So, Podnews’s image server is a bit dead. It was a PHP box that:
a) did a database lookup to find the external URL of an image
b) fetched the image
c) resized it to a specific size, in either AVIF or JPG format
d) uploaded it to Amazon S3
e) output the image (but should probably 301 redirect to the S3 file address).

I’m assuming that the “right” way to do this would be a Lambda function, and not a full server. I wonder whether I could achieve the above by asking an AI tool very very nicely to write the code for me. I wonder where I even start. Would anyone have any useful pointers to an easy “how to” guide?

A fridge calendar from a real estate agent was in my mailbox this morning.

I guess the girls don’t need to worry their pretty little heads about their own names, or be given mobile phones. That’s man stuff.

Turns out that updating PHP made my image resizer box very angry. Sigh.

Interesting to read that shopping TV network TVSN is to close. Long blocked from my television’s set of available channels, I’m most surprised that it was still going. It’s 2026. Who would sit in front of a television and buy things?

Tiny little tweak to Podnews's stylesheet today - adding the least-noticeable border-radius to all of the images. Dramatic improvement in "quality" feel, interestingly. Probably only visible on retina screens.

Won't be visible anywhere really until the cache expires. Probably best to not hurry that process for any other page other than this one: https://podnews.net/update/spotify-memberships

Podnews's image server traffic today.

Normally, I'm doing about 220 image requests per minute. Except when the bots come, and grab as many as 9,421. (That's 157 requests a second),

2,840 per minute of those requests bounced through to the main Podnews webserver, for those images to be made fresh for whatever it was that was asking for it. At one point, I was serving more than 330 MB per minute.

It's pointless looking at useragents or IP ranges at this point - this is just another day in the office, and my infrastructure dealt perfectly well with it. But, man, I wish this didn't happen.

I'm interviewing @imyke about Designed In California in an hour or so - about the Kickstarter process and how that show got to get made. If you have burning questions - editor@podnews.net will find me.

https://podnews.net/podcast/i11vzw

Heh, guess who runs his online businesses using PHP... :eek:

Upgrading all the machines just in case to be a little closer to the latest release when it comes; it *looks* as though I'll be relatively unlucky to be hit, given I don't use the more obvious tools and have some good protection in front of many of my boxes, but you can never be too sure.

Luckily, finished my dayjob a bit earlier than normal, so that's bought me a little time.

Some mitigation and understanding here.
https://jackalsyn.com/posts/php-up-2026.html

Best line of today's @Podnews podcast.

Well, this is a thing. Overnight in the UK, the BBC World Service will come... from Sydney.

https://james.cridland.net/blog/2026/bbc-world-service-sydney/

Something for Podcasting 2.0 types to check out - the payment flow for Spotify's Memberships product, its rebadged Podcast Subscriptions product. A clear link in-app, to a payment in a browser, which then gives access to additional content. The "payment in a browser", which uses Stripe, is clearly to avoid Apple's 30% tax.

RE: https://mastodon.social/@streetcomplete/117468641641299594

Very excited that StreetComplete is almost out for iPhone. (It’s not yet available in the AppStore - it takes a few days apparently). But very excited for it: a good app for people who like walking!

Very odd being sent audio of me from thirty years ago. But that happened today. It’s most certainly “of its time”, but a random show of mine (and not a very typical one) from 1995 resurfaced, to my delight - I never recorded anything I did on the radio, so it’s lovely to find something after all these years.

If you want to be transported back to a 1995 FM radio disc-jockey, then here’s the link for you.

https://james.cridland.net/blog/2026/james-andrews-pulse/

Hey, @samsethi - look what's in my Amazon WAF dashboard...

Help!

I'm being charged $5.07 a day to serve files that don't exist in Cloudfront. This is essentially all my Cloudfront bill, and I've kind of had enough of paying for it.

Are there any AWS people in the fediverse who might know how to cut my bill, or stop paying for 404 errors like this?

https://james.cridland.net/blog/2026/aws-requests-help/

#amazon #aws #Cloudfront #amazonaws

I got an interesting set of data from Australian commercial radio. Plus, lots more international radio trends. #radio #australia

https://james.cridland.net/blog/2026/time-spent-listening-australian-commercial-radio/

I've always wondered how difficult it might be to replicate a liquid-glass-esque blur-in-the-background experience on a website. Turns out it's really easy - set a background colour with opacity of 0.75; then backdrop-filter:blur(2px) which blurs the backdrop a little. Sure, it's not got the specific effects of the curved side of the glass, but it does the job.

@hacks4pancakes Interesting to read about digital nomad visa requirements.

So far as I can see, accepting payment for speaking at a conference in the US is almost impossible for anyone who isn’t a US citizen. (No conference organiser is going to sponsor a visa or a green card). So I don’t give any paid talks there. I wish I could learn more about what’s possible.

Just refreshed my YouTube playlist of live news TV channels. There are really quite a few these days, including BBC News (which I can link to the Asia Pacific version, but not the other ones quite yet).

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwIxQJuE1gp7PLsJSFYY9PHmTakG4DSph

A slightly more perfect one - and a blog post where I can put these, which is handy.

https://james.cridland.net/blog/2026/handy-sieve-examples/