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Hacker Public Radio

Your ideas, projects, opinions - podcasted.

New episodes every weekday Monday through Friday.
This page was generated by The HPR Robot at

Welcome to HPR.

About HPR.

The HPR Community.

What differentiates HPR from other podcasts is that the shows are crowd sourced from the community - fellow listeners like you. There is no restriction on how long the show can be, nor on the topic you can cover as long as they are not spam and "are of interest to Hackers". If you want to see what topics have been covered so far just have a look at our Archive. We also allow for a series of shows so that hosts can go into more detail on a topic.

You can download/listen to the shows here or you can subscribe to the show in your favorite podcatching client to automatically get our new shows as soon as they are available. You can copy and redistribute the shows for free provided you adhere to the Creative Commons Attribution Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) License.

History.

Hacker Public Radio (HPR) is an Internet Radio show (podcast) that releases shows every weekday Monday through Friday. HPR has a long lineage going back to Radio FreeK America, Binary Revolution Radio & Infonomicon, and it is a rename of Today With a Techie radio. Please listen to StankDawg's " Introduction to HPR" for more information.

Free Culture.

Hacker Public Radio is dedicated to sharing knowledge. We do not accept donations so please consider supporting our patrons. If you listen to HPR, then we would love you to contribute one show a year. Our shows are by default released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license. All the software we use is Free software. All the code we develop is published in our GitTea repository. All the media is available via the feeds.

Governance.

HPR is entirely community driven. Policy decisions are proposed and discussed on the Mailing list, which is open to anyone to join. Mailing list discussions are brought to the attention of the listening community on the first Monday of the month in the HPR Community News show. This show is also open to anyone to participate in. The schedule for the Community News shows can be downloaded as an iCal calendar containing recording dates for the next 12 months. A reminder is also sent to the mailing list in the week before the recording.

Our hosting is kindly provided to us by Josh Knapp from AnHonestHost.com, and he has the last word in issues related to site security. A changing team of volunteers called the "admins" or "Janitors", deal with the day to day operation of HPR. Acting as the first point of contact, processing the shows, coordinating policy discussions, removing spam, updating the website, etc. They are contactable via the email account admin @ HPR. They have no more say over policy than anyone else. Anyone who has shown a long term dedication to the project and is trusted by the community, can become an admin.

See the section stuff you need to know for more information.

Recent Policy Changes

Please support our Patrons.

Our hosting is kindly provided by Josh from AnHonestHost.com. We would appreciate it if you could donate to help reduce his costs in funding the hosting. He is also accepting bitcoins to 1KsxJr9HtsdaUeU7yaV9bk9bQi21UPBtUq

Please also consider supporting the https://archive.org/donate/ who are now hosting our media files.

Primary Contact Points.

Secondary Contact Points

These platforms are monitored from time to time. Commenting here is less likely to get an immediate response.

In the Press.

How to Help.

Hacker Public Radio is a communty podcast where the shows are provided by the community, and is also governed by the community, and we rely on the support our Patrons to provide the hosting infrastructure.

Submit a show

One of the best ways to help out is to contribute a show. You can find out everything you need to know here.

Suggest Topics

If there is a technical topic you would like us to cover, or if you are looking for topics to record a show on, then look no further than our Requested topics page.

Podcatcher Support

Please report your experiences with our feeds to https://hackerpublicradio.org/about.html#contactadmin@hpr.

Other ways to help

You can help by:

Download Archive.

Please be aware that our Archive exceeds 62Gb (Ogg: 21Gb, Spx: 16Gb, mp3: 25Gb). We are happy for you to download them, but please make sure that you are not going to incur additional bandwidth charges on your side.

We will be happy to post you the episodes on physical media anywhere in the world if bandwidth is an issue.

Full Episode Guide

The compete episode guide is available to you, and it lists all the shows on one page going right back to the very first episode.

Command line download

You can download the audio of the episodes directly from the command line using the following commands:

So you want to record a podcast.

Well you've come to the right place. Our goal here at HPR is to make it as easy as possible for you to get a podcast released. We take care of the hard bits so you don't need to. Recording your first show is always a daunting prospect but hundreds of people like yourself have done it and so can you.

1. Stuff you need to know.

2. Select a Topic.

The first thing you will need to do is decide on a topic for your show. You might already have an idea but if not you can have a look at our Archive page for examples of shows people have recorded in the past. You can also look at our Requested Topics, or our Series page to see if you can add your knowledge to the pool.

If you are worried that your show may not be of interest to Hackers then you can click here to check if it is.

If you can't think of anything to talk about then please just record a show telling us how you got into tech as a way to introducing yourself to the community.

3. Record your show.

Please select more detailed information on how to record a show:

Don't forget to introduce yourself in your show.

4. Upload your show.

Once you have your audio ready you can post your show by going to the Calendar page or press the ⇧Upload⇧ button.

After you have selected a date you will be redirected to the request page, where you will be asked to select your show and email address. We will send a link to where you can upload your show to this address and so it must be a valid working address that you can access quickly. We intend to use GPG to speed up the validation of hosts, so you may wish to use an email address that has an associated public key available on public key servers.

More Information.

Questions ?.

Got any questions not covered here, then just email "admin" at "HPR", and we'll get in touch with you with all you need to know about getting your show published.
You can chat with other podcasters using IRC in the #oggcastplanet channel on the libera.chat network. Follow us on Mastodon (use the tag #hpr) and on Twitter (use the tag #hpr). We have a Facebook and LinkedIn group, so please join and spread the word.

Still Nervous.

Fellow listeners like yourself contribute the shows and so we all know how hard it is to do that first show. You're probably worried that we won't like the topic. Well don't be, have a look at our Archive to see how diverse the contributions have been. You're probably worried about the quality of your audio, that you sound funny, that English isn't your native language, that you suffer from a speech impediment, that your show has loads of ummms and awws in it, well don't be. We have plenty of hosts that fall into all these categories but continue to produce great shows.

At the end of the day the show is about the content and not the quality of the audio. That's not to say we won't help you with ways to improve the audio if you wish, or narrate your script if you can't or won't record it yourself. Drop into the IRC channel #oggcastplanet where there are people who will help.

Our Mottos

Any audio is better than no audio.
Any topic of intrest to hackers.
It ain't a show unless it's on the server.
If you tell us you are doing a show, then you owe us a show.

You don't need anyones permission to upload a show, but if you have any questions then drop into the #oggcastplanet channel on libera.chat and chat with a live person 24/7.

Requested topics.

This is a list of topics that have been requested by the community. Feel free to add it to the list by emailing admin at hpr or by tweeting us on @HPR.

Stuff you need to know.

This is some important information that you will need to know before uploading to HPR.

You will no longer be allowed to edit HPR pages on Wikipedia .

Once you upload a show, you will no longer be allowed to create or edit pages relating to Hacker Public Radio in Wikipedia.
See our FAQ about the HPR Wikipedia page for more information.

All policy decisions are made by the HPR Community .

The community decides the HPR policies. Please join the HPR Mailing List to participate.

HPR will stop as a project if there are not enough shows .

Hacker Public Radio is dedicated to sharing knowledge. We release about 260 shows a year, which is probably more than all of the other FOSS podcasts put together. If you listen to HPR, then we would love you to contribute one show a year. Remember once that all the reserve shows have been used up and there are no more shows in the queue, HPR as a project will stop.

Support our Patrons.

Our hosting is kindly provided to us by Josh Knapp from AnHonestHost.com, and The Internet Archive at Archive.org. We encourage you to support our Patrons. Over the years kind people have donated services and supported equipment for our conferences.

We do not syndicate non HPR Shows.

HPR is founded on the principle of Hackers sharing knowledge. For this reason we are only releasing material created exclusively for HPR. We will continue to promote new podcasts and other creative commons material, but if you wish to have your show promoted, then please contact our sister site Free Culture Podcasts.

That said, if there is a piece of creative commons content that you would like to promote, then feel free to record a regular show. There you can introduce the content and explain why it is important, providing links to where we can get more information etc., and then include one example episode.

You are agreeing to license your show CC-BY-SA.

All our shows are now released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license, which means that while you continue to retain the copyright to your show, you are allowing us (and everyone else) to use it provided we give you attribution and that we release it under the same license. Click the link for more information.

You have permission to redistribute your show in its entirety .

Never include content, for example music, in your show that you do not have permission to redistribute. Try to avoid using any content in your show that can not be redistributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license. If you are redistributing under another Creative Commons license, GNU Free Documentation License, public domain, or FLOSS software license, then please signal that when you upload your show. We do not post other copyrighted content, even if it is made available under fair use, or by arranged permission.

The audio of your show will not be moderated.

We do not vet, edit, moderate or in any way censor any of the audio you submit, we trust you to do that. Aside from checking snippets for audio quality/spam checking, we have a policy that we don't listen to the shows before they are aired. This is a long standing tradition arising from the fact that HPR is a community of peers who believe that any host has as much right to submit shows as any other.
We do transcode the audio into different formats.

Please note that this only relates to the audio you upload. The rest of the meta-data (branding/summaries/tags/show notes/etc.), are managed by the HPR Community, and may be edited. The show hpr2210 :: On Freedom of Speech and Censorship describes the agreed approach to this topic.

Your show will be signaled as containing explicit content .

Given that we are an open forum for free speech we signal all our shows as "explicit" with the assumption that the listeners will apply the required discretion when playing the shows in public. That said the majority of our content is technical in nature and therefore is often considered appropriate for any audience. If you feel that your show will be considered inoffensive in every region of the world then you can signal that when you upload the show.

When dealing with content that is "explicit" or contains material that would best be suited for a mature audience, it has become traditional to include a short warning at the very beginning of the show before the intro, to allow listeners time to switch off the episode should they so desire.

hpr2210 :: On Freedom of Speech and Censorship describes the agreed approach to this topic.

You determine when your show will be released.

The HPR Schedule is entirely community driven and we recommend that you pick the date or show number as then you know when your show will be released. However the slots will only be allocated once the shows have been successfully processed. Any missing information can result in a show missing the requested slot. Once the slots have been allocated it is not possible to move them.

All reservations need to be approved.

Any host can select any free slot a up to year in advance. However the audio must be ready at time of picking a slot so that it can be upload immediately afterwards.

In exceptional circumstances it may be necessary to reserve a slot while not having the audio available, but this must be approved by the HPR Mailing List in advance. Be sure to allow as much time as possible, and include a reason why you feel it is necessary to reserve the slot.

This is intended only for exceptional circumstances, such as a scheduled interview where we would like the audio to be released as soon after the event as possible, or to cover an important topical situation that has occurred. Due to the extended time now needed to post shows to external sites, the extra work this entails and the disruptive effect of reservations, we will no longer be allowing them except in very rare cases of the type mentioned above.

The following are standing reservations:

We use UTF-8 end to end.

See the video "Characters, Symbols and the Unicode Miracle - Computerphile" for an interesting background to ASCII and UTF-8.

Keep accessibility in mind.

When you includes output from the command line in the show notes, posting screen-shots of console or terminal output makes it impossible for screen readers to access the text. Always try to include the raw output ( eg: embedded in <pre> tags)
Include descriptive language in any link texts.
Avoid structures like: "For accessibility information click here"
Rather use: "For more information click our accessibility page"

Your show will be heard by an International Audience .

We have people listening from all over the world, who may not have the same cultural background as yourself, therefore you should be as clear as possible when giving details. For example always give temperatures in both Celsius and Fahrenheit, measurements in Metric and Imperial, dates in YYYY-MM-DD iso8601 format, and abbreviations using the NATO phonetic alphabet. Never assume that your audience knows what age a sixth grader is, or how big a 20 Cent Euro coin is. Keep in mind that keyboard layouts are also different so make sure to specify the key shape or the position inrelation to a common known standard. For example:

The at sign normally situated above the 2 key on a US keyboard, and has a unicode number of U+0040. For more information see Wikipedia

An xkcd cartoon showing ISO 8601

Feed the reserve queue.

The reserve queue is intended only to be used in the cases where there is still a gap in the schedule one week prior to release. This was known as the emergency queue, but now can also be used when the hosts don't care when the shows are scheduled. They will be used on a first come first go basis, when there is no conflict with the scheduling guidelines. These shows contain a message alerting listeners to the fact that we had free slots that were not filled.

Scheduling Guidelines

  1. You must have your audio recording ready to upload before you pick a slot.
  2. New hosts, Interviews, and other time critical shows should use the first free slot.
  3. Always try and fill any free slots that are available in the upcoming two weeks.
  4. When the queue is filling up then leave some slots free for new contributors.
  5. Post non urgent shows into the first empty week.
  6. If you are uploading a series of shows then post them one every two weeks.
  7. If you have a non urgent show that is timeless, then add it to the Reserve Queue.

Recording a Podcast

On this page you will find information on how to record a podcast. Our golden rule is Any audio is better than no audio. so keep that in mind. Don't forget to introduce yourself in your show.

Recording with a portable media player .

Many of today's portable media players support recording audio out of the box. Search for "Voice Recorder", to see if there is an application for your smartphone. Whichever option you have close to hand, try and set the recording to the best quality format (WAV or FLAC), and set everything else to the highest setting. It's always the goal to get the best quality audio but here at Hacker Public Radio we value content over quality and so long as it's audible we'll take it.

Then just record your show, request a slot, and we'll do the rest.

Recording with a portable media player.

Some of our hosts recommend Android Audio Recorder on my android phone. It's available on F-Droid and Google Play. These are the recommended settings:

Recording/Editing using your Computer.

The majority of podcasters use Audacity. First set the Project Rate to 44100Hz, then you can either record your show in Audacity itself or import the file you recorded earlier and edit it as you wish.

Audacity Can Record

Audacity is a free, easy-to-use and multilingual audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems.

When you have finished editing your podcast you can export it.

  1. Confirm that the Project Rate is set to 44100 Hz (bottom left).
  2. File -> Export and select FLAC File.
  3. Click Options... to reveal FLAC Export Setup.
  4. Set Level to 8 (best).
  5. Set Bit depth to 24.

Audacity Export Settings

Recording Interviews with the Phone.

If you want to record a one-to-one interview with someone then you can use Skype in conjunction with Skype Call Recorder. If everyone is using skype then it won't cost you anything otherwise you will need to pay for SkypeOut service. Although the quality is usually terrible, you could also put your phone on hands free and record with a portable media player.

Recording round table discussions.

If you would like to record with multiple participants then you can use Mumble. Connect to chatter.skyehaven.net Port: 64738 .
Walk through the audio wizard and then pop into the Hacker Public Radio room. Once you are ready press the recording button, select multichannel and then start. That will record multiple tracks, one for each participant which you can edit and then submit.
Kwisher made a Mumble tutorial which you might find useful and Delwin has produced a number of short shows on how to configure the audio quality.

Audacity Can Record

Avoid Bedding/background music.

You may include backing music but it's best if you don't. Most long time podcast listeners speed up their shows, as this allows them to cram more shows into a day. Having bedding music makes it more difficult to understand, and prevents tools like truncate silence from working correctly.
Others will convert shows to mono to listen in one ear leaving the other free to carry out their other chores. Still more slow the shows down so that they can improve their English. Others are hard of hearing and backing music makes it difficult to understand the text.

We mix down to Mono.

We will by default mix down your show to one channel mono and we will transcode to MP3, ogg and spx formats. If you want to control this in more detail then please email admin at Hacker Public Radio for more information.

No need to add Metadata to the file.

There is no need to add any information to the file as that will be inserted based on the information you fill in when you upload the show.

Please promote HPR.

Feel free to use the promotional material to spread the word in your podcasts, or have them played on to other shows.

General HPR promotion

New Year Promo

Picking a slot for your show

Any host can select any free slot a up to year in advance, by recording their show and uploading it to the desired slot. In exceptional circumstances it may be necessary to reserve a slot while not having the audio available, but this must be approved by the HPR mailing list in advance. Be sure to allow as much time as possible, and include a reason why you feel it is necessary to reserve the slot.

This is intended only for exceptional circumstances, such as a scheduled interview where we would like the audio to be released as soon after the event as possible, or to cover an important topical situation that has occurred. Due to the extended time now needed to post shows to external sites, the extra work this entails and the disruptive effect of reservations, we will no longer be allowing them except in very rare cases of the type mentioned above. [?]

You can post your show by going to the Calendar page. Once you have selected a date you will be redirected to the request page, where you will be asked to select your show and email address. We will send a link to where you can upload your show to this address and therefore it must be a valid working address that you can access quickly. We intend to use GPG to speed up the validation of hosts, so you may wish to use an email address that has an associated public key available on public key servers.

The audio of your show will not be moderated, however the information provided in the upload form may be moderated. All publicly facing material is managed by the HPR Community as a whole, and not just the host providing the show. The show hpr2210 :: On Freedom of Speech and Censorship describes the agreed approach to this topic.

Note: This email address will be published on the HPR website and will be given out in the feeds, so please use a public email address for this purpose. Where we publish it we pad it with dot nospam at-sign nospam dot.
i.e. hpr@example.com becomes hpr.nospam@nospam.example.com. If you do not want to have your email exposed, please contact the admin@hpr team to arrange a alias.

Once you press next, an email will be sent to your email address pointing to where you can upload the show. You need to open the link within 15 minutes or the temporary lock will be released. Once you open the link, you can fill in the information at your leisure. The upload form works on the assumption you will be posting one show at a time, from the same IP address. Once you have pressed submit you will not be able to edit any of the information.

Adding an Episode

The unique link sent by email will allow you to manage both the episode and information about yourself that is displayed on HPR. The following information will be requested:

Personal Information

Remember All information will be displayed publicly. The only exception is that your email address will be sent in the feed with some anti-spam additions.
For example hpr@example.com will become hpr.nospam@nospam.example.com

Your profile information is used on the website, in the RSS feeds, and on social media sites. You can change your profile information at any time, by submitting another show.

Episode Information

Press submit and your show will be sent to the HPR Volunteers to be processed. Keep an eye on the calendar for when it is posted. Your show information is used to process the media files, on the website, in the RSS feeds, and on social media sites.

Workflow

  1. REQUEST_UNVERIFIED -
  2. REQUEST_EMAIL_SENT - email sent
  3. EMAIL_LINK_CLICKED - pending upload
  4. SHOW_SUBMITTED - upload complete
  5. METADATA_PROCESSED - shownotes.{json,txt} processed to html
  6. SHOW_POSTED - show in the database
  7. MEDIA_TRANSCODED - audio all generated
  8. UPLOADED_TO_IA - on the IA and visible
  9. UPLOADED_TO_RSYNC_NET - archived on rsync.net

Frequently Asked Questions

0.1 What is Hacker Public Radio?

0.2 What is a show?

0.3 Can I submit a show made for another podcast?

0.4 What defines a show as being "Produced for Hacker Public Radio"?

0.5 What are the mandatory elements of an HPR show?

0.6 What are tags?

0.7 Is it OK if I don't include notes with my show?

0.8 How do I include photographs or other files with my show?

0.9 What is and is not edited in a show after submission?

0.10 What are some common errors in show notes?

It depends on the note format to some extent:

0.10.1 HTML notes

0.10.2 Markdown notes

0.10.3 General errors

0.11 If I notice an error in my show's details how can it be fixed?

0.12 Does hobbypublicradio.com have anything to do with HPR?

0.13 How can I talk to other HPR hosts and listeners?

0.14 Why has HPR not got a Wikipedia page?

Once someone contributes to Hacker Public Radio, the Wikipedia rules prevent us from editing a page. You can of course create one prior to contributing a show, or ask for one to be created.

We do of course believe that Hacker Public Radio should have a Wikipedia entry. We are one of the longest running podcasts having started as Today with a Techie on 2005-09-19. We also are unique in our community driven approach to producing shows. And of course the fact that Wikipedia itself references us as a source [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]

0.15 I'd like to post a show but I would rather not have my email address published on the site.?

The mail is just a way for us to get back to you if there was an issue posting the show.

If you trust the janitors to know your real email we can just use an alias for you on the web site and have it forward the email to you automatically. That runs the risk that were the redirect list compromised then your real email would get exposed.

If you prefer, we can use the janitor email for your shows with your own host id. Then if any emails come in we can manually forward them at some point. The risk is that you are trusting the janitors to protect your email but again it could be compromised.

In both cases we would do our best to protect your email but we can't guarantee anything.

The other option is to use an a throwaway email, like https://www.guerrillamail.com/ for your show. This will be up for enough time to get the key necessary for to post the show. However keep in mind that we will be very suspicious of any submission done this way and will be checking it in detail, so expect delays in processing.