
Advertise on podcast: Hacker Public Radio
Rating
4.2from
This podcast has
10 episodes
Language
EnglishPublisher
Hacker Public RadioExplicit
Yes
Date created
2008/05/28
Latest episode
2026/02/03
Average duration
-
Release period
2 days
Description
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.
Unlock Hacker Public Radio podcast Email contact info,
Listeners & Audience details
Email contact information
Direct podcast contact details

Listeners
Audience numbers & engagement insights

Audience details
Podcast Insights

Social media
Check Hacker Public Radio social media presence
Podcast episodes
Check latest episodes from Hacker Public Radio podcast
HPR4567: Movie Recommendations for Hackers
2026/02/03
This show has been flagged as Clean by the host.
Warning, this episode containers some spoilers for movies.
The following movies are in my cybersecurity movie library. The ones marked * are included in review in this episode.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) *
AntiTrust (2001)
Blackhat (2015)
Blade Runner (1982)
Catch Me If You Can (2002)
Citizenfour (2015)
CSI: Cyber (2015)
Enemy of the State (1998)
Firewall (2006)
Gattaca (1997) *
Ghost in the Shell (1995)
Hackers (1995) *
Heartbreakers (2001)
The Imitation Game (2014)
I, Robot (2004)
Johnny Mnemonic (1995)
Jurassic Park (1993) *
The KGB, the Computer and Me (1990) * - Youtube link
The Lives of Others (2006) *
Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World (2016)
The Matrix (1999)
The Matrix Reloaded (2003) *
The Matrix Revolutions (2003)
Minority Report (2002)
Mission: Impossible (1996) *
Mr. Robot (2015)
The Net (1995) *
The Net 2.0 (2006)
Ocean's Eleven (2001)
Office Space (1999) *
Person of Interest (2011) *
Revolution OS (2001)
The Social Network (2010)
Sneakers (1992) *
Superman III (1983) *
Surrogates (2009)
Swordfish (2001)
Takedown (2000)
Tron (1982) *
WarGames (1983) *
Slashdot "Best Hacker movie" poll (August 2001):
https://slashdot.org/poll/683/best-hacker-flick
This episode contains short except clips from some of these movies used under free use for demonstration.
Provide feedback on this episode.
HPR4566: HPR Community News for January 2026
2026/02/02
This show has been flagged as Explicit by the host.
New hosts
Welcome to our new hosts:
Jim DeVore,
Carmen-Lisandrette.
Last Month's Shows
Id
Day
Date
Title
Host
4544
Thu
2026-01-01
Uncommon Commands, Episode 2
Deltaray
4545
Fri
2026-01-02
YouTube Subscriptions 2025 #12
Ahuka
4546
Mon
2026-01-05
HPR Community News for December 2025
HPR Volunteers
4547
Tue
2026-01-06
Cheap Yellow Display Project Part 6: The speed and timing of Morse
Trey
4548
Wed
2026-01-07
YouTube Subscriptions 2025 #13
Ahuka
4549
Thu
2026-01-08
[deprecated] Pomodoro Task Tool (pomotask.sh)
candycanearter
4550
Fri
2026-01-09
Playing Civilization V, Part 7
Ahuka
4551
Mon
2026-01-12
“Elsbeth in IT: Since ’97” (Part 2)
Elsbeth
4552
Tue
2026-01-13
Printer Conspiracy
MrX
4553
Wed
2026-01-14
Nuclear Reactor Technology - Ep 4 Less Common Reactor Types
Whiskeyjack
4554
Thu
2026-01-15
How I do todo
Jim DeVore
4555
Fri
2026-01-16
HPR Beer Garden 8 - Belgian Christmas Ales
Kevie
4556
Mon
2026-01-19
Nitro man! RC Cars
operat0r
4557
Tue
2026-01-20
Why I prefer tar to zip
Klaatu
4558
Wed
2026-01-21
YouTube Subscriptions 2025 #14
Ahuka
4559
Thu
2026-01-22
Enkele off line vertaaltools
Ken Fallon
4560
Fri
2026-01-23
Arthur C. Clarke: Other Works, Part 2
Ahuka
4561
Mon
2026-01-26
A bit about Mission:Libre, a new project for 11-14 year olds in free software
Carmen-Lisandrette
4562
Tue
2026-01-27
Software development doesn't end until it's packaged
Klaatu
4563
Wed
2026-01-28
Nuclear Reactor Technology - Ep 5 Fast Reactors
Whiskeyjack
4564
Thu
2026-01-29
MakeMKV error
Archer72
4565
Fri
2026-01-30
HPR Beer Garden 9 - Barley Wine
Kevie
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 20 comments in total.
Past shows
There are 6 comments on
5 previous shows:
hpr4313
(2025-02-12) "Why I made a 1-episode podcast about a war story"
by Antoine.
Comment 3:
Ken Fallon on 2026-01-23:
"Spammer"
hpr4424
(2025-07-17) "How I use Newsboat for Podcasts and Reddit"
by Archer72.
Comment 7:
Ken Fallon on 2026-01-03:
"Some podcast aggregators show ccdn.php as file name #321"
Comment 8:
Archer72 on 2026-01-05:
"Re: download-filename-format for HPR podcasts"
hpr4532
(2025-12-16) "Cheap Yellow Display Project Part 5: Graphical User Interface "
by Trey.
Comment 2:
Ken Fallon on 2026-01-10:
"Possible Graphics Library"
hpr4536
(2025-12-22) "Welcome to the Linux Community"
by Deltaray.
Comment 6:
Archer72 on 2026-01-05:
"Re: Good talk CliMagic"
hpr4543
(2025-12-31) "Nuclear Reactor Technology - Ep 3 Reactor Basics"
by Whiskeyjack.
Comment 2:
Kevin O'Brien on 2026-01-01:
"Really enjoying this series"
This month's shows
There are 14 comments on 9 of this month's shows:
hpr4546
(2026-01-05) "HPR Community News for December 2025"
by HPR Volunteers.
Comment 1:
Archer72 on 2026-01-06:
"Nuclear Reactor series"Comment 2:
Henrik Hemrin on 2026-01-07:
"Linux"
hpr4551
(2026-01-12) "“Elsbeth in IT: Since ’97” (Part 2)"
by Elsbeth.
Comment 1:
operat0r on 2026-01-15:
"White Male"
hpr4552
(2026-01-13) "Printer Conspiracy"
by MrX.
Comment 1:
candycanearter07 on 2026-01-24:
"printer issues"
hpr4554
(2026-01-15) "How I do todo"
by Jim DeVore.
Comment 1:
brian-in-ohio on 2026-01-17:
"Welcome"Comment 2:
candycanearter07 on 2026-01-24:
"good first show!"
hpr4555
(2026-01-16) "HPR Beer Garden 8 - Belgian Christmas Ales"
by Kevie.
Comment 1:
KarldaTech on 2026-01-16:
"Christmas Ale"
hpr4557
(2026-01-20) "Why I prefer tar to zip"
by Klaatu.
Comment 1:
candycanearter07 on 2026-01-20:
"interesting experiment"
hpr4559
(2026-01-22) "Enkele off line vertaaltools "
by Ken Fallon.
Comment 1:
ClaudioM on 2026-01-23:
"Just What I Needed!"Comment 2:
mnw on 2026-01-26:
"Great Recommendations!"
hpr4561
(2026-01-26) "A bit about Mission:Libre, a new project for 11-14 year olds in free software"
by Carmen-Lisandrette.
Comment 1:
Henrik Hemrin on 2026-01-27:
"Happy to learn about the project"Comment 2:
candycanearter07 on 2026-01-28:
"cool project"
hpr4563
(2026-01-28) "Nuclear Reactor Technology - Ep 5 Fast Reactors"
by Whiskeyjack.
Comment 1:
mnw on 2026-01-29:
"Great Series"Comment 2:
Whiskeyjack on 2026-01-29:
"hpr4563 :: Nuclear Reactor Technology - Ep 5 Fast Reactors"
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/2026-January/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.
HPR4565: HPR Beer Garden 9 - Barley Wine
2026/01/30
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
2026/01/29
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
2026/01/28
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
2026/01/27
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=13264
Provide feedback on this episode.
HPR4561: A bit about Mission:Libre, a new project for 11-14 year olds in free software
2026/01/26
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: [email protected]
"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
2026/01/23
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
http
HPR4559: Enkele off line vertaaltools
2026/01/22
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
2026/01/21
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.
Podcast reviews
Read Hacker Public Radio podcast reviews
BlindNotBroken84 2023/07/04
Love this idea
Keep it up
Andrew Erickson 2012/12/27
This is real Open Source
With a different host every day, you get people's once every few month bit of tech awesomeness every day, not oh no we have to do a show, let's throw ...
JDanielPeel 2021/07/15
Mixed bag, at best
Some of it is moderately interesting from time to time. But after just listening to a guy (probably drunkenly,) ramble about installing an SSD and 16 ...
ahalbert 2013/07/25
Hit or Miss, but worth subscribing to
This is a community based radio show, so anyone can make their own podcast for HPR. This results in variable quality, with shows that cover a topic we...
Dnb guy 2012/06/23
Lots of great info ☎
The only problem I have with this podcast is I feel that I should have a notepad ready when I listen to it.
_uxp 2009/06/22
Informative
This podcast is very informative, but don't expect to become certified in any of the subjects featured. It is volunteer supported radio show, so it do...
aCamView 2010/02/27
morgellon 2008/08/17
Fun Show!!
A great community based show, each day brings a different host and a different subject!
Mdxblue 2011/02/15
Jbu92
Hey jbu92 this is m61 wassup Jimbo
Podcast sponsorship advertising
Start advertising on Hacker Public Radio relevant audience podcasts
You may also like to advertise on these Podcasts

4.9361121
The Runthrough
Adam Rippon, Ashley Wagner, and Sarah Hughes

4.89071706
Sasquatch Chronicles
Sasquatch Chronicles - Bigfoot Encounters

4.6296424
Chemistry For Your Life
Melissa and Jam, Bleav

4.712915708
The NoSleep Podcast
Creative Reason Media Inc.

4.910288383
The Magnus Archives
Rusty Quill

4.7781466
The Home Service Expert Podcast
Tommy Mello: $200 Million Founder|Forbes, Inc., Entrepreneur Columnist

4.5779175
Dinner with the Heelers - A Bluey Podcast
Dinner with the Heelers - A Bluey Podcast

4.94164243
Twenty Thousand Hertz
Dallas Taylor

4.63920319
Coffee Break French
Coffee Break Languages

4.92337137
Midnight Burger
Business Goose Media
