Episode: 4470
Title: HPR4470: HPR is twenty years old today. 
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4470/hpr4470.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-26 01:01:13

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This is Hacker Public Radio episode 4,470 for Friday the 19th of September 2025.
Today's show is entitled, HBR is 20 years old today.
It is hosted by Lee and is about 22 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, a clip show looking back over 20 years focusing on the history of HBR.
Hello, I'm Lee, today I'm looking back at the history of this community podcast.
Today of Attacky started almost six out of 20 years ago.
It derived from Radio Free Cameracle which had been running since 2002.
After a few hundred episodes today of Attacky was rebranded Hacker Public Radio, which was
announced in the first episode under this new title.
Hello, everybody and welcome to Binary Revolution Radio episode number 201.
I am staying up.
It's not in my radio.
Do you use it that well or 200?
This isn't 201?
No, no.
What are we?
Hacker Public Radio.
What is Hacker Public Radio?
Hacker Public Radio.
I remember you and I were talking that way back in the day and we decided to do this topic
radio thing and combine it and make Hacker Public Radio.
Oh, yes.
Now I remember.
Actually, yes.
We are doing episode one of Hacker Public Radio and the other voice you heard is that of our
good friend, Enigma.
Yes, yes.
And we are going to do episode one and this is going to be an overview of exactly what
is Hacker Public Radio.
That was Stank Dawgan, Enigma, talking in HPR 0001 in December 2007.
Hacker Public Radio became a place for community networking and also command line culture.
You can see this in episode 0720, the interview between Delta Ray and Chleto.
Hi, everyone.
Hi, everyone.
This is Katsu.
I'm staying here at the Indiana one because I'm talking to Mark who is also known as Delta
Ray in the IRC.
And you do a lot of things.
So first of all, say hi to everyone.
Hi, everyone.
Thank you.
So the first thing that I really wanted to talk to you about was your command line talk that
you gave.
It's called command line magic or something like that.
And when you tell me how that kind of got started or what that is.
Well, command line magic is a Twitter and identical feed that I post little tips and tricks
to do to try to encourage people to delve into the command line more than they usually do.
I always tell them, and I've been built here this two for a long time where I tend to use
the command line.
I did from eating your LS and simple come here and you look at the man page, you're like,
oh, there's all this dirt dust I could do, but I don't know what to do with it.
And you always see people using spoilers and wilders.
You think that it's dust in this complex and they're always using examples that are
like food bar.
Yeah.
And you don't know how to apply it in daily life.
So what I wanted to do was close to real things that I'm doing, like, that's a reminteration
and tight-task.
In episode HPR 0853, Pat Volkading is interviewed about Slackware Linux at yet another Linux
event.
So what about Slackware?
Oh, yes, Slackware.
How does that tie into this whole ritualistic burning of oververomas?
Oh, well, I do usually keep that going on my desk.
There you go, see.
So there is a tie.
And it's, and I guess part of how I ended up knowing about that, still, how the
instance is made and what not.
If something is compiling, I sometimes will not multitask and will go read stuff online.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Burn me out too much if I tried to utilize myself at 100% speed, so yeah.
As well as community networking, hack-pub-it-ray-jo, became a place for discussion and debate of contemporary
issues, as well as a place where people could reflect on what they'd seen or heard online
or even in other podcasts in HPR 078JWP talks about Bitcoin.
Good day.
My name is JWP, and I wanted to do a hacker-public-rate-a-radio episode in response to the Linux outlaw's
Bitcoin show on the hacker-public-radio.
I was concerned because I heard on the Linux action show that what the Linux outlaw's
guys put out in their very nice podcast about Bitcoin wasn't a true representation of
the facts.
And I'm a pretty simple guy, and I was like wondering, what are the facts?
First and Brian, they didn't really go into the facts.
I just said that Fab and Dan didn't cover the facts, and it wasn't a very factual thing.
They were upset that the outlaw team was the number one Linux podcast for the year.
I wasn't sure if it was factual or not what they said, and they concerned me, so I decided
that I would do some research on my own.
Personal storytelling in the stout, it was a frequent topic.
For example, in HPR 08070, don't worry, look back at his early computing experiences.
We wanted to canx computer express, I'm from Warsaw, Indiana, up in the northern part of
Indiana, it's a small town, and we would either go to Fort Wayne or to South Bend for shopping
to kind of take our pick, depending on which place we thought might have what we want,
which is kind of nice, you know, it was kind of a neat town.
In that regard, you were within a driving distance of several cities that you could quickly
get to without too much hassle.
So if we want to go to Fort Wayne, we could go to Computer Corner, which is this musky,
feral computer store that had a mismatch of like Zenith data systems, computers, as
well as Amiga systems, IBM systems, you know, it was a pseudo business sales center,
and they also did computer repair and stuff, and I was, I don't know, that place always
kind of gave me the creeps a little bit, although they had a nice Amiga display, but it
always, it always seemed like it was sort of smoking, and stuff, probably all you've been
into a computer store like that, especially from the 80s.
Another regular topic for episodes was the practical side of hobby slide electronics
in Amiga radio, for example, Mr X talks about soldering in HPR1037.
My second children home was a weller soldering gun, it used low voltage and high current
to heat the copper dip.
It came with a variety of attachments for craft work, like scorching cork, melding
and cutting plastic.
It also came with a strip of PTFE tape, as polytetra floro ethylene, which allowed you
to reseal a polytene bag, you simply place the PTFE strip on top of the polytene bag
you wanted to seal, and then run an iron over the strip.
HPR has also been the place where contributors could record a show within the show, for
example, Linux in-laws.
It's an excerpt from HPR3439, hosted by a monochromec.
This is Linux in-laws, a podcast on topics around free and open source software, and
is hosted in contraband, communism, the revolution in general, and whatever fence is your
vehicle.
Similar to the events Clarity was reporting on earlier, Ken Fallon also attended community
events, and would record interviews around those.
For example, an interview of Kevin O'Brien at our bio Linux Fest in 2013, episode
HPR1322.
Kevin, can you give us a little bit of history about the Ohio Linux Fest, how long it's been
going, and the usual stuff for anybody living in a jar who doesn't know about this
Fest?
Sure, this is our 11th year, and it started a lot less formally among some college students
at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.
The first year or so for a couple of years probably was kind of small, and not the sort
of production it is now, but a number of people who got together and said, you know, we
can do better than this.
Let's make us a major event.
Similarly, Al and Jerry talk about OgCamp in HPR1642.
Hi, I'm Al, I'm Jerry, and we met at OgCamp, we decided that we kind of wanted to come
and do an episode on HPR to tell people about OgCamp.
This is my first year at OgCamp, and it was Gary's first one as well, wasn't it?
It was, yeah, it was really fun, I had a lot of fun, drank a lot of beer, went to a lot
of talks, and generally had a really good time, met lots of nice people as well, let's
not forget that bit, yeah, it was really good, yeah, I don't know where to start really,
well, I mean, start with the pub on the first night, which is where we met really, isn't
it?
It's my first kind of open source event I went to, and I was a bit nervous about going
because I don't really know that many people in the open source community, and I was really
surprised, and I got there, I kind of heard a couple of voices that I knew on the podcast.
Haccup Public Radio has always been a good place for in-depth instructional recordings
of a technical nature, for example, HPR1690 by Fletoo in 2015, which was about the Arduino.
So right now our power source is along the right-hand side of our breadboard, and we've
color coded it red maybe, I have, or the breadboard that I happened to have lying around
is red, it has the red line.
So that's our electrically charged power strip right now, so that could power the rest of
our breadboard, and in fact it will.
Ten years ago, the first decade of HPR was celebrated, episode 1874, it's a fireside chat
with droops, again, interviewed by Ken Fallon.
Hi everybody, my name is Ken Fallon, and you're listening to another episode of Haccup Public
Radio, or is it?
Or is it another episode of today with a techie, which started this weekend, coming
we can 10 years ago, folks 10 years ago, and therefore I have online, live from the
USMA, one of the men who started it all, Mr. Troops, how are you doing Troops?
Hey Ken, how are you doing?
I'm excited to be here.
I'm not doing too bad at all, not doing too bad at all.
So for those of you who don't know who Troops is, can you give us some rundown please?
Well that's kind of what we're on the spot, I'm some guy who a long time ago in college
was really into internet radio, and so we created this really cool thing.
It didn't work, and so we created this other cool thing that didn't work, and then we
created this other thing that was really lame, and eventually we got to the point where
we created something that was actually really cool, and it was so cool that other people
took it over and have done a much better job than we ever did with it, and have created
this whole Haccup Public Radio thing, and it's very awesome.
Haccup Public Radio has never been restricted to just circuits and Python scripts.
For example, in HPR1890 recording in 2015, the Lovebug takes us along for a short walk
with his son.
Well, hi everyone, my name's the Lovebug, this is my first APR recording, although I'm
not a stranger to podcasting, I haven't been my son, what's your name?
Come here, come here, come here, come here, speaking to there, yeah, speaking to that, what's
your name?
What's your name?
What's your name?
Who's this?
Alex.
Alex.
Alex.
And we're walking down to our local church, as we have a posh coffee and breakfast morning.
HPR is also sometimes a place for impassioned rants.
For example, episode HPR2186, Ysake Nu Linux, by Spaceman.
I don't know how you don't get the point that a kernel is just a component of an operating
system, it's not the operating system.
Now, here's what's important, when you're seeing GNU, you're referring to something that
stands for something bigger than what Linux stands for.
Being a community podcast, podcasting itself does get a big mention in HPR.
For example, HPR2503, which is my journey to podcasting by the Lovebug again.
So the catalyst of me starting podcasting occurred in 2007.
I discovered podcasting through a couple of friends who had their own podcasts.
One was the random three, which was a personal musical journey, where Mark, the host, would
play three seemingly random pieces of music from his own collection.
In fact, it's quite common for hosts on HPR to sometimes have their own podcasts, and
some shows will be crossover shows where various hosts and various podcasts get together.
HPR2673, again, at the Ohio Linux Fest, is a roundtable with the Urandom crew.
Everyone, welcome to another exciting episode of Hacker Public Radio.
I'm Lyle.
I have with me Taj.
What's good, everybody?
And we are bringing you a special multi-podcast roundup we did this year at Ohio Linux Fest,
2018 in Columbus, Ohio.
We had folks from the Sunday Morning Linux Review, Linux Logcast, Urandom, and I mean
Hacker Public Radio.
Obviously.
There were laughs, tears, awkward silences, which you probably won't hear, and a damn
good time.
So I would encourage you all to give it a listen and check out everybody's podcasts.
I know everybody works hard to put out their shows, come to cons like this, meet people,
have stuff to say, and generally have a good time.
Check for links for everybody's shows in the show notes.
Clat 2, who's been mentioned earlier right from the early episodes of HPR, is also known
for a podcast screening world order.
Another in-depth instructional series is The Intro to Get with Pen and Paper, starting
with episode 2554.
After this episode, I want to go into some of the nitty-gritty things about Get because
I have heard from people on Hacker Public Radio that they don't necessarily understand
how Get works.
They know these magical incantations that they're supposed to do.
They see them in the stack exchange, or stack overflow posts when they look up.
How do I do such and such in Get?
But they don't understand why they're doing it, and that's a frustrating thing.
Well, that's frankly one of the main reasons that Hacker Public Radio exists in a way,
right?
We need to understand what we are doing rather than just take it on faith that, hey, this
magic thing that you can do will result in something that is magic.
So let's get started.
I'm going to explain this in a little bit of a different way than you may have ever
had it explained before, which hopefully will be a benefit because I know that there's
quite a lot of stuff out there on Get.
So saying, okay, I'm going to explain Get.
That's kind of not again, you know?
So this is different.
This will be a little bit different, and it's different because it's paper-based.
It's based.
It does not involve a computer.
And yet you can still learn a lot of principles of Get.
So what I've done is I have created eight little mini index cards.
I've taken one, it's not a three by five.
It looks more like a four by six index card.
Cut it into fourths, and I've done that to two different ones.
So I've got eight.
You can do the same thing.
You can do, you can just use paper, it doesn't matter, it doesn't really, it doesn't
matter.
You could use post-its as well.
Post-its actually work really well.
And that will be the files.
Those will be the files that we create.
Those are, that's the content that we're going to create.
One episode that touches on time's past is the recording HPR-307 between Enigma and
Can.
This came out in 2020.
So what else has been going on in the last 12 years or 10 years?
Well, we've had the ups and downs.
Just as you were mentioning the New Year show, you know we've had for the last two New
years, we've had 26 hour New Year shows.
Oh, you have.
Interesting.
Yeah.
It's, I think it started with Polki from, they have their own show now, from DevRandom.
You DevRandom.
I love to do one of those history of podcasts.
So maybe you guys could help out with it, you know, the show was inspired, you know, HPR
was, is a director of a, today with a techie, which was inspired by BenRab, which was inspired
by Radio Freak America, you know, going all the way back and then that, you know, the
Linux, link textual, you know, the Linux reality, a lot of the Linux links, although it shows
like a graph or something of, of all the shows when the start of when the finished.
Yeah, and absolutely, and I think that putting that, you know, somewhere is important for
folks that are, that are coming new to this to kind of understand the history, because
we, I think we've lost a little bit of that, because I, I don't really know, like when
shows started, when shows stopped, like what's a derivative of what?
Yeah, exactly.
And the, what's funny now is podcasting has never been so popular as it is in the, yeah,
I know.
And, and we were kind of ahead of our curve or ahead of our time back then because there
was so many, there was so much good content.
You know, circa 2008 to 2000, like 10, when I left, that was just so much, like you've
listed like five or six, and I could probably come up with five or six more on top of my
head.
And it was, it was a ridiculous amount of content we were pushing out.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Kevin, who's known from the podcast, Tuckstown, made his debut solo episode in 2015 with
HPL 1793 about open-source CD RIPPES.
Hello, hello, and welcome to our episode of Hacker Public Radio.
My name's Kevin, and whilst this isn't my very first appearance on Hacker Public Radio,
it is my first attempt at flying solo, so this is a totally new experience for me.
I thought my first ever episode, I thought I would do a brief roundup of just some CD
RIPPING software, open-source of course, that is available on the Linux system.
Through this episode, I hope to actually look at a variety, so I'm going to look at some
dedicated RIPPERS graphical and command line, and also take a wee look at a couple of complete
audio suites, which actually include the RIPPING abilities, which want to make a brief comment
about each and just compare them, and of course what I see is very subject, a subjection
level, I mean a lot of this down to personal taste, but I'm going to try and give my opinion
and be as balanced as I can.
Now, if you're a regular listener to my show Tux Jam, then you'll also know that I'm
a big fan of Creative Commons music, and I'm not letting you guys off with no music
in this episode either, so throughout the show we're going to get to and have some music
tracks from 20-pound sounds and blowing up bridges, so that's look forward to.
This brief walk through has just been the tip of the iceberg of the mixture of content
and the variety of hosts who have contributed, there's plenty to look back on and hopefully
plenty to look forward to.
Thanks for listening.
You have been listening to Hecker Public Radio at Hecker Public Radio does work.
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