Episode: 3351
Title: HPR3351: HPR Community News for May 2021
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3351/hpr3351.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 21:29:34

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3351, for Monday 7 June 2021.
Today's show is entitled, HPR Community News, for May 2021 and is part of the series HPR
Community News that is hosted by HPR Volunteers and is about 66 minutes long and carries an explicit flag.
The summary is, the HPR patrons are doing the rounds.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by archive.org.
Support universal access to all knowledge by heading over to archive.org forward slash donate.
Hi everybody, welcome to another edition of Hacker Public Radio. This time it's Community News
from May 2021. Joining me this evening is, hello, it's Dave Morris.
How are you Dave? I'm good, I'm good, it's 15-15 needs, so it's not quite evening yet, but
but you know who's counting? 16-15 here, Dave, is it closer?
Yeah, yeah, I'll let you off. Actually, it was one thing I noticed when I moved to the Netherlands,
in Ireland, time is a flexible thing, half an hour either way, you'd be grand.
Here are the cashiers and in the supermarkets will switch from good afternoon to good evening at
16-1800 exactly on the button. Oh yes, I quite like that, actually, but there you go.
Right, anyway, HPR Community News is not about local traditions in European countries,
it is about Hacker Public Radio, which in actual fact is a community on the interwebs,
and if you where the shows are submitted by random listeners, very similar to, in fact,
identical to people like your good self listening to the show. So that is why we always take
time to welcome the new hosts, and the new hosts this month are Dave.
I'm sure there's a lot of people out there feeling very guilty right now. You know who you are,
we expect better of you. Okay, that's enough about that, Dave. My best-made friend's voice.
Right, where were we? What we do? Yes, oh, bit of a reminder, yes, HPR Community News is the
idea is the juniors who are the people who keep HPR running administratively from today,
not necessarily those who were just some of the community members. We go through what has been
happening in the HPR community for the last month. Most important, they go through every show,
so you are at least every show gets some feedback. So we'll start with that. And the first show,
last month was HPR Community News. Yes, to which there was no feedback.
There were no feedback. What do we cover, Dave? What last last month?
We thought there was loads to discuss. Yeah, you would really? Yeah, yeah. We did an ad on
episode as well a bit later. Yeah, the more contentious stuff maybe. I don't know, we'll wait
and see if we go to any comments on that one. Okay. Looking into CEPH storage solution,
which was by Daniel Pearson's, and he also had a YouTube series on this.
Data objects, object store demons, that sort of thing. Basically, from what I could get,
it was a bit like an S3, Amazon S3, but that you run yourself.
Seemed very detailed. Lots of information on there if anyone was interested.
That was the only bit that really understood. But yeah, it sounds interesting with having a look
at if you're into that type of thing. Yeah, particularly if there's you want to run your own
cloud in your own data centers, for example. Yeah. And then Enigma came with Pandas part
dear. And this was a continuing discussion about favorite Python module Pandas, which is in the
little bit of Python series. And this is the tool for extracting data from spreadsheets and
CBS's. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, yeah, it's powerful stuff. It sounds like a lot of good stuff here,
and quite a nice way of getting into this type of data. There are other ways, obviously, but
writing all scripts or scripts or something is maybe not the best thing. So yeah.
Of course, if you say CSV three times, and we're all who turns up,
to say, good friend, be easy. Who said in his first comment, he said another great show.
Thanks for another great show. I look forward to your next one. As you use of pd.apply in
lieu of np.select. Here's my two cents. Apply is more readable in most cases, but select is more
performant. Where when performance matters or when the data is very large, you might want to use
np.select. For instance, when using np.select in your example here, the output was 10 times faster on my
pc. It gives an example. Unfortunately, he tried to use markdown. Anyway, yeah, the days were going to
likelihood of us putting markdown in the comments seems probably a little bit slow, but a bit low,
I should say, but anyway, yeah, interesting examples, which I won't read out, and he says finally,
in many cases, the readability can trump the need for speed, but just wanted to give a counterpoint.
And then he followed that up with one more speak gain. If you really want to fly, you can turn on
pandas series to numpty arrays. For your example, I got twice as fast as the regular np.select,
so 10 times faster. Wow. That was numpy, by the way. Yeah, numpty in Scotland means you're
needing it. Yes, that's why I said that we did. Which appeals to me, I'm sure it doesn't, nobody else
will get it. Not the first time people have loved that one of me, and I'm sure it won't be the last.
So the following day, Linux in laws, if you're listening, the one and only Linux kernel
contributor panel. Now, this was quite an interesting gathering of people.
Yeah, you did well to put this together to be told. Indeed, it is some heavyweights here,
and got some really interesting things to say. Yeah, yeah, it was, as you say, it was congratulations
on having got together such a team. Very good. He didn't actually list the panel members,
which is a bit. No, he didn't. You're quite right. And I was just looking through that.
I think he mentioned them in the show, because I might not say some impressive people,
so it's just presumably they were listed. But yeah, it would have been nice to have had some sort of
bio or something like that in the notes, wouldn't it? Yeah, let's add a comment to that you're asking for.
Yeah, we need to update that. Didn't necessarily buy the argument about the, about the,
they, they, they, they benevolent dictator for life, and that gives you carte blanche to be.
Yeah, yeah, didn't necessarily buy that argument, but that was countered by
during the show as well. So that was, that was good. Not a great believer in benevolent dictators
of any sort, because, you know, things can change. Yeah. Well, it's the, the part was about the
welcoming community, the benevolent dictator is another thing. Jury still out on that one, but
okay, they're a mask project. This is the Gimp, and this is a hooker who chokes away at
that, basically, an entire series of stuff. And I must say, I'm learning so much from this.
And again, some of these shows, you're going, well, that's, that's kind of obvious, isn't it?
And then by the end of the show, you're going, okay, I, I really would never, obviously,
what it may have been, I would never have known this. And he's just presented it in a fashion
that you don't need to learn it yourself. No, it's great. It'll definitely be the time when I
want to pull Gimp out and start doing some of this sort of stuff. This will be a great place to go
and find or follow the links, actually, the links it, brilliant. Yeah. And true to his word,
Taj, put together a podcasting how to on getting the microphone, what microphone to pick.
And this is going to be linked to in the series on, on how to get the best audio.
Yeah, yeah. This is really good. I really enjoyed this. It's a step by step. I like it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And although I fiddle around with microphones and done stuff and you
there with dynamic and condenser and stuff, I didn't know at this level of information. And
you know, there's, there's a lot to be learned there. I have a condenser mic and that explains why
somebody, the other side of the house is scratching themselves, you can hear it. Not that many.
There is nobody, nobody scratch you here at the moment. But when I, when I had a cat, the cat was
always making a racket. So shall I read Tray's comment? Please do. Yeah. Tray says, great episode.
Thanks for the advice. Looking forward to the next episodes in this series.
Yeah, excellent. Very much agree.
My current devices, a list, short list of tablets and forms that I'm using these days.
And sadly, it is a GWP. Sadly, no open source handheld devices these days, but Android may count
though. Yes. But it's also, it was nice to get a rundown on his devices because it kind of confirms
my own suspicions that I want to get some tablets for the house when we move back in.
And yeah, there's, you know, what, what solution do you pick if you want an open source
only thing I see now is the pine book. That's pretty much it.
Yep. Yep. I know. I know. It's my daughter just bought a new M1 iPad because she says there's
nothing. Well, she's, she's an artist in a spare time. So what else could I use? You know,
they're possibly one of the Microsoft ones, but I don't know anything about them. But, you know,
she has very little choice in what she, what she could use and what software and so on.
Yeah. So breaking the cardinal guideline, GWP did two shows in a row. He and GWP and Platto
see me after class. Well, technically, when Platto does that, he's doing use posting different
series, but okay, we'll see. I will be talking about that later. So it's amazing actually.
You can go years without something happening on HPR, like triggering of the guidelines.
And then in the one month, we had like four or five different opinions where people didn't read
their guidelines. So I don't know. We'll talk, we'll talk, we'll talk, we're doing a pick anybody
out individually. GWP. Because I shouldn't be picking a GWP because I know that man has guns. So
but like I'm all about him a good beer and then that's hopefully all making feel better.
Anyway, this is a grave rundown on the state of pine 64 bordering on a paid advertisement GWP.
Following all from his old suddenly, I now do have an open source tablet. See what's happening
here Dave? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This was this is most interesting though. I'm
used a little about these things. It was good to hear his summaries. I must say I have not had
great look with pine 64 as a project as yet. And I think that's just bad look at my partner.
So but I really do support what they're trying to do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm tempted, but I just
bought myself a a fair phone because my own phone is giving up a one plus one is very very very old
now. But so yeah, I'm not I'm not running after a pine phone quite quite yet, but it's enormously
tempting. I got one and yeah, it's I changed some setting on us and now the keyboard is the screen
instantly locks and I can't once you type anything to unlock it to the screen. It goes back in
the sleep mode and the screen is locked again. So yeah, I'm sure I can fix it, but it's just after
the saga, I went through to get it. I just lost all will to live with some characters and
sometimes you see that would be frustrating. Yeah. Leave another. However, what I did see was
keyboard thing, which I will get the keyboard battery. And basically you've got a mobile phone device
that you can have a full keyboard like, you know, back in the day. And then I'll put some sort of
basic operation system on it that. So it's not going away. It's just I don't have the energy for
right now. I understood. The InfoSec broadcast general information security, privacy and security.
This is where Tray is going through podcasts recommendations for the information security
arena. And he's broken, broken, broken it down into several different sections. And I'm enjoying
this quite a lot because nice and bite size. Yeah. Yeah. So you had a good job of giving a comprehensive
list with obviously good URLs and stuff. And nice, punchy summaries of what it is he's talking
about. So yeah, it's an amazing resource for this stuff is the thing if you want to get into it.
And I've had requests for this sort of stuff. People have asked me for podcast recommendations
in the past specifically related to security. So this is a great break down. Long may they continue.
And excellent show notes obviously. Yes, they are. They're nice too. I just turn them into HTML.
He sends them in as kind of a plain text, I think. But yeah, they're really nice to work with.
Yeah. And the following day we had a podcast recommendation. Some of them are self after I heard
her car on the platoon thing. Oh, gonna go over there. Yeah. Yeah. And I thought, oh,
you know, that's definitely something for HPR. And he kindly CC zeroed his podcast so that he could
do that. So there you go. That's good. Excellent. Excellent. Yep. So it's an interesting sound. I've
not listened to the podcast yet, but it certainly sounds like it is well worth a listen.
Yeah, it's, I've had a few listens while I was waiting for people. And yeah, not really,
you know, it's not that I'm particularly into anarchy or whatever, but it's norm to
it's something that has always been for me where people have said, oh, anarchist, you know,
okay, you know, punk punk rock, that sort of thing. It's something you don't talk about and don't
discuss and don't think about. But it's, you know, if platoon is saying this is the way to go,
then it's worth opening your mind to at least the arguments and you can then at least
with comfort dismiss them, if you wish. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was some talk show I listened to
his podcast in the past few months where I forget what the topic was, but they were saying
one of the people we're going to talk to is an anarchist. This is an academic in the UK university.
And there was all the sort of sniggering and tittering of, oh, of course, you know, the
there's been a hell of an awful piece of publicity done against the concept of anarchism with
that huge ignorance as to what it actually means. And she did an amazing job of explaining what
the anarchist view on this subject was, I guess I can't remember where it was, but yeah, I was
just impressed at the clear sightedness that was that was shown there. So yeah, something from
mostly who well worth looking into. You have to course the princess bride on this. I do not think
this word means what you think it means. Yeah, don't you? Yes, that's very much the case. But it's
one of these things where you could say the powers that be who decided this is not for the
hyperloy. So, you know, getting poisoned in their minds and they won't want to have anything
to do with it, you know. So the following day, we had the first in the New Year shows from Honki.
This was another one that I had to space out every two weeks. That's a pain in the ass, but
that amount of pain in the ass was nothing compared to what editing 26-hour show was. So thank you
very much, Honki. We may need to come up with a way for to do mass uploads.
That's something that we need to do. Anyway, it's worth a thought. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That would explain what we're on about soon. We'll have a big block of stuff then. Yeah,
yeah. Doing one and then putting them in and it can be a pain.
Yeah, it's really designed around the single shot thing, isn't it? Yeah. If you have a lot
that you want to submit, then it's a different door game. So, this was the first show when I was about
obviously COVID, Brexit, everybody should be using IS-8601. Obviously, there was me filling that out.
What a surprise.
Yeah, stuff.
Good to see. It was an interesting thing. I had joined in on this bit of the whole recording.
Probably got a little bit too tired later on, but yeah, it was good to listen back to it and
it was good to be involved, actually. I enjoyed that. Yeah, I've been known to be hostile in the
past to the HPR show due to limitations of my own making. Namely, I felt it should come out
straight away when an actual fact, no, it shouldn't. But I'm really glad Hunky is doing this and that's
it's really nice to listen back to it. Sometimes when a three-hour short drops and TFED,
you're on OMG, do I really want to listen to this and considering I've been on some of it. But
the amount of stuff that you missed, very much. I've gone through the same process and then
you know, it ends and I think, oh, that's a shame. Oh, when's the next one? I think that's it.
Oh, yeah, Hunky writes, thanking. I would like to thank Dave Morris for fixing the show notes.
Thanks, Dave. Early welcome, Hunky. That's fine. He surprised me by going through all of the
shows and thanking and all the people involved, which is of course a sound good one, which yeah,
yeah, that was a very nice touch I thought. So I like that the board is stuck, which is a dramatic
reading by Daniel Pearson. We had a little bit of problem, little bit issues with this one as
all so that was that was funny. We got this one released under a creative commons non-commercial,
no derivatives, 3.0, unported license. But I want to tell you that this article and hearing him
reading it was just cheered my day up and met all the work associated with this, which wasn't too much,
just I emailed the person for the permission. Oh, metal all worth it. So that was, I really did
like this show. Yes, yes. I'd read the actual item because it was it was mentioned all over the
place on Macedon and various places. But I really enjoyed the reading of it. That was that was
nicely done. Yes. And the fact that it was it was brought to HBR's attention I thought was
really cool as well, you know, it's a it's a very it's an example of taking a thing where everybody
is getting really worked up about it or at least maybe we're supposed to be getting worked up
about it. But and taking a very different view of it and and I thought that it was completely
brilliant. Yeah, I think if there's one show this month that want to put a smile on your face
or listen to this one. Yeah, very much so. We had one comment from M. Pardo who said it's the most
enjoyable article I've ever read with the possible exception of those that might have been
more enjoyable. That's that's a bit of a qualification and excellent dramatic reading as well.
Cheers. Oh, fantastic, fantastic. Following day, this is one of the most boring ones that you're
going to get on the network this month. However, I would strongly advise anybody who does has the
troubleshooting or a third line support in their title to be making copious notes of this one.
And that is tattoo's episode on open SSL s underscore client which works like tell net
and allows you to do the tell netty type stuff that we used to do to troubleshoot
email connections and that sort of thing. And this is a web server op that you can connect to it.
That on SSL ports. So if you ever wanted to connect to a mailbox to see if it was working,
you would turn it to the ports, you know, the pop three port or something.
SMTP port and then, you know, say hello and log in and do your commands.
But that's not possible over TLS. What this allows you to do is do that thing. It does the SSL
connection as well. It's not very good stuff.
Yeah, I hadn't knew nothing of this. I had stopped doing this type of thing. I've had the past
11 years now. So, you know, not too surprising. But, you know, had I been faced with needing to do
this sort of stuff, then this would have, and it's relatively new, is it? It's not been around
for a long time. I didn't quite mention whether it was a recent addition to Open SSL.
It certainly wasn't around in the days when I first started using Open SSL. But still, you know,
it's very, very cool. And yeah, everybody should know about it. And it's a great way to do this sort
of stuff. So yeah, brilliant. Excellent. Good, good, very important piece of information.
I'll put this one up with the day I learned that control or goes back in command history and
bash. That's how important this one is. Yes, indeed, indeed. No, it's great. I've yet to find a
need for it at home. But, you know, maybe rethink that. I did at one point have a, there is a port.
If you look through the, is it, what's it, CETRA services or something? This lists all the ports.
And I remember noticing there was one marked as password or something. So you could put a password
service behind there, which when you, you poked it with telnet would come back and give you a password,
which is not very secure. I remember setting that off. People who just could not manage to make
passwords, just just get one off there. But yeah, it was telnet. So it wasn't, it was not really
much of a solution. Now I can't believe it. Right. Next day, we had little in laws of police
politicians and artificial intelligence part two. This is actually a nice series with some good
links in this month. Yes, yes. There's certainly going into quite a lot of depth with this,
which is, which is good, which is necessary, I think, because it's a, it's a multi-layer topic,
isn't it? So yeah, beginning to understand a little bit more about what TensorFlow is and stuff.
So the next day, we had Kevin, a hookah with privacy and security episode about
as someone who has reasons to be on Facebook. I've gotten used to seeing people warn that their
accounts was hacked and we should not accept your friends, friend requests from them. It is so
common that you would wonder if Facebook had no security at all, but the truth is something
different I'm more annoying about. Yeah, wasn't it? I thought this was really good, actually.
I did not, I mean, obviously Facebook is, I don't touch Facebook. I did have an account,
I deleted it with this year, in fact. But never used it anyway. But yeah, it is, it is obviously
a place that's going to be attacked a lot. And this cloning of account is a very unpleasant
attack. And yeah, yeah. So good, I didn't know the advice. So yeah, good advice, as you say.
We got my wife, got SMS or WhatsApp message from somebody going, and the text was,
hey, Dad, I got a new form. Can you add me to your contacts?
Oh, I thought that was actually pretty feckin clever, you know, you have 50-50 chance.
You're going to hit somebody who's not very tech savvy and go, oh, okay.
And there we go. Yeah, yeah. So easy. And then the follow-up from that is that they ring,
saying that they're somewhere on that they need, you just send money.
Just, that's the second part of that hack. Yep, yep, yep, yep. Oh, let's invite them.
Anyway, a challenge for you, Rune from JWP. We want to get Getty serial terminal for a main frame.
So, there you go. Yeah. First time I saw somebody doing a challenge
the show, what I approve, so far. No, it's good, it's good. I didn't make a note of what the
main frame was, but presumably an IBM, is it? There's a HB 700.
I started to support you for this terminal. Yeah, I don't know what the main frame.
Does main frame now mean IBM?
Just like the, I don't know, that would be hard to put in it. Yeah, it would.
It wasn't that way in my day. But yeah, my colleague, one of my ex-colleagues, and I have done
a little bit of fiddling around with getting the open VMS running on pies. Well, he still
worked. I've just sort of been, I used to manage the VMS system at the university work time.
So, he, he was just explaining what was involved. You can get a license from the HP
that owns it now. Yeah, it is. And you can get a hobbyist license and run the MS on a pie.
But I also build a cluster, build a, build a pie cluster with the MS,
which is, but I, I, yeah, I'm not quite sure why you want to accept it.
I look forward to hearing the show, do you?
Well, I'll get my pal Kevin to, who will, who will say, no, I'm not doing that.
I'll pull a bottle of something in front of them and see what happens.
Yeah, I've often said to him, he should come and talk to us about the stuff.
Private. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's, it's an ongoing attempt on going project.
Okay, next day was the second New Year's Eve show. And you could tell I wasn't on because
there was no talk about ISO, it's a one date. But the ones talk about heated roads and driveways,
distilling spurts, geek talk and single board computers.
And honky says, thank you, I would like to thank Kevin, we share for running the stream for the New
Year show. Cool. Cool. The fourth programming language, Brian and Ohio next day. And a little bit of
history, what it's about. And more videos on said. And a link to Tatoo's episode on this.
Yeah, yeah. I know this is, this is brilliant. I really, I had this on my list because I haven't
done much with the fourth, but I did have fourth on my old BBC Micro as a, as a ROM. And I ran
a version for the driver's synthesizer that was connected to my BbMicro 16 channel synthesizer thingy,
which I'll talk about one day. But yeah, but I've never, there's been a lot to do this for the past
10 years at least. So glad somebody else has done it. And this is really nicely done, very well done.
I enjoyed hearing the stuff here that I didn't know about talk. So it's my turn to read.
Thank you for my, thank you for my gesture. KG says my experience of fourth at S.A.O.
Well, that is not sure. So anyway, interesting show. I was a grad student in Arizona working with
the Gamma Ray group at S.A.O's Whipple Observatory. Just, so I don't find out what that is.
Something Arizona observatory. You continue reading and I'll look it up. My first task was to
develop a tracking system for the 10 meter atmospheric Cherenkov telescope. We used fourth
running on a Z80 door to board hosted by an Apple 2. The same hardware was used to control a 24-inch
telescope. That system was developed by a fellow who'd worked for S.A.O satellite tracking program.
In fact, several other staff members at Whipple had traveled the planet, installing, operating and
maintaining the bacon-none cameras used to photograph satellites and determine their orbital
elements. The amusing thing is that a couple of years after I graduated, they replaced the Apple 2
with a PC and tried to reverse engineer the fourth code. Given that the tracking code wasn't all
that complicated, this was sheer insanity. My experience with fourth is that even your own code
came rapidly inscrutable. Probably a fraction of my coding accident at the time rather than fourth itself.
Yes. It is. There are similarities in my mind too, Lisp, because the components are
really simple. Yet you can build some amazingly complicated things, layer upon layer using it.
It's not a thing I'm having any expertise in, really. I've never been that level of a programmer,
but yeah, it's quite, I'm sure it's easy to write stuff that is very, very hard to understand once
you've done it. I'm trying to find out what S.A.O is and all I can find is something in Arizona
and that it is something to do with the telescope.
Yeah. Not a name I know, but so. So, yes, folks, remember what you think is obvious?
I might not be obvious to everybody else. So, pretty good, really. If anyone knows what
S.A.O. is, Toss. It's a great comment though. It's good to hear from S.A.O.
Yes, it's been that close to it. Fantastic. Does bugs be a sure too?
I would have thought of myself. Well, yeah. Fourth, it's a very, very strange language,
right? Limited experience. But yeah, it really makes you think very, very differently.
Yeah, but this guy's working as a gamma ray group in the Whipple Observatory, right there.
That's a show, Dave. Oh, quite. Yes, yes, indeed.
Yeah, take one step back here. Hello, my name is KG. Here's my introduction to technology.
I just throw a random comment about working on Z80s and Apple twos and a great big telescope in
this guy. Okay, might be of interest to hackers. Okay, very good.
Must be the heat. We're not we're not up to our usual standards here, Dave.
That's fairly warm here, actually. We're heading for it. Yeah. Anyway,
Trey comes with the third, which is about a career and personal development within InfoSec
and podcast that would assist you with that. So I highly recommended you tuning and listen to
those shows. Yeah, good stuff. Excellent stuff. And then we had the second entages episodes
about improving audio. And this time was about equalization, which was kind of interesting,
actually, to hear the actual examples because, you know, people describe it, but it's
nice to hear. And to that end, Archers says 72 said another great episode. Thanks for continuing
this series. The samples of types of equalization were enlightening. Also, there are now no crickets
from you, Randermal Casta. Yes. So yeah, I find this another very useful insight.
I know how equalization works in a general sense of twitter for the things, but I don't have
touches deeper knowledge. So if it's great that he shared it at that level, I found it most useful.
So yes, following day we had New Year's episode part three. The history of community stops by
for a chat. Adjusting next cloud time and date. Why can't I? Guess who was back.
And carries on. Doctor, who at the end? And you do this comment, please.
Wow, there's a lot went on in that one, wasn't it? I've forgotten how much it was. So Honki says,
thanking again, I would like to thank Ken Fallon for his job recording this podcast. It was because
of his fine recording of the stream that this podcast happened. Thank you very much, Honki.
The reason this podcast happened was because you edited it and posted it. That's why it was happened.
Yeah, that was a good one actually. And John Colg came on that one. And he was talking about his
his recumbent bike. Yes, which is good. There were lots of all to voices. Yeah, excellent.
Very good. Next day Paul Crockett did an ethical analysis of renewable energy and conservation.
And I mean, have you fallen off the end of the month? I have. I have. You've done that thing.
And tune in next month to find out what happens there. Do, do, do, do. I meant to do that day.
I meant to do that. Of course you did. Of course you did. It's a teaser. But the next month.
Teaser is well done. So there were five comments to previous shows on the network. And Dave
the love bug sent in a comment to HPR 2499 back in 2018, which was a Mr X show in the
in the Han radio series tuning around on the HF 40 meter band. Having just joined the ranks
of amateur radio users, I it made sense for me to look at HPR episodes relating to amateur radio.
I loved this episode. Very interesting listening to conversations on the 14 meter bands.
Real hardcore users on seven megahertz. I did notice that the German station to F sorry Delta Fox
to Bravo Oscar wasn't using the NATO fanatic alphabet. Is this a common occurrence?
And Mr X says, hi Dave, sorry for taking a bit of time to reply. I noticed the comment
flag up in my RSS reader. And then probably forgot all about it. Things have been crazy busy here.
I only remembered thanks to a gentle prod by Dave Morris. Glad you enjoyed the show. By
coincidence, I turned my HF set on just last weeks. Something haven't done for a good long while.
I must admit to being a bit rusty with the latest rules and regulations related to remember that
certainly here in the UK you were encouraged to use the NATO fanatic alphabet. I've certainly heard
various stations using different fanatics. Perhaps they think it's easier to hear
under noisy conditions or perhaps they just like the sound of it. Personally, I just stick with
the NATO fanatic alphabet. Dave mentioned you recently became an amateur so many congratulations.
I'm sure you'll have lots of fun with the hobby. If there are so many directions, it can take you all
of us Mr X. Very good. And next cloud application updates by Turget and the other script to
automatically update next cloud, which is probably obvious. And the comment was by
I have no idea how you would pronounce that. I'm not to cure that. Why, why,
cheer, chouch, I don't know, I don't know. Okay, safe question mark. What if an updated app is
incompatible with the current next cloud version? That would be so basically what happens if the
automated process fails. So maybe Turget can do another episode to describe in that.
So next we had a comment on Clackay's show 3-3-1-7 reading a manifesto towards a
cooperative technology movement. And Aaron C says raises an excellent point. I'm just commenting
to say that this manifesto and subsequent show make an excellent point. The free software
community as it stands has good and is as discussed well guarded principles with no compromise.
Well, this is admirable. It's also what's killing the movement. Like language, all movements
must eventually morph or evolve over time or they die off. It's completely acceptable to maintain
a core set of tenets, of course, but having a figurehead who uses the internet in bizarre and
arcane ways makes free software more like a paranoid nest of conspiracy theorists than it does to
make technological progress by freeing the user from the constraints of mega corporations.
Free software is inevitably political, but the mocking and jeering of people who still use
proprietary software scared off companies and created the open source movement, which if anything
made it easier for mega corporations to profit off the collectivized free labor of programmers
who cared enough to donate their time. To me, the free software stalwarts were the progenitors
of their own worst enemy, which is open source. They allowed it to happen themselves and
foster the likes of Google and Facebook. The FSF concentrates too much on acting like a single
state communist party with its attention focused on creating a cultural personality around
storm. I agree the rich of the movement today should reflect more social needs, creating
software for the good of the people, even if that makes software socialist.
Well-reasoned argument? Good one. And if you disagree, record a show. Infasex security
podcasts, news and current events by Trey, Kevin O'Brien says that he really liked the show.
For the details we are, it is great to hear about the podcasts you follow. I recognize many of
them as shows are used to follow, though frankly since retiring, I have been putting my energy into
other matters. I'm turning 70 in a few months and have other priorities now.
Yep. One of which is supplying HBR with a steady feed of shows. Absolutely, yes, yes, that's a
very active one. We approve of this. Then there are seven comments for this show, then anything on
the news mail list? There's nothing. There's nothing on it. Not mailing this, isn't it?
It's just the one, just me saying about this episode, I think. Yeah. And so we're going to
the other business because I've around time. I don't think so. But any other business,
a lot, this month we've had a lot of shows coming in clusters. So back in the day,
the queue was kind of a thing that was assigned to people. And then there were rules about,
if you do this, then that new horse will do this and then that. And then we just left it up to
the community. And that has turned out to be the best way to manage the queue. Because there is
no discussion about who submitted the show when and somebody else's show got released before
mine and all that sort of stuff. Because you pick the day that you pick. However, we have this
continuous problem with HPR of the solitude effect. We get no shows, then we get a lot of shows,
then we get a lot of shows, then it gradually drains off and we have a call for shows,
then we get a lot of shows and then it gradually fills off and we get a lot of shows,
then we have no shows again. So that's the, that's nothing new. That is
pretty much a common problem in think of it like at a hydroelectric power station where
you've got a dam and you're controlling, you have no control over the amount of water that goes in.
The only thing you can do is they control the amount of water that comes out. So you as a host,
when you're submitting your HPR shows, we have guidelines up there that will help us
spread out the shows so that there are slots in there available for new hosts that come along,
or returning hosts, or somebody who's got a show. Because if you go to the, to the counter now,
you see that there's the first available show is nearly in a month's time and you're thinking to
yourself, oh, month's time, well, HPR must have loads of shows. But we still have over 250
available slots in this year or 150 available slots in this year. So we do not have loads of shows.
So what we ask, what we've done is written on the very top of the page when you upload some
guidelines. First of all, that you need to have an audio recording ready before you pick a slot.
And the reason for that is that's just what we've agreed. It's all fair that if you just can't
randomly go and pick a slot and then go, oh, I will record it five minutes before the day. So you
have to have your recording done. If that's not the case, if for any reason that doesn't apply,
for example, the community news show, then that needs to be approved by the mailing list.
That goes for everybody, including me. So always try and fill any free slots that are coming up
in the next two weeks. So if you go to the, to the main page and you see a free slot in the next two
weeks, then you've, you pick those two, you pick that slot first, you pick the first slot that you can
because we need to make, we have a lead time to populate the feed. So that's, that's important to do
that. But then if the queue is filling up as in the first two weeks or full, then consider leaving
some free slots for new contributors. So if there's a free slot, the first two weeks are full,
and then there's a free slot in the third week, then leave it there. That's fine, because more
than likely somebody will look at the queue and go, hey, there's a free slot and I'll pop my show in
there. If you see that there are five free slots in the third week, then you could put it on the
Friday or put it on the Thursday or something like that and start filling it from Friday,
Thursday or Wednesday, leaving that free, free slot there. Am I making sense so far, Dave?
Indeed so yes. So if you have a non-origin show and you know the queue is in a pretty healthy stage,
so that, you know, the first two weeks are full and the third week is beginning to fill up,
then go down and find a week that doesn't have any shows at all. So right now,
um, operator and a hookah are running some series, and what they do is they're following
they are actually hookahs. Um, if you're uploading a series of shows, consider scheduling one
every two weeks. Now, what I want to do there is clarify that out to mean, if any host is submitting
more than one show, then there should be two weeks between their shows. So a hookah will pick
the Fridays and then 10 days later we'll pick a Friday and 10 days later we'll pick a Friday.
So that's how that works. And operator posted a wedgie shows one after the other, which in fairness
was the way we did it back in the day. And, uh, I asked and got his permission to move those out,
but frankly, that was a pen in the ass and just operating, nothing to do with operator. It's just
if people are submitting a load of shows, then we should have a better way of doing that, um,
that we can space them out automatically. So I've been thinking about that as well, possibly having
something in, change something in the workflow that based on your email address, you will get a
notification in the email link saying, um, yeah, you've selected this day, but you've already got
this show scheduled on this day. Do you want to pick this day instead? Um, and there are cases where
people might not want to do that there. These are guidelines. For example, you have a show schedule,
same, uh, hookah has a show schedule here. And then something comes up, uh, that's very important,
you know, that's time critical. And it must be released on the, on the, on the date of the next
available slot. Then that's a reasonable thing to do is to override that guideline and, and just
post the show. But most people who are uploading shows are not aware of these guidelines and just
post them one after the other. And what that has the effect of creating a load jam in the queue,
queueing system so that there's no space for shows coming in. And then people will look,
all those three months. So I'm not going to wait and I'm not a week after that. I'm going to post
my show in the first available slot, which will be, which is just pushing the load jam more and more
and more. Did I don't know if I've explained the issue correctly? It's a hard one to explain it,
isn't it? It's, uh, yeah, yeah, it's, uh, it's obvious when you're dealing with it, but maybe not
so much when you're trying to, um, give the, the, the advice is to how to avoid the problem, you know,
it's, it's, it's a difficult one. It's a difficult one. But yeah, I can't think of a better way of
putting it than these, than he's written here though, I have to say. Yeah, yeah. So the way I like
the queue to be is that two weeks are full. And then the third week is filling up that and then,
you know, it should be tapering off after that. Three weeks, you know, uh, so two weeks for the third
week would still have one free slot in us. The fourth week might have two free slots in us, the fifth
week, uh, three, and then the remaining weeks, um, would have, uh, one show posted, you know,
that kind of thing. That's because we, we keep, uh, I don't know, many weeks, uh, one, two, three,
four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve weeks on the main page that you can pick.
And then if you pick a date for the, anytime in the next year, it gets listed in the
also schedule section. So, um, why is that important? Just,
particularly, this particularly tends to happen when, um, we do a call for shows and people submit
shows. So say we have five people are interested in submitting shows and then they go to the queue
and they see that the, the queue is now full. Then of those, we might lose three because they go,
well, I really don't need to submit a show. And then worse, the next time they hear a call for
shows, they're going, uh, well, you know, by the time I put a show together, it will be full again.
So, um, yeah, steady and, um, try and keep the queue under control.
Yes. I've certainly heard, well, seeing people mention in, um,
mastered on stuff, things like, well, yeah, I was thinking of submitting a show and I was going to
choose such and such a slot. But that means it won't come out until, no, two months down the road
or something, you know, and, uh, if you got yourself to the point where you, you know, you,
you psyched yourself, you hit up to the point where you can actually produce something where you've
been quite reluctant before. And that's a, that's not a fun thing. Um, yeah. But on the other hand,
having an empty queue because somebody forgets, oh, and then you, you can back to it. We could have
this discussion next month, and the queue could be, uh, entirely empty. We might not get, uh, a show
right up until the next month, when is, uh, so we're about half full, uh, between now and next month.
But we've had months to where we didn't get anything coming in. Yeah, the queue was completely
full, and then the shows, uh, people stopped submitting shows. But really, all of this should be
summarized me while floating on again, down to, uh, the point where, um, it is the person submitting
the shows who also needs to take responsibility for keeping the queue from being, uh, completely messed up.
Yep, yep. Well, the other factor is that a block of shows from the same host can,
you know, it's the, it may, there may be variety in that, that block. But, but, um, often it,
it wouldn't be quite, quite as varied as the normal state of state of play on HBR. And the,
the variety is one of the things that attracts people quite a lot. So, you know,
trying to ensure that as much variety as possible is maintained. Is, uh, is, is, is a desirable thing.
So that's another reason why you shouldn't do that.
So I'm thinking of proposing a change to the male list saying if you're uploading a series of
shows considering scheduling one every two weeks, I think that should be clarified to, because
a series of shows, somebody might assume that to be, for example, taking a hookah, who, who,
schedules the shows on every two weeks, all of them. You might have a series on, I have three
shows on this topic and then I've got three shows on another topic. So I'll post on the Monday
from topic A and on Tuesday from topic B. So rather than, uh, rather than meaning that what it
should read is if you're uploading multiple shows considering scheduling one every two weeks.
Yep. Yep. Or even stronger, it would be better to schedule one every two weeks.
Yep. That seems reasonable. Okay. I'll, uh, add send out a mail to the male list about that
and see what people think. Okay, okay. So in other, any other business, I just wanted to say that
having written a script which can go backwards through the list of shows and upload them to
archive.org, I've been trying to do, you know, actually doing about five a day when I get a chance.
So the sum total, since last, the last community news, I've uploaded 96 in the range of, um, show one
to 870. So, um, we have everything from 700 to 870 now uploaded. So, um, yeah.
I can keep that, keep that going. Then, uh, we should be able to clear a backlog before too long.
That is grid news. That's grid news. And, um, the other thing is the tags and summaries.
I've done a few myself this month. I try and do, do, uh, a few, at least.
It's not always possible because life gets busy, but I've done seven. So, we've got 377,
which still need a summary or tags or both. You're chugging away through them, though.
Gradually, gradually, slow and surely. I just had a comment to the Linux and laws
absurd to remind tasks them to submit the names. Show notes. Yes. Uh, reminder,
stuff you need to know, HPR will stop as a podcast. If they're not enough shows,
we do not syndicate shows that are not produced by HPR. You're green to license your show,
CC by SA. This is important, people. You need to have the copyright for everything in your show.
You have permission to redistribute the show in its entirety. Your show will not be monitored.
Uh, your show will be signaled as containing explicit content. You determine where the schedule
you show will be released. Use UTF-8 intent or at least try to show be held by an international,
heard by an international audience. We also need emergency shows and we will, you will no longer
be allowed to edit HPR pages on wiki pdf. That's the stuff you need to know. All of it is important.
Any of it that you don't do means more work for us, Dave. Essentially. Yep, yep. And we don't
like work, Dave. But we don't. We have our lives rather than happy, totally dedicated to HPR.
Yeah, no, all mess and aside, people, these guidelines lost me about 12 hours of work this month.
That's that's how much. And admittedly, normally it doesn't. We don't get the color of that.
But it just so happened that this month that cost me 12 hours over the total month and hour here
and an hour and a half. They're emailing 15 months here, getting replies during the day.
So it is not a trivial amount. You need to, um, you're uploading stuff and you're putting us
the entire project on the line. So, yeah, please spend the time to, you know, just think before
you upload, make sure that you're doing what you're supposed to do. Yeah, ending very, very school
tea tree this month, Dave, almost cut into me. Right? Well, yes, we don't want to be putting people
in detention, you know, so, so go write a show at your homework for next week, pick a topic
and submit a THPR. And the title is anything that is of interest to hackers.
Yes. So yes, yes, I'm desperately trying to break my failure to produce many shows
that COVID has done to me. So, but yeah, two shows just been added to the Q1 by
my good friend McNally and one by myself. So, sort of, the interest to get back into doing
regular shows again tonight. It's the, the, the lockdowns and all that stuff.
Mess people up in different ways, you know, but there you go. Yeah, hopefully we're coming out of it.
I've got my, um, got my vaccination this month. So, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you've got a single
vaccination. I'm like, that's what I did. Yeah. So, I'm so sure you have to go back for a second one.
Yeah. And then two days later, the council is here. There's no longer given that vaccination
dose to people. Yeah. That's all very strange. Yeah. Yeah. They run out of something.
No, they, uh, the risk of blood clots is fine. So, you know, they, they can afford to lose people
of my age in the population. They can't afford to lose the other people because they have to pay
the pensions of the politicians, you know. Well, right. Yeah, yeah. Because I got AstraZeneca.
My son got his first shot this, this week, and he got the Pfizer.
The AstraZeneca has got, um, association with blood clots, but not if he was old as I am. And, uh,
the Pfizer doesn't have such an association. So, the youngsters, uh, get that one. So, yeah, it's all,
it's all sorts of weird things going on. Yeah. But then again, you look at it as
then the risk of getting a blood clot in itself is equal to that of getting struck by lightning.
So, okay, I can, uh, and even then it's treatable. And then you're into, again, getting struck by lightning.
If you, uh, if it gets complicated. So, and on the other hand, you know, we all,
everybody's got to die sometime. Indeed. Indeed. On that happy note.
So, mit your shores now before it's too late, folks.
I live for immortality on archive.org. Absolutely. Yeah. Don't die, yes, it says my, my wife.
I don't die at all at the same time. That's the plan. So, spread it out a bit, that's it, yeah.
Yeah, spread it out. What did you say? I can't deal with the kids on my own after that. Well,
we'll see then. I'm recording this, you know.
Say hello to the HP or audience, because I'm not editing this out.
Okay, bye. Tune in to mother for another exciting episode of
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