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AT&T confirms it is buying ad platform AppNexus reportedly for between $1.6B-$2B

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Re: AT&T confirms it is buying ad platform AppNexus reportedly for between $1.6B-$2B

#21
post #13
post #11

So as someone getting AT&T Fiber this week, what VPNs should I look at using?

Make your own with a box in AWS or any other cloud provider running something like Strongswan on Linux or iked on OpenBSD. All the out of the box VPNs I've found have some shortcomings, either being horribly insecure (PPTP, seriously?), overpriced, often abused (which means their entire subnet is banned by pretty much everything) and the providers sometimes seem shady (I want a VPN to escape cancer aka ads, not the g…

Sounds great, I'll do my research and get to work.

Re: AT&T confirms it is buying ad platform AppNexus reportedly for between $1.6B-$2B

#22
post #10

There should be some decent commentary from industry people on r/adops: https://old.reddit.com/r/adops/comments/8tqezg/att_to_acquir... https://old.reddit.com/r/adops/comments/8t2z0f/atts_brian_le...

Extra props for including "old." there.

Re: AT&T confirms it is buying ad platform AppNexus reportedly for between $1.6B-$2B

#23
Wow. Wow. Wow.

Part of me is terrified that someone who has all my details just bought a firm that can trad on them. (It’s economic magic though - as if the Federal Reserve bought a hedge fund)

But part of me says that when one dinosaur buys another, the end result is rarely Excellence. I suspect that this will wind up a disaster and write-off.

Re: AT&T confirms it is buying ad platform AppNexus reportedly for between $1.6B-$2B

#24
More and more "vertical integration".

And, with the current FCC, I expect more forced "channeling" of customers/users into said integration.

I wrote Congress regarding net neutrality. I got one response -- and that not from my own representatives. And, despite my pointing this behavior out in my original letter, it just continued to shill the ATT, Comcast, Verizon, et al. talking points.

Right now, at home, on the connection Comcast just raised the monthly cost of by circa 30% since the beginning of this year, I'm using a VPN to keep their nose (and JS injection) out of my business.

I reiterate: We need a competing physical layer. One that we keep from getting likewise co-opted.

Re: AT&T confirms it is buying ad platform AppNexus reportedly for between $1.6B-$2B

#25

Wow. Wow. Wow. Part of me is terrified that someone who has all my details just bought a firm that can trad on them. (It’s economic magic though - as if the Federal Reserve bought a hedge fund) But part of me says that when one dinosaur buys another, the end result is rarely Excellence. I suspect that this will wind up a disaster and write-off.

Been blocking ads for years pretty thoroughly. Its a trillion $ industry that might as well not exist really.

My advice: buy an unlocked Android phone. Throw DNS66 on it to block in app ads. Use browsers that support ublock origin, I advise Fennec which is Firefox for Android stripped of the Mozilla crap.

You are not a powerless victim, you have agency.

Re: AT&T confirms it is buying ad platform AppNexus reportedly for between $1.6B-$2B

#26
post #22
post #10

There should be some decent commentary from industry people on r/adops: https://old.reddit.com/r/adops/comments/8tqezg/att_to_acquir... https://old.reddit.com/r/adops/comments/8t2z0f/atts_brian_le...

Extra props for including "old." there.

Why the dislike of the new interface?

Re: AT&T confirms it is buying ad platform AppNexus reportedly for between $1.6B-$2B

#28
post #13
post #11

So as someone getting AT&T Fiber this week, what VPNs should I look at using?

Make your own with a box in AWS or any other cloud provider running something like Strongswan on Linux or iked on OpenBSD. All the out of the box VPNs I've found have some shortcomings, either being horribly insecure (PPTP, seriously?), overpriced, often abused (which means their entire subnet is banned by pretty much everything) and the providers sometimes seem shady (I want a VPN to escape cancer aka ads, not the g…

I've found that a lot of typical residential traffic (Netflix) is blocked when routing through datacenters.

I'd love to hear your experience.

Re: AT&T confirms it is buying ad platform AppNexus reportedly for between $1.6B-$2B

#29
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extra props for including "old." there.

Why the dislike of the new interface?

Personally I feel it is optimized for constant dopamine and advertisement, at the cost of content density.

Previously, I could navigate to a subreddit, relatively quickly glance at whether anything was new, without being distracted by autoloading images and videos. Now reddit looks more like ebaumsworld 10 years ago.

Re: AT&T confirms it is buying ad platform AppNexus reportedly for between $1.6B-$2B

#30
post #28
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make your own with a box in AWS or any other cloud provider running something like Strongswan on Linux or iked on OpenBSD. All the out of the box VPNs I've found have some shortcomings, either being horribly insecure (PPTP, seriously?), overpriced, often abused (which means their entire subnet is banned by pretty much everything) and the providers sometimes seem shady (I want a VPN to escape cancer aka ads, not the g…

I've found that a lot of typical residential traffic (Netflix) is blocked when routing through datacenters. I'd love to hear your experience.

I don't have any issues with Netflix on either Linode or Digital Ocean personally.
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