There's a very simple solution to keeping podcasts free and open: don't buy paywalled content, and don't listen to shows that are "only available on [proprietary app x]!"
I'm going to continue supporting independent, freely-available RSS podcasts through Patreon/direct donation, and you should too. Nothing (short of ISP-level censorship) can make those hundreds of thousands of hours of decentralized, self-hosted content go away.
I'm not convinced that tightening up web development practices is what's going to solve climate change, but:
> When you push the CPU processing of the UX from the mobile device back down to the server, the energy consumption certainly moves. Does it decrease, though?
One could argue that developers/website owners might be more motivated to optimize their server code for performance, thereby decreasing their hosting bills, vs optimizing front-end code which they don't pay to run.
Available to start immediately. US and EU dual-citizen. Gaps on resume due to health issues, never been fired. Willing to work weird hours for remote positions.
On all the pumps near me, the second from the top on the right side mutes the video. Some gas station attendants or kind customers thought to write "Mute" on the button in sharpie, and I encourage everyone to do the same.
I wouldn't condone vandalism -- despite however justified you may feel it is, plus it would have the opposite effect: I don't want whoever create those demon machines to know we know where the mute button is.
Some podcasts I've listened to recently have had local ads injected into them at the start/end. I can tell it's happening because it takes a few seconds for a download to progress after I start it.
Based on complaints I've heard (mostly from Marco Arment, on podcasts he guests on), the ad-injection platforms are often responsible for horribly mangling the mp3 format. They tend to not update the mp3 file's stated length, resulting in time-remaining being off if you trust it.
Plus, of course, dynamic ad lengths completely break the ability to share timestamps for podcasts -- no "you should really listen to the bit starting at 17:52"...
Npr and old media solved this a while ago. national news shows follow strict schedules, with fixed length breaks at fixed times. Local stations inject their own content into the stream. And a lot of that is produced live.
The other comments already gave you some great info, but I'll just link some good documentation for anyone looking to get started. I discovered Matrix the other day and decided to set up a toy matrix-synapse server, which took less than two days' worth of free time for someone with a programming background and no serious IT expertise.
I hope this project gets more traction because it's a fantastic, secure, self-hosted, full-featured, (inhales), open-source version of slack/telegram/kind of discord. Not perfect yet, but really great so far. Even pretty easy to set up e2e-encrypted voice and video calling through your server.
I don't think you're wrong, but I'd just add that social media platforms like Facebook are doing everything they can to keep a user's attention at the cost of closer IRL relationships or anything else in their lives. To them, the more time you spend on their platform, the more money they make.
So increased social media use is definitely a symptom of broader disconnection in our societies, but it's also helping that disconnection along quite happily.
I've been looking into telegram alternatives for a while. The best one I've found is the Matrix protocol (https://matrix.org), which is sort of like a cross between telegram and slack but it's open-source and you can self-host it. There are several app/webapp clients that you can use with your server, like https://riot.im.
It's got end-to-end encryption by default (although you need to manually enable it in some clients like Riot), Riot's mobile app works well, and supports audio and video calling through your server.
Last I checked, you couldn't get notifications on iOS running through your own server - that's sort-of-inherent in how iOS notifications work, of course, but that makes the self-hosting feature unusable for a lot of users.
I get notifications with the Riot iOS app. I did take a little extra time to set up my toy matrix server with LetsEncrypt certificates, not sure if that makes a difference.
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: No
Technologies: Full-stack modern JS. Node/express, React stack, several databases.
Résumé/CV: http://tinyurl.com/cjmoran-resume
Email: see resume link