Re:Disqus, a dark commenting system
by dredmorbius on Friday February 05, 2021 @10:05AM
(#26037046)
On many podcasts now, this is increasingly obfuscated or hidden:
- There is no dedicated podcast homepage, only a set of service links (Spotify, Itunes, etc.).
- RSS itself may not be provided.
- Audio is hidden inside Javascript requests.
I do listen to many podcasts by going to a page and finding the single-episode download link,and playing that directly via mpv or other CLI tools. Success rate is falling, seems to be ~75% or so anecdotally. Often I'll curl the page, explode elements to one per line, and grep for '\.mp3' references. Even that fails often.
And yes, I use dedicated podcast apps to subscribe specifically, but I don't want or need to subscribe to every last podcast just to listen to a single episode.
Open standards promote interoperability. Profit comes by building walls and moats.
- There is no dedicated podcast homepage, only a set of service links (Spotify, Itunes, etc.).
- RSS itself may not be provided.
- Audio is hidden inside Javascript requests.
I do listen to many podcasts by going to a page and finding the single-episode download link,and playing that directly via mpv or other CLI tools. Success rate is falling, seems to be ~75% or so anecdotally. Often I'll curl the page, explode elements to one per line, and grep for '\.mp3' references. Even that fails often.
And yes, I use dedicated podcast apps to subscribe specifically, but I don't want or need to subscribe to every last podcast just to listen to a single episode.
Open standards promote interoperability. Profit comes by building walls and moats.
Profit seems to be winning.