Why do commercial spaces sit vacant? - by Andrew Burleson
This explains a phenomenon we see the world over -- empty commercial real estate staying vacant for years at a time:
The short answer is both simple and surprising: in many cases, lowering the rent on a building will force the bank to foreclose on it. Foreclosure is very bad for both the bank and the operator, so both parties would rather “extend and pretend,” leaving the building vacant while they wait and hope for the market to change.
Tags: via:hn finance money real-estate buildings commercial-property dereliction empty-buildings vacancy extend-and-pretend loans foreclosure
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The Smart TV in Your LivingRoom Is a Node in the AIScraping Economy
really detailed write-up of how BrightData's scraping SDK is embedded in various mobile devices and TVs running on residential broadband networks, then being resold as "residential proxy IPs":
Petflix, a Roku app documented by The Verge, is a representative case. Its opt-in screen reads: “To enjoy Petflix for free with fewer ads, you are allowing Bright Data to occasionally use your device’s free resources and IP address to download public web data from the internet. Bright Data will only use your IP address for approved business-related use cases. None of your personal information is accessed or collected except your IP address. Period.” [...]
At least three CTV-focused entities (PlayWorks, CloudTV, Longvision) monetized their user’s devices as residential proxy exit nodes. PlayWorks in particular reports CTV distribution across major TV platforms and ISPs, with reach figures in the hundreds of millions of households per its own marketing materials.
Tags: proxies residential broadband scraping internet tv smart-tv roku petflix android ios mobile brightdata