Episode: 3207
Title: HPR3207: Fireside chat with E Nigma
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3207/hpr3207.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 18:52:27

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This is Haka Public Radio episode 3,274.
You may be 17th of November 2020.
Today's show is entitled Fireside Chat with Enigma.
It is hosted by Ken Fallon and in about 63 minutes long and Karimanec's visit flag.
The summer is Ken talks to the original HDR and today with a tech admin.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by an Honesthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HBR15.
That's HBR15.
Better web hosting that's Honest and Fair at An Honesthost.com.
Hi everybody, my name is Ken Fallon and you're listening to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
This time we've got someone special aboard.
I'm talking to Enigma. How are you doing Enigma?
Pretty good. I don't know if I'm special, but you know we'll go for another special for me.
Very special to me.
Well, I think for me you are the HBR admin.
So I don't know if you were just telling me it's been 10 years since you submitted your last show.
So I think it's time we called up a little bit.
Yeah, exactly. So for those of you who don't know, I was the admin around when HBR started.
I actually ran a podcast called Today with a Techie 300 episodes of that.
It was a similar in vain of HBR where we actually had hosts, submit shows, and it's basically the same thing.
We stopped that in episode 300.
We wanted to go a little bit more mainstream.
We wanted to kind of rebrand that show.
And that's kind of the sendience of HPR 13 years later.
Who was we?
Well, it was me, groups, Stankdog, Dual Parallel, some names.
Most people haven't heard of. We haven't been around in quite a while.
Sure, there's lots of people here who know these groups is from the...
And Phenomenon.
Yeah.
The groups are from the Phenomenon, host here on Twitter and on HPR.
Stank is, of course, the person who organized the domains and all the stuff.
And Dual was from Radio Freak.
Radio Freak.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
And he was in the industry naming as well, was he?
Yeah, he was the one that actually came up with the idea of hacker public radio.
And he introduced the idea back on Radio Freak America.
And we kind of ran with it after that show ended.
And then Phenrever Radio was kind of in between there.
I was on a couple episodes back in 2000.
It's probably been 2006.
So it's been a while.
Well, yeah, my last HPR episode was 2010, like October, I believe.
Yeah, that's what happened.
So tell us a bit about, how did you get involved in today with a techie?
Well, and just for your information, we consider HPR to be a direct continuation of today with a techie.
Because it stopped on one day and started the next day with the same host.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
So originally was actually doing show notes for today with a techie and Phenrever Radio.
And I got involved with that community.
And then Drupes one day asked me, hey, you want to actually be the admin of today with a techie?
And I'm like, sure, why not?
So that's kind of how I got roped into it.
Maybe nobody else wanted to do it.
You know, I was listening to one of your community news episodes, like this morning.
And I was, it rang so true of asking for shows.
Like, I used to, I know, beg people on RC back in the day, hey, submit a show.
Hey, you got anything, that type of deal.
So I definitely feel for you there.
Yes, I was checking up some of our correspondence over the years.
And remember, one email her, you were catching up, saying hi.
And I was going, yeah, things are doing well.
We don't know how to make sure we're doing this.
We still have to solve the people submitting shows.
But yes.
Yeah.
And I'm really just didn't start to catch off there.
And I'm proud of you guys for continuing all of the things that we, we did back, you know, 12 years ago.
So like, I, I can't thank you and, and cool too.
And, and some of the others that have been around for a while.
Like, some of the names just kind of make me smile because I, I realized just how long it's been.
And, you know, we have the same theme that we had on day one, which is.
Just I, I would assume you have changed it and rebranded by now, but you didn't.
Well, there's been a, there's been a few attempts to do that.
And there are some additional, some people have submitted additional things.
So, so that's an option.
One of the things I was thinking about whenever we get around to, I keep saying, you know,
that people are sick and tired of hearing about this new version of the website that we're going to be doing.
And just as soon as I get people to, you know, solve begging for the shows thing,
which takes up so much of my time, then you can focus on that spare time under the website,
which is why the website hasn't changed in 15 years.
But, how I never, one of the things I wanted to do was have a drop down list.
When you submit your show, then you can pick the theme or you just get a random theme in.
Oh, that would be cool. Yes. Yeah.
Yeah. A few nice ones.
I'm a lot of them.
Sorry, go ahead.
Well, I was going to say I, I think it's just kind of nostalgic for me,
like it being the same theme. I don't know.
I'm just an old school guy that just, just really liked that old theme, but I'm biased.
Who did that theme?
Oh, I think one of droops is friends.
I don't think, I don't remember the guy's name.
Now you're going to make me go back in my archive.
No, no, I have it on the list. I have it somewhere.
Oh, you do.
Yeah, that's it.
We need to credit everything.
So I have the name somewhere.
Name escapes me at the moment.
But I still prefer the twat team.
Which one? There was two.
Hey, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do.
Now I'm able to get my cable.
Not that I got my cable.
I mean, well, that one.
So if we're talking about theme songs, I always love that Ben Revintro.
So for those of you who haven't heard it, you know, go, go.
Listen to like the first 10 minutes.
If you listen to anything of a Ben Revint radio show.
That was my favorite theme.
Very good.
And you know, there are people who still go back every year.
I'm religiously listened to radio free, American.
Yeah, I can believe it.
Draw a doll was a charismatic guy.
So even if you're listening to it for pure entertainment value,
I, I would recommend it, you know, and, and it gives some good basics.
And kind of where we've been, you know, I'm.
I'm feeling like I'm more of a historian these days than anything.
And I miss.
I feel we've lost a lot of that, you know, 2005 to 2015 time period.
And a lot of the old forms kind of went away.
Yeah, yeah.
I think a lot of them suffered from an HBO as well.
Suffered a lot from spam and attacks.
And it was just relentless.
The, yeah, the amount of updates that you needed to be doing.
So can you tell me just for the listeners here, how was it like?
What was it like to submit a show back in the day?
How did it, how did it start the whole, especially with, you know,
it took over from the, from troops there.
Very manuals on very manual.
So a lot of them, I would splice like, like the, the, they would basically give me a show content.
And I would put in the intro outro themes.
I would actually manually go post the show.
I would do all the show notes.
It was a very manual process on my part from, from at least the today with the techie.
Perspective, we got a little bit better in HBR.
But nothing like you guys are doing today, like with the automate with the automation you have.
Yeah, the automation is mostly Dave to be honest.
Actually, about the, they're about the monitoring the shows and stuff.
I have met a few people paranoid.
And now they're just constantly there's raspberry pies with traffic light signals whenever we're low of shows.
People's traffic light school.
So I don't need to worry about it anymore.
That's nice. Yeah, yeah, you definitely have come a very long way since, since my day.
So any, any tips or tricks for us here on getting, getting people to submit more shows.
Well, if I would have had that, we would have had a show every day, wouldn't way back in the day.
But I guess from, from my perspective, you know, go talk to some folks, maybe some folks that haven't submitted.
That are, that are super active in, you know, forums, IRC, whatever.
And, and just, you know, talk to folks that have a particular interest.
I think it's a lot easier to do a show if you're really passionate about the project.
Yeah, it's okay. And when you're talking to me about that, you're actually talking to the HBR community.
This is something that the HBR community listening there should, you know, if there's somebody you're talking to and they're passionate about something, have them do a show.
Just throw away, press the record button on your phone and, and if nothing else, it's your show.
All the better if you can get them to record the show.
Yeah, if you have one listener or 50,000, it really doesn't matter if you're passionate about the project.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, they really go, go back to the radio freak America stuff.
I, um, go back and listen to that. The technology may have changed.
It may be less of a phone freaking circuit, but the ideologies that they were talking about there are as true today as, as they were back in the day.
Which I don't know if that's a good thing or just slightly disappointing after all these years.
Well, I, I think you can hear the passion come through their podcast.
I mean, I think that was, you know, why I went away for a while is because I, I lost, I lost something and, and I felt like I, I wasn't contributing enough.
So went away a little while. I'm, I'm coming back now in some former fashion.
I haven't decided what yet, but, um, and I think, you know, going back to those radio freak America days, those, those guys really like embodied the spirit of what we do.
Um, were you a member of the phenomenon or a big rep?
I was, I was a member of both. I was a, a DDP member for the latter half of when we disbanded.
Um, the DDP was, was essentially Stankdog's group of, of folks that we, we were to do projects together.
So it was, you know, me, groups, uh, Nick 84, uh, Stankdog, um, I'm probably forgetting somebody along the way, but, uh, we, we kind of all did projects together.
And I think I haven't seen a whole lot and, and I've been back a couple of months now.
I haven't seen a whole lot of that community type projects, um, in current day, you can say that, that there is, but I, I just haven't seen that.
Like a group of folks that are doing, where did you, uh, hang out with some IRC, which IRC was that?
Uh, that was actually the Benrev IRC mostly, and then I hung out in, uh, on free node, um, uh, the emphanomicon channel.
And, um, I was on a couple of other IRC's. Now I'm hanging out and august planted on free node.
Um, if, if anyone wants to come and talk about old school things, I'm, I'm there.
Excellent. The cord chills. What's that supposed to say?
Yeah, report shows, hashtag record shows, right?
Yeah. It's, uh, it's weird because I was going back looking at this stuff.
And I actually heard about the rebranding of, of today with a techie, to HBR on the, a lot of Linux links podcast from, uh, Dave,
deviates podcast, other, uh, HBR.
But I think the focus of HBR at the time, and correct me if I'm wrong here with more, uh, people, more podcasters who had their shows,
that they would contribute to show rather than the listeners.
I'm a writer matters, that's what, what the pivot was in HBR.
A little bit. Yeah. We had listeners as well. I know you, were you, today with the techie, or did you come along as HBR?
No, uh, today with the techie.
Okay, so you're, you're a really old school. I'm not dating us at all, but, um, okay, I couldn't remember when you came along.
I know Kletto was, was about in the same vein.
I think he did some, some, today with the techie, uh, deals.
Um, but like Dave and, uh, deviates and, and some of the others came along a little later.
And they were releasing kind of their podcast on both.
Um, so it gave them a bigger exposure and it gave us some content.
So we did, we did that, uh, for a while, and then, you know, others came along.
Uh, I know operator has been forever, uh, given us shows, um, and some of the others.
But yeah, I, I think I did a little bit of both.
Yeah.
I know. I saw, uh, one of his, uh, uh, bad audio ones.
It was recently, it was like, yeah, it was really brutal.
I made it through it.
Um, but, but there has been some speaking about audio.
I, I think I remember somebody, uh, submitted a show recorded on the headphone,
where they converted the headphone into a microphone, because they didn't have a microphone.
Uh, back in the twat days.
Oh, yeah, I think I remember that show.
Now granted, um, I was a podcast freak back then.
So I listened to every, uh, to, uh, twat tech, um, episode, every bin rev episode,
every radio freak America episodes.
So you're talking like four, five, six hundred shows there.
And I think I've listened every HPR up to like 500.
So I've got like 2500 episodes to go.
But you know, Dave would be remiss of me.
Uh, did Morris, uh, if you can, if you're listening to the other shows,
then submit tags for them as well.
Sorry.
Curial.
Yeah.
No, it's fine.
Um, but yeah, I think, um, everything should be available still like on archive.org.
Um, no, we have all the twat chills over here.
And I was actually going to ask you, do you have seen as you did the show notes?
If you have better show notes, because I lost the, um, the, uh, source material for the,
today with a techie stuff.
So the good to have the expanded channels.
Yeah, I may be able to, to hook you up with that.
Um, let me, let me look into that and, and I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I can follow
you an email about that later.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
So I'm all, this is all very just joined as a, I should be more professional.
Playing for your technique.
But I consider you to be a, I've listened to your shows down through the years.
And going back, reading the stuff that I sent you, I sent you the emails that I dread
getting myself the old, uh, I promised to do, I have this idea for a show.
What do you think of it as a show idea?
Well, obviously it's a brilliant show idea or, you know, I need to send me the shows.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think I remember a couple of those emails and I'm like, just send me the show, man.
Yeah.
But you were very cool.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wow.
Wow.
And their profiles show two years ago.
I sent in.
I promised you back in 2003, I think.
Was that right?
2000?
No, 2000 or something.
Uh, it's not like they should.
Let me, let me get out.
But anyway, you go talk about something.
Submitting shows.
How was it in the, in back in the day, FTP servers?
And did you have problems with FTP servers?
Um, not a whole lot.
I, we were pretty consistent on that, but it was, it was FTP.
Um, and then I would, I would basically just move it, you know,
from the incoming directory into, um, the actual show directory,
link the show and then off to the races.
So it was, it was a pretty easy process, but, you know,
you're looking at probably 15 minutes a night that I'm sitting there.
Either doing show notes, uploading a show, so on and so forth.
You know, times 300 times.
I think I did, I don't know, a couple hundred out of HBR.
So yeah, definitely a little bit of a time synch, um,
when you're coming, when you're talking about that.
Yeah, that was one of the things I wrote, uh,
some scripts to automate that.
And the thing that really got me was the, um,
uh, the quality of the MP3 audio is back in the twat days.
Those shows are, you know, some of the stuff people were sending in.
And then we'll run them.
But then again, they were submitting the shows on dial up.
So, you know, yes, yes.
And, and I would get MP3s.
I would get org warbists.
I would get, um, I, I think I got wave files at some point.
It was, it was ridiculous.
So converting some of that stuff,
putting the, um, putting the intro outro music on it
and, and posting those was definitely a,
a time in cleaning up some of the things,
doing some audio editing.
I used Audacity.
That's how I learned Audacity was, was doing that.
So, um, and, uh, yeah.
So it was definitely an interesting time.
And the sample rate of some of the shows,
I've seen were like incredibly low one monotrack,
just, or a stereo track with a left only track in it.
Or even some of them I've seen where they,
the audio was biased.
There was a DC bias in this,
that was up, um, biased more to the left.
Oh, it's just weird stuff.
Yeah.
So I didn't care at that point.
We were getting shows.
And that was at the kind of the point.
So like, I was not an audio file in the sense of,
you must have org warbists, you know,
a certain sample rate blah, blah, blah.
Like that's just never crossed my mind.
And of course, back in the day, as I said before,
back in the day,
people were sending in chills and dialogues.
So you could not expect somebody to send in a flack file.
You know, the cost, real hard, cold cash at the time.
Absolutely.
And, and a lot of times, you know,
we would, I would get like USB drives of, of shows
with some of my friends that were here in the,
in the Florida Tampa area.
Um, so like, I would,
I would get those and upload those.
So it's, it's definitely, uh,
was an interesting, uh, experience looking back on it.
I don't know how we, we got to 300 shows.
But and some of the longer shows too, like hours and stuff,
you know, forever.
But interesting nonetheless.
Did you speak into that?
Do you know all these guys in person?
Or did you meet them on the line?
Uh, some in person, some online.
We used to, uh, go to the,
the two major conferences in,
in the US.
We used to go to Defcon and Hope.
Um,
I've been to New York a couple of times for Hope and then,
uh, Defcon was my favorite because it's in Vegas.
Um,
and, you know, Stankdog and I went to a couple of those.
Um,
I think I met dual ones,
mostly dealt with him online,
and droops, I think,
I don't think I ever met droops in person.
I could be wrong,
but, um,
I think it was mostly just online on the phone.
That type of deal.
I just dug up that email there.
There was, uh,
13th of December 2005,
and I ended up posting the show on, uh, 2016.
There you go.
Well, you're about five years,
six years late or ten years late.
Ten years,
there was a ten years,
uh,
ten years,
eleven years.
Yeah.
Ten years,
eleven years.
Well, that is the one thing that I,
uh,
having to deal with procrastination with people
and perfection,
oh, those are the worst.
Uh-huh.
Send in the show,
you can,
your next show can be better.
It's where it is on the show.
Send,
show number one in.
Yeah.
You're never going to be perfect.
And,
and I, you know,
nobody expects perfection.
We're,
we're not paid to do this.
This is,
this is our,
you know,
our outlet for what we,
what we have passion for.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Anything is,
is,
it's audible.
Inferno's operator did push this.
To push that to the limit the other day,
but it was audible.
That was the,
that was the judgment.
And there are plenty of shows on here,
just to the listeners,
there are plenty of shows on here that will,
um,
show you how to get into podcasting.
But our vice always is,
just press the record,
send in the show,
and then you have your worst show over,
and everything gets better after that.
Yeah,
and I think we're just using this episode to,
uh, be an ad for sending your shows.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And now we can,
we can both say it and, you know,
maybe it'll mean something.
I don't know.
Maybe they'll just look not listen,
but whatever.
Did you have, uh,
any shows that you were thinking?
Anyone's that,
that stand out.
I'm, I'm reluctant to do that myself
because I actually enjoy all the shows.
There's something in every show that I've,
I've enjoyed,
but has there only been any that stuck out to your?
Um, I think we did something really weird one year.
We did a,
uh, a New Year's Eve.
It was either New Year's or Christmas Eve.
We did a Colin show.
And we had community members like,
uh, Colin and,
and just kind of talk about whatever.
It was very interesting.
It was memorable.
Um,
we were on the phone for like two hours.
You know,
that one stands out.
I don't know if you were a part of that.
I don't remember what year it was.
To be quite honest.
I'd be in a different time zone.
I mean, it's you.
So yeah, you would be.
Yeah, you would be.
You, it would be like literally the middle of the night.
I think it was New Year's Eve.
And we were like,
the idea was we were stay until midnight to ring in the New Year.
Something like that.
That was a promise.
Um, we hope that.
I'm sorry.
No, go ahead.
It's the people think we're interrupting each other.
It's because there was a time like,
because we're on different parts of the world.
Yeah.
Um,
a couple of other ones.
I think the, the first HBR was definitely a,
a memorable one.
Me and Stankdog did an intro to HBR.
And I think that we were the only two on that phone.
Originally, the idea was it was going to be me stank and dual.
I don't think dual could make it that day.
Um,
and it was just me and Stank.
Um,
so that the last,
uh,
swat tech was was memorable for me.
Um,
just kind of the changing of the guard,
you know, when we were rebranding.
Um,
I did a security camera.
This isn't an HBR episode,
but I did a security camera episode with, um,
Stankdog on Ben Rev Radio.
That was memorable for me.
I think that was my first like hour episode of doing the podcast.
And it probably is really horrible looking back at it.
You know, 10 years, 12, 12 years later.
But I think that one was,
that was a good,
good hour and a half talking to my friend.
Yeah.
So that was nice.
Some of the nicer shows is listening into,
uh, especially with COVID now,
there's been a few where people have had conversations
and just sent them in the shows.
It's really nice to just listen to,
uh,
your friends.
I'm using their quotes,
uh, just shooting the breeze for a while.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think that's,
that's the point of this is to,
to have fun with it,
you know, don't make it a job,
don't make it a,
uh,
you know, something you have to do
because then you get burned out,
you, you lose your passion,
and you kind of want to go away.
Um,
so I think that's the,
the biggest thing.
I,
uh,
I must say,
I've been very,
very lucky with the amount of people
who have, uh,
supported here on the network,
ever since taking over.
Actually, it's amazing.
If you ask for help,
people give it to you.
So that's,
uh,
that is quite good.
There's been a lot of people
who are willing to help us.
Yeah, and maybe that's,
that's the key of,
of staying in it as long as you have,
you know,
the,
is, is asking for help
and not getting,
um,
put in a place
where you're,
where you feel like it's a job
or feel like it's,
um,
well, they're,
they're up in,
they're up in days.
Yes,
they're up in days.
I don't know about that.
And dealing with spammers and stuff
at the beginning was,
uh, was a,
just frustrating
that you're busy with something else
and then some moral
is facing the website
or something.
So, yeah, that's,
well, and then you have a,
you, you have a day job
and you have a family too.
So,
yeah, exactly.
It's kind of,
it, the balance is tough.
Exactly.
So what else has been going on
the last 12 years or 10 years?
Well, we've had the,
we've had the,
we've had the,
we've had the ups and downs,
just as you were
mentioning the New Year show,
you know, we've had,
uh,
for the last few New Year's,
we've had, uh,
26-hour New Year shows.
Um,
oh, yeah.
Interesting.
Yeah.
Uh, it's,
I think it started with,
uh,
uh, polka,
from, uh,
they have their own show now,
uh, from DevRandom.
You DevRandom.
I love to do
one of those,
history of podcasts.
So maybe you guys could
help out with it.
You know, they, uh,
show was inspired,
you know,
HBR was,
is a director of today
with a techie,
which was inspired by,
uh,
binrav,
which was inspired by
Radiofreak America.
Okay, I'll go on the whole
of that.
And then,
now,
you know, the Linux,
link tech show,
you have the Linux reality,
a lot of Linux links,
although it shows,
like a graph
or something of,
of all the shows
when the start of,
when the finished.
Yeah, and absolutely,
and I think that,
putting that, um,
you know,
somewhere
is important for folks
that are,
that are coming new
to this,
to kind of understand the history,
um,
because we,
I think we've lost a little bit of that,
um,
because I, I don't really know,
like,
when shows started,
when shows stopped,
like, what's a derivative of a lot?
Yeah, exactly.
And, uh,
what's funny now is
podcasting has never been so
popular as it is in the business.
Yeah, I know.
And, and we were,
kind of,
ahead of our curve,
or ahead of our time,
back then,
because there was so many,
there was so much good content,
you know,
circa
2008-200,
like,
10,
um,
when I left,
um,
that was just so much,
like,
you've listed,
like, five or six,
and I could probably come up with five or six more
on top of my head,
and it's,
it was
ridiculously amount of content
we were pushing out.
Yeah, exactly.
And they,
the,
the danger now, I think,
is that, uh,
people assume that you need
to get into podcasting,
to listen to podcast.
You need
to be part of soundcloud
or Spotify,
or they didn't even
publish their RSS feeds
for a lot of the news,
you know,
the mainstream news shows
that have podcasted.
Yeah, and,
and you really don't.
And,
we kind of proved it
12 years ago,
or even further back
than that,
um, that,
it's kind of,
publish your RSS,
you'll get a following,
you're, you're,
you're promote a little bit,
and you've got a big community.
How many people,
like, just curious,
like, what's your,
what, what's our download rate
on HBR,
episode, episode,
like, what's the average?
To be honest,
let me,
I'll tell you the,
the one second,
they made a put you on the spot
there.
Well,
I have a,
a well-known,
uh,
philosophy,
uh, with regards to HPR,
and, uh,
and it stood me well,
is that I don't care
about the number of downloads.
Uh, I do care about the number of holes.
I, I couldn't care less,
or could care less.
Hello.
Yeah.
Yeah, I couldn't care less.
Uh, you know,
I, I do realize that we have listeners.
Well, people are busy,
people are not busy,
people listen to some of the shows,
people don't.
I'm not actually that concerned about the listeners,
because a listener,
it's not interested me,
what's not interested me as a host.
So, I will,
I will say that the hosting,
the number of holes determines
how healthy HPR is from week to week,
or month, month, in the case of,
whether we,
when we introduce new holes.
Yeah, I think that's,
you know,
yeah.
Sorry about the lag there,
but yeah, I think that's,
um,
totally fair.
I was just curious as to what,
because I know it's gotten bigger over the years,
and it, and it ebbs and flows.
Um,
it's just curious.
I'm going to the Internet Archive,
and they have a list of the number of downloads.
Um, let's see.
I should be feeling dead air here,
but I'm, I didn't have anything to say.
You shouldn't do that to a fact.
You should be,
you should be,
you should be,
uh, saying nothing,
and then,
well, that works too.
There was something somewhere that would tell me the number of,
uh, people who listened to it.
Well, it doesn't really matter like,
well, it does know that you brought it up.
Because our,
because your listeners need,
don't need to know, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
I need to know.
I see today's show is 2,300,
as we're recording this,
3,200.
You remember when you would like to have a celebration,
when you passed a hundred mark?
I would.
I would, I would really have a celebration.
If we hit like 100 or 200 downloads,
you're talking 3,200 downloads for,
well, never do I mean,
uh, we've done 3,200 episodes.
Oh, yes.
Yes.
Yes.
We've done 3,200 episodes,
and that's a crazy number.
Like, just,
it's an astronomical number in my head.
Like, I was just surprised that you,
that's 254 episodes a year
across the 12 or 13 years we've been doing this.
Yeah, I think,
I can't find it now here,
but the last time I looked,
there was about 5,000 people,
uh, any particular show gets downloaded
about 5,000 times,
and then based on the website,
you will have about,
um, which is always a bit odd.
You get the
half the downloads,
and then you give it a given day,
is a recent show.
So in the last week.
Uh-huh.
And then the other half are shows
from God knows when back.
Yeah, you're going to get those,
those one feather of the Google hits, right?
Yeah, exactly.
And then, uh,
I've said before,
like, there's lots of,
lots of times that you get,
uh, emails like Dave,
um, Dave Morris,
one of the guys who helps out,
was saying that, uh,
he just recently got a,
um,
a comment on,
somebody emailed him a comment on a show,
on this very first show,
which must have been five or six years ago.
So there was a very,
very amazing tale.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's the,
and, and when you're a Google search,
like, if you're looking for a particular topic,
you could get a Google hit that way too.
It's,
it's definitely an interesting concept of having something
from 10 years ago,
pop up, um,
and your Google search.
But it's,
it happened for so,
yeah.
Yeah, for some of the stuff,
like Vi and Vim and Alc,
there was relevant today as the word back then.
So yeah.
Yep.
Excellent.
Absolutely.
So real?
No, I was going to say,
and, and some of the newer topics,
um, you're going to get,
um,
a lot more traffic too.
So that makes sense,
like, 5,000 hits.
But I would,
I was happy with a couple hundred hits back in the day.
So, you know,
if you're telling me,
multiple thousand people
are listening to the show every day,
or, or at least,
inconsistently,
that's,
that's a crazy number.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's, uh,
that was about it.
And that,
the way we,
at HPR,
and internet archive,
do it,
is actual hits,
which is the number of
unique hits per IP address to the website.
So,
I got you.
As opposed to,
what sound cloud,
or whoever do it,
they consider every,
every time a file has been touched
as being a play.
So, yeah.
I'm like,
they do that?
Because then,
more advertising, guys.
And we don't,
we don't really care
about advertising
from an HPR perspective.
Not so much at the whole,
you know,
why didn't you do advertising?
We'll be a good question.
Because we always wanted it to be more
about the content
and less about the advertising dollar,
um,
I know when we were,
when we discussed doing,
um,
HPR, we wanted it fairly
ad-free.
Like, there would be occasional,
like, plug-on hosting
and things like that.
And I know you guys have kept the,
that, the similar,
um,
but we didn't want,
a person to get spammed with six different ads
back in the, you know,
just coming to the site.
So, um,
we did the same for the forums
for a long time,
for the Binra forums,
um, and other projects.
Um, so we had some
that were ad revenue generating,
um,
what was the thing
that we used to do,
uh, I think hack,
radio live,
um,
had ads.
So, there were sites
that had ads, sites that didn't have ads.
So, some of our blogs had ads
and things like that.
Did you,
were you linked
to Hacker Media at all?
Hacker Media was Drupes thing.
Um, so,
okay.
He, he ran that
and, you know,
we supported it from an HBR perspective.
Um,
we did, uh,
that and, um,
hack radio live,
which was our streaming,
uh, service.
So, we actually had,
where we were,
uh, streaming shows 24-7.
Excellent.
There's been talk of them,
um, broadcasting some of the HBR shows, um,
a,
actual radio station.
Um, that would be really cool.
And that kind of gets us,
and one, one thing,
one tangent I have is,
the reason HBR is,
hacker public radio was,
we were,
we were trying to do a spoof off of NPR.
Um,
and that was kind of the synthesis of that.
Um, and it would be really cool,
if it ended up on our actual radio station.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, so that was a simple,
was mentioned that he was doing this.
But I, I don't know,
how far projects go.
Or with this, uh,
COVID-19,
what, what's happening there?
Okay.
Absolutely.
But, um,
so what else
from an HBR admin perspective,
because you are the HBR admin now?
So,
I've passed a tooltorch.
Um,
what else do you need help with
from, from your perspective?
with the tags you're asking folks to go out and tag shows and do like a show
note type thing. Yeah so that's where the thing first like to be 100% clear the
way I felt that I felt I was never really part of Benrev or or in Phnomacone and
I was just a host and I've tried to very much to keep us that way as well. Yes I've
got the keys SSH keys to the kingdom but I prefer to consider my role as as that
of a janitor rather than rather than anything else and it's actually helped
being able to push a lot of the in the early days a lot of the grief that I got
was about scheduling and stuff and why you put a show here and I tried to come
up a rules and I tried to come once we put up the website and you just pick
you pick the slot yourself so you pick the slot so here are some guidelines and
if you choose to ignore them you can will be annoyed but you can ignore them
and they're right there on the upload page it couldn't it couldn't be
simpler and that really has moved a lot of the grief. Some of the things is the
constant fighting for shows which we've discussed and if we if we could get
people to submit shows that will be awesome and factor the matter is
some days I have time to work in HBR and some days I don't because I've got a
life and all sorts so but going back and tagging the shows that would really
help if if somebody is listening to the shows Dave on the main page there's a
please help out tagging older shows if you click on that then you'll get a
list of the shows that are missing some tags and I personally from you would
like to know I would like to get they today with a techie shows it's more
metadata on them so if you go to Hacker Public Radio or for such to do today
with a techie then well actually TWA TV yeah yeah to us. HTML that's all I've
got so okay through it. Yeah shoot me an email and and I'll see what I can
dig up from the way back machine and well we'll definitely come up with
something cool and people can also download the shows download it today with
the techie shows so right now we've been doing quite a bit of work on we were
hit with a DDoS attack believe it or not some years back now and that's put
into my mind how exposed we were and in the whole in the whole centralized
decentralized thing you know the wave that goes everything's decentralized and
now everything's back into the cloud which is like central computers but my
mainframe terminal type thing and I was thinking well wouldn't it be nice if
somebody could just go get clone HPR and then do an earthsync pull down the
shows and then have their own their own mirrors available so that you have your
own cloud it actually using old cloud or next cloud the people will be able to
serve out HPR if for any reason it was DDoS you know that people could just
post a link and the show will be available there via GitHub so that's our via
GitHub or GitLab so that's kind of what we're working on now is taking the
database and seeing if we can push that into a SQLite database and when we're
finishing making modifications that the SQLite database gets exported to an
SQL statement which is a text file which we can check into Git and then we can
run automated tools on that and then say for example if you wanted to post
tomorrow show you would check out Git and you would have a script that would
run that would build the SQLite database run all the queries publish out a
static HTML website and push that up to the HPR website that's kind of the
idea now that would be cool it would be cool tech wise yeah but so if somebody
wants to kind of do a proof of concept on a template simple templating system
but the issue I get is I get I'm actually flooded with people who are willing
to help but the issue is that we have it's basically just a website is what HPR
is they it's not a complex content distribution system it's just a website
and then and the XML file it's not rocket science what's rocket science is
getting the shows in that's the that's the so are we gonna have a counter of
how many times we've said post shows like like I feel like they should have
a counter but I feel like there's one person in this planet like who understands
what about the box and it's you it is and and I I totally feel for you and
yeah well to be honest now Dave and Mr. X who both have Raspberry Pi's
monitoring the thing will be screaming down there their microphones now going
yeah no we're also worried about it we're worried about it so you don't have
to so we can we can definitely add them to the crew part of the ship part of the
crew right oh they are yeah they're absolutely I'm a cook and one thing that I
have mentioned before is I don't know did you have a list of like old regulars
that you would hit up that you know when you met a call for show you just knew
these people were going to submit some shows yeah I pretty much knew who was
gonna submit shows I had you know four or five guys yourself included that
would would come to me in a pinch and say hey and then I got creative with the
today with the techie stuff like I would put up random stuff from creative
commons like I think a couple of them were like music type shows yeah that
were that were audio based so yeah so we got creative toward the end there and
kind of to fill out the schedule yeah and that's yeah we still do have that here
with the for your consideration so we we ran into a bit of an issue that if
we when we didn't have enough shows we started playing syndicate content on
the issue ran into was that if people didn't didn't submit shows it stopped
being HBR after a while it became hacker media so we were just indicating all
the people's content and that's not what HBR is about so all we have now is the
recommendation if you come across a piece of content a new podcast for example
then you record an intro you say hey this is a new podcast that I've heard
about it's really good you might be interested and here's the show blah
provided of course it's under creative commons license and then that's
proved very very useful on a lot of other podcasts of God knows us because
they've been they've been played here in HBR and it's all good it all for the same
goal so yeah you know what I do with sorry carry on go ahead go ahead we could do
with some promos you know it's all very well me saying hey we don't want
listeners but if we don't have listeners we don't oppose so we do need both
so people I want to do some promos and submit them to other podcasts that
will be excellent that was the thing we did back in the day playing other
people's promos yeah yeah that would be a interesting spin on it I think we
did a little bit of that too but back you know when I was running today with
a techie so we would we would promote each other show you know from from
NRW to infinomicon radio and I think today with a techie so I think the three
were very intertwined yeah it's something that we could definitely do here as
well so people want to do some promos for HBR that would be excellent submit
them to admin that HBR do you have dual parallel contact information because
an interview with him would be quite nice I can probably get it yeah yeah I
can definitely do that I don't know if some of those guys have have kind of
unplugged permanently not sure if he is one of those so I can definitely hook
you up if if he's interested there have been a few people who have when a
contact of mailing you know people who have some issues didn't want to be
contacted again so I don't know what the backstory is there but you know it is
I think well it could have been a multiple things I mean you know the flame
wars on the internet so it could be that or it could be a scenario of you
know they've moved on you know me personally so not to promote myself but you
know I was going through you know working way too much some some issues with
with my family from a from a health perspective had some deaths in the
family and needed to get away for a while and then kind of kind of lost my
passion for for doing this as a hobby rather than just work so it could be
that it could be something else so I respect folks to step away from from
doing this as much as I do it's a lot of them to come back so definitely we'll
reach out and see what what we can do there and I'm sure there are people who I
have pissed off actually during the course of these years and the yeah you know
you make mistakes I can only apologize to people if I drove them away from
H.B. or that was definitely not the attention yeah my apologies with dropping it
into your lap so I know I left very abruptly and kind of just handed off the
rain so you know I apologize for the folks that you know we're talking to me
every day and then I kind of just disappeared yeah but I I thought it went okay
because we discussed it on the mailing list and said yeah do you want it was
actually lost and bronces show about old soldiers episode 560 I looked it up
where he was on about podfitting at the time and you know how to grisfully
shut down your podcast and making reference to how Linux reality did it I
I believe rather than just stopping and nobody knows what's happened to you
and you know you're getting your you've built up this bond with people that you
listen to every day and then suddenly they're not there anymore so it's it's
always a good way to to round it up so when I replied to the mailing list at
the time saying okay guys are we going to wrap up H.B. or are we going to
continue it on thank you met the valid point well do you want to roast and then
okay was yeah then I kind of set myself up for that one I guess yeah you did
you kind of did but that that's okay and and you've done really well in my
stead so so I I can't thank you enough for continuing this on and and building
something bigger than I thought it could ever get yeah but I think it's the
community has really has really helped the the fact that people care about this
even last year when we're at Boston we were really lucky to have a table there
and you just explain as people were going past you just explained to them oh I've
never heard of H.B. or I'm listening to podcasts tell me about H.B. or well it's
just like Fostam people arrive they give a talk and then they go oh wow man this
brilliant I can't believe I heard heard about this and stuff so yeah it's it's
such it's so much the same idea as free and open source software that yeah
people a lot of the people get it it is a brilliant idea and to be honest I
think we we are doing okay having more people from the community involved I
would always like to see more people coming along that's great yeah and and
absolutely and I think the biggest thing is the community is why this is still
going 13 years later yeah there would be very little I can't think of a
podcast you could quote me if I'm wrong that's gone as long as H.B.
are and if you if you mirror up twat tech and H.B. are side by side we went for
almost 15 years so I can't think of another podcast maybe off the hook off the
wall type more commercial podcast but nobody that's done it as long
the links to textual are slightly old slightly older than us okay
15 years one month of 22 days all right well I don't know how they do it
page and they still don't have a Wikipedia page and and that's one thing I
think our history is important so I've got a couple of ideas that I want to
run by you off air that maybe we can we can definitely capture that history
and capture that that community again it will be nice yeah and I feel that we
are a little bit under attack because of the plethora there's a of new
podcasts that are available out there it's great there's new content and the
amount of YouTube stuff that's on there it's cutting into the into the
listening market and also the fact that COVID has come on people are less
commute and therefore less listening time to book us and I think maybe doing
a combination of that so expanding expanding the H.B.R. brand to something
else might be an interesting concept so you're going to send me into a
pyramid scheme though well I'm hoping I I stick around this time so so I can
actually see my vision through but yeah hey I know we've talked for a little
bit around an hour any other questions you've got for me or no I'm sorry I'm
prepared for this because it's it's a bit like talking to somebody who you were
somebody who was in my years quite a lot and I've spoken to you quite a lot
but actually I don't know where you live I don't know so it's this sort of
freaky thing that you know people but you don't know them tattoo for instance I
I have actually spoken to in online bus other than the photos I've seen of him
we could walk past each other in the corridor and I would never know that who
who is it's just a nature of the beast I guess yeah and it's weird because I
don't I don't know if you know with my with my internet handle there is an
actual picture of me there there might be something from Defcon or hope or
whatever back in the day but I haven't seen one yeah I used to wear I used to
wear Jersey with with a nigma in the back to all the to all the hakkakons and
that's how people recognize me and that's how I did that and but yeah it's been
it's very interesting you could literally walk by somebody and not know who
they are you know for those who don't know I'm in I'm in the Tampa Florida area
been here for 20 years or so I I'm in the the data analytics space as a
profession been here for 13 years and kind of been doing my thing for the last
10 but I'm hoping to get a little bit more active in the community and I'm
definitely gonna submit my HBR episode how about that there's a promo for you
hashtag only a show hashtag very good and I'm also kind of reluctant to ask you
questions like I married you have a family and that sort of thing because it's
particularly with the old HBR crew and twerk crew there was an element of
yeah you don't deduce somebody or you don't dox somebody yeah and a lot of
that has gone away and over the years I know a lot more people that have been
open with it so I'm not gonna announce my first and last name and my social
security number on the HBR I'm gonna do that however I am I'm getting married
next year thank you we're gonna actually get married on Halloween of next
year so we were we were intending on doing it this year but COVID happened and
we kind of pushed down the pipe a little bit but yeah so it'll be actually my
second marriage I only stayed with my first wife for like a year it was bad it
was a bad idea long story short and she's actually she was a member of the
community I won't blast her handle or whatever I don't think she's around or
even listen to this anymore but yeah so we have a 15-year-old girl in high
school and she's a sophomore so she'll be driving over soon oh second year of
high school okay anyway so she she's definitely a little terror but you know
we love her stuff so yes that's kind of me per me kind of personally you know I
I have other hobbies outside of this I have a lot of aquariums at the house do you
know yeah yeah I remember I often heard on my shows about aquariums I knew you
were gonna say that
that's what I would have said but yeah I could do an aquarium HPR episode in the
future that's a good idea or even take it like that because I have like them
set up with the the timers for the lights and maybe I'll do something a little
more tacky with a raspberry pie so that's a that might that might be fun my
brother was a two aquariums and it's got a plastic pipe in between the two
which is really cool and then the fish and the flow swim up the plastic pipe
down into the other aquarium that's really cool that is really cool yeah haven't
done that yet but I I have several and that's probably what I'm gonna be doing
this weekend is is reworking my office because I got a couple of of low-grade
servers that I want to put in there and get my my office looking more tacky back
so I've only actually been like officially back I think for a couple of months
so it's I've got some hardware to put in when you say officially back what does
that mean back in the mindset to to be a high-carrier again yeah I I would say
we used to use the term unplugged you know where you kind of just distance
yourself from everything hacking related I think I feel like I've plugged back
in a bit I'm not going to be nearly as active as what I was that's just not
realistic and that's part of why I burned out is you know doing a day job plus
you know spending HPR time plus spending we've we're doing bin rev radio we
were doing half TV yeah we had lots of things going on and and trying to have
a social life as well it just doesn't work so the balance I think is key but I'm
definitely gonna be back somewhat and I've got a couple of ideas I'm working
working through there's a lot of the things in there that I would be interested
in hearing shows about of course yeah no but John Colp has done so many shows
now where he just puts a recorder on on a Saturday and then tells you what he's
doing and his garage garage or shop as you might call it and amazingly
interesting what comes out of it because to the person recording this is an
everyday thing and then to the rest of us so what is he doing what is that thing
that he briefly mentions in passing and then you know a 15 15 episode series
follows is at least my dream from yeah I think that would that would be cool
and maybe turning on the recorder might be a thing that I do maybe maybe I'll
do something like aquarium related and I just turn on the recorder and see
what happens I will say I will say to you though and I'll say I say this as well
too a lot of the hosts especially when you get the email oh I've got this
brilliant idea for a series and I'm going to send in shows and it's at that
point that I say well you owe me a show because that's a thing but I actually
don't like getting those ones because I have to feel like I have to temper the
guy saying you do realize if you do anything more than one show a month even
do a one show a month takes a lot of time and effort if you're yes I'm to do
there are very few podcasts that can get away with doing one show a week even
one show every two weeks you really want to be dedicated living and
breathing the project that you're into so burn out is definitely a thing which
is what we were doing one show a year while we were doing we were doing one
show a week for for so imagine this been reveredio was one show a week we
doing that and then we would do hpr or twat tech whichever you prefer plus we
were producing other yeah plus we were producing other content with hack TV
and some of the forum stuff it got significantly a lot of work yeah and then
and then you get discouraged because you get the the flamers like you were
saying earlier where people just don't like what your content so don't
listen so don't don't participate like you don't need to flame me for something
that I'm passionate about so I guess my advice to folks listening in is if
you don't like the content move along it's not it's not something you need but
this one exactly exactly tune in tomorrow will be something else on nobody has
to like every show yeah and nobody will accept me well no I do I genuinely make
an effort to to find something in every show that I that is memorable and even
when you were talking there about the show that you did with the camera back on
on on bin rev I was thinking do I remember that show because I listened to all
the bin revs religiously yeah it was a video thing before video was a thing
it was hack TV I don't know if it still exists I don't know but it was it was
legit video of us doing stupid stuff I'm gonna look at it look for it now I
probably have it on a on a hard drive somewhere who and if I have it I will
I will share it with the world well I'll say to you take it easy I'm I'm requesting
you to do shows but only do it if you're comfortable with it don't edit them
just send them all in well until I get silence I appreciate that and I will
take you up on that for me personally so how have I missed on anything and it
doesn't actually matter because we can always schedule another look interview
yeah I think we've talked talked it through if anybody has questions
specifically you know leave them in the comments section and I'll definitely
read when this thing when when it goes live I'll definitely read every comment
and if you want to talk to me personally if you remember me I'll cast
planet over on free node I'm there if you want to chat and remember the I won't
say the good old days but you know what I mean yeah I know what you and with
that folks tune in tomorrow for another exciting episode of hacker public radio
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