Hacker Public Radio

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Sources (yes I used wikipedia, I am a hack, what else do you
expect)

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

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

Band/Artist website

https://merzbow.net/

Where to listen to or buy the album

Original Release (stream)

https://merzbow.bandcamp.com/album/pulse-demon

Remaster Release (stream)

https://merzbow.bandcamp.com/album/pulse-demon-remaster-reissue

Link to buy a physical copy new

https://www.relapse.com/products/merzbow-pulse-demon-reissue-2x12

Next album I'm reviewing, Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music

https://tidal.com/album/50021
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Webp is meant to replace GIF, JPEG, and PNG.

Its features include:



Lossy compression




Lossless compression




Metadata, including Exchangeable Image File Format (EXIF) and
Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP)




Transparency (an "alpha channel")




Embedded ICC (International Color Consortium) profile




Multiple frames (animation)




The typical expectation is to achieve equal or better visual
quality as a JPEG or PNG or GIF, but with a savings of 25% to 35%
on file size.

This is famously difficult to measure, because if you concede to
an equal file size, then the quality ought to be better, but there
is a "ceiling" to quality that can be detected by the majority of
human eyes.

So the metric is the unmeasurable: How good does it look to you?

If it looks as good or better, and the file size is smaller, then
it can be said that the format is superiour.

The best and most common test is to look at an image compressed
with JPEG or PNG compression, and then look at the same image
compressed by WEBP.

If you can't tell the difference, and the file size of WEBP is
smaller, then it's an improvement for disk space and bandwidth.

WEBP is an 8-bit format (based on the VP8 video codec) and lacks
support for 10-bit, 12-bit, or 16-bit colour.

Specifically, WEBP is YUV420, where Y is Luma (brightness and
darkness), and U and V are Chroma (colour).

Each 8-bit pixel in the UV (Chroma) corresponds to a 2-by-2 block
of 8-bit Luma pixels, or in other words, Chroma gets half the
resolution of Luma.

This is not uncommon, because how sharp an image appears to the
human eye is mostly (not entirely, to be fair) influenced by Luma.

Our eyes differentiate bright from dark better than our eyes
perceive subtle shifts in hue.

The ICCP chunk starts with a 4-byte declaration (the ASCII string
"ICCP"), then a 32-bit integer representing the length of the
payload, then the payload (the ICC profile specification according
to the International Color Consortium), and then optionally a byte
to pad the header.

The embedded ICC profile can define any old colour space you
want.

If none is defined, sRGB is assumed.

The libwebp library only parses the ICC profile, it
doesn't actually handle conversion.

That's left to the client application, which is why you might get
a notice sometimes in GIMP or a similar application about a colour
space mismatch.

(It's generally safe to convert to your current colour space, and
if it's not then you'd know it because you're working in a
multimedia production house where colour spaces and colour
profiles are significant.)

Converting to WEBP is available in most applications, at this
point, including Image Magick and the cwebp command.

Image Magick:


$ convert foo.tiff foo.webp

Or using cwebp with -q for a quality
0 (low) to 100 (high), and -o for output:


$ cwebp foo.tiff -q 60 -o foo.webp

Test images are available from a Mozilla test
suite.

Or you can test on a Hacker Public Radio image, such as the
screenshot of the upload form on the episode_show_notes
page:


$ wget https://hackerpublicradio.org/images/upload_form.png

$ cwebp upload_form.png -q 50 -o upload_form.webp

$ ls -gl

-rw-r--r-- 1 users 308K Sep 16 13:56 upload_form.png

-rw-r--r-- 1 users 79K Sep 16 13:57 upload_form.webp

References



Developers
Google




Salivity.github.io




Mozilla



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[WP2Shell is] a
pre-authentication RCE in WordPress Core
. The attack has no preconditions and can be exploited by an anonymous user in a stock install of WordPress with no plugins.








- from
wp2shell.com








Wordpress.org -
https://en-gb.wordpress.org/








Searchlight WP2Shell Website -
https://wp2shell.com/








CVE-2026-63030 -
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-63030








CVE-2026-60137 -
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-60137








OpenSSH -
https://www.openssh.org/








FileZilla -
https://filezilla-project.org/








GNU Tar -
https://savannah.gnu.org/git/?group=tar








GZip -
https://www.gzip.org/










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Civilization VI, made a number of changes, and one of the biggest was the introduction of Districts. Buildings that perviously would have just been part of the city now had to be built in special districts, and the game limited how many of them you could build in any one city. This forced you to make choices, and making choices is the heart of the Civilization series.

Playing Civilization VI, Part 1


Districts

As we have said before, the rule for each new version of Civilization is that 1/3 stays the same, 1/3 is tweaked, and 1/3 is new. So among things staying the same is the Hexagonal grid first introduced in Civ V, along with the usual roaming tribe in 4000BC. But the handling of terrain that a city can use has changed. The old Big Fat Cross was dropped in Civ V, and replaced with a large Hexagon. And how you use the terrain has changed. In older versions of Civilization, the terrain was mostly used for either farming or mining. It was all about resource extraction, in other words. All of the Buildings you constructed you could think of as abstract, or as all living in the City Center. The only reason you had for making different choices in the Build queue was if you didn’t have enough time or resources to build everything. As a result, many cities looked very similar in what got built. You would put a Granary in each city to help it grow, a Barracks in each to build your troops, a Temple in each city to gather Faith, and so on. There wasn’t much a decision here, or at least not enough to satisfy Ed Beach, the Chief Designer of Civ VI. So he came up with a new land use system involving Districts.

With this system, you had to allocate land in your city for most things you would build. If you wanted to focus on Science, for instance, you would have to allocate a tile to a Campus district. Then, inside this district you could build a Library, a University, an Obervatory, and a Research Lab. But that is the only place they could be built. Furthermore, to prevent you from building every district, they limited the number of districts each city could have based on its population. You can always build one district with a new city, but to build another you need to get to a population of 4, and you get the ability to add a District with each additional increment of 3, so at Population 7, 10, 13 you get the ability to add a District. And these Districts have to be constructed as part of the normal city Build process. So in the above example, you would first have to build the Campus district, and when that was complete you could then build the Library to put inside it. And for both the Districts and the buildings inside of them you need to research certain technologies before they become available to you.

Where to locate your districts becomes an issue as well. First of all, the tiles available to you are also your stock of tiles for building Farms and Mines, so you need to make choices here. Of course, making choices is the basis them of all Civilization games. Then there are the adjacency effects of terrain tiles. Both Campus (Science) and Holy Site (Faith) districts benefit from being adjacent to Mountains, and the adjacency effects are cumulative, so a tile with mountains on 3 sides can have major bonuses. But since this affects both kinds of Districts, again you have to make a choice. If you are aiming at a Science Victory, or a Religious victory, the choice will be easier, but in case you need to choose. As to placing a District, when you decide to build one you will get a highlight on the map of locations that are permissable. But if you have several such sites, you need to choose which one fits your strategy best.

District Types

There are a lot of Districts you can build and listing every one of them here would be tedious. Some are only relevant to late-game situations, others address issues like Housing and Amenities, which we will discuss separately. But there is group of core Districts that every player will need to deal with from the beginning:

City Center – This is one you get automatically when you build a city, and can hold a Granary, a Monument, a Water Mill, and various levels of Walls, ranging from Ancient to Renaissance.

Campus – This is the Science district, and is unlocked by discovering Writing. That comes pretty early so you will get this capability quite easily, but if you are going for a Science victory you might want to make a beeline for Writing. Remember that if you go into the Tech Tree you can click on a tech to select it, and the game will automatically research it and all of its prerequisites. This is very handy for simplifying Research choices. As mentioned, an adjacency bonus is +1 Science for every adjacent Mountain, but you can also get #1 Science for every 2 Rainforest or District tiles. Don’t worry about memorizing these bonuses, they will appear on the map when you are selecting a spot to place your District. Campuses contain Libraries, Universities, Observatories, and Research Labs. And the more built up your Campus Disctrict is, the more Great Scientist points you accumulate. If you want a Science victory you should make it a priority to get Camapus districts put down ASAP in at least a couple of cities, since the effects build like compound interest.

Theater Square – This is the Culture District, and is unlocked by discovering Drama and Poetry. That is a somewhat later tech, use the technique of clicking on it in the Tech Tree to get there quickly if you want to pursue a Culture victory. It contains the Amphitheater, Art Museum, Archeaological Museum, and Broadcast Center. It gives +2 Culture from each adjacent Wonder, and +1 Culture from each 2 adjacent Discrticts. The buildings all have slots for holding Great Works, and generate points for Great Writers, Great Artists, and Great Musicians.

Holy Site – This is the Religious district, and is unlocked when you discover Astrology, which is a fairly early tech. This district contains Shrines, Temples, and other Worship buildings. It generates Faith, which can be surprisingly useful. Civ VI introduced a new system of relgious warfare and new Religious victory type, but in some circumstances you can use Faith to purchase Units and Buildings, so even if you are not intending a Religious victory you should not overlook it. This district generates Great Profit points. It has adjacency bonuses of +1 Faith from every adjacent Mountain tile, and +2 Faith from every adjacent Natural Wonder, so if you are lucky enough to have a Natural Wonder in your city keep this in mind.

Encampment – This is the Military district, and is unlocked by discovering Bronze Working, a very early tech. By building an encampment you can build units that start out with higher Veteran status. In Civ VI I like to build one or two of these in my Empire and use them to construct all of my units. Remember, in Civilization you always want to maintain a strong military to deter your rivals. Buildings include Barracks, Stable, Armory, and Military Academy. This District produces Great General points. It has no adjacency bonus, and cannot be built next to the City Center. But it has strong Defense and can function like the City Center in terms of defense and bombardment capabilities. All newly produced or purchased units will appear in this District, not in the City Center as would otherwise happen. I like to build this on land that is otherwise of low value, like a Desert tile.

Commercial Hub – This is the Commerce district, and is unlocked by discovering Currency. The Buildings you can place in this include the Market, the Bank, and the Stock Exchange. Adjacency bonuses include +2 Gold from an adjacent Harbor, and +2 Gold for each Adjacent river. So if your city includes a river that runs into the ocean, place a Harbor in the right spot and then a Commercial Hub and watch the Gold pile up! The Commercial Hub generates Great Merchant points. In addition, a Commercial Hub gives you one additional Trade Route, another way to generate more cash. As we have seen in this series, in all Civilization games a healthy Treasury is a major part of a successful game no matter what Victory type you are pursuing.

Harbor – This is the Seafaring District and is unlocked when you discover Celestial Navigation. Buildings in this district include Lighthouse, Shipyard, and Seaport. And if you don’t have a Commercial Hub in the city, adding a harbor can give you one additional Trade Route. Adjacency bonuses include +1 Gold from each adjacent Coastal resource, and +1 Gold from every 2 adjacent District tiles. There is also a bonus of +2 Gold if adjacent to the City Center. This district has to be built in Coastal waters adjacent to Land, but note that the City Center does not need to be on the Coast to build this. You just need to have Coastal Waters available within your city. This district generates Great Admiral points. While this district is important for projecting Maritime power, it is equally useful for generating Gold, reflecting the fact that historically Maritime powers have been the most successful traders and the wealthiest nations.

Industrial Zone – This is the Production district, and is unlocked when you discover Apprenticeship. Its buildings include the Workshop, the Factory, and the Power Plant. Adjacency bonuses include +1 Production from each adjacent Quarry or Mine, and +1 from each two adjacent Districts. One interesting thing is that some of the prodction bonuses from this district can applly to any City whose City Center is within 6 tiles, so it is possible by careful placement to have one Industrial Zone that benefits 2-3 cities. This district generates Great Engineer points.

These are the major districts you will be dealing with, and note that each one generates Great Person points. But note also that there are 7 of them. You can certainly have a large Empire that contains at least one of each. But to have all of them in one city would require a population of 22, which can happen if you aim for it, but also would mean very little in the way of farming or mining. I have seen expert players do a “one city challenge” where they attempt to win a victory with only one very large city, but I have never been interested in that sort of thing. I play to relax and enjoy myself. And one more thing about adjacency bonuses: you get bonuses even from Districts in a different city. As an example if you place a Commercial Hub from City A next to a Theater Square from City B, both Districts can benefit from the adjacency.

Links

https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/District_(Civ6)

https://www.palain.com/gaming/civilization-vi/playing-civilization-vi-part-1/

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Living under a rock







Living under a rock and feeling completely out of touch with everyone else.



I rarely buy new items unless I have to due to me being a tight Scotsman however recently I have bought a few new items and their performance surprised me somewhat and made me feel a little like I’ve been living under a rock. I thought this would make a good topic for an HPR show.











SSD 256GB USB stick (Refer to picture 1 and 2)









Wikipedia article about SSD’s










This is my first ever SSD, its made by Netac






It is a double ended USB thumb drive with a USB A one side and USB C the other.



I couldn’t believe how fast it was on my Mac; copying a 700MB file seemed almost instantaneous.



I couldn’t actually believe it had copied the file and thought it had been an error!



I tried it on my old PC running Ubuntu and was getting 40MB/sec write speed!



Even more surprising was copying files between a USB hard drive and the SSD usb stick, with both connected to my Raspberry Pi. This was achieving a sustained write speed of 60MB/Sec.



I’ve never seen anything faster than 40MB/Sec.



I think I’ve been living under a rock for a number of years while the rest of the world moved on!



My only concern with this technology is that I am not totally convinced about the long term reliability of SSDs. The SSD is great for transferring files back and fourth to different devices however for now I’ll stick to spinning hard drives on my PC for long term storage as speed is not so important to me.











Picture above shows my new Netac USB SSD stick













Picture above shows how the USB SSD stick opens











LED Lantern (Refer to pictures 3)





This LED Lantern was recommended by my mother



We purchased it from Tesco’s.







Tescos in the UK


is a British multinational groceries and general merchandise retailer



I think it only cost me £8.40. (UK pounds)



It even came with


AA batteries


!



The LED Lantern is 9 inches x 3.5 inches



The light output is phenomenal. It is diffused and fills a good-sized room with light.



It has a low output mode, which is still very usable and will increase the running time.



It also has a flashing option, which is likely only useful in an emergency.



I think the reason they were selling them so cheap was that the date code of the included AA alkaline batteries was almost out of date.







Alkaline batteries can have a very long shelf life.














Picture above shows the new LED latern that I bought from Tescos Super Store in the UK











Laser printer HP M209dw (Refer to picture 4)









Wikipedia article about laser printers










Wikipedia article about inkjet printers






I needed to replace my old Epson inkjet printer with a new printer as it recently failed after 20 years of use! I covered the failure of my old printer in HPR episode


HPR4552






My new printer is an


HP M209dw






I'm finding it really nice to have crisp, clear, trouble-free printing again.



It’s also very nice that the printer does double-sided (duplex) printing.



I’ve been putting my new printer to good use printing out various


SSH


documentation to help me try and solve an SSH problem I’m having.



As of May 2026 i’ve now had the printer about 6 months and according to the printer I’ve used about 50% of the toner cartridge.



I believe it may be necessary at some point to remove the cartridge and gently rock it in order to use up all the remaining toner. I’m slightly nervous of doing this as I'm concerned it could prove messy.



Time will tell how long the cartridge ultimately lasts and how much a new toner cartridge will cost. I also think it unlikely that this printer will last 20 years like my last Epson printer. Come to think of it I might not last that long either. :)



















New Raspberry Pi4 server install









Wikipedia article about the raspberry pi 4.






Current stumbling block is


SSH


.



My new raspberry pi 4 is running an up to date distribution. This distribution has a corresponding up to date version


SSH


. This newer version of SSH is refusing to connect to another raspberry pi running an old distribution.



I can’t update the distribution on the older raspberry pi because it has a PiFace command and display add-on board which I covered in HPR episodes


hpr2933


,


hpr2951


,


hpr2963


,


hpr2976


. The drivers for this board are not available on an up to date raspberry pi Linux distribution.



Getting the driver software installed for the add on PiFace command and display board on and up to date raspberry pi Linux distribution is non trivial.



I also need to be able to make this work in the other direction. ie the old pi needs to be able to SSH into the new pi. This is proving tricky.



I did a search within the


SSH release notes


and found over 20 references to possible incompatibilities between the latest version of SSH and the old version of SSH running on my PiFace Raspberry pi!













Car tyre problems





Mrs. X’s car had a long-standing tyre problem.



The air pressure in one of her front tyres kept going down.



This caused a warning light on the dashboard to come on.



At first, it was taking a long time for the light to come on after it was pumped up.



Over time the leak got worse and the light came on more quickly after the tyre was inflated.



We eventually took her car to our local garage; they couldn’t find the fault.



The tyre leak continued to get worse.



We eventually took the car to a car tyre specialist called


Farmer Autocare


near Medowbank in Edinburgh Scotland. They discovered that air was leaking from the tyre valve.



They informed us that they were unable to repair the tyre because it was fitted with a


TPMS “Tyre Pressure Monitoring System”


.



They said that the tyre valve had a sensor and this couldn’t be separated from the tyre valve and that we would need to go to one of their specialist branches that can replace this. This would require a new sensor which would need to be reprogrammed. They warned us the repair could be expensive.



The following week, we visited the specialist Farmers Autocare in Corstorphine Edinburgh. They took a closer look and found that it was actually leaking around the edge of the valve. They ground down any corrosion around the alloy wheel, refitted the valve and added sealant.



In the end, the repair bill ended up being very reasonable.



We were warned that each of the four valves has a battery installed and that they have a finite lifespan and that due to the age of the car, any one of the four batteries could fail at any time.



Each of the valves would be expensive to replace!



I guess this is the price you pay for the complexity in modern cars.













Kindle pre 2013 No longer supported by Amazon





I have one of the affected devices. It’s a


pre 2013 Kindle 4


.



It was the last model before they brought in a touch screen. My wife complains about her newer model with a touch screen. She preferred the earlier model like mine.



In an email Amazon said they were glad we had enjoyed using our kindle for a long time. Going forward we can no longer purchase books from Amazon as they are cutting Kindle Store access.



What surprised me most was that the email stated that a factory reset of the Kindle would make the device unusable for good!



I was under the impression that I can still download books manually from Amazon. However this may not be true as I noted down the following comment from somewhere. Unfortunately I can’t remember where:





The statement 'You can still log into Amazon’s “Manage Your Content and Devices” page on the web, download your owned Kindle books as files, and transfer them manually via USB.' is not really true. There is no longer (in April 2026) any "download" facility on that page, even for titles I "own". That's the whole point.








During the episode I refer to the fictitious TV character Victor Meldrue from the UK TV show “


One Foot In The Grave


” whose catch phrase was “I don’t believe it!”.









Roku streaming stick Feb 2026





Our old


Google Chromecast


started to become very buggy and slow. This is an old model that you use by casting programs from your phone or tablet device.



My mother has a newer version of the


Google Chromecast


. When I visited her I also found this a bit slow and buggy.



I previously tried replacing our Google Chromecast with an


Apple TV


streaming box costing over £100!



I found this frustrating as some of my existing apps would not cast to my Apple TV streaming box.



I promptly returned the Apple TV streaming box to


Amazon


for a full refund.



Mrs X came up with the idea of buying a


Roku


streaming stick.



I knew very little about


Roku


and didn’t expect to be much good due to the low price (£27 UK).



We bought the


Roku


Streaming stick plus 4K HDR



This is a streaming device similar to a


Google Chromecast


and


Amazon’s Firestick






We have found it extremely good value at only £27 (UK)



The remote control is excellent and also controls all the TV major functions like volume & turning the TV off and on.



The interface seems very responsive and I can cast all my apps from my phone and tablet to it with no problems.



The only negative thing I have found is that it seems to have stopped my TV remote working with


Kodi


. I have Kodi running on a


raspberry pi


under my TV. This works by sending the remote control signals received by the TV and passing them to the raspberry pi via the


HDMI


cable connected to the TV. These control signals are sent using


CEC


. My hunch is that during the Roku installation it has upgraded or reconfigured the


CEC


on my TV stopping it from now controlling


Kodi


. Luckily this is not too much of a problem as I don’t use


Kodi


very often these days and I can also control Kodi using an old


Xbox


remote control and Xbox infrared Sensor that I have plugged into my raspberry pi.







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