July 22, 2024 - Assorted Reads

Hi folks!

I enjoyed writing the last 'assorted reads' post so much that I thought I'd make this a monthly thing. If you have something you've read recently that you've been sharing with everyone, feel free to drop me a line either in the comments below or via email (you can find the address on my 'about' page) - I'm always interested in new reads!

Last Woman by Carleigh Baker

It's been a long time since I've read a collection of short stories. I've generally avoided them since high school as reading some were part of my English classes and I found them to be unbearably dry. I also didn't enjoy the length of the stories themselves and generally preferred novels because I liked reading how characters evolve and change as they encounter various challenges in the story.

While I didn't pick this up on my own (it was a book club pick), it surprised me with how good it was and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The stories, touching on social isolation, climate change, and billionaires travelling space to name a few themes, felt relevant to the world we're currently in and at times were quite funny.

If you're looking for a read that's easy to pick up and put down yet still thought-provoking, I'd highly recommend this book.

Reverse Engineering TicketMaster's Rotating Barcodes

I saw this on HackerNews somewhat recently and given how much I hate TicketMaster for making it impossible to just print tickets offline rather than use their app (which changes the barcode after short time intervals), I have to admit I felt giddy reading how someone managed to crack the app in order to do just that.

Much like a blog post from 2020 where someone explained how they found the Australian Prime Minister's passport number from an Instagram photo, it's detailed enough to fully understand what they did while not getting so in the weeds to be dry.

The conclusion of the article is also worth shouting out:

I think we can all agree: Fuck TicketMaster. I hope their sleazy product managers and business majors read this and throw a tantrum. I hope their devs read this and feel embarrassed. It’s rare that I feel genuine malice towards other developers, but to those who designed this system, I say: Shame.

Shame on you for abusing your talent to exclude the technologically-disadvantaged.

Shame on you for letting the marketing team dress this dark-pattern as a safety measure.

Shame on you for supporting a company with such cruel business practices.

Software developers are the wizards and shamans of the modern age. We ought to use our powers with the austerity and integrity such power implies. You’re using them to exclude people from entertainment events.

My reaction to that mic drop of a conclusion:

To me, that last paragraph about software developers using our knowledge and skills responsibly ties back to the concept of 'ethical debt' I mentioned in my last post.

While AI seems to be the main driver at the moment in spurring further conversations around ethical debt, there are, as this TicketMaster story shows, plenty of existing areas where addressing ethical debt or factoring it into our software design process is something we can start as standard practice much like we do with technical debt today. Hopefully, by doing so, we avoid becoming complicit parties in creating more TicketMasters.