Notices by James Cridland (james@bne.social)

Recommended: Kagi Small Web. A never-ending collection of random recent blog posts from the internet (including mine!) which you can just swipe through. Much better than scrolling social media. Free; you can make it less random.

https://apps.apple.com/au/app/small-web/id6756679001

@evan Is there a similar thing we should be doing here with podcasts? A “listen” activity? Is @samsethi already doing it?

I genuinely don't know whether this was worth the time writing, but https://podnews.net/AGENTS.md is now live, if any AI agents wish to take a look.

@dave I don't know if it's worthwhile you doing something similar. Particularly, I have told agents visiting my website to use Podcast Index, so happy to change this language to work with you. (Maybe an AGENTS.md on your website to help?)

Exclusive: Podnews will have all the Webby Awards winners in podcasting. Tuesday, 8am ET. https://podnews.net

@evan I’ve always wondered what this means.

My website “federates” - by posting new content automatically to the fediverse from @Podnews . Is that what you mean?

Or is the suggestion that HN removes all its web comment infrastructure and replaces it with comments sourced from ActivityPub?

What would you mean here - and what would you do?

A note of appreciation for David Marzal for your excellent work in tidying up the Podcast Index Github, and making it useful again. Lots of very nice work.

@DavidMarzalC@masto.es or @DavidMarzalC@mastodon.social or @DavidMarzalC@mastodon.escepticos.es

A sneak peek at a techy thing: how Apple Podcasts HLS streams work.

Some may/will have better information than I do here; but I’m publishing this later today, and would, of course, welcome any feedback of the things I’ve got wrong. Feel free to quietly do that via email if it helps - editor@podnews.net will find me.

Of note - advertisers *can* require their ads not to be skippable, according to the spec. But we don't know whether Apple Podcasts is going to honour that.

https://podnews.net/article/apple-podcasts-hls-tech

Just did my “inventors pitch” for the podcast:location feature. Stressed the open nature of the whole thing.

One of the judges just didn’t understand - “but how do you make money”?

It was as if I had landed from another world.

The world of capitalism doesn’t understand a feature that tries to make the world a brighter place, and helping people find content they want to hear.

Slightly subverting the medium, but there is an “inventor”s session at Podfest, to pitch new inventions in podcasting. I pitched the podcast location tag, and looks like I’m in to pitch the idea!

(Obviously I’ve written the 45 minute speech I’m making the day before, and the 4 minute one too, and am not leaving this late).

@adam @dave

Hey! If you’re new here, or you’re looking to follow more people, I’ve been running this for the last six months or so and it’s been helpful. A simple browser extensions that (privately) keeps a list of the websites you visit that have fediverse accounts to follow.

https://streetpass.social/

#forkiverse #fediverse #mastodon

@proscience @renewedresistance https://pitchfork.com/news/ice-recruitment-ads-no-longer-on-spotify/

Has anyone done any work in a proper list of “podcast apps that support RSS video podcasts”?

(Not alternateEnclosures - proper full video, like This Week In Tech - https://podnews.net/podcast/i41ok )

(Not HLS streams, but proper full video files)

(Not separately uploaded video like Spotify or YouTube, but actual RSS sourced video)

RE: https://social.podnews.net/@podnews/115768020345392690

Now, this looks really quite welcome. iHeartRadio looks like giving video-podcasts-via-RSS nice visibility in the iHeartRadio app in the US. You don't have to host your podcast with them, and it works with RSS. I've asked for more technical information, so watch Podnews over the next few weeks for more.

Interesting. Podnews bandwidth doubled on/around Dec 21. Our RSS feed was suddenly doing 150,000 hits a day instead of the usual 22,000 hits. It's gone back to normal now.

One IP address from "Wowrack" hit our RSS feed 132,098 times in one day. Cheers, random fake-browser guy, for hitting me with $20 extra bandwidth.

User-agent was a set of fake browsers - some on Windows running Chrome 119 or 120; some on Mac running Chrome 120. Both browsers came out in late 2023.

Added my RSS feed to the rate-limiting rule. Thankfully, it's static; sadly, it is static on disk, not static on S3.

Time for a new browser? I've had a good play with a ton of them, and I think I've found one that could be the thing.

https://james.cridland.net/blog/2025/alternative-browsers/
#macos #helium #firefox #chrome #orion

This is fun. Stolen from LinkedIn/Reddit; published in the oldest newspaper in Pakistan, "Dawn". #ai #aislop #fail

This is a very nice extension for Chrome - StreetPass for Mastodon quietly checks the websites you visit to see if they're on the fediverse, and keeps a list so you can follow them on the platform. (The data stays in your browser only).

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/streetpass-for-mastodon/fphjfedjhinpnjblomfebcjjpdpakhhn?pli=1

The Podnews Weekly Review just hit 250,000 downloads. Congratulations to producer and co-host @samsethi and thank you to @Alban and all at Buzzsprout for being our sponsor. Here’s to the next quarter of a million!

I *think* I've worked out why Apple Podcasts might be about to support JSON chapters.

I've blogged a thing: https://james.cridland.net/blog/2025/apple-podcasts-chapter-support/

Wow. Too late for Podnews today, but this is the equivalent of the ravens leaving the Tower.