I can support efforts to create more Big Birds, but not more Elmo's. Worst child influence ever.
*Caillou has entered the chat*
I would always put the channel on PBS kids and didn't mind much what was on because I trusted it, except for Calliou.
The Push for a “PBS for the Internet”
161–170 of 303 posts
Re: The Push for a “PBS for the Internet”
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
PBS accepts large amounts from #bigAg, #bigPharma and various oligarch 'foundations'. The worry is that these huge entities shape the messaging. You won't ever hear monopolist Bill Gates critiqued on PBS or NPR for example...
That's certainly not true. NPR criticizes Bill Gates often as part of the "celebrity billionaire" group, and recently had a story about his affair with an employee.
'NPR’s funding from Gates “was not a factor in why or how we did the story,” reporter Pam Fessler says, adding that her reporting went beyond the voices quoted in her article. The story, nevertheless, is one of hundreds NPR has reported about the Gates Foundation or the work it funds, including myriad favorable pieces written from the perspective of Gates or its grantees.'
https://www.cjr.org/criticism/gates-foundation-journalism-fu...
Re: The Push for a “PBS for the Internet”
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
I work at PBS on one of the teams building these apps, and this has not been the case since I joined. PBS apps are maintained in house out of our Arlington headquarters, with most team members working fully remote during covid, but I fully appreciate you calling our apps good!
I’m sorry for my mistake. I live in Oregon and I was led to believe that OPB was developing the Kids apps since they reached out to me about 2ish years ago for working on the games.
No worries! My apologies if I came off brash, you may have been right about the origins of the kids games. We're currently hiring for engineers to work on them!
https://www.pbs.org/about/careers/current-openings/?gnk=job&...
Re: The Push for a “PBS for the Internet”
#164We already have this in Croatia! It works great! It’s called CARNET.
See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CARNet
You can also get extremely cheap access to CARNET via mobile and broadband providers in Croatia. They are CARNET only plans.
Re: The Push for a “PBS for the Internet”
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
We watch the full PBS NewsHour most nights, simulcast/streamed live on YouTube (also available on all/most PBS affiliates) ... and it's available for later viewing as well. Some would say it leans a bit left but I think it's the best unbiased presentation of (U.S.) national concerns. They get wide access for interview to the most relevant American and non-American persons across a wide range of topics and are not afr…
It's centrist, it's just that looking at facts instead of simply accepting what politicians say at face value often tends to lead to support for political talking points from the left. This isn't intrinsic to left or right wing ideologies, there are plenty of areas where nobody has a monopoly on good policy, but when it comes to Democratic and Republican political leaders, The Dems look to scientific consensus (clima…
I'm going to push back on that a little bit.
I think that climate change denial is one of many ways the GOP has sold its soul in the past 20 years, but the Democratic party takes it as axiomatic that certain climate change interventions are less harmful than climate change itself.
We can reasonably quantify flooding of coastal real-estate, but that is likely to be only a small fraction of the effects. So the overall picture of climate change looks like a giant pile of risk, rather than a clear outcome. The Democratic party has come to a consensus that the best way to treat the giant pile of risk is to treat the cost of allowing it to continue as approximately infinity.
50 years ago it was widely agreed upon that the US (and possibly humanity) faced an existential threat from thermonuclear war. Some people argued that unilateral disarmament was the best solution, but there were other points of view as well.
I would love a world in which the GOP were arguing about which climate-change interventions are not worth it rather than one in which the GOP just pretends that it's not happening (or not related to CO2 emissions).
FWIW The Democratic Party has its own blind spots on policy outcomes with regards to scientific consensus e.g. when it comes to affordable housing. Perhaps the stakes are higher when it comes to climate change, but the number of times I have heard a Democratic politician say "Supply and demand does not apply to X" without any evidence of that is rather mind-boggling.
Re: The Push for a “PBS for the Internet”
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The audience is centralised, and increasingly so. You could design a computer system that feels centralised, but is actually decentralised – like the Fediverse[0] – and have people use that. That'd solve this problem (if you had enough draw and interop to get people to switch). [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse
I don't see how the fediverse solves this problem. Fediverse nodes are no different than websites with respect to information distribution.
Take YouTube. There is one of it. PeerTube, however, could potentially encompass all video-hosting sites.
Re: The Push for a “PBS for the Internet”
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
I donate to PBS for the streaming, but I wish they would update their content more frequently, or rather they have a lot of content that I don’t care much about (especially the local programming). Mostly I’m interested in the nature, science, and history documentaries, especially the nature and nova series, but they only show a new episode once every few weeks.
Have you looked at their YouTube channels? Eons and SpaceTime are excellent. EDIT: here's all of the channels: https://www.youtube.com/c/pbsdigitalstudios/channels
My kids love It's Okay to Be Smart
Re: The Push for a “PBS for the Internet”
#168Historically we had public access to the cable network as a part of the cable act of 1984 - in the 80's and 90's there was a concept of PEG - Public, Educational, and Governmental TV channels that the Cable company had to carry as a part of being able to put lines in the ground.
https://www.fcc.gov/media/public-educational-and-governmenta...
The distribution side of this was made mostly irrelevant by on-demand services like YouTube - where it still exists it's mostly videography training, or making other local content, with a few channels still playing tapes.
Re: The Push for a “PBS for the Internet”
#169> decentralizing the distribution of quality news This is laudable - but it ignores the reality of aggregators and user behaviour in the attention economy. The audience is centralised, and increasingly so. The question becomes: how can a pluralistic public-service ecosystem flourish within that economy? In the UK the BBC has tried a number of routes for this, including sponsoring local reporters, external linking to…
Yep, it is odd. There's also an entire piece of R&D that the BBC are doing that I know people on called "Public Service Internet" https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/projects/public-service-internet
Interesting to read this - has anything come out of that project yet?
The BBC generally has quite good online services (e.g. news, iPlayer) but would be interesting to see what this project is thinking about.
Re: The Push for a “PBS for the Internet”
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m sorry for my mistake. I live in Oregon and I was led to believe that OPB was developing the Kids apps since they reached out to me about 2ish years ago for working on the games.
No worries! My apologies if I came off brash, you may have been right about the origins of the kids games. We're currently hiring for engineers to work on them! https://www.pbs.org/about/careers/current-openings/?gnk=job&...
Quick question if you know the answer: is that position remote-friendly/where is it located? There doesn't seem to be any location info on that listing.