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Comment Well... (Score 1) 19

This will be great for Haiku, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD installs, there's not the remotest possibility there'll be binaries for these. Not because the software couldn't be ported, but because the sorts of people politicians hire to write software would never be able to figure out the installer.

Submission + - Arkansas becoming 1st state to sever ties with PBS, effective July 1 (apnews.com)

joshuark writes: Arkansas is becoming the first state to officially end its public television affiliation with PBS. The Arkansas Educational Television Commission, whose members are all appointed by the governor, voted to disaffiliate from PBS effective July 1, 2026, citing the $2.5 million annual membership dues as “not feasible.” The decision was also driven by the loss of a similar amount in federal funding after the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) was defunded by Congress.

PBS Arkansas is rebranding itself as Arkansas TV and will provide more local content, the agency’s Executive Director and CEO Carlton Wing said in a statement. Wing, a former Republican state representative, took the helm of the agency in September.

“Public television in Arkansas is not going away,” Wing said. “In fact, we invite you to join our vision for an increased focus on local programming, continuing to safeguard Arkansans in times of emergency and supporting our K-12 educators and students.”

“The commission’s decision to drop PBS membership is a blow to Arkansans who will lose free, over the air access to quality PBS programming they know and love,” a PBS spokesperson wrote in an email to The Associated Press.

The demise of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, is a direct result of President Donald Trump’s targeting of public media, which he has repeatedly said is spreading political and cultural views antithetical to those the United States should be espousing. Trump denied taking a big should on television viewers.

Comment Re:Can't Europe (Score 1) 121

The time has come for a European University CSE department group to reverse-engineer HDMI 2.1 and publish a compatible implementation on Github.

There's a solid history of this category of work going back 30 years.

They have certain legal protections for compatibility and public interest work.

This 1990's licensing model is antiquated and obsolete.

IEEE and ITU have abdicated their responsibility so sombody like Valve needs to do for transport spec what AV1 did for codecs and linux did for operating systems.

"A rising tide lifts all boats" is common among free marketeers and communists but opposed by fascists.

Comment Re:Real problem is criminal motivations (Score 1) 19

> Is there a huge difference between a criminal organization and a multinational corporation?

Yes, huge difference.

The common-law criminals running corporations get statutory protection from liability for the crimes they commit under corporate letterhead.

A regular mafia has individual liability.

Comment Re:People that are otherwise rational (Score 2) 121

It's supported by a vast body of observations and consistent models grounded in well-established physics.

Too bad the climate scientists can't program. Their computer models are pure garbage.

Climate models are physics bases, and, to date, have been quite successful in predictions.
  https://yaleclimateconnections...
  https://science.nasa.gov/earth...

Comment Re:I can see the point. (Score 2) 135

There is no reason why social media couldn't be safe. USENET was never this bad.

Yes it was. That's why USENET invented moderation. The unmoderated forums were pretty horrific sometimes.

The one thing about USENET, though, is that the trolls and flamers and a$$holes were actual humans, not troll farms or click-farmers or AIs.

Comment I can see the point. (Score 4, Insightful) 135

Social media has become a toxic dump. If you wouldn't allow children to play in waste effluent from a 1960s nuclear power plant, then you shouldn't allow them to play in the social media that's out there. Because, frankly, of the two, plutonium is safer.

I do, however, contend that this is a perfectly fixable problem. There is no reason why social media couldn't be safe. USENET was never this bad. Hell, Slashdot at its worst was never as bad as Facebook at its best. And Kuro5hin was miles better than X. Had a better name, too. The reason it's bad is that politicians get a lot of kickbacks from the companies and the advertisers, plus a lot of free exposure to millions. Politicians would do ANYTHING for publicity.

I would therefore contend that Australia is fixing the wrong problem. Brain-damaging material on Facebook doesn't magically become less brain-damaging because kids have to work harder to get brain damage. Nor are adults mystically immune. If you took the planet's IQ today and compared it to what it was in the early 1990s, I'm convinced the global average would have dropped 30 points. Australia is, however, at least acknowledging that a problem exists. They just haven't identified the right one. I'll give them participation points. The rest of the globe, not so much.

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