HPR

Posted at 2026-11-03 21:00:36 relating to the show hpr4718 which was released on 2026-09-02 by Whiskeyjack entitled Programmable Logic Controls - Episode 2

thanks, Whiskeyjack, for taking the time and expertise to answer this mortal. very appreciated knowledge to a so narrow-mind of me thinking 0x000434 (any memory adress) is a pinnacle of complexity when, depending on the size of the project (and the skill of the programmer), it is not any higher ground than using variables.

yes, for a podcast, your choice of what to delve on is definitely a must.

Posted at 2026-11-03 00:04:58 relating to the show hpr4718 which was released on 2026-09-02 by Whiskeyjack entitled Programmable Logic Controls - Episode 2

In the series on PLCs I stuck mainly to older systems as they are simpler and so can be more easily explained in a podcast.

Some later PLCs used their programming software (or IDE) to add layers of abstraction to addressing which could be seen as the equivalent of named variables as opposed to address based.

Manual memory assignment was not actually that difficult in practice, but your point of view on that may depend on the size and complexity of projects that you worked on.

There is much to be said for simple PLCs and programming software when your objective is to bang out small projects quickly without having to become an expert in many different brands of different proprietary PLCs.

So, your point of view on this can vary depending on what sort of projects you worked on.

Posted at 2026-11-02 21:05:04 relating to the show hpr3771 which was released on 2023-01-16 by Paul Quirk entitled How I eliminated pain naturally

Hi Paul.
This was a so inspiring show, uplifting too. Thanks for your sharing and many blesses to your health and in everything!

I'm feeling discomfort in my wrists and back of the left hand in the last months; was checking for ergonomic mouse and keyboard but didn't go for one yet. Listing to your recommendations I think that is a way to go for good.

Posted at 2026-11-02 20:32:55 relating to the show hpr4718 which was released on 2026-09-02 by Whiskeyjack entitled Programmable Logic Controls - Episode 2

Me listening: 'PC stands for' (Personal Computer) 'Programmable Controller". (Mind blows.)
'It also came to mean Personal Computer'. Uff, I was not ALL wrong after all.

I haven't listened to all the PLC series for now, but what I listened to is very well done.

What I saw in ep. 3 (hpr4728) and caught my attention is that the memory management was manual, so the programmer needed to know and define the adresses for the functions (for that specific PLC), and this episode 2 conveys a similar ideia: inputs and outputs are not figures on their own to referentiate: you need to go to their memory adresses to get them.

I was thinking if it was an advantage, as to simplicity or precision or maybe even security (as to be so low-level that it was hard to do something wrong that still would worked in unintended ways, instead of just not working), or if it was mere limitation of the processing capacity and languages (not) supported at the time.

Don't see this as a question, it probably is self-answered in the shows and I just have to listen more of them calmly. See as an attention-grabbing content.

Posted at 2026-11-02 19:57:20 relating to the show hpr4743 which was released on 2026-10-07 by Klaatu entitled wl-copy

Thanks for this show! A good, focused tour of these handy commands.

I'm almost entirely on Wayland these days, but for a good while I was straddling Wayland/X11 and sharing utility scripts across machines. I still have conditionals like this littered across my fish scripts:

```fish
if test "$DESKTOP_SESSION" = "regolith-x11" -o "$WAYLAND_DISPLAY" = "no"
set cmd xsel -ib
else if test "$DESKTOP_SESSION" = "regolith-wayland"
set cmd wl-copy
else
echo "I don't know how to copy"
end

....

| $cmd
```

Probably time to clean those up! But old hacks in personal utility scripts really tie the room together don't they?

Posted at 2026-11-02 16:01:27 relating to the show hpr4735 which was released on 2026-09-25 by Kristoff entitled hpr4715 :: friedcamp interviews part 5: Yvon Masyn

Enjoyed this show, I'm a sucker for a blimp!

Posted at 2026-11-02 14:54:44 relating to the show hpr4761 which was released on 2026-11-02 by HPR Volunteers entitled HPR Community News for October 2026

Hi Ken,

It was good to hear this community show after such a great effort. I wouldn't call it a failed experiment, but one to be used on a small scale.

I kind of feel bad for introducing this type of tool, but after discussing it with Mrs. Archer, came to the conclusion that it doesn't hurt to try something new.

I am reminded that since this is a community effort, bad (or limited use) ideas will have a vote.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertog_Jan

Cheers,
(especially to Ken)
Archer72

Posted at 2026-11-02 13:31:16 relating to the show hpr4757 which was released on 2026-10-27 by Archer72 entitled Follow-up on a local Ham visit for Kevie and Ken

Espeak is better than this 'cloned' voice. Espeak conveys information without promising human likeness and then failing. I think this desire to have Star Trek like computer experiences has led to an emphasis on form while not getting the underlying function working well. Bring back Eliza and plain text!

Posted at 2026-11-02 09:56:21 relating to the show hpr4761 which was released on 2026-11-02 by HPR Volunteers entitled HPR Community News for October 2026

Hi candycanearter07,

When I read this comment I was sure that you were mistaken, as I had (or so I though) made a point of reading your comments out myself.

However you are correct two of your seven comments were read out by clones. Those two slipped in as one block of eight under the episode hpr4741.

This was an honest mistake, and as you can see all the other comments I deliberately personalized with text so it would be clear that I was personally reading it.

I have edited out the section and replaced it with my own reading of the comments.

All the media has now been replaced so the vast majority of people will only hear the corrected version.

As for the others, I have triggered a force re-download of the episode to the new version, however that may only trigger on the next download of the episode, and is dependent on the client people are using.

I can only apologies for the mistake, and please be assured that it was a genuine error, and not a intentional act on my part.

Ken.

Posted at 2026-11-02 04:06:32 relating to the show hpr4761 which was released on 2026-11-02 by HPR Volunteers entitled HPR Community News for October 2026

That was quite an interesting demonstration. While the voice clones were not perfect, they were very recognizable as the voices of particular show hosts.

While having each comment read out by a voice clone of the commenter is an interesting idea. I think it may perhaps be better to simply treat the voice clones as "guest hosts" for the community news and have a few arbitrary clones read out the comments, perhaps rotating the clones for different months, and have two per show reading alternate comments.

This would also get around the problem of keeping track of who objects to their voice being cloned and who does not. You would just need a small number of volunteer "voice clone guest hosts" for reading comments. By using HPR hosts as the voice clones rather than some arbitrary AI voice, I think it would help promote a sense of community.

However, the "live" community news hosts should still offer their comments on the comments when appropriate, as those are in many cases as interesting to listen to as the comments themselves (e.g. Ken's brief interjection on electrical power frequency when reading one of my comments). I would hate to lose this sort of "human" element of the show.

If the process of creating the audio for comments read by clones could be largely automated, this may reduce the amount of work which needed to be done by the community news hosts. It may also be advantageous to avoid having the entire show in the voice of a single host in cases where there are no additional humans available.

However, if the process cannot be automated and it continues to result in more work for the Community News hosts than doing it manually, then I'm not sure that it is worth doing.


P.S. While the voice clones did make some mistakes, I'm not sure that their error rate is actually worse than that of some of the human hosts who read out the comments.

Posted at 2026-11-02 02:56:41 relating to the show hpr4761 which was released on 2026-11-02 by HPR Volunteers entitled HPR Community News for October 2026

i never consented to this what in the actual frick i was pretty explicit on the mailing list about NOT having my comments read out by a terrible god awful voice """"""""""clone"""""""""" and hearing my own thoughts soullessly voiced by a machine was sickening. please either refrain from using the bot on my comments and either outright skip mine or actually put a modicum of effort into your JOB and actually use your voice. thank you

Posted at 2026-10-31 22:27:36 relating to the show hpr4758 which was released on 2026-10-28 by Whiskeyjack entitled Programmable Logic Controls - Episode 6

Thank you for your comment.

If you like the overlap between industrial controls and computing, you may find the next episode, "hpr4768 :: Programmable Logic Controls - Episode 7" of particular interest. In that episode I focus on the use of computers on the factory floor, including a number of odd and unusual variations on commodity architectures, and how software was used in ways that its creators probably never imagined.

Posted at 2026-10-31 21:10:42 relating to the show hpr4758 which was released on 2026-10-28 by Whiskeyjack entitled Programmable Logic Controls - Episode 6

I loved the show and it made me nostalgic for my earlier days in computing.

Posted at 2026-10-31 18:48:43 relating to the show hpr4758 which was released on 2026-10-28 by Whiskeyjack entitled Programmable Logic Controls - Episode 6

I will add this question to the list of follow up questions for this series and address it in a follow up episode.

I will give you a short answer now however, which is that the electrical power frequency and voltage situation is actually much more complex and arbitrary than you probably imagine. I will have to go into a bit of technology and business history to answer it properly however, so I'll leave the details to the follow up episode.

Thank you for your question and I hope to get more questions which I can also try to answer, so I hope that listeners will post in their questions under any of the episodes in this series.

I think that some of the best episodes that I have done so far have been the product of answers to questions that people posted, so I'll ask people to go ahead and post comments.

Posted at 2026-10-31 08:19:33 relating to the show hpr4757 which was released on 2026-10-27 by Archer72 entitled Follow-up on a local Ham visit for Kevie and Ken

Started off okay, but when it got into the numbers, I couldn't tell what to try to pay attention to, it was just a hammering of numbers to try to remember, couldn't hear why either, the numbers drowned out getting any story about whats going on. But my brain can only process so much, in general lol.

Posted at 2026-10-30 23:12:59 relating to the show hpr4758 which was released on 2026-10-28 by Whiskeyjack entitled Programmable Logic Controls - Episode 6

Hi Whiskeyjack,

I came across some suggested videos on 50 Hz AC in Europe (and Japan) and 60 Hz only in the US.
Unfortunately these are all AI generated.

It might be interesting to have an engineering explanation on this, and how it relates to PLC's on both sides of the pond.

Cheers,
Archer72

Posted at 2026-10-28 16:10:13 relating to the show hpr4766 which was released on 2026-11-09 by Antoine entitled Rant about Audacity 4.0.1

funny enough, i just installed tenacity after seeing audacity used ai in another forum

Posted at 2026-10-27 20:54:33 relating to the show hpr4757 which was released on 2026-10-27 by Archer72 entitled Follow-up on a local Ham visit for Kevie and Ken

I found it an uncanny likeness to Archer72.
ergo you must think that ...... ?

Seriously though, I only relaised that it was Archer because of the effortless reading of the specs.

As an experiment, on Archers next episode (see what I did there) can you intermingle your real voice with your clone and see who will notice the difference. Don't mention it in the show, just come back after a month.

Posted at 2026-10-27 13:39:31 relating to the show hpr4757 which was released on 2026-10-27 by Archer72 entitled Follow-up on a local Ham visit for Kevie and Ken

hi,
i dont think the ai ""voice"" came out very good, it was very hard to listen to.

Posted at 2026-10-25 11:36:37 relating to the show hpr4357 which was released on 2025-04-15 by murph entitled Short introduction by murph.

Hi Murph,

I heard this show again, and was now wondering about your experience with Amiga, Slackware, Tmux and configs (please share), different memories of past conferences. Did I forget anything?

Cheers,
Archer72

Posted at 2026-10-24 12:44:46 relating to the show hpr4752 which was released on 2026-10-20 by TheDUDE entitled Static Addict Episode 2: Metal Machine Music

So I forgot to add my intro from the last review in here and forgot to give a background on Lou Reed (probably because he's a household name I didn't think to) also forgot to respond to the comments to the last review, my apologies. Also I like to add for the anti spam quest it is so difficult to not write pirate instead of public. Lol

Posted at 2026-10-21 01:33:32 relating to the show hpr4749 which was released on 2026-10-15 by murph entitled murph gives a presentation talk about Hacker Public Radio at the OLF conference

This was very interesting.

I have a comment on microphones though. The host recommended using a "good" microphone when recording an episode for HPR.

While a good microphone would be better than a bad microphone, you don't need a professional grade microphone to record an episode. I have found that an inexpensive gaming headset with microphone works quite well if you are recording a solo episode at a desk.

A headset also has the advantage of keeping the microphone at a consistent distance from your mouth, keeping the audio recording more consistent. It is also much less sensitive to background sounds, making it easier to record reasonably good audio.

So people should not be put off from recording an episode because they think they need high quality equipment. Even relatively inexpensive equipment can be good enough. You can spend $25 or less and have good enough recording equipment. I compare several different recording devices in HPR4658, together with audio samples for those who want to get an idea of what inexpensive kit can do.

On a slightly different topic, the host mentioned my 8 part series on nuclear power technology. I am glad to hear that people found it interesting.

Talking about HPR at conferences is always a good way to promote HPR to both new listeners and to potential contributors. Thanks to murph for the work that he did on this.

Posted at 2026-10-19 22:59:04 relating to the show hpr4766 which was released on 2026-11-09 by Antoine entitled Rant about Audacity 4.0.1

Hi Antoine,

I heard this in the future shows, and was reminded of the controversy surrounding the Muse Group (who own Muse Score) aquiring Audacity in 2021. This prompted installing Tenacity, and therefore recording

hpr3538 :: Installing the Tenacity audio editor

https://hackerpublicradio.org/eps.php?id=3538

Hopefully this is worth a try, and maybe you can report back. :-)

Cheers,
Archer72

Posted at 2026-10-19 21:06:21 relating to the show hpr4747 which was released on 2026-10-13 by Vance entitled UNIX Curio #13 - Replacements for cat

I have never used tsort and I am not sure that I really understand it. I just noticed one day that it was there when looking through a list of commands.

I just ran a quick test to see which distros have it, and found it in Alma, Debian, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Raspberry Pi, Suse, and Ubuntu. It however is not in Alpine by default.

I didn't try any other distros, but this covers most of the major ones.

The Ubuntu man file states that tsort is useful for scheduling and determining execution order.

If you decide to do an episode on it, then if you can find a few practical examples there is certainly enough to make an episode out of it.

The versions for Linux, OpenBSD, and FreeBSD all have different options. The options for GNU tsort and uutils tsort do the same things as each other, but are not completely compatible in terms of how they are called. This is at least four different versions just among the distros that I tested.

The man pages for OpenBSD and FreeBSD offer much better information about tsort than the Linux man pages that I looked at.

According to OpenBSD, their tsort is compliant with "POSIX.1", but has extensions. They offer volume and page references to Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming for further information.

According to FreeBSD, tsort first appeared in Version 7 AT&T Unix.

Posted at 2026-10-19 07:29:46 relating to the show hpr4318 which was released on 2025-02-19 by dnt entitled What's up with the dates on the HPR future feed in AntennaPod?

This came up on the matrix channel this week.

Thanks dnt.

Should we then set the Future Feed to the date the show was posted ?

Posted at 2026-10-17 06:42:11 relating to the show hpr4747 which was released on 2026-10-13 by Vance entitled UNIX Curio #13 - Replacements for cat

Wow, a lot going on here in the comments. I appreciate it!

Whiskeyjack: Can't believe I didn't think of 'tac' or 'rev' when putting this together. While they are not in POSIX, they are certainly widespread. I honestly have never encountered 'tsort' before - will look into it and see if I can make anything out of it.

candycanearter07: I haven't checked; some implementations of 'head' might support +1, but POSIX does not require it. I always thought of 'tail -f' as being well known, but maybe should revisit that. In practice, I generally use 'less' with the 'F' command instead of 'tail -f' these days, but sometimes it's not available.

Posted at 2026-10-16 12:40:03 relating to the show hpr4717 which was released on 2026-09-01 by Archer72 entitled Visit with a blind Ham operator

Hi Ken and Kevie,

I heard your question about the antenna height in the Community News. The approximate antenna total height is indeed 15 metres, with the whip part of the antenna around 5 to 6 metres.

Cheers,
Archer72

Posted at 2026-10-15 23:51:41 relating to the show hpr4747 which was released on 2026-10-13 by Vance entitled UNIX Curio #13 - Replacements for cat

Hi xmanmonk,

Do you have interests to hackers of your own?

If so, HPR would like an introductory show. :-)

Cheers,
Archer72

Posted at 2026-10-15 21:15:23 relating to the show hpr4747 which was released on 2026-10-13 by Vance entitled UNIX Curio #13 - Replacements for cat

cool ep!
i basically already use head and tail as cat for super long files that have important data at the start/end, also i use an alias to replace cat with batcat

ill also point out the same trick can be used with head since it also supports +1 to print up to the last line in the file

i think a curio on tail would be useful since one of its "hidden" functions (-f, or --follow) is so incredibly useful i wish it was talked about more its amazing for following log files

also also grep is slightly better than cat at catting every file in a directory, since you can use grep -r '' . to print everything recursively, as opposed to cat * which only prints non-hidden files in the current dir

Posted at 2026-10-15 17:00:13 relating to the show hpr4749 which was released on 2026-10-15 by murph entitled murph gives a presentation talk about Hacker Public Radio at the OLF conference

This was an overall fantastic introduction to HPR and the process of recording an episode, but I particularly loved the section about how to start recording - and how much preparation and thinking should go into it.

I think I need the phrase "think, to taste" engraved on a plaque.