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Crackdown on bots after Ticketmaster’s Taylor Swift fiasco?

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After Ticketmaster failed to sell tickets for Taylor Swift’s Eras Stadium tour earlier this month, the company blamed “bot attacks” and fans for the meltdown.

Now members of Congress are asking the FTC if it plans to enforce a 2016 law designed to combat such “attacks.”

Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Connection), the ranking member and chair of the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security respectively, He wrote a letter on Monday to the Federal Trade Commission He asks if the commission will invoke the Best Online Ticket Sales Act, or the BOTS Act.

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Signed into law in 2016, and Potts Law It gives the government the power to crack down on those who abuse bots — software applications programmed to run automated tasks over the Internet — to buy large amounts of tickets for profit. These brokers often run ticket bots that automatically suck up huge swaths of tickets as soon as they go on sale.

These tickets are then sold on third party websites, often at much higher prices. The law prohibits the resale of tickets purchased using bots, and people who illegally sell tickets face a $16,000 fine.

“While bots may not be the sole cause of these problems, which Congress assesses, fighting bots is an important step in reducing consumer costs in the online ticketing industry,” Blackburn and Blumenthal wrote.

Peter Kaplan, a FTC spokesman, said the agency had received the letter but declined to comment further.

When Ticketmaster announced it had canceled ticket sales for Swift’s concerts to the public after a series of pre-sales, it blamed “the staggering number of bot attacks as well as fans who didn’t have invite codes,” saying it “led to unprecedented traffic on our site, resulting in A total of 3.5 billion system requests – 4 times the previous peak.

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While the letter referred specifically to the Ticketmaster Swift debacle, the senators also pointed to other recent examples, such as consumers trying to buy tickets to see Bob Dylan perform in Nashville last March, only to be told the tickets in their cart weren’t counting. present. The message also referred to a separate incident where 22,000 fans signed up to buy Blake Shelton tickets but only a few hundred people walked out with them.

The letter goes on to point out the wild profit margins on third-party sites with some listings as high as $1,000 for a Bruce Springsteen concert and $40,000 to see Adele.

“Preventing this kind of harm to consumers is exactly why Congress chose to enact the BOTS Act six years ago and why we both chose to sponsor it,” the letter read.

The FTC has cracked down on individuals who use bots in the past. This past January, the Federal Trade Commission announced that it planned to issue a $31 million fine against three New York ticket brokers who the commission accused of using bots to purchase tens of thousands of tickets for concerts and sporting events, then making millions by reselling them. them to the masses at higher prices.

The letter acknowledged the January case, which was the first use of the BOTS law, but asked the FTC why it had not done more to enforce the law against other potential cases of bots use.

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Swift’s fiasco also drew criticism of Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation Entertainment, the world’s largest concert promoter. The two companies merged in 2010, raising concerns that the resulting company would have stranglehold on ticket sales and other parts of the music business.

Ticketmaster has long faced criticism for the fees it charges consumers, and there has been political pressure on antitrust officials to get involved.

Last week, other members of Congress — Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), longtime critic of Ticketmaster and Live Nation, and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) — announced that they would Hold a hearing on the impact of Ticketmaster’s dominant hold on the ticketing industry and “how consolidation into the live entertainment industry and the ticketing industry is hurting customers and artists alike.”

“When there is no competition to incentivize better services and fair prices, we all suffer the consequences,” Klobuchar said.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) chirp Earlier this month you think the company needs to be dismantled.

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Department of Justice antitrust investigation into Live Nation Entertainment It has been announced earlier this month. It seeks to determine whether Live Nation has abused its power over the live music industry.

In 2019, the Department of Justice was preparing for a long legal battle against Live Nation over allegations that Forced concert venues To work with the Ticketmaster division.

Long live the nation in which he settled Agree to extend some conditions from its 2010 merger that was supposed to ensure fair competition in the ticket market and prevent Live Nation from retaliating against venue owners who decided to defect to competitors.



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A reporter from Stanford University is behind an explosive investigation

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On the same day as the story was published, Ecclesiastes I launched an investigation at Tessier-Lavigne’s research and seven years of alleged scientific misconduct detailed in the Stanford Daily story.

“It was absolutely amazing,” said Sam Catania, editor-in-chief of the Stanford Daily. “I can’t say I expected the board of trustees to act quickly.” But he said the launch of the investigation “has become just another news event for us.” Baker continued to cover the story, revealing that the photo could have been tampered with Additional papers Co-authored by Tessier-Lavigne. He also spoke about invitations to the rector get down and the Expanding the group of people which will investigate allegations of scientific misconduct. (You can read all of the Stanford Daily coverage here.)

On February 17, three days before the Polk Prize winners were announced, Baker posted another Huge story Debunking accusations that Tessier-Lavigne had falsified data in a 2009 paper that identified a possible cause of brain degeneration in Alzheimer’s patients.

Baker said his personal interaction with Tessier-Lavigne was brief. He reached out to the university’s president shortly after emailing him asking for comment on the story about the alleged Alzheimer’s data. I went up to him. I just said, “Hi,” and he said, “Oh yeah, yeah. I received your message. I look forward to being in touch. Im in a hurry.’

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“I started to say something,” Baker continued, “and he slammed his car door halfway through my sentence.” “Of course, he never came back to us. His lawyer did.”

Shortly after the Alzheimer’s story was published, Tessier-Lavigne sent a letter to Stanford faculty and staff Attacking the student newspaper’s reports as “full of lies”.

Tessier-Lavigne’s letter reinforced Baker’s conviction that his stories would never have been published if the Stanford Daily had not been an organization operating outside the control of the academic establishment. (The newspaper celebrates the 50th anniversary of its independence from the university this year.) “The stakes are very high,” Baker said. “The person we are writing about is literally responsible for all of us.”

Both the Stanford Daily reporter and editor-in-chief bash questions about the impact their investigation might have on Tessier-Lavin’s tenure as university president.

“We just want to report the facts and we want to get them right. That’s what’s most important to us,” Catania said. “You know, whatever happens, if at the end of the day we were fair, we were accurate, we were accurate. For me, that would be “mission accomplished” on the newspaper side.

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For his part, Baker said he just wanted to “know the truth about exactly what happened.” He added, “I try not to think too much about what’s going to happen based on all of this. The thing I’ve spent most of the time thinking about is making sure we get it right, making sure we get it as comprehensive as possible. I’m not responsible for passing judgment; people will get there.” Others come to their conclusions. So my only job here is just to go on and find out what’s really out there.”

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The untold story of notorious influencer Andrew Tate

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despite their attempts In gaining fame and fortune on TV, it was in the kickboxing gym where the brothers really thrived. They attend Storm Gym in Luton, a well-equipped facility in an old warehouse on a commercial estate, under the tutelage of Emir Subasic, an ex-military kickboxer, who becomes close with them and their family.

The staff at the gym declined to comment on Andrew or Tristan, and the gym’s location was recently updatedRemoval Descriptions Andrew as “one of the most devastating fighters” and Tristan as “a war machine”.

Johal, the gym owner from Leicestershire, believed Andrew was a skilled kickboxer and admired the way he fought with his hand, a high-risk strategy that allows fighters to bob and weave quickly but exposes them to knockout risks.

Johal suspects that Andrew learned his knack for self-promotion during his years as a fighter. “Andrew was always a little bit controversial. Sometimes you have to be the bad cop,” Johal said, explaining that the big money and fights go to the loudest boxers.

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“Andrew learned that a long time ago. He always said things to get people to support them, to get noticed. Nothing like that,” Johal said as a person. He added that Andrew used to go to kickboxing forums on the internet and write controversial things to get attention for his matches.

Ibrahim Al-Bastati, the Dutch kickboxer who defeated Andrew and won the championship belt in 2016, told Mirror That alpha male personality is just a verb. He told the newspaper, “He’s lying to a lot of people, he’s not the person he says he is.” “I know him very well, Andrew and his brother Tristan. I’ve been talking to them all week before the fight doing interviews, and he’s a very kind person.”

Andrew also took a distinct approach to marketing his bouts with the combat press, Says An interviewer from Love 2 Fight, a combat sports game, in 2013 came from a mysterious land called Wudan and was trained by a character named Master Po. This story was later incorporated into Tate’s misogynist training materials, illustrated with elaborate manga-style cartoons, and adopted by his followers.

“His fights were selling themselves,” Johal said. “He literally called himself ‘the cobra.’ Because like a cobra, his right hand, straight from behind, would knock most people out.”

Both brothers are successful in the ring. Andrew won many world title fights and Tristan won two British titles. Although it was not a profitable business, it did bring in some money. Andrew finally gets a sports car, an Aston Martin DB9, when he wins £10,000 from a fight.

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“It was quite a strange thing because it was a one-bedroom apartment with an Aston Martin DB on the outside,” O’Halloran recalls. This led to the origin of Andrew’s famous nickname “Top G.” “We used to always say when we were younger, ‘What a better G’,” O’Halloran recalled. “The guy’s a big gangster here—he drives an Aston Martin.”

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Chuck E. Cheese still works on floppy disks – until now

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Of Chuck E. Cheese’s 600-plus locations worldwide, fewer than 50 still have the quarter-century-old “Studio C” design of animation electronics using these floppy disks. Other restaurants have a version of the show that uses contemporary technology, while some have no animation at all. (Ars Technica He has a story About Chuck E. Cheese’s floppy disk use with a more detailed breakdown of all the old technologies.)

Eventually, Chuck E. Cheese plans to phase out animation entirely and focus on new screen-based entertainment (plus a more retro approach: a living human in a mascot costume). fix was It was first announced in 2017but restaurant renovations are an ongoing process, and it may be a year or two before the last of the animatronics are scrapped.

Tom Persky is the owner floppydisk.com, the largest floppy disk provider still in existence. His business has a few weapons: You can buy blank disks through him or send old floppy disks to transfer to more modern storage media. Persky will also program discs for bulk order customers, and he confirmed to BuzzFeed News that Chuck E. Cheese was indeed a longtime customer of his. He said he was sad that he would lose the company as a customer.

As for why the restaurant still uses floppy disks, Persky told BuzzFeed News that the floppy technology, while outdated, is actually very reliable. “If you’re looking for something very stable, really impenetrable — it’s not internet-based, it’s not network-based,” Persky said. “She’s very elegant at what she does.”

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Chuck E. Cheese’s press reps confirmed the series’ use of floppy disks with BuzzFeed News. However, they were very careful about what other information they were willing to share, and after a few days they told us that the company would not be officially involved in this story.

However, an experienced Chuck E. Cheese employee, who asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to speak on behalf of the company, echoed Persky’s sentiments.

“The floppy disks work surprisingly well. The animation, lighting, and rendering sync data are all in the floppy disks,” the employee told BuzzFeed News. SD. But newer setups usually cause issues with things, and it’s easier to keep the old stuff running.”

Even after Chuck E. Cheese phases out floppy disks, they’ll likely still be in use for some time in other areas – such as medical devices. While the thought of this might make you nervous, Persky insisted it was a good thing. “Why don’t you use USB? Well, let’s just say your life depends on it,” he said. If you have a choice between a USB drive or a floppy disk, choose the floppy disk every-time.

“It’s one thing if your animated bear isn’t smiling when cued,” he continued. “It’s another matter if your medical device breaks down.”

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