Episode: 1185
Title: HPR1185: Shooting the Breeze
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1185/hpr1185.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 21:13:35

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Hi everybody this can a quick note before we go on to our show today I'd like to thank
everybody for contributing to the sonar project on indiegogo that's indiegogo.com forward
such a sonar there will be a link in the show notes for today's episode there's six days
left to donate 134 people have contributed a little over four thousand five hundred
dollars that's 23% of the goal so I would ask you that instead of buying that raspberry
pie buying that extra cup of coffee or simply replying to somebody who's wrong on the internet
could you throw a few books the way of Jonathan all this research that's going to be done on
this what is essentially a research project is going to be donated back upstream so whatever
distribution you happen to be running will eventually benefit from this so that out of the
box the new links distributions will be more accessible by default which will force other
OS vendors to make their desktops accessible by default come on folks you know we can do this
I'd appreciate it if you could throw a few books their way also get onto Facebook Twitter
identica wherever on the mailing list put or talk to your local log spread the word and wherever
you work this is this is going to be an easy one to do they're only asking for 20 grand we're
already 25% of the way last little bit of a push this week would be absolutely fantastic I
appreciate it and with that I'll turn you back to the show by the way anybody who contributes
drop me an email and I'll add you to the top of the list for any swag that we happen to get
here in hyperbolic radio just a little bit of incentive if you didn't have enough already so
remember indigo go forward slash sonar anywhere in the world can donate you don't have to pick the
the rates that they have there in total is as much as as much as you like or as little as you like
if you can't afford us start pimping the project we would really appreciate it thank you
you
hello hpr listeners my name is jezra and i'm coming to you live from studio umlot
you're coming from a yoda mic stand and here i say hello i'm in waibu
and yeah that that's the first thing i should ask you why are you talking into a microphone that's
taped to the business end of a red rider bb gun because i needed a microphone stand and i think
that did a great job i hope it's unloaded um well yeah well that means that you know it's a
bb gun so i don't think it's going to do too much damage although uh could have hpr's first life
shooting yeah that's just what we need but it works and that's what i have lying around the house
so a microphone duct taped to a bb gun being held by a life-size statue of yoda yeah that's that's
pretty much what everybody has right yeah i think so okay it works so and it was they're cheap
done so so you had an idea like uh a week ago you shot it to me on identica did we want to review
our our last hpr well we we certainly made some predictions about what was going to happen in
2012 and some things we were closed some things we were far off and so we should you know
talk about those and say hey we were totally wrong or we were totally right
wait we were wrong ever uh maybe don't tell anyone well i thought you hit it pretty close with
your prediction about ubuntu on say tablets and i think i came up with some ubuntu on del or del
would be looking to make those tablets or something but yeah i don't know what else doing now
i think they're looking to go private and who knows i think they're looking to get bought out by
Microsoft so so long the Linux support again spotty invest what would you break it was interesting
uh when you when you said did we want to like recap or or whatever i i didn't remember half of what
we talked about so i listened to the episode again and it's it's it seems like 2012 just flew by
and then listening to our old recording it seems like that was like two years ago it was
it was uh late December of 2011 actually okay yeah when we were just it's just uh it was a
whole other time yeah i was excited about the raspberry pie oh yeah oh i ended up getting one
but you you got disappointed with yours yeah yeah very much so um for various reasons one proprietary
video driver and two the lack of mounting holes which means i can't make a custom enclosure as
awesome as i would like to i kind of waited and waited and then as soon as that model B came out
with the extra memory and you know 35 bucks i ordered it she's October or November and it came
right before christmas so i've only had it running now for two weeks but so far it's good
awesome yeah and i have mounting holes i don't know why they didn't do that in the first place
uh yeah i just expected expected them to be in cases i imagine but the first thing i thought of is
you know put it somewhere and screw it to a wall and have it do whatever it's doing yeah and amazingly
not everyone has a 3d printer or access to a milling machine where they can just make their own case
yeah that was weird yeah so it's pretty much you have to buy a custom prefabricated case
and a power supply so the Ubuntu phone thing that kind of came to be actually it didn't happen
in 2012 um Mr. Shuttle or held it off for spite when's it do it's due February 2013
yeah but that means they were working on it in 2012 and by working on it i mean they probably
just copied the code for using cute instead of gtk from mego or jola whatever so mego jola
and uh mer mer use qt and so it's easier for Ubuntu to just take that application developing
framework say okay we'll just do this using the same qt that the other mobile people are using
and then all of those apps will run on our phone and it's easier to do that then start fresh using
gtk which is what the rest of Ubuntu uses oh when i just said uh mark held it for spite i was joking
like as if he listened to our old hpr no i'll get those two he probably was sitting in his volcano
with a cat yeah juzor and bill i'll show them so the other prediction was uh automate everything
you were you were talking about fridges that yep everything well you know i
that's debatable because they were working on it in 2012 and then in 2013 stuff came out
sorted you so you heard of i i didn't see any uh i read a lot of text off online and i didn't see
any mention of any like a fridge you can plug in cat five well yeah maybe it's not a fridge maybe
it's a firearm that it was running linux that you can access through a web browser hmm i'm just
remembering back now i think i heard of like development of uh just kind of like a framework for
these devices or you know standardizing apis or something oh probably yeah there's a company
called ninja blocks or the the device that is made is called a ninja block and it is based on
the beagle bone and ninja blocks are a series of um oh jeez how to explain this ninja blocks
is a small computer that takes input from its environment so there'd be like temperature sensors
that sort of thing and it does something it's a way of in a sense home automation hmm so that
someone could say oh front door is open my house is now interneted and i'm sure you can control
it all from your android phone or what have you uh you control it all from your web browser
because i still think controlling things from a single point device is bad i don't know i just
saw a front door lock that you can control with your android phone and a doorbell that has a
camera in it so you know who's ringing your doorbell and you can unlock your phone from remote
remote location yes and so so does that require just an android app or is there a web API that
someone can access through a web browser i'm not sure how they're doing it but it is controlled by
an android app and it's it's a physical lock that you you put over your deadbolt
yeah i thought those were awesome and it has a little servo inside it just unbolts the deadbolt
yep which is very cool my door my doorbell is broken at the moment because
we get we're in a community where you know you get a lot of people want to hand out pamphlets and stuff
and it and that's that's everyone it tries me nuts and uh the phone the the button fell out of
my doorbell and i realized those people would just they wouldn't open the screen and knock
so i've left it i left it broken works great oh so they just press the button and stand there
for a while and then leave there's no button it's just it's just like the case the button fell out
oh but that that doorbell thing with the camera in it i i would probably i'm a target market for
that one i would love that can ignore people or go pick up your ups package
that sounds like a pretty awesome idea and it can be done fairly easily
hmm i can't remember any other predictions um yeah what predictions were there or do you have
some predictions for this year no i probably just a rehash of what i thought was gonna happen last year
and it's gonna happen again this year but maybe it's the year of linux on the desktop oh we're not
gonna have desktop so i don't think oh how about this it's the year of linux on the tablet
that's uh well that could be the android's got a linux core no no no no no no no no no no no
linux not a android cano linux cano plus linux a proper linux a real linux yes i would like that
yes i've i'm slightly interested in tablets and if there was an actual linux tablet that i can control
i would have gotten one already but i i feel like if you give me my android phone i just feel like
it's like a consumer device and i'm not i don't know what's going on behind the behind the screen
so to say how about the fablet the phone the tablet the big phone those are coming to
the phone with the with the six inch screen running new linux that's what i'm looking for i don't
know if you're joking or you read the article that there is actually one coming out that's that size
oh awesome good as it should be i was silly with these people look at least the cops will
say i'm when they're on the phone driving with that big giant do you remember the del streak
i don't well five inch screen yes yeah it was big but you know what it could work as a tablet
yep is it a big phone or is it a small tablet i actually use my phone for maybe five
five percent of my phone's function is actually phone call so
i wouldn't mind a larger phone but as soon as i have to hold it up to my head at work or something
no that would be weird yeah well see then you get a bluetooth headset and then you're all set
oh that's true and plus i like it my front pocket so here's what you do you put your phone in your
front pocket you put in your bluetooth headset you go to a conference where they have a secure
mumble server set up your phone is in your pocket you press it to activate it to talk
and then you go click beep beep beep hi this is bill i'm over in section blah blah blah and then
we're talking about that star trick right there that is the star trek communicator yeah using mumble
yeah i say we go for it actually the tablets we have now the devices they're actually
better than what they were showing in star trek smaller thin air yes
Okay, so that's very true. I don't really have like predictions for things coming up. I just have like a general feeling of the way things are moving.
Oh, I'm looking at my notes now. I might just cut this little piece out.
Then before you do that, okay, you're going to leave this piece in because I'm going to tell you what Star Trek did wrong.
Okay, go for it.
And here's what I think Star Trek did wrong. They named their computer.
Computer. Computer. You have to tell you like Scotty.
Well, I was talking, you know, more Picard era Star Trek next generation.
But the computer named computer. Who does that? I got like five or six computers. Not a single one is named computer.
Mine or mine all have box on the end. So it might be arch box or basement box or myth box.
And it's coming to the point at my place where the computers themselves are becoming less and less important.
And the whole network that they're connected to is becoming more and more important.
Yeah, now that you say it. Yes, you're right. I'm noticing. As you're saying that, I'm noticing it now.
Like I have computers that are doing dedicated things and I access them from other rooms and I'm messaging around my own house.
And it is. So instead of talking to a computer, you're talking to your house.
Hmm. The way I probably the probably the way I talk to my car when it starts up right away in the morning and say, oh, good job.
Goodie because my car has a name. So what where you're going with this is Star Trek should have called the computer house.
Well, Star Trek should have called the computer ship. Yeah, there you go.
Or given it an actual name because that's something that humans do. We anthropomorphize everything.
Or at least I do. But that's the future. They know better.
Well, they don't because it's still based on something that someone had to write in the 80s and they did a great job of it.
But they didn't realize that okay, oh, oh, oh, perfect example.
Data data has a name. Data is just a computer with a series of parts and sensors.
Good point. But data is a unique entity with a name and computer is just far too generic.
My home network is a unique entity with a name and a bunch of sensors.
Yep, when I want to hack it, I just say, just run that. Exactly.
Oh, I just thought of something else we talked about that while we mentioned briefly, hey, buddy.
And we didn't even actually even actually explain what it was, but hey, buddy is an identical front end that you wrote.
And a bunch of us like helped beta test it and give you a constant beta testing.
Beta testing, bug reports, chipping and code and stuff. It was a lot of fun.
But what do you think about what's going to happen with Hey, buddy in this pump?
Oh, no.
I think everything's well, so Hey, buddy communicates with identical status.net servers.
And it communicates with the status.net portion of that server.
So if that server on the underside on the back end is using pump IO, it doesn't matter.
So if status server one is talking to status server two using pump IO, it doesn't matter to Hey, buddy,
because Hey, buddy is communicating with the status server through the status API.
So how they communicate in the back end is irrelevant, at least as far as Hey, buddy goes.
Okay, cool. I didn't know if it was going to be like a whole big re-writer.
Or if it was going to just stay functional for our own status.net instances.
We'll see. It depends on how things change in the future.
It's just another thing from my notes here.
Not quite solid predictions, but one of the things I just see coming down the line is,
it seems like everything is moving towards this world garden model like Apple has.
It seems like Microsoft now wants to do this with Windows 8.
There's going to be an Android.
It seems like computer users are being like gobbled up and separated into little markets.
Waldgardens and vertical silos.
I just see this continuing to happen like it's kind of.
It's taking the what we as hackers enjoy about computers, which is controlling our own computers and just moving it towards like.
They're trying to make us consumers, where we're just pressing the buttons and watching fancy things on the screen.
And it seems like at the moment you have to choose which little market you're going in.
Now I'm reluctantly in Android, but don't want to be because you have no viable open source option.
Yes. So.
Which is why I don't own a mobile phone.
Oh, you don't know.
Well, I mean, I own an N900. It's not connected as a mobile phone.
Is it has the capability that was.
Yeah, I could put the chip in and turn it into a telephone.
I see.
But I use it as a pocket computer.
It is a full GNU Linux operating system in my pocket.
Hmm.
I wonder if I can get it to work with Verizon.
I should look into that.
I'm due for a new phone.
I'm still on the original droid, the original Motorola droid, and it's kind of actually physically falling apart now.
Well, then I'm going to suggest you don't get an N900 because they are old.
Okay.
You can't.
You can't get a new one.
So we are back to the situation where there are no choices.
No.
If you wanted something more recent, maybe an N9.
All right.
Which was motor.
No key is only.
Nego phone.
Well, there was the N950, but that was developer only.
If you get one of those, you would be very, very happy.
Check it out.
Do you have any predictions or ideas or how you think things are going?
Other than GNU Linux on the tablet and possibly the tablet.
No.
Smaller.
I predict someone will release an arm based computer that has open source drivers for its video card.
They don't want to cater to us.
Yes, that would be cool though.
Yeah, that would be cool.
Okay.
So if we're going to kind of follow our same layout as the last episode, we went into projects next.
So what are you up to?
Well, last year I had a wine box that I was going to turn into a computer.
And that wine box is now still a wine box.
It's a bunch of electronics components for when I'm doing soldering.
So I had a few projects.
One was getting started with the Beaglebone.
And with the Beaglebone computer, small arm based computer with plenty of pins.
And I've got a lantern connected to that right now with three LEDs that have a web browser can control them.
On turn them off, making flicker, making faded and out.
Unfortunately, I just fried something on that machine.
And so the rotary telephone that I had connected to it so that I could use a rotary phone as a computer input device has failed.
I may be able to fix it, but I won't know until later today.
And I've got a Raspberry Pi that I'm going to be working on also later today.
Doing some custom software and I have a PIR, which is a basically it's a motion detector.
And so things will happen when someone walks by this computer.
I mentioned last time having that little teensy board and that was kind of my 2600 project.
That's something I only worked that gave me something to do when I went to those meetings.
And our meetings moved to a college where only students can have access to Wi-Fi.
So I go to these meetings now and I just kind of sit there.
So I stopped working with the teensy.
But then when I got the RPI, I'm getting back into that.
This might be more of my style of full computer with some GPIO pins, not just a little development board.
I feel like I have more potential with this.
I would say it would depend on what you want to do with the GPIOs.
Actually, the first thing that popped into my head was getting that 1541 drive going again.
But looking into it, you can program Python with the RPI, which I would feel comfortable in.
But from what I'm reading, Python is not a very time.
It doesn't do timing well.
So I don't know what type of timing I need with that old device.
I can give you absolutely no advice on that.
They said, if you want, if you need very strict timing on the GPIO pins, I think they were recommending C,
which I've dabbled in before.
I just have to relearn everything I dabbled in.
Well, if there is a C library, well, if there's a Python library written for the Raspberry Pi.
And there is.
You may be able to use that.
So that library will access the GPIO pins.
And it won't necessarily be Python accessing them, but it'll be Python accessing the library that accesses them.
And that library will be written and C.
But from what I'm reading, it's there's still like timing and latency issues.
If you need data going across, you know, from a device, you need a certain timing.
And if your pins aren't doing it, you're just going to be dropping data.
Oh, how fast does it need to be to read and write to that?
It's a common word drive, right?
That's what keeps me laughing because how fast could a commoner drive be?
But the other project I kind of thought about doing with it was something we joked about an identical like six months ago.
But now that I have a pie, I was thinking maybe put it in the basement, run some wires to the things in the basement,
and then have an account that this thing goes, you know, bills basement says the washer's done.
And bills basement says the dehumidifier is full like something like that.
Yeah.
So then I'm going to assume that you have your washer and dryer down in the basement washer dryer.
So some pump dehumidifier furnace water heater.
So you would need some sort of sensor connected to all of those things.
I would probably just run a very small wire over and then figure out what on the washers make in the buzzer work.
And then just put a little mouse trap relay in there.
The one tank can fire the relay and the our pie can be watching the pins for, you know, five volts or closure or, and then that would trigger.
Yeah, five triggered that five volts will fry it just so you know, what are they running on?
Either 1.8 or 3.3.
I just said five volts because the power supply built for it was so that's the five volts input and then probably 3.3 like a TTL logic voltage.
Well, as someone who has fried a recent computer, go to go.
Just so you don't get sad.
Actually, I'm not sure how fried it is. I cannot program any of the pins for reading input.
So I haven't tested them for output.
What kind of computer?
This was the big one where I I shorted it on a five volt pin.
And then sad days.
Oh, one other project. Here we go.
I recently purchased and I'm waiting for it to arrive a GPS device for my, for a home computer, USB GPS device.
For this reason, that GPS device is going to be getting satellite data through GPS satellites, blah, blah, blah.
And that GPS data will include time data, atomic clock time data.
So then using that GPS device and NPD and TP, sorry, on my computer network time protocol.
I will have my entire home network synced to atomic clock time.
So I would be a pretty much a stratum zero or stratum one level time server.
And you will never be late to anything again.
Oh, I will always be late, but at least all of my computers will be synced to each other within a, within a few microseconds of time.
Oh, I just recalled something where I'm just going to jump back in time here on.
When we were talking about how phones and such, you're locked.
You're locked into their world gardener, you know, their ecosystem.
And I just read today that it is now illegal to unlock a carrier's phone.
When did these be?
Yes, the carrier's phone.
It just puts into my head like, okay, you bought this bed, but it's illegal for you to move it into the.
You didn't buy the bed, but you didn't buy the bed.
No, well, the bed you might have bought the phone.
You didn't.
Yeah, you're.
They're like us.
They're subsidized and you do it.
Subsidized, which means you co-own it with the carrier.
But after your two years or whatever that lease is, I mean, that's you've paid all your money and it's your device, right?
Then you should be able to unlock it. Yeah, because you own it.
You should allow it to affect today.
They're telling us they're telling us what to do, man.
AT&T will unlock it, piss on them, but apparently they will unlock it after two years.
It's illegal for you to do it, but it's okay for the carrier to do it.
I'll probably want to lock you into to your contract with them to do it.
Of course.
Okay, Brady, we're going to time shift back up to where we were.
Or wherever that.
I don't know.
You got anything else?
Yeah, no, not really.
Well, we should do this more often instead of just once a year.
Yeah, I do.
The problem is coming up with a topic.
That's.
Yeah.
And what we're doing here is kind of like a show about us, which is kind of strange.
I don't know who would want to hear this.
Probably no one.
They can just hit fast forward.
I don't care.
But yeah, the topic is the problem.
And then sometimes.
Some topics come up, but they're just like a little bit over our heads.
Or it's going to take like a whole bunch of research and.
We're not going to be in a 40 on it.
So half the people listening will probably be going, these guys aren't talking bullshit.
And by the way, like I said, I'll cut things out.
If you want, I'll send a ship it over to you.
And then you can give it a listen through.
And if you're not comfortable with something.
I'm going to call you the editor and producer.
Okay.
So you can blame me either way.
Yeah.
I might leave that part.
Okay, that's fine.
Yeah.
So I don't know.
I guess we have to.
Take up a closing or something.
Goodbye, everybody.
You're not going to do a contact info or.
Because you know everybody's going to send us email about this crap.
Okay, here we go.
If you would like to get in touch with us.
I, Jezrev can be reached at.
Jezrev at Jezre.net.
That would be my email address.
And I also have a status instance.
Status.jezrev.net.
And I'm on some other social media.
Do hiki joby thingies and some forums here.
I'll tell you about it.
If you put your name into the goog.
You're like the whole first two pages with you have a unique name.
The goog.
Actually, when you just gave your.
Contact info.
It reminded me of the last episode we did.
I did not have.
I did.
I did not have gun monkey net.
Net.
And after that episode was when I was asking you, I think I was.
That was when I was asking you, you know, who, who did you use as a registrar?
That's when I got the ball rolling on that whole thing.
And so now yes, I have my own status net instance.
Gun monkey net.net slash status net.
And my email addresses and why bill at gun monkey net.net.
Love the recursion there.
Well, this is not recursion.
I did the recursion as a joke because somebody squatting on gun monkey dot everything.
Sounds a bit.
It's it's it's spite again.
Oh, it'd be redundancy.
The redundancy.
I just, you know, if somebody's going to squat on everything, I'll just go net.net.
And, you know, I'm done.
Sounds a bit.
Okay.
So that's another yearly recap of the us crappy year.
All right, buddy.
You take care, Bill.
All right.
See you then.
Bye.
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