David Pierce

Editor-at-Large

The Vergecast builds a tech company

David PierceJul 9, 2024

David PierceJul 8, 2024

Scalpers: always one step ahead of Ticketmaster.

Ticketmaster does some pretty wild (and user-hostile) stuff in the name of stopping scalpers and bots from getting all the good tickets. And the scalpers and bots seem to always have another move. Case in point: those rotating barcodes on your ticket.

If you’ve bought a ticket, this token can be extracted from within the Ticketmaster app (or, in some cases, from Ticketmaster’s desktop website), exported to a third-party platform, and tickets can then be generated on that third-party platform.

Scalpers Work With Hackers to Liberate Ticketmaster's ‘Non-Transferable’ Tickets

[404 Media]

Proton just launched a privacy-focused alternative to Google Docs

David PierceJul 3, 2024

Apple’s Vision Pro: five months later

David PierceJul 2, 2024

The portable speakers you need this summer

David PierceJun 30, 2024

The music industry’s AI fight

David PierceJun 28, 2024

David PierceJun 27, 2024

“Be realistic, buddy. No one cares about you.”

The whole “my phone’s microphone is listening to me!” thing is one of my favorite internet debates. This McSweeney’s piece is very funny — and exactly correct about how it really works.

It’s not like there are hacks every day, and there will be more and more as time progresses, and some amoral lunatic on the dark web will eventually see a transcript of every in-person conversation you’ve ever had.

Calm Down—Your Phone Isn’t Listening to Your Conversations. It’s Just Tracking Everything You Type, Every App You Use, Every Website You Visit, and Everywhere You Go in the Physical World

[McSweeney's Internet Tendency]