throwaway_5753

Anyone listened to anything good recently? I haven't read or listened to anything in years; Sci-fi fan here but willing to explore.

I see them often posted as a way to circumvent soft paywalls at site like the NYT. I also sometimes see comments on how CloudFlare DNS will not resolve them. I also see there are a number of them with somewhat unusual top-level domains (md, ph, is).

I'm out of the loop but curious -- who runs these sites and why? How do the operators pay for hosting? Is it legal to circumvent soft paywalls like this? Is the paywall circumvention intentional or accidental?

Would love any pointers or details about this useful and mysterious service.