Audacity, a beloved open-source audio editing software tool, has just received a massive makeover. For those unfamiliar with Audacity, it’s a 26-year-old piece of FOSS software that provides incredibly robust audio editing capabilities for the perfect price – $0 – making it ideal for independent musicians, garage bands, vinyl rippers, and college students who want to make a slowly, deliberately spoken foreign-language recording for a group project sound vaguely fluent - not that this vulture would know anything about that. While an incredibly useful tool, Audacity’s interface has been stuck in the mid-aughts for a couple of decades now. That's changed with Thursday's release of Audacity 4.0.0. Not only has the interface been completely overhauled, but there are also a lot of under-the-hood changes as well. The new UI was rebuilt on Qt and adds a Home screen for recent projects, plus configurable Workspaces. Audacity veterans will notice that the actual editing workflow looks different – much more like a modern piece of software than a relic of the Winamp days. As part of that redesigned interface, a number of new features bring Audacity into the current age: Clips can be moved over one another, with the underlying portion replaced where they overlap, multiple clips can be selected at the same time, and clips can be grouped for moving as a single object. Audacity 4 also retains non-destructive trimming, meaning trimmed portions of a clip can be recovered simply by extending the clip back into the trimmed-out portion. Audacity users have been crying out for a dedicated splitting tool, parent company Muse Group said in a press release, and that’s been added in version 4. Clip envelopes have also been added, which allow users to adjust the volume and add fades to tracks without altering the original recordings. All of Audacity’s built-in effects have been given an interface redesign as well. In short, it’s a substantial rebuild, although Muse has tried not to alienate veterans, noting that "existing keyboard shortcuts remain available, projects created in Audacity 3 open normally, and the familiar layout of tracks and timeline has been preserved.” Audacity 4, like all the versions that preceded it in the past 26 years, is remaining open source and free as well. “We always like to thank the open source community who help our team make things better,” Muse’s head of communications Jack Sutton told The Register in an email. Sutton also tipped his hat to Martin Keary, former head of product for Muse Group, who was an instrumental part of building Audacity 4 and recently left the company. Speaking of Keary, he published a nearly hour-long YouTube video in October defending the early alpha build of Audacity 4 when the FOSS audio editing world maligned the early build for turning Audacity into a full-fledged digital audio workstation (DAW) used to record, edit, and produce audio, instead of the editing tool it had long been. Keary insisted that wasn’t the case, and Sutton reiterated the point to us. “DAW features like virtual instruments and MIDI support are not in Audacity 4,” the Muse Group spokesperson explained. “Some of the under-the-hood and structural changes do make it easier for our team to potentially build DAW-like features in future, but our current priority is on … speedy and efficient audio editing.” Audacity 4 can be downloaded on GitHub and on MuseHub for those who use Muse’s other tools. ®

The Titan dune field where NASA's Dragonfly rotorcraft will land in 2034 has a name: Ahmakiq Undae. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) approved the name, and NASA announced it in an update as the spacecraft's 2028 launch edges closer. It is scheduled to arrive at Saturn's moon Titan in late 2034. Dragonfly's fabrication began in late 2024 and was completed about a year later. Most recently, engineers fitted the probe's wiring harness, which, according to NASA, includes an estimated 17,315 feet of conductor wire and 374 connectors, and weighs about 100 pounds. The harness is accompanied by a battery weighing in at almost 300 pounds. The nuclear-powered Dragonfly is an impressive piece of hardware. The fuselage is almost 13 feet long, and the arms will hold eight sets of rotors. The probe has landing skids and a cap on the end for its power source. The harness fitting means other Dragonfly components can be added, including its avionics and science instruments. During May and June, the rotorcraft was put through vibration testing, including suspending the fuselage on bungee cords to see how it behaves in the air, and a sealing test where engineers checked how well the structure keeps the environment out – Titan's atmosphere is, after all, dense, cold, and about 1.5 times the pressure of Earth's. Dragonfly isn't the first visitor to Titan - the European Space Agency (ESA) landed the Huygens probe there in 2005. However, while Huygens was a static probe that lasted just over an hour on the surface, Dragonfly is planned to spend at least 3.3 years exploring the moon's environment. According to NASA, the probe will explore "diverse environments from organic dunes to deposits associated with an impact crater – Selk Crater – where liquid water and complex organic materials key to life once existed together." The probe is effectively a flying laboratory and must withstand temperatures as low as minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 179 degrees Celsius) and potentially liquid methane rain. It also requires a heat shield to protect the spacecraft during its descent through Titan's dense atmosphere. Once on Titan, the plan is for the vehicle to fly to multiple locations during its mission. Installing the wiring harness (something familiar to anyone who has battled wiring looms on automobiles) and naming the landing zone are milestones on Dragonfly's journey to launch. Next will be connecting the wiring to science instruments as they are delivered, along with other flight components. In 2024, Dragonfly's total lifecycle cost was $3.35 billion - approximately twice the original estimate - and the mission was more than two years late, with the COVID-19 pandemic, supply-chain issues, and additional design work pushing up costs. The mission is currently scheduled to launch no earlier than July 2028 on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. ®

Lewis Hamilton was all smiles as the F1 paddock reconvened at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza on Thursday, with the Ferrari driver hoping that an engine update will boost his and the team’s Italian Grand Prix chances.

Mercedes' Kimi Antonelli is preparing to start from further down the order at the Italian Grand Prix due to an engine penalty, but the championship leader still hopes to make the most of the opportunity.

María Corina Machado says interim government does not have democratic mandate to negotiate natural resources

The Venezuelan opposition leader, María Corina Machado, has questioned Donald Trump’s oil deal with Venezuela’s interim government, declaring that the country’s natural resources do not belong to “an illegitimate regime”.

In her first public comments since Trump announced what he called “the biggest oil deal in world history” with Venezuela last Friday, Machado walked a diplomatic tightrope between challenging the controversial agreement and trying not to rile the White House.

Continue reading...

Ultravox

TheGufotography has added a photo to the pool:

IMG_20260402_090713_DSC_1897-6

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hama-riky%C5%AB_Gardens

You can buy some of my photos here:
www.artheroes.de/de/shop/The-Gufotography/181196

De Ondernemingskamer bekijkt de gang van zaken rondom de overname van OCI. Kleine beleggers vinden dat de Egyptische bezitter van een meerderheidsbelang in het chemiebedrijf zijn positie heeft misbruikt. Nederland moet „geen speeltuin worden voor miljonairs”.

De politie is op zoek naar een man die in Hellevoetsluis een dure tas heeft gestolen in een zonnestudio. De verdachte intimideert daarbij een medewerkster. Tijdens de diefstal probeert hij zijn gezicht bedekt te houden, maar dat gaat niet helemaal goed.