Slashdot Mirror

Mozilla-backed researchers are working on a real-time noise suppression algorithm using a neural network -- and they want your noise! Long-time Slashdot reader jmv writes: The Mozilla Research RRNoise project combines classic signal processing with deep learning, but it's small and fast. No expensive GPUs required -- it runs easily on a Raspberry Pi. The result is easier to tune and sounds better than traditional noise suppression systems (been there!). And you can help!
From the site: Click on this link to let us record one minute of noise from where you are... We're interested in noise from any environment where you might communicate using voice. That can be your office, your car, on the street, or anywhere you might use your phone or computer.
They claim it already sounds better than traditional noise suppression systems, and even though the code isn't optmized yet, "it already runs about 60x faster than real-time on an x86 CPU."

Mozilla-backed researchers are working on a real-time noise suppression algorithm using a neural network -- and they want your noise! Long-time Slashdot reader jmv writes: The Mozilla Research RRNoise project combines classic signal processing with deep learning, but it's small and fast. No expensive GPUs required -- it runs easily on a Raspberry Pi. The result is easier to tune and sounds better than traditional noise suppression systems (been there!). And you can help!
From the site: Click on this link to let us record one minute of noise from where you are... We're interested in noise from any environment where you might communicate using voice. That can be your office, your car, on the street, or anywhere you might use your phone or computer.
They claim it already sounds better than traditional noise suppression systems, and even though the code isn't optmized yet, "it already runs about 60x faster than real-time on an x86 CPU."

jmv writes: The Opus audio codec, used in WebRTC and now included in all major web browsers, gets another major upgrade with the release of version 1.2. This release brings quality improvements to both speech and music, while remaining fully compatible with RFC 6716. There are also optimizations, new options, as well as many bug fixes. This Opus 1.2 demo describes a few of the upgrades that users and implementers will care about the most. It includes audio samples comparing to previous versions of the codec, as well as speed comparisons for x86 and ARM.

BrianFagioli tips news that Mozilla, Microsoft, Google, Cisco, Intel, Amazon, and Netflix are teaming up to create the Alliance for Open Media, "an open-source project that will develop next-generation media formats, codecs and technologies in the public interest." Several of these companies have been working on this problem alone: Mozilla started Daala, Google has VP9 and VP10, and Cisco just recently announced Thor. Amazon and Netflix, of course, are major suppliers of online video streaming, so they have a vested interested in royalty-free codecs. They're inviting others to join them — the more technology and patents they get on their side, the less likely they'll run into the issues that Microsoft's VC-1 and Google's VP8 struggled with. "The Alliance will operate under W3C patent rules and release code under an Apache 2.0 license. This means all Alliance participants are waiving royalties both for the codec implementation and for any patents on the codec itself."

Via Engadget comes news that GOG, the DRM-free game store platform, has launched a DRM-free movie store. The initial set of movies are gamer oriented, and you won't find major studio releases (yet, and not for a lack of trying on the part of GOG). From GOG: Our goal is to offer you cinema classics as well as some all-time favorite TV series with no DRM whatsoever, for you to download and keep on your hard drive or stream online whenever you feel like it. We talked to most of the big players in the movie industry and we often got a similar answer: "We love your ideas, but we do not want to be the first ones. We will gladly follow, but until somebody else does it first, we do not want to take the risk". DRM-Free distribution is not a concept their lawyers would accept without hesitation.

We kind of felt that would be the case and that it's gonna take patience and time to do it, to do it, to do it right. That's quite a journey ahead of us, but every gamer knows very well that great adventures start with one small step. So why not start with something that feels very familiar? We offer you a number of gaming and Internet culture documentaries - all of them DRM-Free, very reasonably priced, and presenting some fascinating insight into topics close to a gamer's heart. Videos are mostly 1080p (~8GB for a 90 minute film) and can be acquired for about $6. They're using h.264/mp4 and not VP9/Matroska, but you can't have everything ;). If you don't want to download that much data, it looks like all of the videos are also available in 720p and 576p.

New submitter rvalles writes "Xiph.org just released a major update to their Opus audio codec. Opus 1.1 offers major improvements over last year's 1.0.2 release. Opus is a general-purpose, very flexible, open and royalty-free audio codec that offers low-latency and high quality/bitrate, incorporating technology from Skype's SILK codec and Xiph.Org's CELT codec. Its first release beat everything else last year at 64kbit/s in a listening test held at HydrogenAudio."

New submitter rvalles writes "Xiph.org just released a major update to their Opus audio codec. Opus 1.1 offers major improvements over last year's 1.0.2 release. Opus is a general-purpose, very flexible, open and royalty-free audio codec that offers low-latency and high quality/bitrate, incorporating technology from Skype's SILK codec and Xiph.Org's CELT codec. Its first release beat everything else last year at 64kbit/s in a listening test held at HydrogenAudio."

New submitter rvalles writes "Xiph.org just released a major update to their Opus audio codec. Opus 1.1 offers major improvements over last year's 1.0.2 release. Opus is a general-purpose, very flexible, open and royalty-free audio codec that offers low-latency and high quality/bitrate, incorporating technology from Skype's SILK codec and Xiph.Org's CELT codec. Its first release beat everything else last year at 64kbit/s in a listening test held at HydrogenAudio."

SD-Arcadia writes "Mozilla Blog: 'Cisco has announced today that they are going to release a gratis, high quality, open source H.264 implementation — along with gratis binary modules compiled from that source and hosted by Cisco for download. This move enables any open source project to incorporate Cisco's H.264 module without paying MEPG LA license fees. Of course, this is not a not a complete solution. In a perfect world, codecs, like other basic Internet technologies such as TCP/IP, HTTP, and HTML, would be fully open and free for anyone to modify, recompile, and redistribute without license agreements or fees. Mozilla is fully committed to working towards that better future. To that end, we are developing Daala, a fully open next generation codec. Daala is still under development, but our goal is to leapfrog H.265 and VP9, building a codec that will be both higher-quality and free of encumbrances.'"

An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from a post by Xiph.org's Monty Montgomery: "Xiph.Org has been working on Daala, a new video codec for some time now, though Opus work had overshadowed it until just recently. With Opus finalized and much of the mop-up work well in hand, Daala development has taken center stage. I've started work on 'demo' pages for Daala, just like I've done demos of other Xiph development projects. Daala aims to be rather different from other video codecs (and it's the first from-scratch design attempt in a while), so the first few demo pages are going to be mostly concerned with what's new and different in Daala. I've finished the first 'demo' page (about Daala's lapped transforms), so if you're interested in video coding technology, go have a look!"

An anonymous reader writes "The Free Lossless Audio Codec, FLAC, loved by audiophiles for its lossless fidelity has been updated to version 1.3.0. FLAC is an audio format similar to MP3, but 'lossless', meaning that audio compressed in FLAC doesn't suffer any loss in quality. FLAC v1.3.0 is the first update in almost 6 years and it is also the first release from the new Xiph.Org maintainer team." Big new feature: ReplayGain works for sampling rates up to 192kHz so you can finally control the volume of your obsessively ripped LPs.

An anonymous reader writes "Continuing a firehose tradition of maximum information density, Xiph.Org's second video on digital media explores multiple facets of digital audio signals and how they really behave in the real world. Demonstrations of sampling, quantization, bit-depth, and dither explore digital audio behavior on real audio equipment using both modern digital analysis and vintage analog bench equipment... just in case we can't trust those newfangled digital gizmos. You can also download the source code for each demo and try it all for yourself!" Plus you get to look at Monty's beard and hear his soothing voice. There's a handy wiki page with further information and a summary of the video if text is your thing.

An anonymous reader writes "Continuing a firehose tradition of maximum information density, Xiph.Org's second video on digital media explores multiple facets of digital audio signals and how they really behave in the real world. Demonstrations of sampling, quantization, bit-depth, and dither explore digital audio behavior on real audio equipment using both modern digital analysis and vintage analog bench equipment... just in case we can't trust those newfangled digital gizmos. You can also download the source code for each demo and try it all for yourself!" Plus you get to look at Monty's beard and hear his soothing voice. There's a handy wiki page with further information and a summary of the video if text is your thing.

An anonymous reader writes "Continuing a firehose tradition of maximum information density, Xiph.Org's second video on digital media explores multiple facets of digital audio signals and how they really behave in the real world. Demonstrations of sampling, quantization, bit-depth, and dither explore digital audio behavior on real audio equipment using both modern digital analysis and vintage analog bench equipment... just in case we can't trust those newfangled digital gizmos. You can also download the source code for each demo and try it all for yourself!" Plus you get to look at Monty's beard and hear his soothing voice. There's a handy wiki page with further information and a summary of the video if text is your thing.

It's been said that the mix of stories on Slashdot is like an omelet: linux and tech, mixed with science and Legos, and a few reviews and sci-fi folded in. It's not just the stories that are a good mix, however, it's the people behind them. Through the past 15 years, an unusual cast of characters have been responsible for keeping the site up and running and bringing you the stories you want to read. We've asked a number of them to write a few words about their time working here and to share a few memories. Below you'll find that some of our former employees don't know what "a few words" means, and a collection of what bringing you news for the past 15 years has been like. Chris DiBona
Right after they had switched from being Chips & Dips to Slashdot, I was working at a company called VA Research. VA Research, at the time, shipped Linux hardware to dotcoms and other people and that was groovy. I liked Slashdot. It was fun. That was really the only place to go to find people who gave a crap about Open Source and free software at the time.

I said to them, "Hey. What if I just send you some hardware so that you can beef up the site a bit." They're like, "Oh my god. That'd be so helpful. Please send it." I did, they got the hardware and it was pretty helpful, it seems. They re-wrote the [Ad Foo], ad servicing system at that point and we were the base ad, so if they had no ad to show, it'd just show a VA Research ad as a thank you to us.

That went on for a year and a half, two years, I want to say, except for in classic Rob, Jeff, me style. It showed the same ad for two years and we would know that the site was broken, or Ad Foo was hosed, because it would show the ad with chips that were four years out of date. That's how I got involved and how I got to know the guys

Nathan Oostendorp
My only real association with the site is with the technology, and what I remember about Slashdot is that it was an entirely "seat of the pants" affair - there were no patterns laid down to follow, it's not like there were a hundred other sites using MySQL and there wasn't much precedent for using a database backend in the first place -- it was routinely even condemned as being risky. We had this feeling of "okay we've discovered that using Perl and MySQL to create pages of HTML is pretty awesome" so we played around a lot. Slashdot was the main thing, but there were a bunch of other projects like DJ Hernandez, which was I guess an early version of Spotify, and the original Everything (cum Everything2) which was kind of a proto-wiki system.

Fundamental to Slashdot was the Story submission and moderation system, and then the comment system, and the several dozen (what would now be called RSS feeds) for "Slashboxes" which at the time were a lot of HTML regex cron jobs from yours truly. We had idea that all the information on the internet was going to be accessible, and Slashdot could be the channel for it. The universe we were living in, everything was accessible and Slashdot could be the "geek lens" for everything to flow thru.

Very quickly we started realizing that we had to make money doing this business and so we created an "open source ad system" called Ad-fu (Inspired by one of the quote by the X-Files Lone Gunmen "my kung-fu is the best"). I spent an inordinate amount of time building this system, which was quixotically designed to put DoubleClick out of business -- once you've mastered mod_perl and databases, scheduling ads and counting the results should be easy, right? Ad-fu was several weeks of my full-time effort and got us through about 18 months and the acquisition by Andover.Net, at which point it was migrated to their Ad System which was written in C and flat files "for scalability"...

After the acquisition my relationship with Slashdot was intermittent -- the "ajax-y" single-page comment system was originally based on a hacked-up prototype I did in grad school in the mid-00s. I got my black belt in Perl, MySQL, and web programming thanks to Slashdot, and it's served me well as a practitioner in the ensuing 15 years.

Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda
15 years ago I spent every spare moment building a website hosted on the silliest domain name I could think of. I ran polls asking how many shots my roommate should drink. I posted stories detailing personal art projects, or explaining how our car broke down driving from Michigan to North Carolina. Somewhere between then and now, amidst all the movie & kernel releases, technological breakthroughs, and ceaseless threats from governments and corporations, I came to understand that Slashdot was itself made out of The Stuff that Matters. My heartfelt thanks go out to everyone who remembers.

Jeff "Hemos" Bates
One of the things people often have asked about over the years is, how did you guys know you wanted to build this business? Yeah, well we didn't, is the reality. There was no Machiavellian plan, there is nothing like that, it was absolute sheer evolution, I think that's a good way to put it. Which made for some particularly interesting discussions with BC's and people who wanted to buy it in the early years. Because, they would ask things like, well what is your burn rate. And I would say, well the landlord likes to be paid and I like to eat, so there isn't one.

I think in terms of things that Slashdot did that meant a lot to me or I am proud of, I think the post-Columbine stuff that John Katz did. I know I just said John Katz so we might as well just turn on the troll radar right now. I like John just for the record.

John is a great, very thoughtful guy. And I think that what he did during Columbine, for giving a voice to the freaks and weirdoes, and by no means am I saying that, I don't even remember their names, Eric and Dylan, I guess? That what they did was a good thing. Not at all, that was a terrible, terrible thing. But, I think that the writing that he did and the discussions that happened around that was fantastic. I think that that is a situation that is the epitome of why sites like Slashdot and social media sites are so important and meaningful. It was knitting together people all across the country, and all across the world where they didn't have a lot of people around them that they could talk about this with. They had to go online to find a community that understood what it was that they were trying to say.

Jon Katz
Slashdot was an important place for me, if not a great fit. I loved the energy of the site, and the Linux ethic looks stronger now even than it did then. After Columbine, I wrote a series on the site called "Voices From The Hellmouth" and it was one of the most important pieces I ever did. If convention media had followed the idealism and values of Rob and Jeff, they might not now be such a shambles. Slashdot was a revolutionary website, a landmark in Internet history. I was very proud to have written there.

Emmett Plant
“You wrote for Slashdot?”

I get this a lot, even twelve years after I’d written my last piece. It happened again just two weeks ago, talking to a guy from InfoSec.

I was young, idealistic and had no idea what I was doing. I imagine that for most of us, this is still true. We didn’t write for a market or to capitalize on a trend. We wrote about things we liked, and tried to get other people to like them, too.

A cynical perspective could see Slashdot as a place where angry nerds gather and rant anonymously about the topics of the day, but it misses the point. It’s actually a place where hundreds of thousands of people show up to say, ‘Hey, look at this thing, isn’t it cool?’

Sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes it’s hell-no, but there’s always an answer.

Nerds are some of the weirdest people you’ll ever meet. They also tend to be intelligent, opinionated and enthusiastically kind. Twelve years later, Slashdot still makes that obvious -- Even when the readers are loudly complaining about software patents, arguing about intellectual property and demanding new Firefly.

“What was it like?”

Rob Malda had managed to learn most of Darth Maul’s moves, and was terrifying with a dual-bladed lightsaber toy. We knew every word to ‘Cowtown’by They Might Be Giants, and we broke out into song while driving down a highway in Michigan. The ‘geek compound’was actually a few houses at the end of a suburban cul-de-sac. Jeff Bates did a killer Dr. Evil impression, and was able to eat clementines at a terrifying pace. The one-and-only time I’d ever visited the aforementioned ‘compound,’I had a flu and was taking a terrifying amount of medication for it, which led to me saying wildly inappropriate things to people I’d just met. No one really seemed to care. I slept on CowboyNeal’s couch, and learned that Rob and I had not only run BBSes ‘back in the day,’but ran them on the same software as well.

I wrote a lot of pieces that I still enjoy to this day. I also wrote a lot of pieces that I’d prefer to never see again. I approved some stories that I shouldn’t have, and rejected a lot of stories that probably should have gotten more attention. Have I mentioned that I had no idea what I was doing?

I enjoyed my time at Slashdot tremendously, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. It’s unsettling to know that what you’re typing in vi tonight is going to be in front of more than a million smart people tomorrow morning. Then those smart people will be encouraged to comment on what you write, telling you exactly how much of an unparalleled genius/complete moron you are. They may even make a chart.

No matter what we had to say on the site back then, everything at the time was colored by money. The dot-com investment mania was at full strength, and there was a wildly inaccurate assumption that we were all hip-deep in filthy lucre. Writing about technology isn’t terribly lucrative, even if you’re writing for one of the most popular sites on the planet. Putting the technology to use is considerably more valuable: When I left tech writing and journalism to go back to work as an engineer, my income more-than-doubled.

“All good things...”

I left Slashdot to take over as the editor-in-chief of Linux.com, which ended up being a beautiful disaster. I went back to engineering for about a year, then took over as the CEO of the Xiph.org Foundation for a while, and then went back to engineering again. I started a production company and was able to fulfill childhood dreams by working on Star Trek and writing a lot of music for video games. My current time is divided between working in systems engineering, managing my production company and training for my private pilot certificate here in the Valley of the Sun.

I still love tech, and I still love sharing cool new things with people I barely know.

I still run Linux machines at home, at work and in outside projects.

I still think the DMCA is a terribly stupid piece of legislation.

I still throw down with pudge on political matters.

I still read Penny Arcade, run a BBS and hang with trekkies.

...and I’m on IRC right now.

Jonathan "CowboyNeal" Pater
My fondest memories of Slashdot are always those that surround the events when people came together to effect a positive change. Starting already in the site's infancy when there was a real push among our readers, spurred on by one of CmdrTaco's editorials, to open the source of Netscape. When it actually came to pass, it was clear that in addition to being a fun way to keep up on the news and waste some time during coffee breaks and slow work days, Slashdot could be a force for good as well. Years later, we still haven't been able to influence any sort of software patent reform, but, we can keep hoping.

I always enjoy the Slashdot interviews. We've been able to interview a diverse group of people that ranges from David Korn and Rob Pike, to mc Chris and Warren Ellis. I feel that that diversity is something that makes Slashdot more interesting than just a technology news site, and the ability to pass questions on to the interviewees from our readers makes for an interesting article.

The other memory foremost in my mind, is of the infamy of being the most ubiquitous Slashdot poll option of all time. I read not long ago via Wikipedia that this was because I was in charge of the polls, and had inserted myself into them. This isn't true at all, but because Wikipedia needs a source to quote, I feel that now for our 15th anniversary, is a good time to set the record straight. While I've never been fully "in charge" of the polls, I did make plenty of polls over the years, but I never put myself into one. The honor and prestige of starting that tradition belongs to Chris DiBona, and even after he moved on from Slashdot, the other editors managed to keep it alive. I'd like to both thank and forgive him, for starting the tradition. I never kept track if I ever won any of the polls, but I have to assume I won at least one of them. That time, whenever it might have been, was pretty sweet too.

Finally, I want to thank everyone who ever emailed me over the years. To be sure, it's often been a deluge of stuff to wade through every morning. I may or may not have had time to respond to your particular email, but I read all of them eventually, even the nasty ones. Thanks for writing me, but most of all, thanks for reading the site. It's the readers that make everything possible.

New submitter jmv writes "It's official. The Opus audio codec is now standardized by the IETF as RFC 6716. Opus is the first state-of-the-art, fully Free and Open audio codec ratified by a major standards organization. Better, Opus covers basically the entire audio-coding application space and manages to be as good or better than existing proprietary codecs over this whole space. Opus is the result of a collaboration between Xiph.Org, Mozilla, Microsoft (yes!), Broadcom, Octasic, and Google. See the Mozilla announcement and the Xiph.Org press release for more details."

An anonymous reader writes "A recent post at Xiph.org provides a long and incredibly detailed explanation of why 24-bit/192kHz music downloads — touted as being of 'uncompromised studio quality' — don't make any sense. The post walks us through some of the basics of ear anatomy, sampling rates, and listening tests, finally concluding that lossless formats and a decent pair of headphones will do a lot more for your audio enjoyment than 24/192 recordings. 'Why push back against 24/192? Because it's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, a business model based on willful ignorance and scamming people. The more that pseudoscience goes unchecked in the world at large, the harder it is for truth to overcome truthiness... even if this is a small and relatively insignificant example.'"

Freddybear writes "Xiph.org, makers of ogg audio and theora video codecs, submitted a detailed proposal to the FTC for the patents workshop. Their proposal recommends changes which would help to eliminate the practice of 'submarine' patents regarding standardized technologies. Quoting: 'The Xiph.Org Foundation recommends that the FTC work to require specific, ex ante disclosure of patents or patent applications that would read on standards under development, that failure to disclose exhaust the patent, and assertion of such a patent ex post be deemed anti-competitive. This should apply not only to standards development activities that the patent holder participates in or knows about, but those it should have known about. Furthermore, vague infringement allegations or activities designed to avoid an SSO's disclosure requirements or undermine the standards process should also be deemed anti-competitive.'"

Aldenissin writes "From the Xiph.org developers, Opus is a non-patent encumbered codec designed for interactive usages, such as VoIP, telepresence, and remote jamming, that require very low latency. When they started working on Opus (then known as CELT), they used the slogan 'Why can't your telephone sound as good as your stereo?', and they weren't kidding. Now, test results demonstrate that Opus's performance against HE-AAC, one of the strongest (but highest-latency) codecs at this bitrate, bests the quality of two of the most popular and respected encoders for the format, on the majority of individual audio samples receiving a higher average score overall. Hydrogenaudio conducted a 64kbit/sec multiformat listening test including Opus, aoTuV Vorbis, two HE-AAC encoders, and a 48kbit/sec AAC-LC low anchor. Comparing 30 diverse samples using the highly sensitive ABC/HR methodology, Opus is running with 22.5ms of total latency but the codec can go as low as 5ms."

Aldenissin writes "From the Xiph.org developers, Opus is a non-patent encumbered codec designed for interactive usages, such as VoIP, telepresence, and remote jamming, that require very low latency. When they started working on Opus (then known as CELT), they used the slogan 'Why can't your telephone sound as good as your stereo?', and they weren't kidding. Now, test results demonstrate that Opus's performance against HE-AAC, one of the strongest (but highest-latency) codecs at this bitrate, bests the quality of two of the most popular and respected encoders for the format, on the majority of individual audio samples receiving a higher average score overall. Hydrogenaudio conducted a 64kbit/sec multiformat listening test including Opus, aoTuV Vorbis, two HE-AAC encoders, and a 48kbit/sec AAC-LC low anchor. Comparing 30 diverse samples using the highly sensitive ABC/HR methodology, Opus is running with 22.5ms of total latency but the codec can go as low as 5ms."

Ignorant Aardvark writes "Xiph.org just released the first installment in its video series 'A Digital Video Primer For Geeks,' which covers digital audio and video fundamentals. The first video covers basic concepts of how digital audio and video are encoded, and does so in an understandable fashion. The video is hosted by Monty, the founder of Xiph.org (the people who brought you Ogg), and explains a lot of concepts (FourCC codes, YUV color space, gamma, etc.) that many watchers of digital video have long been exposed to, but don't quite understand themselves. The intent of the video series (in addition to general education) is to spur interest in digital encoding and get more free software hackers involved in digital audio/video."

Ignorant Aardvark writes "Xiph.org just released the first installment in its video series 'A Digital Video Primer For Geeks,' which covers digital audio and video fundamentals. The first video covers basic concepts of how digital audio and video are encoded, and does so in an understandable fashion. The video is hosted by Monty, the founder of Xiph.org (the people who brought you Ogg), and explains a lot of concepts (FourCC codes, YUV color space, gamma, etc.) that many watchers of digital video have long been exposed to, but don't quite understand themselves. The intent of the video series (in addition to general education) is to spur interest in digital encoding and get more free software hackers involved in digital audio/video."

SergeyKurdakov writes "Monty 'xiphmont' Montgomery of the Xiph Foundation says the latest action-packed, graph- and demo-clip-stuffed Theora project update page (demo 9) is now up for all and sundry! Catch up on what's gone into the new Theora encoder Ptalarbvorm over the last few months. It also instructs how to pronounce 'Ptalarbvorm.' Ptalarbvorm is not a finished release encoder yet, though I've personally been using it in production for a few months. Pace on improvements hasn't slowed down — the subjective psychovisual work being done by Tim Terriberry and Greg Maxwell has at least doubled-again on the improvements made by Thusnelda, and they're not anywhere near done yet. As a bonus Monty gathered all Xiph demo pages in one place." Also on the video codec front, and also with a Xiph connection, atamido writes "Google has released On2's VP8 video codec to the world, royalty-free. It is packaging it with Vorbis audio, in a subset of the Matroska container, and calling it WebM. It's not branded as an exclusively Google project — Mozilla and Opera are also contributors. Builds of your favorite browsers with full support are available." An anonymous reader points out this technical analysis of VP8.

SergeyKurdakov writes "Monty 'xiphmont' Montgomery of the Xiph Foundation says the latest action-packed, graph- and demo-clip-stuffed Theora project update page (demo 9) is now up for all and sundry! Catch up on what's gone into the new Theora encoder Ptalarbvorm over the last few months. It also instructs how to pronounce 'Ptalarbvorm.' Ptalarbvorm is not a finished release encoder yet, though I've personally been using it in production for a few months. Pace on improvements hasn't slowed down — the subjective psychovisual work being done by Tim Terriberry and Greg Maxwell has at least doubled-again on the improvements made by Thusnelda, and they're not anywhere near done yet. As a bonus Monty gathered all Xiph demo pages in one place." Also on the video codec front, and also with a Xiph connection, atamido writes "Google has released On2's VP8 video codec to the world, royalty-free. It is packaging it with Vorbis audio, in a subset of the Matroska container, and calling it WebM. It's not branded as an exclusively Google project — Mozilla and Opera are also contributors. Builds of your favorite browsers with full support are available." An anonymous reader points out this technical analysis of VP8.

netcrawler writes "Steve Jobs' open letter on Flash has prompted someone at the Free Software Foundation Europe to ask him about his support of proprietary format H.264 over Theora. Jobs' pithy answer (email with headers) suggests Theora might infringe on existing patents and that 'a patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other "open source" codecs now.' Does he know something we don't?" Update: 05/01 00:38 GMT by T : Monty Montgomery of Xiph (the group behind Theora, as well as Ogg Vorbis, and more) provides a pointed, skeptical response to the implicit legal threat, below. Monty writes: "Thomson Multimedia made their first veiled patent threats against Vorbis almost ten years ago. MPEG-LA has been rumbling for the past few years. Maybe this time it will actually come to something, but it hasn't yet. I'll get worried when the lawyers advise me to; i.e., not yet.

The MPEG-LA has insinuated for some time that it is impossible to build any video codec without infringing on at least some of their patents. That is, they assert they have a monopoly on all digital video compression technology, period, and it is illegal to even attempt to compete with them. Of course, they've been careful not to say quite exactly that.

If Jobs's email is genuine, this is a powerful public gaffe ('All video codecs are covered by patents.') He'd be confirming MPEG's assertion in plain language anyone can understand. It would only strengthen the pushback against software patents and add to Apple's increasing PR mess. Macbooks and iPads may be pretty sweet, but creative individuals don't really like to give their business to jackbooted thugs."

SergeyKurdakov sends in a followup to our discussion a couple of months ago on purported shortcomings to the Ogg format. The inventor of the format, Monty "xiphmont" Montgomery of the Xiph Foundation, now refutes those objections in detail, with the introduction: "Earnest falsehoods left unchallenged risk being accepted as fact." The refutation has another advantage besides authoritativeness: it's far better written than the attack.

jamesswift writes "The FSF have written an open letter to Google urging them to free the VP8 codec with an irrevocable royalty-free licence: 'With its purchase of the On2 video compression technology company having been completed on Wednesday February 16, 2010, Google now has the opportunity to make free video formats the standard, freeing the web from both Flash and the proprietary H.264 codec.'" Also from the letter: "The world would have a new free format unencumbered by software patents. Viewers, video creators, free software developers, hardware makers -- everyone -- would have another way to distribute video without patents, fees, and restrictions. The free video format Ogg Theora was already at least as good for web video (see a comparison) as its nonfree competitor H.264, and we never did agree with your objections to using it. But since you made the decision to purchase VP8, presumably you're confident it can meet even those objections, and using it on YouTube is a no-brainer."

David Gerard writes "Google Chrome includes Ogg support for the <video> element. It also includes support for the hideously encumbered H.264 format. Nice as an extra, but ... they're also testing HTML5 YouTube only for H.264 — meaning the largest video provider on the Net will make H.264 the primary codec and relegate the equally good open format Ogg/Theora firmly to the sidelines. Mike Shaver from Mozilla has fairly unambiguously asked Chris DiBona from Google what the heck Google thinks it's doing." DiBona responded with concerns that switching to Theora while maintaining quality would take up an incredible amount of bandwidth for a site like YouTube, though he made clear his support for the continued improvement of the project. Greg Maxwell jumped into the debate by comparing the quality of Ogg/Theora+Vorbis with the current YouTube implementations using H.263+MP3 and H.264+AAC. At the lower bitrate, Theora seems to have the clear edge, while the higher bitrate may slightly favor H.264. He concludes that YouTube's adoption of "an open unencumbered format in addition to or instead of their current offerings would not cause problems on the basis of quality or bitrate."

YA_Python_dev writes "The Xiph.Org Foundation announced Monday the release of Theora 1.0. Theora is a free/open source video codec with a small CPU footprint that offers easy portability and requires no patent royalties. Upcoming versions of Firefox and Opera will play natively Ogg/Theora videos with the new HTML5 element <video src="file.ogv"></video>, and ffmpeg2theora offers an easy way to create content. Theora developers are already working on a 1.1 encoder that offers better quality/bitrate ratio, while producing streams backward-compatible with the current decoder." Adds reader logfish: "Since its bit-stream freeze in June of 2004 there have been numerous speed-ups and bug-fixes. Although Nokia claimed it to be proprietary almost a year ago, nothing has been proven. So now it's time to help it take over the internet, and finally push for video sites filled with Theora encoded vlogs, blurts and idle nonsense."

An anonymous reader writes "While Ogg Vorbis format has not gained much adoption in music sales and portable players, it is not an unsupported format in the industry. Toy manufacturers (e.g. speaking dolls), voice warning systems, and reactive audio devices exploit Ogg Vorbis for its good quality at small bit-rates. As a sign of this, VLSI Solution Oy has just announced VS1000, the first 16 bits DSP device for playing Ogg Vorbis on low-power and high-volume products. Earlier Ogg Vorbis chips use 32 bits for decoding, which consumes more energy than a 16-bit device does. See the Xiph wiki page for a list of Ogg Vorbis chips."

chrisd writes "Just wanted to let you know that we've opened up the student application process for the Summer of Code. We've signed up ~100 mentoring organizations this year, including Apache, Postgres, Xiph, The Shmoo Group, Drupal, Gallery and many others. We're accepting applications through May 8th this year."

ZephyrXero writes "Have you ever wanted to run your own internet radio or TV station, but thought the bandwidth would cost too much? While Wired thinks Peer-to-peer broadcasting, or "peercasting", will be the future of the internet (previously posted); Peercast.org says it's already here today. Peercast's software is available for Linux, Windows, and Mac. You can broadcast both audio and video without needing a whole lot of bandwidth since each audience member also uploads back to the network. The Xiph Foundation is also working on a similar project called "IceShare," but it's still in planning. Peercast, still in beta seems to already be fully functional and ready for an audience (even you dial-up guys)."

ZephyrXero writes "Have you ever wanted to run your own internet radio or TV station, but thought the bandwidth would cost too much? While Wired thinks Peer-to-peer broadcasting, or "peercasting", will be the future of the internet (previously posted); Peercast.org says it's already here today. Peercast's software is available for Linux, Windows, and Mac. You can broadcast both audio and video without needing a whole lot of bandwidth since each audience member also uploads back to the network. The Xiph Foundation is also working on a similar project called "IceShare," but it's still in planning. Peercast, still in beta seems to already be fully functional and ready for an audience (even you dial-up guys)."

drapmeyer writes "Xiph.org has released a new version of the Ogg/Vorbis endocer: libOgg1.1.2 and libVorbis1.1.0. Point your browsers to the tarball for maximum excitement. Changes include several platform and build fixes, documentation for multiplexed streams, and other goodies. Also look at rarewares."

p80 writes "The Xiph foundation announced today that the 'Theora I bistream format is now frozen,' even though Beta 1 is not out yet and encourage people to try it as 'there's no reason to delay adopting a free alternative any more!' Mplayer and Xine both support Theora. For Windows users, Directshow filters for Ogg Vorbis, Speex, Theora and FLAC are available here. You can get test cases here and transcode Quicktime movies to theora on that page." This freeze, as an anonymous reader puts it, "means that all future versions will support the format as it is now. It will be interesting to see if there is as much uptake for this as there was for the Vorbis sound format."

xanderwilson writes "The New York Times (2nd half of the article; free reg. required as always) writes, 'Project Gutenberg is well known for offering free electronic versions of famous public-domain texts. Now Telltale Weekly wants to be its audio-book equivalent.' Of interest to others in the Slashdot community: Ogg Vorbis and MP3 downloads, payment via Bitpass micropayments, and a cheap-now, free later (with a Creative Commons License) business model." (And if you buy the Ogg Vorbis versions, part of the money goes to xiph.org.)

ArcRiley writes "For more than a year Xiph hackers have been working on Ogg Theora, an improved version of On2's VP3 video codec. Alpha-3 includes several bitstream changes, VP3 to Theora "upgrade" utilities, and is now supported by Xine, MPlayer, and Real's Helix Player. We're nearing Beta-1 where the format will be frozen, fully documented, and it'll be ready for everyday use."

ArcRiley writes "For more than a year Xiph hackers have been working on Ogg Theora, an improved version of On2's VP3 video codec. Alpha-3 includes several bitstream changes, VP3 to Theora "upgrade" utilities, and is now supported by Xine, MPlayer, and Real's Helix Player. We're nearing Beta-1 where the format will be frozen, fully documented, and it'll be ready for everyday use."

ArcRiley writes "For more than a year Xiph hackers have been working on Ogg Theora, an improved version of On2's VP3 video codec. Alpha-3 includes several bitstream changes, VP3 to Theora "upgrade" utilities, and is now supported by Xine, MPlayer, and Real's Helix Player. We're nearing Beta-1 where the format will be frozen, fully documented, and it'll be ready for everyday use."

ArcRiley writes "For more than a year Xiph hackers have been working on Ogg Theora, an improved version of On2's VP3 video codec. Alpha-3 includes several bitstream changes, VP3 to Theora "upgrade" utilities, and is now supported by Xine, MPlayer, and Real's Helix Player. We're nearing Beta-1 where the format will be frozen, fully documented, and it'll be ready for everyday use."

ArcRiley writes "The winners have been announced for the contest that Creative Commons launched last fall to deliver their ``some rights reserved'' message with a short video. Congratulations to Justin Cone, Sheryl Seibert, and Kuba & Alek Tarkowski for their winning videos!"

ArcRiley writes "After 3 years of development and 6 weeks of beta testing, Icecast 2.0 has been officially released! Features include support for both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis, a web administration interface, support for listing in directories (such as dir.xiph.org), and is freely available under the GNU GPL for Linux and Windows."

ArcRiley writes "After 3 years of development and 6 weeks of beta testing, Icecast 2.0 has been officially released! Features include support for both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis, a web administration interface, support for listing in directories (such as dir.xiph.org), and is freely available under the GNU GPL for Linux and Windows."

ArcRiley writes "After 3 years of development and 6 weeks of beta testing, Icecast 2.0 has been officially released! Features include support for both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis, a web administration interface, support for listing in directories (such as dir.xiph.org), and is freely available under the GNU GPL for Linux and Windows."

ArcRiley writes "After 3 years of development and 6 weeks of beta testing, Icecast 2.0 has been officially released! Features include support for both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis, a web administration interface, support for listing in directories (such as dir.xiph.org), and is freely available under the GNU GPL for Linux and Windows."

Sesse writes "iRiver has just released firmware updates for its iFP-300T and iFP-500T flash memory-based audio player series. According to a news story on their site, this update includes features 'supporting the Ogg file format', so it looks like iRiver can finally be added to the quickly growing list of Vorbis-capable hardware!"

Alexander writes "Rio has announced several players, among them the Karma 20GB Ogg Vorbis music player, which also sports Ethernet as the preferred connection method. Is Ogg Vorbis finally gaining industry acceptance?" There's more information on the new Rio line-up via an article at The Register.

volsung writes "It's finally here! Xiph.org has made a beta release of firmware with Ogg Vorbis support for the Neuros portable music player. You can grab the firmware from the Neurosetta site. Note that this beta release only plays Vorbis files, and may skip on very high quality files, like average bitrates above 200 kbps. Also, you'll need to head over to the positron website for instructions on how to upload Vorbis files. Big thanks go out to Monty all of his hard work, and Digital Innovations for supporting the project. (See the DI press release here.)" Update: 07/01 15:26 GMT by T : Stan Seibert writes with an update: if you'd like to get one of these players, visit open.neurosaudio.com to find them on sale.

volsung writes "It's finally here! Xiph.org has made a beta release of firmware with Ogg Vorbis support for the Neuros portable music player. You can grab the firmware from the Neurosetta site. Note that this beta release only plays Vorbis files, and may skip on very high quality files, like average bitrates above 200 kbps. Also, you'll need to head over to the positron website for instructions on how to upload Vorbis files. Big thanks go out to Monty all of his hard work, and Digital Innovations for supporting the project. (See the DI press release here.)" Update: 07/01 15:26 GMT by T : Stan Seibert writes with an update: if you'd like to get one of these players, visit open.neurosaudio.com to find them on sale.

frohike writes "After reading the recent article about game non-originality, I'm pleased to say that there's another entry to the Dreamcast's innovative game lineup, and this time it isn't coming from one of the Big Publishers but the underground: Feet of Fury! This independent music beat game includes player vs player gameplay and a Typing of Fury mode. It was developed by us on a $0 budget using Linux, Gimp, and various other free tools over the past few years, and it uses the BSD-licensed KallistiOS toolkit as its base. (This is the same toolkit which most homebrew developers have written the emulators and such with.) We've used a number of neat free software technologies such as Ogg Vorbis in the game itself, and we contribute a large chunk of our code back to the community in the hopes that others can follow in our footsteps. There is even a publisher ready to help you get your ideas to fruition and sell them for you, so what are you waiting for? Now's your chance to be a console developer too. Let's make some great new innovative Dreamcast games!"