Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

Post by lmm » Mon, Jul 08, 2024, 11:50 PM UTC

financetechbro wrote: post #281

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #269

I am sure this is pointed out elsewhere, but ticketmasters business model is based on lying to the public so that the artists and venues don’t have to. Taylor Swift is a nice-ish person and wants her fans to think they can buy tickets for her shows at about 25 bucks because that’s a lot of money for a 12 year old and she does not want to alienate her fans. Her manager is an evil cackling bastard and wants to get as m…

As much as I dislike Ticketmaster this is pure conspiracy unless you provide sources

Post by lmm » Mon, Jul 08, 2024, 11:52 PM UTC

dzhiurgis wrote: post #303

vjerancrnjak wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even government software has issues (Vienna). I paid a €100+ fine for not having a ticket, even though I spent time going through the purchase flow. I have 100s of tickets purchased. Live agent and support agent just shrugged and told me I don't know how to use the app, washed their hands of any responsibility or need for understanding. It's like there's no way to make the software human and humans in the loop have a…

That’s just reflection of your culture. I.e. I come from Eastern Europe where cheating is so engrained and “i made an oopsie” would never fly. Beurocracy is face to face and takes ages Now living in NZ I get tons of slack for something like “verify youre local for free museum entry” or “get your passport by post”. Life is so much easier when societal trust is high.

Post by krupan » Mon, Jul 08, 2024, 11:56 PM UTC

ihumanable wrote: post #285

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.

It's interesting how the real problem here is that our economic system has no way to sell a product at what the seller will bear, only what the buyer will bear. I think this is a fascinating feature, a lot of artists would be more than happy to make $X for a show so that their fans can come see them. The problem ends up that a free market has no mechanism for that, the artist can sell the tickets such that they end u…

Post by lmm » Mon, Jul 08, 2024, 11:57 PM UTC

bagels wrote: post #317

Zopieux wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How often has this been a problem though? How about not keeping your boarding pass, or ticket, or credit card for that matter, visible for the world? Just put it in your wallet, I don't know. This is security FUD. Stop solving problems that do not exist to the point where it makes the news when they do happen, once a century. This DRM scheme concretely creates millions of small annoyances to millions of people and wa…

It also happens that pranksters can cancel your travel if your boarding passes make it on to Twitter or other social media. It's not a non-problem like you make it out to be. Sure, it won't happen to you or me, because we know it is a risk to expose these documents, but that is not true of most people. Maybe the DRM is not worth it. I actually think it's obnoxious for concert tickets (I recently had to deal with this…

Post by ssl-3 » Tue, Jul 09, 2024, 12:00 AM UTC

chocolatkey wrote: post #241

ssl-3 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps a better question is: Why not PDF417? What functional improvement would be had by using a 2D QR code?

One possible reason I can think of is that phone camera apps will not proactively read PDF417 barcodes like they will QR codes, thus discouraging people from thinking they can scan and decode them.