Csound Updated 2025-07-16
XML file format (but with 99% of the action of interest in a domain-specific language on the CsInstruments and CsScore elements) that can be played and the reference implementation. Offers complex effects out-of-box apparently.
Allows you to easily define instruments with seemingly arbitrary mathematical functions, and then use them to play notes at given time intervals.
The instrument functions can be parametrized, and each note played can have different parameters.
The instrument definition actually defines a block diagram graph, much like a hardware synthesizer would.
Csound is so not-bloated that it contains an UI system. And it includes an interactive virtual MIDI keyboard that interacts with parameter knobs: www.csounds.com/manual/html/MidiTop.html
But hey, it's fun. And like any other good domain-specific language, debugging it is barbaric of course.
If only it had been written in Python... the array manipulation boilerplate would be likely perfect for NumPy, and this would have been exactly what Ciro Santilli wanted!
CSound states that one of its design goals is backward compatibility, and it shows. Some of the stuff is utterly arcane, e.g. you have to remember what GEN10, GEN11, etc. mean instead of having named enums.
It just worked on Ubuntu 20.04 no questions asked:
sudo apt install csound
git clone https://github.com/csound/csound
cd csound
git checkout 92409ecce053d707360a5794f5f4f6bf5ebf5d24
csound examples/xanadu.csd
which runs this file: github.com/csound/csound/blob/92409ecce053d707360a5794f5f4f6bf5ebf5d24/examples/xanadu.csd and this plays a relly cool sound demo:
Video 1.
Xanadu Csound demo
. Source.
Save to file instead of playing:
csound -o xanadu.wav xanadu.csd
or direct ogg output:
csound --ogg -o xanadu.ogg xanadu.csd
or pipe to stdout to FFmpeg TODO: stackoverflow.com/questions/64970503/how-to-pipe-csound-output-to-ffmpeg-for-conversion-without-an-intermediate-file
TODO find the most amazing set of songs made with it on GitHub? Some examples:
Documentation-wise, it's a bit lacking. The only dude who can explain it really well, Dr Richard Boulanger, made the "The Csound Book" closed source, so, congrats, this will forever hurt the popularity of Csound.
IBM Updated 2025-07-16
As of the 2020's, a slumbering giant.
But the pre-Internet impact of IBM was insane! Including notably:
Measurement-based quantum computer Updated 2025-07-16
TODO confirm: apparently in the paradigm you can choose to measure only certain output qubits.
This makes things irreversible (TODO what does reversibility mean in this random context?), as opposed to Circuit-based quantum computer where you measure all output qubits at once.
TODO what is the advantage?
Politician Updated 2025-07-16
Rabi cycle Updated 2025-07-16
AI training robot in a room Updated 2025-07-16
Ciro Santilli wonders how far AI could go from a room with a bank account an Internet connection.
It would have to understand that it must keep its bank account high to buy power.
And it would start to learn about the world and interact with it to get more money.
Likely it would become a hacker and steal a bunch, that's likely the easiest approach.
In that scenario, Internet bandwidth would likely be its most precious resources, as that is how it would interact with the world to learn from it and make money.
Compute power and storage would come next as resources.
And of course, once it got to cloud computing, which might be immediately and thus invalidate this experiment, things would just go nuts more and more.
EPUB Updated 2025-07-16
This is a good thing. It basically contains an entire website, with HTML and assets inside a single ZIP, and a little bit of metadata.
It is incomprehensible why browsers don't just implement it as they already have all the web part, and also ZIP stuff:
The situation is so sad. Ubuntu 21.04 doesn't come with a reader installed by default:

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