neuracnu

This is an issue to take up with individual website operators.

Almost every large website is going to be protected by both a CDN and an application firewall, either of which can be configured to slow down, gatekeep or outright block traffic coming from an IP that is suspected to be a VPN. And there are many reasons why they could be doing this:

• websites that rely on advertising to operate get less value from VPN users. A lot of users using the same IP address means advertisers have a more difficult time showing them relevant ads, thus paying the website less for them. So there is a financial incentive for a website to convince its users to stop using their VPN voluntarily.
• a security-minded site could be concerned with malicious actors using VPNs to shield their identities and locations during attack/breech attempts.
• a site seeking to protect its content from automated scraping by various bots (search crawlers, LLM data harvesting or competitors) may believe that those actors are using VPNs to hide their identities.

The only solution I can see is to reach out to the site operators themselves and explain your valid use case. I’ve done this a few times myself. I’ve never received a response, but some of the websites that I visit which used to block my VPN traffic eventually stopped blocking it.

If you don’t like something, make some noise.

Alternatively, you could use a cloud provider to spin up a micro instance running your own OpenVPN server that you re-roll IPs on occasionally, but this takes more effort and doesn’t really address the root cause.

Jack Reacher, the vanilla gorilla.

Reznor was (is?) the lead singer in Nine Inch Nails. He and Ross have collaborated on a bunch of film and TV scores over the last 20 years or so, mostly to excellent results.

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are doing the score, so the music should at least be solid.

But the Jared Leto of it all...

I think it depends on the distribution agreement. For a big-budget, major studio release you might see one or two trailers like that (featuring this card), but exhibitors can put whatever else they want in there as well. AMC is the absolute worst about this.

0. Don't make me pay to park a car.
1. No ads.
2. No excessive "welcome to our theater chain!!1!" preroll. A static card or 5-sec bump will do.
3. One movie trailer is ideal; Two is OK; Three if you must. Absolutely no more than that.
4. Comfy seating.

I also never quite got a grip on Summer Wars. I got this sense that the pacing and storytelling was not at all designed or intended for me (as an American viewer, watching subs). But I would never argue it was a “bad” movie, or even that it didn’t work. I just got the sense that I was not the right judge of it.

If there are cases to be made for it, I’m all ears.

I have so many questions.

I worked for a major CDN for quite some time, and there was no shortage of divination and reading-of-tea-leaves regarding who was up, who was down, who is surviving and who will get acquired in the content provider space. OTT media was easy money until everyone rolled out multi-cdn solutions and started putting the screws to each vendor for better prices. It was brutal, but I learned a lot about business watching it happen.

How much of all that AAPL buyout discussion do you think was 100% hopium? Sure Paramount had assets and means, but why would Apple want to acquire that and not rent it? Let studios claw at each others heels to produce viable content while AAPL sits back and pays a premium to choose the best bargain. Apple+ was never interested in being #1; the service is just table stakes at their scale (like Paramount Plus one might argue). AAPL’s business is manufacturing lifestyle products and hype. How was Paramount expecting their acquisition to bolster those pillars?

What was your vantage of the Ugly Sonic debacle (circa 2019)?

What did other execs have to say about Mother! (2017)? It was a beautiful disaster and I loved it, but it couldn’t have had many fans internally.

This CBS/Viacom tug of war had to be brutal as well, but the entire enterprise seems to be all under the Paramount umbrella now. Any regrets?

My guess: distribution breadth and advertising spread are based partly on how much interest the trailer gets. And the trailer gets more interest if people get teased for it.

“But,” you protest, “isn’t that what teasers are for?”

I would think so, but maybe cutting one of these is easier, and teasers rarely have info about release dates (aside from the actual film release year, usually).

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The original article is here, but paywalled:

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/apple-streaming-losses-top-1-billion-year

I'd like to know if this accounts for it being a value-add service for Apple, something additional they can bolt into other services to entice a sale (iCloud bundles, third party subscriptions like T-Mobile service, credit card bonuses) where the company receives bulk backdoor support as part of the partnership.

That's the reason you see Apple and Amazon branching out like this. They aren't intended to be money-makers; they're loss leaders.

WB just posted a first-look trailer-for-a-trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9u-2yB8GJ-Q