Hi, this is Allison Sheridan of the NosillaCast Apple Podcast, hosted at Podfeet.com, a technology geek podcast with an EVER so slight Apple bias. Today is Sunday, October 25, 2026, and this is show number 1120. This week we have a quick update from Steve on his problem removing and reattaching a solar filter during a total eclipse, then I’ll tell you how I descended into madness installing Linux on my Synology just to test the install of an app called Blip. In Security Bits, Bart answers a listener question about backing up Passkeys, then he does a deep dive into what Certificate Authorities are and how the eMudhra certificate failure turned into the second-biggest security story of the week. Of course, he followed this with the even bigger story of how the programming language that powers the web, PHP, was compromised. Sounds like a fun show, am I right?
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Well, the big switchover on Patreon happened where everyone was foisted from per-creation pledges to monthly pledges. I have to say, I think that all in all … this went quite poorly.
I measure how well this went compared to what patrons (and I) should have been able to expect.
Before the switchover, I downloaded all of the membership info into a CSV file so I could import it into Excel to analyze the data before and after.
Patreon told me that they would take the per-creation amount from before the switchover and multiply it by 4 for their new monthly pledge, unless the person had already set a max monthly pledge, and then they would use that. I suggested if people wanted to stabilize the number before the switchover, they could go set a max monthly pledge and then they’d be golden.
Of the folks who took the opportunity to set a monthly max, the vast majority set the monthly max to what they were donating weekly before. I’m relatively certain that the system must have been confusing because I can’t believe that many people meant to cut their pledge by 75%! I spoke with one patron who was in this boat and who is a close friend. I knew she would not be insulted that I was questioning her financial decisions, and she said that she had definitely not intended to do that.
She even provided a screenshot showing that her pledge is set to her intended monthly pledge which was 4X her weekly pledge before.
One lovely patron (who has been a patron for a decade), had a pledge of $5/creation with a max of $30/month. They applied a manual change to set the monthly max to $5 (which again, I’m pretty sure was unintentional), but the algorithm put them down to $20/month anyway.
Another (also lovely person) had a per-creation pledge of $2 with a $2/month max. Did Patreon put them down for $2/month? Nope, they were assigned $8/month.
If you’re a current patron, it would be great if you’d pop back in there and evaluate whether the amount you’re now pledging is what you meant to spend. If it’s 25% of what you were giving before and you meant to do that, I’m not at all offended or annoyed. If the system was so goofy that it led you to believe you were keeping your pledge the same as before, then it looks like some action might be required.
I’d like to thank Richard Gunther, Joop, Kenneth Knight, John Ormsby and Clinton MacDonald for upping their pledges to match, or even exceed, what they were giving before to try to fix this mess!
The only good part of this story is that to compare the two CSV exports in Excel is that I got to use one of my favorite tools, VLOOKUP, to find values from one data range and return a value from a different data range. But get this: I got the VLOOKUP right the very first try! That has literally never happened in the decades I’ve been using Excel.
The bottom line is that I’m sad that this disruption is annoying for the patrons, but things should settle down soon!
Security Bits — 25 October 2026
Transcript of NC_2026_10_25
That’s going to wind this up for this week. Did you know you can email me at [email protected] any time you like? If you have a question or a suggestion, just send it on over. Remember, everything good starts with podfeet.com. You can follow me on Mastodon at podfeet.com/mastodon. If you want to actually see Steve and my podcast work on YouTube, you can go to podfeet.com/youtube. If you want to join the conversation, you can join our Slack community at podfeet.com/slack where you can talk to me and all of the other lovely NosillaCastaways. You can support the show at podfeet.com/patreon or with a one-time donation at podfeet.com/donate with Apple Pay or any credit card, or through podfeet.com/paypal. And if you want to join in the fun of the live show, head on over to podfeet.com/live on Sunday nights at 5 PM Pacific Time and join the friendly and enthusiastic NosillaCastaways. Thanks for listening, and stay subscribed.