Episode: 4611
Title: HPR Community News for March 2026
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4611/hpr4611.mp3
Transcribed: 2026-07-31 16:15:09 (official HPR transcript)

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4611, for 2026-04-06
Today's show is entitled, "HPR Community News for March 2026"
The host is HPR Volunteers and the duration is 01:00:43
The flag is Explicit, and the license is CC-BY-SA
The summary is "HPR Volunteer Ken talks about shows released and comments posted in March 2026"
Hi everybody, my name is Ken Fallon and you're listening to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
This is the HPR Community News for March 2026.
I'm on my ownio today due to scheduling issues that we couldn't work around, but bear with me and we will make it through.
If you would prefer not to hear just my dulcet tones on this podcast, you can always volunteer to be part of the HPR Community News.
If you are part of the HPR Community, so HPR is a community podcast where the shows are released every weekday, Monday through Friday.
They can be any topic that is of interest to hackers within reason and no restriction on the length or the content outside of that.
We'll be talking about that later.
So this show is put on by the HPR Community volunteers who help manage the project commonly known as the janitors.
And the reason for that is because we just implement decisions that are implemented by the mailing list, which is the overall governing body.
If you want more information on that, go to the above page and you'll get loads of information on how you're governed.
We do this show so that we can bring to you the news and some positive feedback in the show that has been released and we can bring to you any other information that we need to share with you as part of the community.
So it is left the honour of welcoming new hosts is left to me, but it's not much of an honour this month because we didn't have any new hosts this month.
It is a bit sad and depressing, really.
HPR is a community project where we can only continue if we continue to get new hosts in.
And the reason for that is that there is a cycle and life catches up with people in more ways than one.
And we need a continual inflow to manage the outflow of people who are no longer active on the project for whatever reason.
And that's fine.
So if you haven't recorded a show for HPR and you do listen to it, please go pick the first free slot, record your show first, and then tell us a little bit about yourself, how you got into tech.
Don't forget to introduce yourself and how you got into tech and how you got to be listening to the HPR podcast.
Awesome to hear.
We will then be able to give you an entire list of other shows that you could do for HPR.
Let's go through each of the shows.
And the first one was, oddly enough, HPR Community News for February 2026.
And we try and do the Community News on the first Monday of the month.
It's not always the first.
It's somewhere between one and six by definition.
Two comments.
The first was from CandyK and Egy.
4140, thanks for the best wishes.
Things got much worse.
Ooh.
WhiskeyJack says,
HPR Community News discussion on audio.
In HPR 4586, Community News for February at around the 50-minute mark, you talked about automating the audio process for HPR.
I have a four-part series ready to go, which may be relevant to some of this.
Episode two, covering the basics of filtering, de-essing, normalizing, using FFMPEG in a shell script.
I was planning to release this as soon as my present series on nuclear reactor technology was done.
There's one more episode in that schedule.
I'm definitely not an audio expert, but I am only started learning about this in order to fix audio problems that were in the first few HPR episodes that I did.
I listened to the Linux Matters podcast that you referred to with respect to the automation processing software, so I have some of an idea of what they're talking about.
I do have some concerns about the practical problems that may arise when dealing with episodes sent in by just anybody using all sorts of hardware, however.
I had assumed that you were already doing some sort of normalizing for HPR, as the volume levels are fairly consistent.
In fact, I emphasize to listeners in the series to send a non-normalized copy to HPR, so as not to conflict with whatever processing you're doing.
Perhaps someone at HPR could do an episode to talk about it in the community news, explaining what HPR actually does in terms of audio processing, as that may help in generating some discussion as well as interest on its own right.
So, end of comment, end of comment, end of comments for that episode.
First of all, I think in one of the New Year episodes, I went through what we do with audio processing, so that is coming up.
So, it's one of the later ones, because it was the morning after, the night before.
So, you might have a listen to that.
I do intend to do that sort of thing, but I'm still checking to see if what Martin has produced is going to be useful for us.
It's a tricky balance here on what we do with audio processing.
Some people, the audiophiles among us, will have done an awful lot of work, and we don't want to do too much.
On the other hand, if it's all over the shop, we will tend to do something to try and fix the audio a little.
And I basically make that decision looking at the waveform and looking at the frequency diagram.
So, that was the first episode.
Moving on.
Unix Curio number one, Shell Archives.
This was from Vance.
Brilliant little series.
I am loving it.
I have to say I'm going ahead.
But I follow the future feed.
As soon as shows are posted, by the way, they get released into the future feed.
There are some dangers with that if you're listening.
As your only feed, I subscribe to both.
But it is nice if you could do that for us, because you might be able to pick up issues with the audio.
Like, yeah, I don't know, 10 minutes of silence or something in there.
Or at the left, it's only in your left ear of blood or something like that.
Always very useful.
And then you can give feedback to us here as the janitors before it goes out en masse.
So, I have been listening to all these shows already.
This was a great one.
And there was several comments.
Archer72 says, continuing series.
Hi, Vance.
I have kept this series.
I've kept this series, the future feed, so I can hear it sooner.
Same here.
Oh, I have just now looked at your great show notes.
Cheers.
Archer72.
And the show notes are absolutely excellent.
It is a joy to see them.
Everything works exactly as you expect.
There's even uppercase.
Everything is, they're just gorgeous.
X-Man Monk says, UU encode and UU decode on Solaris.
I worked with the infamous Inference Corporation years ago when they still existed.
And the corporate servers ran Solaris.
I can't recall which version they were running when I was there.
That server had UU encode and UU decode on it.
It's, I may not have been installed by the OS, but it was there.
Someone put it there.
So I know it at least ran on Solaris, which wouldn't require much more than compilation
of the sources.
Anyway, great show.
Thank you very much.
Vance replies, thanks, and Solaris.
I appreciate the positive comments.
Regarding Solaris and SunOx and OS and AIX, I don't recall exactly how it determined
that UU encode wasn't included with base OS.
Probably a set of man pages online somewhere.
Of course, you could be easy to compile and install UU encode from source, and I'm sure
it happened frequently.
Similarly, it was common for GNU versions of some utilities to be installed by people
using commercial Unix systems because they often had additional capability.
More episodes are coming.
Hope you enjoy them.
And the last comment was from Jim DeVore, who says, thanks for the trip down memory lane.
Great episode.
I especially enjoyed Char and remember all the issues I once had with attachment.
I still have them at times, but that is generally due to security forbidding executable file types.
Uh-huh, Jim.
Uh-huh, I know what you're doing there.
Okay.
Good shows.
Good shows.
Moving on.
Uh-huh, Belgian Scottish Ale.
There were no comments on this one, but this was about, um, the continuing series of the
HBR Beer Garden, where Kevi and Dave discuss, in this case, Belgian Scotch Ales.
And I have to admit that I got one of these for purposes, uh, for scientific research.
And I must say, I wasn't, that, it was the experience, the, the, the joy of drinking along.
Uh, that was nice.
Great history lessons.
Loved the references to the World War II and, uh, uh, sorry, World War I, obviously.
And, uh, Scottish troops in Flanders.
However, um, how would that become a thing?
So, great episode there.
Loving the series.
Um, so, moving on.
And the following day, we had a gap in the, in the schedule.
So, we popped in one of these episodes.
And with the hookah's permission, I removed the, his reserve cue warning, uh, that he had embedded in the audio.
We'll be talking more about that later.
And I think this was the last in this series, actually, um, quite a nice mix of historical episodes, cruises, and scientific and history.
So, um, as ever, a very good idea.
And I really enjoy that.
And there are a few channels that I've managed to subscribe to more or less at each of these.
Thank you very much.
The following day, we had, uh, a hookah again.
And the rule, this was a scheduled show, whereas the reserve cue one was inserted.
So, obviously, the rule about not having 14 days in between, uh, or, sorry, 10 shows in between.
Doesn't apply in this case.
This is about, uh, playing Civilization V and Part IX and looking at the game mechanics.
In this case, various different types of city-states, um, managing the relations between city-states, uh, and that you can be neutral or not.
So, this is a, uh, this is a nice one.
Uh, I'm getting to understand the game.
Don't really have the free time in order to be doing it, but, uh, there you go.
The following day, we had Lee with a bit of Git, where he relates a Git adventure that occurred while working on, uh, a work logging project and doing rebases and dangers of.
So, this is, um, an extension to the Git, um, series that Tlatoo started.
And walks through the various different commands.
And basically, this shows, uh, describes the caveats that you might run into.
Candy Kane-Eater says,
Anecdotal teaching is the best kind.
I think that the way you explained all these features using a real story and going through your thought process,
while weaving explanations for each command is an interesting way to teach the program.
I found the story interesting and learned a lot about Git that I didn't know about.
There you go.
Thank you very much, Candy Kane-Eater, for doing that, uh, for posting the comments.
Comments are indeed currency by which we pay our hosts.
Um, the next day we had Antoine with, uh, Happy by Shower 2, which was the second part of the mini-series.
And Candy Kane-Eater here said,
Interesting.
I think that hearing about what other people do in their day-to-day life is extremely interesting.
And wouldn't mind a third episode.
In particular, the idea of learning how to share things I sometimes struggle with.
Since outside of sharing drawings and stuff I've made, it's difficult.
Best of luck to you.
Antoine replies,
Happy that this was in some measure good for you.
Sharing is difficult, especially what is relevant to us.
Which is irrelevant to others who make us shameful for having difficult priorities, needs, and tastes.
Or simply because we're afraid not only of being mocked, but worse, not being understood, ignored.
My vision only, my fears, barriers, block me to others and others to me.
But it's good to remember or to learn the lessons that we are different.
Sharing, drawing feels interesting.
Might see in some of your work, actually.
Moving back on to hardcore science here.
Nuclear reactor technology, part 8.
Generating generation 4 reactors.
Future reactor technologies, particularly that are referred to as generation 4 by, of course, Whiskey Jack.
There were two comments to this episode.
Jim DeVore says,
As an engineer and an insatiable curiosity about too many topics, I love the series overview that I doubt I can find anywhere else.
And Whiskey Jack replies,
Thank you for the encouragement.
Always helps to know that people are actually listening to this episode.
A number of listeners have posted questions about topics covered in the series,
and I've promised to answer them with a follow-up episode.
I have the script written for the follow-up and will record it early April and currently has about 20 minutes of content.
Currently have a couple of episodes uploaded for slots in April,
and non-related series will post follow-up episodes after the second one in the new series.
That means it should be out in late April.
If anyone has any questions that they would like me to address,
please post them in the comments to any of the episodes in the series.
And then we had the New Year's episode part two.
And as always, the show notes are fantastic.
I even had to download, there's no comments to this episode, but, you know, go to it yourself.
I downloaded a cool browser tag called Open All Links for this one,
which got me banned from Wikipedia because there's so many links from Wikipedia.
You know, a four or nine, it'll clear us up after.
But great episode and great work to the team there for putting those show notes together.
Operator talks about water, water everywhere, talks about various water-related things,
generally water measures and where they're located and how they're protected.
It's kind of interesting, actually.
I wouldn't have minded show notes, but I would have liked to see a few photographs of those, actually, Operator,
because, again, as we say, not all the listening audience are familiar with the things that you're talking about.
It became clear as you were going through it in the ground and stuff.
But here we have the water meters that are either inside the house or they're, in our case,
the old style was that they would be in a concrete sort of basin that is outside in your garden.
So maybe I need to do a show about that.
There were no comments on that one.
And the next show was me adding voiceover audio tracks, creating, using, created, using text-to-speech movie subtitles.
Three comments.
First one was from Fokie.
Interesting solution, but annoying.
Thank you for the interesting show.
I can say, Fokie, how encouraging it was to find that as the first comment.
But I know, Fokie, you've been on here on the show, so I know it's coming from a good place.
Anyway, interesting solution, but annoying.
Thank you for your interesting show.
Great how you solved all the issues, but I won't use it.
I remember seeing these films, TV sets in Poland, while buying things.
I always thought, how can they stand with this annoying voice distracting them?
Luckily, it often were done so proper, so I didn't even understand the original voices.
And you're right, it's worse when the original language is the language you understand.
Which case is the example you used?
I used a Swedish example, and Fokie's from Sweden, or speak Swedish at least.
Which, in this case, was the example used?
Especially because the male voice in Swedish is mumbling a bit.
Karsten says, an amazing project.
I love projects like this.
I might be doing it for K-dramas, but just a whole one can recycle elements of your scripts for other projects.
Great stuff, thanks.
Yep, absolutely feel free to cut and paste.
It's a proof of concept.
I much prefer if this was a built-in switch into FFMPEG, and it's only a matter of time.
It will be.
But, yeah, it was just basically a proof of concept.
10DK and Eater said, interesting.
I wouldn't personally use this, but I find it extremely crafty and cool the way you modify movies to your own enjoyment.
I also often forget that MPV supports multi-audio tracks, smiley face.
As an additional tip to improve the watching experience on MPV, you can define a global subtitle folder with subfile path and name the SRT file with the same audio file, or use audio sub dash sub dash audio equals fuzzy to make the subtitles matching more lenient.
It should be loaded by default along with your original file.
Yeah, I think I even mentioned that in the show, but good tip.
MPV is awesome.
And, yeah, I really enjoyed that show.
Took me a long while to do it.
Following day, we had Unix Curial Part 2, FGREP.
And this one was one that I was not aware of.
And it basically FGREP, EGREP, and FGREP, and explains the use cases.
And I posted the first comment.
And the comment title is Time to Active Use.
And the answer is Length of My Commute.
I immediately put it into a script and did exactly what I wanted to do.
Dan Drew says, nice job explaining asterisk CREP terms.
Done a great job of explaining when to use each type of CREP.
I thought in-house class and regular expressions and your explanations would have helped the crew know why there are different versions.
Anyway, thanks for keeping Unix alive.
Candy K. Neesha says, informative.
I've always brushed off EGREP and FGREP as niche tools, but this episode inspired me to use it more often.
Thanks for providing another tool in my tool.
As a general CREP tip, you can use the dot to avoid escaping certain patterns in the shell, i.e. if your pattern has a space.
The dot might be a period in some countries.
Vance says, expressions.
Thanks for the encouragement, everyone.
It is indeed weird that there are two types of regular expressions.
I guess three, if you count Perl-compatible rejects.
On top of that, the shell pattern matching glob notation does the same type of job in a different way.
I guess that is the result of tools being developed by different people at different times.
The following day, we had Shane with recording good audio using open source tools and has basically a lot of tips and tricks.
Very well worth listening to if you're starting out.
And also makes it clear that while HPR will accept any audio, we do prefer good audio.
But on the other hand, as I've always said, and I have not always said, I like bad audio.
I do not like bad audio.
Of all the people here, I don't like bad audio.
If we can hear it, that's good enough.
That's the barrier for people starting out.
We will encourage people to do better.
I love good audio.
But what I don't like is somebody procrastinating for 19 months over an episode rather than just sending it in.
That's perfect.
Get in the way of practical.
Yeah.
So Archer72 says, great tips.
Hi, Shane.
Great tips on recording and how environment plays into recording quality.
I never knew the Blue Yeti was not worth it because it's been touted as professional podcaster.
Ken, I think this episode should be listed on the recording page.
Yes, Archer.
And you can edit the About page to include it.
The next comment was from Ol Almot, which says, GarageJam601.
I wrote a GNOME music studio recording software, GarageJam.
It records the USB audio class devices and built-in microphones instantly and can annotate metadata about them.
See, there's a link to the norm discourse as well as the project homepage for source code and the homepage is garagejam.org.
That is vagrant, blatant spamming of the network and the only way all that you can redeem yourself is coming on and recording a show about GarageJam.
And I'm saying winking.
So thank you for the feedback.
And good to know that there are other tools out there.
And yes, you should be promoting your stuff.
Although technically it was spam.
But I'm letting you away with it on the grounds that it's free Libre opens for a software.
Is it free Libre opens for a software?
Yes, it is.
I had already checked.
It's GNU GPL V3.
Excellent.
Well done.
So we'll leave it in there.
Next, we had a nice little episode by Dave about women in digital and game events, raising awareness of forthcoming events to encourage more women into digital and games.
Links in the show notes.
We're happy to share that sort of stuff here.
Other stuff we're happy to share is the first Doctor Part 5, continuing lock into Doctor Who.
And also this month, apparently, another episode has been found and the BBC are currently updating it.
So this one covers the Celestial Toymaker, the Gunfighters, Savages, the War Machines, the Smugglers, the Ten Planet.
And Kelly says, great series.
Hi, Ahuka.
That was a fascinating look at the first Doctor.
Looking forward to hearing the rest of the series.
I also went back and watched every episode.
There are some good constructions out there so that the story can be followed for the missing episode.
I hope that you change your mind and continue the series right up to the present Doctor.
Kevin says, I think I will.
Kevin O'Brien is a hooker.
Oh, no, I don't.
I think I will.
I'm now thinking I might just cover all the classic Doctor Who's and then stop.
I don't think there's any need to cover the revised series that began in 2005.
But then, but when did that become 20 years ago?
Can anyone stop this train?
Oh, I feel your pain.
Archer 72.
Great series and second continuation.
Hi, Ahuka and Kevi.
I seconded the request to keep the series going to the end.
Although I have not seen many episodes, this is an interesting series.
The next day, we had How to Be a Better Writer by Enestello.
And by taking apart a large language model style, we can learn how to be a better writer.
And some of the tips in there was make mistakes, edit yourself, and avoid ticks that are dangerously
close to becoming the norm.
And there were no responses as yet on that one.
We're approaching the end of the month.
So, obviously, it takes time for the comments to come in.
And then we had New Year's episode part three.
And there were no comments on that.
Although they were talking about a lot of stuff that I'm massively into.
Ham Radio, Echolink, ISS, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
So, the next episode, or possibly rant, was by Hopper MCS.
And it was entitled, On the Erosion of Freedom in Open Source Software.
Page Restrictions and what System76 did.
And Microsoft putting some code behind the firewall.
And yeah, there are quite some valid points in this episode.
So much so that I think it inspired another collaboration, which we shall hear soon.
No comments on that.
We then had quick tips for January 2026 by Operator.
And I did the show notes Operator so you didn't have to.
Using baking soda and superglue to get emery epoxy type seals.
I mean, there are lots of classic stuff.
How to blow out a candle.
Request for most shows in nursing.
Foam machine.
I just love these episodes.
They're just stuff.
The only downside is, without the show notes, I don't know what's in there.
So, I forget which episode they were in.
And then, the next day, we had one of the nicest episodes I've ever heard.
And that is Lee Lockstone's wifey poo.
Lee and Elisabeth get hitched.
This was something I knew they were engaged when we were over here in the Netherlands.
And I'm absolutely thrilled that they managed to tie the knot.
I hope everything goes well.
I give them my congratulations.
Elizabeth says, we appreciate your felicitations.
Trollocoster said, congrats.
And now, we want all the fun puns.
First off, congratulations.
Now, we're expecting follow-up episodes with all the nerdy jokes and puns that your friends
made about your nerdy wedding.
Antoine, smiley face.
Wow, what a show.
So, just coming by to give congratulations.
Dear couple, Lee and Al.
Claudia says, congratulations to you both.
Wow, congratulations to you both.
Wishing you all the best in your new journey together.
Paul Jay also says, congratulations.
Lee and Elisabeth, congratulations.
And thank you for sharing your joyous occasion with us.
Could you please share the reference to the poem Elisabeth read out?
I looked in the transcript, but it doesn't come through too clearly.
Best wishes for your life together in the future.
Paul.
So, from now on, when I'm promoting HPR, I'm going to be saying, yeah, you know, I'm not
saying, I'm not claiming all the credit for this.
But, you know, let's face it.
Two HPR hosts.
Get married on HPR.
What can we say?
What can we say?
Yeah.
If that's not unique enough for you, Wikipedia.
Anyway, congratulations to them both.
Couldn't happen to two nicer people there.
Absolutely a joy.
Couldn't have much.
Moving forward.
Next episode.
My nerdy childhood from floppy disk to dial-up dreams.
Throttle-coaster.
And this is about how he grew up.
I just loved the piece of this where he's talking about going into a computer shop.
They said, can you spend some time here?
And they thought, like, it was just going to be picking a computer for one day, but then
ended up spending it every Wednesday afternoon or something.
Fantastic.
Fantastic episode.
Trey says, trip down memory lane.
Thank you for this trip down memory lane.
Very much reminds me of my own experience during the time.
I believe that we had a certain set of skills for troubleshooting, for experimenting, and for
learning because we did not have the internet to look everything up.
This is what makes us happier.
We're hackers, not in the criminal sense, but like MIT and Hack 1 have defined it.
Hacker.
One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming limitations.
Hacker 1.
That's what's in the name.
Revealed from Hacker 1, and the link is there.
X-Man Monk says, great episode.
Ah, memories.
I'm a bit older, but I wanted to say that the sound effects in this episode brought back
all kind of memories.
Thanks for a great show.
Troller Coaster replies.
Back to you.
Hey, Trey.
Why don't you flip out the PDP 11 and show off your skills?
If you're into old school definition of hackers and you're frustrated that youngsters are spoiled,
make sure you pick up next week's episode on age verification.
If it will be the best thing ever.
X-Man Monk.
Glad you like the sound effects.
I had to edit out the occasional fart.
At a certain age, bowel movements are a thing.
But then again, luckily, podcasts don't also send this.
Troller Coaster says, note to janitors.
Hey, janitors.
I realize that you have to read my previous comment out loud.
May I suggest not to add sound effects to the comment?
Couldn't possibly.
I wasn't able to find a free Libra open source fart sound that I would approve of.
M says, nerdy nostalgia.
Great episode, Troller Coaster.
Really enjoyed this one.
Had me all nostalgic for the early days of computing.
I recorded HPR 1541 back in 2014.
Ding!
For a shameless plug, lol.
Where I covered my early days from computing and how it all led up to me coming to Linux.
I think that I made mention of BST as well.
And this reminds me of that.
Thanks for sharing.
The next day was Linux Curios Part 3.
Base names and der names.
Oh, these are vital, vital, my friend.
Yes, another Linux kernel article that he's picking on, but he's not ready.
Show notes are, as always, excellent.
And X-Man Monk says, great episode.
Love the Unix Curio series.
Thanks so much for always good to bash things as well as commands that are useful.
And that, I believe, was that for this month's shows.
So we did have a lot of comments on other episodes.
The first one was all the way back in 2022 by Zen Floater 2 Cars.
And Modessin says, additional details on cars.
I enjoyed your episode and appreciate you discussing cars on a HBR episode.
I want to point out that your facts on electric cars are inaccurate, as well as some of the details about charging infrastructure.
I have never encountered evidence of laws forcing you to replace an electric battery before selling cars.
The battery chemistry you cited was nickel-cadmium, but that is not what they're using.
They're using various lithium chemistries.
Also, most people are not depleting their battery capacity on a daily basis.
And 244 charging plug is more than adequate for most uses.
Thanks again for making the show.
Would be good to have some episodes on charging electric cars, cars in general and stuff.
We have a surprising lack of that, considering who we are.
This one was for a show released in March of last year.
A radically transparent computer without complex BLSI by Mark Abel.
And Mark himself says, a new online home for Doug 36 and Doug 18.
Many links in this episode that he did back then broke due to the location of the Doug House, new US-based non-profit.
Doug 36 is alive and well and lives at htbsdoug.org.
And Doug House has also broken ground on Doug 18, an 18-bit transparency functioning host card-sized processor for applications where a full CPU will be overkill.
As with the Doug 36, Doug 18 does not employ any complex VLSI, no microtrocessor, FPGA, PLD, AISC, or DRAM architecture.
And I've asked Mark to send me an updated show notes where he did.
So that's been updated in the meantime.
And the following comment is on how I use Newsboat for podcasts and Reddit by Archer72.
And there was an ongoing discussion there about the podcast download format that was.
And Ahmed says that it is not fixed, alas, the cast.
Hello, Ken.
I'm sorry for the late reply.
I just listened to Jan and December's news a few days ago.
No, the problem did not get fixed.
I don't think that it would be fixed on the HPR website since I use WGET to download the episodes.
It does get properly named to HPR MP.
Yeah, I've been looking into that one.
It's a bit of a complex one, all right.
And we'd love to hear your introduction to tech episode.
And the next comment was on a show from November 2025, HPR Beer Garden 5, Hefenweizen.
And Khan Amann said that the word Hefeweizen does not exist in German.
The correct compound noun is Hefeweizen from Hefe, yeast and Weizen, wheat.
However, there are words Hefeweizen, oats and Weizen, some synonyms like wise men, manners to indicate, that do not have any relationship with beer.
The word Hefeweizen does not exist in German.
It does exist in English.
It's a female cow.
A female calf.
Kevin says, thanks, Dan.
Thank you for pointing this out.
I have noticed the Speerlinger and I shall attempt to get it sorted out.
He did indeed.
And we got it sorted.
So, the next one we had was on the episode from January, Nutri-Reactors episode 4, Less Common Reactor Types.
First comment was from Antoine.
I said, we are, where are the designs patented?
Hi, Whiskeyjack.
Nice episode.
You said AGR based on Magonyx was a Nutri-Reactor type that does sell well outside of the UK.
I started thinking, if it were, is possible for another country to develop it by themselves based on that project,
or if it had, has a commercial restriction for exploration of the technology.
I've yet to listen to the following episodes of Doing So Little by Little.
I may learn better on the choices, but I felt free to present the question to you now.
Thanks.
Whiskeyjack says in reply to Antoine.
One, yes, there are a number of patents on commercial nuclear technology.
However, most of the basic principles were discovered early on, and any early patents had expired by the term nuclear power had been exploded commercially and on a widespread scale.
I'm currently in the process of recording a follow-up episode to this series.
I will add your questions to the script, as I think it offers an opportunity to address specific topics.
So listen to that episode for more details.
Antoine says, thanks, Whiskeyjack, for the information.
I will do my best to catch up on the question and answers.
So the next one was on HBR Beer Garden 9, Barley Wine, and Al Ailman says,
I've had HBR in my feed for a long time.
Always hopeful something will spark.
Then you two come up with Big Garden, and you like what I like.
I'm writing from Oklahoma, where the state legislator funded her Senate campaign with money from the liquor distributors in exchange for monopoly control over what we drink.
But I think before the law changed, I actually had some scotch silly.
Anyway, really enjoy your shows.
On data processing retrospective with Lee, Archer72 has a comment, previous generation.
Hi, Lee.
I wish more people would record thoughts on the previous generations, not only about tech, but about life outside the subject.
Then on thorium reactors, we had four comments.
First, Archer72, interesting series.
Hi, Whiskeyjack.
Thanks for the series.
I've been listening with interest to each one.
And Whiskeyjack replies, thank you for the feedback.
The last episode is coming up on the 11th of March, episode 4593.
If anyone has any questions related to the topics, contact me, and I'll do a follow-up episode.
I have another series on a completely unrelated topic that I'll start posting after this one is done.
But I will delay if anyone wants to follow up on this series.
Clinton says, modern situation.
I would like some commentary on the current situation.
Why has Hingley gone off the rails, the new American approach, the odd things done after Fusima, the new reaction rules in the States?
Whiskeyjack replies, I will do a follow-up episode on nuclear power technology and try to cover your questions and others.
I have four-part series audio recording ready to go, but I will slot nuclear power follow-up after that and start working on it.
Anyone else would like me to address those or any other points is welcome to ask their questions.
So, Unix Curio 0 introduction.
Murph says, great show.
Looking forward to some more.
Glad to see that you picked up the call and submitted.
Well done.
Looking forward to hearing us.
On making first contact, my episode where I met contact, Archer72, great to hear your 7.3s.
Hello, Ken.
I have gotten behind on my comments, but did listen.
Did you get the idea of using the Bofang UVF5 or Mini from the New Year show?
Just curious.
Not directly, but yes, because you were discussing us in the HPR Matrix channel,
and it is just literally two radios for 25, I think, 35 euros or something.
It's just, you know, a good deal.
And also, now that our governments are mandating that you have a, advising strongly, that you have a disaster relief kit in your home, which is something that they're doing.
Maybe I should do a show on that.
And the next day, we had Candy Caneater commenting on Operator Show's response to Lee and Elsbeth episode.
A relatable episode.
I haven't been lucky enough to get a job in the IT space, but what you talked about with struggling with people resonated with me.
I am extremely bad with, like, talking to people if it is not a topic I'm super familiar with and kind of fall into generic responses or making dad jokes during conversations.
Yeah, it's a tough one.
And we do have some episodes on that.
For example, Tattoo's Making Friends one is a good episode, and we could do with people expanding and expounding on that here.
It's something quite a lot of us have trouble with.
So, here's to be our Beer Garden 10, Scotch, Ales, and a wee heavy.
Upcoming beers, Kevi tells us, that episode 11 will be Belgian Scotch Ale.
You want to get your purchases in now.
And episode 12 will be Baltic Porter, Baltic Porter, and Belgian Scotch Ale.
You have no excuse now.
Small modulary actors come up, and Brian in Ohio says, good show.
Loving the series.
Maybe Whiskey Jack could give some close comparisons between large and small actors.
He could also give us a realistic look at nuclear plants' safety and accidents compared to conventional power production.
Looking forward to an episode on fourth generation reactors.
Yes, Brian.
Thank you.
In response, Whiskey Jack says, I can do a follow-up episode on small modular actors, comparing the pros and cons of SMRs versus large reactors, and what factors may favor either.
I will also cover any other questions that may come up.
For safety, you could possibly be a controversial subject.
So, probably not a good fit for HPR.
There will be people who have strong political-based opinions either way.
I would like to stick with just explaining how the technology works, and other people on the forums address non-tech issues.
I think it would, personally speaking, I think it would make a good topic for HPR, particularly if it's balanced and you've got citations.
Respectful debate.
That's what we're all about here.
The next comment is on recording a show and crappy audio by Archer72.
There were four comments in here.
The love bug, Dave Lee, starts with,
Anyone who knows me knows my opinion on audio quality, in particular as it relates to HPR.
Listening to the results of your three microphones, the Zoom H1 sounded utterly beautiful.
Did I agree?
But those earbuds were moderately awful.
And the Soundcore earbuds were quite decent, but your voice sounded a bit robotic.
You'll never experience decent audio quality from devices that were going to be attended for that purpose.
Earbuds are notoriously bad for quality due to audio processing needed to handle the distance between the bud and your mouth.
I always recommend an audio recorder with decent quality microphone first, a mobile phone recording app, and a laptop built-in third.
Anything else is last resort.
Sounds a bit snobby, and I grant you that I know conflicts with Ken's stance on quality doesn't matter.
I'll come back to that.
But you really do need to consider the audience.
Is it also worth mentioning that any difficulties experienced through bad audio get compounded by listening to higher, at higher playback speed?
Okay, I agree with all of that, but I want to please, again, stress, I do not like bad audio.
I do not think that audio quality does not matter.
It does.
Okay, let's be clear on this.
Audio quality does matter.
However, if there's no recording of a thing, then we've lost that.
Even if it's poor audio, start with the best you can get, yeah.
If you can afford a H1 mic, that is, yes, brilliant.
I happen to have a Zoom H2, but they're expensive.
Not everybody has them.
Not everybody is able to go out and shoo out the equivalent to 300 euros for even crappy earbud things.
A lot of the people that I've been working with recently do not have headsets.
They have what comes in their laptop.
They don't get headsets.
So we cannot impose these first world assumptions on people who are listening to the podcast.
This podcast is for everybody.
If you're somewhere and the best microphone that you have is a headphone, an old headphone that you're using,
and it comes in left here, we will do our best here on HPR to get it to an audio quality that will work.
And in fact, we will do and we will sponsor microphones for you if we can get them to you.
Yeah.
So I never said that audio quality doesn't matter.
What I've said is any audio is better than no audio.
But I've also said black is the best.
We accept the rest.
72 comments.
Bad mic.
Hi, Dave.
I wouldn't record it with either the earbud on a regular basis, but it works in a pinch.
My preference is always for a proper mic, is to use the XS audio recorder, which mysteriously disappeared from F-Droid app.
Actually, this is not so mysterious considering the state of Google's current relationship against floss apps.
I have also heard the results from the audio Android recorder with a lapel mic in previous episodes, which shows semi-decent quality.
Deser said, false advertising.
So far this morning, I have listened to the episode three times in an attempt to hear some crappy audio.
What I'm hearing is various levels of not perfect audio, but nothing crappy.
This is probably the first time I have heard audio recorded from an earpiece.
And this is one of my favorite genres of HBR shows, the hardware used to record a show.
Thank you.
Thank you, Jezre.
So moving on, and the last comment was on MPV util scripts, which was a show from February by Kandikean Eater.
And Windigo says, MPV Flank Hub.
I've been using MPV as my primary media player for years, but I've only used bash scripting to extend its functionality.
Approach that seems rough and uncivilized compared to your Lua examples.
Thanks for the informative and inspiring episode.
I'm excited to give this a try.
Windigo also says, if you do want to hook up into MPV with external bash scripts,
you can set up a socket with the dash dash input dash IPC dash server and pipe command line input output through that.
Unfortunately, it doesn't really work well on multiple MPV windows,
but it's great if you only plan to have one window open at once.
That would make a good show, Windigo.
Thank you.
I'd like to hear it.
Archer72 says, hi, Windigo.
My skills are lacking in this area, but with only one improvement made for MPV.
MPV, I pretty much forgot about it because I get copied to a new system in the form of dash dash aliases.
And the alias is MPlayer equals MPlayer space dash AF space scale tempo,
which I borrowed from Ken and linked to my episode or blog post on that.
Candy Canator puts in a updated script into the comments.
Yes, probably need to update the script.
Somebody can remind me to do that.
That would be great.
Oh, where's Dave when you need him?
And then we have the comments on this month's show.
Let's mosey on to the thread.
And for those of you who don't know, the mailing list is the discussion forum where we discuss changes that's going to be happening to HPR.
We have some comments there from Jason Dodd, who says this is in relation to last month's stock posting on X on Twitter, or continue to use it.
Indeed, when that conferral happened with FreeNode, I switched to Libra and noticed Podcast Planet wasn't there.
So I started it and figured that the admins from FreeNode would come over and take it over.
That has not happened, but it's not too late.
Need a proper admin.
I was never admin of Podcast Planet, but I have joined us on an IRSSI session.
So I am in there.
It's quite enough, but a nice, chill place to be.
Then we have proposed bridge from IRC to Matrix.
And Ken was asking about an IRC to Matrix bridge from IRC.libra.chat to the HPR Matrix.
It seems to be involved, but might be worth looking at.
There are two ways to go about it, bi-directional or one way, most likely from Libra, chat, and Matrix.
Taj replied saying,
My understanding, my understanding, given that it's been a while since this happened, and I'm not in a position to look up the details at the moment, is that there was a Matrix to Libra bridge that was developed by the Matrix team.
IRC, Libra, kindly asked them to knock it off because the bridge was causing serious issues on their side.
And I think Libra went as far as to ban it.
It's honestly a shame, since when that bridge stopped working, I essentially abandoned IRC.
And I think that's the general status with that.
There was an invite to today's Community News, which I am going to read out.
Community News will be recorded each week during the last week of the month.
Volunteers are encouraged to participate during the HPR Community News.
Hosts will discuss shows, community feedback, address concerns related to the project.
Particular participants are encouraged to listen to all the shows aired during their respective months.
If you're interested in participating or have concerns related to the project, I don't know why we have so many concerns related to the project, please contact admin at hackerpublicradio.org.
Thank you for choosing Hacker Public Radio.
So what we've noticed is that the schedule is very difficult to stick to, that it is at this time or particular time of recording,
and that it makes it inflexible for the people who have volunteered their time to change it.
So in this case, I needed to go and help.
I was over this week in England with helping my nephew with something or other.
And by the time I got back, Kevi was already going on vacation.
So our timetables didn't work out.
This is why I'm recording it myself.
And having it at a particular slot means that we can't really adjust it normally.
What we would do is, Kevi would say, look, I'm heading off.
We recorded a day earlier.
Couldn't in this case, but then we would have just listened to the Friday shows beforehand and do the recording from there on.
That's actually fine.
So if you do want to contribute to this beyond the community news, you're absolutely welcome.
But it sends us an email, and then if you're living somewhere else, you might be able to pick a time in the morning or the afternoon that suits you,
and you don't have to stay up in the middle of the night for the recording.
So that's more or less the attention to make it more flexible.
It's still over to everybody.
It's just there's no need to be specific that it must be at this time.
It should be at a time that is convenient for the people who are giving up their personal time to it, is all I'm saying.
We also took out the bits about the Mumble in there because we have had people join, and Mumble hasn't been working that fantastically lately for some reason.
I'm not sure why.
Sometimes it does.
Sometimes it doesn't.
So we might just switch to using Jitsi or something else.
That works fine.
So just like with the scheduling, we'll pick whatever suits the people who have volunteered.
Okay.
Do need some Moolik over.
Okay, and that was that.
Then I did want to read out a comment that I sent out, and it's in the April 26 archive, but because of the way the month is a bit late this time.
And it is in response to the community news.
So I'll just read it out.
Hi, all.
I'd like to bring up the following items here so that they're also included in the community news show.
Changes to the approach recording the community news show.
Anyone that's interested in recording the community news show, please get in touch one-to-one prior to the recording.
Having people drop in at the last moment is not ideal technically or helped with the scheduling deadline some of the hosts may have.
By arranging it beforehand, we can pick a suitable time for everybody and agree on a common platform for recording.
It would be great if you could listen to all the shows and are prepared to read out the comments provided.
Any other business topic number two, how we are expected to behave.
Following some questions on Matrix about the use of the explicit flag, I give the following clarification.
As it reflects the current state of things as I understand it.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
We begin.
We place trust in the people of the community to do the right thing.
It is always, first and foremost, the responsibility of the hosts themselves to think how their words would impact on others in the community.
If you are ever asking if you should put an explicit flag on an episode, it means, by definition, you should put it in.
While swearing is allowed, remember that JWP's granny is listening.
Don't go out of your way to be belligerent.
We follow the principle that inside shows, free speech applies.
As with shouting fire in a crowded theatre, there are exceptions.
We do not post hate speech, copyrighted material, spam, etc.
If you think it's going to be excessive, then please put a warning at the beginning of your show.
Something like, sorry, I went off on a bit of rant in this one.
If you're listening to this in the public place, it might be best to put on headphones or listen later.
Episode 1309 is how I personally did it.
If there are any complaints about technical or otherwise, we have policies to deal with it.
I'll link in the show notes.
Outside of the podcast audio, for example, show notes, tags, feeds, etc., we still expect the host to do the right thing.
In the case they don't, the janitors can and do intervene.
We follow the parental advisory approach akin to the covers on CDs in shops.
Listen to HBR 22010 on freedom of speech and censorship for more information.
There is no point having a warning in the intro of the show if the show notes and title and text-to-speech intro already contain the offending phrase.
And this, of course, extends to anywhere we have an official HBR presence.
That means Matrix, Telegram, Mastodon, IRC, etc.
But it also extends to boots and anywhere you are representing the HBR project, for example, presentations.
Okay, that was item number two.
Item number three.
HBR Wikipedia has gone again.
Frankly, this is annoying.
We did have a page, but now it's gone without trace.
And we have very much exceeded the bar to have a page.
And I would help, as it would help in communicating with third-party organization and policy makers.
If there are any Wikipedians out there who have not already contributed to the show, please help us here.
It's just like to know why our page was removed.
Any other business part?
Four, recent policies.
Four dot one.
We will no longer be actively posting on Twitter slash X on a daily basis.
We'll continue to monitor.
That is a nice one for me because I no longer have to jump through hoops to fit into their 100 character limit.
Four dot two.
Changes to the reserve queue has been made as per our discussion in January.
You will by now have noticed the change to the tone of the announcement.
It's okay to mention the show that it's a reserve show, even to ask for contributions.
But hosts should please not place any warnings in their reserve episodes.
These will be added automatically using the following script.
Link to the GitT instance, HPR prepare reserve.back, which is a skeleton script.
Three, sorry, four dot three.
Clarification on discussions on policy changes, changes to scheduling guidelines.
You should read the rules as a if-then statement, as in, one, you must have your audio ready for recording before you pick a slot.
Two, new hosts and interviews and other time critical shows should use the first free slot.
Rule three, if not two, then always fill any free slots that are available in the upcoming queue.
Rule four, if not two and three, then when the queue is filling up, leave some slots free for new contributors.
Post non-urgent shows into the first empty week.
And six, as I jumped over.
Five, if you're uploading multiple shows, please leave at least two weeks between your chosen slots.
And seven, if you have non-urgent shows that are timeless, add them to the reserve queue, but don't include a dire warning.
Because if a dire warning is required, it'll be added.
And any other business.
If there is any other business, people would like to mention, reply here or send it directly.
Because that goes for all the shows now.
If you have stuff that you want to announce or something, here is a fine place to do it.
We'll do it at the end of the community news show.
And D&T responded about the Wikipedia thing.
It doesn't, blog doesn't dispute the notability, but it says the sources are not good enough.
To which I reply, well, that's right, given we're the reliable source for many articles.
We also keep public articles on there.
But if anybody else has cases where HBR is mentioned in print, magazines, talk schedules, etc.
In the real world, please pass them on.
Okay, that's it.
Thanks for listening.
If you want to be part of this show, please listen to all the shows.
Have a read of the comments.
And ping us on when will be a suitable time to be recorded sometime in the last week of the month.
And you're more than welcome to join.
And with that, I'll say thank you for listening.
And tune in tomorrow for another exciting episode of Hacker Public Radio.
You have been listening to the Hacker Public Radio podcast, at hackerpublicradio.org.
Today's show was contributed by a HPR listener like yourself.
If you ever thought of recording a podcast, then visit the HPR site to find out how easy it really is.
Hosting for HPR has been kindly provided by anhonesthost.com, the Internet Archive, rsync.net, and the HPR Community Content Delivery Network.
Unless otherwise stated, today's show is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license.
