Audacity has added AI audio editing capabilities thanks to Intel’s free OpenVINO plugins. These plugins add AI-powered noise suppression, speech transcription, music generation and remixing, and music separation to the freeware sound editor and are available for download today.
  • wewbull@feddit.ukEnglish
    5510·
    9 months ago

    I thought audacity was tarnished with spyware or something these days. Is it safe again?

    • xor@infosec.pubEnglish
      907·
      9 months ago

      after looking into it:
      it’s not and it never was.
      a) it’s open source, so nobody’s putting that shit in there without getting caught
      b) it had an opt-in error reporting feature that would send data back… that was the entire thing…

      • drislands@lemmy.worldEnglish
        224·
        9 months ago

        What? You must be joking. Really? The entire thing was about opt-in error reporting?

        … seriously, that can’t be it, can it?

        • Eager Eagle@lemmy.worldEnglish
          22·
          9 months ago

          Not really that simple, it was an apparent change to the privacy policy that vaguely anticipated collection of arbitrary user data, which shook the confidence of the open source community on the project. The fact this happened right after audacity was sold was the cherry on top.

          https://github.com/audacity/audacity/issues/1213

          Changes were eventually reverted or revised.

          • doctorcrimson@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            9 months ago

            Were they reverted? I’ll have to check later, but an official statement from Muse Group stated they provided the data they collected to third parties so idk. If the telemetry is still there then I’m not downloading it, Open Source projects generally don’t need telemetry to begin with.

        • xor@infosec.pubEnglish
          103·
          9 months ago

          yep… really just that…

          i’ve used it forever with a very restrictive firewall and i’ve never seen it do anything unexpected… or any phoning home at all…

        • doctorcrimson@lemmy.worldEnglish
          37·
          9 months ago

          in 2021 Audacity was acquired by a company called MuseGroup who added unnecessary telemetry and they admit that they do provide the data the collect to third parties. It’s spyware as far as I’m concerned.

      • books@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        9 months ago

        Point a has always me me wonder, is that accurate? Are there actually people going through the code to make sure open source isn’t malicious? I can barely read my coworkers code… Let alone a strangers.

        • xor@infosec.pubEnglish
          2·
          9 months ago

          people are definitely going through the code on a project as popular as audacity…
          less well known stuff is much less scrutinized, of course

      • doctorcrimson@lemmy.worldEnglish
        26·
        9 months ago

        That’s not entirely true, Audacity was acquired by a company called MuseGroup who added unnecessary telemetry and they admit that they do provide the data the collect to third parties. It’s spyware as far as I’m concerned.

    • InfiniWheel@lemmy.oneEnglish
      65·
      9 months ago

      It was a pull request to add opt-out analytics that got blown out of proportion, where the real issue was the EULA and how tonedeaf of a move it was considering the community around Audacity. IIRC, they ended up replacing it with opt-in analytics.