NPR to get $36M in settlement to operate US public radio system

https://apnews.com/article/trump-npr-lawsuit-2cc4abfa8cf00fe6f89e387e63eb4a2a

40•geox•1h ago

Comments

giancarlostoro•50m ago

Call me ignorant but isn't it drastically cheaper to run an internet radio station? Then let others, including other radio stations repeat your internet stream over radio. I'm genuinely curious.

floatrock•41m ago

What happens when a major CDN goes out? Or, god forbid, a major datacenter region has a DNS blip that apparently 1/3 of the internet depends on?

Or, what if a hurricane or ice storm knocks out some internet connectivity? That would be a time when you really want to broadcast a message to anyone with a cheap fm/am radio.

Cheaper isn't always the metric here.

giancarlostoro•39m ago

CDN? for internet radio? Internet radio predates all that.

floatrock•29m ago

Predates, sure.

Is affected by? No idea, but I'm sure there's some cloudflare rep convincing you that you need cloudflare to make sure your high-availability stream stays highly available when just yesterday azure got a ddos measured with Tbs. Just not today... today those cloudflare reps happen to be busy.

Point is, radio comms serve a public utility that often is a Plan-B if internet links go down. Multicast it onto your podcatcher of choice, sure, but don't make that your backbone.

E39M5S62•38m ago

I'm curious too. As a complete outsider to that problem space, it seems like a lot of the tech was designed/created in an era before wide-spread broadband and internet-based content distribution. I'm sure a lot of it is simply that new hardware from that vendor is largely a drop-in replacement for each station, so there's no need to re-engineer their broadcast booth.

Stealthisbook•37m ago

The justification for many of these stations is emergency preparedness. They're maintained for the ability to receive and transmit emergency alerts despite power outages or transmission line cuts. The daily programming is mostly incidental beyond maintaining listenership

ndiddy•37m ago

The stations that rely on CPB funding as a main source of income are the "others" who repeat the NPR content over the radio. They're tiny stations (typically 1-2 full-time employees) that mainly serve communities where internet streaming is not a viable option due to spotty cell coverage.

woodruffw•25m ago

The US is pretty large, and has large areas without reliable cellular or wired Internet connections. Public radio ensures accessibility in those areas.

almosthere•21m ago

I wonder if we should just pass a bill that requires Starlink or Amazon Leo to use 0.5% of their bandwidth for low quality (but higher than radio) free access to Inet Radio streams in some special way. Then start building out the infra in vehicles.

woodruffw•4m ago

There are plenty of places in the US that don't have reliable satellite access either (not because of orbital coverage, but because of geographic features like mountains/deep valleys).

(And these aren't remote/unpopulated areas: you can find plenty of satellite dead zones 2-3 hours outside of NYC in the Catskills.)

mikeyouse•44m ago

The system in question is actually pretty interesting from a tech standpoint;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Radio_Satellite_System

> In 2007, the SOSS was retired for the newest and current system of the PRSS, the ContentDepot. The ContentDepot no longer uses linear feeds of SCPC-based digital audio bitstreams like the SOSS. Instead, it uses a dedicated TCP/IP-based one-way connection uplinked via satellite from PRSS, which is received by a storage receiver (a combination satellite data receiver & file server) manufactured by International Datacasting [5]. Program feeds are requested and set up at a special internet-accessible web site (known as the ContentDepot Portal) that member stations can log on to, where they can subscribe to specific programs and live feeds. The subscribed programs are then delivered via satellite as a file transfer to the storage receiver in the form of MP2-encoded ACM-based WAV files, which then can be imported into a station's automation and/or playback system.

> Live feeds are sent in the ContentDepot system as streaming MP2 audio, sent over the same satellite transponder, but as an IP multicast stream (as opposed to a file transfer for pre-recorded programs) which is decoded by a special streaming audio receiver (called a stream decoder) set to the IP multicast addresses assigned for live audio streams on the satellite transponder used by ContentDepot.

> The newest generation of ContentDepot hardware for the PRSS, as of 2014 and also manufactured by International Datacasting, is a special version custom-manufactured for PRSS of their commercially available "Superflex Pro Audio" receiver. It combines both the stream decoder for live programming and storage receiver for pre-recorded programming in one rack-mounted system, in previous comparison to separate units for live decoding and program storage respectively with the introduction of ContentDepot.

> Some components of the previous SOSS still are in use in the ContentDepot era: one of the ABR-700 demods (as well as the downconverter) is still used by NPR as a "squawk box" for verbal announcements regarding programming to NPR stations

Post-Quantum Cryptography in .NET

Introducing flat-rate pricing plans with no overages

UC Berkeley scientists hail breakthrough in decoding whale communication

Ehtml – Extended HTML for Real Apps

Feeling the force of argument (2009) [pdf]

Host overhead is killing your inference efficiency

Why a High Frame Rate TV Can't Fix Cinematic Motion

Aptible gets acquired by private equity firm Crest Rock (Opti9)

Feline Induced Psychosis?

Why Human Talent Still Matters in an AI World and How to Stand Out

Cranberry sOSS

A surprise with how ' ' handles its program argument in practice

The SEC Opposes Shareholder Proposals

Smart SFP – Mini Linux System on a Stick (Literally)

You're Doing It Wrong (Kamp 2010)

Foundations for autonomous finance – Part I

In FTC lawsuit, federal court finds that Meta is not illegal monopoly

The science of weight loss – and why your brain is wired to keep you fat

Valar Atomics Says It's the First Nuclear Startup to Achieve Criticality

Call Center DBS Penghapusan atau tambah limit

Hosting on Cloudflare 'Cause I Need To

Show HN: My Album with Suno v5

What's the Deal with Kalshi's Fees

Hey where did all the Slack channels go?

Andrej Karpathy on Gemini 3

New EU Chat Control Proposal Moves Forward

Inside a Wild Bitcoin Heist: Five-Star Hotels, Cash, and Vanishing Funds

Mexico president issues ferocious warning to Trump after US strikes threat

Python Developers Looking at Introducing Rust Programming Language in CPython

Military Veterans Who Refused Covid Vaccine Now Eligible for GI Bill Benefits