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Posted by josephcsible 6 hours ago

81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone(twitter.com)
310 points | 338 commentspage 3
kmoser 5 hours ago|
I noticed the barcodes on the reporter's printed tickets in that video. I hope a nefarious actor doesn't freeze-frame it and reprint them.
avree 5 hours ago||
The ones that the reporter says were for yesterday's game? I guess if the nefarious actor also has a time machine, that'd be a pretty big risk.
daedrdev 5 hours ago||
This is another reason why etickets are used, they regenerate the barcodes
ChrisArchitect 5 hours ago||
Alternate link or source instead of rando Twitter user:

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/video/news/local/why-longtime-...

https://www.instagram.com/arozier/reel/DWsHAvDjxeL/

jayd16 5 hours ago||
If you think this is bad you should see the absolute cluster that is Intuit Dome's system.
queenkjuul 4 hours ago||
People like to say "vote with your wallet, your privacy is your problem" with regard to smartphones, but like going to a baseball game has for a couple years now required you to have an Android or iOS device, same with many concerts and shows.

It's simply not reasonable to have to give up baseball and concerts to avoid your phone spying on you. And when accessing your bank or your local sports teams or your favorite band is tied up on your choice of phone, voting with your wallet becomes impossible -- I'm to give up patronizing my favorite artist because the venues use digital tickets? It obviously changes the balance of the equation such that nobody would ever choose their privacy over access to the world, and the vendors know this.

eudamoniac 3 hours ago|
> It's simply not reasonable

> voting with your wallet becomes impossible

> nobody would ever choose their privacy

Drawing the line at skipping music concerts is a choice, which to you is impossible, but to others is trivial... There have always been these lines. It gets slightly harder every year to choose privacy because of people with your mindset about their specific thing they aren't willing to give up, but this ticketing change is just another brick in the wall, not anything substantially different. People who thought it was simply unreasonable and impossible to vote with their wallet about <every previous thing> have created the environment where this ticketing change happens. And your comment here goes on to create the environment where something even more important is smartphonified later.

jimt1234 5 hours ago||
My concern here is not that a simple transaction like purchasing a ticket to a baseball game requires a smartphone, but that the purchase now binds the customer to a personal and irreversible relationship to multiple entities (MLB, the Dodgers, the ticket agency, etc.) that (1) is not necessary, and (2) adds no benefit to the customer.
krackers 26 minutes ago|
I'm sure those all those entities would also _never_ sell customer data in order to make an extra buck.
shevy-java 5 hours ago||
It's like having a chip implanted. That is, the addiction to requiring a smartphone.

Next step is to re-use the body parts, just as in Soylent Green.

kjkjadksj 6 hours ago||
Stuff like this should always have an analog failsafe like a printable ticket. I can’t be the only one who has a phone actually die out and about. Especially as this device gets a little old, battery drops maybe 1% every 2 min of screen on use. Even worse in crowded cell service situations like baseball games.
freeqaz 6 hours ago||
Also a good fallback if your phone screen cracked 2 hours before. But I can imagine part of the challenge they are facing here are scalpers. TicketMaster app 'rotates' the actual ticket every 30 seconds. Can't rotate paper.

I'd think that having a 2nd factor like presenting ID that matches the ticket would be sufficient there though.

loloquwowndueo 5 hours ago||
You don’t need the app itself to get the rotating tickets, the algorithm is pretty dumb and was reverse engineered back in 2024. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40906148

You probably still need a device of some kind though.

andrewla 5 hours ago||
Ticket counterfeiting is the core problem that they are trying to prevent. If there's a fallback method then that fallback method can be abused to forge tickets.

EDIT: I know complaining about downvotes is a downvotable offense itself, but I'm genuinely curious as to what is objectionable about this comment.

hapless 3 hours ago|||
Forgery isn't relevant.

He's a known individual, a season ticket holder. He's not some random dude showing up with a paper ticket.

red_admiral 5 hours ago|||
China's solution: your passport is your ticket. Not great for privacy, but persumably you also want to check that people banned from a stadium for their behaviour don't get in anyway.
adamsb6 2 hours ago||
It's very elegant.

The first time we traveled domestically in China I kept thinking that my wife had to be mistaken, there has to be some kind of confirmation we need to show in order to board. But nope, it literally is just show up with your ID.

TheMagicHorsey 4 hours ago||
This reminds me of a story my grandfather told me about how they needed to have a bunch of infrastructure and employees devoted to telegraph based notifications in 1970s India, because some bureaucrats refused to move everything over to telephone, and didn't want to be inconvenienced by having to use new technology.
opentokix 3 hours ago|
[flagged]
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