For me the most memorable parts of these films are the amazing prosthetics and makeup that Weta Workshop created, especially the orcs. They are so well done and give the films such a realistic quality.
When I first saw these films in theatre as a teenager I remember being blown away by all of the CGI which was obviously great for its time, but nowadays I appreciate these and the other practical effects so much more. The various videos Adam Savage has made on his Tested channel with Weta Workshop are great as well, I can't recommend them enough to anyone interested in this type of thing.
I had to deal with the opposite problem this week. My company uses Qualys for our vulnerability management stuff and after our security guys ran their scans throughout the network over the weekend we had a bunch of false positives. Seems that they were alerting on log4j-api in addition to log4j-core (only log4j-core is impacted per Apache). Looks like Qualys fixed it on Monday though so this shouldn't be a problem going forward if anyone else uses them.
I mostly agree with you, but I don't think most people are buying gift cards for themselves. Why would they when there are activation fees attached to these products? Generally they're given out as kind of a lazy gift among family and friends during the holidays, or somtimes from businesses to their employees. As long as the card is for something mildly useful like Starbucks (Although according to the post this seems to be the one that is actually redeemed the least), or Amazon then I wouldn't be too upset about receiving one. At the end of the day though I'm in the same camp as you when it comes to my own spending. I don't like to give money to anyone for anything less than immediate services rendered.
Yes a prepaid debit card is a type of open-loop card.
The two main types of open-loop cards in this industry are prepaid gift cards and reloadable prepaid debit cards. You probably see the gift cards all the time if you live in the US, they are often on an endcap near the front of grocery stores and pharmacies. Once the funds have been fully debited from the gift card account the card can't be used again, and these also expire after a few years if they aren't redeemed. Reloadable debit cards are basically a simplified bank account often used by the underbanked or for people who may not want to use a debit card tied to their bank or a credit card for whatever reason.
For the most part folks can use these products to make any purchase that one could make with a normal debit or credit card, but there are some exceptions to that. I think most of the streaming services don't accept them, and probably many other subscription based services that use periodic charges to an account.
When I first saw these films in theatre as a teenager I remember being blown away by all of the CGI which was obviously great for its time, but nowadays I appreciate these and the other practical effects so much more. The various videos Adam Savage has made on his Tested channel with Weta Workshop are great as well, I can't recommend them enough to anyone interested in this type of thing.