rkhalloran 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (109) comment rss

  • On the post: Trump Deploying The National Guard To Fight Crime Blurs The Legal Distinction Between Police & Military

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 29 Sep, 2025 @ 08:11am

    SCOTUS is making shit up at this point

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/28/clarance-thomas-precedence-supreme-court-docket But he's perfectly willing to uphold Lovings v. Virginia (overturning the ban on interracial marriages in the 60s) given his current relationship. Hypocritical SOB.

  • On the post: Institutional Failure: CBS Wimps Out, Pays Trump $16 Million Bribe To Settle Baseless Lawsuit

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 03 Jul, 2025 @ 08:24am

    Tiffany Network --> Home Shopping Network

    The era of Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow it sure as hell isn’t.
    They're no doubt spinning in their graves fast enough to power major cities. Murrow in particular loathed the need for advertisers (ref. "Good Night and Good Luck") while Uncle Walter saw them as a necessary evil at best. I'd like to think neither would have stood for this blatant payoff to accommodate politics.

  • On the post: Sorry, Affordable, Evenly Deployed Fiber Optic Broadband Is Illegal Now Under Our Shitty, Ignorant Government

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 13 May, 2025 @ 08:43am

    excuses

    The law was intended to make bandwidth available to rural and poor famililes where the big ISPs weren't pulling lines. That a disproportionate number of the latter are POC just gives 47 and co. a reason to slash the funding and drive business to the incumbent providers who so far have repeatedly proven they have zero interest to do so.

  • On the post: California Bill Would Require That AT&T And Comcast Make Broadband Affordable For Poor People

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 08 May, 2025 @ 08:32am

    sadly..

    Most of the entrenched ISPs have cut sweetheart deals with localities that effectively let them lockout potential competitors from pole access to string their own lines, etc. City/county-wide version of the apartment block owner locking the tenants into Provider X, who's usually providing some kickback based on percentage of tenants they get signed up.

  • On the post: Trump’s Illegal Effort To Defund Public Broadcasting Stumbles Forward

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 07 May, 2025 @ 08:46am

    You can't roll over enough for these people...

    One irony is that NPR’s coverage (like CBS, WAPO, the LA Times, and countless others) has folded to this bullying by being friendlier to Republicans than ever, which actively helped normalize authoritarianism this last election season. And they are still being bullied.
    And that is called paying the Dane-geld; But we've proved it again and again, That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld You never get rid of the Dane.
    • Kipling

  • On the post: Justin Baldoni Streisand’s Accusations Against Him By Sending Legal Threat Over ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 16 Jan, 2025 @ 04:50am

    Dragging Marvel/Disney into the mix...

    My guess is he's betting that the House of Mouse will buy him off rather than deal with the PR of being part of this whole sh*tshow. On the other hand, given the immense piles of money the Deadpool movies have brought in, they'd probably be OK with backing Reynolds/Lively to keep them happy. And Disney probably ranks just below IBM in their ability to Blacken the Sky with Lawyers.

  • On the post: Consumers Cut Streaming Services In 2024 After Endless Price Hikes And Enshittification

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 09 Jan, 2025 @ 05:12am

    relying on streaming a losing proposition

    Spinning-rust HDDs have become cheap enough, and disc ripping tools prevalent enough, that anything you want long-term is best acquired as physical media that you then rip to store yourself. A Raspberry Pi with a media server package, plugged into an outboard HDD, makes for a cheap NAS solution you can then play back on your preferred screen.

  • On the post: Trump FCC Commissioners, Cable Lobby, Use Lazy Soup And Coffee Metaphors To Defend Shitty Broadband Usage Caps

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 12 Dec, 2024 @ 08:12am

    >>Section 1, their preferred streaming services where the bandwidth usage just doesn’t count The core argument for net neutrality, where ISPs think their bits are 'better' than ones from outside their space. >>Section 2, where you can just pay a fee anyway. Pure cash-grab since obviously they *do* have the infrastructure bandwidth to deal with your usage, they just want to screw you out of more money to get at it.

  • On the post: Trump FCC Commissioners, Cable Lobby, Use Lazy Soup And Coffee Metaphors To Defend Shitty Broadband Usage Caps

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 12 Dec, 2024 @ 06:59am

    Not buffet but restaurant seating...

    Better analogy: restaurant seating. If you arrive and all the tables are taken, either you wait for one to free up (data throttling), or the owner needs to expand seating & kitchen capacity to deal with the traffic (backend upgrade). The ISPs are wanting to ensure some number of open tables or hustling diners through dinner to turn the table over quicker.

  • On the post: Honolulu Pays $175,000 To Settle Lawsuit Over Arrest Of A 10-Year-Old Girl

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 03 Dec, 2024 @ 05:59am

    re: payout

    My standing comment on these settlements is that taking it from the police pension fund would quickly lead to the "thin blue line" doing more to keep their own more in line...

  • On the post: Ohio Sheriff Tells People To Write Down Addresses Of People With Kamala Harris Signs In Their Yard

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 01 Oct, 2024 @ 11:40am

    Another "constitutional sheriff"?

    There's another faction of the MAGA delusion that believes that sheriffs are the ultimate arbiter of constitutional legality, state/federal authority notwithstanding. To no one's surprise, the "Chief Law Enforcement Officers" espousing this tend to lean (fall over..) to the right politically, claiming government overreach. This is generally used as an excuse for overreach by local LE instead, as if most of them cared about it. This guy seems to check all the boxes for this particular justification for overzealous policing. Reference piece: https://apnews.com/article/constitutional-sheriffs-5568cd0b6b27680a28de8a098ed14210

  • On the post: Dish, DirecTV Eye Irrelevant Oblivion Via Pointless Last Gasp Merger

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 17 Sep, 2024 @ 07:25am

    circling the drain

    The fixed cost of having multiple satellites in orbit, carriage fees to N providers, and no advantage from local exclusivity agreements w/r/t providers puts both companies at a disadvantage. With high-bandwidth internet available to an increasing number of people, now including mobile providers using their networks for backhaul, satellite TV is becoming a niche market for extreme rural settings and little else.

  • On the post: Monopolized U.S. Telecom Industry Eyes More Consolidation, Because What Could Go Wrong

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 12 Sep, 2024 @ 07:25am

    Trying to reassemble the monopoly?

    The former SW Bell has already swallowed up most of its Baby Bell siblings along with their mother, and put on her skin like some cautionary Greek myth. Verizon spun off a lot of their former-GTE acquisitions to Frontier in the early 00's and now wants it all back. Now they're suggesting the sole holdout among the Baby Bells (US West -> Qwest -> CenturyLink -> Lumen) may get assimilated as well? Can some high-level necromancer please resurrect Judge Greene and set him on Deathstar-Prime and its northeastern sibling before they start talking about consolidation?

  • On the post: School President Throws Library Dean Under The Bus After Florida College’s LGBTQ-Books-In-A-Dumpster Dumpster Fire

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 29 Aug, 2024 @ 08:48am

    DeStupid and the GQP-led legislature are well-known to be under the thumb of real estate developers. One of them proposed adding the golf course, hotel etc to the one park and the department apparently added the "improvements" to the other parks as cover. Then the Tampa paper got wind (before many of the parks' admins) and the resultant shitstorm has forced them to back away and claim it was never real to start with. I'm sure they'll try and push this later on once this initial outburst about it quiets down.

  • On the post: School President Throws Library Dean Under The Bus After Florida College’s LGBTQ-Books-In-A-Dumpster Dumpster Fire

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 29 Aug, 2024 @ 05:22am

    DeStupid following the playbook..

    The FL state dept for environmental protection, with jurisdiction over the state parks, recently proposed out of the blue to develop a handful of state parks with golf courses, hotels (er, "lodges" :-)), pickleball courts etc. https://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/2024/08/21/florida-state-parks-jonathan-dickinson-golf-course/ The plan was not well received: https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/politics/2024/08/28/florida-gov-desantis-puts-controversial-state-parks-plans-on-hold-jonathan-dickinson/74980449007/ "Republican leaders, including U.S. Sens. Rick Scott and Marco Rubio, and state Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, criticized the plan and came out against it. U.S. Rep. Brian Mast, a Republican who represents the Treasure Coast, said the plan would go forward “over my dead body.” " Now DeSantis' comments: ""It was not approved by me, I never saw that. They're going back to the drawing board," DeSantis told reporters. "A lot of that stuff was half-baked and it was not ready for prime time and it was intentionally leaked out to a left wing group to try to create a narrative," DeSantis said.

  • On the post: Press Struggles To Explain How The GOP Killed A Popular Broadband Discount Program, Driving Millions Of Poor Americans Off The Internet

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 28 Aug, 2024 @ 07:17am

    "Fairness" != "calling out BS"

    The press is bending over backwards to not appear biased in their reporting, even if what they're reporting on is politically-motivated bovine waste and likely to cause problems to the people they're supposedly informing. Unbiased reporting is expected, but willingness to speak truth to power when necessary is also expected as a core value of the Fourth Estate. Otherwise you may as well be Fawx News and simply pander to whatever faction best pays the advertising bills.

  • On the post: School President Throws Library Dean Under The Bus After Florida College’s LGBTQ-Books-In-A-Dumpster Dumpster Fire

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 28 Aug, 2024 @ 06:58am

    Not the first librarian dismissed

    Just after Corcoran & company arrived early 2023, they dismissed the librarian at the time, just in time for the students hitting finals to lose their reference librarian, with little explanation. Her being publicly out in the middle of their anti-LGBTQ rampage is generally considered to be a primary cause. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2023/05/04/new-college-florida-abruptly-dismisses-librarian

  • On the post: Florida College Throws Out A Bunch Of LGBTQ+ Books Just Because

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 25 Aug, 2024 @ 07:34pm

    GQP has abandoned principles

    As a younger guy I bought into the small-government arguments the Reagan era party was peddling. At this point they've thrown that aside to intrude into any number of aspects of people's lives and most recently jumped onto the authoritarian crap TFG is selling, hopefully with no more success than recently.

  • On the post: Florida College Throws Out A Bunch Of LGBTQ+ Books Just Because

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 24 Aug, 2024 @ 03:08pm

    Getting The F Out...

    A handful of other schools have offered fast transfer to NCF students looking to GTFO given the overhaul by DeStupid & co, which my kid thankfully took advantage of.

  • On the post: Florida College Throws Out A Bunch Of LGBTQ+ Books Just Because

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 24 Aug, 2024 @ 03:05pm

    um, state school?

    New College is a STATE College, not private.

Next >>