rkhalloran 's BestNetTech Comments

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  • On the post: Mike Pence Calls For RFK Jr.’s Ouster…But Not For The Reasons You Would Think

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 17 Dec, 2025 @ 05:15am

    Pence whistling to the canines

    By using the GQP trigger-word 'abortion' he's either subtly trying (yah right)to undermine his ex-boss by forcing his feckless colleagues to either take on Brain-worm Bobby or risk being called out by the pro-birth crowd, or he's calling out to the MAGAt crowd about the eeevil pill and trying to regain some credibility in the party after 47 dumping him for the second round.

  • On the post: Netflix To Buy Warner Bros For $82.7 Billion, But Trump FCC, DOJ Could Intervene For All The Wrong Reasons

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 08 Dec, 2025 @ 04:58am

    Free HBO/Max...

    I'm in the same boat, though as little as we use the service now that GoT is through, I'd be fine with pitching it should The New Owners decide to start charging for it. The content since Zaslav got his mitts on HBO has been less than compelling...

  • On the post: RFK Jr., CDC Vaccine Guidance, A New Deputy CDC Director, And Measles In South Carolina

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 04 Dec, 2025 @ 04:28am

    SC vaccine exemptions

    Many have religious exemptions, which are laughably easy to obtain and don’t require any affirmative description of what religion we’re even talking about.
    No faith tradition, short of a handful of niche evangelical/fundamentalist groups best summarized as 'storefront churches', have issues with vaccinations. Even the Christian Scientists, the typical example of religious exemptions, leave such matters to the individual. What we're seeing are adults buying into the right-wing BS about vaccine problems and using religion as their excuse to avoid the jab. Mind you almost all of these adults were vaccinated by their sensible parents having seen the fallout of now-preventable childhood scourges such as polio, etc.

  • On the post: Congress Dusts Off ‘Think Of The Children’ Playbook To Push Internet Censorship Bills

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 01 Dec, 2025 @ 11:39am

    If you're afraid..

    If you are Afraid of What your kids will see on the net? DONT GET THE NET.
    The correct answer is ACTUALLY PARENT YOUR KIDS. This is the digital version of finding "nudie mags" under your kid's bed then trying to sue Playboy/Penthouse/... for the kid getting ahold of them (yes I know they've stopped publishing in print).

  • On the post: RFK Jr. Is Very Interested In, And Likely Wrong About, Your Teenager’s Sperm Count

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 22 Oct, 2025 @ 08:40am

    RFKjr blather..

    "our parents aren't having children." Chances are if your parents didn't have children, neither will you... :-)

  • On the post: Another Report Highlights How Wireless SS7 Flaw Is Putting Everyone's Privacy At Risk

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 15 Oct, 2025 @ 08:46am

    SS7

    1) SS7 was ratified mid-70s, so realistically pre-cellular, and assumed to be between major wireline carriers all playing nice together; what need for security? 2) the ability of Five Eyes agencies to eavesdrop on 'trunk' traffic is presumably a feature-not-a-bug. 3) the rise of cellular, cheap SDR hardware and software to decompose traffic was frankly not on the radar at the time and unplanned for. 4) at this point retro-fitting any real security would require new CCITT specs to implement, which in the current political context would be even harder than getting the original agreement back in the 70s.

  • 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.

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