It's quite expensive to operate broadcast TV stations because they're designed to keep the barriers to access to their programming very low. No subscriptions or intermediate distribution networks between the licensed transmitter and the consumer...just some cheap and easy to find commodity hardware. At least, that was how TV used to be.

ATSC screwed that up in the US. The transition was huge bungle at a time when internet bandwidth was about on-par for the purpose of delivering video content. These days a cell phone gets you more entertainment than the combined programming of all broadcasters in a market and everyone has a phone/tablet...part of the cost of living in the modern world.

Allowing large collections of TV licenses to be held is, in this day, a leveling of the playing field from my point of view. We've had DirecTV and Dish, Comcast and Cox, all national footprint content distributors, for decades now. I don't see much of a difference between a Comcast and a Sinclair anymore.

If you wanted to really be fair, you'd subject companies that hold more than a certain national percentage of broadcast licenses to the same standards that are applied to a common communications carrier, maybe?

Not sure how quickly 3rd-party parts will be available or if they'll work the same. A lot of the issues with Deere equipment is in the distributed nature of the software. Lots of sensors and actuators run Deere-owned software. Even if the part OEM branches out and sells directly to consumers (which is not likely as I bet most of the sourcing contracts are exclusive to Deere...no direct sales of Deere-designed parts) the software loads are still going be under copyright.

It's one thing to crank out monkey-copy taillight lenses. It's a whole different thing to do that to LIDAR/RADAR assemblies that automatically adjust cutting heads to follow the ground contours.

Acronym collisions are unavoidable, but you're think someone would've done some research on MXC before going with it?

Care to explain the recent Starlink whitelisting event that locked most Russian terminals out of the network and arguably resulted in the collapse of a number of their offensive operations while giving Ukraine a large operational advantage?

You mean, like cPanel?

Don't even need Copyfail. The broken auth logic grants root itself.

Try running a C compiler on a pair of stringy floppies. I did that for a time on some QLs. You went about it the same way you'd go about compiling on a 2-floppy CP/M setup. Source, editor and compiler (with requisite header files) on one disk, linker and libraries on the other disk.

Louis: "Ah, we have zunk ze last of ze cursed Windows machine in the depths of the Siene, Capitaine!"
Jacques: "Very well. What do you use to look after our mighty fleet of Manchot?"
Louis: "Why, Intune, of course."
Jacques: "Sacre bleu!"

Some years ago we had a BBB server set up that interfaced with our Moodle implementation. BBB was (is?) a mishmash of OSS, including using FreePBX for media switching and compositing. If you're not familiar with WebRTC, SIP and the plumbing behind that then it can be a bear to troubleshoot. It think that's one reason why it doesn't have the following of, say, Discord.

We ended up going with Zoom later on as it was cheap at the time and the end-users took to it like ducks to water. Now we're looking at other options because Zoom got caught up in the whole AI thing.

Wouldn't THAT be a hoot? Starlink also being a secret ABM system, with the orbital vehicles sacrificing themselves to fill their orbits with clouds of debris to intercept missiles in mid-flight...

C has had the "unsafe" declarator since its inception. It's very easy to see: if the file name ends in ".c", you know you're looking at potentially unsafe code and should be careful.

Not even local news? I get the attitude but there are some good news programs out there, still. Of course, you may think you already know everything so what's the point of digesting any news programs, right?

Outside of sports and news, there's little reason to watch linear programming anymore. Personally, I like that my cable provider bundles most of the streamers that I like to access as it actually lowers the cost vs. individual subscriptions.

You also get to ditch the cable box for a bring-your-own-Roku and have some DVR functionality (rewind and somtimes fast-forward...nice for watching live football) built into the cable "app".

I think that there's a growing market for providers that can bundle streamers in a cost-effective "one-stop" product.

It's really quite simple if you've ever gone elbows deep into a modern engine...

To meet new CAFE numbers, you have to get your engine as small and light as possible for the parameters it needs to meet for the product. So, all aluminum 3 or 4 cylinder blocks, under 3 liters of displacement. These don't produce great power naturally aspirated so you add some form of forced induction. Turbocharging tends to be the most efficient and easiest to control to provide variable boost so you bolt one of those on, with all the plumbing and controls.

Forced induction leads to higher chamber pressures. Add direct injection and you start getting some rather "dynamic" effects during combustion. All this energy gets transmitted down the conrod to the main crank. What's protecting the crank? Soft metal bearings that expect a certain amount of oil film of a certain strength to be between the parts to cushion, cool and lubricate the crank and conrod.

Thanks to other parts of CAFE and EPA regulations, the oil specified by some engine manufacturers is light...very light. 0W-20 or even 0W-18. And, it has fewer "old school" additives like zinc sulfate or similar, that act to protect against metal to metal damage, should the oil film get too thin.

Finally, your average car owner in the US is not the best when it comes to maintenance and will run an engine long past its oil-change point. This is where the trouble starts. These thin oils don't have great additive packages because they have to be thin to keep the lubricating friction losses down to meet efficiency benchmarks. As the engine racks up hours they tend to overwhelm the oil detergent packages (detergents suspend fine particles swept up by the oil, hopefully to be filtered out) and start shedding ash and other particulates. At this point, the oil isn't meeting the lubrication requirements, and you start seeing bearing damage. Keep this up and eventually you'll trash a bearing as everything's been engineered down to the Nth degree with little margin for slop.