Woken up a bit and implemented the ndash fix in a way that actually works.

components/motd.php

@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ function decode_entities($text, $quote_style = ENT_COMPAT) {
        $trans_tbl = array_flip($trans_tbl);
        $text = strtr($text, $trans_tbl);
    }
-   if ($text="–") $text = "-";
+   $text = preg_replace('–', '-', $text);
    $text = preg_replace('~&#x([0-9a-f]+);~ei', 'chr(hexdec("\\1"))', $text);
    $text = preg_replace('~&#([0-9]+);~e', 'chr("\\1")', $text);
    return $text;