HPR

Posted at 2026-03-18 03:52:52 relating to the show hpr4597 which was released on 2026-03-17 by Vance entitled UNIX Curio #2 - fgrep

I always brushed off egrep and fgrep as niche tools, but this episode inspired me to use it more often! Thanks for providing another tool for my toolbelt. As a general grep tip, you can use . to avoid escaping certain patterns in the shell (ie if your pattern has a space)

Posted at 2026-03-18 03:34:11 relating to the show hpr4597 which was released on 2026-03-17 by Vance entitled UNIX Curio #2 - fgrep

You've done a great job of explaining when to use each type of grep. I taught an in-house class on regular expressions, and you're explanations would have helped the crew know why there are these different versions.

Thanks for helping to keep *nix alive!

Posted at 2026-03-17 13:46:31 relating to the show hpr4593 which was released on 2026-03-11 by Whiskeyjack entitled Nuclear Reactor Technology - Ep 8 Generation Four Reactors

Thank you for your encouragement. It always helps to know that people are actually listening to these episodes.

A number of listeners have posted questions about topics covered in this series and I promised to answer them in a follow up episode.

I have the script written for the follow up and will record it in early April and it currently has about 20 minutes of content. I currently have a couple of episodes uploaded for slots in April for an unrelated series and will post the follow up episode after the second one in the new series. This means It should be out in late April.

If anyone has any more questions they would like me to address, please post them in the comments to any episode in this series.

Posted at 2026-03-17 01:19:46 relating to the show hpr4587 which was released on 2026-03-03 by Vance entitled UNIX Curio #1 - Shell Archives

Great episode. I especially enjoyed shar and remembering all the issues I once had with attachments. I still have them at times, but that is generally due to security forbidding executable file types...

Posted at 2026-03-17 01:13:51 relating to the show hpr4593 which was released on 2026-03-11 by Whiskeyjack entitled Nuclear Reactor Technology - Ep 8 Generation Four Reactors

As an engineer with an insatiable curiosity about way too many topics, I loved this series. A nice overview that I doubt I could find anywhere else.

Posted at 2026-03-16 13:38:03 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

I wouldn't personally use this, but I find it extremely crafty and a cool way to modify movies for your own enjoyment! I also often forget that mpv supports multiple audio tracks :P. As an additional tip to improve watching experience, on mpv you can define a global subtitles folder with --sub-file-path and name the srt file the same as the audio file (or use --sub-auto=fuzzy to make the subtitle matching more lenient), and it should be loaded by default along with the original file.

Posted at 2026-03-13 16:44:12 relating to the show hpr3711 which was released on 2022-10-24 by Zen_Floater2 entitled Cars

I enjoyed your episode and appreciate you discussing cars on an HPR episode. I want to point out that your facts on electrics are inaccurate as well as some of the details about charging infrastructure.

I have never encountered evidence of laws forcing you to replace an electric battery before selling a car.

The battery chemistry you sited was Nickel Cadmium but that is not what they are using. They are using various lithium chemistries. Also, most people are not depleting their battery capacity on a daily basis and a 240v charging plug is more than adequate for most uses.

Thanks again for making a show!

Posted at 2026-03-13 15:28:45 relating to the show hpr4509 which was released on 2025-11-13 by Kevie entitled HPR Beer Garden 5 - Heferweisen

Thank you for pointing this out, I hadn't noticed the spelling error, I shall attempt to get it sorted.

Posted at 2026-03-10 04:20:16 relating to the show hpr4592 which was released on 2026-03-10 by Antoine entitled Happy by shower # 2

I think that hearing what other people do in their day to day life is extremely interesting and wouldn't mind a third episode. In particular, the idea of learning how to share things is something I struggle with, since outside of sharing drawings and stuff I've made, its difficult. Best of luck to you

Posted at 2026-03-10 01:39:18 relating to the show hpr4576 which was released on 2026-02-16 by operat0r entitled Responce to Lee/Elsbeth eps

I haven't been lucky enough to get a job in the IT space, but what you talked about with struggling with people resonated with me. I am EXTREMELY bad with like talking to people if its not a topic I'm super familiar with, and kinda fall back to generic responses or making little dad jokes during the conversation.

Posted at 2026-03-09 04:58:24 relating to the show hpr4591 which was released on 2026-03-09 by Lee entitled A Bit of Git

I think that the way you explained all of these features using a real story and going through your thought process, while weaving explanations of each command, is such an interesting way to teach about a program! I found the story interesting, and learned a lot about git that i didnt know about.

Posted at 2026-03-07 20:10:08 relating to the show hpr4587 which was released on 2026-03-03 by Vance entitled UNIX Curio #1 - Shell Archives

I appreciate the positive comments!

Regarding Solaris (and SunOS and AIX), I don't recall exactly how I determined that uuencode wasn't included with the base OS. Probably a set of man pages online somewhere. Of course, it would be easy to compile and install uuencode from source and I'm sure it happened frequently. Similarly, it was common for GNU versions of some utilities to be installed by people using commercial UNIX systems because they often had additional capabilities.

More episodes are coming; hope you enjoy them!

Posted at 2026-03-07 18:42:23 relating to the show hpr4573 which was released on 2026-02-11 by Whiskeyjack entitled Nuclear Reactor Technology - Ep 6 Thorium Reactors

I will do a follow up episode on nuclear power technology and try to cover your questions and others.

I have a four part series on audio recording ready to go, but I will slot in the nuclear power follow up for after that and start working on it now.

Anyone else who would like me to address these or other points is welcome to add their questions or comments as well.

Posted at 2026-03-07 11:30:14 relating to the show hpr4573 which was released on 2026-02-11 by Whiskeyjack entitled Nuclear Reactor Technology - Ep 6 Thorium Reactors

I would like some commentary in the current situation, why has hinkley gone off the rails, the new american approach, the odd things done after fukushima, the new radiation rules in the states.

Posted at 2026-03-06 19:25:26 relating to the show hpr4565 which was released on 2026-01-30 by Kevie entitled HPR Beer Garden 9 - Barley Wine

I've had HPR in my feed for a long time - always hopeful something will spark with me. Then: you 2 come up with
Beer Garden! And: you like what I like! I'm writing from Oklahoma, where a state legislator funded her senate campaign with money from the liquor distributors in exchange for monopoly control over what we drink, but I think before the law changed I actually had some scotch silly. Anyway, RREally enjoy your show,

Posted at 2026-03-05 05:58:31 relating to the show hpr4597 which was released on 2026-03-17 by Vance entitled UNIX Curio #2 - fgrep

The length of my commute

Posted at 2026-03-05 01:47:53 relating to the show hpr4587 which was released on 2026-03-03 by Vance entitled UNIX Curio #1 - Shell Archives

I worked for the infamous Inference Corporation years ago when they still existed, and the corporate server ran Solaris (I don't recall which versions were running when I was there). That server had uuencode and uudecode on it. It may not have been installed with the OS, but it was there. Someone put it there. So I know it at least ran on Solaris, which wouldn't require much more than a compilation of the sources.

Anyway, great show! Thanks so much!

Posted at 2026-03-04 06:47:39 relating to the show hpr4509 which was released on 2025-11-13 by Kevie entitled HPR Beer Garden 5 - Heferweisen

The word "Heferweisen" does not exist in German. The correct composite noun is "Hefeweizen" from "Hefe" (yeast) and "Weizen" (wheat).

However, there are German words Hafer (oats) and Weisen (some homonyms like wise men, manners, to indicate), that do not have any relationship to beer. The word "Hefer" does not exist in German.

Posted at 2026-03-03 23:38:55 relating to the show hpr4583 which was released on 2026-02-25 by Whiskeyjack entitled Nuclear Reactor Technology - Ep 7 Small Modular Reactors

I can do a follow up episode on small modular reactors comparing some of the pros and cons of SMRs versus large reactors and what factors may favour either. I will also cover any other questions that may come up.

As for safety, that could possibly be a controversial subject and so probably not a good fit for HPR. There will be people who have strong politically based opinions either way, and I would like to stick to just explaining how the technology works and let other people in other forums address non-technical issues.

Posted at 2026-03-03 23:11:25 relating to the show hpr4586 which was released on 2026-03-02 by HPR Volunteers entitled HPR Community News for February 2026

In HPR4586 Community News for February at around the 50 minute mark, you talked about automating the audio process for HPR.

I have a 4 part series ready to go which may be relevant to some of this. Episode 2 covers basic filtering, de-essing, and normalizing using FFMPEG in a shell script. I was planning to release this as soon as my present series on nuclear reactor technology was done (there's one more episode in the schedule).

I'm definitely not an audio expert, as I only started learning about this in order to fix audio problems that were the first few HPR episodes that I did.

I listened to the Linux Matters podcast that you referred to with respect to their automated processing software, so I do have some idea of what they are talking about. I do have some concerns about the practical problems which may arise when dealing with episodes sent in by just anybody using all sorts of different hardware however.

I had assumed that you were already doing some sort of normalizing for HPR, as the volume levels are fairly consistent. In fact I emphasized to listeners in the series to send an non-normalized copy to HPR so as not to conflict with whatever processing you are doing.

Perhaps someone at HPR could do an episode or talk about it in the community news explaining what HPR actually does currently in terms of audio processing as that may help in generating some discussion as well as being interesting in its own right.

Posted at 2026-03-03 15:44:12 relating to the show hpr4571 which was released on 2026-02-09 by Lee entitled Data processing retrospective

Hi Lee,

I wish more people could record thoughts of the previous generations, not only about tech but about life outside this subject.

Cheers,
Archer72

Posted at 2026-03-03 15:15:19 relating to the show hpr4587 which was released on 2026-03-03 by Vance entitled UNIX Curio #1 - Shell Archives

Hi Vance,

I have kept this series the future feed so I can hear it sooner. :)

Oh and I have just now looked at your great show notes.

Cheers,
Archer72

Posted at 2026-03-03 15:08:13 relating to the show hpr4584 which was released on 2026-02-26 by Archer72 entitled Recording a show, and crappy audio

Hi Dave,

I wouldn't record with either earbud on a regular basis, but it works in a pinch.

My preference, if away from a proper mic, is to use the Axet Audio Recorder which mysteriously disappeared from the F-droid app.

Actually, this is not so mysterious considering the state of Google's current relationship against the developers of FOSS apps.

I have also heard the results of the android recorder with a lapel mic in a previous episode, which shows semi-decent quality.

Cheers,
Archer72

Posted at 2026-03-02 21:10:12 relating to the show hpr4583 which was released on 2026-02-25 by Whiskeyjack entitled Nuclear Reactor Technology - Ep 7 Small Modular Reactors

Loving this series. Maybe Whiskey Jack could give some cost comparisons between large and small reactors. He could also give us a realistic look at nuclear plant safety/accidents compared to conventional power production. Looking forward to the episode on FORTH generation reactors ;-)

Posted at 2026-03-01 23:39:18 relating to the show hpr4586 which was released on 2026-03-02 by HPR Volunteers entitled HPR Community News for February 2026

thanks for the well wishes! things got so much worse <3

Posted at 2026-03-01 22:35:38 relating to the show hpr4585 which was released on 2026-02-27 by candycanearter entitled mpv util scripts

local function resolve_missing_cover(domain)
print("looking for " .. (domain or "nil"))
local extico = {
["hub.hackerpublicradio.org"] = "https://hackerpublicradio.org/images/hpr_logo.png",
-- yes using a product picture is silly but so is not featuring your icon ANYWHERE else
["anonradio.net"] = "https://sdf.org/store/thumbs/anon3.jpg",
["archives.anonradio.net"] = "https://sdf.org/store/thumbs/anon3.jpg",
["hashnix.club"] = "default",
["radio.kingposs.com"] = "https://kingposs.com/assets/buttons/PossBadge.gif"
}

if domain then
local force = extico[domain]
if force == "default" then return resolve_missing_cover() end
if force and mp.commandv("video-add", force, "auto", "domainhardcode.png") then return end

local favico = "https://" .. domain .. "/favicon.ico"
print(favico)
if mp.commandv("video-add", favico, "auto", "favico.png") then return end
end

mp.command("video-add ~~/cover.png auto default.png")
end

Posted at 2026-03-01 19:21:46 relating to the show hpr4574 which was released on 2026-02-12 by Vance entitled UNIX Curio #0 - Introduction

Glad to see that you picked up the call and submitted. Very well done, too! Looking forward to more.

Posted at 2026-03-01 08:52:41 relating to the show hpr4585 which was released on 2026-02-27 by candycanearter entitled mpv util scripts

Hi Windigo,

My skill are lacking in this area, with only one improvement made to mplayer/mpv. I pretty much forgot about it, because it get copied to a new system in the form of .bash_aliases

alias mplayer="mplayer -af scaletempo"

which I borrowed from Ken

https://kenfallon.com/speeding-up-speech-with-mplayer

Cheers,
Archer72

Posted at 2026-03-01 05:07:24 relating to the show hpr4585 which was released on 2026-02-27 by candycanearter entitled mpv util scripts

If you do want to hook into mpv with external bash scripts, you can set up a socket with --input-ipc-server and pipe command line input/output through that. Unfortunately, it doesn't really work as well with multiple mpv windows, but its great if you only plan to have one window open at once

Posted at 2026-02-28 23:06:46 relating to the show hpr4573 which was released on 2026-02-11 by Whiskeyjack entitled Nuclear Reactor Technology - Ep 6 Thorium Reactors

Thank you for the feedback. The last episode in the series is coming up on the 11th of March in episode hpr4593. If anyone has any questions or related topics that they would like me to follow up on, I can make a follow up episode to address those topics.

I have another series ready on a completely unrelated topic that I will start posting after this one is done, but I will delay that if anyone wants a follow up episode to this series.