hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr4195.txt

Episode: 4195
Title: HPR4195: Hacking HPR Hosts
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4195/hpr4195.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 21:09:12

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4195 for Friday the 30th of August 2024.
Today's show is entitled Hacking HP Our Hosts.
It is hosted by Ken Fallon and is about 36 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, social engineering, more contributions to HP, are by picking when to publish your show.
Hi everybody, my name is Ken Fallon and you're listening to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
So this is another one in the meta-h, behind the scenes here in H.Core, and I wanted to look
at Hacker Public Radio from the point of the business and from the point of view, education
and what I've been doing professionally and bring some of the insights you guys.
So I am a production engineer by trade, so responsible for doing supply chains in a factory
or in a production environment.
To take stuff in, you do something with an issue but that's pretty much the job.
I move from that to into IT and then for the last 24 years, I've been doing IPTV or just regular cable TV as well,
building back ends for those systems.
Everything when you turn on your TV and the TV grid is there, the video and the band is there,
the building systems, the schedule, the apps now and stuff like that.
So for your information, this is all my opinions and not my current or previous employers.
It's just everything that I'm saying here is public domain and well known within the industry.
It's just you might be aware of it out there in the H.Core listening public.
So if we're looking at H.Core from the point of view of the business, the first thing we need to know is what sector we're in.
What do we do? Well, we're dedicated to sharing knowledge, so we are probably a university,
our hackerspace or something like that, but and that's correct from my point of view of us getting hosts in.
But we're leaving that aside now for a moment and we're dealing with listeners, we're dealing with your regular podcast productions.
We're producing podcasts and our podcasts are competing for the time and the tension of our audience.
So therefore we're in the entertainment business.
So somebody has a choice to listen to H.P.R., but it could be watching TV.
It could be on YouTube, it could be reading a book, it could be listening to Spotify.
All these things they could be doing instead of listening to H.P.R.
And furthermore, they could be doing a lot more of those sort of rather than sitting down and actually composing the thoughts together,
writing an outline of a show, thinking about what they're going to say, how they're going to say it, formalize it,
sit down in front of a recording and recording a show.
So that is why listeners and hosts are, I feel, are two different things.
You're asking the orders of magnitude more of somebody to be a host than when you're asking them just to be a listener.
But, okay, so if we're in the entertainment business, let's have a look at what we say about ourselves.
Hacker Public Radio is a podcast, the release is shows every weekday, Monday or Tuesday, Friday.
And that is a classic event promoter, rule of thumb.
You've got the who, who wear a watermelon and why?
Why is we're dedicated to sharing knowledge?
But the who is H.P.R.
What?
A exciting tech episode that is of interest tigers.
The what?
So the where is on the RSS feed and the when is every weekday, Monday through Friday.
Now, that's the schedule.
And so now you're aware of that, you're going to see it everywhere.
I've got some examples here of other places you might see it.
I took them randomly from various different places.
For example, YouTube playing Octoom Baby Live at the Las Vegas Sphere from the 23rd to the 30th of June.
So who is this YouTube, what are they doing, Octoom Baby, where Las Vegas Sphere when 23rd to the 30th.
If you go to a website, for example, you go to the Globe Theater, might see Richie the Third all summer.
So they have only two pieces of information there.
Yeah, but the other stuff is implied.
The where is the Globe Theater?
What is also implied because you know it's Shakespeare because it's the Globe Theater in Strapfund and even in the UK, home of Shakespeare.
So in some of them are just the news attend.
In four years, the BBC had the news attend.
Everybody knew it was the BBC, it was the news, it was attend.
There were two channels, so it was on the BBC.
So you tuned in at 10 and much did you get the news.
So, but that's even gone into a modern context you'll get.
So Disney Plus might have season two of Firefly coming in the fall.
And sometimes they'll mess with you while they're doing this, like you'll just see the Mandalorian, for example, walking across the screen.
And then they'll have the Disney logo.
So you only get, you know what it is, it's the Mandalorian and you know where it's going to be.
It's going to be on Disney Plus, but you have no idea of when.
So you're talking to everybody, but that's a marketing stunt trying to build up, build up excitement about the product.
But it's very important that you have the where, where and when, because you know, you're making, making days.
Find somebody you really like, you invite them out to dinner.
And kind of would work out if you ended up at a different restaurant or went on the wrong day.
I mean, I'm all working a romantic movie, but in real life, like, okay, where's this creep I didn't need to turn up.
So people really, that's ingrained so much into every aspect of people's lives.
It's really, it's really important to keep in mind of what you do, is what you say.
And even when you have show is removed from Netflix, for example, you expect it to be there.
The win is whenever I walk up to the screen when it comes to Netflix, and that was the, that was the thing you never have to worry about the win anymore.
But now programs are disappearing.
So the win is, oh, before the, they remove it from the screen and stuff.
So, a theater is going to have an address schedule when events occurs.
And on a TV, they have predefined channel locations and often have 24, seven schedules of programs.
So, but we're not in TV, we're not theater, we're not ready, we're podcasts.
So, let's compare us to the professionals like NPR and the BBC.
And I use that in air quotes because we were here first.
So we're the professionals.
There, those guys are going to have a permanent staff.
Mostly what the, the podcast, like the news podcast coming from the BBC is just nicely done by some editors for from the main production that's already gone out.
So they've already got the audio feeds for the radio shows and they just package it up and send it out as a podcast feed.
So they've got permanent staff, they're paid.
So they have control over their supply because they're paying them.
Netflix as well will also, on Disney+, for example, will commission external parties for to record their content.
So the Mandalorian will be in production and it'll come out on this particular day and it better be because it's the people of both subscriptions for the service and it better be there in the fall whenever the fall is.
But they might also just purchase regular shows.
But regardless of the approach, they all have a mechanism to meet production schedules.
Now, unlike other podcasts, HPR, we don't.
We have no control of our supply chain.
And we do still have a contract to deliver one product every day, Monday through Friday, but we have no control over the distribution channel.
That's, that's a very interesting challenge from a production engineering point of view that has been,
has been at the back of our minds for a long time.
And it's important to understand how much energy has gone into managing the balancing act and it's absolutely core to this project.
It takes up most of the generous time of this, this particular thing here and it should be taking up quite a bit of your time and you can't.
So in this, in this episode, I want to talk to you about how you can help, obviously sending in shows, obviously getting involved.
But also when you're posting a show, where to do that smartly so that you help us out, also being the project in general.
So we have no control over the supply, as we said.
For example, YouTube can control their supply because they can, they can modify the algorithm, for example, back not so long ago.
They were favoring long form content and then ticked up come along and now they're favoring shorts.
Although everybody who had invested in all that, suddenly the algorithm changes and now they either have to stop or they need to produce more shorts.
So that's how they control supply.
So a supply chain, I realize I've been talking about this, but basically haven't explained it to you.
So Wikipedia is a good description.
Supply chain is a complex logistical system that consists of facilities that convert raw materials into finished products and distribute them to end customers or consumers.
Meanwhile, supply chain management deals with the flow of goods within the supply chain in the most efficient manner.
Wikipedia, you're free in the cyclopedia.
So our supply chain is entirely tasted by the host, our generous host, who denies time to recording a show.
Hopefully that will be you, if you're listening.
So the janitors have no control over when the shows are sent in and all we can do is remind you to send in some shows.
Now, we've been doing this for nearly 19 years or so.
This is nothing new to us. We understand the patterns that have.
Even in the Netherlands, the such a concept has come comber-tight, a cucumber time, where there's a lot in the news.
Everybody's an holidays, everybody's camping in a field in France and nobody wants to do anything to annoy somebody else.
So therefore, you get like bunny rabbit programs on bunny rabbits save from fire.
But this year, there's been the Olympics, so that's been a boon for news content.
So for us, we see that during the summer in the northern hemisphere, that the number of shows contributors go into a lot.
And so consciously, I see that the regular hosts who came down during the winter months will have adapted and are sending in shows.
That's actually when I tend to send in most of my shows, is during that summer period, where I have a little bit more time.
But the it's when the HBO really does need the show the most.
So that's a normal thing.
But we do need your help in managing this.
Now, we asked for a policy change a few years back on this topic.
And the community disagreed with us that this was needed and would prefer to be able to schedule it.
So it's just some history back in the day, when HBO started, the idea was that there would be 30 podcasters who would send in a show based on a Google sheets.
That changed over time.
And then the shows were dumped into the FTP server and they were getting pulsed.
And when I started helping out, I tried to formalize the logic that I was using to post the shows.
So my idea, rather than have a whole submitted four shows in a row, like a hooker does, will submit a whole go shows in a series, maybe eight, ten shows.
And rather than putting them out one after the other, I would space them out two days at a time.
Some holes like that, some don't.
But it ended up just being a mess and nobody could understand what was going on.
So what we did was change it so you decide when you upload where you put the show on what day.
And some people will put their three shows, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, one after the other.
And there are a few reasons why I don't like that.
One is that if, for example, somebody doesn't like you, you don't like the sound of my voice.
And three days one after the other is a bit much for anyone.
So it might lose listeners as a result of that.
And also, if they love your voice, you want them to keep them coming back for more.
So it's good to even it out.
But I'll go into that in more detail.
But about the boom and bust supply thing.
We've mentioned this Dave and I are the community news many times.
And I'll just read out what I have here.
Usually, when we do a call for shows, if there's not enough shows coming up in the queue to
to FBQ, we'll send out a call for shows on the mailing list.
And which in itself is a result of a low in contributions.
So this is a pendulum where the system is going out of equilibrium.
So there's not enough shows.
We ask for a call of shows and this leads to a boom and bust or a sort of a tooth delivery of shows.
And it's kind of painful for us to observe it because we can see it happening.
So here's what happens.
So there's a loan on the shows.
No shows are coming in.
We call for shows.
Then there's a burst of contributions that all take the first available slots.
So the queue then fills up for the upcoming weeks.
Meanwhile, our friends and partners and other Linux free liberal arts or software podcasts
have heard the show and they've mentioned it on their shows.
So two weeks later, they're recording that, two weeks later, that's released.
And then there are somebody else.
Here's that show.
Now four weeks ahead in time.
Comes over to HPR with the idea of recording a show.
Has a look at the queue.
See, it's absolutely full.
And thanks.
Well, I'm just going to be three months before my show goes out.
So then feels that HPR is crying wolf.
And it assumes then the next time that they hear a call for shows assumes that the queue
will be full and that hop, there's no point.
So the timely delivery of shows is an inherent challenge with volunteer contributions.
But fortunately, this is a well understood problem
in both production engineering and also in the in the TV industry where I'm working.
And it's called queuing theory or buffering or buffering.
And you see it all over the place.
So you have a constant supply of, say, for example, you're loading the train with coal.
There's a constant supply of coal coming out of the mines.
But the railcars are only so long or you'll see it's, you know,
thickened grain from silos into ships, same thing.
On TV, we will see you have it back in the day from camera to TV set
was all MPEG transport stream, which is fixed block.
So so many I think 124, 124 bytes in a block of data.
And they have to be full.
And that was fine when everything is on the same standard.
But then IP streaming come along.
And now you're buffering over the internet.
You're sending packets over, we send them packets over the internet.
And they're coming as there's a lot of jitter in the network.
There's a lot of congestion.
Sometimes you get a big dump of packets on a lot of packets to view the queue.
So how do you deal with that?
Well, you put in a buffer.
And a good example of this is back in the day.
If you're watching live TV broadcast television and the national team was playing football game.
And then they score a goal or something.
And then you hear the entire neighborhood has one roaring out of the street.
And now, because everybody's listening their own cable networks or an IPTV or over the internet.
So one's goal and of course the first two years are the ones working on our systems obviously.
And then our competitors suppliers will shout a few minutes later when all their networks are.
Buffers have filled up and they're gone in.
So here the effect is you hear you see the goal and then 30 seconds, you know, a few seconds later.
Somebody else you scream me a few seconds later.
Somebody else is screaming and stuff.
So that happens all the time.
So it is not, it's not failure actually.
It's planning.
It's basically a fact of life.
Now, in the manufacturing sector, there was, there, there has been a trend to get away from that.
called just in time delivery, where you, your factory expects the delivery on this day.
So you keep absolutely minimum of inventory and you are relying on a constant supply chain.
So that was all fine until 2021 and Sue's canal got blocked by a ship.
And all of a sudden the just in time manufacturing the ships had to go round another way.
And then this led to shortages and supplies and disruptions and supply chain and all that could do.
So the answer to that of course was just have bigger buffers, pay for warehousing etc etc.
So yes.
And just now that I mentioned this also happens all the time on TV.
So your regular TV schedule used to be produced and printed and would be in the TV guide
or the radio times or the RT guide or whatever and would come to your home.
And because it was fixed so far in advance, if there was a change to your program,
you would hear the announcer come on.
Inner change to our regular.
We're putting on this filler program.
Well, you know, because the football team was on, it went into extra time.
The program after that got cancelled and now you've got a two hour slot that is in free.
So you know, you need to put in a buffer program of 30 minutes.
Quite often actually after, if you look at traditional broadcast media as of by the way,
you'll see that after sports events like that, they'll have lots of smaller,
short programs that are not part of a series or not that they can easily drop out reruns and stuff
of old classic 40 towers or something that's nice 30 minute blocks that they can replace
with something else.
Filler talking ahead program for the first 15 minutes and then you back into your schedule again.
This happens all the time.
You don't see it, you're not aware of it as much now because your apps and stuff automatically
update and your recordings it.
But if you do take a screenshot of it, even after an event is broadcast, you go back and fix
the catch up so that the schedule all looks correct.
So we get loads of that happening all the time.
So this is the means of the matter, how do you help us?
When you're contributing show, you decide when you post your show.
The choice of slot may encourage others to submit a show themselves.
So think about that for a second.
We have observed that there is a Goldilocks zone where there are just the right amount of
free slots left to encourage contributions.
Now if there are too many free slots, some people get disheartened and don't want to continue
or contributing to a dying project.
On the other hand, too many free slots can send regular hosts into a panic to fill them all.
And this is what I was talking about, about people getting burned out of what wasn't really
clear. But I'd like to be clear about that.
So for example, new janitors or regular hosts will see the queue and start being slaved to the
queue. So quite often I need to take them aside and go, okay, it's okay, this is normal operation.
Don't panic. We have, there's no need.
This is why I say, submit one show a year.
That's your responsibility.
If you don't that, then whether HPR continues as a project or not is not down to you.
It's down to the other person whether they're going to step up to one show a year.
That's all we ask.
Now we'd love to get more shows than that, obviously.
But don't get, don't become obsessed with the queue.
Yeah, flash and lights and LEDs and stuff is fun at all, but yeah.
So fortunately, we now have the reserve queue, right?
And for a long time, we didn't.
But now when you're uploading, you can write there, there's the window showing you the free
slots, but right there above that is a big line saying feed the reserve queue.
If you click on that, then it'll add it to the reserve queue and the submission is exactly the
same as all the other ones.
The only thing is it goes into a folder on the server.
And as we need them, we will post them.
As you, we literally will, we'll go through the posting process again
and submit it onto, based on the scheduling guidelines.
And we will modify the audio to have the reminder in.
So my feeling is, been asked, should I put shows into the reserve queue or should I put them into
the main queue? I would say follow these guidelines here, if we can.
But before we go to that, if we have too many free slots, yeah.
So if we have too few free slots, then the opposite effect occurs, as I said, people
will come along and go off. Well, my shows never going to get released or
what's the point I wanted to do a show before Christmas.
And now the first free slot is going to be in February, yeah.
And then February inevitably comes around and we're sure to show us again.
So how are you going to hack human behavior?
You can influence our supply chain by being smart about how you schedule your shows.
So first things first, you need to have the audio ready.
And you should have shown all that stuff before you do any of.
Because, you know, don't be pressing reserve and then going away for two weeks.
And then the slot is there where you think, oh, I'll have three months in order to record that show.
And then you forget, and you forget, and you forget.
And the next thing, Dave and I are rushing to fill that slot.
So we don't, we don't allow that.
You have to have a community approved reason if you want a reserve slot.
Otherwise, your slot will be freed up.
So think about this logically, right?
If you're a new host, we want to hear about you.
That is the one time when you should post in the first available slot.
If you do an interviews with somebody and don't have a reason for not picking a particular day,
so you might decide, well, I'll record my interview now and schedule it two days before the event.
That's absolutely fine.
But interviews, if you, you know, if they're given taking their time to talk to you about it,
then it's only fair that their interview should come out as quickly as possible.
So even if you have had two shows in that week and their interviews, pop them out,
that's, that's what we're saying.
But these are guidelines you use your own judgment.
One thing though that you should do is if there are time critical shows,
pop them out. That's not just about you've got another event that's coming up and you need to
have a show before the event. It's also about a new version of software has been released.
It's kind of no point telling us that in two years time when there's four more releases.
So tell us that if there's a vulnerability or the security in use, a stuff like that,
that's time critical. That shouldn't be in the reserve queue. That should be in the me.
Okay, rule them. Now rule three is about filling up the next two weeks.
So if there's a free slot in the next two weeks, you fill that. The reason for that is
we need time to process the shows. That gives us one week where the queue is filling up
and one week to do the actual processing. Getting it on to archive.org,
making sure the RSS feeds are okay, make sure that there's no errors in the in the audio,
that there's no weirdness going on. So that's more for our point of view.
If they're this week, whatever's left of us, and next week,
are have free slots, pop it in there that will help us out.
Now we get into the kind of vagueness. So when the queue is filling up,
then leave some slots for new contributors. And that's also leave some slots. So it looks
like we're doing okay, but we could do the shows. That's the kind of feel we're going for.
So post your non-urgent shows. So, you know, shows that are not interviews or time critical.
So if it's just a regular old show about, I don't know, a bash script that you wrote or something,
put that into the first empty week on the page. Don't go too far down, but you know,
if there's the first empty week, or if there's only one Ahuka show in, pop it in next to that.
So Ahuka takes the Friday, you take the Thursday. If you're uploading a series of shows, or if you've
got some series of shows from the same host. And so if Dave is doing a, with somebody else,
a, you know, two people doing a security episode puts, puts them one this week and one two weeks
time. If a host is doing multiple shows, put one next week and then one two weeks, that's the idea.
Now, then if question comes, when do I put them into the reserve queue? So my answer to that is,
if you've got non-urgent shows, again, you know, regular shows that you would have put into the queue,
put one into the regular queue, put one into the reserve queue. If you had reserve queue the last time,
then put into the regular queue this time. And keep, keep doing that last time.
And using the reserve queue, a few things about that, don't, it's okay to say you're using the
reserve queue, but don't fall into the trap of saying that your show is going to be less quality,
audio wise or content wise, then it would be otherwise. And this is important because we want
people to know that we have quality content. So if you've got time to do three shows,
well, two to the main queue, put one to the reserve queue. That's sitting there,
it's regular old show, no reason to have lower content in there. You can of course say,
I'm, I've decided as this is non-urgent content to put it into the reserve queue and not into the
main queue. That means folks, there is an empty slot available. So please consider contributing
to hacker public radio, et cetera, exit. Oh, and just general rule of thumb always introduce
yourself and never say, oh, I'm nervous. And this is really bad to public speaking or whatever.
That sets people's minds. You know, I'm not, yeah, it's first really public speaking as you
never say that. So yeah, that's good. And remember that despite all the ups and downs, we have never
missed a day since September 2009. So we can do this. We've done it before and we'll do it again.
Another thing that I have not mentioned and I want to bring to your attention is the
janitor's covenant. A lot of people may not be aware that this exists, well, it kind of does.
I haven't had a name for it, but I've decided to call it the janitor's covenant. And we will
continue to pull shows as long as you, the Hitchperer community, continue to send them in. If people
stop sending them in, then we're going to shut down the project with grace and with a big send-off.
And that's only right and proper though. Now that implies that we need, you know, we're not going
to last forever. So we need successors to start coming up and take over and thankfully people,
some people have been showing interest. And this is great. And if we're stepping away from the
project, I would like to see that somebody else is coming in to take my place and help out. So
the order of the map, before we go any further, we should give a nod to the people who get their
free time to keep shows pumping through. And they are Enigma, Portillo, Drupes, Stankdog,
Klatu, Tasman, Slick Zero, Ken Fallon, Kogcruncher, Dave Morris, Ron, Norrist, and Keith Murray.
And Keith has had to step away from the project, not having enough time. So thanks very much, Keith,
for all your contributions. And just a private note about Ron. He, uncharacteristically,
disappear from the, from the internet. And we have reason to believe, we're reason to fear for
his health. So if anyone lives in the Baltimore area in the US, could you get in touch with us
because we've been trying to contact him and haven't been able to, if he's stepping away from
the project, that's absolutely fine. No problem. But I just want to know. So supply chain production,
we spoke about production as the order of them up. The janitor's covenant, we'll take them in,
we'll process them and stuff. Probably, Dave and I will do some shows on how we produce shows,
because the new janitor's that could have had more of it surprised at the amount of manual
intervention that there is in the project. And yeah, and yeah, there is quite a lot. But then again,
we are never, we never cease to be surprised at the mistakes that people make when sending in
shows, including and not limited to myself and Mr Morris as well. So we're the ones who tend to break
it most. So that's the supply chain. We've spoken about that. They, how you can influence it by
scheduling your shows correctly, the processing that we do, and the distribution channels
where we send our shows out. Now, I spoke earlier about people buying in content and paying people
to create content. So luckily, that's not a problem for us. We have, well, NPR, Disney, Netflix,
etc can afford to record unique content. It is also very, very, very expensive.
Amazon, Apple and Spotify have the resources to do this, but they and others also make use of
freely available content to inflate their inventory of podcasts. So therefore, if you are starting
your podcast business, well, all you have to do is pull in the HDR feed and all of a sudden you
have added more than one and a half months of continuous audio podcasts to your playlist. So
there's no problem getting our stuff distributed. And are we annoyed about that? No, we're not,
because we're dedicated to sharing knowledge provided, of course, that the adhere to the
Creative Commons Attribution Share International License, which is our prime directive as work.
So currently our fee, RSS feed is being picked up by archive.org, Amazon, Google podcasts,
iHeart Radio, iTunes, listen notes, mixed-out player FM pod chaser, radio.net, Spotify,
top podcasts. Actually, Google podcasts, I need to take that out, they're shutting down.
And yeah, and we're also on an IMDB because we were recommended for an award at one time.
So that was an interesting thing I noticed the other day. Stuff like promotion and awards and stuff.
So they community awards, podcast awards, you should smidge us for that sort of stuff.
Boss, even though they take our content, we have no control over what they do with the feed,
how they use it, if they cache it, if they use the images, if they adhere to the explicit tag,
do this play the host on the episode, do they chunk cases, do they render the UTF8 stuff?
Okay or not. And as a result, we're putting together a team, we're putting the team together,
the order of the mop for janitors for the distribution channels, and we've had two volunteers so far,
who think I've ignored them, but I have not. We will be putting a wiki together, something a bit like they,
meds is my thoughts, I don't know if a lot of people have other ideas, maybe the new janitors will
have ideas of their own, but something like the LineageOS, where you, you know, this channel,
and we have a metadata mapping from our feed to that. And that way we can improve the experience
and quality of our product to the listeners, our consumers. So that's it. I hope this was interesting
to you guys. I hope it explains my thoughts on the things, and why I say stuff or do stuff that
might not make sense. And if there's anything that you'd like clarification on, or if you think
that you mentioned something or other there that was interesting, give me a shout, not really sure
what I can and can't do, I would need to check it. If that's related to specifically related to work,
then I probably, I probably can't do that unless it's already. But that was this. When you're
uploading the show, there's a link there that shows you a link to the above page with the
guidelines on it, and there you can read them at your leisure. And with that, tune in tomorrow for
another exciting episode of Hacker, a public radio.
You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio does work. Today's show was
contributed by a HBR listener like yourself. If you ever thought of recording podcasts,
you click on our contribute link to find out how easy it leads. Hosting for HBR has been kindly
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stages, today's show is released under Creative Commons, Attribution 4.0 International License.