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Hacker Public Radio

Your ideas, projects, opinions - podcasted.

New episodes every weekday Monday through Friday.
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Welcome to HPR the Community Podcast

We started producing shows as Today with a Techie on 2005-09-19, 18 years, 0 months, 12 days ago. our shows are produced by listeners like you and can be on any topic that "are of interest to hackers". If you listen to HPR then please consider contributing one show a year. if you record your show now it could be released in 4 days.

Call for shows

We are running very low on shows at the moment. Have a look at the hosts page and if you don't see "2023-??-??" next to your name, or if your name is not listed, you might consider sending us in something.


Latest Shows


hpr3955 :: airgradient measurement station

Daniel Persson talks about a hardware measurement station he's installed

Thumbnail of Daniel Persson
Hosted by Daniel Persson on 2023-09-29 is flagged as Clean and released under a CC-BY-SA license.
airgradient, measurement, air quality. general. (Be the first).

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format. Play now:

Duration: 00:05:56

AirGradient is an open-source solution to measure the air in your living area. In my case, I need to keep track of the air in my office, so I have a healthy working environment.

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hpr3954 :: Sedating HPR at the Steading

MrX and Dave Morriss have lunch and record another chat

Thumbnail of Dave Morriss
Hosted by Dave Morriss on 2023-09-28 is flagged as Explicit and released under a CC-BY-SA license.
Edinburgh, The Steading, discussion. general. (Be the first).

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Duration: 01:14:22

Introduction

Hosts:

We recorded this on Sunday September 3rd 2023. We met in person again, and as before first visited the pub called The Steading where we had lunch. Then we adjourned to Dave's car in the car park, and recorded a chat.

The name "Steading" is another (Scots?) version of "Farmstead", and means the same. It's also an anagram of "Sedating"1, so ...

Topics discussed

  • Vaccines:
    • Dave has an appointment for COVID-19 and influenza vaccines. The new Omicron variant BA.2.86 has prompted another booster for some people.
    • Discussion of Smallpox vaccination
    • MrX has an appointment for an influenza vaccine
  • Edinburgh:
    • Dave took a trip on the recently extended Edinburgh tram
      • There is only one route, from the airport to Leith (port).
      • Older residents get free access.
    • MrX and MrsX recently walked from the centre of Edinburgh along the Water of Leith to the area where the tram terminus is at Newhaven.
  • Email:
    • Dave is using version Thunderbird 115.1.1 which is a rewrite of the original series where the API has now changed a lot.
    • Long-used add-ons now no longer work:
      • A favourite was Mailbox Alert which triggered sound alerts (or others) then mail arrived in a folder - so this could be after filtering. This was much more useful than the traditional "You have mail" type alerts.
    • Discussion of tags:
      • MrX mentions tags, meaning bits of text that can be attached to messages and used to classify them and to search for them.
      • In Gmail there are labels which can do this and these can be used to group messages regardless of folders
      • Thunderbird also has this concept which it calls tags. It comes with pre-defined tags such as Important and To Do, but more tags can be added. Any message can be given one or more tags. The filtering system can add tags as a message is processed. Searches can be performed on tags also.
      • Dave is an enthusiast of nested folders with filters to classify messages. MrX is keen on using tags for the same purpose. Dave mentioned Thunderbird's saved search feature (which he wrongly called virtual mailboxes) which can collect messages according to many criteria, including tags.
      • Some discussion about mail message storage strategies: file per message, mbox format, etc.
  • Ticks:
    • MrX's dog has brought some ticks back from recent walks.
    • Scotland seems to be a bit worse off for ticks in recent years.
    • Hikers need to protect against them and to perform checks that they are not on clothes. Wearing long socks or gaiters over long trousers can help.
    • Lyme Disease is a bacterial infection that can be passed by ticks.
    • This Week in Parasitism recently talked about an unpleasant disease caught from ticks, Babesiosis (not bacterial as Dave thought, but caused by a protozoan). This was in the USA; the disease doesn't seem to be in the UK at the moment.
    • Removal of ticks needs a tool or a fine pair of tweezers.
  • HPR changes:
    • Mentioned on the recent HPR Community News
    • Problem reports can be sent by email to admin at HPR, as messages to @hpr@botsin.space on Mastodon, and to the #hpr:matrix.org channel on Matrix.
  • Watching and listening:
    • MrX has been watching the YouTube channel Little Chinese Everywhere, recommended in the last of these chats.
    • MrX has also been listening to the BBC radio show Computing Britain. It consists of 12 15-minute episodes, from 2015, and is available as a podcast.
  • YouTube recommendations:
    • Dave:
      • Not Just Bikes:
        • A channel about cycling and city design. The channel owner is Canadian but has moved to Amsterdam for a better life for himself and his family. He highlights the differences between North American city design and the design of many European cities.
        • Example video: Even Small Towns are Great Here (5 Years in the Netherlands)
      • BicycleDutch:
        • Another channel about cycling in the Netherlands. This channel host, Mark Wagenbuur, is Dutch and does videos about cycle routes, and their development. Lots of videos made as he cycles a route. He is based in ’s-Hertogenbosch (map) and cycles in the region and to and from Utrecht.

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hpr3953 :: Large language models and AI don't have any common sense

Learn how to load and run GPT-2 or Llama2 to test it with common sense questions.

Hosted by hobs on 2023-09-27 is flagged as Clean and released under a CC-BY-SA license.
AI, GPT, GPT-2, Llama2, Hugging Face, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing. general. (Be the first).

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format. Play now:

Duration: 00:18:10

Hobson and Greg are working with volunteers to develop an open source AI that we call Qary (QA for question answering). We're adding plugins to support open source large language models (LLMs) like GPT-2 and Llama2. Here's how you can use LLMs in your own Python Programs.

  1. Create a Hugging Face account:
  1. Create and copy your access token:
  1. Create a .env file with your access token string:
echo "HUGGINGFACE_ACCESS_TOKEN=hf_..." >> .env
  1. Load the .env variables in your python script using dotenv package and os.environ:
  • TIP: Use os.environ to retrieve the dict of variable values rather than dotenv.load_values- Otherwise other environment variables that have been set by other shell scripts such as .bashrc will be ignored.
  • This confused us when we were getting our GitLab CI-CD pipeline working and deploying to Render.com.
  • Each of your cloud services will have different approaches to setting environment variables.
  • This token string can be passed as a keyword argument to most of the pipeline and model classes.
import dotenv
dotenv.load_dotenv()
import os
env = dict(os.environ)
token = env['HUGGINGFACE_ACCESS_TOKEN']
  1. Find the path and name for the model on Hugging Face hub you want to use:
  • search for "llama2" in the top search bar on huggingface.co/
  • TIP: don't hit enter at the end of your search, instead click on "See 3958 model results for llama2"
  • I clicked on meta-llama/Llama-2-7b-chat-hf to see the documentation
  1. On the documentation page for your model you may have to apply for a license if it's not really open source but business source like Meta does with its AI so you can't use their models to compete with them
  • Apply for a license to use Llama2 on ai.meta.com using the same e-mail you used for your Hugging Face account.
  1. Follow the instructions on huggingface.co to authenticate your python session
  • TIP: You'll need to use the kwarg use_auth_token in the AutoModel.from_pretrained or pipeline functions.
  • And it should be set to the token from your Hugging Face profile page. The hugging face documentation says to use the token kwarg, but that never worked for me.
from transformers import pipeline, set_seed
generator = pipeline('text-generation', model='openai-gpt')
q = "2+2="
responses = generator(
    q,
    max_length=10,
    num_return_sequences=10
    )
responses
[{'generated_text': '2+2= 2.2, 1.1 and'},
 {'generated_text': '2+2= 3336 miles. they'},
 {'generated_text': '2+2= 2, = 2 = 2'},
 {'generated_text': '2+2= 4 = 2 = 5 \n'},
 {'generated_text': '2+2= 0 ( 1 ) = ='},
 {'generated_text': '2+2= 6 times the speed of sound'},
 {'generated_text': '2+2= 2 times 5, 865'},
 {'generated_text': '2+2= 3 / 7 / 11 ='},
 {'generated_text': '2+2= 2 2 \n 2 of 2'},
 {'generated_text': '2+2= 1, 9 = 1,'}]

Here's the cow leg counting question:

    q = "There are 2 cows and 2 bulls, how many legs are there?"
    responses = generator(
        f"Question: {q}\nAnswer: ",
        max_length=30,
        num_return_sequences=10)
    answers = []
    for resp in responses:
        text = resp['generated_text']
        answers.append(text[text.find('Answer: ')+9:])
    answers
     'four. \n " let me see if i have this straight',
     'only 3. and three cows and 2 bulls are bigger than',
     '2, 2, 1, 2. \n " not yet',
     "one per cow, that's all there is. in fact",
     '30. and what am i? oh, yes, about',
     'one. the big, white bull that is bigger than 1',
     'three. they need to be introduced to the cow population before',
     "1. i don't know how many and where exactly ;",
     'no 2. 2. two bulls for 1 bull and 2',
     '1, there are 1.2, and 2, there are']

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hpr3952 :: Making the Case for Markdown

Keith discusses the background and applications for Markdown.

Thumbnail of Keith Murray
Hosted by Keith Murray on 2023-09-26 is flagged as Clean and released under a CC-BY-SA license.
markdown, plain text, writing, text editors, file formats. general. (Be the first).

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Duration: 00:06:44

Links to things mentioned in this episode:

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hpr3951 :: Cell Phone Screen Protectors

I talk about how I fail at Cell Phone Screen Protectors

Hosted by operat0r on 2023-09-25 is flagged as Explicit and released under a CC-BY-SA license.
tech, phone repair, cell phones, Screen Protectors. general. (Be the first).

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Duration: 00:28:40

I talk about how I fail at Cell Phone Screen Protectors

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hpr3950 :: Sid Meiers' Alpha Centauri

One of the best overlooked games

Thumbnail of Ahuka
Hosted by Ahuka on 2023-09-22 is flagged as Clean and released under a CC-BY-SA license.
Computer games, strategy games, Alpha Centauri. general. (Be the first).

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Duration: 00:16:09

Because it doesn't have the word "Civilization" in its name, this game is unfairly overlooked. It was a major achievement when released, and it is still a very rewarding game for anyone to pick up and play. There is a lot of depth to it, and it holds up well even after a couple of decades.

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hpr3949 :: How I use virtualisation to tame my Social Media addiction.

Knightwise talks about the command line applications he uses to fight his Social Media addiction.

Thumbnail of knightwise
Hosted by knightwise on 2023-09-21 is flagged as Clean and released under a CC-BY-SA license.
linux, tailscale, vpn, social media, reddit, irc, discord, . general. (Be the first).

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Duration: 00:15:37

Apps I talk about

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hpr3948 :: Cleaning up my mancave and talking about Creativity

Knightwise sets up his podcast rig in a messy attic and talks about the stuff lying around

Thumbnail of knightwise
Hosted by knightwise on 2023-09-20 is flagged as Clean and released under a CC-BY-SA license.
linux, podcasting, retro. general. 1.

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Duration: 00:26:31

Just a Random babble as I setup my podcasting rig in the office, clearing out some old stuff and telling you about what I encounter.

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hpr3947 :: Archiving Floppy Disks

This show describes how I go about archiving old floppy disks.

Thumbnail of Steve Saner
Hosted by Steve Saner on 2023-09-19 is flagged as Clean and released under a CC-BY-SA license.
floppy, disk, archive, linux, commands. general. (Be the first).

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Duration: 00:16:49

Archiving Floppy Disks

Summary

This show describes how I go about archiving old floppy disks. These disks date back to the early 90s when floppy disks were a common way of installing software on personal computers. They were also used as a portable storage mechanism for data files.

Equipment That I'm Using

  • IBM ThinkCentre desktop computer with a 3.5in floppy disk drive
  • Installed the 32-bit version of Slackware 14.2

Making an image of an entire floppy disk

dd if=/dev/fd0 of=filename.dsk

Making a floppy disk from a disk image

dd if=filename.dsk of=/dev/fd0

Copy files from a floppy disk

mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy
cd /mnt/floppy
cp filename /some/destination/path/filename
cd
umount /mnt/floppy

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hpr3946 :: Planning for a planner, part 02.

Sgoti and Bumble Bee discuss discbound planners, agendas, ink pens and more.

Thumbnail of Some Guy On The Internet
Hosted by Some Guy On The Internet on 2023-09-18 is flagged as Clean and released under a CC-BY-SA license.
Discbound, Notebooks, Planners, Happy Planner, Ink Pens.. general. 1.

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Duration: 00:36:08

Discbound Planners and Notebooks.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Previous five weeks

hpr3945 :: My chrome plugins hosted by Daniel Persson

2023-09-15. 00:04:31. Clean. general.
chrome, plugins.

Daniel Persson summarize the essential plugins he uses every day

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format.

hpr3944 :: Race for the Galaxy hosted by Tuula

2023-09-14. 00:15:47. Clean. general.
race for the galaxy, card game.

Tuula explains very basics of card game called Race for the Galaxy

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format.

hpr3943 :: Why my Dell does it better on Linux. hosted by knightwise

2023-09-13. 00:12:25. Clean. general.
linux, .

Knightwise talks about how he uses his Dell XPS 15 with Linux.

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format.

hpr3942 :: RE: How to make friends. hosted by Some Guy On The Internet

2023-09-12. 00:12:43. Clean. general.
Friends, reply show.

Sgoti replies to Klaatu's show, "How to make friends."

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format.

hpr3941 :: Interview with Yosef Kerzner hosted by operat0r

2023-09-11. 00:59:23. Clean. general.
Interviews, hacking, ai.

Interview with Yosef Kerzner

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format.

hpr3940 :: Equipment Maintenance hosted by Ahuka

2023-09-08. 00:13:12. Clean. Travel.
RV, travel, southeast US, maintenance.

We prepare the RV and the truck for our trip.

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format.

hpr3939 :: How I got into tech and hacking hosted by Trixter

2023-09-07. 00:20:38. Clean. How I got into tech.
demoscene, hacking, programming, assembly, gaming.

Getting interested in tech can start in both odd and familiar places. This is Trixter's story.

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format.

hpr3938 :: An open directory of web audio stream hosted by dnt

2023-09-06. 00:18:36. Clean. general.
internet radio, free culture.

I was looking for an open directory of web audio streams and found radio hyphen browser dot info.

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format.

hpr3937 :: Adventures in Pi-Hole hosted by Noodlez

2023-09-05. 00:08:17. Clean. general.
pi-hole, linux, networking, self-hosting.

Noodlez recounts their experience getting a pi-hole server

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format.

hpr3936 :: HPR Community News for August 2023 hosted by HPR Volunteers

2023-09-04. 00:56:37. Clean. HPR Community News.
Community News.

HPR Volunteers talk about shows released and comments posted in August 2023

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format.

hpr3935 :: Server build retrospective hosted by Daniel Persson

2023-09-01. 00:09:46. Clean. general.
server, hardware, rack.

Daniel Persson goes through his experience of building his first server

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format.

hpr3934 :: Crusader Kings II hosted by Tuula

2023-08-31. 00:38:12. Clean. Computer Strategy Games.
Crusader Kings, Paradox.

Tuula rambles about her all time favourite strategy game Crusader Kings II

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format.

hpr3933 :: Planning for a planner. hosted by Some Guy On The Internet

2023-08-30. 00:47:32. Clean. general.
Discbound, Notebooks, Planners, Happy Planner, Ink Pens..

Sgoti and Bumble Bee discuss discbound planners, agendas, ink pens and more.

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format.

hpr3932 :: Short introduction to inxi hosted by folky

2023-08-29. 00:07:17. Clean. What's in My Toolkit.
shell, inxi, forum.

folky gives the show about inxi that Ken wished for

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format.

hpr3931 :: What Instrument was played in hpr3905? hosted by Fred Black

2023-08-28. 00:34:00. Clean. general.
Music, quiz, Instrument.

I reveal what instrument was played in hpr3905

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format.

hpr3930 :: Playing Civilization II Test of Time hosted by Ahuka

2023-08-25. 00:12:27. Clean. general.
Computer games, strategy games, Civilization II, Test of Time.

Some hints for playing Civilization II Test of Time

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format.

hpr3929 :: Some experiences with different notes apps hosted by Lee

2023-08-24. 00:09:47. Clean. general.
markdown, notes.

About apps that store notes as markdown

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format.

hpr3928 :: RE: Klaatu. hosted by Some Guy On The Internet

2023-08-23. 00:24:27. Clean. Bash Scripting.
Bash scripting, bash commands, bash_aliases.

Sgoti confuses everyone with bash nonsense.

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format.

hpr3927 :: Audacity Update 20230702 hosted by Ahuka

2023-08-22. 00:06:12. Clean. general.
Audacity, MP3, transcoding.

RESERVE SHOW. Audacity has been having problems lately.

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format.

hpr3926 :: Karate Do: An Overview hosted by Hipernike

2023-08-21. 00:45:06. Clean. general.
karate, martial arts, sports.

Hipernike talks about Karate, its meaning and some of the things he has learnt

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format.

hpr3925 :: Uncommon tools and social media hosted by Daniel Persson

2023-08-18. 00:05:29. Clean. general.
social media, linux.

Daniel Persson talks about some of the tools he uses for video production and social media

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format.

hpr3924 :: Mass Quick Tips for August 2023 hosted by operat0r

2023-08-17. 00:25:49. Clean. general.
hacking, computers, Android, quick tips.

operat0r will never get to some of these as full eps so here you go!

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format.

hpr3923 :: Meal preparation. hosted by Some Guy On The Internet

2023-08-16. 00:41:28. Clean. general.
Bumble Bee, Meal Prep.

Sgoti chats with Bumble Bee about meal preparation.

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format.

hpr3922 :: Silent Key hosted by Trey

2023-08-15. 00:04:01. Clean. HAM radio.
morse code, cw, amateur radio, telegraph, memorial.

A brief history of the term "Silent Key" as applied to amateur radio

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format.

hpr3921 :: HPR AudioBook Club 23 - John Carter of Mars (Books 1-3) hosted by HPR_AudioBookClub

2023-08-14. 01:48:36. Clean. general.
mars, audiobook club, fiction, scifi, audiobook.

In this episode the HPR Audiobook Club discusses the first three books of John Carter of Mars

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format.

hpr3920 :: RV Trip 2022-2023: Southeast US hosted by Ahuka

2023-08-11. 00:14:22. Clean. Travel.
RV, travel planning.

Step one for a months-long RV trip is the planning.

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format.

hpr3919 :: How I hacked my voice hosted by Tuula

2023-08-10. 00:15:59. Clean. general.
voice, trans.

Tuula talks about what she's doing to change her voice

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format.

hpr3918 :: Emacs package curation, part 3 hosted by dnt

2023-08-09. 00:14:24. Clean. general.
emacs, elisp.

Let's go through every single package installed in my Emacs configuration. The last one.

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format.

hpr3917 :: Response to "Permission Tickets" by oneofspoons hosted by dnt

2023-08-08. 00:06:48. Clean. general.
crypto.

Hopefully a useful provocation, in response to a recent intriguing show by another HPR host

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format.

hpr3916 :: HPR Community News for July 2023 hosted by HPR Volunteers

2023-08-07. 01:15:33. Clean. HPR Community News.
Community News.

HPR Volunteers talk about shows released and comments posted in July 2023

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format.

Older Shows

Get a full list of all our shows.