16 ms·

His software sang the words of God, then it went silent

440 points by kens 4y ago

kristopolous 4y ago
I really enjoyed the typography. It had some retro flourishers but looked fresh. Actually the palette on the entire site is pretty nice. What a pleasing layout
sambapa 4y ago
That's why FOSS is the way.
Maursault 4y ago
I don't understand why they can't run old hw or a vm with legacy OS and keep running the last version of TropeTrainer they have. "Oh no! Windows 7 is no longer supported! I have to update!" is BS. It's not like it self-destructs or something. There are entire populations of Mac users running legacy hw and software, 68k boxen and even Apple ][ users still out there. You know, an OS keeps on working whether or not it is still supported and has any more updates or patches. I've still got NetBSD 2.3 and A/UX 3.0.1 booting on a SE/30. I used to leave it up 24/7, but it just eats electricity. I'm still running Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion, and my main box runs Mojave and I'll never upgrade it. What's the problem here? This software will self-destruct?
codetrotter 4y ago
Thought for sure this would be about TempleOS
- cfq 4y ago
  Me too. Whoever decided on that title must have known about Terry and TempleOS. I miss him so much. R.I.P.
sergiotapia 4y ago
I 100% thought this would be about Terry Davis. Rest in peace Terry.
- westmeal 4y ago
  Good night sweet prince.
matt1555 4y ago
[flagged]
bombcar 4y ago
I don't see where it's indicated why this software wouldn't continue to run in a VM forever?
- vxNsr 4y ago
  It sounds like the software pulled the trop you wanted from a server. So unless you already downloaded everything, there is nowhere that has it. And even if you have the install file, it’s not that useful because you can’t download the trop files.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Ah, that's much worse, and sadder. More and more "desktop" software is just streamed intentionally or unintentionally from various SaaS servers, which will go dark at some point. Gamers have dealt with this for years now, but it's going to affect more and more things. The era of emulators being able to preserve software is coming to an end.
    - c22 4y ago
      It's okay, for the next generation of emulators, forward-thinking users will train ai models on the service to replace the remote functionality with a local imitation.
  - squokko 4y ago
    Well if someone has downloaded many of the files then the files can be pulled from there.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - calgarymicro 4y ago
    Are you sure? Because based on my reading of the article it sounds like it's all embedded in the executable. >I ask Schnee if Buchler’s source code could be reconstructed from a copy of the software. >It might be possible to induce the machine code to dump out a database of every phoneme it had ever uttered — all the tiny pieces it had used to sing Armenian and Lithuanian and Egyptian trope — and then, if you were very patient and very skilled, you might be able to write code to piece them back together.
krossitalk 4y ago
Not a single original thought. How this isn't about Terry A. Davis is disappointing
- canjobear 4y ago
  Terry's software still works.
  - gnarbarian 4y ago
    Probably because he got the New Testament update. Thomas Buchler is still running the legacy code.
    - FroshKiller 4y ago
      Christianity is a fork. That doesn't make Judaism legacy.
      - doublerabbit 4y ago
        [flagged]
        vanillaicesquad 4y ago
        With a 24% successful deployment rate I would say it's already in production
        jojobas 4y ago
        That's mostly because you can't uninstall it.
- sweetjuly 4y ago
  Terry's work is remembered not really because it was exceptionally great but because it was just pretty odd in an interesting way. Plenty of people make hobby operating systems, custom programming languages, and more.
makeworld 4y ago
This immediately reminds me of Llull from https://unsongbook.com/ https://unsongbook.com/, a (fictional) program that finds the names of God by iteratively speaking Hebrew phonemes.
- namaria 4y ago
  I have been trying to find this for ever! Lost track of the bookmark in an older notebook and could never search it properly... Thank you!
- agentwiggles 4y ago
  > "Meh,” I said. “Meh. Meh. Meh. Meh. Meh.” > That was the part that led to the apocalypse.
officeplant 4y ago
Heard about this ordeal on NPR a while back. It's crazy how dependent a community can become on a piece of software and at the same time no one takes measures on preservation or open sourcing that software. Especially with all the passion and work Tom put into the program and his work with multiple Rabbi's to tweak in their slight changes and localized traditions. This feels more like much needed historical preservation that the community could have guided. What a massive blunder of closed software.
- kulahan 4y ago
  As always, XKCD has touched on this [1]. 1: https://xkcd.com/2347/ https://xkcd.com/2347/
- bombcar 4y ago
  I've seen it multiple times; the sole company/developer often considers the software "their baby" and doesn't want to "let it go" for a number of potentially quite valid reasons, such as fear of loss of livelihood, disagreement with others on the direction, etc. Tarn Adams has a similar situation with DF. But hopefully they realize that at least having some sort of 'make available on death' could be valuable. We have already lost untold countless relatively custom software packages for niche markets that you've never heard of - and people just continue or go back to doing things by hand.
  - alpaca128 4y ago
    Last I heard Tarn Adams is considering open-sourcing at least parts of it in the long term now that they are more financially independent. The Steam launch was probably the best case scenario for both developer and community.
    - Cthulhu_ 4y ago
      Yeah, and part of me wishes they did this years ago, but at the same time I can understand they wanted to keep it small on purpose; once you go public like on Steam, the dynamics change and you can't just bury your nose in code all day but you have to deal with finances, refunds, reviews, legalese, etc as well.
bhhaskin 4y ago
It's a good story. But the things that make it a good story are also just plain wrong. At the end of the day it's software. It could be ran in a VM or even using windows compatibility layer. It could be decompiled and recompiled as a WASM web app. I also highly doubt the code for the voice engine is 4 million lines. The story calls the creator a genius, but really it's just a guy that had a passionate project. It's a good story, but anyone who doesn't think computers are magic can see right though it.
- themaninthedark 4y ago
  There is a lot of focus on the ... human aspects .. of the people in the story but in turn it makes some of them look really bad. The quote about 4 million lines of code and how could they it would be impossible for them to share it because it is too large for email... I think the program's creator was a great guy, doesn't seem like he was really thinking about his death seriously. His friends loved him and miss him but do not look to continue his legacy by helping the community. The worst thing is that all the little dialects that were preserved by this are now at larger risk of being lost.
- aftbit 4y ago
  If so, why is the new version not taking this route? Just failure of imagination?
  - bhhaskin 4y ago
    My guess is they can make more money off a subscription, and it's easier to develop and deploy a web application with a subscription model.
  - temporal828 4y ago
    Whew boy -- the reminder of the Gell-Mann amnesia effect is powerful on this one. I can't imagine it would not be more than a few minutes of downloading the image from archive.org and running it on any VM - I would be a bit surprised if this had any kind of sophisticated VM countermeasures in it. Meanwhile, I can believe there is some 4 million line code of something (maybe it was written in assembly!) - in any case a horrible unmaintainable mess that nobody at this software company wants to deal with anymore. Rather just rewrite it in some web based shit like half of this site does for a living. Also on actually reading TFA - it's rife with errors - at no point in history was the DECTalk the only game in town for speech synthesis - let alone 1999! - and the idea that it was the only one with controllable pitch is hogwash as anyone with a early 90s Mac can attest.
david422 4y ago
I have a bunch of software/websites that I run. If I were to get hit by a bus, they would all go offline and there would be many confused users. There is no-one that could pick up where I left off. I have on my todo list to make a dead man's switch. If I don't flip the update after a couple of months, a maintenance message is put up, and if I still don't update it, then an end of life process is kicked off before all my domains expire. Maybe I'll get to it some day.
- AvImd 4y ago
  Would you like to open source your apps when this happens? Is the absence of updates the only signal you wish to rely on, or should confirmations from other people be involved somehow in the decision?
  - david422 4y ago
    The software is mostly just hobby/paid apps that do have a bunch of users. It would be difficult to turn that into open source although I've thought about doing pieces of them before.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- culi 4y ago
  Google actually has this built in: https://myaccount.google.com/inactive https://myaccount.google.com/inactive You can set it to share all of your passwords and data to someone after you disappear
  - david422 4y ago
    Oh, interesting, didn't know that existed.
- pabs3 4y ago
  If you ever want those websites uploaded to archive.org, please ask ArchiveTeam to run ArchiveBot over them. https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/ArchiveBot https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/ArchiveBot The software is harder since I guess you aren't offering gratis downloads, but I think Software Heritage will eventually offer a source code escrow service. https://www.softwareheritage.org/ https://www.softwareheritage.org/
reiichiroh 4y ago
This is from March 2022. The whole site stopped publishing September 2022.
- vxNsr 4y ago
  Was this another Joshua Topolsky project?
  - Doctor_Fegg 4y ago
    Yes.
jejones3141 4y ago
Has anyone tried to run it under WINE?
- dmonitor 4y ago
  How does Windows have a reputation for "backwards compatibility" when every single piece of legacy software that people want to use shits itself on the latest Windows version, yet somehow runs on WINE.
- ryukafalz 4y ago
  This is the way, for software like this that's stuck in time. I just recently helped my fiancee get a piece of old bioinformatics software running that wouldn't run on Windows 10. WINE on Ubuntu on WSL2 works fine.
  - withinboredom 4y ago
    Did turning on Windows compatibility not work?
    - ryukafalz 4y ago
      It did not.
- BirAdam 4y ago
  This is the way. Win32 is now, more or less, the Linux software development api via WINE. Nothing else is stable in the sense of not-constantly-changing.
neilv 4y ago
This project sounds important to a large community of people. Yet it sounds like many of the people mentioned in the article were in some ways outsiders, even within that community. I don't know whether the reasons are the same, but we used to often see situations like that in open source software, and in computing in general before that.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
rendx 4y ago
https://archive.org/details/Trope_Trainer_Kinnor_Software_Inc._Version_3.2_2005 https://archive.org/details/Trope_Trainer_Kinnor_Software_In... thank you Jason Scott! :) Maybe someone wants to try to get this to work in a VM (or Wine even), report back (and email the author of the article if successful)?
- calibas 4y ago
  The CD says making unauthorized copies are a violation of copyright and Torah law...
  - sterlind 4y ago
    I think it should be okay, even a mitzvah, to preserve the program since preserving knowledge of the Torah is hefsed merubeh when it's in real danger of being lost. but I'd definitely want to heck with the rabbi he was working with first. but even if the copyright status is murky there's enough sofek and it's for a good purpose. (disclaimer: not actually Jewish)
- Animats 4y ago
  Yes, archive.org has an .iso file. Someone posted an activation code for the program there. Windows 7 programs should run fine under Wine on Linux. So if anybody really wants to run this, it shouldn't be hard. But listening to chanting from DECtalk? Here's "Happy Birthday" via DECtalk.[1] There was apparently a 90s thing for religious DECtalk files. Here's an archive of them.[2] Here's "The Old Rugged Cross" in DECtalk input format.[3] This mysterious program that represented so much work is probably mostly a DECtalk player and a big collection of playable religious DECtalk files. If someone were to extract the files, that would recover the content. There are players for DECtalk files; there's one at the links below. Converting them to a better text-to-speech system would help. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150310175636/http://theflameofhope.co/free/HAPPY%20BIRTHDAY.mp3 https://web.archive.org/web/20150310175636/http://theflameof... [2] http://theflameofhope.co/SONGS%20FOR%20PC'.html http://theflameofhope.co/SONGS%20FOR%20PC'.html [3] http://theflameofhope.co/dectalk%20speak%20window/GOSPEL/OLD%20RUGGED%20CROSS%20-%20HYMN.EN http://theflameofhope.co/dectalk%20speak%20window/GOSPEL/OLD...
shp0ngle 4y ago
From the title, I thought this was about TempleOS and Terry A Davis.
- elzbardico 4y ago
  Different fairy tales it seems. I fail to see why this is important
  - b800h 4y ago
    I recommend "Atheist Delusions" by David Bentley Hart for reasons that your materialist beliefs might not be so well founded.
  - officeplant 4y ago
    Hate religions all you want, but software like this is neat from a cultural/historical perspective and seemed to be an interesting solution to a community's problem. It also makes me wonder how we can use technology to save others that are rapidly dying like Native American languages and oral traditions.
- willcipriano 4y ago
  A former contributor here if you had show dead on
Normal_gaussian 4y ago
> Friedman explains that he had previously developed another web application, but says he can’t tell me what the app was called because of ongoing legal issues. Does anyone have any insight into this?
vxNsr 4y ago
Wow, it’s an impressive story, but hard to imagine learning from that software if the sample is accurate. I learned to lein and the most important thing was having a clear and clean recording of the trop.
kragen 4y ago
this is why f-droid warns you about some applications, 'undesired features: promotes non-free network services' free software is a good start, but as long as it's dependent on a centralized service, it's not a guarantee this won't happen to you
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
shliachtx 4y ago
https://chabad.org/torahtrainer https://chabad.org/torahtrainer has a similar (free) web based program, but it appears to use a recording instead of a synthesizer.
- LegitShady 4y ago
  This one has two problems. 1) the way he's enunciating every word and then pausing stops this from flowing nicely as a tune. Maybe its good for teaching but it doesn't sound as nice as flowing nicely would, and the tune ends up helping you memorize it better than the trop (since reading at the actual torah scroll doesn't have the trop). 2) while he has good overall sound and reading of the trop, the interface isn't highlighting the trop involved - you can memorize the reading but it isn't doing a good job teaching the tune of each trop to someone who needs the help enough to use it. It needs some re-work to make sure people associate the correct trop with the tune it creates. still totally usable but a student needs to know to make an effort to connect the words smoothly and not pause as this person does. edit: listening to some of this I also notice some inconsistencies in how he treats some of the trop. It might be a different style issue but I don't think so.
cjohnson318 4y ago
> “Not everybody keeps all 613 commandments” I thought this was a beautiful perspective.
- dunefox 4y ago
  If you can just pick and choose what commandments you want to follow they're not commandments and therefore pointless.
  - hgsgm 4y ago
    It's not just the Law; it's also a good idea.
  - giaour 4y ago
    At least a sixth of the commandments haven't been followed by anyone since 70 CE.
    - sbierwagen 4y ago
      (Context: many commandments relate to rituals performed at the Temple in Jerusalem, which was destroyed by the Romans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Temple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Temple )
    - paxcoder 4y ago
      [dead]
  - mistermann 4y ago
    This applies to non-religious people with their ethics/morals/facts/etc as well. As with faith, sin also comes in many forms, from a semiotics perspective. But, one is probably best of not getting into too much detail as it can interfere with living one's best life (of which high self-esteem is a crucial component).
  - cjohnson318 4y ago
    Well, that's certainly a popular opinion lately.
retrac 4y ago
It occurs to me that a program like this can be effectively complete. And stand alone. I'm sure there's a few bugs and of course always more features are possible. But this software would probably be usable as-is in 100 years for Torah study just as it is today. It's quite a shame we still haven't come up with a way of packaging software in a way that makes it relatively future proof, even if the legal issues could be resolved.
- asdff 4y ago
  We kind of have. Buy a new mac today and you can run a 40 year old sh program fine. Its just that most people aren't being trained on these standard unchanging technologies in computing unless they take an active interest in it. They are being trained on $newapp and how to navigate $newwebsite and become beholden to those patterns of software design sensibilities, because in this attention economy this obviously generates a lot more money than having the masses use some simple bash code to solve a lot of their problems.
  - perardi 4y ago
    …do you really think that a bash script is the best interface for the masses to explore the Talmud?
    - eddieroger 4y ago
      Certainly not on Friday night or Saturday, unless they open it ahead of time and leave it there. Maybe we can train Shabbas goys to use bash.
    - asdff 4y ago
      It only seems ridiculous framed from the modern perspective on computing. Ask this in 1995 and yes, this would be the best interface. The only reason why its no good anymore is because these abstraction layers we shovel into people. Maybe in 2005 the best way to view the talmud was a gui based native app, because thats the level of abstraction layer people where shoveled versus the command line. Maybe in 2015 the best way moved from a native app to a website, since thats now how most people operate by then, not installing tools themselves but just going to different websites and therefore losing that knowledge. Maybe today the best way is a mobile app, because people don't even visit desktop websites anymore and don't take well to those design philosophies. You have to wonder where this is marching off too, this march away from complexity into easier and simpler abstractions, further from the magic and raising the ivory tower of the wizard who makes these tools higher above the masses who increasingly have no idea what is happening nor any mental model to think about this stuff as it actually works. Certainly some groups benefit from siloing the knowledge of fire of our modern world, but I can't help but imagine we are all losing in this race away from complexity.
eigenvalue 4y ago
From the title I thought this was going to be about TempleOS and Terry Davis.
- zen_1 4y ago
  Same
- joncrane 4y ago
  Same! GMTA!
ivraatiems 4y ago
I used TropeTrainer to study for my bar mitzvah! Brings back memories. A shame it's gone now. I wonder if the source code was ever in any sort of repo online, or if it was only ever on the guy's computer, in truth. So, speaking from an ethical standpoint - and I mean purely philosophically, not in terms of legalities - what would be wrong with reverse engineering this program and finding a way to get it running again, for those who paid for it? If it's just a matter of spoofing a couple web requests and maybe bypassing some activation checks, I suspect it could be done.
- RajT88 4y ago
  Legally Grey, ethically fine.
- jamal-kumar 4y ago
  I was thinking the same thing. It's effectively within the realm of abandonware at this point. (edit: I guess someone released a new version about a year ago but it's not as good?) People have been reversing stuff like DOS games recently [1], I don't really see any reason why this program couldn't be done the same. I think the legality is kind of just handled by not packing in the binaries along with the code. Personally I don't know a deep lot about reverse engineering, but it sounds like an interesting challenge to try to learn it. edit 2: someone did this [2] [1] https://github.com/jamesfmackenzie/chocolatekeen https://github.com/jamesfmackenzie/chocolatekeen [2] https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/1505006493417938946 https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/1505006493417938946
  - courseofaction 4y ago
    [2] Is the "fixed" of this article, it seems. Trope trainer has been reverse engineered and you can run old versions. Interesting series of events.
simonw 4y ago
If it's out there as an old Windows 7 .exe what are the chances that someone could get it running in WebAssembly eventually, similar to how https://infinitemac.org/1998/Mac%20OS%208.1 https://infinitemac.org/1998/Mac%20OS%208.1 works?
frankfrank13 4y ago
Beautiful story
fieryskiff11 4y ago
[dead]
samhuk 4y ago
From the headline I honestly thought that this was some strange take on TempleOS...
ur-whale 4y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgKXC_6n_jw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgKXC_6n_jw
Hitton 4y ago
[flagged]
- MarcoZavala 4y ago
  [dead]
- verbify 4y ago
  I found your comment hurtful and I'd urge you to delete your comment. Obviously trademarking someone else's program name is very unethical, but I don't think it's indicative of my ethnicity. This is on quite a moving article about Jewish culture and doesn't warrant comments about Jews and business practices. Implying the joke and not saying it explicitly doesn't make it any better.
ars 4y ago
A small note on pronunciation: trope is pronounced trup or tr-uh-p not like the English word it looks like.
- voicedYoda 4y ago
  Just like Yiddish pronunciations, maybe? Here in Chicago it's pronounced the way it's written: rope with a 't'
ww520 4y ago
I heard that the creator of the K language Arthur Whitney would delete all old versions of the compiler source code and binaries before working on the next version. That's a unusual step to start afresh. It illustrates that giving enough will and resource most software can be recreated.
- jamal-kumar 4y ago
  I've done that before and found it super refreshing. If the program is about the size you can fit in your head you can probably end up re-writing it better the second time around. Bonus points if it's in a new programming language
- bhawks 4y ago
  Granted that K and other APL descended languages are often referred to as write once & read never this seems humorously appropriate.
pknerd 4y ago
Not sure whether it was the article itself or the software, I got hooked to it. As the follower of another Abrahamic faith(Islam), I have nothing but utmost respect for Thomas Buchler.
shmerl 4y ago
It only makes sense for such kind of software to be funded by the community and be open source in the first place. It's quite in line with the goals it's intended for. Same way the trop itself doesn't have copyright. Also, even if something doesn't run on modern Windows, good chance it would run in Wine on Linux.
29athrowaway 4y ago
This is what TempleOS is for.
ethicalsmacker 4y ago
I thought this was going to be about TempleOS. I got excited for a minute!
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
lurker616 4y ago
This could be a great use case for chatGPT/GPT-4 - help understand and maintain open source software in perpetuity.
slushh 4y ago
This is another approach at automatically generating the right interpretation. Why is the software important when the entire bible could be recorded once and then be streamed from Youtube? There is one computer still running. Everything could be recorded. Psalm 90 - Prayer of Moses [1] >Note-for-note transcription of the Hebrew texts by Dennis McCorkle utilizing the DAVIDIC CIPHER. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q77NWugDVLo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q77NWugDVLo
adastra22 4y ago
This is absolutely maddening to read. Open source the software for christ's sake! *I* will recompile it to run on macOS Catalina or Windows 11. It's not that hard. Just get it on GitHub! Or heck, give me a precompiled binary and I'll give you a docker script that runs it in virtualization on any computer. EDIT: Ok I finished the article. I guess the source code is gone. But surely there is a binary floating around somewhere? I could get it running under Wine, or worst-case decompile and fix the program.
- jmkni 4y ago
  It looks like you can download an ISO from here - https://archive.org/details/Trope_Trainer_Kinnor_Software_Inc._Version_3.2_2005 https://archive.org/details/Trope_Trainer_Kinnor_Software_In...
  - adastra22 4y ago
    And it runs fine under virtualization, it seems: https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/1505006493417938946 https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/1505006493417938946
- jes5199 4y ago
  so, there’s an old version on archive.org that was pretty easy to crack a serial number and run in a VM. It uses the older, low-quality Hebrew synthesis that was cobbled together from German and French phonemes. I have physical CDROMs and serial numbers for one of the last versions ever published, but I haven’t been able to get them to run — they try to contact an activation server which no longer exists. I think this is just DRM, and in theory it can be bypassed, but no one has managed to do it yet. (I’ve gotten a couple people to look at it, but no one has had time to seriously dig in) The data files for Trope Trainer are mostly human-readable, lots of XML. But then there’s an incredible amount of hand-coded stuff implemented in the software - very detailed pronunciation rules for Hebrew, just written as, apparently, lots of switch statements. In principle it could be mapped out, but I’d feel more confident about it if we had a running copy of the newer version. I actually started reimplementing the old version as javascript- I managed to get the dectalk DLLs running in Wine, and then it’s just a matter of sending it the right phoneme codes… I had it accurately reciting the first few words of Genesis! but then someone mailed me the new, locked CDROMs, which derailed me

440 points by kens 4y ago

I really enjoyed the typography. It had some retro flourishers but looked fresh. Actually the palette on the entire site is pretty nice. What a pleasing layout

sambapa 4y ago

That's why FOSS is the way.

Maursault 4y ago

I don't understand why they can't run old hw or a vm with legacy OS and keep running the last version of TropeTrainer they have. "Oh no! Windows 7 is no longer supported! I have to update!" is BS. It's not like it self-destructs or something. There are entire populations of Mac users running legacy hw and software, 68k boxen and even Apple ][ users still out there. You know, an OS keeps on working whether or not it is still supported and has any more updates or patches. I've still got NetBSD 2.3 and A/UX 3.0.1 booting on a SE/30. I used to leave it up 24/7, but it just eats electricity. I'm still running Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion, and my main box runs Mojave and I'll never upgrade it. What's the problem here? This software will self-destruct?

codetrotter 4y ago

Thought for sure this would be about TempleOS

cfq 4y ago
Me too. Whoever decided on that title must have known about Terry and TempleOS. I miss him so much. R.I.P.

sergiotapia 4y ago

I 100% thought this would be about Terry Davis. Rest in peace Terry.

westmeal 4y ago
Good night sweet prince.

matt1555 4y ago

[flagged]

bombcar 4y ago

I don't see where it's indicated why this software wouldn't continue to run in a VM forever?

vxNsr 4y ago
It sounds like the software pulled the trop you wanted from a server. So unless you already downloaded everything, there is nowhere that has it. And even if you have the install file, it’s not that useful because you can’t download the trop files.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Ah, that's much worse, and sadder. More and more "desktop" software is just streamed intentionally or unintentionally from various SaaS servers, which will go dark at some point. Gamers have dealt with this for years now, but it's going to affect more and more things. The era of emulators being able to preserve software is coming to an end.
  - c22 4y ago
    It's okay, for the next generation of emulators, forward-thinking users will train ai models on the service to replace the remote functionality with a local imitation.
- squokko 4y ago
  Well if someone has downloaded many of the files then the files can be pulled from there.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- calgarymicro 4y ago
  Are you sure? Because based on my reading of the article it sounds like it's all embedded in the executable. >I ask Schnee if Buchler’s source code could be reconstructed from a copy of the software. >It might be possible to induce the machine code to dump out a database of every phoneme it had ever uttered — all the tiny pieces it had used to sing Armenian and Lithuanian and Egyptian trope — and then, if you were very patient and very skilled, you might be able to write code to piece them back together.

krossitalk 4y ago

Not a single original thought. How this isn't about Terry A. Davis is disappointing

canjobear 4y ago
Terry's software still works.
- gnarbarian 4y ago
  Probably because he got the New Testament update. Thomas Buchler is still running the legacy code.
  - FroshKiller 4y ago
    Christianity is a fork. That doesn't make Judaism legacy.
    - doublerabbit 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - vanillaicesquad 4y ago
        With a 24% successful deployment rate I would say it's already in production
        jojobas 4y ago
        That's mostly because you can't uninstall it.
sweetjuly 4y ago
Terry's work is remembered not really because it was exceptionally great but because it was just pretty odd in an interesting way. Plenty of people make hobby operating systems, custom programming languages, and more.

makeworld 4y ago

This immediately reminds me of Llull from https://unsongbook.com/ https://unsongbook.com/, a (fictional) program that finds the names of God by iteratively speaking Hebrew phonemes.

namaria 4y ago
I have been trying to find this for ever! Lost track of the bookmark in an older notebook and could never search it properly... Thank you!
agentwiggles 4y ago
> "Meh,” I said. “Meh. Meh. Meh. Meh. Meh.” > That was the part that led to the apocalypse.

officeplant 4y ago

Heard about this ordeal on NPR a while back. It's crazy how dependent a community can become on a piece of software and at the same time no one takes measures on preservation or open sourcing that software. Especially with all the passion and work Tom put into the program and his work with multiple Rabbi's to tweak in their slight changes and localized traditions. This feels more like much needed historical preservation that the community could have guided. What a massive blunder of closed software.

kulahan 4y ago
As always, XKCD has touched on this [1]. 1: https://xkcd.com/2347/ https://xkcd.com/2347/
bombcar 4y ago
I've seen it multiple times; the sole company/developer often considers the software "their baby" and doesn't want to "let it go" for a number of potentially quite valid reasons, such as fear of loss of livelihood, disagreement with others on the direction, etc. Tarn Adams has a similar situation with DF. But hopefully they realize that at least having some sort of 'make available on death' could be valuable. We have already lost untold countless relatively custom software packages for niche markets that you've never heard of - and people just continue or go back to doing things by hand.
- alpaca128 4y ago
  Last I heard Tarn Adams is considering open-sourcing at least parts of it in the long term now that they are more financially independent. The Steam launch was probably the best case scenario for both developer and community.
  - Cthulhu_ 4y ago
    Yeah, and part of me wishes they did this years ago, but at the same time I can understand they wanted to keep it small on purpose; once you go public like on Steam, the dynamics change and you can't just bury your nose in code all day but you have to deal with finances, refunds, reviews, legalese, etc as well.

bhhaskin 4y ago

It's a good story. But the things that make it a good story are also just plain wrong. At the end of the day it's software. It could be ran in a VM or even using windows compatibility layer. It could be decompiled and recompiled as a WASM web app. I also highly doubt the code for the voice engine is 4 million lines. The story calls the creator a genius, but really it's just a guy that had a passionate project. It's a good story, but anyone who doesn't think computers are magic can see right though it.

themaninthedark 4y ago
There is a lot of focus on the ... human aspects .. of the people in the story but in turn it makes some of them look really bad. The quote about 4 million lines of code and how could they it would be impossible for them to share it because it is too large for email... I think the program's creator was a great guy, doesn't seem like he was really thinking about his death seriously. His friends loved him and miss him but do not look to continue his legacy by helping the community. The worst thing is that all the little dialects that were preserved by this are now at larger risk of being lost.
aftbit 4y ago
If so, why is the new version not taking this route? Just failure of imagination?
- bhhaskin 4y ago
  My guess is they can make more money off a subscription, and it's easier to develop and deploy a web application with a subscription model.
- temporal828 4y ago
  Whew boy -- the reminder of the Gell-Mann amnesia effect is powerful on this one. I can't imagine it would not be more than a few minutes of downloading the image from archive.org and running it on any VM - I would be a bit surprised if this had any kind of sophisticated VM countermeasures in it. Meanwhile, I can believe there is some 4 million line code of something (maybe it was written in assembly!) - in any case a horrible unmaintainable mess that nobody at this software company wants to deal with anymore. Rather just rewrite it in some web based shit like half of this site does for a living. Also on actually reading TFA - it's rife with errors - at no point in history was the DECTalk the only game in town for speech synthesis - let alone 1999! - and the idea that it was the only one with controllable pitch is hogwash as anyone with a early 90s Mac can attest.

david422 4y ago

I have a bunch of software/websites that I run. If I were to get hit by a bus, they would all go offline and there would be many confused users. There is no-one that could pick up where I left off. I have on my todo list to make a dead man's switch. If I don't flip the update after a couple of months, a maintenance message is put up, and if I still don't update it, then an end of life process is kicked off before all my domains expire. Maybe I'll get to it some day.

AvImd 4y ago
Would you like to open source your apps when this happens? Is the absence of updates the only signal you wish to rely on, or should confirmations from other people be involved somehow in the decision?
- david422 4y ago
  The software is mostly just hobby/paid apps that do have a bunch of users. It would be difficult to turn that into open source although I've thought about doing pieces of them before.
deleted 4y ago
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culi 4y ago
Google actually has this built in: https://myaccount.google.com/inactive https://myaccount.google.com/inactive You can set it to share all of your passwords and data to someone after you disappear
- david422 4y ago
  Oh, interesting, didn't know that existed.
pabs3 4y ago
If you ever want those websites uploaded to archive.org, please ask ArchiveTeam to run ArchiveBot over them. https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/ArchiveBot https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/ArchiveBot The software is harder since I guess you aren't offering gratis downloads, but I think Software Heritage will eventually offer a source code escrow service. https://www.softwareheritage.org/ https://www.softwareheritage.org/

reiichiroh 4y ago

This is from March 2022. The whole site stopped publishing September 2022.

vxNsr 4y ago
Was this another Joshua Topolsky project?
- Doctor_Fegg 4y ago
  Yes.

jejones3141 4y ago

Has anyone tried to run it under WINE?

dmonitor 4y ago
How does Windows have a reputation for "backwards compatibility" when every single piece of legacy software that people want to use shits itself on the latest Windows version, yet somehow runs on WINE.
ryukafalz 4y ago
This is the way, for software like this that's stuck in time. I just recently helped my fiancee get a piece of old bioinformatics software running that wouldn't run on Windows 10. WINE on Ubuntu on WSL2 works fine.
- withinboredom 4y ago
  Did turning on Windows compatibility not work?
  - ryukafalz 4y ago
    It did not.
BirAdam 4y ago
This is the way. Win32 is now, more or less, the Linux software development api via WINE. Nothing else is stable in the sense of not-constantly-changing.

neilv 4y ago

This project sounds important to a large community of people. Yet it sounds like many of the people mentioned in the article were in some ways outsiders, even within that community. I don't know whether the reasons are the same, but we used to often see situations like that in open source software, and in computing in general before that.

deleted 4y ago
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rendx 4y ago

https://archive.org/details/Trope_Trainer_Kinnor_Software_Inc._Version_3.2_2005 https://archive.org/details/Trope_Trainer_Kinnor_Software_In... thank you Jason Scott! :) Maybe someone wants to try to get this to work in a VM (or Wine even), report back (and email the author of the article if successful)?

calibas 4y ago
The CD says making unauthorized copies are a violation of copyright and Torah law...
- sterlind 4y ago
  I think it should be okay, even a mitzvah, to preserve the program since preserving knowledge of the Torah is hefsed merubeh when it's in real danger of being lost. but I'd definitely want to heck with the rabbi he was working with first. but even if the copyright status is murky there's enough sofek and it's for a good purpose. (disclaimer: not actually Jewish)
Animats 4y ago
Yes, archive.org has an .iso file. Someone posted an activation code for the program there. Windows 7 programs should run fine under Wine on Linux. So if anybody really wants to run this, it shouldn't be hard. But listening to chanting from DECtalk? Here's "Happy Birthday" via DECtalk.[1] There was apparently a 90s thing for religious DECtalk files. Here's an archive of them.[2] Here's "The Old Rugged Cross" in DECtalk input format.[3] This mysterious program that represented so much work is probably mostly a DECtalk player and a big collection of playable religious DECtalk files. If someone were to extract the files, that would recover the content. There are players for DECtalk files; there's one at the links below. Converting them to a better text-to-speech system would help. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150310175636/http://theflameofhope.co/free/HAPPY%20BIRTHDAY.mp3 https://web.archive.org/web/20150310175636/http://theflameof... [2] http://theflameofhope.co/SONGS%20FOR%20PC'.html http://theflameofhope.co/SONGS%20FOR%20PC'.html [3] http://theflameofhope.co/dectalk%20speak%20window/GOSPEL/OLD%20RUGGED%20CROSS%20-%20HYMN.EN http://theflameofhope.co/dectalk%20speak%20window/GOSPEL/OLD...

shp0ngle 4y ago

From the title, I thought this was about TempleOS and Terry A Davis.

elzbardico 4y ago
Different fairy tales it seems. I fail to see why this is important
- b800h 4y ago
  I recommend "Atheist Delusions" by David Bentley Hart for reasons that your materialist beliefs might not be so well founded.
- officeplant 4y ago
  Hate religions all you want, but software like this is neat from a cultural/historical perspective and seemed to be an interesting solution to a community's problem. It also makes me wonder how we can use technology to save others that are rapidly dying like Native American languages and oral traditions.
willcipriano 4y ago
A former contributor here if you had show dead on

Normal_gaussian 4y ago

> Friedman explains that he had previously developed another web application, but says he can’t tell me what the app was called because of ongoing legal issues. Does anyone have any insight into this?

vxNsr 4y ago

Wow, it’s an impressive story, but hard to imagine learning from that software if the sample is accurate. I learned to lein and the most important thing was having a clear and clean recording of the trop.

kragen 4y ago

this is why f-droid warns you about some applications, 'undesired features: promotes non-free network services' free software is a good start, but as long as it's dependent on a centralized service, it's not a guarantee this won't happen to you

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

shliachtx 4y ago

https://chabad.org/torahtrainer https://chabad.org/torahtrainer has a similar (free) web based program, but it appears to use a recording instead of a synthesizer.

LegitShady 4y ago
This one has two problems. 1) the way he's enunciating every word and then pausing stops this from flowing nicely as a tune. Maybe its good for teaching but it doesn't sound as nice as flowing nicely would, and the tune ends up helping you memorize it better than the trop (since reading at the actual torah scroll doesn't have the trop). 2) while he has good overall sound and reading of the trop, the interface isn't highlighting the trop involved - you can memorize the reading but it isn't doing a good job teaching the tune of each trop to someone who needs the help enough to use it. It needs some re-work to make sure people associate the correct trop with the tune it creates. still totally usable but a student needs to know to make an effort to connect the words smoothly and not pause as this person does. edit: listening to some of this I also notice some inconsistencies in how he treats some of the trop. It might be a different style issue but I don't think so.

cjohnson318 4y ago

> “Not everybody keeps all 613 commandments” I thought this was a beautiful perspective.

dunefox 4y ago
If you can just pick and choose what commandments you want to follow they're not commandments and therefore pointless.
- hgsgm 4y ago
  It's not just the Law; it's also a good idea.
- giaour 4y ago
  At least a sixth of the commandments haven't been followed by anyone since 70 CE.
  - sbierwagen 4y ago
    (Context: many commandments relate to rituals performed at the Temple in Jerusalem, which was destroyed by the Romans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Temple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Temple )
  - paxcoder 4y ago
    [dead]
- mistermann 4y ago
  This applies to non-religious people with their ethics/morals/facts/etc as well. As with faith, sin also comes in many forms, from a semiotics perspective. But, one is probably best of not getting into too much detail as it can interfere with living one's best life (of which high self-esteem is a crucial component).
- cjohnson318 4y ago
  Well, that's certainly a popular opinion lately.

retrac 4y ago

It occurs to me that a program like this can be effectively complete. And stand alone. I'm sure there's a few bugs and of course always more features are possible. But this software would probably be usable as-is in 100 years for Torah study just as it is today. It's quite a shame we still haven't come up with a way of packaging software in a way that makes it relatively future proof, even if the legal issues could be resolved.

asdff 4y ago
We kind of have. Buy a new mac today and you can run a 40 year old sh program fine. Its just that most people aren't being trained on these standard unchanging technologies in computing unless they take an active interest in it. They are being trained on $newapp and how to navigate $newwebsite and become beholden to those patterns of software design sensibilities, because in this attention economy this obviously generates a lot more money than having the masses use some simple bash code to solve a lot of their problems.
- perardi 4y ago
  …do you really think that a bash script is the best interface for the masses to explore the Talmud?
  - eddieroger 4y ago
    Certainly not on Friday night or Saturday, unless they open it ahead of time and leave it there. Maybe we can train Shabbas goys to use bash.
  - asdff 4y ago
    It only seems ridiculous framed from the modern perspective on computing. Ask this in 1995 and yes, this would be the best interface. The only reason why its no good anymore is because these abstraction layers we shovel into people. Maybe in 2005 the best way to view the talmud was a gui based native app, because thats the level of abstraction layer people where shoveled versus the command line. Maybe in 2015 the best way moved from a native app to a website, since thats now how most people operate by then, not installing tools themselves but just going to different websites and therefore losing that knowledge. Maybe today the best way is a mobile app, because people don't even visit desktop websites anymore and don't take well to those design philosophies. You have to wonder where this is marching off too, this march away from complexity into easier and simpler abstractions, further from the magic and raising the ivory tower of the wizard who makes these tools higher above the masses who increasingly have no idea what is happening nor any mental model to think about this stuff as it actually works. Certainly some groups benefit from siloing the knowledge of fire of our modern world, but I can't help but imagine we are all losing in this race away from complexity.

eigenvalue 4y ago

From the title I thought this was going to be about TempleOS and Terry Davis.

zen_1 4y ago
Same
joncrane 4y ago
Same! GMTA!

ivraatiems 4y ago

I used TropeTrainer to study for my bar mitzvah! Brings back memories. A shame it's gone now. I wonder if the source code was ever in any sort of repo online, or if it was only ever on the guy's computer, in truth. So, speaking from an ethical standpoint - and I mean purely philosophically, not in terms of legalities - what would be wrong with reverse engineering this program and finding a way to get it running again, for those who paid for it? If it's just a matter of spoofing a couple web requests and maybe bypassing some activation checks, I suspect it could be done.

RajT88 4y ago
Legally Grey, ethically fine.
jamal-kumar 4y ago
I was thinking the same thing. It's effectively within the realm of abandonware at this point. (edit: I guess someone released a new version about a year ago but it's not as good?) People have been reversing stuff like DOS games recently [1], I don't really see any reason why this program couldn't be done the same. I think the legality is kind of just handled by not packing in the binaries along with the code. Personally I don't know a deep lot about reverse engineering, but it sounds like an interesting challenge to try to learn it. edit 2: someone did this [2] [1] https://github.com/jamesfmackenzie/chocolatekeen https://github.com/jamesfmackenzie/chocolatekeen [2] https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/1505006493417938946 https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/1505006493417938946
- courseofaction 4y ago
  [2] Is the "fixed" of this article, it seems. Trope trainer has been reverse engineered and you can run old versions. Interesting series of events.

simonw 4y ago

If it's out there as an old Windows 7 .exe what are the chances that someone could get it running in WebAssembly eventually, similar to how https://infinitemac.org/1998/Mac%20OS%208.1 https://infinitemac.org/1998/Mac%20OS%208.1 works?

frankfrank13 4y ago

Beautiful story

fieryskiff11 4y ago

[dead]

samhuk 4y ago

From the headline I honestly thought that this was some strange take on TempleOS...

ur-whale 4y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgKXC_6n_jw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgKXC_6n_jw

Hitton 4y ago

[flagged]

MarcoZavala 4y ago
[dead]
verbify 4y ago
I found your comment hurtful and I'd urge you to delete your comment. Obviously trademarking someone else's program name is very unethical, but I don't think it's indicative of my ethnicity. This is on quite a moving article about Jewish culture and doesn't warrant comments about Jews and business practices. Implying the joke and not saying it explicitly doesn't make it any better.

ars 4y ago

A small note on pronunciation: trope is pronounced trup or tr-uh-p not like the English word it looks like.

voicedYoda 4y ago
Just like Yiddish pronunciations, maybe? Here in Chicago it's pronounced the way it's written: rope with a 't'

ww520 4y ago

I heard that the creator of the K language Arthur Whitney would delete all old versions of the compiler source code and binaries before working on the next version. That's a unusual step to start afresh. It illustrates that giving enough will and resource most software can be recreated.

jamal-kumar 4y ago
I've done that before and found it super refreshing. If the program is about the size you can fit in your head you can probably end up re-writing it better the second time around. Bonus points if it's in a new programming language
bhawks 4y ago
Granted that K and other APL descended languages are often referred to as write once & read never this seems humorously appropriate.

pknerd 4y ago

Not sure whether it was the article itself or the software, I got hooked to it. As the follower of another Abrahamic faith(Islam), I have nothing but utmost respect for Thomas Buchler.

shmerl 4y ago

It only makes sense for such kind of software to be funded by the community and be open source in the first place. It's quite in line with the goals it's intended for. Same way the trop itself doesn't have copyright. Also, even if something doesn't run on modern Windows, good chance it would run in Wine on Linux.

29athrowaway 4y ago

This is what TempleOS is for.

ethicalsmacker 4y ago

I thought this was going to be about TempleOS. I got excited for a minute!

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

lurker616 4y ago

This could be a great use case for chatGPT/GPT-4 - help understand and maintain open source software in perpetuity.

slushh 4y ago

This is another approach at automatically generating the right interpretation. Why is the software important when the entire bible could be recorded once and then be streamed from Youtube? There is one computer still running. Everything could be recorded. Psalm 90 - Prayer of Moses [1] >Note-for-note transcription of the Hebrew texts by Dennis McCorkle utilizing the DAVIDIC CIPHER. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q77NWugDVLo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q77NWugDVLo

adastra22 4y ago

This is absolutely maddening to read. Open source the software for christ's sake! *I* will recompile it to run on macOS Catalina or Windows 11. It's not that hard. Just get it on GitHub! Or heck, give me a precompiled binary and I'll give you a docker script that runs it in virtualization on any computer. EDIT: Ok I finished the article. I guess the source code is gone. But surely there is a binary floating around somewhere? I could get it running under Wine, or worst-case decompile and fix the program.

jmkni 4y ago
It looks like you can download an ISO from here - https://archive.org/details/Trope_Trainer_Kinnor_Software_Inc._Version_3.2_2005 https://archive.org/details/Trope_Trainer_Kinnor_Software_In...
- adastra22 4y ago
  And it runs fine under virtualization, it seems: https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/1505006493417938946 https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/1505006493417938946
jes5199 4y ago
so, there’s an old version on archive.org that was pretty easy to crack a serial number and run in a VM. It uses the older, low-quality Hebrew synthesis that was cobbled together from German and French phonemes. I have physical CDROMs and serial numbers for one of the last versions ever published, but I haven’t been able to get them to run — they try to contact an activation server which no longer exists. I think this is just DRM, and in theory it can be bypassed, but no one has managed to do it yet. (I’ve gotten a couple people to look at it, but no one has had time to seriously dig in) The data files for Trope Trainer are mostly human-readable, lots of XML. But then there’s an incredible amount of hand-coded stuff implemented in the software - very detailed pronunciation rules for Hebrew, just written as, apparently, lots of switch statements. In principle it could be mapped out, but I’d feel more confident about it if we had a running copy of the newer version. I actually started reimplementing the old version as javascript- I managed to get the dectalk DLLs running in Wine, and then it’s just a matter of sending it the right phoneme codes… I had it accurately reciting the first few words of Genesis! but then someone mailed me the new, locked CDROMs, which derailed me