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Hacker Public Radio is an podcast that releases shows every weekday Monday through Friday. Our shows are produced by the community (you) and can be on any topic that are of interest to hackers and hobbyists.

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    • Jan 30, 2026 LATEST EPISODE
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    Latest episodes from Hacker Public Radio

    HPR4565: HPR Beer Garden 9 - Barley Wine

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 30, 2026


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. With winter in full swing in the UK, Dave and Kevie continue their look at winter warmer ales with a review of a couple of British Barley Wine ales. Dave samples Ridgeway's Criminally Bad Elf whilst Kevie tries out a lmited release from Chiltern Brewery Roger Bodger's Barley WIne. Connect with the guys on Untappd: Dave Kevie The intro sounds for the show are used from: https://freesound.org/people/mixtus/sounds/329806/ https://freesound.org/people/j1987/sounds/123003/ https://freesound.org/people/greatsoundstube/sounds/628437/ Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4564: MakeMKV error

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 29, 2026


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. I am using MakeMKV version 1.18.2, the most updated version of the program USB Blu-ray drive BD-MLT UJ240AS reads a DVD or Blu-ray disc correctly Matshita SATA Blu-ray drive BDDVDRW CH20L stalls with ad DVD or Blu-ray disc Hewlett Packard The disc does not stall with Handbrake There is enough power, using an adapter that provides 12v Before: MakeMKV v1.18.1 linux(x64-release) stuck when launched How do I download older versions? MakeMKV old version repo makemkv-bin-1.17.7.tar.gz 2024-05-15 16:29 makemkv-oss-1.17.7.tar.gz 2024-05-15 16:31 After: Recorded with: Zoom H1 Essential Microphone Monitored with: soundcore V20i open ear headphones Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4563: Nuclear Reactor Technology - Ep 5 Fast Reactors

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 28, 2026


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. Fast Reactors 03 Fast versus Slow Neutrons "Fast neutron" reactors are ones which use the "fast neutron" reaction. This is as opposed to "slow" or "thermal" neutron reactors which use a slow neutron reaction. Nearly all reactors in use today use a slow neutron reaction. 04 Moderators 06 No Moderator in Fast Neutron Reactors 07 Burners versus Breeders 08 Fast Fission Fuel Cycle 08 "Typical" Fuel 09 Other Methods 10 Reprocessing 11 Fuel Types 11 Oxide 12 Metal 13 Nitride 14 Carbide 15 Coolant 16 Liquid Sodium 18 Liquid Lead or Lead-Bismuth 19 Helium Gas 20 Molten Salt 21 History of Fast Neutron Reactors 21 Origins 22 Reasons for Developing Them 23 Reasons They are Still Being Developed 24 This is a Proven Technology 25 Plutonium Stockpiles 26 Pros and Cons of Fast Reactors If fast reactors are more expensive and difficult to operate than slow reactors, why is there any interest in them? 27 Pros Fast neutron reactors can use all of the uranium supply by converting the U-238 to plutonium as well as using the U-235. Slow neutron reactors can only use the U-235 plus converting a very small proportion of the U-238 to plutonium. This means that a given amount of fuel will go much further when used with a fast neutron reactor than a slow one. 28 Some (but not all) fast neutron reactors can produce more plutonium than they use. This extra plutonium can be used to make uranium-plutonium mixed oxide (or MOX) fuel to be used in slow reactors, or it can be used to power a thorium fuel cycle. So the higher cost of the fast neutron reactors can be offset by having it produce fuel for several slow neutron or thorium reactors. 29 They can also use up or "burn" radioactive waste. That is, highly radioactive elements which are a byproduct of fuel use but not usable as fuel by themselves can be separated from the spent fuel and fed back into the reactor where the additional radiation will convert them into elements or isotopes which are either not radioactive or which are otherwise easier to dispose of. 30 Cons There are a number of cons however, as otherwise there would be a lot more fast neutron reactors in the world. Since water, even "light" water, is a moderator, fast neutron reactors cannot use water as a coolant. Other alternative coolants must be used, and these complicate the design of the reactor and make it more difficult to operate. 31 Alternative compatible coolants may be corrosive, and so new materials may need to be developed for both the reactor vessel and the fuel cladding. Alternative coolants are often opaque, making it difficult to inspect the reactor. The fuel cycle requires reprocessing spent fuel, which means that reprocessing facilities have to be set up, which is an additional expense. 32 Fast neutron reactors were primarily developed on the premise that uranium supplies were limited and would soon become very expensive. However new very large and very high grade uranium deposits were discovered in Canada, Australia, and Kazakhstan, causing uranium prices to fall rather than rise. As a result it is much cheaper to operate a once-through fuel cycle than to build fast neutron reactors. 33 Future Prospects Currently fast neutron reactors are not economically competitive with slow neutron reactors for electric power generation so there isn't a lot of interest from prospective customers. Originally interest in them was driven by a belief that the world would run short of uranium. However, higher uranium prices sparked increased mineral exploration which resulted in finding large high grade reserves of low cost uranium, undercutting the need for economizing on its use. 34 There is still ongoing R&D though as they offer several other use cases. One is to get rid of radioactive waste elements by turning them into non-radioactive or less radioactive isotopes or elements. The other is to provide a supply of plutonium for fuelling thorium reactors. 35 Conclusion This has been a short overview of fast neutron reactors, including their history, uses, and underlying design features. In the next episode we will describe the use of thorium in nuclear power, including what thorium is, how it differs from uranium, and what sort of reactors can use it. Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4562: Software development doesn't end until it's packaged

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 27, 2026


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. Development isn't over until it's packaged Most software development I've done has been utilities for highly specific workflows. I've written code to ensure that metadata for a company's custom file format gets copied along with the rest of the data when the file gets archived, code that ensures a search field doesn't mangle input, lots of Git hooks, file converters, parsers, and of course my fair share of dirty hacks. Because most software projects I work on are designed for a specific task, very few of them have required packaging. My utilities have been either integrated into a larger code base I'm not responsible for, or else distributed across an infrastructure by an admin. It's like a magic trick, which has made my life conveniently easier but, as magic does, it has also tricked me into thinking that my development work is done once I can prove that my code does its job. The reality is that code development isn't actually done until you can deliver it to your users in a format they can install. I don't think I'm alone in forgetting that software delivery is the real final product. There are many reasons some developers stop short of providing an installable package for the code they've worked on for weeks or months or years. First of all, packaging is work, and after writing and troubleshooting code for months, sometimes you just want your work to be over just as soon as everything functions as expected. Secondly, there are a lot of software package formats out there, regardless of what platform you're delivering to. However, I view packaging as part of quality assurance. There are lots of benefits you gain by packaging your code into an installer, and you don't have to target every package format. In fact, you get the benefits of packaging by creating just one package. Checking for consistency When you package your code as an installable file, whether it's an RPM file or a Bash script or a Flatpak or AppImage or EXE or MSI or anything else, you are checking your code base for consistency. Pick whatever package format you're most comfortable with, or the one you think represents the bulk of your target audience, and you're sure to find that the package tooling expects to be automated. Nobody wants to start packaging from scratch every time they update code, so naturally packaging tools are designed to be configured once for a specific code base and then to create updated packages each time the code base is updated. If you're building a package for your project and discover that you have to manually intervene, then you've discovered a bug in your code. Imagine that you've got a project repository with a name in camel-case. You hadn't noticed before, but your code refers to itself in a mix of lowercase and camel-case. Your package build grinds to a halt because a variable used by the packaging tools suddenly can't find your code base because it was set to a lowercase title but the archive of your code uses camel-case. If this happens to you, it's also going to happen for every software packager trying to help you deliver your project to their users. Fix it for yourself, and you've fixed it for everyone. Discover surprise dependencies For decades, one of the most common problems of software troubleshooting has been the phrase “well, it works on my machine.” No matter how many tools we developers have at our disposal to make it easy to build and run software on a clean system, it's still common to accidentally deliver software with surprise dependencies. It's easy to forget to revert to a clean snapshot in a virtual machine, or to use a container that just happens to have a more recent version of a library than you'd realised, or to get the path of an important executable wrong in a script, or to forget that not all computers ship with a thing you take for granted. Not all packaging tools are immune to this problem, but very robust ones (like RPM and DEB, Flatpak, and AppImage) are. I can't count the times I've tried to deliver an RPM only to be reminded by rpmbuild that I haven't included the -devel version of a dependency (many Linux distributions separate development libraries from binaries.) You may not literally fix every problem with dependency management by building a single package, but you can clearly identify what your code requires. It only takes a single warning from your packaging tool for you to add a note to other packagers about what they must include in their own builds. As an additional bonus, it's also a good reminder to double check the licenses your project is using. In the haze of desperate hacking to get something to just-work-already, it's helpful to get a gentle reminder that you've linked to a library with a different license than everything else. Few packaging tools (if any?) detect licensing requirements directly, but sometimes all it takes is a reminder that you're using a library that comes from a non-standard repo for you to remember to review licensing. Every package is an example package Once you've packaged your code once, you create an example for everyone coming to your project to turn it into a package of their own. It doesn't matter whether your example package is an RPM or a DEB or just a TGZ for a front-end like SlackBuild or Arch's AUR, it's the interaction between a packaging system and the input script that counts. Even a novice package maintainer is likely to be able to reverse engineer a packaging script enough to reuse the same logic for their own package. Here's the build and install section of the RPM for GNU Hello: %prep %autosetup %build %configure make %{?_smp_mflags} %install %make_install %find_lang %{name} rm -f %{buildroot}/%{_infodir}/dir %post /sbin/install-info %{_infodir}/%{name}.info %{_infodir}/dir || : Here's the GNU Hello build script for Arch Linux: source=(https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/hello/$pkgname-$pkgver.tar.gz) md5sums=('5cf598783b9541527e17c9b5e525b7eb') build(){ cd "$pkgname-$pkgver" ./configure --prefix=/usr make } package(){ cd "$pkgname-$pkgver" make DESTDIR="$pkgdir/" install } There are differences, but you can see the shared logic. There are macros or functions that abstract some common steps of the build process, there are variables to ensure consistency, and they both benefit from using automake as provided by the source code. Armed with these examples, you could probably write a DEB package or Flatpak ref for GNU Hello in an afternoon. Package your code at least once Packaging is quality assurance. Even though a packaging system is really just a front-end for whatever build system your code uses anyway, the rigour of creating a repeatable and automated process for delivering your project is a helpful exercise. It benefits your project, and it benefits the people eager to deliver your project to other users. Software development isn't over until it's packaged.Shownotes taken from https://www.both.org/?p=13264Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4561: A bit about Mission:Libre, a new project for 11-14 year olds in free software

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 26, 2026


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. Mission:Libre is a new project for 11 to 14-year-old kids who're interested in free software. Mission:Libre website: https://missionlibre.org Carmen's e-mail address: carmen@missionlibre.org "Libre!" issue 0: https://missionlibre.org/files/libre0.pdf Mission:Libre's Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/MissionLibreProvide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4560: Arthur C. Clarke: Other Works, Part 2

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 23, 2026


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. This brings us to a look at some of Arthur C. Clarke's other stories, A Time Odyssey (1951), Tales From the White Hart (1957), The Nine Billion Names of God (1954), The Star (1955), Dolphin Island (1964), and A Meeting With Medusa (1971. These stories will wrap up our look at Clarke's Science Fiction and we have seen a lot of good stuff here. And as a final note, we cover CLarke's Three Laws. Arthur C. Clarke: Other Works, A Time Odyssey A collaboration between two of science fiction's best authors: what could possibly go wrong? Well, something went wrong. This series is not bad, but I hesitate to describe it as good. This series was described by Clarke as neither a prequel nor a sequel, but an “orthoquel”, a name coined from “orthogonal”, which means something roughly like “at right angles”, though it is also used in statistics to denote events that are independent and do not influence each other. And in relativity theory Time is orthogonal to Space. And in multi-dimensional geometry we can talk about axes in each dimension as orthogonal to all of the others. It is something I can't picture, being pretty much limited to three dimensions, but it can be described mathematically. It is sort of like the 2001 series, but not really. It has globes instead of monoliths. And the spheres have a circumference and volume that is related to their radius not by the usual pi, but by exactly three. Just what this means I am not sure, other than they are not sphere's in any usual sense of the word. In this story these spheres seem to be gathering people from various eras and bringing them to some other planet which gets christened “Mir”, though not in any way to the Russian Space Station. It is a Russian word that can mean “peace”, “world”, or “village”. I have seen it used a lot to refer to a village in my studies of Russian history. Anyway, the inhabitants include two hominids, a mother and daughter, a group of British Redcoats, Mongols from the Genghis Khan era, a UN Peacekeeper helicopter, a Russian space capsule, an unknown Rudyard Kipling, the army of Alexander The Great… Well at least they have lots of characters to throw around. They end up taking sides and fighting each other. In the end several of the people are returned to Earth in their own time. But the joke is on them. The beings behind the spheres are call themselves The Firstborn because they were the first to achieve sentience. They figure that best way for them to remain safe is to wipe out any other race that achieves sentience, making them to polar opposite of the beings behind the monoliths in 2001, for whom the mind is sacred. Anyway, the Firstborn have arranged for a massive solar flare that will wipe out all life on Earth and completely sterilize the planet, but conveniently it will happen in 5 years, leaving time for plot development. Of course the people of Earth will try to protect themselves. Then in the third book of the series an ominous object enters the solar system. This is of course a callback to the Rama object. It is like they wanted to take everything from the Rama series and twist it. While I love a lot of Clarke's work and some of Baxter's as well, I think this is eminently skippable. The two of them also collaborated on the final White Hart story, which isn't bad Other Works Tales from the White Hart This collection of short stories has a unity of the setting, a pub called White Hart, where a character tells outrageous stories. Other characters are thinly disguised science fiction authors, including Clarke himself. Clarke mentions that he was inspired to do this by the Jorkens stories of Lord Dunsany, which are also outrageous tall tales, but lacking the science fictions aspects of Clarke's stories. Of course this type of story has a long history, in which we would do well to mention the stories of Baron Munchausen, and of course the stories of L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt as found in Tales from Gavagan's Bar. And Spider Robinson would take this basic idea and turn it into a series of books about Callahan's Place. Stories of this type are at least as much Fantasy as anything, but quite enjoyable, and I think I can recommend all of these as worth the time to while away a cold winter's evening while sitting by a warm fire with a beverage of choice. The Nine Billion Names of God This short story won a retrospective Hugo in 2004 as being the best short story of 1954. The idea is that a group of Tibetan monks believe that the purpose of the universe is to identify the nine billion names of God, and once that has been done the universe will no longer have a purpose and will cease to exist. They have been identifying candidates and writing them down, but the work is very slow, so they decide that maybe with a little automation they can speed it up. So they get a computer (and in 1954, you should be picturing a room-sized mainframe), and then hire some Western programmers to develop the program to do this. The programmers don't believe the monks are on to anything here, but a paycheck is a paycheck. They finish the program and start it running, but decide they don't want to be there when the monks discover their theory doesn't work, so they take off early without telling anyone, and head down the mountain. But on the way, they see the stars go out, one by one. The Star This classic short story won the Hugo for Best Short Story in 1956. The story opens with the return of an interstellar expedition that has been studying a system where the star went nova millennia ago. But the expedition's astrophysicist, a Jesuit Priest, seems to be in a crisis of faith. And if you think it implausible that a Jesuit Priest could also be an astrophysicist, I would suggest you look into the case of the Belgian priest Georges Lemaître, who first developed the theory of the Big Bang. Anyway, in the story, they learn that this system had a planet much like Earth, and it had intelligent beings much like Earth, who were peaceful, but in a tragic turn of events they knew that their star was going to explode, but they had no capability of interstellar travel. So they created a repository on the outermost planet of the system that would survive the explosion, and left records of their civilization. And when the Jesuit astrophysicist calculated the time of the explosion and the travel time for light, he is shaken: “[O]h God, there were so many stars you could have used. What was the need to give these people to the fire, that the symbol of their passing might shine above Bethlehem?” Dolphin Island This is a good Young Adult novel about the People of the Sea, who are dolphins. They save a young boy who had stowed away on a hovership that subsequently had crashed, and because no one knew about him he was left among the wreckage when the crew takes off in the life boats. And from here it is the typical Bildungsroman you find in most Young Adult novels. The dolphins bring him to an island, where he becomes involved with a research community led by a professor who is trying to communicate with dolphins. He learns various skills there, survives dangers, and in the end has to risk his life to save the people on the island. If you have a 13 year old in your house, this is worth looking for. A Meeting With Medusa This won the 1972 Nebula Award for Best Novella. It concerns one Howard Falcon, who early in the story has an accident involving a helium-filled airship, is badly injured, and requires time and prosthetics to heal. But then he promotes an expedition to Jupiter that uses similar technology, a Hot-Hydrogen balloon-supported aircraft. This is to explore the upper reaches of Jupiter's atmosphere, which is the only feasible way to explore given the intense gravity of this giant planet. Attempting to land on the solid surface would mean being crushed by the gravity and air pressure, so that is not possible. The expedition finds there is life in the upper clouds of Jupiter. Some of it is microscopic, like a kind of “air plankton” which is bio-luminescent. But there are large creatures as well, one of which is like jellyfish, but about a mile across. This is the Medusa of the title. Another is Manta-like creature, about 100 yards across, that preys on the Medusa. But when the Medusa starts to take an interest on Falcon's craft, he decides to get out quick for safety's sake. And we learn that because of the various prosthetics implanted after the airship accident Falcon is really a cyborg with much faster reactions than ordinary humans. As we have discussed previously, Clarke loved the sea, and in this novella he is using what he knows in that realm to imagine a plausible ecology in the atmosphere of Jupiter. Of course when he wrote this novella no one knew about the truly frightening level of radiation around Jupiter, but then a clever science fiction writer could come up with a way to work around that. Clarke's Three Laws Finally, no discussion of Arthur C. Clarke can omit his famous Three Laws. Asimov had his Three Laws of Robotics, and Clarke had his Three Laws of Technology. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. This concludes our look at Arthur C. Clarke, the second of the Big Three of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. And that means we are ready to tackle the Dean of Science Fiction, Robert A. Heinlein. Links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Time_Odyssey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_from_the_White_Hart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Jorkens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron_Munchausen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_from_Gavagan%27s_Bar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callahan%27s_Crosstime_Saloon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Billion_Names_of_God https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star_(Clarke_short_story) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin_Island_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Meeting_with_Medusa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws https://www.palain.com/science-fiction/the-golden-age/arthur-c-clarke/arthur-c-clarke-other-works/ Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4559: Enkele off line vertaaltools

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 22, 2026


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. Offline Translator tools Translate text offline LocalTranslate is an offline translation application that uses Firefox's neural translation models (from the mozilla/firefox-translations-models project) to perform high-quality translations locally on your device. Note: LocalTranslate is not affiliated with The Mozilla Foundation in any way. Links LocalTranslate by Shriram Ravindranathan on flathub.org GPL-3.0 license Source Code Offline Translator - On-device translation of text and images A translator app that performs on-device translation of text and images without sending your data to external servers. Features: On-device translation using Mozilla's translation models Transliteration of non-latin script OCR (Optical Character Recognition) for translating text in images Automatic language detection Image translation overlay that preserves original formatting Support for multiple language pairs No internet required for translation once models are downloaded All translation happens locally Links Offline Translator by David Ventura on F-droid [GNU General Public License v3.0 or later]( https://spdx.org/licenses/GPL-3.0-or-later.html Source Code hpr3315 :: tesseract optical character recognition Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4558: YouTube Subscriptions 2025 #14

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 21, 2026


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. I am subscribed to a number of YouTube channels, and I am sharing them with you. Links: https://www.youtube.com/@bulwarkmedia https://www.youtube.com/@thefabfaux https://www.youtube.com/@TheGreatWar https://www.youtube.com/@TheHistoryGuyChannel https://www.youtube.com/@TheImmedFamily https://www.youtube.com/@TheKoreanWarbyIndyNeidell https://www.youtube.com/@TheLanguageTutor https://www.youtube.com/@TheLincolnProject https://www.youtube.com/@planetarysociety https://www.youtube.com/@TheSaxyGamer https://www.youtube.com/@JSHIPLIFE https://www.youtube.com/@thespiffingbrit https://www.youtube.com/@AmyShiraTeitel https://www.youtube.com/@thefrielsisters https://www.palain.com/ Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4557: Why I prefer tar to zip

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 20, 2026


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. I'm gonna talk about archiving specifically with tar and even more specifically why I prefer tar over zip. Shownotes at https://www.both.org/?p=13268 Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4556: Nitro man! RC Cars

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 19, 2026


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. Today it's a special Christmas episode, it's such a kind of part for the RC cars. So we're going to have to talk to them about the Metro cars. The Metro cars are RC cars that run off of this like 20% oil gas thing. So the oil is in the gas, it has a little motor and you can pay you know $800 for a motor or you can pay, you know, the 50 bucks for a motor. https://traxxas.com/products/models/electric/rustler-bl2s Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4555: HPR Beer Garden 8 - Belgian Christmas Ales

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 16, 2026


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. Dave and Kevie bring the HPR listeners another festive edition of the Beer Garden, with the focus turning to Belgian Christmas ales. Kevie discovered a scan of the original advert in the Journal De Charleroi from 1896 Translation: Christmas beer has arrived at the Arabian horse and the globe, these two establishments so famous for Anglaise beers. Go and taste it, because Christmas is only sold for a short time. In this episode Dave samples Baby Jesus by Brouwerij 't Verzet and Kevie tries out La Binchoise Speciale Noel . Connect with the guys on Untappd: Dave Kevie The intro sounds for the show are used from: https://freesound.org/people/mixtus/sounds/329806/ https://freesound.org/people/j1987/sounds/123003/ https://freesound.org/people/greatsoundstube/sounds/628437/ Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4554: How I do todo

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 15, 2026


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. References in order of first mention Daytimer - https://www.daytimer.com/ PalmPilot - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PalmPilot Gina Trapani - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gina_Trapani Todo landing page - http://todotxt.org/ Todo file format - https://github.com/todotxt/todo.txt Dropbox - https://www.dropbox.com/ Simpletask - https://github.com/mpcjanssen/simpletask-android/ QTodoTxt - https://github.com/QTodoTxt/QTodoTxt Synology DS220J NAS - https://global.download.synology.com/download/Document/Hardware/DataSheet/DiskStation/20-year/DS220j/enu/Synology_DS220j_Data_Sheet_enu.pdf Ice_recur - https://github.com/rlpowell/todo-text-stuff Py_recur - https://github.com/TASpinner/py_recur Microsoft todo - https://to-do.office.com/tasks/ Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4553: Nuclear Reactor Technology - Ep 4 Less Common Reactor Types

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 14, 2026


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. 02 Less Common Reactor Types In this episode we discuss some of the less common historical reactor types. These are a mixture of less common commercial types and some experimental or research reactors. I will cover advanced or future designs in another episode. 03 Minor Successes 04 Magnox 07 AGR - Advanced Gas Cooled Reactor 10 LWGR - Light Water Graphite Moderated Reactor (RBMK) 14 Historical Oddities or Dead Ends 15 Organically Cooled Reactors 16 Organically Cooled and Moderated 18 Organically Cooled and Heavy Water Moderated 24 HTGCR High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor 28 HWLWR - Heavy Water Light Water Reactor or SGHWR - Steam Generating Heavy Water Reactor 31 Reactors Making a Comeback 32 Pebble Bed Reactors 33 AVR 35 THTR-300 36 South Africa, China, and the US 39 Making a Come Back? 40 MSR - Molten Salt Reactors 41 Slow or Fast Neutron Reactors 42 Fuel 43 Salts 44 Why Some Variants Use Dissolved Fuel 46 History 47 Types of Molten Salt Reactor 48 Pros and Cons 52 Overall 53 Conclusion In this episode we discussed some of the less common historical reactor types. As we have seen, there have been a number of different reactor designs which were less commercially successful for one reason or another. Some of them may make a come back however, particularly as the basis for a small reactor. In the next episode we will describe fast neutron reactors. Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4552: Printer Conspiracy

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 13, 2026


    This show has been flagged as Explicit by the host. Background I have a very old EPSON R300 inkjet printer It has served me well for many years. I thought it was at least 10 if not 15 years old. I got it before I even became interested in Linux. For many of those years now I have been using this printer extensively on Linux. It has been a really good printer and has been incredibly cheap to run. Many years ago I got a number of sets of ink for it. I think they only cost me £15! A colleague at work later on gave me more sets of ink. I ended up with a large bag full of ink cartridges which I have been working my way through ever since. I used the printer infrequently for many years. This is far from ideal for an ink jet printer as doing so tends to cause the ink jet nozzles to clog up. Unsurprisingly in later years it has become somewhat temperamental. The problems consisted of paper mis-feeds (Probably down to the rubber take up rollers going hard over time) and missing bits of print (This I assume due to infrequent use of the printer and age of ink jet cartridges all of which were well out of their expiration date). The mis-fed paper could be solved by individual feeding each sheet through the printer. The poor / missing print could be solved by a combination of running the print head clean routine or by replacing the offending cartridge. Latterly I had print problems again and as per usual after cleaning the heads and then finally changing the cartridge the printer resumed printing normally. Shortly after this I bought myself an Apple iMac mini and thought it could be useful to be able to print from it. I visited the EPSON website downloaded and installed the EPSON print driver for my trusty R300 printer. I tried printing from my iMac and received a warning stating something like some of the components within your printer are worn and may need servicing. I'd never seen a message like this before as I normally print using open source print drivers on Linux which never report such things. When I tried printing on my Apple Mac no black text was visible on the page. I tried running the head cleaning routine and this made no difference. I eventually had to resort to changing the colour of the text within the LibreOffice document. This allowed me to print text that was at least legible. At the time I was a little suspicious of all this as the printer had been working so well just a few days previous. I plugged my trusty printer back into my trusty PC running an old version of Ubuntu using the open source printer drivers. Fired up LibreOffice and tried to print a document. To my surprise the printout was very good. While it was not as good as when the printer was new the quality of the black and coloured text was actually very good. My suspicion though I can't prove it is that the EPSON print driver has worked out that the printer is 10 plus years old and needs to be returned to EPSON for servicing (or to purchase a new printer). To ensure this the driver is crippling the output from the printer. The Open Source print drivers have none of the nefarious nonsense and allows the printer to operate. As I said I cannot prove any of this however I'll leave this up to you decide what you think is going on here. At this point I was going to end the podcast however the story didn't end there. The story continues My mother wanted me to print out some holiday insurance documents for her. She sent me a copy of her documents as I told her my printer was working again. The first page printed out slightly faintly but was readable the other pages seemed to print using invisible ink. I tried cleaning the heads but it made no difference. It's looking a bit like my printer or at least the cartridge is past its expiry date. Clearing out our loft I found the original box for my EPSON R300 printer and discovered that it was purchased in May 2005. This means the printer is now over 20 years old! At this point I decided that it was maybe about time that I replaced our ageing printer. We use the printer very infrequently and rarely need colour. For this reason I decided this time to buy a laser printer since I believe these don't tend to dry out like ink jet printers and are less likely to suffer with infrequent use. Only time will tell though I don't expect this one to last 20 years! Finally after all this I am not sure if using the EPSON driver had anything to do with the final demise of my printer though who knows. As Klaatu would say I leave that up to you dear listener to decide. Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4551: “Elsbeth in IT: Since '97” (Part 2)

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 12, 2026


    This show has been flagged as Explicit by the host. A two-part conversation about what it's really like being a woman in tech for almost three decades. Content Warning: The F word probably makes an appearance multiple times. In this episode, Lee sits down with Elsbeth to talk about her long, winding, sometimes ridiculous, often inspiring journey through the IT industry — starting all the way back in 1997. If you've ever worked helpdesk, ever had a customer say “my cup holder broke” (yes, the CD tray)… or ever felt underestimated in a room full of engineers, this one's for you. Because we throw around some tech terms in the conversation, here are a few friendly definitions so everyone can follow along. Terms We Mentioned (in plain English) QA (Quality Assurance) Think of QA as the people who try to break things on purpose so regular users don't break them accidentally . They test software, hardware, websites — you name it — to catch bugs before they cause chaos. If it's glitch-free, a QA person probably saved the day behind the scenes. Content Moderation This is the work of keeping the internet from turning into the Wild West. Moderators review posts, comments, images, and videos to make sure they follow community rules and don't harm users. It's a mix of tech tools and human judgment — and yes, it can get intense. Building PCs Where many IT careers start! Building PCs is basically grown-up Lego: picking parts assembling them hoping you don't zap anything with static electricity praying the cable management gods smile upon you It's one of the most empowering skills in tech and often the first time someone realizes, “Oh hey… I can actually do this.” Gender Equality & Inequality Gender equality means giving everyone the same chance to succeed — no matter who they are. Gender inequality is what happens when that doesn't happen. In tech, inequality often looks like: being talked over being paid less being assumed “non-technical” having to prove yourself twice as hard being the only woman in a room… again Elsbeth has seen all of this firsthand since 1997 — and she's got stories. End-User The end-user is simply the person who actually uses the product. Not the engineer who built it. Not the manager who approved it. Not the QA who tested it. The end-user is the human at the end of the chain who clicks the button, pushes the key, taps the app… and finds entirely new ways to break things no one expected. Understanding them is the secret superpower of tech. Neurodivergence Neurodivergence means brains come in many beautiful varieties — like ADHD, autism, dyslexia, and more. Neurodivergent people often bring incredible strengths to IT, including creativity, pattern spotting, hyperfocus, and out-of-the-box problem solving. They can also face misunderstandings in workplaces that weren't designed with different brains in mind — something Elsbeth talks about openly and honestly in this episode. Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4550: Playing Civilization V, Part 7

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 9, 2026


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. In our next look at the game mechanics for Civilization V we examine the topic of Science and how to win a Science victory. This is something that has been in Civilization from the very beginning, but in Civilization V there are some changes worth addressing. Playing Civilization V, Part 7 Science In most respects this is not all that different in Civ 5. Most of the techs are the same, there is a tech tree that is pretty similar, and you need to keep up in Science for any victory condition you are seeking. You may want to just beat your enemies into submission, but if you are using Chariots while they have Tanks, you aren't going to have success. But also it is obvious that if you are going for a Science victory, you need to really focus on this. So many of these tips should be followed for any victory condition, but should be mandatory if you are going for a Science victory. The mechanics of researching technologies is that you have to accumulate a certain amount of Science to discover a new technology, but this amount goes up over time, so you have be continuously looking to increase your output of Science to keep up. for instance, one of your first Techs would be Pottery, which has a cost of 35 Science. But in your Capital city you get 3 Science from your Palace, and let's say you have a population of 2, so you are generating 5 Science per turn. That means you will research Pottery in 7 turns. But the Education tech costs 485 Science, Astronomy costs 780, Scientific Theory costs 1650, Plastics 4700, and Particle Physics 6000. These are all key techs to advance your Science to a Science Victory. So you can see that you need to be continually increasing your Science. To start with, Population=Science. You get one Science for every one point of population. That does not, however, mean that you need to have a lot of cities to get there. 4-5 well developed cities are quite sufficient, and adding more cities can cause Unhappiness problems. Since higher population itself can cause Unhappiness there is no good reason to add to the problem. Buildings The next boost you can give to Science is by building city improvements. The first, which comes early in the game, is the Library, which is available once you research Writing. A Library boosts the Science output of a city by one Science for every two citizens (roughly a 50% boost, rounded down), so building those early pays off. Because advancing through the tech tree is a process of accumulating Science, the earlier you can get these boosts the better. The other population-based boost is the Public School (available when you research Scientific Theory), which also boosts Science by one for every two citizens, and also offers a Specialist slot for a Science Specialist. And since more population means more Science, the Granary (available when you research Pottery) is a good building because it helps to grow your population. There is one other building worth mentioning which is the Observatory (available when you discover Astronomy). It doesn't depend on population, but on location. You have to have a city that is located directly next to a Mountain to build this, but it adds 50% to the Science output of the city. Mountains are otherwise useless (unless you are the Incas), but if you want a Science boost and happen to see good location (the ideal spot is an isolated mountain that is not part of a mountain range so you don't lose farming and mining production) this can be great boost. Scientist Specialists You can at a certain point take some of your citizens out of the farming and mining and turn them into Specialists, but you have to have a slot for them, and those slots come in buildings as well. We've already mentioned Public Schools providing one slot. Universities (available when you discover Education) provide 2 slots, as well as boosting the city output of Science by 33%. The other Science building, which comes late in the game, is the Research Lab (available when you discover Plastics) which adds another Specialist slot, plus 4 Science, and then adds 50% to the Science Output of the city. It comes too late to help much in most of the Tech Tree, but is essential to research the Space techs, which are very expensive. Wonders The first one to try for is the Great Library. It gives you a free Library in the city, +3 Science per turn, and a free tech. Use the free tech to get an expensive tech like Philosophy. Oracle provides 1 Great Person Point per turn towards a Great Scientist. Hanging Gardens provides +6 Food per turn (boosting your population), and a free Garden which boosts your Great Person Points by 25%. Leaning Tower of Pisa increases your Great Person Points by 25% in all cities, plus a free Great Person of your choice when you build it. Porcelain Tower gives you +50% from Research Agreements, plus a free Great Scientist. and Hubble Space Telescope provides two Great Scientists, a free Spaceship Factory in the city where it was built, and +25% production for spaceship parts. All of the above are World Wonders, which means you are in competition with other players to build them, and only one player can be successful in each case, so you won't get them all. You can sometimes rush a World Wonder by “chopping”, i.e. using your workers to cut down Forests for added production, but you need to have high production cities to build Wonders in general. There is one National Wonder to focus on, though, the National College. Every player can build their own version of any National Wonder. The National College can be built only when you have a Library in every one of your cities. Your strategy should be to build it as soon as possible, so don't build more than 3-4 cities before you get to this. It gives you +3 Science, plus an increase of 50% in the Science output of the city you build it in. Great Scientists As you work on your Science you will accumulate Great Person Points towards getting a Great Scientist. Some wonder produce Great Person Points, and all of your Science Specialists produce Great Person Points as well. As these add up you will suddenly see a Great Scientist appear. In the early game, the best thing to do is use this Great Scientist to build an Academy. Move the GS to any tile within your city and create the Academy there. It will yield at least +8 Science, bu there are also modifiers that can add to that. The alternative which is better later in the game is to use the Great Scientist to get a free Tech discovery. The reason is that early in the game that +8 Science is very significant, and it can accumulate over time. Combine that with things like an Observatory and a University that increase the city output and it can add up nicely over time. But by perhaps the Medieval Era, and certainly the Renaissance Era, you start running out of time for that accumulation. Meanwhile, the techs have gotten so expensive that a free Tech is the better option. Research Agreements These become available once you research Education. You have to have a Declaration of Friendship with the other player to create one. You each put a certain amount of gold into the pot to fund the research, and after a period of time (usually 30 turns) you each get an amount of Science from it. The way it is calculated is based on the partner that produced the least amount of Science during the agreement. From a science standpoint if you are ahead in Science it probably won't benefit you to enter into the agreement. But it does build your relationship with the other player so I wouldn't avoid them altogether. If you are behind in Science it can help you, of course. Policies and Ideologies Given that you should probably be building tall (4-5 cities) instead of wide (8-12 cities), it makes sense to start out with Tradition instead of Liberty. But once you get to the Renaissance you will want to enable the Rationalism tree to maximize your Science. When you get to Ideologies, you have a choice to make. Ignore Autocracy as that is not a Science-oriented choice. If you have 3-5 cities, Freedom is the best Ideology because Specialists require less food (Civil Society), and have reduced Unhappiness (Universal Suffrage). With a wide strategy (more than 5 cities) Order starts to look better. Getting Worker's Faculties will give +25% Science from every Factory. Exploration and Techs Exploration is generally a good idea for a variety of reasons, but one to focus on here is the effect of meeting other players. In the first place, if you find other players who have researched techs you do not yet have, you can trade for them. You do this whenever possible. Remember, the other players will all be trading with each other anyway, so if you don't participate you will simply fall behind. If you have a nice tech and can trade it to just two other players, you will jump up two techs along the tech tree, and that can be huge. If you hold onto it as a secret, some other player will research it, and they will trade it and get that boost instead. So trade whenever you can. Another advantage is that when you discover that another player has a tech you don't have yet, your cost to research it goes down. Trade This is the next Science boost we will cover. when you set up a trade route with either another player or a City-State, one of the benefits can be an increase to your Science. The main benefit of trade routes is money, at least the way I play, so I will always start by looking for the best addition to my Treasury, but if I can choose between equivalent monetary rewards but one trade route offers more Science I might prefer that if I am going for a Science victory. Choosing an Empire There are many Empires you can play, and some of them are oriented to a Science victory. The two obvious choices are Babylon and Korea. Babylon gets a free Great Scientist when you discover Writing, which is very early, so you should use it to put down an Academy. And it earns Great Scientists 50% faster. Korea's advantage comes from +2 Science from all specialists and from all Great Person tile improvements, plus you get a tech boost each time a Science building or wonder is built in the Capital. Of course, you can win a Science victory with any Empire if you are careful about leveraging your Empire's strengths. For example, Venice and Portugal can rake in the gold in huge amounts, and you can buy a lot of stuff that way. Or with the Celts you generate a ton of Faith, and that can be used to buy buildings and Great Scientists with the right Social Policies. Conclusion This is just a quick overview of the Science path, and there is always more to learn. If you really want to dive into the Science options and get a Science Victory, the Civilization Fanatics site has a pretty good strategy guide at https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/science-victory-guide-any-difficulty.530940/. Links: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/science-victory-guide-any-difficulty.530940/ https://www.palain.com/gaming/civilization-v/playing-civilization-v-part-7/ Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4549: [deprecated] Pomodoro Task Tool (pomotask.sh)

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 8, 2026


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. lrest=0; while true; do echo refreshing project list; tsk=$(task +PENDING _unique project | shuf); for x in $tsk; do echo proj:$x; dispmd="task proj:$x ready || task ready"; [[ $lrest -eq 0 ]] && dispmd="task ready"; timeout 1500 watch $dispmd; ((lrest=lrest+1)); echo "begin break with enter..."; read; resttime=5; if [[ $lrest -gt 3 ]]; then resttime=15; lrest=0; fi; while [[ $resttime -gt 0 ]]; do echo $resttime minute rest; sleep 60; ((resttime=resttime-1)); done; echo "break over, enter to continue..."; read; done; done Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4548: YouTube Subscriptions 2025 #13

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 7, 2026


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. I am subscribed to a number of YouTube channels, and I am sharing them with you. Links: https://www.youtube.com/@civilization https://www.youtube.com/@sixtysymbols https://www.youtube.com/@SophieAlloway https://www.youtube.com/@SpaceRocketHistoryChannel https://www.youtube.com/@StamFine https://www.youtube.com/@Stubagful https://www.youtube.com/@Suibhne https://www.youtube.com/@talkmoretalksolobeatles https://www.youtube.com/@TTBFromTheRoad https://www.youtube.com/@theark2544 https://www.youtube.com/@TheBeatles https://www.palain.com/ Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4547: Cheap Yellow Display Project Part 6: The speed and timing of Morse

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 6, 2026


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. Hello, again. This is Trey. Welcome to part 6 in my Cheap Yellow Display (CYD) Project series. Thank you for hanging in there with me on this rambling series. If you wish to catch up on earlier episodes, you can find them on my HPR profile page https://www.hackerpublicradio.org/correspondents/0394.html To review, my project is to build a portable morse code "Keyer memory" which can be connected to any of my amateur HF transceiver radios by simply plugging it in to the code key input port. This is based around an ESP32 platform which comes prepackaged on a yellow PC board with a color touchscreen display, WIFI, and Bluetooth. We fondly call this contraption the Cheap Yellow Display. So far, I have defined the necessities, collected the required hardware, and failed miserably building the graphical user interface (GUI). While I sort out the technical challenges getting my GUI code to play nicely with the CYD's touchscreen, it is important that we spend some time discussing Morse code itself, and the timing standards we will need to follow. I am not going to dive too deeply into the history behind telegraphs and Morse code, but it is very interesting. If you want to learn more, Wikipedia has the origins and evolution written out quite nicely at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code For our purposes, we will fast forward from the year 1820 (When telegraphy began) all the way to 1865 when the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) standardized, what it called "International Morse Code". When I say Morse Code for the remainder of this podcast, I am referring to this ITU International Morse Code. Morse code typically includes the following characters: The 26 letter basic Latin alphabet The Indo-Arabic numerals 0 to 9 There is also a single accented Latin letter (É), which is written as an E with an accent mark, and a handful of punctuation marks. These characters are encoded using a sequence of short and long signals. Each short signal is referred to as a dit . Each long signal is referred to as a dah . At a young age, I began to refer to them as dots and dashes, as this is how they are usually written. For example, the letter "A" consists of a single dit followed by a single dah. When written out this would look like a period followed by a hyphen (what some might call a minus sign) .- This encoding method allows messages to be sent by turning on and off an electrical signal. This could result in a light flashing or a tone sounding to the pattern of the signal. The timing of a dit and dah, along with the spacing between them is carefully defined. Morsecode.world does a great job explaining the timing, and you can find their explanation at https://morsecode.world/international/timing/ It all starts with the dit, or more accurately, the amount of time the dit signal is turned on. We will call this length of time 1 unit. We will get to the actual length of time for a unit later in this episode. For now, it is just one unit. So, if a dit is 1 unit long, a dah will be 3 units long, so there is an obvious and consistent difference between a dit and a dah. Also, empty space between elements of the same character is 1 unit long. The space between characters should be 3 units long. Let's demonstrate using the letters H, P, & R. An "H" would be 4 dits …. A "P" would be 1 dit followed by 2 dahs and ending with 1 dit .--. An "R" would be 1 dit followed by 1 dah and ending with 1 dit .-. Remember when we send these grouped together like a word, we need 3 units of spacing between each character. You can hear this now. This is Morse code for the letters "HPR" at 15 words per minute .... .--. .-. That is the perfect segue to the next section, words per minute. The speed of morse code is measured in "words per minute". But how do you calculate this when some characters are short (Like the letter "E" which is only a single dit long), and other characters are long (Like the letter "J" which starts with a single dit and is followed by 3 dahs)? And that's just letters. What about words? We have short words and long words. How can we standardize on words per minute with so much diversity of length? Well, thanks to the French, we have a quite elegant solution to this problem. Well, not the French in general. Just PARIS. PARIS is the standard word which has been agreed upon to be used for determining the speed of Morse code. The word PARIS is 50 units long. "P" = dit(1) + (1) + dah(3) + (1) + dah(3) + (1) + dit(1) = 11 units {Space between letters} = 3 units "A" = dit(1) + (1) + dah(3) = 5 units {Space between letters} = 3 units "R" = dit(1) + (1) + dah(3) + (1) + dit(1) = 7 units {Space between letters} = 3 units "I" = dit(1) + (1) + dit(1) = 3 units {Space between letters} = 3 units "S" = dit(1) + (1) + dit(1) + (1) + dit(1) = 5 units {Space between words} = 7 units 11+3+5+3+7+3+3+3+5+7 = 50 units Here is the word PARIS sent at 15 WPM .--. .- .-. .. ... Morsecode.world again does a great job explaining the maths for how many milliseconds long a dit should be for a specific WPM of code ( https://morsecode.world/international/timing/ ) But, no... We could not keep it that simple. Some guy named Donald R. "Russ" Farnsworth had to complicate things and increase the gaps between letters and words to make interpreting code much easier. There are even more maths for Farnsworth timing... Wait a minute. When did I start saying "Maths" instead of "Math" like a normal North American? What is the reasoning around pluralizing "Math" anyways? Which way is more original English, "Math" or "Maths"? This sounds like a show idea for someone other than me. If you know or are interested in researching it, I look forward to listening to your show in the future. ANYWAYS, there IS much more MATH about Farnsworth timing on another page on Morsecode.world. ( https://morsecode.world/international/timing/farnsworth.html ). But I don't want to get into all of it in detail here. Not when there is a shortcut we can use in our code. Simplified, we can take 1,200 and divide it by the WPM we desire, and it will give us a close enough approximation of the number of milliseconds long a dit should be. For the 15 WPM messages you have heard throughout this episode, a dit was 1200/15 = 80 ms in length. If I speed it up to 20 WPM (The speed at which I try to practice) a dit will be 1200/20 = 60 ms long. This will be an important calculation for us as we develop the code we will later be using to construct our messages using the CYD. And this is also a good stopping point so that I can get back to trying to build that infernal GUI. Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4546: HPR Community News for December 2025

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 5, 2026


    This show has been flagged as Explicit by the host. New hosts There were no new hosts this month. Last Month's Shows Id Day Date Title Host 4521 Mon 2025-12-01 HPR Community News for November 2025 HPR Volunteers 4522 Tue 2025-12-02 Lee interviews Elsbeth about SL Shop and Hop event Elsbeth 4523 Wed 2025-12-03 Nuclear Reactor Technology - Ep 1 - Nuclear Basics Whiskeyjack 4524 Thu 2025-12-04 Living the Tux Life Episode 3 - Automating the Install Al 4525 Fri 2025-12-05 Using mail merge in thunderbird Ken Fallon 4526 Mon 2025-12-08 Baofeng and SDR++ Lee 4527 Tue 2025-12-09 Overly Complicated Media Ripping setup Archer72 4528 Wed 2025-12-10 Photography software Henrik Hemrin 4529 Thu 2025-12-11 yoga370 review Brian-in-Ohio 4530 Fri 2025-12-12 Playing Civilization V, Part 6 Ahuka 4531 Mon 2025-12-15 HPR Beer Garden 6 - Imperial Stouts Kevie 4532 Tue 2025-12-16 Cheap Yellow Display Project Part 5: Graphical User Interface Trey 4533 Wed 2025-12-17 Nuclear Reactor Technology - Ep 2 Nuclear Fuel Whiskeyjack 4534 Thu 2025-12-18 Reviving My Kawai K4 Synthesizer Claudio Miranda 4535 Fri 2025-12-19 Living the Tux Life Episode 4 - Various software I have been using Al 4536 Mon 2025-12-22 Welcome to the Linux Community Deltaray 4537 Tue 2025-12-23 “Elsbeth in IT: Since '97” (Part 1) Elsbeth 4538 Wed 2025-12-24 HPR Branding Ken Fallon 4539 Thu 2025-12-25 YouTube Subscriptions 2025 #11 Ahuka 4540 Fri 2025-12-26 Arthur C. Clarke: Other Novels, Part 1 Ahuka 4541 Mon 2025-12-29 HPR Beer Garden 7 - UK Christmas Ales Kevie 4542 Tue 2025-12-30 Can Haiku Mumble? Claudio Miranda 4543 Wed 2025-12-31 Nuclear Reactor Technology - Ep 3 Reactor Basics Whiskeyjack Comments this month These are comments which have been made during the past month, either to shows released during the month or to past shows. There are 27 comments in total. Past shows There are 2 comments on 2 previous shows: hpr4424 (2025-07-17) "How I use Newsboat for Podcasts and Reddit" by Archer72. Comment 5: Ken Fallon on 2025-12-02: "Checking for أحمد المحمودي to see if there are issues." Comment 6: أحمد المحمودي on 2025-12-03: "download-filename-format for HPR podcasts" hpr4520 (2025-11-28) "Arthur C. Clarke: Rama and Sequels" by Ahuka. Comment 1: morhook on 2025-12-30: "programmer and content creator" Comment 2: Kevin O'Brien on 2025-12-30: "Glad you liked it" This month's shows There are 25 comments on 11 of this month's shows: hpr4521 (2025-12-01) "HPR Community News for November 2025" by HPR Volunteers. Comment 1: Archer72 on 2025-11-30: "Silent key"Comment 2: Trey on 2025-12-01: "Silent Key Archive"Comment 3: Trey on 2025-12-01: "TuxJam CYD Episode"Comment 4: candycanearter07 on 2025-12-12: "thoughts"Comment 5: Archer72 on 2025-12-19: "Re: thoughts"Comment 6: candycanearter07 on 2025-12-21: "Re: Re: Thoughts" hpr4522 (2025-12-02) "Lee interviews Elsbeth about SL Shop and Hop event" by Elsbeth. Comment 1: candycanearter07 on 2025-12-13: "peek into the community" hpr4523 (2025-12-03) "Nuclear Reactor Technology - Ep 1 - Nuclear Basics" by Whiskeyjack. Comment 1: bjb on 2025-12-04: "Love your show/series, thank you"Comment 2: Kevin O'Brien on 2025-12-04: "Looking forward to more"Comment 3: Trey on 2025-12-09: "Looking forward to this series" hpr4526 (2025-12-08) "Baofeng and SDR++" by Lee. Comment 1: Trey on 2025-12-09: "SDRs" hpr4529 (2025-12-11) "yoga370 review" by Brian-in-Ohio. Comment 1: Paulj on 2025-12-31: "Thanks - great show" hpr4532 (2025-12-16) "Cheap Yellow Display Project Part 5: Graphical User Interface " by Trey. Comment 1: norrrist on 2025-12-16: "starting small " hpr4533 (2025-12-17) "Nuclear Reactor Technology - Ep 2 Nuclear Fuel" by Whiskeyjack. Comment 1: bjb on 2025-12-18: "Thank the host for interesting series" hpr4535 (2025-12-19) "Living the Tux Life Episode 4 - Various software I have been using" by Al. Comment 1: candycanearter07 on 2025-12-19: "cool setup!"Comment 2: Archer72 on 2025-12-19: "Tmux" hpr4536 (2025-12-22) "Welcome to the Linux Community" by Deltaray. Comment 1: Archer72 on 2025-12-21: "Brilliant!! "Comment 2: Torin Doyle on 2025-12-22: "Deltaray did a fine job in covering GNU/Linux aka Linux, here."Comment 3: Ken Fallon on 2025-12-22: "Agree"Comment 4: Deltaray on 2025-12-26: "Thanks"Comment 5: Morhook on 2025-12-30: "Good talk CliMagic" hpr4538 (2025-12-24) "HPR Branding" by Ken Fallon. Comment 1: candycanearter07 on 2025-12-24: "interesting peak of behind the scenes!!"Comment 2: Steve Barnes on 2025-12-24: "Merci!"Comment 3: Archer72 on 2025-12-29: "Re: candycanearter07" hpr4543 (2025-12-31) "Nuclear Reactor Technology - Ep 3 Reactor Basics" by Whiskeyjack. Comment 1: L'andrew on 2025-12-31: "Praise for this series" Mailing List discussions Policy decisions surrounding HPR are taken by the community as a whole. This discussion takes place on the Mailing List which is open to all HPR listeners and contributors. The discussions are open and available on the HPR server under Mailman. The threaded discussions this month can be found here: https://lists.hackerpublicradio.com/pipermail/hpr/2025-December/thread.html Events Calendar With the kind permission of LWN.net we are linking to The LWN.net Community Calendar. Quoting the site: This is the LWN.net community event calendar, where we track events of interest to people using and developing Linux and free software. Clicking on individual events will take you to the appropriate web page. Any other business Thanks to all 57 HPR contributors in 2025! Ahuka, Al, Antoine, Archer72, beni, Brian-in-Ohio, candycanearter, Celeste, Claudio Miranda, Daniel Persson, Dave Hingley, Dave Morriss, Deltaray, dnt, Elsbeth, folky, FredBlack, gemlog, hairylarry, Henrik Hemrin, Honkeymagoo, HPR Volunteers, iota, Jerm, Jeroen Baten, Jezra, Ken Fallon, Kevie, Kirbotica, Klaatu, ko3moc, Lee, Lochyboy, Major_Ursa, Manon, Marc W. Abel, mightbemike, Moss Bliss, MrX, murph, norrist, operat0r, oxo, Paulj, Reto, Rho`n, Shane - StrandedOutput, SolusSpider, Some Guy On The Internet, Swift110, thelovebug, Thibaut, Trey, Trixter, Trollercoaster, Whiskeyjack, Wojciech Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4545: YouTube Subscriptions 2025 #12

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 2, 2026


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. I am subscribed to a number of YouTube channels, and I am sharing them with you. Links: https://www.youtube.com/@RickStevesTravelTalks https://www.youtube.com/@RickStevesEuropeOfficial https://www.youtube.com/@ringostarr https://www.youtube.com/@RBReich https://www.youtube.com/@RobWords https://www.youtube.com/@rockhall https://www.youtube.com/@RowanJColeman https://www.youtube.com/@RoyalCaribbeanBlog https://www.youtube.com/@SabatonHistory https://www.youtube.com/@sassygamerlady https://www.youtube.com/@ScienceNewsMag https://www.youtube.com/@NASAScience https://www.youtube.com/@sciencium https://www.youtube.com/@scifri https://www.youtube.com/@SciShow https://www.youtube.com/@SciShowPsych https://www.youtube.com/@scishowspace https://www.youtube.com/@securitynow https://www.palain.com/ Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4544: Uncommon Commands, Episode 2

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 1, 2026


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. Refs: https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=2BSD/man/last.u https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Util-linux&oldid=271104508 https://kernel.googlesource.com/pub/scm/utils/util-linux/util-linux/+/612721dba838fe37af543421278416bb7acf770c/login-utils/README.admutil https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-haardt-9087023/details/experience/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterorbaek/details/experience/ https://flameshot.org/ commands: ping yahoo.com traceroute -m 100 bad.horse mtr www.yahoo.com scrot flameshot zless messages.1.gz bzless messages.1.bz xzless messages.1.xz last -10 last reboot last $USER -10 People involved: mtr: Matt Kimball Roger Wolff scrot: Tom Gilbert zless and related commands: Paul Eggert last command: Howard Katseff Michael Haardt Peter Orbaek Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4543: Nuclear Reactor Technology - Ep 3 Reactor Basics

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 31, 2025


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. 03-Reactor-Basics 01 Introduction In this episode we will describe the basic features and characteristics of reactors together with descriptions of the most widely used commercial reactor types. 03 Fast Versus Slow Reactors 04 Slow Neutron Reactors 06 Fast Neutron Reactors 08 Reactor Moderators 10 Light Water 11 Heavy Water 13 Graphite 14 Unmoderated 15 Coolants 16 Common Coolants 17 Alternative Coolants 18 Primary and Secondary Coolant Loops 20 Steam Generation 23 Brayton Cycle Gas Turbines 24 Refuelling Method 25 Main Commercial Reactor Types 26 PWR - Pressurized Water Reactor 28 BWR - Boiling Water Reactor 29 PHWR - Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor 33 Conclusion We have covered the main reactor characteristics. These characteristics can be mixed in various ways to give different reactor types. The characteristics also affect the types of fuel that can be used. We also covered the three main commercial power generation reactor types. In the next episode we will describe some of the less common historical reactor types. Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4542: Can Haiku Mumble?

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 30, 2025


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. Haiku: https://www.haiku-os.org/ BeOS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS Mumble: https://www.mumble.info/ HPR NYE Show: https://hackerpublicradio.org/new_year.html How to Connect to HPR Community Room using Mumble: https://hackerpublicradio.org/mumble-howtoProvide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4541: HPR Beer Garden 7 - UK Christmas Ales

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 29, 2025


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. With Christmas approaching (and actually gone by the time this is posted), Kevie, Dave and Paul try out a variety of Christmas ales from the UK. Dave opts for St Peters Christmas Ale , Kevie samples Samuel Smith's Winter Welcome Ale and Dave supports his local brewery, Purple Moose, with a mug of Merry X-Moose . Connect with the guys on Untappd: Dave Paul Kevie The intro sounds for the show are used from: https://freesound.org/people/mixtus/sounds/329806/ https://freesound.org/people/j1987/sounds/123003/ https://freesound.org/people/greatsoundstube/sounds/628437/ Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4540: Arthur C. Clarke: Other Novels, Part 1

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 26, 2025


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. This brings us to a look at some of Arthur C. Clarke's other stories, The Sands of Mars (1951), The Deep Range (1957), and The Fountains of Paradise (1979). These are just a few of his well-regarded stand-alone novels. Links: https://www.sffworld.com/forum/threads/the-clarke-asimov-treaty.46067/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sands_of_Mars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islands_in_the_Sky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthlight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Trilogy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Deep_Range https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin_Island_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ghost_from_the_Grand_Banks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fountains_of_Paradise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminsterfullerene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Sold_the_Moon https://www.palain.com/science-fiction/the-golden-age/arthur-c-clarke-other-novels-part-1/ Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4539: YouTube Subscriptions 2025 #11

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 25, 2025


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. I am subscribed to a number of YouTube channels, and I am sharing them with you. Links: https://www.youtube.com/@ProfessorofRock https://www.youtube.com/@ProgAxia https://www.youtube.com/@quill18 https://www.youtube.com/@RachelFlowersMusic https://www.youtube.com/@RadioFreeSkaro https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvpxXoojGDRVA7zLYlY-48g https://www.youtube.com/@ralphtownermusic412 https://www.youtube.com/@RandyRainbowOfficial https://www.youtube.com/@realfastspanish https://www.youtube.com/@realtimehistory https://www.youtube.com/@RealLifeLore https://www.youtube.com/@pickupchangetoe https://www.youtube.com/@RichieCastellano https://www.youtube.com/@RickBeato https://www.youtube.com/@rickbeato2 https://www.palain.com/ Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4538: HPR Branding

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 24, 2025


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. HPR Branding This episode refers to the initial release of https://repo.anhonesthost.net/HPR/hpr_documentation/src/branch/main/branding.md The Intro Duration It will always be 30 seconds long and in some edge cases may be slightly longer. The following table will help put that into context. It gives the percentage of the show the intro takes related to the length of the shows. 1.7% of an average show (29 minutes 30 seconds) 0.1% of our longest show (7 hours 27 minutes) 187.5% of our shortest show (16 seconds) Breakdown Generation The intro is generated by the process_episode.bash script and uses the say.php file to generate the data. The text is created using piper test to speech . It was previously created using espeak , and we are open to suggestions on how to improve it. The text is played over the HPR Theme Music Theme Music Credits The background is an arrangement by Maestraccio which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license, of the HPR Theme, composed by slick0 which has No Copyright applied. Message To effectively communicate an event it's important to convey the answers to Who? , What? , When? , Where? , and Why? The Five Ws is a checklist used in journalism to ensure that the lead contains all the essential points of a story. As far back as 1913, reporters were taught that the lead should answer these questions about the situation being reported. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ws What?, When?, Where? The first sentence is always This is Hacker Public Radio episode (show id) for “(day of week)” the “(day number)” of “(month and year). Saying the name of the show at the beginning of an episode is called establishing brand recognition . It is standard for podcasts, TV and Radio shows as well as on broadcast networks, not to mention the pre-rolls in a movie. We started to do it because some of our Visually Impaired users appreciated knowing what show is playing. Now the same reason can be applied to everyone as the use of visual controlled User interfaces have diminished. Most people control the playlist with headset or voice controls. Saying the show id, and date is common where there are a lot of episodes eg: news or weather shows. It is often skipped where the content is sufficient to identify the episode, eg “the last episode of the foo bar baz podcast, or the last Saturday Night Live” We include the show id and date to allow the listener to refer to the episode easily. As we have literally thousands of shows, we need to help people identify which show they are now listening to, so that it can be easily shared, or commented on. What? Why? We always include Today's show is entitled. (title) . If the episode is part of a series then we also include It is part of the series (series name) . We always include the show (synopsis) . This tells the listener what the show is about. It allows them to skip the episode if they wish. They may wish to do this for many reasons, for example: because they are not interested in the topic, they wish to listen to it while in front of a computer to reference the accompanying show notes, they are listening in public and the topic might not be appropriate. Who? The next part will either be It is the first show by new host (host name) , It is the (multiple of 10)th show of (host name) , or It is hosted by (host name) We are required by the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license to credit our hosts, so we do. We think it's important to highlight new hosts especially, so our community we encourage them to continue to contribute. It's also nice to call out hosts who have been contributing a lot by highlighting each 10th show they send in. Where? We always include and is about (minutes)minutes long to give people an idea of how long the show is. Normal broadcasts have to fit neatly into a standard TV/Radio Broadcast schedule. Many podcasters now follow the same tradition of having episodes of a predictable length. Eg: 30 minutes or an hour. On HPR, there is no restriction on how long the show can be so it's desirable to give the listener a way to know how long the episode is so they can plan accordingly. Warning We always include either It carries a clean flag or It carries an explicit flag . This is also common for broadcasts where they are dealing with a topic that may be disturbing to some people. What We always include The summary is. (summary) . As this also tells the listener what the show is about. License In the event that the show is not released CC-BY-SA we include Todays show is licensed under a (license_long_name) license. Outro Theme Music Credits The background is an arrangement by Maestraccio which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license, of the HPR Theme, composed by slick0 which has No Copyright applied. Over the music is the following text recorded by Manon which has No Copyright applied. You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at hackerpublicradio.org . Today's show was contributed by a HPR listener like yourself. If you ever thought of recording a podcast, then click on our contribute link to find out how easy it really is. Hosting for HPR has been kindly provided by anhonesthost.com , the Internet Archive and rsync.net . Unless otherwise stated, today's show is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license. Discussions about the HPR Theme 2023-04 intro 2022-03 Great Intro 2022-03 TTS 2022-03 The TTS voice 2021-11 Theme - was “Possible cause and solution to subscriber attrition(trying again without encryption)” 2020-08 the voice 2019-11 Ken's Voice Is Better Than espeak 2018-09 HPR Branding 2018-09 Accordion outro 2018-10 Intro volume 2018-10 TTS over intro music 2016-02 speech synthesis during intro 2015-12 How to check if the intro and outro are added 2015-02 Intro and Outro 2014-12 Outro Theme 2014-12 Bug Fix HPR Intros 2014-11 MaryTTS, clipping 2014-11 An HPR Theme Question, And First Time Member 2014-02 What's the word on intro and outro clips? 2011-09 HPR Theme 2009-06 my eps for HPR and intro Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4537: “Elsbeth in IT: Since '97” (Part 1)

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 23, 2025


    This show has been flagged as Explicit by the host. A two-part conversation about what it's really like being a woman in tech for almost three decades. Content Warning: The F word probably makes an appearance multiple times. In this episode, Lee sits down with Elsbeth to talk about her long, winding, sometimes ridiculous, often inspiring journey through the IT industry — starting all the way back in 1997. If you've ever worked helpdesk, ever had a customer say “my cup holder broke” (yes, the CD tray)… or ever felt underestimated in a room full of engineers, this one's for you. Because we throw around some tech terms in the conversation, here are a few friendly definitions so everyone can follow along. Terms We Mentioned (in plain English) QA (Quality Assurance) Think of QA as the people who try to break things on purpose so regular users don't break them accidentally . They test software, hardware, websites — you name it — to catch bugs before they cause chaos. If it's glitch-free, a QA person probably saved the day behind the scenes. Content Moderation This is the work of keeping the internet from turning into the Wild West. Moderators review posts, comments, images, and videos to make sure they follow community rules and don't harm users. It's a mix of tech tools and human judgment — and yes, it can get intense. Building PCs Where many IT careers start! Building PCs is basically grown-up Lego: picking parts assembling them hoping you don't zap anything with static electricity praying the cable management gods smile upon you It's one of the most empowering skills in tech and often the first time someone realizes, “Oh hey… I can actually do this.” Gender Equality & Inequality Gender equality means giving everyone the same chance to succeed — no matter who they are. Gender inequality is what happens when that doesn't happen. In tech, inequality often looks like: being talked over being paid less being assumed “non-technical” having to prove yourself twice as hard being the only woman in a room… again Elsbeth has seen all of this firsthand since 1997 — and she's got stories. End-User The end-user is simply the person who actually uses the product. Not the engineer who built it. Not the manager who approved it. Not the QA who tested it. The end-user is the human at the end of the chain who clicks the button, pushes the key, taps the app… and finds entirely new ways to break things no one expected. Understanding them is the secret superpower of tech. Neurodivergence Neurodivergence means brains come in many beautiful varieties — like ADHD, autism, dyslexia, and more. Neurodivergent people often bring incredible strengths to IT, including creativity, pattern spotting, hyperfocus, and out-of-the-box problem solving. They can also face misunderstandings in workplaces that weren't designed with different brains in mind — something Elsbeth talks about openly and honestly in this episode. Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4536: Welcome to the Linux Community

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 22, 2025


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. Below are some links to help you find related software and resources: Beginner-Friendly Distros https://linuxmint.com https://ubuntu.com https://fedoraproject.org https://pop.system76.com Help & Community Linux Questions — https://www.linuxquestions.org Reddit r/linux4noobs — https://www.reddit.com/r/linux4noobs Stack Exchange Unix/Linux — https://unix.stackexchange.com Ask Fedora — https://ask.fedoraproject.org Ubuntu Forums — https://ubuntuforums.org Local & Live Community https://www.linux.org/forums/ https://freegeek.org/ https://mastodon.social https://fosstodon.org Software Alternatives GIMP (image editing) — https://www.gimp.org Krita (digital painting) — https://krita.org Inkscape (vector graphics) — https://inkscape.org Blender (3D modeling & animation) — https://blender.org LibreOffice (office suite) — https://libreoffice.org Ardour (audio workstation) — https://ardour.org LMMS (music production) — https://lmms.io Kdenlive (video editing) — https://kdenlive.org Linux Gaming Steam for Linux — https://store.steampowered.com ProtonDB compatibility reports — https://www.protondb.com Lutris game launcher — https://lutris.net Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4535: Living the Tux Life Episode 4 - Various software I have been using

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 19, 2025


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. Show Notes System Monitoring & Metrics Prometheus Open-source monitoring and alerting toolkit for collecting and storing metrics. Documentation : https://prometheus.io/docs/prometheus/latest/installation/ Prometheus Node Exporter Hardware and OS metrics exporter for Prometheus. Guide : https://prometheus.io/docs/guides/node-exporter/ Grafana Open-source analytics and visualization platform for monitoring metrics. Docker Installation : https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/setup-grafana/installation/docker/ Featured Grafana Dashboards Power Information Dashboard : https://grafana.com/grafana/dashboards/12542-power-information/ Node Exporter Full : https://grafana.com/grafana/dashboards/1860-node-exporter-full/ Power Management & Battery Tools TLP Advanced power management tool for Linux that optimizes battery life. Installation Guide : https://linrunner.de/tlp/installation/index.html Battery Uptime Timer Script Custom script for monitoring battery usage and uptime. GitHub Repository : https://github.com/mralc/Battery-uptime-timer Setting Battery Charge Threshold Limit battery charge to extend battery lifespan: echo 90 | sudo tee /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/charge_stop_threshold Note: Adjust the value (90%) and BAT0 according to your system. Caffeine Prevents your system from going to sleep or activating the screensaver. Project Page : https://launchpad.net/caffeine Backup & File Sharing LocalSend Open-source cross-platform alternative to AirDrop for sharing files locally. Website : https://localsend.org/ Déjà Dup Simple backup tool for GNOME desktop environment. GNOME Apps : https://apps.gnome.org/en-GB/DejaDup/ FOX Clone System backup and cloning tool for Linux. SourceForge : https://sourceforge.net/projects/foxclone/ Terminal Utilities Tmux Terminal multiplexer that allows multiple terminal sessions within a single window. GitHub Wiki : https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4534: Reviving My Kawai K4 Synthesizer

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 18, 2025


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. Links Kawai K4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kawai_K4 Kawai K4 Battery Replacement (Japanese): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ux3y2ClgP1I Neal Beard and his Machines - Kawai Battery Replacement: https://nealbeardahm.blogspot.com/2012/10/kawai-battery-replacement.html Kawai K4r: Rack-mount module version of the K4 Kawai Downloads Page: https://kawaius.com/downloads/ Standard MIDI Files (SMF): https://midi.org/standard-midi-files MIDI System Exclusive (SysEx) Messages Explained: https://blog.landr.com/midi-sysex/ amidi(1): https://linux.die.net/man/1/amidi Syntaur Keyboard Parts & Accessories: https://syntaur.com/ Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4533: Nuclear Reactor Technology - Ep 2 Nuclear Fuel

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 17, 2025


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. 01 Introduction This episode is the second in an 8 part series on nuclear reactor technology. This episode will cover types of nuclear fuel, recycling of nuclear fuel, uranium and thorium resources, and medical isotopes. 03 Types of Nuclear Fuel 03 Natural Uranium 04 Enriched Uranium 05 Mixed Oxide Fuel, or MOX 06 Thorium Fuel 08 Plutonium in Uranium Cycle Reactors 09 Depleted Uranium 10 Oxide or Ceramic versus Metallic Fuel 12 Recycling Spent Fuel 13 Once Through Fuel Cycles 14 Reprocessing Spent Uranium Fuel into Mixed Oxide or MOX Fuel 16 Reprocessing and Thorium Fuel 17 Direct Reuse of Spent Light Water Fuel in Heavy Water Moderated Reactors 18 DUPIC - Direct Use of Used PWR Fuel in CANDU 20 RepU - Reprocessed Uranium Fuel in CANDU 21 Uranium and Thorium Resources 21 Uranium Mining 22 Uranium in Sea Water 23 Thorium 24 Medical Isotopes 25 Examples of Common Medical Isotopes 26 How Medical Isotopes are Made 27 Producing Isotopes in Research Reactors 29 Producing Isotopes in Power Reactors 31 Summary The basis of nuclear fission is nuclear fuel. There are three main types of nuclear fuel in commercial use today. These are natural uranium, enriched uranium, and mixed oxide or MOX uranium-plutonium mixtures. It is possible to use thorium in a sort of thorium-plutonium or thorium-uranium MOX fuel, but this not currently economically viable at this time when uranium is so cheap and abundant. Spent fuel can be recycled and used in a reactor again. Medical isotopes are an important byproduct of the nuclear industry, and a large share of the world's population has benefited from this at one time or another. 32 Conclusion In the next episode I will describe the basic features and characteristics of reactors together with descriptions of the most widely used commercial reactor types. This concludes the second episode of an 8 part series on nuclear reactor technology. Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4532: Cheap Yellow Display Project Part 5: Graphical User Interface

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 16, 2025


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. Hello, again. This is Trey. Welcome to part 5 in my Cheap Yellow Display (CYD) Project series. If you are still listening to me ramble about this project, thank you. If you wish to catch up on earlier episodes, you can find them on my HPR profile page https://www.hackerpublicradio.org/correspondents/0394.html To review, My project is to build a portable morse code "Keyer memory" which can be connected to any of my HF transceiver radios by simply plugging it in to the code key input port. Then I could transmit stored messages by simply touching their specific icon on the touch screen. I also want to be able to program each macro individually from the graphical user interface (GUI). To do this, I need to learn how to build a GUI. Most of the CYD resources I have been referencing recommend using Squareline Studio for GUI development on the CYD. Sadly, Squareline Studio is not open source. If any of you have experience with a good, open source alternative to Squareline Studio, please record a show to help the rest of us. Squareline does have a free trial and a free single user / single computer license, which I am using for this project. It will run on Windows, Linux, and Mac. After watching several videos about using the CYD with Squareline, I started to outline the functionality I needed. Squareline provides a wide range of pre-configured boards and interfaces to choose from, in addition to widgets and controls which you can drag onto your screens, and it will automatically generate the supporting code in the background. The initial page needs to have the macro buttons, with labels for the message they will send when pressed. There also needs to be navigation buttons to move from one page to others. Another important page will be the configuration page, where the user can store the contents of each macro and set the speed at which code will be sent. I would like to have a keyboard page where the user can type a custom message and send it. I made a few GUI sketches on post-it-notes, then I installed Squareline Studio on my Ubuntu laptop to start designing. There is a bit of a learning curve. Even with guide videos, I found the user experience to be... challenging. Their own GUI leaves much to be desired. It was not designed to run on the laptop's screen size/resolution. I had to switch to a much higher resolution monitor and rearrange frames within the app itself in order to see many of the controls. Button size adjustments, alignments, and label text did not work quite as expected. Getting things sized and aligned properly took quite a bit of fiddling. The text displayed on a button is a separate object from the button itself, so I have had to put some thought into object naming so that I can write code which will change button labels dynamically. I am including some screenshots from Squareline for the interface I designed. One great feature is that you can define actions and conditions for objects in your project. For example, there are buttons on the left which will navigate to specific screens. I defined actions within Squareline, such that when the specific navigation button is pressed, it will change the button appearance to look like it has been pressed and will then scroll left or right to a specified screen. Actions were also valuable for the Speed (WPM) slider on the Config screen. When this slider is moved left and right, the GUI will change the actual number for WPM to the right of the slider. Next, there is a simulator function which can be used to test how well the GUI works. It took some trial and error, but I was able to build and successfully test, navigational actions and the WPM slider. As I was working on building the afore mentioned WPM slider, and thinking about the default words per minute of Morse to use, my ADHD interrupted me (As usual). I decided to change the default speed that I use for the Arduino Nano based Morse code practice keyer which I keep on my desk. You can learn more about this keyer in episode 3 of this series. And we will also discuss Morse code speed in a future episode in this series. The original code (As found on https://github.com/jmharvey1/ArduinoCPO ) specified 12 words per minute (WPM) as the default speed, with buttons to increase or decrease this. However, I am practicing at 20 WPM. Every time I turn on the practice set, I need to turn up the speed and guess when I am close to 20. I went ahead and opened the PracticeOscilator project in Arduino IDE and updated the wpm variable to a value of 20. No, you will not see this change reflected in my own GitHub repo because: A) I wanted to test it locally first B) 20 WPM may be a little fast for a default C) I do not use git the way that it is meant to be used, or the way I SHOULD be using it, with pull requests and all. Bad Trey. D) I was distracted ANYWAY, the reason I bring this up is that it is the first time I have used the Arduino IDE to program a board with this system since I upgraded from Ubunto 20.04 to Ubuntu 22.04. Try as I might, I was not able to get the Arduino Nano's USB port to be recognized in Linux so that I could upload the updated keyer code. I spent several days troubleshooting, using other Arduino devices, different USB ports, and different cables, all to no avail. If anyone has any recommendations, I am open to suggestions. So, I dug out my son's old Windows 10 PC and started again. I had to install the Arduino IDE, load all the necessary libraries, and my code from Github (Which I had to manually change once again, because I don't fully get git). Finally I was able to update the Arduino Nano with its new code, and it works perfectly. But this revealed the same problem for the CYD. I also could not get it to connect over USB to my Ubuntu system. Time to migrate the entire project to Windows. My next step was to install Squareline Studio on Windows. Here, I ran into another snag, as my trial license was only for one system, so I had to uninstall Squareline from Linux before I could activate the license on Windows. Did I mention that I would love to find an open source, free software product to use instead? If you know of one, please ping me or post a comment. I wasted more time trying to get the GUI project I had written on the Linux machine imported into Squareline on Windows, all the while thinking of improvements I could make if I started again from scratch. It would not load, and would not load. In the end, I started all over again. After much blood sweat and tears, my GUI code was working again, and this time in Windows. I was able to run it in the simulation mode and move from page to page successfully and also use the WPM slider. I exported the UI from Squareline, and I loaded the code it generated into a new project within Arduino IE. Now was the moment of truth. I followed instructions found on the Pang YouTube channel video [ESP32 + LVGL] Configuration input device rotary encoder ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGM6gu9OpbA ). I connected the CYD and uploaded the code. SUCCESS!! You can see my "Send" screen loaded perfectly! Now to try other screens. Wait. Drat. It does not seem like my navigation buttons work. Actually, it does not appear that the touch screen is responding at all. I spent the next several days trying to figure out what went wrong. I checked and double checked interrupt and configuration settings (Such as those described in another of Pang's videos, [CYD + LVGL] Configuration Cheap Yellow Display | Easy Guide ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmR-mjJVumU ). Nothing worked. I came to realize that I bit off more than I could chew, and I should NOT have started with such an ambitious project. Instead I should have started with a simple equivalence of "Hello World", where I could build and test simple functionality to make sure I knew exactly what I was doing, then expand on it. Lessons learned, and a good stopping point for this episode. I am open to your feedback on what you would recommend, what I should do differently, etc. You can post simple feedback as a comment or send me an email using the address in my HPR profile. As usual, if your feedback is more than a sentence or two, you might want to record it as an episode so that other listeners can benefit from it as well. Time for an espresso. Maybe I will make it a double. Or even a triple! Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4531: HPR Beer Garden 6 - Imperial Stouts

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 15, 2025


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. Kevie and Dave continue their look at winter beers with the a look at Imperial Stouts. In this episode Kevie tries Knight of Ren by Yorkshire based microbrewery Tartarus and Dave samples Toffee Nut Latte Imperial Stout by Edinburgh based Vault City . Connect with the guys on Untappd: Dave Kevie Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4530: Playing Civilization V, Part 6

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 12, 2025


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. In our next look at the game mechanics for Civilization V we examine the topic of War and Combat. This is a complex topic, and we are just hitting the high points here, but we also provide a link to the War Academy for furhter study. Links: https://www.palain.com/gaming/civilization-v/playing-civilization-v-part-3/ https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Promotions_(Civ5) https://forums.civfanatics.com/forums/civ5-war-academy.451/ https://www.palain.com/gaming/civilization-v/playing-civilization-v-part-6/ Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4529: yoga370 review

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 11, 2025


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. 1 intro ═══════ non-forth show! 2 inspiration ═════════════ episode 4402, looking for a single device to be able to do forth work, read documents, some web browsing discussed the ups and downs of using a pinetab2 and how i used fluxbox and some scripts to bend the device to my needs device was ok but underpowered interview with david revou, episode 4491 mentioned blog section of hardware, led me to lenovo yoga 370 3 yoga 370 ══════════ i purchased one used on ebay, $250 USD 2 in 1 device, can be used as a laptop or tablet 13" ips touch screen display x86_64 Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7600U CPU @ 2.80GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux 500G nvme 16G ram suprisingly fixable, replacable battery, memory, nvme [picture][picture] 4 installing slackware ══════════════════════ installing slackware: stop secure boot in the bios, reformat the hardrive using gdisk mkfs, efi boot using elilo (not grub2) had to reboot between each disk drive change. when complete the slackware installer did all the rest of the work, installing elilo and the boot entry after the install i did my normal slackware post install stuff, and everything works (maybe not the fingerprint reader but i do't use that anyway ) 5 scripting ═══════════ modified the scripts from the pinetab2 to activate laptop (landscape) and tablet (portrait) mode. using xrandr to rotate the screen, xinput the touch screen, the keyboard is disabled in tablet mode created .desktop entries and added some graphics to get buttons that i pin to the kde task manager to activate 6 setting up okular ═══════════════════ a great document reader, okular. to read documents in tablet mode i use presentation mode in the settings menu under configure okular/ presentation mode you'll find enable touch navigation and then tapping on the left/right side of the screen will move the page forward and backward. great for reading especially pdf's 7 tablet mode software ══════════════════════ xournal++, , hand note-taking software, exploring using this for things like d-charts for forth developement 8 outro ═══════ Lets all work to stamp out and abolish redundancy Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4528: Photography software

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 10, 2025


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. Today I will list and talk briefly about software related to photography that I have installed on my computer. DigiKam https://www.digikam.org/ RawTherapee https://rawtherapee.com/ GIMP https://www.gimp.org/ Rapid Photo Downloader https://damonlynch.net/rapid/index.html PIX https://github.com/linuxmint/pix VueScan https://www.hamrick.com/ Entangle https://entangle-photo.org/ DisplayCAL https://displaycal.net/ DarkTable https://www.darktable.org/ Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4527: Overly Complicated Media Ripping setup

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 9, 2025


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. Hello, this is your host Archer72 for Hacker Public Radio. In this episode, I share my overly complicated media ripping setup, and hope it helps someone. First of all, I have revised my media ripping setup since HPR3294 - Update to MakeMKV to back up media I've changed my mind about only using a terminal for ripping media, and it was time to make a change. Now, I start both MakeMKV and Handbrake from a remote GUI, either on my laptop or phone. VNC server for remote GUI virt-manager server sudo apt install tigervnc-common Remmina VNC viewer, tabbed viewing Debian desktop VNC Client for Android AVNC client on F-Droid NFS server on Raspberry Pi Remote for Intel mini PC Server mark-hpprodesk600g2dm description: Space-saving Computer product: HP ProDesk 600 G2 DM (Y0E36UP#ABA) vendor: HP serial: xxxxxxxx width: 64 bits sudo apt install nfs-kernel-server Added symbolic links to /srv/ for ease of use Oct 28 05:34 dvdrip -> /mnt/USBdrive-12Tb/DVDrip/ Oct 28 05:30 movies -> /mnt/USBdrive-12Tb/Movies/ Oct 30 05:20 tv -> /mnt/USBdrive-12Tb/TV 192.168.50.20:/mnt/USBdrive-12Tb/DVDrip /mnt/dvdrip nfs users,defaults,_netdev,nofail 0 0 192.168.50.20:/mnt/USBdrive-12Tb/TV /mnt/tv nfs users,defaults,_netdev,nofail Blu Ray writer *-cdrom description: DVD-RAM writer product: BDDVDRW CH20L vendor: hp physical id: 0.0.0 bus info: scsi@9:0.0.0 logical name: /dev/sr1 version: BC33 capabilities: removable audio cd-r cd-rw dvd dvd-r dvd-ram MakeMKV Discs won't stop loading MakeMKV above v1.17.7 still broken on Linux Downgraded version Old versions of MakeMKV makemkv-bin-1.17.7.tar.gz makemkv-oss-1.17.7.tar.gz Tailscale on Debian trixie Tailscale on F-droid MakeMKV via Remmina Handbrake via Remmina Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4526: Baofeng and SDR++

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 8, 2025


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. Goal: send a voice signal on VHF or UHF, receive and record with SDR via RTL dongle Core Problem and Resolution An issue may have been a hardware I/Q Imbalance in the RTL-SDR, which suppressed the desired signal, resulting in very low output volume that required excessive manual amplification. Initial Problem: Very quiet, barely audible recorded audio, initially on UHF 433 MHz Key Discovery: An I/Q imbalance caused a repeating signal "image" in the spectrum, Frequency Change: Switched to the VHF 145.500 Mhz band, Gain Override: To overcome the defect and the failing AGC, gain stages were manually adjusted: Squelch: Squelch (SQL) was set to OFF (0) to prevent the software from muting the quiet, legitimate signal. Adjusted the final Sound Output/Recording Gain on the host OS to match the maximized digital output, achieving audible voice. Summary of Key Radio and Software Settings Transmitting Radio (Baofeng UV-5R): Operation: Simplex (direct radio-to-SDR). Mode: Narrowband FM (NFM). Receiving Software (SDR++): AGC: Disabled (Crucial override). RF/Tuner Gain: Adjust (Inject best signal power). AF Gain: Adjust (Produce loudest digital audio). Squelch (SQL): OFF (0) (Prevent muting of quiet signal). Filter Bandwidth: 12.5 kHz(Correct setting for NFM). The ultimate resolution was forcing input and output gain in SDR++ and volume adjustment in Audacity Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4525: Using mail merge in thunderbird

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 5, 2025


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. As the new year show is upon us, Ken needs a way to send out some mail messages to fellow Free Culture Podcasters . Rather than just putting every one on the bcc, a more personal mail list can be done using the Thunderbird Mail Merge add on. Install Download it, and then open Thunderbird, select "Tools", "Add-ons and Themes". Then press the Cog icon ⚙, and select "Install Add-on From File...", Finally select the downloaded file and confirm. Creating the CSV To use it create a list of emails with a heading, "PrimaryEmail" in our example. $ cat maillist2025.csv PrimaryEmail jblogg@example.com missing@example.nl janvanduck@example.nl Using Mail Merge Just add each column field to the address boxes, or the body of your message, surrounded by double curly brackets . In our case we add "{{PrimaryEmail}}", in the to field. Then press the new "Mail Merge" button in the top right. Select "CSV" and select the file you prepared before. If you are sending now, then you can put in a random delay, so that when you press send there will be a delay between each of the mails been sent. If you select the default send later, then after pressing send the mails will be placed in the outbox so you can send them later. Links https://freeculturepodcasts.org/ https://services.addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/mail-merge/ Cog icon provided by https://glyph-party.wimpys.world/ from https://linuxmatters.sh/67/ Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4524: Living the Tux Life Episode 3 - Automating the Install

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 4, 2025


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. Setting up Linux Mint with Custom LVM and Luks Linux Mint with Custom LVM on LUKS Overview The current Linux Mint installer doesn't support custom partitions when setting up a new machine with LUKS encryption using LVM. I prefer having a separate partition for my home directory and a backup partition for Timeshift, so that reinstalling or fixing issues won't overwrite my home directory. I found several approaches to achieve this. One method involves setting up partitions first and then using the installer to select them, but this requires extensive post-installation configuration to get boot working with the encrypted drive. I discovered this blog which explains how to repartition your drive after installation. Combined with my guide on setting up hibernation, I created this documentation to help remember how to install a fresh copy of Linux Mint with LVM and LUKS. Tested on: Linux Mint 22 Cinnamon Partition Layout For this guide, I'm working with a 1TB drive that will be split into the following logical volumes: Root - 100GB (system files and applications) Swap - 32GB (for hibernation support) Home - 700GB (user files and documents) Backup - 100GB (Timeshift snapshots) Unallocated - ~68GB (reserved for future expansion) This setup ensures that system snapshots and user data remain separate, making system recovery much easier. Installation Guide Step 1: Initial Linux Mint Installation Start the Linux Mint installation process as normal: Boot from your Linux Mint installation media Follow the installation wizard (language, keyboard layout, etc.) When you reach the Installation type screen: Select "Erase disk and install Linux Mint" Click "Advanced features" Enable both options: ✓ Use LVM with the new Linux Mint installation ✓ Encrypt the new Linux Mint installation for security Click Continue Enter a strong encryption password when prompted Complete the rest of the installation (timezone, user account, etc.) When installation finishes, do NOT click "Restart Now" - we'll repartition first Important: Do NOT reboot after installation completes. We need to repartition before the first boot. Step 2: Access Root Terminal After installation finishes, open a terminal and switch to root: sudo -i This gives you administrative privileges needed for disk operations. Step 3: Check Current Disk Layout View your current partition structure: lsblk -f This displays your filesystem layout. You should see your encrypted volume group (typically vgmint) with a large root partition consuming most of the space. Step 4: Resize Root Partition Shrink the root partition from its default size (nearly full disk) to 100GB: lvresize -L 100G --resizefs vgmint/root What this does: -L 100G sets the logical volume size to exactly 100GB --resizefs automatically resizes the filesystem to match This frees up ~900GB for our other partitions Step 5: Resize Swap Partition The default swap is usually small (a few GB). We need to increase it to 32GB for hibernation: lvresize --verbose -L +32G /dev/mapper/vgmint-swap_1 What this does: -L +32G adds 32GB to the current swap size --verbose shows detailed progress information This ensures enough swap space for RAM contents during hibernation Note: For hibernation to work, swap should be at least equal to your RAM size. Adjust accordingly. Step 6: Create Home Partition Create a new logical volume for your home directory: lvcreate -L 700G vgmint -n home What this does: -L 700G creates a 700GB logical volume vgmint is the volume group name -n home names the new volume "home" Step 7: Create Backup Partition Create a logical volume for Timeshift backups: lvcreate -L 100G vgmint -n backup What this does: Creates a dedicated 100GB space for system snapshots Keeps backups separate from user data Prevents backups from filling up your home partition Step 8: Format New Partitions Format both new partitions with the ext4 filesystem: mkfs.ext4 /dev/vgmint/backup mkfs.ext4 /dev/vgmint/home What this does: Creates ext4 filesystems on both logical volumes ext4 is the standard Linux filesystem with good performance and reliability Step 9: Mount Partitions Create mount points and mount your partitions: mkdir /mnt/{root,home} mount /dev/vgmint/root /mnt/root/ mount /dev/vgmint/home /mnt/home/ What this does: Creates temporary directories to access the filesystems Mounts root and home so we can configure them Step 10: Move Home Directory Contents Move the existing home directory contents from the root partition to the new home partition: mv /mnt/root/home/* /mnt/home/ What this does: Transfers all user files and directories from the old location to the new home partition Preserves your user account settings and any files created during installation Without this step, your home directory would be empty on first boot Step 11: Update fstab Add the home partition to the system's fstab file so it mounts automatically at boot: echo "/dev/mapper/vgmint-home /home ext4 defaults 0 2" >> /mnt/root/etc/fstab What this does: Appends a mount entry to /etc/fstab Ensures /home partition mounts automatically at startup The 0 2 values enable filesystem checks during boot Step 12: Clean Up and Prepare for Reboot Unmount the partitions and deactivate the volume group: umount /mnt/root umount /mnt/home swapoff -a lvchange -an vgmint What this does: Safely unmounts all mounted filesystems Turns off swap Deactivates the volume group to prevent conflicts Ensures everything is properly closed before reboot Step 13: Reboot Now you can safely reboot into your new system: reboot Enter your LUKS encryption password at boot, then log in normally. Verification After rebooting, verify your partition setup: lsblk -f df -h You should see: Root (/) mounted with ~100GB Home (/home) mounted with ~700GB Swap available with 32GB Backup partition ready for Timeshift configuration Setting Up Timeshift To complete your backup solution: Install Timeshift (if not already installed): sudo apt install timeshift Launch Timeshift and select RSYNC mode Choose the backup partition as your snapshot location Configure your backup schedule (daily, weekly, monthly) Create your first snapshot Additional Resources Original blog post on LVM rearrangement Setting up hibernation on Linux Mint Conclusion This setup gives you the best of both worlds: the security of full-disk encryption with LUKS, and the flexibility of custom LVM partitions. Your home directory and system backups are now isolated, making system recovery and upgrades much safer and more manageable. Automating Your Linux Mint Setup After a Fresh Install Automating Your Linux Mint Setup After a Fresh Install Setting up a fresh Linux Mint installation can be time-consuming, especially when you want to replicate your perfect development environment. This guide will show you how to automate the entire process using Ansible and configuration backups, so you can go from a fresh install to a fully configured system in minutes. Why Automate Your Setup? Whether you're setting up a new machine, recovering from a system failure, or just want to maintain consistency across multiple computers, automation offers several key benefits: Time Savings: What normally takes hours can be done in minutes Consistency: Identical setup across all your machines Documentation: Your setup becomes self-documenting Recovery: Quick recovery from system failures Reproducibility: Never forget to install that one crucial tool again Discovering Your Installed Applications Before creating your automation setup, you need to identify which applications you've manually installed since the initial OS installation. This helps you build a complete picture of your custom environment. Finding APT and .deb Packages To see all manually installed packages (excluding those that came with the OS): comm -23

    HPR4523: Nuclear Reactor Technology - Ep 1 - Nuclear Basics

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 3, 2025


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. This episode is the first in an 8 part series on nuclear reactor technology. This is a politics free series and the focus is on the technology of the reactors. This series will focus on the civil nuclear industry, with a particular focus on electric power generation reactors. I will discuss the technology, what it is, how it works, and some of the pros and cons of different technologies, but I will try to avoid offering too many opinions on what is the best or worst of anything. Episode 1 will cover nuclear basics, including basic terminology and civil versus military nuclear material. Episode 2 will cover nuclear fuel, including the different types, recycling of spent fuel, uranium and thorium resources, and medical isotopes. Episode 3 will cover reactor basics, including slow versus fast reactors, moderators, coolants, steam generation, refuelling methods, and the three main commercial reactor types. Episode 4 will cover the less common reactor types, including types which are no longer used, some historical developmental dead ends, and some types which may possibly be making a come back. Episode 5 will cover fast reactors, including the different types, some of their history, why they were developed, and why they have so far only seen limited use. Episode 6 will cover thorium reactors, including what is thorium and how it differs from uranium, why there is interest in thorium, what sorts of reactors can use thorium, and why thorium has not yet seen widespread use. Episode 7 will cover small modular reactors or SMRs, what the reason is for developing them, what are the different ways they may be used, and where they are currently being built. Episode 8 will cover "Generator IV" reactors which is a collection of future technologies. 08 Isotopes 09 Isotopes of Uranium 10 Nuclear Fission 11 Half Life 12 Fissile versus Fertile 13 Enrichment of Isotopes 14 Civil Versus Military Nuclear Material 15 Uranium 16 Plutonium 18 Conclusion In the first episode of this series we have discussed what the series will cover, some of the basic nuclear physics terminology, and the differences between civil and military nuclear material. In the upcoming episodes we will discuss some of the basic engineering aspects of reactors, The various types of commercial reactors, including common and uncommon ones, nuclear fuel, including uranium, plutonium, and thorium, medical isotopes, small modular reactors, and the areas of research being conducted into new reactor technologies. In the next episode however we will cover types of nuclear fuel, recycling of nuclear fuel, uranium and thorium resources, and medical isotopes. This concludes the first episode of an 8 part series on nuclear reactor technology. Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4522: Lee interviews Elsbeth about SL Shop and Hop event

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 2, 2025


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. In this episode, Lee sits down with Elsbeth Starling — fae-coded creator, mesh-maker, scripter, and accidental caffeine-fueled entrepreneur — to talk about what it really takes to get accepted into Second Life's legendary Shop & Hop as a relatively new business owner. At just about a year and a half into her SL journey, Elsbeth breaks down the whole process: how she applied, what the organizers look for, and why imposter syndrome is basically the unofficial application form. Link to the last Shop and Hop information She shares her behind-the-scenes workflow using GIMP , Blender , and LSL scripting to turn simple mesh ideas into fully interactive creations. (Spoiler: it involves equal parts stubbornness and fairy dust.) We dive into SLRead , the virtual HUD-based e-reader system she and Lee created — a tool that brings the joy of real-life reading into the digital world, complete with pages, collections, and a whole lot of cozy vibes. Elsbeth also reveals her newest item premiering at Shop & Hop: an interactive story-time décor piece that lets ANY avatar sit down, pick one of six sweet stories, and be read to in local chat. Think “campfire storytelling,” but with lag and better fashion. We wrap up by talking through the practicals: the cost of participating, how sales work at large SL events, the realities of being a smaller creator in a massive marketplace, and why Shop & Hop can be one of the best visibility boosts for emerging designers. If you're an SL creator dreaming of Shop & Hop — or just curious how creators bring magic into the metaverse — this episode is a must-listen. Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4521: HPR Community News for November 2025

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 1, 2025


    This show has been flagged as Explicit by the host. New hosts Welcome to our new host: Whiskeyjack. Last Month's Shows Id Day Date Title Host 4501 Mon 2025-11-03 HPR Community News for October 2025 HPR Volunteers 4502 Tue 2025-11-04 Cheap Yellow Display Project Part 3: Reverse beacon network Trey 4503 Wed 2025-11-05 One time passwords using oathtool Whiskeyjack 4504 Thu 2025-11-06 YouTube Subscriptions 2025 #7 Ahuka 4505 Fri 2025-11-07 New site - looks great! Archer72 4506 Mon 2025-11-10 The UCSD P-System Operating System Whiskeyjack 4507 Tue 2025-11-11 What's in the bag ? Ken Fallon 4508 Wed 2025-11-12 YouTube Subscriptions 2025 #8 Ahuka 4509 Thu 2025-11-13 HPR Beer Garden 5 - Heferweisen Kevie 4510 Fri 2025-11-14 Playing Civilization V, Part 5 Ahuka 4511 Mon 2025-11-17 Audio-books Lee 4512 Tue 2025-11-18 HomeAssistant - Nmap ("Network Mapper") Reto 4513 Wed 2025-11-19 Living the Tux Life Episode 2 - Ventoy Al 4514 Thu 2025-11-20 YouTube Subscriptions 2025 #9 Ahuka 4515 Fri 2025-11-21 Privacy? I don't have anything to hide... Archer72 4516 Mon 2025-11-24 Browser User Agent Henrik Hemrin 4517 Tue 2025-11-25 Cheap Yellow Display Project Part 4: The hardware Trey 4518 Wed 2025-11-26 Cosy News Corner for Week 46 - Your source for Open Source news Daniel Persson 4519 Thu 2025-11-27 YouTube Subscriptions 2025 #10 Ahuka 4520 Fri 2025-11-28 Arthur C. Clarke: Rama and Sequels Ahuka Comments this month These are comments which have been made during the past month, either to shows released during the month or to past shows. There are 22 comments in total. Past shows There are 8 comments on 8 previous shows: hpr3753 (2022-12-21) "Some thoughts on "Numeronyms"" by Dave Morriss. Comment 3: Ken Fallon on 2025-11-03: "Just linked to this" Comment 4: Dave Morriss on 2025-11-05: "Thanks Ken" hpr4397 (2025-06-10) "Transfer files from desktop to phone with qrcp" by Klaatu. Comment 2: Ken Fallon on 2025-11-18: "I knew this would come in handy" Comment 3: candycanearter07 on 2025-11-19: "issues with qrcp..." Comment 4: Ken Fallon on 2025-11-20: "qrcp is private 0x0.st is not" hpr4485 (2025-10-10) "Git for Github and Gitlab" by Archer72. Comment 3: Archer72 on 2025-11-01: "candycanearter07 and Sayaci: Thanks!" Comment 4: candycanearter07 on 2025-11-05: "Re: candycanearter07 and Sayaci: Thanks!" hpr4491 (2025-10-20) "Thibaut and Ken Interview David Revoy" by Thibaut. Comment 3: dnt on 2025-11-04: "Great interview" hpr4493 (2025-10-22) "HPR Beer Garden 4 - Weissbier" by Kevie. Comment 5: TA Spinner on 2025-11-10: "Great episode, I look forward to more!" hpr4494 (2025-10-23) "Exploring FUTO Keyboard" by Antoine. Comment 1: Archer72 on 2025-11-01: "Keyboards use" hpr4498 (2025-10-29) "Living the Tux Life Episode 1" by Al. Comment 1: candycanearter07 on 2025-11-10: "cheers for taking the plunge!" hpr4499 (2025-10-30) "Greg Farough and Zoë Kooyman of the FSF interview Librephone lead developer Rob Savoye" by Ken Fallon. Comment 1: Henrik Hemrin on 2025-11-05: "Good interview pod to learn more about the Librephone project" This month's shows There are 14 comments on 8 of this month's shows: hpr4501 (2025-11-03) "HPR Community News for October 2025" by HPR Volunteers. Comment 1: Archer72 on 2025-11-01: "If you do something cool..."Comment 2: candycanearter07 on 2025-11-05: "Re: If you do something cool..."Comment 3: Archer72 on 2025-11-08: "Tip from operat0r" hpr4503 (2025-11-05) "One time passwords using oathtool" by Whiskeyjack. Comment 1: interesting, but... on 2025-11-10: "candycanearter07"Comment 2: Whiskeyjack on 2025-11-12: "One time passwords using oathtool" hpr4505 (2025-11-07) "New site - looks great!" by Archer72. Comment 1: folky on 2025-11-04: "Thank you" hpr4506 (2025-11-10) "The UCSD P-System Operating System" by Whiskeyjack. Comment 1: L'andrew on 2025-11-11: "A blast from the p-code past..."Comment 2: brian-in-ohio on 2025-11-17: "good show"Comment 3: Trixter on 2025-11-21: "This was very well done" hpr4509 (2025-11-13) "HPR Beer Garden 5 - Heferweisen" by Kevie. Comment 1: ClaudioM on 2025-11-19: "Both are Tasty!" hpr4511 (2025-11-17) "Audio-books" by Lee. Comment 1: Lee on 2025-11-05: "Errata" hpr4517 (2025-11-25) "Cheap Yellow Display Project Part 4: The hardware " by Trey. Comment 1: mirwi on 2025-11-25: "Explanation of "silent key"."Comment 2: Trey on 2025-11-26: "Thank you, Mirwi. Silent Key episode link" hpr4518 (2025-11-26) "Cosy News Corner for Week 46 - Your source for Open Source news" by Daniel Persson. Comment 1: Torin Doyle on 2025-11-29: "I like this news feature." Mailing List discussions Policy decisions surrounding HPR are taken by the community as a whole. This discussion takes place on the Mailing List which is open to all HPR listeners and contributors. The discussions are open and available on the HPR server under Mailman. The threaded discussions this month can be found here: https://lists.hackerpublicradio.com/pipermail/hpr/2025-November/thread.html Events Calendar With the kind permission of LWN.net we are linking to The LWN.net Community Calendar. Quoting the site: This is the LWN.net community event calendar, where we track events of interest to people using and developing Linux and free software. Clicking on individual events will take you to the appropriate web page.Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4520: Arthur C. Clarke: Rama and Sequels

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 28, 2025


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. This brings us to a look at Arthur C. Clarke's other famous series, Rendevous with Rama and its sequels. This is frequently refered to simply as the Rama series. Links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendezvous_with_Rama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CA%BBOumuamua https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rama_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rama_II_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Garden_of_Rama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rama_Revealed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentry_Lee https://www.palain.com/science-fiction/the-golden-age/arthur-c-clarke-rama-and-sequels/ Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4519: YouTube Subscriptions 2025 #10

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 27, 2025


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. I am subscribed to a number of YouTube channels, and I am sharing them with you. Links: https://www.youtube.com/@Parlogram https://www.youtube.com/@pwhitewick https://www.youtube.com/@eons https://www.youtube.com/@pbsorigins https://www.youtube.com/@pbsspacetime https://www.youtube.com/@PCJLaw https://www.youtube.com/@periodicvideos https://www.youtube.com/@CulturePhilter https://www.youtube.com/@PhotoAdvanced https://www.youtube.com/@physicsgirl https://www.youtube.com/@PoliticsGirl https://www.youtube.com/@PopularCruising https://www.youtube.com/@postmodernjukebox https://www.youtube.com/@PotatoMcWhiskey https://www.youtube.com/@PravusGaming https://www.palain.com/ Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4518: Cosy News Corner for Week 46 - Your source for Open Source news

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 26, 2025


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. We just found out that Daniel Persson has his own YouTube Channel. He's currently doing a series called "Cosy News Corner - Your source for Open Source news", and we're posting the audio of one sample episode here. The link to the video is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zZCa2neliA The channel url is https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnG-TN23lswO6QbvWhMtxpA and you can add the channel to your rss reader opml using the following line. The link to the RSS for the Cozy News Corner podcast is https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?playlist_id=PLP2v7zU48xOIq-TXWuBrhGKNJCyZkblMZ Title: Debian Mandates Rust for APT, Reshaping Ubuntu and Other Linux Distros By: Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols - TheNewstack https://thenewstack.io/debian-mandates-rust-for-apt-reshaping-ubuntu-and-other-linux-distros/ The Complexity of Simplicity Keynote given at TalosCon by Oxide Co-Founder and CTO Bryan Cantrill in Amsterdam on October 17, 2025. "He went into Rust pretty skeptical honestly and it came back realizing that there were so many things that he viewed to be essential complexity that were actually accidental complexity." If you have not learned Rust and you are unfamiliar with the most important thing about Rust to someone who's new to Rust is the way it handles errors, right? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cum5uN2634o Title: Ubuntu's Rust Transition Hits Another Bump as sudo-rs Security Vulnerabilities Show Up By: Sourav Rudra - It's FOSS https://itsfoss.com/news/sudo-rs-issue-ubuntu/ Title: Snapchat Open Sources Cross-Platform UI Framework By Loraine Lawson - TheNewstack https://thenewstack.io/snapchat-open-sources-cross-platform-ui-framework/ https://github.com/Snapchat/Valdi Title: # Solo.io Open Sources Agentregistry, With Support for Agent Skills By: Heather Joslyn - TheNewstack https://thenewstack.io/solo-io-open-sources-agentregistry-with-support-for-agent-skills/ Title: FFmpeg Calls Google's AI Bug Reports "CVE Slop" By: Sourav Rudra - It's FOSS By: Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols - TheNewstack https://itsfoss.com/news/ffmpeg-google-fiasco/ https://daniel.haxx.se/ Title: Ubuntu's New 15-Year Commitment Targets Long-Lived Enterprise Systems By: Sourav Rudra - It's FOSS https://itsfoss.com/news/ubuntu-15-year-support-commitment/ Title: Mozilla Unveils Plans for New 'AI Window' Browsing Mode in Firefox, Opens Signups By: Sourav Rudra - It's FOSS By: Ajit Varma - Distilled https://itsfoss.com/news/mozilla-ai-window-plans/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/ai-window/ https://www.firefox.com/en-US/ai/ Title: Nitrux 5.0.0 Released: A 'New Beginning' That's Not for Everyone (By Design) By: Sourav Rudra - It's FOSS https://itsfoss.com/news/nitrux-5-release/ https://nxos.org/ Title: You Can Play Classic D3D7 Games on Linux With This New Project, But Don't Expect Perfection By: Sourav Rudra - It's FOSS https://itsfoss.com/news/play-d3d7-games-on-linux/ https://github.com/WinterSnowfall/d7vk Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4517: Cheap Yellow Display Project Part 4: The hardware

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 25, 2025


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. Hello, again. This is Trey. Welcome to part 4 in my Cheap Yellow Display (CYD) Project series. If you have hung in there with me so far on this journey, thank you. If you have missed earlier episodes, you can find them on my HPR profile page https://www.hackerpublicradio.org/correspondents/0394.html If you have questions, comments, concerns, or other feedback, please leave an episode comment, or drop me an email (Using the address in my profile). Even better, you could record and upload your own show which shares your viewpoint or expertise. To review, I finally have an actual project to build using the CYD. It is a portable, programmable morse code "Keyer memory" which can be connected to any of my HF transceiver radios by simply plugging it in to the code key input port. Then I could transmit stored messages by simply touching their specific icon on the touch screen. So, now I purchased a pair of CYDs. Each arrived in an anti-static zipper bag with a USB C cable, a 6 inch long 4 pin PB1.25mm to Dupont 2.54mm cable harness, a plastic case holding the CYD itself and a small plastic stylus. There are pictures in the show notes. Depending on how many IO connections I may need, and how I plan to power this, I am probably going to need more 4 pin PB1.25mm wired connectors. You can see a description of the various features and connectors on RandomNerdTutorials writeup about this board ( https://randomnerdtutorials.com/cheap-yellow-display-esp32-2432s028r/ ). The only difference I can see between this description and what I received is that mine have both a MicroUSB and USB C port. Of course, first thing, I had to plug it in and see what happens. It appears to be running some kind of simulation of a web site. The backlit display looks alright. It is not super high resolution, but for the price, it will suite my needs. The touch screen is responsive, but it is pressure sensitive and works best using the provided stylus or a fingernail and not your finger tip. So, I have the CYD. What other hardware do I need? I need to address how one of these will actually connect to my radios. Modern amateur radio transceivers which support continuous wave (CW) transmission (Which is another name for Morse code) generally can use one of two different pieces of hardware for input. The first is what we call a straight key. Below is a photo of the one I own. This is a classic, old fashioned telegraph style code key. It is designed to quickly and easily be pressed down to close a circuit and when released the circuit is opened, effectively making it a normally open push button switch. To send a dot, the operator holds down the key for a short period of time, then releases it. To send a dash, the operator holds down the key for a longer period of time, before releasing it. (We will discuss actual timing specifications for morse code in a future podcast) Connectivity for the switch has been standardized to use a 3.5 mm mono male phone connector which has only sleeve and tip connections. The second option is a paddle style electronic keyer. There are many styles of these, and I am including a picture of the one I use, which once belonged to a close friend of mine who is now silent key. In general, the paddle is two separate normally open switches. In the most common configuration, if an operator presses and releases the paddle on the right, a dash is sent. If the paddle on the right is held, a continuous series of dashes will be sent until that paddle is released. The left paddle works similarly. If it is pressed and released, a single dot is sent. If it is pressed and held, a series of dots is sent until it is released. The function of these paddles can be swapped from left to right using the radio configuration. There is additional functionality which can be configured in some radios for when both paddles are pressed simultaneously, but I am not going to describe those here. The paddle generally uses a 3.5mm stereo male phone connector with the sleeve being common. The tip of the phone connector is wired to the left paddle and ring of the connector is wired to the right paddle. Most modern radios have a built in keyer which can be configured for a paddle and will automatically transmit the dots or dashes at whichever speed is configured based on the paddle pressed. You can see this phone connector illustrated on Wikipedia's phone connector page. . https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone_connector_(audio ) You can learn more about all the various devices which can be used for sending morse and how they function at Morse Code World . https://morsecode.world/keys.html Ideally, controlling all the morse code timing within the CYD would be best. That way, it could be connected as a straight key and any keyer settings already configured within the radio shouldn't matter. However, If I wish to also be able to manually send morse code myself using my paddles, without disconnecting the CYD and reconfiguring the radio, that could be problematic. I may need to factor in the possibility of connecting my paddle to the CYD and then building in code to respond to inputs from the paddles. As I mentioned in a previous episode, I have an Arduino Nano on my desk as a practice oscillator for my paddles. I may be able to reuse some of that code on the CYD. So, if I want the CYD to appear to the radio like a straight key, I will need it to be able to control a switch quickly and accurately. But I also want the CYD and the radio to be electrically isolated from each other. This calls for a relay. I was able to find and order some inexpensive relay modules which work nicely with Arduino and ESP32. These allow connectivity to 5v power and to one of the CYD's GPIO pins. These feed an optocoupler circuit, which, in-turn, drives the coil of the relay. This provides inductive kickback protection to the CYD and can drive a coil which would require more current than the GPIO can provide. Inductive kickback rabbit trail: An inductor is simply a coil of wire. Direct current flowing through any wire generates a magnetic field. Within the inductor, because the wire is coiled, the magnetic field builds from each pass of the wire in the coil. If you include an iron core, it sustains the magnetic field even better. This is the basis for an electro magnet. A relay is simply a momentary contact switch controlled by an electromagnet. One unique property of an inductor is that, current wants to keep flowing in the direction it was applied. To be specific, when the current source is removed, the magnetic field still exists for a while, and it effectively "generates" an electric current within the coil, in the same direction as the one which initially created the magnetic field to begin with. If it has a path to flow, this current will create another weaker magnetic field, which creates its own electric current, in a diminishing loop. If the circuit which drives the coil of a direct current relay is not ready for this continued push of current, damage can be done. Many times this is countered by wiring a "flyback diode" in parallel with the coil and in the opposite direction in which current will be applied. This way, when the current source is stopped, the diode gives a path for the inductive kickback current to safely flow while the magnetic field dissipates. Explained in greater detail at https://inductive-kickback.com/2019/04/inductive-kickback-made-simple-to-grasp-easy-to-handle/ The switch side of the relay is a single pole double throw (SPDT) and makes connections available for common, normally closed (NC), and normally open (NO). It will be easy to connect the common and NO connections to a 3.5mm mono male connector so that it may be plugged into the "key" port on any radio transmitter. I will need to do some testing on the speed of the relay, but I think it will work just fine. Once I start writing some code for the CYD, I will be able to connect and test the relay. Well, this is a good place to end this episode, and it is one of the longest in this series so far. In the next episode, we will begin to look at how we design the user interface for our program, something I do not know anything about (yet). Stay tuned weekdays for additional exciting episodes of Hacker Public Radio, and, at some point, the next episode in this series. If you like what you have heard, please leave an episode comment, or drop me an email (Using the address in my profile). If you have more than a single sentence to contribute on the subject, I encourage you to record an episode with your thoughts and expertise. If you dislike what you have heard, you are encouraged even more strongly to record and upload your own show which shares your viewpoint or opinion. Until next time. Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4516: Browser User Agent

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 24, 2025


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. A while ago I visited a web site that is an archive for old historical documents. It is a data base from where documents can be downloaded as pdf-files. As a visitor I can login to the archive as a guest. When I find a document of interest after search I can right click on the pdf icon and download the document. But I can not. No download when I click on the pdf icon. This is the first time I visit this archive so I do not know exactly how it works. It was time to investigate the root cause. I use Firefox on a Linux machine. I tested several methods to see if any would solve the issue. I tried by changing settings for pop-ups. I changed Firefox security settings. I disabled VPN. I disabled Firefox extensions for blocking trackers. I tested also the Chromium browser as well as the Epiphany browser. All those methods resulted in no difference; nothing happened. I was in contact to a friend on Windows and also staff at the Archive, both telling me that from Windows it worked, including with Firefox. So now I knew the archive works and that it works on Firefox. So I thought, can this somehow be related to Linux? I asked in a Linux forum if someone on Linux could test to download. One person in the forum tested and solved the problem. I would not define it as a Linux problem, but a site design that affected Linux users. The trouble was something I had not thought of: The User Agent. When my browser contact a web site, my browser can tell the site what kind of browser I use, which operating system I use and more. This information can be used by the site to optimize the presentation of the content for me. For to me unknown reason, maybe a mistake, maybe related to some old design compatibility issue, this site did not accept the information my user agent provided. The solution is to tell the web site I am something else. In the browser has Developer tools. When opening the developer tools from meny, typically a developer window with tools and analytics is opened at the bottom part of the web page. One tool is network. Within network I can simulate how the site looks on different devices, with different network connections and also with different User Agents. The tools are similar in both Firefox and Chromium. The exact list of standard options differ and Chromium has more options preloaded. In this specific case, when I in Developer tools on Firefox change User Agent to Chrome Desktop, which relates to Chrome on Windows as I understand, and then reload the web page I can now download the pdf file from the archive. When this web site interpret me to be this other type of user, they can understand each other without any issue. I have reported back to the site owner and hopefully this specific site will not need this work around for the browser User Agent in the future.Provide feedback on this episode.

    HPR4515: Privacy? I don't have anything to hide...

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 21, 2025


    This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. Hello, this is your host, Archer72 for Hacker Public Radio In this episode, what do you have to hide? This topic was brought to my attention when I came across this video from The Hated One . This youtube host is extremely privacy focused, and has interesting opinions on not only US privacy and security topics, but also internationally. This particular video was regarding locking down the settings on Firefox. The claim besides increasing security is to lower bandwidth and memory usage and double rendering speeds. While a lot of these steps the author took seemed excessive, they might help you. I use a few of these settings as a takeaway to this video, as well as an extension that I find very useful. The author is correct in saying that our browsing habits track a lot about your personal life, so here are a few steps that I did follow. First, I selected Strict Blocking under Content Blocking about:preferences#privacy Strict blocking Firefox setting Next, I did not set my history settings to Use custom settings for History and Always use private browsing mode , this is maybe useful for some. Under Address Bar I left everything unchecked, besides Search Engines Firefox address bar settings Next, check the box in Ublock origin settings enable Advance User settings to enable more granular control. Ublock Origin settings Ublock Origin granular control Now, change the default behavior of Ublock origin to Block media elements Block remote fonts Disable JavaScript By checking the boxes for these items Transcript: How to configure Firefox settings for maximum privacy and security Provide feedback on this episode.

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