm now motivated to work some more on it!

Likewise, your site is looking pretty sweet too.

I started work on one of these a couple of years back. Never actually finished it (is anything ever truly finished?!). It’s got a media player with milkdrop visualiser (you can control the presets with left and right on the keyboard), a terminal (with matrix effect via the command with the same name), various settings and apps. I had a drum machine in there, but removed it because it was a bit messy code-wise. Wanna get some emulators in there, my previous site had an awesome JS NES emulator virtual arcade easter egg that was triggered via the Konami code. This web OS experiment is built in jQuery, but I’m inclined to port it over to Vue at some point.

Link, for those that are interested: https://os.virusav.com

Note: the name VirusAV might seem ominous, but it stands for Virus AudioVisual. I’m a coder, VJ, DJ and music producer.

In short, yes. Elites will support deregulation, when it suits/benefits them.

The Trump Administration’s environmental deregulation drive is no doubt lobbied for, backed by, and funded in part by the Fossil Fuel industry.

Three animation tools (not strictly SVG-related) that spring to mind:

Pencil 2D

Synfig Studio

OpenToonz (used by Studio Ghibli, no less!)

If you want 3D, then Blender is a fantastic open source tool.

A big thanks also needs to go to Philip Rebohle for his DXVK package, and Joshua Ashton for his D9VK package, both of which are part of the not-so-secret sauce that Proton uses with Wine to get such a good compatibility with an ever increasing list of Windows games. I have huge respect and admiration for their contribution to Linux gaming.

Linux gaming is looking pretty healthy now.

An obligatory shoutout goes to Ryan C. Gordon (icculus) for this continued contributions to native Linux gaming too (currently working on porting Descent 3). He made it possible for me to play some of my favourite games on Linux well over a decade ago.

VR is the one thing I’ve really been wanting on Linux. I held off on buying a Vive for my PC (I have PSVR though), due to the lack of advertised first class support for Linux, but it seems that the Index kit is fully supported on Steam OS. I’d buy the Index kit right now, if it weren’t for the long list of RMA horror stories I keep reading about on /r/ValveIndex. If Valve could improve quality control on their hardware, myself—and I’m sure other Linux users—would be more inclined to purchase it.

Yes, it will be floss. I've still got a way to go to fully flesh it out, but I'm getting there. Here's a screenshot of what I have so far - https://i.imgur.com/bEBIBFF.png. The sequencer, effects rack to the right, keyboard, pad on the left, wave selection, oscilloscope, level meter, master volume and bottom two dial racks (dry/wet levels) are all working. The rest is yet to be plumbed in, but I've added it in to try and get some idea of the final layout.

At present, the sequence of connections for each effect are pre-determined, but I'm working with the idea that a button will flip the synth around so you can patch the units in any order you wish. Another idea is to start with an empty rack and have you add them in and move them around however you wish too, so you could have more than one of each type in the chain. Very much still a work-in-progress!

I'm actually using Tone.js for this project. So far I'm finding it very useful.

I've downloaded vcvrack, but not actually tried it out yet. It looks awesome. However, the project I'm working on is a web-based synth using the HTML5 Web Audio API. It's built using Tone.js and NexusUI.js, so vcvrack isn't really applicable, as far as I can tell at least!

Thanks for the recommendation though. :)

Oddly, I’ve been playing with this library just this week. I’ve also been looking at various alternatives (some of which have already been mentioned in the comments here).

The only functionality I’m actually looking for is the ability to connect and disconnect elements using virtual cables (that flex and look good, just like those in rete). It’s for a software synth patchbay (like those used in the Reason digital audio workstation software). So, ultimately, even though this library is impressive, it isn’t quite the right fit for my project.

If anyone can recommend an alternative that focuses purely on cabling, I’d love to hear about it!

This looks interesting. I’ve been looking into getting Keybase running on a Raspberry Pi 4. This might help.