James Cridland

Passionate about audio · Editor of Podnews https://podnews.net · Host of the Podnews Weekly Review https://weekly.podnews.net · Personal/radio blog: https://james.cridland.net · These messages self-destruct

I also have a thing for craft beer, and did so before it was quite as trendy as today.

I live in Meanjin/Brisbane QLD Australia - in Bardon 4065 - on the land of the Turrbul and Jagera people. I'm British and moved here ten years ago.

My website: https://james.cridland.net
Podnews: https://podnews.net

Public Key

npub13cgvw8v4hy7yr7ehc0hs27m4csaly2t9x4w60pjzqe0cfhesvhfqf4ck4q

NIP-05 Address

james_at_bne.social@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsguyx8rk2mj0zplvmu8mc90d6ugwlj99jn2hd8sepqvhuymucxt5sprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmnt5xuqvv

Publishing to

relay.momostr.pink

Author Public Key

npub13cgvw8v4hy7yr7ehc0hs27m4csaly2t9x4w60pjzqe0cfhesvhfqf4ck4q

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Last Notes

2026-08-07 00:45:04 UTC

RE: https://en.osm.town/@SmallTownUSA/117051437562345165
I wonder if there is an equivalent of this for Australia? This looks like a fun thing, though I’d be more interested to do it for Aussie places rather than US.
@npub1g94…e2tr #osm #openstreetmap
#note1f0n…5qmg

2026-08-01 02:08:30 UTC

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“Rewatching all the Spiders-Man”
Um

2026-07-30 23:54:12 UTC

Patreon is laying-off 20% of its workforce. "Patreon’s core business is healthy and strong," said CEO Jack Conte, announcing the layoffs and affecting 93 families who have lost their financial security. Well, that's okay, Jack. Well done you.
https://www.patreon.com/jackconte/posts/painful-update-164628951

2026-07-29 12:22:56 UTC

AWS gets more fiendish in its dark-UX patterns every day. Here we are, looking at its Simple Email Service pricing plan. I'm on "à la carte" pricing - oooh, sounds expensive. Here are the nice cheap options. Thanks, AWS!
Except, the "à la carte" pricing is just $0.10 - not visible here, naturally - it's behind a clickdown on an entirely different webpage.
And don't even start me on whatever Cloudfront is trying on these days.
https://assets.bne.social/media_attachments/files/117/003/241/028/698/886/original/e052ef10f8abc756.png

2026-07-26 10:35:57 UTC

Just noticed that the BBC's website no longer allows me to play any video. Probably due to my network and browser privacy settings - the amount of third-party calls on the website is astonishingly high. Oh well.
https://assets.bne.social/media_attachments/files/116/985/833/418/811/570/original/c0c958cd488d8314.png

2026-07-16 05:38:41 UTC

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It turns out that we had a 50A fuse, which had blown. It's been replaced with a 63A fuse.
Our solar system pulled up to 12kW of power. A 50A fuse is rated at 12kW exactly. A 63A fuse is good up to 15.1kW.

2026-07-16 05:19:48 UTC

*SO* confused. Got solar and a battery installed two weeks ago. It's been saying that we have had no power from the grid since 12.55pm. Energex's website says that there is no power outages in the area. Of course, everything is working in this house because the battery is keeping us all going. With both our neighbours away, I've literally no idea whether we have power or not.
The only clue might be that the electricity meter is blank, rather than has numbers on it. I hope that this means that we have a power outage, and the good folk of Energex - who are driving to this house as we speak - are not going to look at me as if I'm an idiot when they get here.
#brisbane #power #solar

2026-07-12 05:10:25 UTC

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Additionally, most EVs need servicing approximately 1/4 as often as cars that run on gas. So there’s a big saving there.
I recently added solar and a battery to the house; which means that my EV’s running costs are effectively zero (excepting tires and servicing).

2026-07-11 12:20:41 UTC

I was interested in how #radio on a Google speaker works. Or doesn't.
So here's where I've got so far. How it works, technically; how it doesn't work, in reality, why it's important, and what we can do about it.
https://james.cridland.net/blog/2026/how-google-speakers-radio-works/

2026-07-11 01:28:44 UTC

Hmm. My plastic payment card from the bank has just been tried to be used to hire a digging machine in Florida. Of all the things! (It sits in my desk drawer; I’ve never used it overseas).

2026-07-09 13:15:00 UTC

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You can remove it today, since it's just a dupe. Literally nothing will change. Nobody should bother with dupes like this.
If you look at https://podnews.net/rss you'll notice that the `description` is short and designed to work if your podcast app doesn't deal with HTML. The `content:encoded` is proper HTML with lots more stuff. Nothing wrong with doing this.
(Caution: I feed Apple a separate feed, based on user-agent)

2026-07-08 09:10:47 UTC

Good news, everyone! A press release breathlessly tells me:
"Audio is the ideal media platform for nasal treatments."
DAT IS DA BEFT DOOZ DAT I HAB HEARD ALL WEEK! *sniff*

2026-07-07 14:51:07 UTC

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I’ve also discovered “reframe”. And that is… wow.
Here’s the magnificent hound but looking between my feet at something. I’d like her to look at the camera instead. And… after a little fiddling about… you can do that. I thought this would be a gimmick nobody would use - but even on a picture as bad as this, it has worked quite well.
https://assets.bne.social/media_attachments/files/116/879/252/864/255/437/original/5de02a0fb6f09bb1.png
https://assets.bne.social/media_attachments/files/116/879/252/827/340/843/original/45c1a9ec95407eb8.png
https://assets.bne.social/media_attachments/files/116/879/252/855/489/049/original/dc08eb4717376bde.png

2026-07-07 14:41:02 UTC

Woah. Looks like my iPhone now has access to the “extend” image thing. (I’m on the developer beta 3). Go to edit a picture in Photos, choose the crop control and zoom out, and it makes up the background.
Here is the original of the magnificent hound; and then I zoomed out. It’s added her back legs quite well; continued making the rug on both sides having understood the lighting; and hallucinated a door that doesn’t exist there but is a style that wouldn’t be entirely wrong.
All I did was pinch the image and select “extend”.
https://assets.bne.social/media_attachments/files/116/879/213/269/771/921/original/c1cb8f13ccf031b5.jpeg
https://assets.bne.social/media_attachments/files/116/879/213/270/135/034/original/d3160b47708d33bf.jpeg

2026-07-06 21:46:00 UTC

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It always used to be that some apps prefer content:encoded if it’s there; and some apps who don’t want HTML will prefer the description field if there’s a choice.
Putting the same content in both is wrong. So - “deprecate putting the same data in both content:encoded and description” would have my vote.
In this case, I think more testing is required (again). Podclock, a podcast testing feed I have, might need to need checking.

2026-07-01 12:36:21 UTC

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Not even an email client - it’s a corporate email scanner.
(When I send out a newsletter, a significant proportion “open the email” within seconds of me sending it, and quite a few methodically “click through” every single link present in the email. I don’t sell on open rates or click through, thankfully.)

2026-07-01 02:35:40 UTC

Discovered - and fixed - an issue today. It turns out that some email services will a) follow all links in an email; b) will then follow all links on those web pages as well.
So, some people have found themselves unsubscribed from the newsletter, because our unsubscribe link led them to a page which contained a link saying “if you’re sure, click this”, and a helpful bot did both.
Now, it’s a form (post) on the website. I’m told that bots that check emails don’t submit POST forms.
Email is such a mess.

2026-06-29 03:33:17 UTC

Sorted new glasses, after an eye test yesterday. It’s always a great pleasure seeing the optometrists trying to deal with my odd prescription, and to get it into an order system which is very specifically not built for how my eyes are. Sigh.
Doing all the chores. Next, a haircut. Coming up later, the shopping. Keep it here for all the latest.

2026-06-27 01:52:12 UTC

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I think better figures are these - https://international-aluminium.org/global-aluminium-can-recycling-reaches-75-marking-major-step-toward-circular-economy/ - which shows Europe isn’t really very good (72%), North America is wors (45%), and East Asia + Pacific, where I am, is 94.6% - the highest in the world. So… 💪

2026-06-26 08:49:29 UTC

Fascinating video showing how cans are recycled. Also interesting to learn that in the US, only 45% are recycled. (In Australia it’s a bit-much-better 56%).
https://youtu.be/PR5mykiFzN4

2026-06-18 12:47:46 UTC

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You can have much longer - just depends on who runs your Mastodon server

2026-06-17 08:37:28 UTC

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The Australian government hasn’t banned YouTube for under 16s.
They’ve just banned *accounts on YouTube* for under 16s.
You might think this is stupid. I’d agree. https://james.cridland.net/blog/2025/australia-social-media-ban/

2026-06-16 06:48:59 UTC

Watching new subscribers to the Podcast Business Journal sign up - and looking carefully at their user-agent.
At 4.13pm, a registration from someone using the "Acoo Browser", a browser last updated in 2009.
At 4.11pm, a registration from someone using "Avant Browser", which was last updated in March 2020.
At 4.09pm, "Arora", a Qt browser which doesn't have a working website, but the main Github repo was updated 18 years ago.
At 3.58pm, "BonEcho/2", a browser based on Firefox, released in 2006 - twenty years ago!
And 3.27pm - Camino v2.1.2, which is abandonware last released in 2012.
PBJ uses https that is secured by TLSv1.2_2021. I don't believe that any of these browsers would be capable of loading the website - if the useragent was actually real.

2026-06-15 04:08:27 UTC

I've lived in Australia for ten years. The bloke doing our solar installation today poked his head into the house. "Have you got a manhole?"
A manhole? Like a hole in a road?
Apparently this loft hatch is a "manhole" in this country. Crazy talk.
#australia
https://assets.bne.social/media_attachments/files/116/752/154/937/047/627/original/565e629d35db5085.jpeg

2026-06-11 11:41:05 UTC

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a) where are you b) what app are you using c) any ad-blocking apps on your phone/device? d) any ad-blocking DNS server you're using, like AdAware or AdBlock?

2026-06-09 06:18:11 UTC

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"The panels can also act as shields for your roof during storms." - greetings from Australia's sunshine state, Queensland, where I've been without solar after the panels acted as shields for my roof during hailstorms.
(I needed the roof replacing, too!)
https://assets.bne.social/media_attachments/files/116/718/691/257/675/685/original/5dcce00690260486.jpeg

2026-05-27 06:30:17 UTC

I'm no @npub12cj…hqkq - but to keep me sane, I write trip reports. Here's one for BNE-LHR which I did last week. It's not up to my usual standard, but still, I wrote it, so you can read it.
https://james.cridland.net/blog/2026/trip-report-bne-lhr/
#travel #qantas

2026-05-21 18:58:24 UTC

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It really isn’t.
Your point is that everything we touch may set an “AI process” off. You decline to define an AI process. I’m concerned that this very post has set an “AI process” off somewhere. You’re better off not using anything electronic.
Actually, even sending a letter might set an “AI process” off. Best to just live in the mountains, alone.
Zealotry has no real place here. The reality is: “Is Kagi a better search engine than Google” and the answer is unequivocally “yes”. And to suggest it isn’t is just trolling at this point.

2026-05-21 17:08:50 UTC

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Again - it’s entirely possible to use Kagi without a single piece of AI. Which was the point of the original post.

2026-05-21 11:12:52 UTC

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They don’t “serve Google search results”; they return blended search results from a number of different services. There is no training of AI or tracking from their search engine. Their search engine only uses AI when you want it to.
But it’s clear you don’t like them: that’s your right. Just makes sense to be fair and truthful in criticism of them.

2026-05-20 23:28:36 UTC

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Kagi has an AI “assistant” which is a separate website. You have to deliberately want to go there.
Kagi’s AI in search has to be deliberately turned on by adding a “?” to a search. Otherwise it is entirely AI free.
A company offering AI only when you want it is very different to a company shoving it down your throat whether you want it or not.

2026-05-19 12:51:31 UTC

Well, that’s all OK then.
https://assets.bne.social/media_attachments/files/116/601/329/295/557/547/original/69db6d596e1e82e2.jpeg

2026-05-17 15:05:16 UTC

Bristol Temple Meads is quite an impressive station from the outside (though less so inside). #travel #uk
https://assets.bne.social/media_attachments/files/116/590/530/641/654/360/original/d37e69deec586dca.jpeg

2026-05-16 11:07:53 UTC

Forgot how much I don’t much enjoy flying any more. But lucky to be able to. Currently in Singapore Airport, singing the Don Don Donki song, which I assume is only there to stop you from loitering in their store.
https://assets.bne.social/media_attachments/files/116/583/934/979/845/431/original/349e5c51555d9e60.jpeg

2026-05-13 22:19:46 UTC

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...as in, the newsletter wouldn't get into *any* corporate email accounts.

2026-05-13 11:41:59 UTC

Things You Don't See In Podnews Today - the third show in this list.
Good grief, it's a good job I didn't sent this out without checking it first... that would have been "interesting" to my newsletter deliverability.
https://assets.bne.social/media_attachments/files/116/567/082/096/036/716/original/8c9c244503079739.png

2026-05-13 11:39:46 UTC

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"simply"
It's very impressive. I should go in and change the colors to "podnews red" :)

2026-05-13 11:31:17 UTC

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...yikes, it's not very good data, mine, is it? I need to work on that.
@npub1rcn…dw4h @npub1tk4…3wu7 @npub1gp8…c8ut @npub1g2v…achf @npub1thg…zq23 @npub1fmx…wp74

2026-05-13 11:30:52 UTC

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https://podnews.net/podcasts/recommendations is from my own database, by the way. I just don't know how to do the fancy stuff @npub1tk4…3wu7 is.
@npub1gp8…c8ut @npub1tk4…3wu7 @npub1g2v…achf @npub1thg…zq23 @npub1fmx…wp74

2026-05-13 01:39:23 UTC

Fiddling with databases. One of my tables is 6.6Gb. Yikes. Just given it a task to update a bunch of rows, which pulled my website down for five minutes while it did it. Yay!

2026-05-12 09:35:57 UTC

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Maybe I should open a piano shop.
https://assets.bne.social/media_attachments/files/116/560/924/155/802/170/original/54936e66191f85b8.png

2026-05-11 10:52:12 UTC

@npub1cwm…wcs6 This page - https://fountain.fm/show/227573 - is returning a 404. Have I broken it? (It's Podnews)

2026-05-10 03:32:03 UTC

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I think The Sizzle would benefit from “read a sample edition” on your front page - I’ve never read an issue and it’s genuinely too much friction for me to give my email address to a form. I don’t really know what I’d get.
About a third of signups are from the website - many of those from archive editions (but more, interestingly, from longform articles and press releases).

2026-05-10 03:25:28 UTC

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fwiw, Podnews stats for a typical day (this was Monday):
Total sent: 33,041; total opens 24,160 (73.1% open rate); total unique opens 15,533 (47.0% open rate).
Website: total pageviews (for this day’s edition) 460
Just 460.
Podnews is free, but I’ve designed the front page to funnel new subscribers to the newsletter because it’s those that are monetiseable, not web views.
I was just idly thinking that I should put the web version behind a login for the first few days, to encourage people to sign up (free), but looked at those figures and thought I should be doing something more useful with my time, like perhaps cutting my toenails or having a good scratch.
The web, as you say, might be useful for people who have got their newsletter rejected by email servers or something, and it’s good marketing perhaps, but it doesn’t replace the newsletter.

2026-05-09 02:08:42 UTC

The racists don’t like the non-racist press reporting on them. #auspol
https://www.9news.com.au/national/abc-journalists-booted-from-one-nation-event-days-out-from-crucial-byelection/44dd97ef-639c-4a5c-9ef5-645e5385ca90

2026-05-08 10:48:51 UTC

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Podnews:
This story was based on screenshots of Podigee's implementation of Spotify's video distribution API, which we erroneously attributed to Spotify's own UX: we're happy to make that distinction clear. What's a little less clear is the extent of the lock-in. Spotify denies that creators are permanently "locked in" to using a Spotify API feed if they opt for video distribution in this way, though the company has confirmed that changing your feed back to RSS requires manual work from both the podcast hosting company and from Spotify itself. From others, we hear that this reversion process may remove comments, reviews, and video files from your podcast; and we also understand that following our story yesterday, Spotify has contacted all partners to clarify messaging about this process. Not that any of us would know - at least two podcast hosting companies have told us that the whole API is under a non-disclosure agreement, and that they are prohibited from speaking about it.

2026-05-04 22:30:52 UTC

Two sets of tradies are due at some point today (8am to 4pm). I have still gone to the coffee shop. Hoping my note (“I am out but can be home in five minutes”), including my telephone number and a QR code of my telephone number, will suffice for the next half hour. (I have cameras which will see them anyway so I can probably greet them as they walk up to the door).

2026-05-01 13:25:34 UTC

@npub1j2m…ngt0 I love Phanpy, I think it’s the best thing for Mastodon on this iPhone.
A recurring bug is that all the page furniture images disappear for some reason. This appears to happen for me every four or five days. To get them back, kill the web app entirely by flicking it up from the task manager.
I’m running latest production iOS build on an iPhone 17 Pro (I think). Shout if I can do anything to help you.
https://assets.bne.social/media_attachments/files/116/499/541/720/737/397/original/351f5fd16c287949.jpeg

2026-05-01 10:48:20 UTC

OH THANK GOODNESS
To stop the emoji picker window from appearing every bloody time your finger hits the [FN] key on your magic keyboard, probably because the delete key is too narrow...
System Settings -> Keyboard -> "Press 🌐 [GLOBE] key to:" - change this to "do nothing".
Tim Apple or John Apple, please note that I do not have a key with a globe marked on it.
https://assets.bne.social/media_attachments/files/116/498/923/461/225/741/original/76a3c6fde00c2085.png

2026-05-01 06:16:59 UTC

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So it would seem
https://assets.bne.social/media_attachments/files/116/497/856/383/474/240/original/6e8e26eb49419566.jpeg

2026-04-30 13:20:49 UTC

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Boring answer - these flights are all done with Qantas. Except Dallas to Rome, which I can only assume is an AA codeshare.
I don’t understand why they don’t do MEL - AKL - JFK - then Rome, SIN, MEL. That’s a bit more interesting, though one more segment, but again it would be all Qantas flights excepting the one JFK-Rome.
Eagle-eyed readers may notice that I don’t know the airport code for Rome, and I’m not looking it up.

2026-04-30 04:32:36 UTC

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If it helps, target release time of Podnews Daily is 11:00 UTC. I normally make it.
If it’s held back for an embargo, I’m aware that some elements of the publish process don’t seem to run properly (most notably, the special Apple-specific RSS feed), and it’s in the list to fix.
@npub1thg…zq23 @npub1ssg…2yvz @npub1krn…tlf5 @npub1xwp…m2fz

2026-04-30 04:30:46 UTC

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Not so sure about that - @npub1krn…tlf5 fires out a post when it has been ingested into the Podcast Index (and it gets there by Podping). That shows a publish time of 10:47 UTC. (For reference, it’s now 04:30 UTC).
https://ap.podcastindex.org/episodes?id=227573&statusid=https://podnews.net/update/pittman-charlamagne&resource=public

2026-04-30 04:19:27 UTC

I absolutely don’t want to question this judge’s competence or anything, but aside from getting the supermarket’s name wrong - which you’d think after two weeks would be a basic thing - I do wonder whether saying in the middle of final arguments that Woollies did nothing wrong is demonstrating whether you understand how the court process actually works. Anyway, he’s a terrific judge and is absolutely at the top of his game. #AusPol #australia
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-30/tense-exchanges-federal-court-case-accc-woolworths/106561702

2026-04-30 03:56:22 UTC

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I entered an award for an industry newsletter - I’d quite like to win that for my ego. And it’s free: run by a university in the US somewhere.

2026-04-30 03:54:27 UTC

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Yep… I can’t imagine it stays on my Home Assistant box forever.
The roofing people took away my solar panels and my inverter yesterday. That was a lot of removing and rejiggering of things on my box to make everything work again. But on the plus side, also put into place one of the cheap IKEA Matter motion sensors, which are excellent, fast and now mean my carport lights go on as soon as I walk near it.
https://assets.bne.social/media_attachments/files/116/491/633/679/897/726/original/8e619c813d02a6e2.jpeg

2026-04-30 03:49:14 UTC

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I don’t have an issue with paying to enter - good awards cost time and money to organise, judge properly, and mean something. I don’t understand why some parts of podcasting expect people running awards to work for free.
That said; $285 is a lot. The Signal Awards, like The Lovie Awards, are run by The Webby Awards - and I’m unclear of the benefit of any of them for podcasting. For a podcast, I’d rather support The Ambies every year, and that’s it. I can’t remember paying to enter an award for a while, excepting The Independent Podcast Awards a few years ago (didn’t win anything).
Winning an award is probably good if you are working for a client on a podcast, and you want to show to your client how brilliant you are. But for your own ego? Not sure that’s worth $285. Maybe it is, I don’t know.
Disclosure: I’ve won two Webbys (for work in 2005) and an Ambies award, in 2025.

2026-04-30 03:38:27 UTC

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Where can I read about backing up this data? I’d like to keep it and have no idea what to do with it.
https://assets.bne.social/media_attachments/files/116/491/570/710/226/825/original/cac11c65ef2beaba.jpeg

2026-04-29 12:08:06 UTC

Following my experiences last week, this cockatoo is now waiting for me most mornings for me to fill up the bowl of bird seed.
https://assets.bne.social/media_attachments/files/116/487/912/436/310/421/original/6566f4834854710d.jpg

2026-04-29 10:02:15 UTC

I will never understand Australian tradies and their working hours.
The other day, someone turned up at 6am - 6AM!!! - to put a skip outside the house.
On Anzac Day - a Saturday, and a public holiday - a bloke turns up in the afternoon to remove the pool heater matting from the roof. He spends two hours doing it.
Tonight, at 5.40pm, a set of four people arrive to remove the solar panels from my roof. It was dark. They came down at 6.15pm, to report that all the solar panels have now been removed. I mean, I guess it's probably safer to remove solar panels in the dark, come to think of it.
Pick a bloody time, Bruce! What next, some bloke turning up at 11pm to remove the bloody scaffolding?!

2026-04-29 09:52:06 UTC

Astonishing. The US government forces ABC television, the home of Jimmy Kimmel, to reapply for its eight TV station licences "within 30 days", even though they're not due for renewal until 2028. I don't want to accuse the US government of trying to censor the media, because clearly they aren't, and I'm sure they will continue to uphold the first amendment because that's in the constitution, and I love those guys
https://www.newser.com/story/388167/fcc-orders-early-review-of-abc-stations-licenses.html

2026-04-29 05:12:44 UTC

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Yes, that one!
Curiously, I've hardly ever used CTRL-Z.
CMD+SHIFT+4 then a SPACE - to take a screenshot of the currently opened window is the one I use almost all the time.
Plus CMD+E, which I've programmed myself to do a variety of things on highlighted files (upload them, resize them, optimise them, etc).

2026-04-28 11:12:30 UTC

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I’ve found one company taking my content, lightly rewriting through AI, and passing it off as theirs. Another two companies just copied my stuff. (One in Vietnam, one in Australia, one in the UK). The people who rewrote it were embarrassed I called them out. The people who stole it were less repentant; but both have given up now.
While a user agent isn’t a mandatory and checkable thing, it means that bots can just pretend to be web browser if they want: I’ll never know. So slightly depressingly, I can’t do anything about it.

2026-04-28 07:32:55 UTC

It says Hola. But it really means Adiós. Taco Bell in Keperra is closed. ¡Ay Carumba!
#Brisbane
https://assets.bne.social/media_attachments/files/116/481/168/096/909/663/original/74ac89bf794be54a.jpeg

2026-04-28 03:55:50 UTC

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That's 33% for the main Podnews website, incidentally. Quite interesting. Also a bit tedious.
https://assets.bne.social/media_attachments/files/116/480/314/454/380/638/original/f8ad594c9b20407e.png

2026-04-28 03:51:47 UTC

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Well, this bit is interesting - a new AI traffic analysis report. Here's the Podnews images server. 55% of the traffic has been AI bots over the past 24 hours.
https://assets.bne.social/media_attachments/files/116/480/298/531/332/226/original/960b619b8441fa7d.png

2026-04-28 03:28:25 UTC

Idly wondering why my AWS bill rose by an unbudgeted $7 yesterday. Ah, it'll be whatever the hell happened between exactly 05:50 and 07:00 UTC yesterday to the images server. (Lots of errors, so probably the rate-limiting worked, but.)
I wonder when this sort of thing just becomes tiresome. Is it now? I think it's now.
https://assets.bne.social/media_attachments/files/116/480/206/653/524/311/original/08f1522cda8a076a.png

2026-04-28 00:11:26 UTC

Huh. Just had a ten minute call from an AI tool, collecting information from me about software I’ve used for a potential consultant call. Very cleverly done, with “typing on a keyboard” sounds to cover up for processing time. Can’t say I liked it, but it was certainly a relatively quick way to get information over.

2026-04-27 18:10:51 UTC

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YouTube has always sold inhouse, and the release (or perhaps the PR email) suggested this was the first time they’ve decided to go out of house.
I must confess, I don’t know what “YouTube audio ads” means, unless it is for a potential YouTube Music ad-supported tier. As far as I understand it, YouTube Main doesn’t have any audio ads - you can’t turn the screen off or play in background without paying for YouTube Premium.
I think any audio ads need to come from the audio ad budgets, which YouTube hasn’t had access to. Easier to get someone that does, to unlock those, rather than start a new internal unit. Plus competition between YouTube Main ads and YouTube Audio ads will be less destructive if one is sold by a third party.
SiriusXM is the largest podcast audio ad company in the US, as far as I can see. As ever, YouTube is focusing on a US strategy rather than a global one - SiriusXM has no sales capability outside the US at all.
(You’re in the audio of Podnews Daily today.)

2026-04-27 12:42:46 UTC

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I had never heard it before… and the sport one is, um, wow.

2026-04-27 12:27:31 UTC

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Shared in https://radioland.email today. 3,700 subscribers. Hope someone has a listen!

2026-04-27 12:17:22 UTC

SiriusXM and iHeart - are they to merge?
And what does that mean for one of iHeart's biggest shareholders... Global?
https://james.cridland.net/blog/2026/siriusxm-iheart-merging/

2026-04-27 11:26:28 UTC

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Yeah. I'm just treating both as the same for now - because I can't work out which lives where.
Genuinely interested in what might happen from it.

2026-04-27 08:14:29 UTC

Got my COVID and flu shots today. The advice is "every twelve months" for the COVID one - last year I got mine on April 29, this year on April 17, but the computer at the pharmacist didn't say no.

2026-04-27 07:37:19 UTC

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Interestingly - https://p0stman.com/what-is-agents-md suggests that a website /agents.md is a thing. So I've made the lower-case variant also work.
There is also apparently an /llms.txt thing as well. While Postman claims they're different, they're probably close enough. So https://podnews.net/llms.txt also works.
Interesting fact: on Saturday, my server saw four requests for https://podnews.net/llms.txt (which was a 404 back then).

2026-04-27 07:16:00 UTC

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I asked Kagi's AI what it thinks. Will go and rewrite slightly.
I have doubts too, but if *one* AI bot does read this, I'll be happy.
https://assets.bne.social/media_attachments/files/116/475/439/298/102/358/original/0c74cbd4d09f1652.png

2026-04-27 07:10:54 UTC

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I have no idea. But if they *do*, this can only help.
https://agents.md/

2026-04-27 07:05:28 UTC

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.
@npub1rcn…dw4h 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?)

2026-04-27 04:59:10 UTC

“We have a brand that is recognised by creative people everywhere. What can we do to fuck it up, Citronella, darling?”
“Oh, Tristram, I have *just* the thing.”
https://cjleo.com/blog/moleskine-ai-lord-of-the-rings-collection-can-only-mock/

2026-04-26 08:02:33 UTC

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It’s a normal working day tomorrow here, because Crisifulli hates the veterans.
(The above sentence contains one truth and one thing I’ve literally made up to make someone look bad, with zero truth to it, in the name of satire. I’ll let you make a decision as to which half is which).

2026-04-26 01:21:12 UTC

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Shots? Or a loud sound?
Proof it’s shots? Or say-so from an administration keen to denigrate the media at any opportunity?

2026-04-26 01:12:15 UTC

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Live coverage/speculation at https://livenow.news

2026-04-26 00:58:42 UTC

Clearly I wouldn’t have gone onto the scaffolding surrounding the house currently but if I had, I’d have been able to take a picture of the destructive power of hailstones on solar panels.
https://assets.bne.social/media_attachments/files/116/468/293/319/518/632/original/15f27bd1a692174f.jpeg

2026-04-25 04:49:41 UTC

Fixed, and tweaked, the @npub1g0z…tl7f plugin for ABC News (Australia), which I maintain. There must have been a change in rendering engine a few weeks ago, which overlapped some text with images.
https://assets.bne.social/media_attachments/files/116/463/539/274/361/731/original/e6d5bf2d3556d50f.png

2026-04-25 03:50:53 UTC

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Great, showers every day for the next week, just as our house is covered in scaffolding ready to start work replacing the roof on Monday. Arg

2026-04-25 03:33:31 UTC

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Awesome, thank you!

2026-04-25 03:30:15 UTC

Earlier: one of two sulphur-crested cockatoos decide to visit the bird table. I was inside making coffee.
This little fella picks up the (empty, rain-sodden) container of bird seed and waves it at me. He sees me watching. He does so again.
I comply with his wishes, and he and his friend get a full container of dry bird seed. They spent the next hour munching away, happily.
I'm being trained by birds. #brisbane #queensland
https://assets.bne.social/media_attachments/files/116/463/212/394/066/810/original/fdebb3169ca01e66.jpeg

2026-04-25 03:23:00 UTC

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Spotify didn't (mostly) grow by M&A; it just grew. It's bigger than either of these two companies, and their main competitor. So I don't really know whether the solution is to break Spotify up into teeny state-wide corporations, because that's unworkable (and would be a significant disincentive for entrepreneurship). Plus, it would give the market to China, probably, who are less likely to care about this sort of thing...

2026-04-25 03:13:27 UTC

@npub1scp…6zy8 [@josh](https://masto.byrd.ws/@josh ) @npub12wa…tkuw There's a page somewhere that shows how BNE .social is doing money-wise and how to donate. Where is that? Can't find it linked from the /about page here, or from the welcoming account bot.

2026-04-25 01:52:32 UTC

While positioned as a radio merger, this would also be very big news for podcasting.
(And forces the hand of the UK’s Global, which owns the maximum permitted shareholding of iHeart).
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/24/business/media/siriusxm-iheart-radio.html?unlocked_article_code=1.dlA.XkXi.eHX28YVgq5g4&smid=nytcore-ios-share

2026-04-24 12:37:07 UTC

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Quite bad coding if that’s the case.
You can absolutely pummel my website, because it’s all cached, flat HTML. But if you try the search function for example, I’ll run a “human check” the first time, because that hits a database (and two API points) and sustained traffic there will hurt. And you’d be surprised how many more bad actors there are out there in 2026 than there were in, say, 2021. It’s astonishingly bad out there. Probably AI-coded bullshit.
The other benefit of cached, flat HTML is that it loads damn fast. A decent CDN and a decent coding model should allow any high-traffic website to run on one tiny little server somewhere.

2026-04-24 12:27:43 UTC

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You… have actually read that law?
The law starts…
“A person who publicly recites, publicly distributes, publishes or publicly displays a prohibited expression in a way that might reasonably be expected to cause a member of the public to feel menaced, harassed or offended commits an offence”
Merely saying “from the river to the sea” isn’t illegal here in Queensland. And while it’s a moronic law and Crissafuli is an idiot, sensationalist reporting like this doesn’t help.

2026-04-24 03:14:15 UTC

Very strange reading the ABC's pieces about the legal issues between Kyle/JackieO and ARN, a publicly listed company. ARN doesn't get mentioned once in this story - instead, the subsidiary that owns the Sydney licence keeps getting mentioned. I wonder why? It's ARN who's share price is collapsing because of this legal action. It's ARN who releases the accounts. Why mention the subsidiary?
#media #australia
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-24/kyle-sandilands-jackie-o-federal-court-hearing/106600790

2026-04-23 08:51:45 UTC

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Are they just before the ATO? I’d like to see them perform in Rundle Mall as well. Also ASIC and CSIRO.

2026-04-23 02:58:53 UTC

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The second time is much easier than the first.
https://assets.bne.social/media_attachments/files/116/451/779/021/271/632/original/b91e79537146d903.jpeg

2026-04-22 21:10:24 UTC

I’m on Nine’s Today show at 8.40am AEST, to talk Kyle and Jackie O. Blink and you’ll miss me!

2026-04-21 15:03:48 UTC

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Somewhere up near Ripponden, I remember there being a near-complete section of Roman Road, which you could just walk on - close to the road where you could park a car. I couldn’t believe that it was still there, and in such perfect condition. It (was?) marked on the Ordnance Survey maps, but I can’t see any Roman Roads on OSM (mind you, not sure what I’m looking for). Amazing to have just found that - I seem to remember it was my first drive out after purchasing a satnav, which made life much easier finding this sort of thing. Hope you’re making similar discoveries.

2026-04-21 11:43:01 UTC

All the winners from The Webby Awards.
And yes, I did end up writing some code that pulled the artwork from the winners, for me to screenshot to produce the background of the header, because of course.
https://podnews.net/update/webby-awards-2026-podcast-winners

2026-04-21 11:40:11 UTC

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Agree!
Also hard recommend: "What On Earth Is This?" - https://www.youtube.com/@WhatOnEarthIsThisThing - which is mostly very good

2026-04-21 02:27:26 UTC

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