rkhalloran 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Grandmother Awarded Nearly $4 Million Over SWAT Raid Predicated On A Faulty ‘Find My Phone’ Ping

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 22 Mar, 2024 @ 11:57am

    re: who pays?

    As usual, this will come out of the city's general funds, which gives the PD license to keep being a-holes; no skin in the game for them. Have these judgments come out of the police pension fund and see how fast the "thin blue line" gets shredded and the bad apples get thrown out of the barrel as quickly as possible.

  • On the post: Does Elon Grok The Trademark Issues With ‘Grok’? AI Chip Company Groq Does

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 16 Nov, 2023 @ 05:48am

    Then the company motto becomes...

    So the sign out front would say "Go stick your head in a pig"?

  • On the post: A New Low: Just 46% Of U.S. Households Subscribe To Traditional Cable TV

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 18 Sep, 2023 @ 11:37am

    TV quality

    Sure, a lot of low-quality “reality” TV appeared about 15-25 years ago, but we’ve also been getting a lot more good TV.
    For better or worse, a lot of "reality" programming began with the last big writers' strike, when the studios were looking for ANYTHING to fill timeslots. This gives me concern with the current strike; are we doomed to more Real Housewives and pseudo-sports drivel? At the same time, the rise of streamers looking to draw eyeballs and not beholden to the cable carriers has led to a lot of very watchable shows. Netflix & Amazon have seemed willing to invest in longer-term productionw with an eye to retaining viewers.

  • On the post: Disney, Spectrum End Cable Blackout, Nothing Meaningfully Changes

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 14 Sep, 2023 @ 06:02am

    Carriage disputes - Cox Media

    My local Fox station is owned by Cox Media, who has been in a carriage dispute with Dish since end-November '22. Of course they're whining about being able to serve their customers and pointing them to the other providers (surprisingly including Hulu, YouTube & Fubo streaming) and OTA antenna. Doesn't look like it's settling anytime soon.

  • On the post: Florida’s Governor Continues To Abuse His Executive Power To Eject His Political Opponents

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 16 Aug, 2023 @ 01:48pm

    don't be "soft on crime"

    The GOP going back to Reagan v Dukakis (if not earlier) have pushed the story that the Dems are weak on crime and electing them will have "those people" ransacking your family & home. Classic trope from the Dixiecrat contingent that moved to the GOP post-LBJ.

  • On the post: Florida’s Governor Continues To Abuse His Executive Power To Eject His Political Opponents

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 16 Aug, 2023 @ 01:43pm

    "they cheat"

    He said from the start the only way he could lose was if "they" cheated, setting up the whole situation we're in now.

  • On the post: Florida’s Governor Continues To Abuse His Executive Power To Eject His Political Opponents

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 16 Aug, 2023 @ 09:47am

    Current GOP

    Remember that much of what calls itself the GOP these days are the result of Nixon's "Southern Strategy" where the segregationist southern wing of the Dems were invited to "cross the aisle" with a wink to their racism after LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act. Their policies have become the default for the party since the Reagan era.

  • On the post: Florida’s Governor Continues To Abuse His Executive Power To Eject His Political Opponents

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 16 Aug, 2023 @ 09:24am

    DeStupid

    The dismantling of Disney's Reedy Creek management operation as payback for their speaking out against the Don't-Say-Gay bill. The dismissal of two county-level AGs for not prosecuting cases hard enough. On a personal note, his upheaval of the state honors school, New College in Sarasota, where my kid *was* attending, now led by his former education commissioner and Ron's CRT attack dog Christopher Rufo. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/14/us/ron-desantis-new-college-florida.html https://www.tampabay.com/news/education/2023/07/19/new-college-florida-struggles-through-overhaul/ https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2023/01/11/desantis-seeks-overhaul-small-liberal-arts-college My kid has taken the offer from Hampshire College in Amherst MA for a soft landing, even though we'll be out of pocket for some thousands for them to be able to complete their degree; with the faculty departures at NCF this wasn't going to happen there.

  • On the post: ‘Max’ Loses Millions Of Streaming Subs After Ongoing Merger Incompetence Bonanza

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 14 Aug, 2023 @ 04:47am

    If I wasn't getting it free...

    I'm still getting HBO -> Max free since I'm on AT&T's gig fiber ISP, presumably a carry-over from when they still owned it. We've watched some stuff there, but especially after the WB/Disco switch, if they expected my *money* for it...

  • On the post: After Bodycam Footage Undoes Its Narrative, NYPD Agrees To Pay $13 Million To Anti-Police Violence Protesters

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 08 Aug, 2023 @ 04:59am

    Fines

    Better still, fines against a department come out of their precious pension fund; *this* would push them to police their own (pun unintended) to protect their retirement $$.

  • On the post: After Bodycam Footage Undoes Its Narrative, NYPD Agrees To Pay $13 Million To Anti-Police Violence Protesters

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 08 Aug, 2023 @ 04:54am

    possible solution?

    If the payouts for these settlements started coming out of the PD's pension fund, I expect the "thin blue line" would shred to bits in short order (yes I know, their contracts insulate them, but items like this may give the cities/counties more leverage in future negotiations).

  • On the post: External Audit Finds Sacramento PD Hasn’t Updated Its Search And Seizure Policy Since 2007

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 03 Jul, 2023 @ 05:56am

    QI solution

    Push through a rule that settlements against police come out of their pension funds and see how fast "the thin blue line" comes apart...

  • On the post: Predictive Policing Makes Everyone A Suspect, Even EU Officials

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 07 Mar, 2023 @ 08:31am

    'more than one school"

    Most military kids will trigger this one simply by virtue of their parent/s' redeployments over their time in service...

  • On the post: HBO Max Keeps Losing Popular Content, Highlighting The Raging Stupidity Of Pointless Media Megamergers

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 06 Jan, 2023 @ 06:16am

    what's the point?

    If they're pulling content they've already produced, isn't that a 'sunk cost' and not costing them much to keep on? Is Zaslav thinking he can replace all of this with Yet More Home Improvement Shows and keep the viewership? Seems like a bunch of the DC comics-related stuff is going away, and they've scuttled almost all the DC shows on the CW network as well. Again, because of production costs vs. "reality" shows? [ A personal disappointment is HBO Max pulling the remastered Babylon 5 series from the 90s, IMNSHO one of the best SF series of that era ]. HBO has been a source of quality shows for decades now, though Netflix & Amazon have been catching up of late. Is he thinking of more $$ by licensing content out to them instead of self-hosting on their captive channels? Little of this makes any sense, and I doubt Zaslav is thinking of anything besides production costs, ignoring whether any of his preferred on-the-cheap content will draw the same level of viewership.

  • On the post: NY Times Aptly Illustrates How The AT&T Time Warner Merger Was An Even Bigger Mess Than You Probably Realized

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 29 Nov, 2022 @ 07:55am

    AT&T management

    back in the mid-80s breakup days, a tech pundit said that given the Deathstar's monopoly mindset, a post-breakup AT&T wouldn't know how to market a cure for cancer. Looks like things haven't changed much (yes, yes, I know the current AT&T is SW Bell with a facelift but I expect the management post-breakup isn't appreciably different).

  • On the post: Legacy News Orgs’ Hatred Of Google Runs So Deep They’re Willing To Give Up Fair Use To Punish Google

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 16 Sep, 2022 @ 06:26am

    see: Google News exits Spain

    You would think they'd take the earlier situation in Spain (https://www.techdirt.com/2015/07/29/study-spains-google-tax-news-shows-how-much-damage-it-has-done/) as a Terrible Warning as to what could happen. Even given the size of the US market I think the 'Plex would be happy to pull the plug on News rather than Pay the Danegeld.

  • On the post: Clarence Thomas REALLY Wants To Make It Easier For The Powerful To Sue People For Criticizing Them

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 29 Jun, 2022 @ 11:42am

    Hillary had words

    on one of the talking-head political shows this past Sunday, HRC told the interviewer: "I went to law school with him. He's been a person of grievance for as long as I have known him," Clinton said Tuesday during an interview on "CBS This Morning" with Gayle King. "Resentment, grievance, anger," she added. This is nothing new apparently...

  • On the post: Clarence Thomas REALLY Wants To Make It Easier For The Powerful To Sue People For Criticizing Them

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 29 Jun, 2022 @ 11:37am

    cases he wants to review

    he made the point in his opinion striking down Roe v Wade that he wanted to review Obergefell v. Hodges; wonder why he didn't mention Loving v. Virginia? :-) The hypocrisy is breathtaking...

  • On the post: Another 1.2 Million Consumers Ditched Traditional Cable TV Last Quarter

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 31 Aug, 2021 @ 04:49am

    Re: saving money

    Had been on DirecTV for a few years as a cheaper alternative to the Comcast pricing at the time. That was before the AT&T acquisition and unending price increases. When the two-year 'commitment' expired last fall, jumped to the Disney bundle (toddler grandkids) and upgraded the Hulu service to their Live tier. Hulu Live is about 40% of what we were paying for satellite with the same channel lineup. We also get a discount on the Disney+. We already had Netflix and we're Amazon Prime customers, so we have no lack of available content.

  • On the post: Stupid Cable TV Retrans Feuds And Blackouts Make Their Way To Streaming TV

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 11 Dec, 2020 @ 04:21am

    Re: Don't forget about AT&T and Tegna

    I dumped DirecTV last month; AT&T's fiber service is (at least for now) uncapped, and Hulu Live is one-third the cost of what I was giving the Deathstar, gets me the locals, and if they get in a pissing match over retrans fees, I'm < 3 mi/5 km from the local broadcast towers and a cheap antenna will get me the locals just fine.

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