lee/hpr-knowledge-base
1
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Pull Requests Actions Packages Projects Releases Wiki Activity

Initial commit: HPR Knowledge Base MCP Server

Browse Source 
- MCP server with stdio transport for local use
- Search episodes, transcripts, hosts, and series
- 4,511 episodes with metadata and transcripts
- Data loader with in-memory JSON storage

🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)

Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
Lee Hanken
2025-10-26 10:54:13 +00:00
commit 7c8efd2228
4494 changed files with 1705541 additions and 0 deletions
Download Patch File Download Diff File Expand all files Collapse all files

85
hpr_transcripts/hpr2277.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,85 @@
Episode: 2277
Title: HPR2277: Outernet and other projects
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2277/hpr2277.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 00:44:58
---
This episode of HBR is brought to you by AnanasThost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HBR15. That's HBR15.
Our web hosting that's Honest and Fair at AnanasThost.com.
Hello World. You're listening to Hacker Public Radio. I'm Mir Shades.
Today I'm going to talk about Outer Ned. I actually want to talk about a couple of different projects that are going on.
They're not exactly new. They've been going on for a couple of years now.
Maybe it's just I've been out of the loop. I discovered this thing called Outer Ned. I found it kind of interesting.
I'm going to get into the meat and potatoes of what Outer Ned is in just a little bit.
First I wanted to look at a couple of similar projects that are going on in the world.
The first is Project Moon, which is Google's. I'm sorry, it's kind of ridiculous sounding.
It's an idea, the premise of which isn't necessarily bad. The idea is to bring Internet access to parts of the world that don't otherwise have Internet access.
They say they can achieve speeds that are close to 3G with these high altitude. They're kind of like weather balloons.
There's a lot that I don't know about the project specifically. Helium is kind of a rare thing now. We're not really supposed to be using that as much.
A lot of people have been wondering, are they using hydrogen? How are they getting the equipment up there?
I think there was some confusion in some of the articles I read because they used the term 3G like speeds.
I think some people thought that maybe they were actually using 3G, but I don't believe so.
My guess is the balloons themselves create some kind of ad hoc wireless network.
There's some information about how Google plans to control the balloons and keep them where they want them.
But there's a lot of issues as far as, again, the type of network that's being used and the balloons themselves can't stay up in the atmosphere forever.
So, you know, as to how they're going to plan on bringing them down and the sorts of things they need to do to them when they bring them down, I don't really know.
There's a lot of gray areas in that project, but basically the idea is they're going to bring Internet to everybody using high altitude balloons.
I don't know that that project has a great people of viable longevity.
It seems like it might be more trouble than it's worth for what you're going to get out of it.
Although I don't think the, I'm sorry, there's a garbage trucking.
It's emptying the dumpsters for the school that's beside my house.
All right, he likes to slam things around at 4 o'clock in the morning because he's a jerk.
But anyway, the other project is a project that's actually, I think for the most part, it's being pushed forward by Zuckerberg and Facebook.
But it's in, it's conjoined with some other companies and it's called internet.org and this one has been just absolutely fraught with problems.
The, the idea is very similar to Google's project loan, except they want to use these solar powered glider drones.
This company has produced these drones in the past that have shown they could stay up in the air.
We're very high up in the air for very long periods of time.
I forget exactly how long I should have looked that up, but I didn't know well, I'm sorry.
I find the drones themselves are actually probably the most fascinating part of the whole project because the rest of it seems like it's kind of a bust.
In order to get this to work, it was essentially free internet access for what's the politically correct term for poor areas of economically depressed areas of the world.
The idea was that it's essentially an app that they can download and install and it gives them free internet access to certain things.
And that's where the problems first started.
It was being described as what you've created here is an internet for poor people, an internet for the poor, and it did get kind of a bad rap for that reason because there was only a handful of websites that you could get to using this thing.
But apparently there was a lot of issues with net neutrality because essentially it meant that they could control what went on their free internet and what didn't.
So in a sense they could control what websites these people in poor countries or poor areas of countries had access to.
And ultimately the issues of, you know, it sounds like it's a big humanitarian thing but most people believe this is just Zuckerberg running everyone on Facebook.
And that actually there's some merit to that because according to the way anybody can create, I guess, I want like a website for this free internet, this internet.org.
The problem is that they have to agree to let Facebook basically track everything and the other problem was is that this internet.org, this free internet thing, doesn't allow encryption.
So, needless to say, that project has come under quite a bit of fire. But this other thing, and it's called outer net, and this is what I actually prompted me to make this episode to begin with.
I ran across just by pure happenstance. I found a YouTube video of a guy putting together one of these kits and showing off the outer net just a little bit.
So it's another one of these ideas where anybody, there's no service charge for this. So you can get, if you, you can either buy one of their devices, which they call a lantern, which is kind of neat. I've seen pictures of them.
I should say I don't have this. This is something that I have not had the chance to experiment with. I'm kind of hoping that by talking about this here, some people out in the community might either already have had some experience with outer net or
or willing to pony at the money for the kit or the device and maybe do a more in-depth show and talk a little bit more about their experiences with it.
From what I gather, anyway, you can buy this device. They call it a lantern. It's kind of interesting little device. It's in a weatherproof box. It has a solar panel on it.
And essentially what it does is it connects to the outer net, which is a network via satellite. And it downloads a bunch of stuff. It does this automatically, and it creates a Wi-Fi hotspot.
And basically, what you do is you connect to it via its SSID. It's like I said, it's a Wi-Fi hotspot, so you can connect to it with a new device that has Mario's access.
And you can browse all the data that it downloads. And essentially, it looks for all the world like it's just caching a bunch of websites offline.
Originally, I don't know how much, I know there's not tons of data. I know originally the plan call for Wikipedia and Project Gutenberg and a handful of other oddball e-books and stuff.
I have no idea what's on it. I can't really speak to the heck because I haven't done this yet. There is, besides the pre-made device that you can buy, the lantern,
they actually sell on the outer net website. A little do-it-yourself kit, which is kind of neat. This is probably what I would do if I had the extra cash, which I doubt right now.
But it's an interesting thing. It comes with a few components. It comes with everything you need to build the outer net box.
And one of the parts, which I find interesting, because, and a lot of the plans, it says you can use a Raspberry Pi, but the kit itself actually comes with a chip.
I don't know how many of you remember a chip. It was built as the $9 computer. It's very similar to the Raspberry Pi Zero.
But anyway, the chip board is what they're using to power this device and do-it-yourself kit.
But my understanding is it uses data casting, so essentially it's one-way communication. The satellites broadcast the data constantly.
The receiver picks it up and just starts downloading stuff. And it just caches everything on the device, and then you can browse what's on the device via your smartphone or laptop or whatever.
That, I know, doesn't sound really great. It still sounds better than having everything unencrypted in track by Facebook.
But I can't speak to how useful this would be to people in a third world country where things like water, food, and shelter might be obviously a little bit more important than internet access.
But I can see the need for that too. It's not just the basics in life.
That's an issue too. I'm not trying to sidestep it, but there's a lot of stories of people in these situations who have been able to contribute some kind of difference when they were able to have access to various kinds of information.
I remember reading about a guy in Africa. I believe it was in Africa. I could be wrong. I could be butchering this story. You're really bad. It's been a long time.
But the guy, and you guys might remember, we built a windmill and provided electricity to a village after reading articles in like popular science, these old popular science magazines that he found.
I guess it's the library or something. I know that it's not like a huge debt, but it kind of is at the same time.
When you look back at the history of the US, there was a lot of cultural changes that happened as a result of not only there was like candle shortages or something.
I don't remember what the deal was, but I remember there was a big deal. The electric light was a big deal for people being able to stay up past dark because you didn't always have access to candles. They were kind of expensive that didn't waste them.
People didn't get to stay up much past dark in those days. So having a cheap source of light after dark changed a lot of things culturally for people in those days.
But that's really all I have. If I would very much like to hear from anyone who has actually tried the outer net kit or even if you just bought the laner, I'm kind of on the fence.
I don't know at some point in the future when I can afford it. Maybe I'll pick one up and do another show that actually goes into the little more debt as to what's available on there.
I find it very interesting. There's not a lot of information out there. I'm going to put some links in the show notes. Hopefully that will help anybody who is interested.
And that's it for me.
You've been listening to Heka Public Radio at HekaPublicRadio.org. We are a community podcast network that releases shows every weekday Monday through Friday.
Today's show, like all our shows, was contributed by an HBR listener like yourself. If you ever thought of recording a podcast, then click on our contributing to find out how easy it really is.
Heka Public Radio was founded by the digital dog pound and the Infonomicon Computer Club and is part of the binary revolution at binwreff.com.
If you have comments on today's show, please email the host directly, leave a comment on the website or record a follow-up episode yourself. Unless otherwise status, today's show is released under Creative Commons, Attribution, ShareLive, 3.0 license.