“Incomplete paper and online applications will not be accepted,” Evans said in the statement. (Parker’s [demonstration] cancellation request would have lacked a driver’s license number.) The Secretary of State’s Office did not respond to individual questions about what testing the portal underwent before launch, the system’s security procedures, what happened to Parker’s cancellation request…

Yeah, that tells us we just don’t know if this was a problem after all. Evans’s statement basically claims it wasn’t a vulnerability. If that’s correct, then the worst thing might be if someone’s browser tripped on the validation JS and allowed them down a blind alley execution path. If the claim is correct and if the page’s JS never shits the bed, then in that case the only negative outcome would be someone dicking with the in-browser source could lead themselves down the blind alley, in which case who cares. The only terrible outcome seems like it would be if the claim is incorrect–i.e. if an incomplete application submission would be processed, thus allowing exploit.

Short of an internal audit, there’s no smoking gun here.

Source code escrow is a thing, too. I’ve only seen it in the context of (as I understood it) protection against going out of business, but perhaps it could apply to discontinued products, as well?

In 2017, the US government banned Kaspersky on government systems, if that’s what you’re thinking of. This new ban sounds to me like the recent TikTok ban, where it would affect the US population at-large and not just government systems.

Sounds like yt-dlp supports BBC iPlayer downloads.

This interpretation is valid. But I recently learned to see it a different way.

If you’ll humor me, please consider this. Since Santa knows if you’ve been “bad or good,” he knows the other reindeer have been bullies to poor Rudolph. And, while a red glowing nose is cool, it’s not a useful fog light. It’s just not.

So Santa “uh oh!” had an emergency where, for the first time ever, the fog was going to be too thick all over the world to deliver presents?

Nope, he set up Rudolph in a position to “lead” his peers in a situation that maybe needed a little help but was not, in any way, a true, worldwide magic-assed Santa emergency. Santa knew how to guide his reindeer to accept each other. The story of Rudolph was not about Rudolph doing something to prove himself. It was about recognizing a Rudolph in need and helping him rise to the occasion to bring him closer to his peers in a way that could heal division.

Rudolph isn’t about how to triumph as a Rudolph. It’s about how to be a good Santa.

(Edit: For everyone who already thought this was obvious in the story, thanks for letting this Rudolph have his epiphany anyway.)