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It's worth noting that PBS affiliates are non-profits that have fairly constrained budgets, especially now that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has been

It's worth noting that PBS affiliates are non-profits that have fairly constrained budgets, especially now that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has been dissolved due to DOGE. Non-profit IT has always seemed, to me at least, to be a land of compromises. There's rarely enough money, knowledge, or time to do things "the right way", so you have to do the best you can. If I could only choose one backup to have, it'd be remote on a provider like Iron Mountain. It would seem as if they are storing things on Iron Mountain through an intermediary company, who may or may not have actually paid the bill. So, y'know, fraud's a possibility here.

Mistletoe 2mo ago
[flagged]
- WorldMaker 2mo ago
  It's nice to know that even in the end the CPB lived up to its mission and promise and swallowed its poison pill rather than be corrupted by partisan politics, but it's also gross to have seen that forewarned poison pill needed in my lifetime. There's some hope that we can still find the next Mr. Rogers to put a heart on a sleeve in front of some future Congress and build a sequel CPB with similar strong core principles.
  - ameliaquining 2mo ago
    The U.S. was way less politically polarized back then.
    - LogicFailsMe 2mo ago
      I think we were just as polarized, if not more so, but we didn't have 24/7 ragebait egging us on to fight some more to drive up the engagement numbers. It's like someone watched the Star Trek ToS episode "Day of The Dove" and thought it was a great idea for a startup. But also, that was 1968, plus sa change and all that...
      - ameliaquining 2mo ago
        Most political scientists don't agree with this. The Wikipedia page provides a good overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_polarization_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_polarization_in_the_...
        LogicFailsMe 2mo ago
        By their metrics, clearly, they are correct. But reading some books lately that were either from or set during the mid-70s to early 80s, the same tired political tropes were already in the zeitgeist. But also, from that link... "Americans' views on gun control seem to stem almost entirely from their cultural worldview and how they position themselves in that cultural schema. Statistics do not persuade them to change their minds." If true, stick a fork in us, we're cooked.
- pirate787 2mo ago
  Sesame Street is doing just fine and the people making billions off the licensing will have to make do without federal taxpayer subsidy.
cwnyth 2mo ago
Iron Mountain is actually an incredibly expensive option, and their agreements are predatory. I would not recommend them.
- epistasis 2mo ago
  Their contract was with OSS, a company that went defunct, that had apparently been using Iron Mountain underneath.
  - cwnyth 2mo ago
    Thanks for the clarification.
- SwellJoe 2mo ago
  Old-fashioned as hell, too. My employer needed to put our stack in escrow for a large deal, and Iron Mountain was where it went. They pass Word docs back and forth like savages.
- quietsegfault 2mo ago
  I used iron mountain for offsite storage of tapes for a huge scientific data archive. The price seemed reasonable given the service we had.
  - cwnyth 2mo ago
    At a company I worked for, we used them for off-site storage, and when we finally went looking for alternatives, we realized we were being charged thousands of dollars a year more than competitors. We no longer have a contract with Iron Mountain.
pirate787 2mo ago
Congress voted to stop federal funding of the CPB, it had nothing to do with DOGE. In a free society, we don't need state-run media.
- rswail 2mo ago
  In an oligarch owned media ecosystem, with obvious corruption of the regulators (FCC, DOJ) to ensure proper use of the public radio spectrum and monopoly restrictions, having a non-partisan publicly funded independent media is vital to the health of democracy. The US is not a "free society". Which is why the BBC, ABC, CBC, etc exist in civilized societies.
  - mindslight 2mo ago
    I think it's worth putting a finer point on the dynamic that the US's real state-run media IS FOX, NBC, and their ilk. The main power structure in the US is the corporate conglomerates, whose owners/managers may compete with one another like players of a sporting team compete with each other, but are ultimately all playing against the People. So invoking "state run media" to talk about PBS/NPR/CPB taking a little public money and trying to produce a different angle of public good rings totally hollow. If you don't like what they end up producing, you can always not tune in! But by the time you're rejecting them on ideological grounds, you should have already rejected every other single station on the air apart from community access type channels.
- jancsika 2mo ago
  > In a free society, we don't need state-run media. I think this is a kind of time-sequence fallacy which I've seen before on HN. It's not that "we don't," but that, perhaps, "we wouldn't." E.g., I study the pieces still standing in famous checkmate positions and decide to start the game using only those pieces. Bad strategy.

Mistletoe 2mo ago

[flagged]

WorldMaker 2mo ago
It's nice to know that even in the end the CPB lived up to its mission and promise and swallowed its poison pill rather than be corrupted by partisan politics, but it's also gross to have seen that forewarned poison pill needed in my lifetime. There's some hope that we can still find the next Mr. Rogers to put a heart on a sleeve in front of some future Congress and build a sequel CPB with similar strong core principles.
- ameliaquining 2mo ago
  The U.S. was way less politically polarized back then.
  - LogicFailsMe 2mo ago
    I think we were just as polarized, if not more so, but we didn't have 24/7 ragebait egging us on to fight some more to drive up the engagement numbers. It's like someone watched the Star Trek ToS episode "Day of The Dove" and thought it was a great idea for a startup. But also, that was 1968, plus sa change and all that...
    - ameliaquining 2mo ago
      Most political scientists don't agree with this. The Wikipedia page provides a good overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_polarization_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_polarization_in_the_...
      - LogicFailsMe 2mo ago
        By their metrics, clearly, they are correct. But reading some books lately that were either from or set during the mid-70s to early 80s, the same tired political tropes were already in the zeitgeist. But also, from that link... "Americans' views on gun control seem to stem almost entirely from their cultural worldview and how they position themselves in that cultural schema. Statistics do not persuade them to change their minds." If true, stick a fork in us, we're cooked.
pirate787 2mo ago
Sesame Street is doing just fine and the people making billions off the licensing will have to make do without federal taxpayer subsidy.

cwnyth 2mo ago

Iron Mountain is actually an incredibly expensive option, and their agreements are predatory. I would not recommend them.

epistasis 2mo ago
Their contract was with OSS, a company that went defunct, that had apparently been using Iron Mountain underneath.
- cwnyth 2mo ago
  Thanks for the clarification.
SwellJoe 2mo ago
Old-fashioned as hell, too. My employer needed to put our stack in escrow for a large deal, and Iron Mountain was where it went. They pass Word docs back and forth like savages.
quietsegfault 2mo ago
I used iron mountain for offsite storage of tapes for a huge scientific data archive. The price seemed reasonable given the service we had.
- cwnyth 2mo ago
  At a company I worked for, we used them for off-site storage, and when we finally went looking for alternatives, we realized we were being charged thousands of dollars a year more than competitors. We no longer have a contract with Iron Mountain.

pirate787 2mo ago

Congress voted to stop federal funding of the CPB, it had nothing to do with DOGE. In a free society, we don't need state-run media.

rswail 2mo ago
In an oligarch owned media ecosystem, with obvious corruption of the regulators (FCC, DOJ) to ensure proper use of the public radio spectrum and monopoly restrictions, having a non-partisan publicly funded independent media is vital to the health of democracy. The US is not a "free society". Which is why the BBC, ABC, CBC, etc exist in civilized societies.
- mindslight 2mo ago
  I think it's worth putting a finer point on the dynamic that the US's real state-run media IS FOX, NBC, and their ilk. The main power structure in the US is the corporate conglomerates, whose owners/managers may compete with one another like players of a sporting team compete with each other, but are ultimately all playing against the People. So invoking "state run media" to talk about PBS/NPR/CPB taking a little public money and trying to produce a different angle of public good rings totally hollow. If you don't like what they end up producing, you can always not tune in! But by the time you're rejecting them on ideological grounds, you should have already rejected every other single station on the air apart from community access type channels.
jancsika 2mo ago
> In a free society, we don't need state-run media. I think this is a kind of time-sequence fallacy which I've seen before on HN. It's not that "we don't," but that, perhaps, "we wouldn't." E.g., I study the pieces still standing in famous checkmate positions and decide to start the game using only those pieces. Bad strategy.