Hacker Public Radio

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The
Dutch Railway Company
occasionally has a anagram of the names of the railway stations on their services.



















The image above shows which service we are on, namely the intercity direct to
Breda
via
Schiphol Airport
, and the time is 07:27.






It shows a cartoon depiction of a platform where the information sign is displaying the letters of the anagram, and today it reads "Nul Te Teer".






Under it says "Oops, the letters are mixed up. Can you guess the correct station ?"






The under it says that the next station at 07:38 will be
Duivendrecht
.








I wrote a script to check my guess. It consists of a function normalise_word, which takes any word, removes everything but the letters, and then converts it to lower case. Each letter is printed to it's own line, where it's sorted, and new lines are removed, to be printed as a "normalised" word.







This is used to take the
List of Dutch Railway Stations from Wikipedia
, to produce a list of stations and convert them to normalized names which is saved to a new file with the normalised names on the same line as the real names.







We can then just grep for the normalised version of the anagram and whatever line it was found in the normalised file, should correspond to the same line in the real file.







"Nul Te Teer" gets converted to "eeelnrttu" which is found in the normalised file, and that corresponds to "
Etten-Leur
"









Tell us how would you solve it ?








#!/bin/bash
# Ken Fallon - CC-0/Public Domain

station_file="ns-train-stations.txt"

# Get the station name
if [ "$#" -lt 1 ]
then
echo "ERROR: Please specify station"
exit 1
fi

function normalise_word() {
printf '%sn' "${1}"
| tr --delete --complement 'A-Za-zn'
| tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
| grep --only-matching --regexp='.'
| sort --ignore-case
| tr --delete 'n'
printf 'n'
}

station="$( normalise_word "${1}" )"

cat ${station_file} | while read word
do
normalise_word "${word}"
done > "${station_file%.*}_normalised.txt"

linenumber="$( grep --line-number --perl-regexp "^${station}$" "${station_file%.*}_normalised.txt" | awk -F ':' '{print $1}' )"

sed --quiet "${linenumber}p" ${station_file}










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In this intense and personal episode, the host recounts the
terrifying experience of his home being struck by lightning
twice—once in an apartment two decades ago and recently in his
current house. He details the catastrophic damage inflicted on his
electronics, explaining how the surge traveled through coaxial
cables, Ethernet lines, and USB ports, destroying network cards, a
motherboard, a gaming mouse, a garage door opener, a dishwasher
disposal, and even an electric scooter. The narrative takes a
harrowing turn as he describes climbing a ladder during an active
storm to tarp holes in the roof, only to have lightning strike 50
feet away, causing drywall to explode and leaving him with a
near-fatal shock. The host seeks practical advice from listeners on
how to properly protect Ethernet connections and electronics during
storms, questioning the efficacy of standard surge protectors versus
industrial-grade solutions, while warning others against the dangers
of handling equipment or going outside during severe weather.



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New hosts

There were no new hosts this month.

Last Month's Shows

Id
Day
Date
Title
Host

4739
Thu
2026-10-01
Happy by shower # 3
Antoine

4740
Fri
2026-10-02
Robert A. Heinlein in the 1960s
Ahuka

4741
Mon
2026-10-05
HPR Community News for September 2026
HPR Volunteers

4742
Tue
2026-10-06
OLF Call for presentations open
Ken Fallon

4743
Wed
2026-10-07
wl-copy
Klaatu

4744
Thu
2026-10-08
HPR Beer Garden 21 - Mild
Kevie

4745
Fri
2026-10-09
BruCON interview 1: The BruCON organization
Kristoff

4746
Mon
2026-10-12
Monotone
Lee

4747
Tue
2026-10-13
UNIX Curio #13 - Replacements for cat
Vance

4748
Wed
2026-10-14
Programmable Logic Controls - Episode 5
Whiskeyjack

4749
Thu
2026-10-15
murph gives a presentation talk about Hacker Public Radio at the OLF conference
murph

4750
Fri
2026-10-16
Playing Civilization VI Part 2
Ahuka

4751
Mon
2026-10-19
Real Live AI Use Case
operat0r

4752
Tue
2026-10-20
Static Addict Episode 2: Metal Machine Music
TheDUDE

4753
Wed
2026-10-21
HPR Beer Garden 22 - Bitter
Kevie

4754
Thu
2026-10-22
BruCon interviews part2: Lockpicking
Kristoff

4755
Fri
2026-10-23
Blender
Elsbeth

4756
Mon
2026-10-26
We are material beings
Antoine

4757
Tue
2026-10-27
Follow-up on a local Ham visit for Kevie and Ken
Archer72

4758
Wed
2026-10-28
Programmable Logic Controls - Episode 6
Whiskeyjack

4759
Thu
2026-10-29
Quine and the Application of Logic to Science
Trurl

4760
Fri
2026-10-30
Robert A. Heinlein: Later Works
Ahuka

Comments this month

Past shows

hpr4318 (2025-02-19) "What's up with the dates on the HPR future feed in AntennaPod?" by dnt.

Ken Fallon said: "dnt has the answer" (2026-10-19 07:29:46)

hpr4357 (2025-04-15) "Short introduction by murph." by murph.

Archer72 said: "No comments so I will" (2026-10-25 11:36:37)

hpr4685 (2026-07-17) "Listening to SSB stations in the early 1980s" by Lennart Benschop.

archer72 said: "Fellow radio enthusiast" (2026-10-11 20:44:40)

hpr4703 (2026-08-12) "Ebooks and Audiobooks" by Ahuka.

Steve Barnes said: "Yee hee hee." (2026-10-08 19:20:27)

Kevin O'Brien said: "I enjoyed doing it" (2026-10-10 20:37:22)

Kevin O'Brien said: "Some additional information" (2026-10-11 16:21:22)

hpr4705 (2026-08-14) "Free Software Is Wasted On You Teens" by Trollercoaster.

Steve Barnes said: "Yes, well." (2026-10-08 19:18:42)

hpr4706 (2026-08-17) "Quirks and Customisations" by Lee.

Dave Morriss said: "I enjoyed this a lot!" (2026-10-07 16:56:59)

hpr4707 (2026-08-18) "UNIX Curio #12 - expr" by Vance.

Dave Morriss said: "Didn't know 'dc'; knew of 'expr' but never got on with it!" (2026-10-09 15:34:00)

hpr4708 (2026-08-19) "Programmable Logic Controls - Episode 1" by Whiskeyjack.

mechatrocity said: "Adding a PLC tag to these episodes and creating a 'series'" (2026-10-09 15:19:55)

archer72 said: "Re: Adding a PLC tag" (2026-10-09 18:11:43)

Whiskeyjack said: "Reply to mechatrocity and archer72" (2026-10-09 22:34:02)

Whiskeyjack said: "Second reply to mechatrocity and archer72" (2026-10-09 22:41:06)

hpr4717 (2026-09-01) "Visit with a blind Ham operator" by Archer72.

Archer72 said: "hpr4741 :: HPR Community News question" (2026-10-16 12:40:03)

hpr4726 (2026-09-14) "Trurl's intro show" by Trurl.

0xf10e said: "More knowledge" (2026-10-15 10:53:50)

hpr4735 (2026-09-25) "hpr4715 :: friedcamp interviews part 5: Yvon Masyn" by Kristoff.

Windigo said: "Inspiring project" (2026-10-05 20:43:24)

hpr4738 (2026-09-30) "Programmable Logic Controls - Episode 4 " by Whiskeyjack.

Archer72 said: "PLC relevance" (2026-10-11 11:30:30)

Whiskeyjack said: "Reply to Archer72 on robots" (2026-10-11 20:12:15)

archer72 said: "robots" (2026-10-12 22:00:13)

This month's shows

hpr4739 (2026-10-01) "Happy by shower # 3" by Antoine.

candycanearter07 said: "thanks" (2026-10-02 23:55:43)

Antoine said: "Yahp." (2026-10-11 00:50:44)

hpr4741 (2026-10-05) "HPR Community News for September 2026" by HPR Volunteers.

Dave Morriss said: "Understanding IPA" (2026-10-02 16:15:38)

Whiskeyjack said: "systemd" (2026-10-06 05:12:41)

Whiskeyjack said: "Dave Morris on fix_tags" (2026-10-06 04:40:31)

Whiskeyjack said: "PLCs versus MIcrocontrollers" (2026-10-06 04:33:28)

Whiskeyjack said: "Background noise in HPR4723" (2026-10-06 04:12:38)

candycanearter07 said: "good episode" (2026-10-06 06:06:16)

candycanearter07 said: "re: Dave Morris on fix_tags" (2026-10-07 04:15:42)

archer72 said: "Re: 8032 series microcontrollers " (2026-10-07 20:21:09)

Whiskeyjack said: "Reply to archer72 on 8032 microcontrollers" (2026-10-09 01:47:38)

hpr4742 (2026-10-06) "OLF Call for presentations open " by Ken Fallon.

An HPR listener. said: "Events." (2026-10-07 10:07:51)

Ken Fallon said: "A fume extractor" (2026-10-08 07:00:30)

Archer72 said: "Re: An HPR listener: Events." (2026-10-10 09:59:46)

Whiskeyjack said: "Background noise in interview" (2026-10-10 17:35:32)

hpr4743 (2026-10-07) "wl-copy" by Klaatu.

candycanearter07 said: "wayland varient" (2026-10-07 13:55:16)

xmanmonk said: "wl-copy package" (2026-10-07 19:52:51)

Whiskeyjack said: "wl-copy and xclip" (2026-10-09 01:37:32)

hpr4745 (2026-10-09) "BruCON interview 1: The BruCON organization" by Kristoff.

archer72 said: "conference" (2026-10-11 20:54:23)

hpr4746 (2026-10-12) "Monotone" by Lee.

candycanearter07 said: "interesting!" (2026-10-13 17:53:08)

archer72 said: "second that" (2026-10-13 19:00:17)

Whiskeyjack said: "Style and delivery" (2026-10-15 02:04:30)

hpr4747 (2026-10-13) "UNIX Curio #13 - Replacements for cat" by Vance.

archer72 said: "tee tip" (2026-10-13 18:49:00)

xmanmonk said: "Great!" (2026-10-14 20:04:41)

Whiskeyjack said: "tac and rev" (2026-10-15 01:36:06)

candycanearter07 said: "head tail and grep" (2026-10-15 21:15:23)

archer72 said: "xmanmonk" (2026-10-15 23:51:41)

Vance said: "Thanks, everyone" (2026-10-17 06:42:11)

Whiskeyjack said: "Reply to Vance on tsort" (2026-10-19 21:06:21)

hpr4748 (2026-10-14) "Programmable Logic Controls - Episode 5 " by Whiskeyjack.

Archer72 said: "Basic modules" (2026-10-10 09:52:34)

Whiskeyjack said: "Reply to Archer72 on 8052AH Basic" (2026-10-10 17:12:52)

hpr4749 (2026-10-15) "murph gives a presentation talk about Hacker Public Radio at the OLF conference" by murph.

Windigo said: "Key phrase" (2026-10-15 17:00:13)

Whiskeyjack said: "Microphones" (2026-10-21 01:33:32)

hpr4752 (2026-10-20) "Static Addict Episode 2: Metal Machine Music" by TheDUDE.

Th3Dud3 said: "Just noticed I left a few things out" (2026-10-24 12:44:46)

hpr4757 (2026-10-27) "Follow-up on a local Ham visit for Kevie and Ken" by Archer72.

candycanearter07 said: "voice" (2026-10-27 13:39:31)

Ken Fallon said: "Audio quality" (2026-10-27 20:54:33)

rabbitear said: "AI Voice" (2026-10-31 08:19:33)

hpr4758 (2026-10-28) "Programmable Logic Controls - Episode 6 " by Whiskeyjack.

Archer72 said: "Frequency standards" (2026-10-30 23:12:59)

Whiskeyjack said: "Reply to Archer72 on Electrical Frequency Standards" (2026-10-31 18:48:43)

Kevin O'Brien said: "Nostalgia" (2026-10-31 21:10:42)

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-October/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.

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Beginning in 1970 Heinlein started to have health issues whihc affected his writing. One novel was a bit of a mess because he was physically unable to fix and polish, and in otghers you can discern that he is revisiting his past as he comes to terms with his own mortality.

Heinlein’s Later Works

1970 marked a turning point in some ways in Heinlein’s writing. First, health issues intruded, and not unexpectedly, intimations of his own mortality became more prominent. This is just my personal opinion, but I think his works became a little more uneven in this last stage of his career.

I Will Fear No Evil (1970)

in 1970 Heinlein had the first of his major health issues with an attack of peritonitis. He did manage to publish one novel but it is a bit of a mess. I Will Fear No Evil tells the story of Johann Sebastian Bach Smith, a billionaire whose body is failing, so he decides on transplanting his brain into another body. He offers $1 million for the donation of a brain dead body. Then his secretary is killed, and her body is used. When Bach wakes up after the surgery he discovers that the secretary is still there and he can talk to her. Or maybe it is all a hallucination on his part. Sex becomes a major part of the story, as would become a theme in Heinlein’s later works. The now female person takes the name Joan, and then decides to have child using sperm frozen by the billionaire. They then decide to marry the lawyer, then he dies, and his personality seems to join the other two. This is certainly consistent to the hallucination hypothesis, but who knows. Heinlein had only done one rough draft when the peritonitis hit, and that laid him up for two years. So this novel at the very least did not receive the polishing he usually gave to his novels. You can safely skip it, in my opinion.

Time Enough For Love (1973)

This is a collection of shorter pieces with linking narration. It concerns the life of Lazarus Long, who we first encountered in Methuselah’s Children. He now becomes a kind of alter ego for Heinlein himself. Lazarus has lived thousands of years, and is tired of it. But he has an audience for his stories, so he will keep on as long they are listening. You can see the parallels, and maybe Heinlein, after a long illness, wondered how much longer he could tell stories. Part of the book is inclusion of extracts “From the Notebooks of Lazarus Long”, which consist of sayings and aphorisms. At the end, he travels back in time and has sex with his mother, before shipping off to France to fight in World War I. If you are a fan, you will want to read this. This book was nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards, but did not win. It did win a Prometheus award.

Heinlein has a rare blood type, and had needed multiple transfusions to combat the peritonitis. As a result in the mid-1970s he got involved in organizing blood drives within the SF community. This reduced his writing. Then in 1977 he had a series of transient ischemic attacks, which were traced to a blocked carotid artery. This set him up to be one of the very early recipients of a carotid bypass operation.

The Number of the Beast (1980)

This novel has 4 protagonists, and different chapters are narrated from each of their perspectives. The four are Zebediah John Carter, Dejah Thoris Burroughs Carter, her father the mathematician Jacob Burroughs, and Hilda Corners. And if you think there is a lot of Edgar Rice Burroughs clues in those names, you are correct. In this novel Heinlein creates his “World As Myth” idea, which basically states that fictional worlds also exist in the Multiverse. If you take the idea of infinite universes seriously, it follows that in infinite universes there must be one for every world written about in stories. In this novel they have a craft that can navigate between universes, and end up visiting Barsoom, Oz, the Lensman universe, etc. before finally joining up with Lazarus Long. This is a fun read in many respects, but he redid it later as The Pursuit of the Pankera, which I prefer, though that may in part be because it has a much long stay in the Lensman universe. I am a big fan of that series as we shall see. This novel was nominated for a Locus award.

Friday (1982)

In his later works Heinlein frequently depicted the world in a violent and chaotic state (for example, see I Will Fear No Evil). And that is certainly the case in this novel. This brings us back to the world of Gulf and Kettle Belly Baldwin. Friday is a genetically engineered person employed by quasi-military organization (the same one we saw in Gulf) as a courier. She has adventures in the chaotic mess that is North America divided into many smaller countries. Sex is part of the story of course, but also we see Heinlein reaching back to his earlier works bring in people and settings from those works. Writing this in the time of Donald Trump I cannot really discount Heinlein’s pessimism, even though I am by nature more of an optimist. This novel was nominated for Locus, Hugo, Nebula, and Prometheus awards. This is a novel I will reread.

Job: A Comedy of Justice (1984)

This is a fantasy novel about Alex, a Christian activist, and Margrethe, a Danish Norse cruise ship hostess. Alex is being corrupted by Margrethe, and quite loving it, when things start to go pear-shaped on them. Jehovah has given Loki permission to torment the couple, which he does through a series of world changes. This is the parallel to the Biblical Job. Along the way the couple spend some time with Satan while not knowing that, and then are separated by the Rapture, because Margrethe is a pagan who worships Odin, and thus ineligible for Heaven. After a bit of Heaven, Alex is tired of it and prefers to be with Margrethe. And of course the book makes the claim the Hell is a much nicer place than Heaven. This is a fun book I can recommend. It won the Locus award for best Fantasy novel, and was nominated for both Hugo and Nebula awards. This would be the last Heinlein novel to get Hugo and Nebula nominations.

The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985)

At this point Heinlein is starting to dwell on his past, and he drags in all kinds of characters from his previous novels and stories, and starts to tie together all of those stories into one whole. Of course, early in his career he tied together stories into his Future History, so perhaps not such a departure. And Asimov did much the same with his Foundation and Robot stories. The story here is a type of thriller with the first killing in scene one, and the protagonist not knowing who is doing this or why. There is a certain charm to this novel but it has to do with how Heinlein uses his words in the writing. He does have a distinctive style. But the plot is bit of a mess. It was nominated for a Locus award.

To Sail Beyond The Sunset (1987)

This last novel continues several themes from his later work: The World as Myth, Lazarus Long, sex (including voluntary incest), and is connected to his earlier works as in the previous novel. This time the protagonist is Lazarus’ mother, introduced at the end of Time Enough For Love. Partly it tells her story in the early days of the Howard Families, introduced in Methusaleh’s Children. Then it continues to the episode with Lazarus, but now seen from her perspective. This is a prime example of why some people refer to Heinlein’s last few works as his “dirty old man” period. It was nominated for the Locus and Prometheus awards.

Heinlein passed away in 1988 from emphysema and heart failure. But a few things made an appearance that are Heinlein-related.

For Us The Living (1938, 2003)

This novel, written in 1938, is Heinlein’s earliest. But he never submitted it for publication in his lifetime, which perhaps tells you what he thought of it. It is not up to the standard of his mature works, but you can discern the DNA of his style in it. It was lost for a long time, and then rediscovered and published in 2003, fifteen years after Heinlein’s death. It still managed to get nominated for a Locus award, but if the same novel were submitted by an unknown author I doubt it would have been nominated. It was all about Heinlein’s name and stature within the field. Only for completists. A man has an accident and wakes up in the future, and the novel describes this future world as the man experiences it.

Variable Star (2006)

This novel was written by Spider Robinson from an 8-page outline written by Heinlein in 1955. So the plot is Heinlein’s, but the words are Robinson’s. But Robinson is a huge fan of Heinlein, one reason he was chosen, and it reads pretty much like a Heinlein novel. Heinlein had intended it to be one his Juvenile novels for Scribners, but clearly Robinson took it an a more adult direction. A young man with no money has a girlfriend whom he believes to be equally impecunious, only she was lying and is the heiress to the solar system’s largest fortune. She has their future all planned out, but the young man decides he wants no part of it, and signs up for a one-way trip of exploration to the stars. The telepathy angle from Time For The Stars reappears here.

I enjoyed it. It did not receive any nominations.

The Pursuit of the Pankera (2020)

This manuscript was found in Heinlein’s papers, and the first third is identical to The Number of the Beast. But then it goes in a slightly different direction. There is still The World As Myth, they still visit Barsoom, and there is longer section in the Lensman universe that I quite liked. I find I prefer this version to the original.

Links

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Will_Fear_No_Evil

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Enough_for_Love

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methuselah%27s_Children

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Number_of_the_Beast_(novel)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friday_(novel)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job:_A_Comedy_of_Justice

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cat_Who_Walks_Through_Walls

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Sail_Beyond_the_Sunset

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Us,_the_Living

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_Star

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Number_of_the_Beast_(novel)#The_Pursuit_of_the_Pankera

https://www.palain.com/science-fiction/the-golden-age/robert-a-heinlein/heinleins-later-works/

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W.V.O. Quine and Analytical Philosophy:
The American logicians vision of applying rigorous logical structures to organise and elucidate fields of human understanding. Reference: Quine, W.V.O. (1951). Two Dogmas of Empiricism, The Philosophical Review, 60(1), 20-43; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/quine/














Kurt Godel and Incompleteness Theorems:
Foundational limits in formal logic where consistent systems contain unprovable true statements. Reference: Godel, Kurt (1931). Uber formal unentscheidbare Satze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme, I; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goedel/














Russells Paradox and Formal Logic:
The historical pursuit of logical foundations for mathematics and the contradictions exposed by paradoxes like the barber paradox. Reference: Russell, Bertrand, and Alfred North Whitehead (1910-1913). Principia Mathematica, Cambridge University Press; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell-paradox/














Abstract Syntax Trees (ASTs):
Hierarchical tree data structures utilised by static analysis tools to break down, parse, and evaluate complex computer source code. Reference: Wikipedia Entry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_syntax_tree














Formal Specifications and Software Verification:
Using mathematical proofs to verify program correctness from first principles without relying solely on empirical runtime testing. Reference: Woodcock, Jim, et al. (2009). Formal Methods: Practice and Experience, ACM Computing Surveys, 41(4).













Deterministic Systems vs. Large Language Models:
The architectural divide between rule-based, deterministic logic engines and data-driven, non-deterministic neural networks.













Steven Wolfram and Computational Irreducibility:
The limits of predictability in complex computational systems and efforts to map universal rules of knowledge. Reference: Wolfram, Stephen (2002). A New Kind of Science, Wolfram Media; Wolfram Language Resource:
https://www.wolfram.com/language/anks/








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