HPR

Posted at 2026-05-06 20:35:49 relating to the show hpr4634 which was released on 2026-05-07 by operat0r entitled Upgrade Failsause

Hi YourName,

We already received a report that there were problems with the audio, and as such we replaced the episode with another from operat0r from the back up queue.

As you are listening to this before it is released I assume it's coming from the Future Feed. You will need to refresh your cache on the podcatcher you are using for to get that episode. Thankfully this is only on the future feed, and the listeners to the main feed will get the updated episode without issue.

Ken

Posted at 2026-05-06 20:05:43 relating to the show hpr4634 which was released on 2026-05-07 by operat0r entitled Upgrade Failsause

I guess I had the mic in my ear but it was not working so you got the mic in my pocket I guess ... sorry folks

Posted at 2026-05-05 09:00:00 relating to the show hpr4631 which was released on 2026-05-04 by HPR Volunteers entitled HPR Community News for April 2026

Sorry if you feel under pressure. Take your time, hope it goes better soon.

Posted at 2026-05-04 18:47:39 relating to the show hpr4631 which was released on 2026-05-04 by HPR Volunteers entitled HPR Community News for April 2026

thanks for the episode suggestion about the process programs but i still dont really want to work on any episodes im still recovering from the stuff that happened feb/march

Posted at 2026-05-04 05:13:02 relating to the show hpr4631 which was released on 2026-05-04 by HPR Volunteers entitled HPR Community News for April 2026

Ken Fallon had said in response to something that I had said in HPR 4628 with regards to me wanting to avoid subjects that some people may view as being politically controversial. He had made the same statement in the previous community news with regards to a comment that I had made in response to another listener.

I first want to clarify that HPR 4628 was recorded and uploaded before Ken had stated this the first time, so when I said this in HPR 4628 it was without the benefit of his earlier clarification on this.

My assumptions were based on what I observed as being the community practice of posting fairly low stress topics that people can relax to and not getting into flame wars. I had assumed this was an unwritten rule that had arisen through common practice.

I was going to attempt to very briefly answer in this comment brian-in-ohio's question on the relative safety of different types of electric power generation. However the answer was getting long enough that I suspect that one of the community news presenters would probably tell me to put it in an episode. I will therefore make a short episode on it and submit it after the episodes I currently have in the schedule.

Spoiler alert however, so far as I can determine, the data upon which to make any sort of objective relative ranking of electric power generation sources simply does not exist in a form which would allow an apples to apples comparison across all industries.

The net result is that any discussion of this topic comes down to belief and opinion rather than provable fact.

I will however attempt to provide some context in which to think about these questions.

Posted at 2026-04-30 18:58:50 relating to the show hpr4627 which was released on 2026-04-28 by Vance entitled UNIX Curio #5 - Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Vance: The Ctrl-Alt-Esc keybind is actually calling a binary, xkill, and it's pretty easy to just set a keybind in your desktop enviroment to call it. On my system, its bound to shift+alt+x, since its really easy to hit with only my left hand.

Also, I figured those weren't POSIX but they're still useful for day to day terminaling and little personal scripts

Posted at 2026-04-29 20:58:44 relating to the show hpr4627 which was released on 2026-04-28 by Vance entitled UNIX Curio #5 - Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Antoine: Not sure if they still support it, but under some window managers you used to be able to press Ctrl-Alt-Esc and the cursor would turn into a large X or a skull and crossbones. You could then click on a window to kill the program that owned it. Similarly, Ctrl-Alt-Backspace would end the entire X session. I think this is no longer common and it might not even be possible under Wayland.

candycanearter07: Very cool, thanks! I've used 'killall' a bunch but was not aware of 'pgrep', 'pkill', and 'pidwait'. They look to have some neat capabilities - maybe you could consider doing an episode on them? (Of course, none of these are in POSIX, so you wouldn't want to use them in a script unless you knew the systems it would be used on have those utilities.)

Posted at 2026-04-29 15:14:31 relating to the show hpr4627 which was released on 2026-04-28 by Vance entitled UNIX Curio #5 - Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

I didn't know about kill -0, thats a cool POSIX way to check if a process is existing or not. In most of my scripts, I used the p* commands instead (pgrep, pkill, pwait) since usually getting a specific process by pid didn't matter and they all support passing a pidfile directly with -F

Posted at 2026-04-29 11:57:27 relating to the show hpr4627 which was released on 2026-04-28 by Vance entitled UNIX Curio #5 - Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Nothing to aggregate, only to say– loved learning about Kill. In my first times of Linux, maybe a problem of mine, I had to use it almost daily (in the main purpose, not knowing until now that the command can pause or only return the running status (: ).
I found it magical, because the ctrl+alt+del of Windows was not always responsive in times of trouble, but, in Linux, accessing a terminal to uss "killall X" (or whatever program) was always possible.
Thank you, Vance, 4dshow.

Posted at 2026-04-28 17:16:54 relating to the show hpr4618 which was released on 2026-04-15 by Whiskeyjack entitled Simple Podcasting - Episode 2 - Basic Filtering

I already have the 5 second audio sample that I need from your HPR 4637 episode from the MP3 release, but I thought it would be polite to ask you first before using it as we were already corresponding in these comments.

I have most of the script written for a new HPR episode and will begin recording the dialogue and making the audio samples used to illustrate each point. I will describe in detail what I did to the sample from your podcast in that episode and show a before and after example.

This new episode is entirely inspired by comments from listeners, and your comment describing a click problem provided a very interesting subject for discussion in it. Thank you for your feedback on this.

Posted at 2026-04-28 00:43:11 relating to the show hpr4618 which was released on 2026-04-15 by Whiskeyjack entitled Simple Podcasting - Episode 2 - Basic Filtering

Thanks for your ideas! Looking at the Ogg/Opus/MP3 files on HPR, I see that they have some additional noise during pauses that makes the click removal filter in Audacity less effective. On the original WAV file, I *was* able to remove most of the tapping noise by applying that filter to pauses with a Threshold value of 50 and a Max Spike Width of 30. Trying the same values on pauses in the MP3 file was less effective, but did improve things a little bit.

I agree that applying the click filter to the sections where I'm speaking produces undesirable distortion. It would be possible to manually highlight just the pauses and remove clicks from each one, but that would be tedious. I considered blanking out those areas, but it would be just as tedious and I thought it might sound weird for there to be total silence.

However, your suggestion of using ffmpeg's agate filter would eliminate the problem of having to manually highlight the pauses. I see that it doesn't totally zero out the waveform, just reduces it, so it shouldn't sound weird.

I would be happy to send you a WAV or FLAC file to play around with, and you are welcome to use as much of this episode as you like in your own work. E-mail me at the address on my host page.

Initial testing seems to indicate that it was likely my mobile phone that caused the problem to begin with. If that is the case, it's easy enough to get rid of the problem at its source by moving it away from the microphone (it was in my shirt pocket) or just turning it off.

Posted at 2026-04-27 00:48:11 relating to the show hpr4618 which was released on 2026-04-15 by Whiskeyjack entitled Simple Podcasting - Episode 2 - Basic Filtering

I had a look at your HPR 4637 episode to see what the "clicks" were like. I did some experiments to try to find a technique which could remove the clicks.

The "click removal" effect in Audacity does nothing useful to deal with this. The same was true for most of a number of other common filter techniques that I tried. The ones which did have an effect on the clicks introduced noticeable distortion in the voice which was more of a problem than the clicks.

What does work is the "noise gate" effect (which is agate in ffmpeg). You set a threshold in dB and any part of the signal which falls below that level is suppressed to zero. In other words, quiet parts of the audio are made quieter. I set a threshold of -20dB and all of the clicks were completely removed without introducing distortion in the voice signal.

In a few spots, short initial syllables on a few sentences were also cut out, but I didn't spend any time adjusting parameters to get it perfect. I suspect that another solution to this would be to not apply the effect on those few parts of the audio where this happens.

Would it be alright with you if I used a short (5 second) clip of your podcast as a noise sample in my own upcoming episode on audio filtering? This is not a noise problem that I can easily recreate and it would make for an interesting problem and solution to address.

The more I look at things the more I am convinced that there is no one size fits all solution to audio problems, only collections of tools that we can keep in our toolboxes.

Posted at 2026-04-26 23:55:45 relating to the show hpr4616 which was released on 2026-04-13 by Trollercoaster entitled Thoughts about age control and further suggestions

Hey, Trollercoaster, I'm a member of the Legislative in Atlantis. (The underwater one.) Nevertheless, we are going to emerge soon, the making of the e-banners can begin.
(Our language is the Atlantean, we don't understand if not it — the translation, if you can read it, is in real time, by scanning of the legitimate eyes that should see the message.)

Parlament members can't roll for the Executive though. Never. You, if you can read, may come to the Palace. If so, please just let me know so I can wake both eyes of the editorial whales for the making of your Presidential Propaganda.

Ahibvederti! **–end_of_italic_atlantean_intimate_translatxxxx___**

Posted at 2026-04-25 15:37:22 relating to the show hpr4616 which was released on 2026-04-13 by Trollercoaster entitled Thoughts about age control and further suggestions

Hello Antoine,

please notify me in what state you are going to submit that proposal. I will move to that state and run around with a banner "Antoine for president!"

Hey Candycanearter07,
I don't get it. Do you hate hackers?

Posted at 2026-04-25 14:31:40 relating to the show hpr4618 which was released on 2026-04-15 by Whiskeyjack entitled Simple Podcasting - Episode 2 - Basic Filtering

Antoine, thanks for mentioning the click removal capability in Audacity! While I already knew about its noise removal filter, I wasn't aware it also had click removal.

It might have helped me for HPR4637, where some sort of electromagnetic signal was picked up by my microphone/recorder, a Zoom H2 (the tapping sound was *not* present in the room where I recorded).

While click removal does seem to distort speech when applied to it (though to my ears, it doesn't sound as weird as when noise removal is done with speech), I could have applied the filter only to the pauses, where the "tapping" is most noticeable. I will consider doing this in the event that I'm not able to eliminate the source of interference in the future, which would be the best way to go.

Posted at 2026-04-25 11:02:26 relating to the show hpr4424 which was released on 2025-07-17 by Archer72 entitled How I use Newsboat for Podcasts and Reddit

Hello أحمد المحمودي

This issue with Newsboat is not forgotten.
I am working on a macro to enqueue, download rename to the 'corrected' filename i.e.
hpr4580 ; The First Doctor, Part 4.ogg

P.S. How did you find HPR or get into tech or any Hacker related subject? We would definitely like to hear about it. :)

Cheers,
Archer72

Posted at 2026-04-24 19:33:03 relating to the show hpr4596 which was released on 2026-03-16 by Ken Fallon entitled Adding voice-over audio track created using text to speech on the movie subtitles

After my wife and I started enabling subtitles a couple years back, I've found it hard to watch media without them.

I love the concept you've outlined here. I know some people have difficulty reading subtitles, so being able to add an audio option is a great tool in the toolbox. :)

Posted at 2026-04-24 03:38:13 relating to the show hpr4625 which was released on 2026-04-24 by Lee entitled Site Specific Browsers

On one hand, I don't really like webapps in general, they always feel incredibly sluggish and give me a headache. On the other hand, it DOES increase Linux support...

Posted at 2026-04-23 08:36:28 relating to the show hpr4624 which was released on 2026-04-23 by Trey entitled Cheap Yellow Display Project Part 7: GUI Trying a Simple Hello World

I need to work on my cyd

Posted at 2026-04-22 15:59:57 relating to the show hpr4618 which was released on 2026-04-15 by Whiskeyjack entitled Simple Podcasting - Episode 2 - Basic Filtering

I knew absolutely nothing about audio before making my first two HPR episodes.

I learned a little bit about filtering in order to try to fix audio noise problems I noticed in those ones before making the 8 part series which followed.

Most of what I know now has come about from having to address the subject more systematically while making this 4 part series.

There is still a lot I don't know, including how to use audio compression properly.

I had never even heard about de-essing until I started making this series. I found out about it while researching filters.

I am currently making a follow up episode which concentrates on filtering methods and what sorts of noise situations each method may be useful in when making a podcast. So far it looks like there are pros and cons to different methods depending on the situation rather than there being a panacea which fixes all audio problems.

So far as clicks go, the recording method that I use of making many small segments and then stitching them together rather than speaking fluidly and continuously seems to inherently need de-essing more because the clicks seem to be most common when you start speaking from a resting state. Given this situation, I have some ideas that I may try which address this specifically rather than using de-essing.

I will add compression to the list of experiments that I will do. We'll have to see if I come up with any useful results.

I am currently about to go buy a new microphone to create a new category of recording set up to collect test samples.

Thank you for your feedback. I got the idea for this project from a comment by an HPR listener on a previous episode.

Posted at 2026-04-22 13:24:48 relating to the show hpr4616 which was released on 2026-04-13 by Trollercoaster entitled Thoughts about age control and further suggestions

I like how you use exaggeration and parody to make your points, it makes your points both memorable and hit hard.

Posted at 2026-04-21 18:58:54 relating to the show hpr4621 which was released on 2026-04-20 by operat0r entitled Android volume control help

I like the double meaning in the title "volume control" in both the literal issue and "control" of the "volume" of your device (like how drives are called device volumes). I also agree that the progressive locking down is annoying, and it intentionally creates a feedback loop of "well people don't understand the systems because its locked down, so we need to lock it down more so people don't break anything"

Posted at 2026-04-20 12:50:09 relating to the show hpr4618 which was released on 2026-04-15 by Whiskeyjack entitled Simple Podcasting - Episode 2 - Basic Filtering

Worthy content! (for use and "for the fun of it"). Actually, as an Audacity user, may not use the command-line editing, but the underlying concepts are the same.
About de-esser, maybe it's better to apply it to the excerpts one need (or want) to improve. With my first uses of click removal, I liked it so much that applied to the entire recording. The result : almost no audible clicking, but a lot of lost missing "t"s in some phonemas. (Best is to don't click the tongue, but, if not, there is declicking — for specific regions.)
I don't remember using de-esser you presented, but the idea may be the same, to check the result where applied.
Aaand, I shall wait for the entire series, but one tool that I would like to listen to is compression. Let's see whether it is going to be adressed on the shows or not, anyway, thanks for sharing.

Posted at 2026-04-20 01:37:33 relating to the show hpr4616 which was released on 2026-04-13 by Trollercoaster entitled Thoughts about age control and further suggestions

Just do the age verification, we can write the law.

For protection of what people of what ages shall or shall not have access to.

Yes, online.

Offline? we have not thought of that, we may have a proposal about it in a near future, thanks, Trollercoaster.


(Great show, thanks.)

Posted at 2026-04-17 16:37:29 relating to the show hpr4619 which was released on 2026-04-16 by Kevie entitled HPR Beer Garden 12 - Baltic Porter

Störtebeker (the same Ö sound as Kevie's Öö!) once had a Nordik-Porter at 9.5% ABV which was an Eisbock (Ice Bock) made from their Stark-Bier (strong beer) at 7.5% ABV which is a Doppelbock (Double Bock), a strong, often dark, German lager (which might be mentioned in the upcoming episode about strong lagers).

The malty Nordik-Porter came in 0.5 l bottles and had heavy coffee and espresso notes and was really the perfect drink for a long cold winter evening.

Howerver, it's not available anymore, but they now offer Grand Marnier and Whisky cask-matured versions in 0.33 l bottles which I did not taste (yet).

Posted at 2026-04-17 09:56:49 relating to the show hpr4569 which was released on 2026-02-05 by Klaatu entitled Kiosk with guest mode on Linux

Great episode! A nice example of using (and adjusting!) Free Software in a public setting like, well, a library!
Btw: An example for "Public Money, Public Code" I tend to use is creating a platform for libraries to catalog and manage their books ;)

So, what about copying a preconfigured browser profiles into `~libraryguest` for some adjustments?

And clearly not over thinking: What about having swap encrypted with a new throwaway key every time? ;P I'm sure there is an option for this…

@#1 /tmp is the only other place I could think of, too, where a user's files could end up in. Maybe run `find /tmp -user libraryguest -exec rm -rf {} \+` before login/at logout.
And cleanup of ~libraryguest even on a ramdisk setup, just in case? ;)

@#3
Smb most probably can be mounted at login via pam like an encrypted homedir. In a "bigger" setup with a bunch of underpowered thinclients you could even mount ramdisks from the one box without soldered-on RAM.

@#4 Oh, RcloneView looks great! Any special permissions/group memberships a user would need?

Posted at 2026-04-14 20:41:28 relating to the show hpr4585 which was released on 2026-02-27 by candycanearter entitled mpv util scripts

I set up a small git repository so i dont have to keep writing comments here when its changed

https://git.sr.ht/~ccaesap/dotfiles/tree/main/item/mpv/scripts

Posted at 2026-04-13 16:43:22 relating to the show hpr4614 which was released on 2026-04-09 by Marc W. Abel entitled Dauug|18: Faster Than a '286, but Inspectable Like a Soroban

I find obscure hardware designs cool, and this is no exception! Deviating from the common 8-bit design is something I've rarely seen, and though I didn't understand a lot of the deeper mechanics, the way you explained it was captivating.

Posted at 2026-04-12 16:16:00 relating to the show hpr4600 which was released on 2026-03-20 by Ahuka entitled The First Doctor, Part 5

My intention was to only cover the classic stories of Doctor Who, but I suppose there is no reason I couldn't cover the renewed series as well, I've certainly seen all of them

Posted at 2026-04-12 03:15:44 relating to the show hpr4614 which was released on 2026-04-09 by Marc W. Abel entitled Dauug|18: Faster Than a '286, but Inspectable Like a Soroban

I suspect this was about computer design, and a fascinating presentation of that subject.

For privacy, wouldn't it make more sense to use old hardware? Things were so much more transparent in the DOS days.