Phillip Winn @pwinn@qoto.org

I have finally found a sauce I prefer to the traditional Huy Fong "Cock Sauce" Sriracha. Diamondback Texafied Sriracha is better. It's just better.

Huy Fong is still excellent for when I'm out and about at restaurants, and I've still got a big bottle in my fridge, plus those packets, but more and more I'm reaching for the Diamondback.

That's one good thing about H-E-B opening stores in the Dallas area. I would never have learned about Diamondback otherwise.

https://www.heb.com/product-detail/diamondback-sriracha-hot-chile-sauce/1978313

#blog #food

Ever have one of those days where so many people are saying such incredibly stupid things that you genuinely start to wonder: am I the one being stupid?

But then someone you’ve respected immensely for many, many years agrees with you, so then you know: it’s not me, it’s all of them.

#blog #personal

When the CEO of IAB describes his worst fear, and it sounds wonderful to you, I guess that makes you an "extremist."

Join me, fellow "extremists," as we insist on basic privacy and "cripple the advertising industry and eliminate it" in the process!

Reading the full script, I note that he calls out Apple as an "enemy from within," so welcome to the party, Apple. Let's take them down!

https://tinyurl.com/5d535vyc

#blog #privacy #advertising

I was not aware before this week that Apple, like Spotify, makes on-demand audio shows available to subscribers without making them available as podcasts, and yet audaciously calls them “Apple Podcast Subscriptions.” This is bad behavior, antithetical to the spirit of podcasting, and Apple should know better.

I learned about it via Hacker News from Matt Basta: https://basta.substack.com/p/the-absolute-audacity-of-apple-podcasts

I don’t use the Apple Podcasts app, because @overcastfm is really great, and most of the Apple’s podcast-related web pages seem to be focused on the usual podcast stuff, same as they have been since 2005 or so. Little did I know that things changed in 2021! That is apparently when they launched this:

https://podcasters.apple.com/878-subscriptions

Horrible!

I get the appeal of the pitch for podcasters. If you have an existing podcast and are tired of paying $5/month or more to host the audio files, you might hear about “Apple Podcasts Subscriptions” and see that they charge only $20/year, and you aren’t required to charge for a subscription. It certainly isn’t clear on the publicly-available pages I’ve seen that this is going to break your podcast, making it no longer freely available everywhere! Instead, even if your show is free, it will be encrypted with DRM and there will be no feed for clients not owned by Apple. They have many lawyers, so it’s probable that this disclosure is buried somewhere in the fine print as you sign up, but it’s still bad behavior.

A podcast is on-demand audio available in any podcast client via a syndication feed. Usually this means MP3 files via RSS, but M4A files via Atom would still fit the description. It’s possible to offer subscriptions to podcasts, and even charge for them. Even on Apple’s own list of “Podcast hosting providers” they list four providers that do so, but the normal way to handle that involves either HTTP Basic Authentication or tokens in the Feed URL, *not* DRM and proprietary clients.

https://podcasters.apple.com/partner-search

Once you take away the feed and lock down consumption to only your apps, you’re not producing a podcast anymore. You’re producing a proprietary on-demand audio show. That Spotify and Apple use the word “Podcast” in their product descriptions is deceptive, but co-opting popular labels is somewhat common, and reasonably-aware people should be able to see through that.

I understand the appeal of this for Spotify and Apple, too. They can both say, “using our app, you can listen to any podcast ever made anywhere, PLUS a bunch of shows exclusive to us!” But of course, Spotify’s exclusives can’t be listened to in Apple Podcasts, and “Apple Podcasts Subscriptions” can’t be listened to in Spotify, because they’re not actually podcasts at that point. It’s a short-sighted approach with lasting damage.

Shame on Apple for playing this losing game.

#blog #nerdery #apple #podcast #spotify