#redbox | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mostlysignssomeportents · 9 months

Text

The long bezzle

Going to Defcon this weekend? I’m giving a keynote, “An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet’s Enshittification and Throw it Into Reverse,” on Saturday at 12:30pm, followed by a book signing at the No Starch Press booth at 2:30pm!

https://info.defcon.org/event/?id=50826

When it comes to the modern world of enshittified, terrible businesses, no addition to your vocabulary is more essential than "bezzle," JK Galbraith's term for "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it"

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/09/accounting-gimmicks/#unter

The bezzle is contained by two forces.

First, Stein's Law: "Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop."

Second, Keynes's: "Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."

On the one hand, extremely badly run businesses that strip all the value out of the firm, making things progressively worse for its suppliers, workers and customers will eventually fail (Stein's Law).

On the other hand, as the private equity sector has repeatedly demonstrated, there are all kinds of accounting tricks, subsidies and frauds that can animate a decaying, zombie firm long after its best-before date (Keynes's irrational markets):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

One company that has done an admirable job of balancing on a knife edge between Stein and Keynes is Verizon, a monopoly telecoms firm that has proven that a business can remain large, its products relied upon by millions, its stock actively traded and its market cap buoyant, despite manifest, repeated incompetence and waste on an unimaginable scale.

This week, Verizon shut down Bluejeans, an also-ran videoconferencing service the company bought for $400 million in 2020 as a panic-buy to keep up with Zoom. As they lit that $400 mil on fire, Verizon praised its own vision, calling Bluejeans "an award-winning product that connects our customers around the world, but we have made this decision due to the changing market landscape":

https://9to5google.com/2023/08/08/verizon-bluejeans-shutting-down/

Writing for Techdirt, Karl Bode runs down a partial list of all the unbelievably terrible business decisions Verizon has made without losing investor confidence or going under, in a kind of tribute to Keynes's maxim:

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/08/10/verizon-fails-again-shutters-attempted-zoom-alternative-bluejeans-after-paying-400-million-for-it/

Remember Go90, the "dud" streaming service launched in 2015 and shuttered in 2018? You probably don't, and neither (apparently) do Verizon's shareholders, who lost $1.2 billion on this folly:

https://www.techdirt.com/2018/07/02/verizons-sad-attempt-to-woo-millennials-falls-flat-face/

Then there was Verizon's bid to rescue Redbox with a new joint-venture streaming service, Redbox Instant, launched 2012, killed in 2014, $450,000,000 later:

https://variety.com/2014/digital/news/verizon-redbox-to-pull-plug-on-video-streaming-service-1201321484/

Then there was Sugarstring, a tech "news" website where journalists were prohibited from saying nice things about Net Neutrality or surveillance – born 2014, died 2014:

https://www.theverge.com/2014/12/2/7324063/verizon-kills-off-sugarstring

An app store, started in 2010, killed in 2012:

https://www.theverge.com/2012/11/5/3605618/verizon-apps-store-closing-january-2013

Vcast, 2005-2012, yet another failed streaming service (pray that someday you find someone who loves you as much as Verizon's C-suite loves doomed streaming services):

https://venturebeat.com/media/verizon-vcast-shutting-down/

And the granddaddy of them all, Oath, Verizon's 2017, $4.8 billion acquisition of Yahoo/AOL, whose name refers to the fact that the company's mismanagement provoked involuntary, protracted swearing from all who witnessed the $4.6 billion write-down the company took a year later:

https://www.techdirt.com/2018/12/12/if-youre-surprised-verizons-aol-yahoo-face-plant-you-dont-know-verizon/

Verizon isn't just bad at being a phone company that does non-phone-company things – it's incredibly bad at being a phone company, too. As Bode points out, Verizon's only real competency is in capturing its regulators at the FCC:

https://www.techdirt.com/2017/05/02/new-verizon-video-blatantly-lies-about-whats-happening-to-net-neutrality/

And sucking up massive public subsidies from rubes in the state houses of New York:

https://www.techdirt.com/2017/03/14/new-york-city-sues-verizon-fiber-optic-bait-switch/

New Jersey:

https://www.techdirt.com/2014/04/25/verizon-knows-youre-sucker-takes-taxpayer-subsidies-broadband-doesnt-deliver-lobbies-to-drop-requirements/

and Pennsylvania:

https://www.techdirt.com/2017/06/15/verizon-gets-wrist-slap-years-neglecting-broadband-networks-new-jersey-pennsylvania/

Despite all this, and vast unfunded liabilities – like remediating the population-destroying lead in their cables – they remain solvent:

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/verizon-sued-by-investors-over-lead-cables-environmental-statements-2023-08-02/

Verizon has remained irrational longer than any short seller could remain solvent.

Short-sellers – who bet against companies and get paid when their stock prices go down – get a bad rap: billionaire shorts were the villains of the Gamestop squeeze, accused of running negative PR campaigns against beloved businesses to drive them under and pay their bets off:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/30/meme-stocks/#stockstonks

But shorts can do the lord's work. Writing for Bloomberg, Kathy Burton tells the story of Nate Anderson, whose Hindenburg Research has cost some of the world's wealthiest people over $99 billion by publishing investigative reports on their balance-sheet shell-games just this year:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-08-06/how-much-did-hindenburg-make-from-shorting-adani-dorsey-icahn

Anderson started off trying to earn a living as a SEC whistleblower, identifying financial shenanigans and collecting the bounties on offer, but that didn't pan out. So he turned his forensic research skills to preparing mediagenic, viral reports on the scams underpinning the financial boasts of giant companies…after taking a short position in them.

This year, Anderson's targets have included Carl Icahn, whose company lost $17b in market cap after Anderson accused it of overvaluing its assets. He went after the world's fourth-richest man, Gautam Adani, accusing him of "accounting fraud and stock manipulation," wiping out 34% of his net worth. He took on Jack Dorsey, whose payment processor Square renamed itself Block and went all in on the cryptocurrency bezzle, lopping 16% off its share price.

Burton points out that Anderson's upside for these massive bloodletting was comparatively modest. A perfectly timed exit from the $17b Icahn report would have netted $56m. What's more, Anderson faces legal threats and worse – one short seller was attacked by a man wearing brass-knuckles, an attack attributed to her short activism.

Shorts are lauded as one of capitalism's self-correcting mechanisms, and Hindenberg certainly has taken some big, successful swings at some of the great bezzles of our time. But as Verizon shows, shorts alone can't discipline a market where profits and investor confidence are totally decoupled from competence or providing a decent product or service.

I’m kickstarting the audiobook for “The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation,” a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and bring back the old, good internet. It’s a DRM-free book, which means Audible won’t carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/10/smartest-guys-in-the-room/#can-you-hear-me-now

136 notes · View notes

wasteful-barbie · 2 months

Text

I can smell the pizza rolls cooking in the oven now…

#vintage #nostaglic #1990s nostalgia #2000s #early 2000s #2000s nostalgia #nostalgic #Redbox #red box movies #pizza rolls #90s movies #throwback #Y2K #y2kcore #y2k aesthetic

12 notes · View notes

theminimal · 2 years

Text

Garfield Cowboy

80 notes · View notes

pastelalleycat · 3 months

Text

#i've seen a surprising amount in my lifetime #curious to know if you guys have too!#poll #polls #redbox #mint's posts 💛

2 notes · View notes

brokehorrorfan · 1 year

Photo

The Ritual Killer will be released on Blu-ray and DVD on May 2 via Screen Media. The 2023 serial killer thriller is currently available on VOD and from Redbox.

Morgan Freeman and Cole Hauser star with Vernon Davis, Giuseppe Zeno, Murielle Hilaire, Luke Stratte-McClure, Brian Kurlander, Julie Lott, Destiny Loren, and Peter Stormare. George Gallo (writer of Bad Boys and Midnight Run) directs from a script by Bob Bowersox, Jennifer Lemmon, Francesco Cinquemani, and Luca Giliberto.

No special features are listed. The trailer and synopsis can be found below.

EMBED

The film follows Detective Boyd (Cole Hauser), who, unable to process the death of his daughter, embarks on the hunt for a serial killer who murders according to a brutal tribal ritual: Muti. The only person who can help Boyd is Professor Mackles (Morgan Freeman), an anthropologist who hides an unspeakable secret. The line between sanity and madness thins as Boyd goes deeper into the killer's world.

Pre-order The Ritual Killer.

#the ritual killer #morgan freeman #cole hauser #peter stormare #serial killer #serial killers #screen media #redbox #dvd #gift #thriller #vernon davis #george gallo #bad boys #midnight run

4 notes · View notes

merumely · 2 years

Text

Currently making something about Alu and will probably be posting it tomorrow and not gonna say much except this:

#ya'll know what this is probably gonna be about let's be honest #the pic says it all #🤣#hellsing #hellsing ultimate #alucard #alucard hellsing #dracula #count dracula #no life king #alucard x oc #dracula x oc #redbox

15 notes · View notes

every-dayiwakeup · 2 years

Note

Following on from the date night, horror movies.

How do the boys respond to horror movies, pre and if you're feeling brave, post flaying.

Oh good one!

Let's see... pre flaying as you can imagine, has a different vibe. Steve has been exposed to weird Sci fi shit in real life and he's not really fond of it, but Billy loves horror movies.

Or rather, making fun of them. He mocks everything from the choices the characters make to rating the brutality of each death (based off of "rad" "bad" and "sad"- sad being when the special effects suck ass). Plus it gives Billy an excuse to be the big brave boyfriend, comforting Steve. He won't say it outright, but he loves when Steve gasps and takes a hold of his hand, squeezing it bone crushingly tight.

Now... post flayed? Oof.

So Billy in general is a good deal more mellow than he used to be. He doesn't wear any of his old clothes, trading in crop tops for baggy sweatshirts and hoodies.

Keeping in mind that even before he was flayed he was very sensitive to his surroundings (due to his turbulent house life), that has definitely manifested into an extreme case of sensitivity to noise. Fire works especially.

He used to like watching TV in the dark. Now he can't handle it.

Flashing probably triggers him too.

But the worst thing for him when watching a horror movie, wouldn't just be the blood- it would be the screaming.

Whether it'd from the movie or from Steve, it sends a jolt down his spine and he convulses, hands cupped over his ears.

Steve can't bring himself to be happy about Billy not begging to watch Halloween or Friday the 13th for the fiftieth time, because he blames himself in a sense for not keeping Billy safe. Because when he was flayed, a part of Billy died, and Steve mourns that- not for himself, but for Billy.

Because his Billy bear deserves a break, and seeing him have to give up things that used to bring him joy (and there weren't that many to begin with)... his heart aches for him.

#so this was one of the most bipolar things i have written #it went from fluff to me making myself cry #redbox #this really got me thinking #a rollercoaster of emotions #thank you love for your question #harringrove solos #hanging with harringrove #im feeling brave so here goes

7 notes · View notes

dreamboypieces · 2 years

Text

Renting a Redbox dvd in one state, with no intention of watching it, only to return it to a Redbox machine in a completely different state, thus traumatizing the dvd by taking it away from everything it previously knew and relocating it to a scary, unknown place.

#on a road trip and thought abt doing this for no reason & then felt bad bc what if the dvd wants to see its friends again #og #redbox #who even uses the Redbox tag on here and why

3 notes · View notes

peculiar-shardscape · 2 years

Text

gday folks i made a 16 paneled comic last night but im a coward to share it so enjoy a picture of this guy getting his ass kicked thanks

#art #roblox #phighting #phighting!#boombox phighting #redbox

4 notes · View notes

nathancone · 18 days

Text

Sign of the times. 👋🏼

#Redbox #goodbye #physical media

0 notes

benx101cool · 28 days

Text

YOU LIAR!

#ben rambles #Redbox #I just saw this while out one day #thought it was weird

0 notes

2022dirt · 1 month

Text

A local grocery store was seen throwing out a Redbox. Redbox’s are video rental kiosks that are updated with new movies. With the incline of streaming platforms, these services have started to become obsolete.

1 note · View note

sweatygiverruins · 2 months

Text

Download Redbox TV Free 2024

RedBox TV for PC is an outstanding streaming application enabling users to enjoy HD channels on their PCs, Macs, and Laptops, enhancing their streaming experience during leisure time. Its user-friendly method of operation makes it accessible to everyone worldwide without encountering any complications.

#Redboxtv #TV #Redbox

0 notes

helloweenhorror · 6 months

Text

Place to watch some free horror!

#halloween #horror #prom night #terror train #movies #scary #Redbox #jamie lee curtis

1 note · View note

millionmilesfromnowhere · 6 months

Text

Not surprising - obsolescence marches on.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/best-buy-will-sell-dvds-through-the-holiday-season-then-discontinue-sales/ar-AA1ibw6n?OCID=ansmsnnews11

#dvd #blu ray #discs #best buy #netflix #redbox

0 notes

eternalsailormom · 7 months

Text

I'm an easy person to chill with; I like DQ blizzards, long walks on the beach, and meticulously scraping judgy religious stickers off my local Redbox kiosk's wall of movies that are apparently heretical enough to warrant slapping a tiny bible to

#how is The Woman King a threat to your god?#who hurt you #oh no strong women #redbox #yeah ok im sure jesus would be down for vandalism #i guess laws only matter if you're trying to cross the border or get an abortion

0 notes