Rak33n

C7 Corvette || F80 M3
Founder of Loud Whips
Founder of AutoMeet

[Marques Brownlee @MKBHD]

The outline of the window in the corner makes this one of the sickest photos I've ever seen

[Culture Gems ⛐ @rpmculture]

Rainy day in the bay 🌁

[Canoopsy @Canoopsy]

Japan shot on iPhone 1

[Big Boss @LordBalvin]

Oscar winners dawg

[flexxico @ripflexxico]

Opening up YouTube in 2011

[Kar @karlogan_]

A good chunk of Sinners is lost if Ryan Coogler never watched this movie

[Rak33n @Rak33n]

Lmaooo

[Grok @grok]

@LoufactsIGB @LRHN_Cash Yes man, di gyal name Crystal Randall get charge wid reckless arson an' lock up inna Texas fi di fire weh spread from burnin' har boyfriend clothes. She still inna custody as ah now.

[Rak33n @Rak33n]

Prob one of the best shoots done of my car. I need this framed.

[DiscussingFilm @DiscussingFilm]

‘SINNERS’ has broken history as the MOST-NOMINATED FILM OF ALL TIME at the Oscars with 16 nominations

See the full nominees list: https://t.co/IuSVQZPi7d

[NICOS ♊︎ @iversontalk]

best video of all time no joke

[🇵🇸 @chomlat]

He might be the last real movie star, and he's keeping cinema alive. People should support him; instead, they find any reason to hate on this man.

[cinesthetic. @TheCinesthetic]

That moment in War of the Worlds (2005) when the tripod rises and starts powering up is pure terror. The sound alone rewires the scene. You feel the shift from curiosity to extinction-level threat instantly.

[vids that go hard @vidsthatgohard]

AI could never write this 🥱

[𝓢𝓱𝓮𝓻𝔂𝓵𝔂𝓷𝓷 🥀 @Sherylynn_R2]

Meanwhile people were driving hours to other cities to see Frankenstein in the theater and Sinners in 70mm. He’s an idiot

[DiscussingFilm @DiscussingFilm]

‘SINNERS’ has won the Best Cinematography award from the National Board of Review.

[Rak33n @Rak33n]

True

[Kurrco @Kurrco]

Metro Boomin says many hip-hop albums nowadays end up sounding like compilations because too many producers are involved and no one's guiding the overall vision:

“A lot of projects today sound like compilations; they don't sound like one idea or one complete thought. […] I feel like what you need in hip-hop is somebody that’s not you to drive the ship.”

“Even if you do have a couple, a few different producers on there, cool — but there’s still one in charge to make sure whatever they’re bringing to the table lines up with what we’re doing.” (via Streetz 94.5)

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Let me explain exactly why VLC is free despite 6B downloads, because no one seems to get it.

VLC doesn’t make money because making money would destroy the only thing that made it reach 6 billion downloads in the first place.

The player grew through a specific distribution loop: tech-savvy users install it once, it works perfectly on every weird video file they throw at it, and they recommend it to everyone forever. IT departments deploy it across entire companies. A Reddit comment from 2009 still drives downloads in 2025 because the answer never changed.

That recommendation engine dies the second ads appear. Not slowly. Immediately.

The users who drive VLC’s distribution are the exact people who understand what ads mean. Your incentives just switched from “make the best player” to “maximize impressions.” They see it, stop recommending it, and your growth engine shuts off.

Run the actual numbers. VLC gets maybe 50 million active users daily across 6 billion total downloads. Typical video player ad rates run $1-3 CPM. Even if you served ads on every playback session, you’re looking at maybe $50-150 million annually at absolute peak optimistic assumptions.

Sounds like a lot until you realize what Kempf actually traded it for.

VLC reaching 6 billion people made Kempf the person who built the infrastructure everyone depends on. He runs a video consulting business. He built dav1d, an AV1 codec that powers modern streaming. Being “the guy who kept VLC free” opens every door in video technology. Clients pay him to solve problems because he proved he optimizes for quality over quick monetization.

“Former ad-supported media player executive” gets you exactly zero of that leverage.

The people celebrating Kempf’s ethics are missing the calculation. He didn’t sacrifice millions for principles. He rejected $150M in highly uncertain ad revenue to build permanent positioning worth multiples of that in everything else he touches.

VLC free generates more value for Kempf than VLC monetized ever could. The trade was never even close.

[Joe Wisniewski @JoeW6_]

A piece of history 🎙️🎥