I tested some images. My take is that the "*" could be the key here. The format of all the image links from Medium containing this character. I couldn't find any other servers having that kind of link format to test.
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Hmm... That's interesting... A * isn't a common character to see in an url (afaik). Maybe cloudflare or the imageproxy can't handle this...
I usually hotlink images from my own server
That might cause copyright problems:
the forum for instance has this explanation:
Copyright
If you are complaining about an image located at ip.bitcointalk.org: That image is hosted elsewhere, and we are only proxying it from the original location in order to protect user privacy. You should not complain to us.
Hotlinking gives credit by default.
True, but i don't host pictures that are copyrighted... As a matter of fact, i usually host diagrams i've created myself or screenshots from open source applications...
there could be multiple explanations, i've listed them from most plausible to least plausible:
- Medium started disallowing hotlinking from their server. It's an age-old problem: services suddenly realize that their bandwidth is being used to hotlink images without them being able to monetize said traffic and start blocking hotlinking without giving notice.
That's easy to
test: hotlinking to medium.com works fine
Eventough this test is conclusive, there's always the chance medium is blocking bitcointalk's imageproxy and nothing else (or they could be using a blacklist instead of a whitelist). It's not that common, so this is probably not the case, but it's certainly not impossible. This way, your test would run fine, but images inserted into bitcointalk would not...