(I work at Stripe.)

Kernel is one of the companies putting this release together. They put up the redirect temporarily; about to put a more informative placeholder until the 10a PT launch.

I keep getting SSL connection errors and "No Data received" errors on this (Yes, after 10AM)

Yep, they're working to bring things back up. Stay tuned!

What is kernel.com? The website doesn't explain, and I can't find anything online talking about them. (It's hard to search because of the similarity to kernel.org perhaps.)

There is a FAQ if you go through to the 5th wave link that covers it:

https://www.kernel.com/movies/the-5th-wave

Looks like its being built as a platform to upsell/preorder for movies.

Thanks!

Why would they do that? Stripe will get plenty of publicity out of this too.