I'm a big fan of community radio, freeform if I'm being picky. I'm curious...

1. Which stations are my fellow Tilderinos listening to? (I'm particularly interested in non-English speaking stations)
2. How are you listening?
3. More generally, are people even listening to much radio any more? If not, why is that?

To get things started, my own answers are.

1. WFMU, dublab, Resonance FM, rrr.
2. Generally I set up an alias per station with fish shell and stream each link via cvlc
3. As I'm posting I guess it's obvious but yes, I listen to the radio almost daily. It's a nice break to have one less thing to make a decision about (what to listen to) while avoiding having to listen to top 40 and discovering all sorts of new music I'd otherwise likely miss out on.

EDIT: The problem has been solved. @Sill identified the problem here and @cfabbro found a work-around here. Crisis averted!

I listen to some internet radio stations on my computer, but a couple of them aren't working any more: they appear to play, but there's no sound coming from my computer's speakers.

It is only two stations. I've tested other internet radio stations I listen to, and they still work: I can hear them. I can play and hear YouTube videos. I can stream Spotify on my computer. I can play and hear my music files stored on my computer's hard drive. So I know my speakers work. I know Chrome works as a music player for other sources, including other internet radio stations. It's just these two radio stations.

One of them is this radio station. Also this radio station. I know their digital streams are working, because I can listen to them via an internet radio app on my phone. So I know their digital signals are being sent out. But, while my phone app can play them, my computer browser can't play them.

I've tested both non-working stations in Chrome and Internet Explorer. They both don't work in Chrome, but this station also doesn't work in IE.

I'm using Chrome 80.0.3987.122. And I'm running Windows 7.

This problem only started a couple of days ago.

What's going on? How do I fix this?

Inside the Ethics Committee is a BBC Radio 4 programme. They describe it like this:

Joan Bakewell is joined by a panel of experts to wrestle with the ethics arising from a real-life medical case.

Each episode is chaired by Bakewell, with a range of different experts (who all sit on hospital ethics committees), talking about the ethical difficulties faced by healthcare professionals (and the organisations they work for) in different real life cases.

Some of it hasn't aged very well - there's an episode about HIV testing an unconscious patient after a needle-stick injury. With advances in treatment and reductions in stigma I think would have made it a very different programme today.

But most of it is pretty good, and explains in detail how some decisions are made.

For example: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0643x61

Ashley is 14 years old when doctors discover a brain tumour. Tests reveal that it's highly treatable; there's a 95% chance of cure if he has a course of radiotherapy.

Ashley begins the treatment but he has to wear a mask which makes him very anxious and the radiotherapy itself makes him sick. He finds it increasingly difficult to bear and he starts to miss his sessions.

Despite patchy treatment Ashley's cancer goes into remission. He and his mother are thrilled but a routine follow-up scan a few months later shows that the cancer has returned.

Ashley is adamant that he will not have the chemotherapy that is recommended this time. He threatens that he will run away if treatment is forced on him. Although Ashley is only 15 he is 6'2" and restraining him would not be easy.

Should the medical team and his mother persuade him to have the chemotherapy? Or should they accept his decision, even though he is only 15?

So, I am far from the most experienced, or the most knowledgeable, or the most active amateur radio operator out there, but it is something that has piqued my interest none the less. Before I got into the hobby, I always assumed that the FCC just game amateurs a small bucket of useless spectrum and that was it. Maybe you could fly an RC plane, but surely that is about as cool as it gets.

It turns out I was dead wrong. Amateurs are allocated bands all across the RF spectrum - more or less. Bands from way below the AM broadcast frequency to way above the microwave frequencies used by our cell phones and wireless routers. Also, you are allowed to legally transmit at up to 1.5 kilowatts of power! That's 3,000 times as much power as your average walkie talkie! :) Also, importantly, the license exam only costs $15.

At many of the lower frequencies, the signals bounce off the ionosphere and you can make contact with people all over the world (propagation gods permitting). At the higher frequencies, you lose that "skip propagation," but more bandwidth is available. There are analog voice repeater networks, digital packet networks, mesh networks running on modified commercial WiFi gear, and even a handful of old school packet BBSes. There are some LEO satellites which run voice repeaters which allow you make international contacts, and sometimes even the International Space Station will participate in events. Lots of cool stuff going on. This hobby is kind of a bottomless rabbit hole of possibilities.

I got my technician license about a year ago, and I have been most interested in the data networking end of the hobby. Despite being a pile of hacks, APRS is still very cool, and sometime soon I hope to set up an AREDN node of my own. Every once in a while I'll call into the local repeaters and shoot the breeze.

So there's my story. Are there any other hams out there?

I was wondering if there's anybody here who's interested in ham/amateur radio. I'm somewhat interested in it myself, and am planning on getting a BaoFeng BF-F8HP soon as my first radio, as well as a Tech (or maybe even General) license.