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Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

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Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#121

Post by makestuff »

cogman10 wrote: post #32
noodlesUK wrote: post #27

This sort of ticketing thing is a trivially solvable problem. It is solved at every airport in the entire world millions of times per day. You provide the name of each concertgoer when you buy a ticket, and they show up with their ticket and ID. You often need to show your ID at these kinds of venues to prove you're old enough to drink beer anyway.

Yup. I have to believe the reason the likes of ticket master isn't fixing this is because they are selling/auctioning/reserving some percentage of tickets to scalpers or "3rd party sellers". Requiring ID is such an obvious solution that I have to believe these convoluted approaches are only there so the secondary market can exist and so ticket master can wash their hands when prices get out of control on that market.

Yeah I agree, they are not incentivized to fix scaling/bots because they get a fee every time a ticket is sold. It is in their best interest for the ticket to be sold as many times as possible.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#122

Post by monksy »

cogman10 wrote: post #83
oehpr wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to presume that the driving impetus of all of this is that they're trying to avoid the actual requirement of checking the ID. Like, they want to improve the flow of traffic through admissions. But I mean, obviously, any kind of system like this strikes me as the same sort of thing as DRM. That you can somehow protect the message from the person you're sharing the message to. How can you avoid reselling if you…

So even if you don't want to do the ID thing, there are alternatives that you see all over the place (like venmo) Have a rotating QR code seeded with a unique to the user id. Then with ticket master, require a login to buy tickets. Register the tickets to the ID and then do the lookup with a combination of the ticket id, rotating qr code, and the user id. That requires the admitter device to send the challenge back t…

Disney is collecting pictures of everyone faces. That's pretty creepy.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#123

Post by yread »

RScholar wrote: post #55

> Software developers are the wizards and shamans of the modern age. We ought to use our powers with the austerity and integrity such power implies. This is one of the most powerful truths underlying the world we currently inhabit. The sooner we can agree to behave accordingly, the better our prospects for ripping the reigns of society from the hands of those whose only animating principles are avarice and exploitati…

I personally think we are more like "plumbers but with JSON". I have principles and apply them but I don't expect the others to do that

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#124

Post by namaria »

fmbb wrote: post #106
RScholar wrote: post #55

> Software developers are the wizards and shamans of the modern age. We ought to use our powers with the austerity and integrity such power implies. This is one of the most powerful truths underlying the world we currently inhabit. The sooner we can agree to behave accordingly, the better our prospects for ripping the reigns of society from the hands of those whose only animating principles are avarice and exploitati…

I dont think it’s a truth. Shamans and wizards (never heard this used to describe anyone in history but let’s assume it’s just any kind of supposed magic user) were people at the top tier of their societies in terms of political power. Not kings or chieftains, but above everyone else. Programmers are just making a living selling their labor power like every other office drone in the world. We’re one of the most commo…

Are there any documented examples of societies where "magics", "shamans" or "wizards" were at the top of the hierarchy? I gotta say, I'm an avid reader of Ancient History and Anthropology and the closest I can think of is the Priest-Kings of Sumeria and your garden variety theocracy and the latter is much more of a priestly bureeacracy than anything else...

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#125

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

NavinF wrote: post #117
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean would you say that developers who work for Facebook have crossed that line?

...by doing what? FB is one of the largest employers of people on this site. If you ran a poll, I'd expect the majority to answer "no" to your question. Of the people who answered "yes", I bet the majority would still accept an offer from FB if it was just 20k more than the next best offer.

One small example: In 2012 Facebook emotionally manipulated people in the name of science without anybody's consent by controlling positive / negative posts on their news feed.

Right? Wrong? Discuss.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#126

Post by pseudo0 »

fmbb wrote: post #106
RScholar wrote: post #55

> Software developers are the wizards and shamans of the modern age. We ought to use our powers with the austerity and integrity such power implies. This is one of the most powerful truths underlying the world we currently inhabit. The sooner we can agree to behave accordingly, the better our prospects for ripping the reigns of society from the hands of those whose only animating principles are avarice and exploitati…

I dont think it’s a truth. Shamans and wizards (never heard this used to describe anyone in history but let’s assume it’s just any kind of supposed magic user) were people at the top tier of their societies in terms of political power. Not kings or chieftains, but above everyone else. Programmers are just making a living selling their labor power like every other office drone in the world. We’re one of the most commo…

Yeah, we are more like masons. We have useful skills that enable building impressive things, but at the end of the day we are building someone else's cathedral.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#127

Post by NavinF »

dylan604 wrote: post #85
725686 wrote: post #73

A few months ago I went to Las Vegas to watch U2 at the Sphere. When I learned that I needed to open the app or website in order to get in I panicked in fear of the shitty internet that is common in massive events, so I opened my tickets since I left the hotel. Unless this stuff works completely offline, it is a terrible idea.

There's no way that I trust the developers of a company like Ticketmaster to install their app on my device.

You don't trust your OS to sandbox it? With a threat model like that, I wouldn't use any apps other than the browser

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#128

Post by fooqux »

RScholar wrote: post #55

> Software developers are the wizards and shamans of the modern age. We ought to use our powers with the austerity and integrity such power implies. This is one of the most powerful truths underlying the world we currently inhabit. The sooner we can agree to behave accordingly, the better our prospects for ripping the reigns of society from the hands of those whose only animating principles are avarice and exploitati…

Programmers being analogous to wizards or martial artists made more sense back when one used to need to train years or decades to become one.

With age comes wisdom.

There has been a lot of good that came from making coding more accessible; I'm not trying to gatekeep. But I do think that this is one instance where the outcome is worse. The martial arts masters still unquestionably exist among us. It's just that they're now surrounded by younger, less-wise people with guns. Both types can fight an army, but only one has the wisdom to know when it's better not to.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#129

Post by xp84 »

danudey wrote: post #68
jjmarr wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying something at a low price and selling it at a high price is arbitrage 101 and is free money. The "true solution" is to sell tickets at their actual market price instead of pretending that the face value of concert tickets isn't increasing due to a larger population and greater demand.

IOW the true solution to scamming is to raise prices so high that only the extremely wealthy can afford them, regardless of how accessible the actual concert/act/group/promoter wants the show to be. The "real" solution here would be for Ticketmaster (or whoever) to actually make a ticket non-transferrable somehow, and then allow for tickets to be transferred directly through the original website for at most the origi…

Can’t someone hack your system by selling access to the link you mentioned for $500? Thus getting you the refund Ticketmaster knows about, and the private payment from the desperate buyer. Also, credit card processing fees used to be refunded when you refunded a transaction, but now I think some processors have now decided to start keeping the fees, because why not. Another 3% margin to apply at each sale (though that can be included in the transfer fee you suggest)

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#130

Post by ants_everywhere »

GenerocUsername wrote: post #81
dylan604 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact we have had less than benevolent wizards and shamans, why would we expect to have modern day equivalent of only benevolent coders? It's such a fairy tale level of expectation that it seems childish. Spending any energy in trying to make real world a fairy tale is just wasted.

It's okay to shame bad actors. In fact, society would likely be better off if e brought back more public shaming

This is certainly not true. Can you name an existing or historical shame-based society that you would actually want to live in?
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