> as long as it includes the key factor - time spent practicing.
And at least for me, frequency beats duration. I make more progress when I play consistently for even 10 minutes every day than when I play for 90 minutes on Sunday afternoon.
And that's when you find out the app considers this usage pattern as a signal of fraud, so then you can't get into the event and have no recourse. Their app, their rules, your loss.
Sorry but you've made that up. That's not a thing.
I saw your other comment, and that was your fault for not having access to your own e-mail account. Asking you to sign in with a verification code isn't blocking your ticket with "no recourse".
Not to mention, you can usually just go to the ticket office and they can look up your ticket if your app isn't working. Obviously they don't advertise this because they don't have enough people to handle if everybody did that. But they're not trying to lock you out from your own ticket.
And as I have just explained in that other comment, they did not ask for a verification code when I bought the ticket. They also did not ask for one when I tested that I could pull up the ticket after I installed their app. They only did so shortly before the show.
Perhaps somewhere deep in the terms of service that approximately zero customers have ever read, it says "Use of this ticket is contingent upon having immediate access to the email address associated with your account." Regardless, it seems unreasonable for them to expect that every user will have connectivity. If that is a requirement, they should state it more clearly.
What does it matter that they didn't ask for a verification code when you bought the ticket? They do that when something looks different, like you're using a new browser or you're in a new location.
Websites and apps commonly require you to log in again when you haven't used them for some time period anyways.
These days, yes, having connectivity and being able to verify a code is just standard practice. It's just security.
>I saw your other comment, and that was your fault for not having access to your own e-mail account.
That's the point, though - we shouldn't need always-on, 24/7-access to email for everything always and forever. You're just victim-blaming at this point.
>Sorry but you've made that up. That's not a thing.
I have a very fun and exciting story about being locked out of my Google Wallet account for that very thing while on vacation. My primary Google account is still banned from performing any monetary transactions as a result, 10+ years later.
If you need to log in to something, yes you need always-on, 24-7 access to email or to SMS depending on how the service/account is configured. That's a very common form of 2FA. I'm not victim-blaming, this is just bog-standard security.
And what I said is "not a thing" is TicketMaster preventing you from entering an event because you've changed location and that you "have no recourse". You definitely have recourse, there are a number of ways, just like it seems like that person did.
Again, the point is that that shouldn't need to be how things function. That you ignore that point of my comment and continue to blame the person for not adhering to how things are misses the point and just continues this circular conversation. Enjoy your day.
Companies don't implement security measures for the fun of it. They do it to prevent hacking, theft, and fraud.
So funny, HN is usually pro-security and pro-2FA.
This conversation isn't circular, you're the one who seems to be missing that this is just standard practice, and for good reason. People try to pull all kinds of scams with tickets. Requiring you merely to log in with 2FA is not problematic.
> I feel like phone tickets are anti-convenience because they rely on terrible apps like TicketMaster.
Case in point: I traveled from St. Louis to Houston for a concert a few years ago. Before I left home to catch my flight, I installed the Ticketmaster app on a phone and verified that I could bring up the tickets. When I tried it again in my hotel an hour before the conference, it no longer worked because the fraud detection in their app was apparently confused as to why I was now in Houston.
Fixing this took 45 minutes on hold to get a support agent and a frantic call to my wife so she could check the disused email address I used to sign up for Ticketmaster 20 years earlier and get the verification code they sent.
There are a lot of reasons to dislike digital tickets, but this is one of them. I used to go to dozens of concerts every year. Now it's such a hassle that I don't bother unless it's small venue that doesn't play these games.
That's fucking nightmarish. That's exactly the kind of scenario I'd think up and be told is "science fiction" by the kind of apologists who think forced usage of technology is okay.
We attended a once-in-a-lifetime show last fall (a performer who is aging and likely won't tour again) a two hour drive away. I wouldn't install the Ticketmaster app and played an old man "character" with the box office to get them to print my tickets and hold them at will call. I played the "we are driving in from out of town" card, etc, and they accommodated me.
I tried that with a closer venue a couple of months ago and got told, in no uncertain terms, "no app no admittance". I knuckled-under and loaded the app on my wife's iPhone (which she insists on keeping because Stockholm syndrome, I assume). I feel bad that I gave in (because it makes me part of the problem). I really wanted to see the show and I wasn't willing to forego it on principle. (Kinda embarrassing, actually.)
> That's fucking nightmarish. That's exactly the kind of scenario I'd think up and be told is "science fiction" by the kind of apologists who think forced usage of technology is okay.
Not to justify it, but we've been fighting this kind of crap for a long time with credit cards and their bonehead "anti-fraud" checks. I'm often on the phone with my credit card issuers every time I travel somewhere because their moronic systems think "different country = fraud" and lock me out until I call them and perform their pointless rituals for them over the phone. Even if you tell them in advance that you're traveling (which I object to because my vacation plans are none of their business), they still often get it wrong and flag you.
Why would you sign into Ticketmaster with an email address you don't have access to and use it to buy tickets?
Don't do that. Create a new account with the email address you have access to.
Apps require you to sign in again all the time, and send a verification code to your e-mail to do so. Changing locations is, yes, a reason to require sign in.
> Why would you sign into Ticketmaster with an email address you don't have access to and use it to buy tickets?
Because in the context of signing in, its role is that of a user ID.
Ticketmaster spams that address constantly. It's a valid email address, to be sure, but they've trained me over the years never to look at it. They certainly didn't do any multi-factor authentication when I bought the tickets, only when I was preparing to use them (despite having accessed them on that very device two days earlier).
Exactly. Ostensibly, one would assume that getting closer to the place you have a ticket for wouldn't flag the use as "suspicious". To have OP demand that everyone use the app, but then blame the user for... traveling to the venue? Wild.
> Apps require you to sign in again all the time, and send a verification code to your e-mail to do so. Changing locations is, yes, a reason to require sign in.
This is the bane of my existence. I manually copy/paste/delete a half-dozen codes from my email/SMS every single day.
If I was ruler, I'd mandate every one of these switch to TOTP 2FA and outright ban email verification other than for password resets.
>Apps require you to sign in again all the time, and send a verification code to your e-mail to do so. Changing locations is, yes, a reason to require sign in.
What? TicketMaster is the only app I use that does this. Probably because it's too hard for end-users to get rid of it. If some Telegram or some food delivery app or something tried to periodically re-prompt me to log in because I went outside my house or whatever, it would get uninstalled and replaced with something that didn't.
> If this guy has the money for a season pass (!) he has the money for a smartphone.
Maybe it's not about the money. Maybe he does not want the negative consequences that come along with having a smartphone. Maybe he has dexterity issues that make using a smartphone difficult. Maybe he doesn't want to install their invasive app. Maybe he finds that paper tickets are easier to manage. Maybe he recognizes that the vendor made this change to benefit themselves at the expense of the fans, as it allows them greater control of the resale market.
I own a smartphone but prefer paper tickets. Luckily I can (and do) still get them at my team's stadium, although I have to pick them up in person.
He shouldn't even need a reason. "I don't want a smartphone" should be sufficient and should not lock one out of commerce, events, and other cultural experiences.
In 50 years, everyone's going to have an advertisement-injecting brain implant, and stores are going to require you to have one in order to purchase anything, and they'll lock you out of commerce as a filthy Luddite if you don't get one. And, 50 years from now, commenters on HN will defend those businesses because the implant is "modern" and supporting those ancient smartphones and credit cards is hard to do.
In my country there is a large religious population that eschew the smartphone. This is great - no government or private service simply assumes that one has a smartphone. All services are available via traditional means - most in three to five languages as well.
He shouldn't even need a reason. "I don't want a smartphone" should be sufficient and should not lock one out of commerce, events, and other cultural experiences.
When I run into this (most recently at a hospital), I tell them "The court doesn't allow me to have a smart phone because I'm a hazard to national security.†"
When they argue (very rarely), I tell them "Take it up with judge Kelso in the 225th District Court. He's in the phone book." That's usually enough for them to break out the backup non-smartphone plan. In my experience, there's always another way, but they're just too lazy to do it.
I’ve been here and I’ll say I’d rather lose in logical argument, then win through lies. It’s so corrosive and people who know you either know this about you or will learn it. Turn back now while there’s still a chance.
I personally can't wait until one will be labeled crazy for wanting to live without a brain implant and its lovely personalized, curated life experiences.
not because of the lack of a phone, because of the relatively unprompted, outlandish and obvious lie. He might as well say "i don't have a phone because aliens took it".
What part of this is an obvious lie and/or outlandish?
Kevin Mitnick was banned from using any computer for quite a while. This absolutely would have included smartphones if they'd been a thing at the time. People are banned from using computers and the Internet all the time.
If you're going to claim that the "national security risk" bit is outlandish, you might be interested to know that when Mitnick was in prison he was held in solitary because officials claimed he could dial NORAD, whistle modem noises into a phone, and start a nuclear war.
Is your point that because you can name one person who was banned from using a computer before the invention of the smart phone, a receptionist working at a hospital would therefore consider that a reasonable and common reason for someone to not possess a smart phone?
I could name a bunch if I spent 30 seconds looking. I could probably name half a dozen others - including names most people would recognise, e.g julian assange - who I think (but am not 100% sure from memory) suffered similar restrictions without even searching.
I happened to name Mitnick because of the "national security" example.
I noticed that you haven't given any reasoning as to why a receptionist working at a hospital would not consider "I'm banned from using smartphones by court order" reasonable, or why said receptionist would need to consider it common for it to be valid? Hospital receptionists deal with all kinds of edge cases all the time.
"I'm banned from using smartphones by court order" is perfectly reasonable and not at all outlandish if you're a sex offender.
"I'm banned from using smartphones because I'm a hazard to national security" is not reasonable. it's crazy. like, who the hell asked? are you saying that if you manage to get your hands on an iPhone the state would be in danger? are you bragging? trying to impress me? i've never heard anyone say this before, it doesn't make sense. are you court ordered to say this? why wouldn't you say that you just don't have one?
that's a more likely thought process than "oh yes, just another mean, lean walking threat to the security of the state. i hear this all the time when asking someone if they want a text message confirmation of their appointment" as the short, wimpy looking man wearing khaki trousers you're serving continues to grin at you disconcertingly.
Yes and yes! That is, indeed, exactly what a person who is part of that culture would likely do. For example Tsutomu Shimomura is hilariously famous for it - the book he wrote about capturing Mitnick is a great example. And part of the reason Mitnick's restrictions were so absurd was that he liked to make grandiose and outlandish claims, and they were believed. All those guys LOVED to toot their own horn, and never let the truth get in the way of a good story. I think it only really stopped being a thing because people started going to jail and their silly claims were used against them in that process.
I noticed that in your simulated internal monologue you didn't actually mention not believing that it was true at any point. It's certainly far more plausible than your "i don't have a phone because aliens took it".
I also noticed that you still haven't given any rationale as to why said receptionist would need to consider it common for it to be valid. Maybe you forgot.
I think that in reality, your internal monologue is incorrect. I think your average hospital receptionist would effectively stop listening/caring after "I don't have a smartphone", and just get on with her work without thinking about it much at all, because she's too busy to bother with it and doesn't actually care very much at all why you don't have a smartphone. Hospital receptionists are busy people and they deal with all kinds of crazy shit.
Not sure why you’re focusing too much on the hospital receptionist part - in reality they deal with crazy people all the time.
It’s ok to think that the average reaction to someone pronouncing that they are a ‘hazard to national security’ in otherwise normal interactions wouldn’t be ‘well that person is crazy’. You don’t need to take it so personally.
I just hope you don’t go around saying awkward outlandish grandiose lies to strangers thinking their reaction is anything other than “well you’re crazy”.
Interesting, I didn't know goalposts could move quite so fast or often.
Not sure why you made up a scenario involving a hospital receptionist, or why you chose to echo my point that they deal with all kinds of crazy shit.
I challenged your assertion that it was an 'outlandish and obvious lie' for one to state that they don't have a smartphone due to a court determining they're a threat to national security, and that 'He might as well say "i don't have a phone because aliens took it"'.
You chose to repeatedly fail, despite being prompted, to address even a single point I raised to counter your claims, instead shifting goalposts and making up invalid scenarios to try to prove some kind of point unrelated to your initial premise. It seems like you're the one taking things weirdly personally.
it's always good to ensure you read what you are replying to, just so everyone is on the same page.
> Not sure why you made up a scenario involving a hospital receptionist
from: "When I run into this (most recently at a hospital)"
> I challenged your assertion that it was an 'outlandish and obvious lie' for one to state that they don't have a smartphone due to a court determining they're a threat to national security
and we're back to "Is your point that because you can name one person who was banned from using a computer before the invention of the smart phone, a receptionist working at a hospital would therefore consider that a reasonable and common reason for someone to not possess a smart phone?"
i guess your long winded answer to that is "yes", and i guess we'll just leave this discussion at that because i don't believe there is much to add to that.
in the future, you could have just replied "yes" to that comment and saved us all some time. instead you derailed the discussion because you couldn't identify the outlandish part in the sentence "i'm banned from using a phone by court order because i'm a threat to national security", then continued to focus on what a specific receptionist might think rather than see that it's obviously a stand-in for someone else you're interacting with.
to summarise for you in clear language, because i think you perhaps you need to hear this:
- telling someone else that you are a threat to national security when you are, in fact, not a threat to national security is a strange, outlandish lie
- it is very obvious to people if you tell them strange, outlandish lies during a conversation
- the general reaction to you doing something abnormal like that during a otherwise normal situation is for the other person to consider you abnormal
- the colloquial, catch-all term for this is "crazy"
Well it seems I forgot a detail, and you didn't make up the hospital receptionist, you just brought her up and then for some reason asked why I was responding to the scenario you brought up.
> and we're back to "Is your point that because you can name one person who was banned from using a computer before the invention of the smart phone, a receptionist working at a hospital would therefore consider that a reasonable and common reason for someone to not possess a smart phone?"
No, I already responded to that, pointing out that I could name a bunch of others if I spent 30 seconds on it. And in fact i did name another right there. And you totally failed to respond to that part of my post and instead decided to wildly guess what the internal monologue of a receptionist might be, as if that was somehow relevant.
It's always good to ensure you read what you're replying to, just so everyone is on the same page.
In the future, you could have just replied "ok so my comment was hyperbolic" to my initial post and saved us all some time. Instead you derailed the discussion by trying to shift goalposts and change the subject to something you thought you could "win", for some reason.
There's other things in your long-winded posts which I could respond to, but given that you've repeatedly failed to respond at all to points I've made, for example where I asked why you seem to think there's no middle ground between "common" and "outlandish lie", but why would I bother? It's not like you'd respond to any points showing how your logic is flawed. So I guess we'll just leave this discussion at that because i don't believe there is much to add to that.
To summarise this for you in clear language, since I think you perhaps need to hear this:
* There are multiple already-cited precedents for exactly the type of thing you're calling an "outlandish and obvious lie". If you'd like more examples, I'd suggest a search engine, where you'll find lots of them.
* It's possible for things to be uncommon edge-cases without being "outlandish" or "obvious lies"
* Hospital receptionists deal with these uncommon edge cases all the time, and are trained to do so. They also regularly deal with crazy people too, and are vanishingly unlikely to even bat an eye at the claim you're calling out. It's unlikely to be the craziest thing they've heard today. And it might even be true.
* There's no compelling, widely-accepted evidence of extraterrestrial visitations to earth, or of their interest in smartphones. Which makes the claim "i don't have a phone because aliens took it" orders of magnitude less likely to be true than the claim that one doesn't have a phone because a court decided that they are a threat to national security - something that, while uncommon, has definitely happened.
* Simply assuming that something is a lie because you haven't personally heard of it before is an excellent way to be incorrect.
* It's actually not a personal attack when someone points out that your logic is flawed and that you're lacking relevant information. And so you probably shouldn't take such things personally and get all upset because your obvious, incorrect hyperbole was called out for what it was.
I do worry how smart phones have become mandatory for a lot of services. Viscerally, I don't like it, because of the monthly payment aspect. I don't have an elaborate theology that is not self-contradictory, it just seems wrong to me.
I think it's a normal reaction to have a visceral negative response to this. You shouldn't have to buy a harmful product as a condition for buying the thing you actually want to buy, or even more broadly as a condition for participating in commerce in general. I don't think the theology needs to be more complex than that.
Do the Dodgers have the right to exclude non-smartphone owners from participating in commerce with them? I suppose they have the legal right to, but we have a visceral reaction to it because it is morally questionable, and even smartphone owners can easily come up with examples where they'd be harmed by similar discrimination: The Dodgers also have the right to exclude non-smokers. They could say tomorrow that you can only buy a season ticket if you're a smoker, and I think that would be considered equally unacceptable to most of us.
I’m not sure how exactly this should be worded in law, but I really wish they would pass a law requiring supporting people without smartphone apps. Obviously there would be some exceptions where justified, even for things other than “the app is the whole point” and those need to be thought through, but in this case and plenty of others, there’s just no reason they can’t accommodate non app users. “It costs more to support non app users” is not a sufficient justification.
The law that he can invoke in a weaponized way is the ADA.
It’s vague enough about what a disability is, that something like “my hand tremor and farsightedness preclude using a touchscreen, I request a reasonable accommodation” is a valid request. If they deny admission and accommodation to somebody incapable of using a smartphone, there is a whole army of lawyers that will gladly take the case on contingency.
As you note, the app is not inherent to seeing a game, or preventing resale. There’s no reason an id and confirmation number can’t be used to get him in.
There is a special ring of hell reserved for people who abuse the ADA.
Such abuse is an insult to everyone who needs it, everyone who engages with it in good faith, everyone who spends gobs of money to make events and services accessible to those with genuine need.
I don’t rule the world but if I did abusers of protective rules would be summarily executed. (Don’t vote for me. I’ve got a short but significant list of similar policies. Scammers those guys would have targets on their heads, kidnap for ransom criminals those guys too)
The ADA was a rare "great" law, in that it is sweeping, applies broadly to many different forms of disability, and it provides companies very little leeway to weasel their way out of complying. It also provides us with a very, very good generic framework for consumer protections, should we ever get an administration who cared about consumer freedom over corporate interests. I'd love to see other (not disability related) ADA-like laws that compel companies to make other reasonable accommodations to be inclusive of reasonable consumers. All kinds of amazing "consumer bill of rights" regulation could be modeled after the ADA.
If his inability to access a ticket on a smartphone has anything to do with an illness, or physical/mental impairment - say, age related cognitive decline - it is exactly what the law is for. The tweet is vague but he says it is too difficult for him which sounds like a physical or mental issue. It doesn’t sound like he is asking for anything but to be able to use his tickets.
I’m actually not convinced that ADA “abuse” is a problem. I once had to do an urgent web redesign nbecause someone who was “abusing” the system with dozens of lawsuits. It’s actually dead easy to get out of an ADA lawsuit: you just provide a reasonable accommodation. In our case it forced the corporate decision makers to prioritize making the site accessible. We provided a temporary disability assistance hotline, and got the site compliant. The lawsuit was dropped, now EVERY disabled person is better served because one “abusive” litigant was trolling for settlements. It doesn’t really matter if the plaintiff actually had a disability that made it impossible to use the site, at the end of the day, it forced a change that needed to happen.
If this gentleman used the ADA inappropriately to get paper tickets, it would set up a process and precedent for other people who have disabilities that preclude smartphone use regardless of his own condition. Sounds like a win to me…
>For sure. If that was true the answer would be "charge the non-app users a nominal fee to cover the cost".
>Invasive tracking is the point, not the cost. It's anti-consumer.
The last (and likely the last) time I went to an MLB game (not the Dodgers), perhaps six years ago or so, I was required to install a smartphone app when I purchased my tickets, keep that app on my smartphone for before and during the actual game. In the several months after buying a ticket and seeing the game, I received no less that 100 spam email messages (I was required to provide an email address as well) from the team's "partners."
What's more, not only was there no option for a paper ticket, if I left my seat during the game to get food/drink, I was required to have my smartphone and present my "ticket" via their app to security personnel when I returned to my seat. Every time.
As I said, even though I was (and am) a life-long fan, I will never go back to the stadium to see a game. It was far too invasive and inconvenient.
Edit: I'd add that I couldn't even block emails (which I routinely do at the server for other emails) from those "partners" because there were emails that were required to obtain my tickets. That isn't me not wanting to "learn" something, that's me not wanting to receive multiple spam emails every day from the same source.
Protip: always use plus aliases when signing up for things like this. Use a unique plus alias for everything you sign up for (the convention I use is e.g myemail+yourcompanyname@mydomain.com). This convention lets you be sure exactly who sold your info when the spam comes, based on the to address, and it also lets you easily block email from that source after you've got your tickets.
The only downsides are that sometimes it doesn't work if their shitty form verification insists that the plus character isn't valid in an email address. In those cases I tend to set up an actual mail alias (yourcompany@mydomain.com), but that's an annoying extra step - pluis aliasing is simple, requires no configuration, and works everywhere. But this is pretty rare. And if you're using it to sign in to things, you'll want a password manager so that you can remember what plus alias you used for each site.
Don't misunderstand me - I'm not defending the behaviour you're posting about - it's reprehensible and I wouldn't have bought tickets at all under such a system. What I'm offering is a way to make it more manageable for people who don't want to go without things that you can only buy under these user-hostile models.
>Protip: always use plus aliases when signing up for things like this. Use a unique plus alias for everything you sign up for (the convention I use is e.g myemail+yourcompanyname@mydomain.com). This convention lets you be sure exactly who sold your info when the spam comes, based on the to address, and it also lets you easily block email from that source after you've got your tickets.
I don't use "plus aliases." I don't need to. I've owned my own domains for just about 30 years, so I just use <whoeveritis>@mydomain.com and then block any emails that start spamming or are just annoying.
Protip: Host your own emails so those greedy scumbags can't cut you off whenever they please, leaving you unable to access all the crap you authenticate through your "plus aliases"
Edit: N.B., I appreciate that you brought that up. Some folks may find that useful even if I don't. That said, I still say folks should host their own email if they have the resources (minimal) and inclination (less so).
So in other words you could have easily blocked the spam emails you were complaining about after the first one arrived.
Regular aliases are fine, but they're more difficult to set up. And don't work everywhere.
I do host my own email. But not everybody has the knowledge/inclination to do so. Which is fine if that's their choice. Plus aliases work for those people too.
>So in other words you could have easily blocked the spam emails you were complaining about after the first one arrived.
That's not what I said at all[2]. In fact, I said[0]:
I was required to install a smartphone app when I purchased my tickets, keep
that app on my smartphone for before and during the actual game. In the
several months after buying a ticket and seeing the game, I received no less
that 100 spam email messages (I was required to provide an email address as
well) from the team's "partners."
I also said[1]:
IIRC, agreeing to receive marketing emails was one of the terms of installing
the app which was required to use the tickets.
[2] And yes, I know you're being a trollish jackass, but I have a little time to kill this morning, so lucky you. That's all the feeding you're gonna get. Now back under your bridge!
I'm being a trollish jackass?!? Fuck off. I posted a helpful tip - for you and for others - on how you can avoid the bullshit you were whinging about, and that you specifically claimed you couldn't block. You replied with condescending trolling pointing out how amazing you are and how you don't need my advice because you run your own email, as if that's some amazing achievement. What it does mean though is that, as I pointed out in my last message, you could have easily blocked the trash email you were whinging about once you had your ticket, making your whinging about it entirely redundant boo-hooing about nothing.
> I also said[1]: IIRC, agreeing to receive marketing emails was one of the terms of installing the app which was required to use the tickets.
Uh-huh, sure, you pointed out, after I had posted and in a different thread that I haven't looked at since, that you theoretically agreed to receive spam according to a shitty set of T&Cs. I'm not sure how this is relevant to managing/blocking said spam? Or your assholish response to my attempt to help you?
Oh noes! They might cancel your subscription to their shitty app that you have explicitly stated you don't want! Maybe they'll call the police! I mean, you have your tickets and have been to the game already and have said that you don't plan on going to another one, and there's no way they could detect that you'd blocked their mail, so the net effect on you for violating their T&C is vanishingly unlikely to ever be anything other than zero, but sure, whatever, keep receiving that ridiculous volume of spam because you theoretically agreed to it, I guess?
>Surely there's an option to unsubscribe from marketing emails. Did you try? It's highly illegal not to have that.
IIRC, agreeing to receive marketing emails was one of the terms of installing the app which was required to use the tickets.
No matter. I just corralled that spam in a folder and ignored them (which is how I knew how many -- >100 -- I received) for the couple of months I had the app installed.
Once I attended the game, I uninstalled the app and told my mail server to reject any emails (with a permanent/"User Unknown" rejection error) to that email address and deleted the folder.
I probably should have filed suit against MLB for coercive licensing of their app. Which would likely be finishing up around now, seven or so years and tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of dollars in lawyer fees later, so the court can tell me that I have no legal recourse.
But I didn't. Mostly, I'm sure, because I don't have your keen legal mind. Why don't you try that and let me know how it works out for you. The actuarials say I should live another fifteen or twenty years, so I can wait. Do tell.
I think you are not remembering correctly. The app does not require you to receive marketing e-mails. It can't supersede law, and it does not in my experience.
Unsubscribing from marketing e-mails does actually work. It's vastly simpler than trying to filter, reject, etc. And this way you still get the actual important emails. Like when an event gets cancelled, or other important information.
You don't need to get all snarky. Just consider this a learning opportunity.
> I’m not sure how exactly this should be worded in law
No policy or law shall be enacted that directly or indirectly requires a use of a computing device where any other alternative at all is possible. Where offering other alternatives presents a cost, that cost (and only that cost, with no markup) may be passed on to the consumer.
That could still get prohibitively expensive. Take the example from this article, where there's only one person still using the paper ticket option...
I could see someone arguing you need a specially trained staff member or supervisor to verify your ID for anti-scalping, which they don't need to do for other e-tickets. Say only one person uses this option all season, they could be asked to pay for an entire employee's salary/benefits.
It's a bit hyperbolic, but supporting non-standard workflows is organizationally expensive with many non-quantifable costs.
> I could see someone arguing you need a specially trained staff member or supervisor to verify your ID for anti-scalping
They can argue that all they like, but they'll stop pretty quickly when I ask why they can't just print out the same barcode as the smartphone user would use, and have the same person scan that using the same equipment so that they can enjoy the same anti-scalping protections (i.e if that barcode has already been scanned, you don't let them in).
If the law had existed all along, it would not be a non-standard workflow.
And there is precedent on the pricing. For example, FAA is not allowed to charge any more for any service than it costs to deliver said service, which is why if i lose my pilot's license, a replacement is $3.
There's no way that costs the FAA $3. It is a wealthy service for wealthy people, so they can afford to absorb some costs. Your knowledge and wording indicates you are likely part of the demographic that knows how to threaten with lawyers.
One cause for the cost-recovery rule was the case Asiana Airlines v. FAA: The court ruled that the FAA’s enabling statute required fees to be "directly related" to the agency's actual costs. They held that the FAA couldn't look at the value of the service to the airline; they could only look at the receipts for what it cost the FAA to "flip the switches and manage the radar".
Have you tried creating a Google account without a mobile phone number from a public computer? Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Ok, so assuming he doesn’t want to spend $500+ for a mobile phone, he’s looking at an Android. Then, when he logs into a Google account, Google hoovers up his location, his associated credit card (if he has one, what if he does not and does not want one?), and countless other personal metadata at the very least that will likely never go away. Even if he does suddenly go from no smartphone to being a savvy personal steward of his digital privacy, you can bet that Google is scrambling to capture as much as possible, at all times, about its users’ personal lives and data.
- If he doesn’t want a Google account, /just/ create a new one
- If he doesn’t have a credit card, /just/ use a family member’s
- If he has Parkinson’s and can’t use touch input, /just/ have a friend do it
- etc.
The question is not whether these obstacles can be overcome (trivially, by “normals”). The question is whether we want these to be the default requirements for basic participation in society. And it’s a completely legitimate question.
I have a friend who is legally blind. He has the font size turned up several notches on his phone so he can just about see it with a huge magnifier on his remaining eye. A majority of the apps on his phone are absolutely not designed for increased font size and are a nightmare to navigate.
Then he can't buy the tickets. People aren't born with a god-given right to get seasons tickets to Dodger's games. There are businesses that choose not to handle cash and only accept credit or debit payments. I need to agree to a credit card companies terms and conditions for that too. Is that unreasonable?
> Maybe it's not about the money. Maybe he does not want the negative consequences that come along with having a smartphone.
In my country right now there's a lot of hand-wringing about the impact of social media and smartphones on teenagers' mental health and education. We've got schools banning phones, and the government wanting to introduce age checks for social media. Infinite doomscrolling in your pocket, endless brainrot short-form videos, it's not healthy and we need to get smartphones out of the hands of the young.
So there are good reasons people might choose not to get a smartphone.
Then exactly the same government also proposed people wouldn't be allowed to work without a 'Digital ID Card' - making smartphones (and google/apple accounts) mandatory.
It's 2026, we've seen that free speech absoluters don't actually care about protecting all speech.
We've seen 'small government' and 'no government power over your life' supporters suddenly just fine with it when women's right to choose is taken away by the government. Or when the government wants to decide/legally enforce gender their gender definition.
We've seen the 'less government' people do nothing as the Feds trample local laws, illegally seize voter roles (voting is a states issue), attempts to inject federal requirements into elections and attach what is a large cost for some people to the right to vote.
So we're going to need more nuance than a disengenuous 1980 platitude on the topic.
These are all great arguments against a big federal nanny state. You’re just finally recognizing why it’s bad when the federal government doesn’t vote your way
>Maybe it's not about the money. Maybe he does not want the negative consequences that come along with having a smartphone.
Maybe he doesn't then get any of the benefits of having a smartphone.
I don't understand why we need to bend over backwards for folks who have chosen to ignore modernity. There was a woman in my neighborhood association at one point who would throw a fit about us using email for communication because "not everyone has a computer you know." This was in 2018. As a society, we've gone completely out of our way to make living on your own terms legal and doable. You don't even have to get you or your kids vaccinated if you don't want to! But then going even farther and expecting to get all the same benefits as folks who've decided to accept and use modern technology is ridiculous... the Dodgers don't owe this man physical season tickets, just like Google doesn't owe me the ability to physically mail in a search term and have the results physically mailed back to me.
Your idealism is fine, and I think regulation of this is completely reasonable, but this isn't much different than private automobile or bicycle companies for transportation. The biggest issue here is an anti-trust concern about two app stores, which should not be allowed. That has nothing to do, however, with having a portable computer to help you with high-end exchanges of goods and services.
A business doesn't have to serve all customers. You can't walk into 99.99% of USA stores and pay in rupees or yen or yuan. This is no different. They can choose what they accept and what they don't. Just like not every store takes credit cards or doesn't take certain credit cards (discover, amex) or doesn't take bitcoin.
It's possible to write a headline that directs blames at both parties: "Major Browsers Fail to Block Websites that Invade Your Privacy"
The fact that the website is doing this is a bigger problem than the browser not preventing it. If someone breaks into a house, it's the burglar who is prosecuted, not the company that made the door.
If you scanned LinkedIn's private network, you'd be criminally charged. Why are they allowed to scan yours with impunity? And why is this being normalized?
The best solution is a layered defense: laws that prohibit this behavior by the website and browsers that protect you against bad actors who ignore the law.
> If you scanned LinkedIn's private network, you'd be criminally charged. Why are they allowed to scan yours with impunity? And why is this being normalized?
First, I think it’s a major issue that Chrome is allowing websites to check for installed extensions.
With that said, scanning LinkedIn’s private network is not analogous to what is going on here. As problematic as it is, they’re getting information isolated to the browser itself and are not crossing the boundary to the rest of the OS much less the rest of the internal network.
Problematic for privacy? Yes. Should be locked down? Yes. But also surprisingly similar to other APIs that provide information like screen resolution, installed fonts, etc. Calling those APIs is not illegal. I’m curious to know what the technical legal ramifications are of calling these extension APIs.
And even if you read the banner on the site, the email they sent, and the announcement itself, you would not see instructions that mention the specific thing(s) you must change in order to opt out.
Sure, you can poke around in the settings and find one that you believe opts you out, but in lieu of clear and explicit instructions from GitHub, you'll have no way to find out. Only the possibility of finding out later that you guessed wrong.
And I'd imagine that this decline accelerates as _developers_ begin migrating to other platforms, since the applications they created are what made that platform appealing to non-developers. That's why Steve Ballmer was jumping up and down, shouting, in a sweaty fervor. Say what you want about pre-Nadella Microsoft, but they definitely recognized the importance of having lots of developers writing software for Windows. And they treated developers like VIPs.
> decline accelerates as _developers_ begin migrating to other platforms
developers don't control what platforms an enterprise would use. Vendors don't dictate the platform either - vendors sell to a customer, and so it makes sense that the customer dictates the platform.
when migration to different platform happens, it's because there's something disruptive that enterprises need to move to, or a new class of enterprise without existing/legacy baggage sees competitive advantage in moving. This happened to IBM when their mainframes no longer offered competitive advantage over the newly minted PC platforms.
If/when windows become lackluster in terms of a required feature, or did not keep up with a needed feature that an alternative platform provides, then the switch will happen fast. What that feature might be i dont know - if i knew, i'd be making it.
> developers don't control what platforms an enterprise would use
They might not control it directly, but they absolutely influence it. Linux was on the losing end of this for many years, as common end-user enterprise software was native and only available for Windows (or in the case of Microsoft Office, nominally available for Mac OS but with fewer features and lots more bugs). That was Microsoft's moat and it started leaking when web applications became ubiquitous. That leak later accelerated when those web applications had to work on mobile operating systems (namely iOS and Android) that Microsoft did not own and could not control.
> Vendors don't dictate the platform either - vendors sell to a customer,
> and so it makes sense that the customer dictates the platform.
There are plenty of counterexamples here. I used to have two legacy SGI machines in my cubicle at work precisely because a vendor dictated the platform to that Very Big Enterprise company many years earlier.
Similarly, many people buy Macs solely to run Logic Pro or Final Cut Pro, because the vendor (Apple) dictated the platform by discontinuing the Windows versions. Apple doesn't have the market share Microsoft has, but unlike Microsoft, they can maintain strong control because of their breadth (OS and hardware for desktop, tablet, and phone, plus high-end creative software) and because a lot of their customers are all-in on Apple's ecosystem.
I never thought I'd say something nice about Google Chrome, but this feature was the only reason that I sometimes used that browser instead of Firefox. The split view is incredibly handy when you're looking at a web application and an observability tool for that web application at the same time.
In my state, you can buy products with pseudoephedrine over the counter, but the law requires you to show ID to the pharmacist who then logs your name and address. There is absolutely nothing in the law that requires scanning or storing the customer's ID, and I don't know why anyone would agree to let them do it.
>[...] but the law requires you to show ID to the pharmacist who then logs your name and address. There is absolutely nothing in the law that requires scanning or storing the customer's ID, and I don't know why anyone would agree to let them do it.
there is very little difference except one is manual input and one is automated input. so, i am not quite sure i am understanding your objection to one and not the other. either your are ok with your information being recorded, or you arent -- the "how it is entered into the recording system" part seems immaterial to me.
At least where I live, the only information they log when looking at my ID is my name and address. Scanning my ID gives them additional information, which increases the vulnerability.
I don't trust them to store it securely nor to avoid the temptation to use that information for other purposes. The only countermeasure is to prevent them from having that information in the first place.
what other information are you concerned about, present on your id, which is not trivially obtainable by already having your name and address? your height and whether you need glasses is hardly sensitive information (and already available to them -- they record the premises and have your time of purchase).
i dont trust them to store it securely either. my objection is to being okay with your information being placed into a database when that information is manually input, but not okay with it being scanned in. if you arent okay with one method, i dont understand why you would be okay with the other.
we are in agreement that the fact that some random company has to store my information at all is sucky.
I'd say the two most important are the date of birth and document ID (e.g., driver's license number). Both are required by the AAMVA 2D barcode standard used for driver's license in the US and both are extremely valuable for identity theft.
Furthermore, the driver's license number is a primary key that could used to join records created by the scan with records in other datasets, potentially giving the company much more information about the customer than they ever realized or agreed to provide.
There's a major difference -- one involved providing a copy of your ID to a 3rd party and the other does not.
I don't want my identity stolen after I bought some cough syrupe because some dirt-bag third party ID management company that was contracted by a pharmacy didn't do their job.
>There's a major difference -- one involved providing a copy of your ID to a 3rd party and the other does not.
they arent scanning as in photocopying. they are scanning the barcode to get the name/address information
the 3rd party (pharmacy, in this case) gets and keeps the information in both scenarios.
>dirt-bag third party ID management company
this isnt online age-verification stuff. the pharmacy itself is typically the one storing the information, and querying it against a government database.
> it's 'do I have faith in all future forms of government who will have access to this data'
And even this assumes that the government can and will protect the data from the various bad actors who want it, something they have absolutely failed to do on multiple occasions.
And at least for me, frequency beats duration. I make more progress when I play consistently for even 10 minutes every day than when I play for 90 minutes on Sunday afternoon.
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