The pain of narrowly missing out on concert tickets is an all too common feeling.

While we might be quick to blame our reflexes, scalpers employing bots have been wreaking havoc in the now mostly digital ticket selling business. 

The Australian state of New South Wales will ban these ticket bots as part of laws passed on Wednesday, which makes it the first jurisdiction in the country to do so.

The Fair Trading Amendment (Ticket Scalping and Gift Cards) Bill 2017 outlaws the use of bots, while also capping the transaction cost of resales to 10 percent of its sale price. Read more…

More about Tech, Australia, Bots, Tickets, and Ticket Scalpers

Source: Mashable | Lawmakers try their hand at banning ticketing bots, but it's not the end of them

If you’re looking for good news about the future of false information on the internet, please close this little post and continue your search. Your eyes are wasting their time here. 

A Pew Research Center study published on Thursday polled more than 1,000 experts of various kinds on how they view the future of fake news. 

Here’s the survey question:

The results are decidedly mixed.

Just over 50 percent of respondents said the media environment won’t improve, while just under 50 percent said it will. 

Why are some experts so pessimistic? According to the study, the two most common reasons are that the “fake news ecosystem preys on some of our deepest human instincts” and “our brains are not wired to contend with the pace of technological change.” Read more…

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Source: Mashable | Experts don't know if the fake news problem will get more or less awful

Uber board member, media mogul, and sleep crusader Arianna Huffington wants you to turn off your phone.

That’s easier said than done, of course, so she’s teamed up with Samsung to make an app that will help you force yourself into it.

It’s called Thrive, and the goal, according to Huffington, is to provide “the tools to take a break from your phone to do whatever it is that makes you more human.” The Samsung-exclusive app isn’t out until December, but Huffington took the stage at Samsung’s Developer Conference to share more about how it works.  Read more…

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Source: Mashable | Arianna Huffington has a solution to your annoying phone notification problem

Twitter prides itself on being “what’s happening,” but unfortunately for the company’s users, what’s frequently happening is unchecked harassment. CEO Jack Dorsey apparently has plans to change all that, and today put forth a roadmap for curbing abuse on the social media platform. 

In an Oct. 19 post, the Twitter Safety team published a detailed calendar listing target dates and goals for changing the site’s rules. Taking it a step further, Twitter promised to share “regular, real-time updates” on its efforts to make the service “a safer place.” 

More about Twitter, Jack Dorsey, Harassment, Social Media, and Social Media Companies
Source: Mashable | Twitter shares its roadmap to curb abuse

Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino had the goods on Harvey Weinstein decades ago — and could have done more to stop his abusive behavior. 

That’s what Tarantino, one of Weinstein’s most frequent directorial collaborators, admitted Thursday in a mea culpa of a New York Times interview. He knew — because his own girlfriend had been abused by him. 

“I chalked it up to a ’50s, ’60s-era image of a boss chasing a secretary around the desk,” Tarantino said. “As if that’s OK. That’s the egg on my face right now.”

Despite having that cartoon stuck in his head, the director also admitted he was “shocked and appalled” when his then girlfriend, the actress Mira Sorvino, told him exactly what she told the New Yorker in an article published last week: that Weinstein had given her an unwanted massage, chased her around a hotel room and shown up at her house after midnight.  Read more…

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Source: Mashable | Quentin Tarantino says he knew about Harvey Weinstein's abuses