This year is already off to a very good start at the movies but 2025 is looking even bigger, in more ways than one. Fresh off the huge success of last year’s Oppenheimer and this year’s Dune: Part Two, IMAX just revealed 14 titles in 2025 that will not only be released in IMAX, but are being filmed specifically for…
On Wednesday, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that could provide at least some accountability for Ticketmaster and other live event vendors. NBC News reports the TICKET Act (not to be confused with the Senate’s separate bill with the same try-hard acronym) would mandate that ticket sellers list upfront the total cost of admission — including all fees — to buyers.
In addition to the full pricing breakdown, the bill would require sellers to indicate whether the tickets are currently in their possession. It would also ban deceptive websites from secondary vendors and force sellers to refund tickets to canceled events. The bill doesn’t appear to address price gouging or extravagant fees.
It now moves to the Senate, which is floating two separate event-reform bills: the other TICKET Act and a bipartisan Fans First Act. The latter was introduced in December to strengthen the 2016 BOTS Act that bars the use of bots to buy tickets, a practice that Taylor Swift fans (among others) can attest is still all too common.
Reforming the ticketing industry became a political point-scoring item in late 2022 after Ticketmaster’s Taylor Swift fiasco. The Live Nation-owned service, which has a stronghold on the industry, melted down as millions of fans battled “a staggering number” of bots. Ticketmaster said presale codes reached 1.5 million fans, but 14 million (including those pesky bots) tried to buy tickets.
Live Nation President and CFO Joe Berchtold testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee in January 2023, where he largely passed the buck to Congress to fix the mess. He suggested the government strengthen the BOTS Act, which one of the Senate’s bills would try to do. During the hearing, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) needled the executive for dodging blame, accusing the company of pointing the finger at everyone but itself.
Representatives Gus Bilirakis (R-FL), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ) issued a joint statement on Wednesday about the House’s TICKET Act. “This consensus legislation will end deceptive ticketing practices that frustrate consumers who simply want to enjoy a concert, show, or sporting event by restoring fairness and transparency to the ticket marketplace,” the group wrote. “After years of bipartisan work, we will now be able to enhance the customer experience of buying event tickets online. We look forward to continuing to work together to urge quick Senate passage so that we can send it to the President’s desk to be signed into law.”
Artists publicly supporting legislation to combat the ticketing industry’s failures include (among others) Billie Eilish, Lorde, Green Day, Cyndi Lauper, Jason Mraz and Dave Matthews. “We are joining together to say that the current system is broken: predatory resellers and secondary platforms engage in deceptive ticketing practices to inflate ticket prices and deprive fans of the chance to see their favorite artists at a fair price,” a joint letter from over 250 musicians reads.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/us-house-passes-ticket-act-to-force-event-pricing-transparency-202852148.html?src=rss
The debut season of Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power—for those that actually ended up making it through all eight episodes—often struggled to really really feel there was narrative moment outside of that one hella cool moment when a mountain blew up. By its climax, it felt like things had barely just started, in…
OpenAI and Reddit announced a partnership on Thursday that will allow OpenAI to surface Reddit discussions in ChatGPT and for Reddit to bring AI-powered features to its users. The partnership will “enable OpenAI’s tools to better understand and showcase Reddit content, especially on recent topics,” both companies said in a joint statement. As part of the agreement, OpenAI will also become an advertising partner on Reddit, which means that it will run ads on the platform.
The deal is similar to the one that Reddit signed with Google in February, and which is reportedly worth $60 million. A Reddit spokesperson declined to disclose the terms of the OpenAI deal to Engadget and OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.
OpenAI has been increasingly striking partnerships with publishers to get data to continue training its AI models. In the last few weeks alone, the company has signed deals with the Financial Times and Dotdash Meredith. Last year, it also partnered with German publisher Axel Springer to train its models on news from Politico and Business Insider in the US and Bild and Die Welt in Germany.
Under the new arrangement, OpenAI will get access to Reddit’s Data API, which, the company said, will provide it with “real time, structured, and unique content from Reddit.” It’s not clear what AI-powered features Reddit will build into its platform as a result of the partnership. A Reddit spokesperson declined to comment.
Last year, getting access to Reddit’s data, a rich source of real time, human generated, and often high-quality information, became a contentious issue after the company announced that it would start charging developers to use its API. As a result, dozens of third-party Reddit clients were forced to shut down and thousands of subreddits went dark in protest. At the time, Reddit stood its ground and said that large AI companies were scraping its data with no payment. Since then, Reddit has been monetizing its data by striking such deals with Google and OpenAI, whose progress in training their AI models depends on having access to it.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/openai-strikes-deal-to-put-reddit-posts-in-chatgpt-224133045.html?src=rss
Video game adaptation Five Nights at Freddy’s proved unstoppable at both the box office and on Peacock, and its follow-up hopes to repeat that success when it arrives December 5, 2025. The release date for Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is the biggest calendar addition for a slew of upcoming Universal Blumhouse releases,…
Whenever a new set of Star Wars toys is announced, fans have come to expect to see characters in some sort of armor. Be it Mandalorian armor, stormtrooper armor, or Clone Trooper armor, toy companies love it because all they have to do is make a new head and reuse an old body. It’s a cheat on 99% of occasions. But,…
On Wednesday, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that could provide at least some accountability for Ticketmaster and other live event vendors. NBC News reports the TICKET Act (not to be confused with the Senate’s separate bill with the same try-hard acronym) would mandate that ticket sellers list upfront the total cost of admission — including all fees — to buyers.
In addition to the full pricing breakdown, the bill would require sellers to indicate whether the tickets are currently in their possession. It would also ban deceptive websites from secondary vendors and force sellers to refund tickets to canceled events. The bill doesn’t appear to address price gouging or extravagant fees.
It now moves to the Senate, which is floating two separate event-reform bills: the other TICKET Act and a bipartisan Fans First Act. The latter was introduced in December to strengthen the 2016 BOTS Act that bars the use of bots to buy tickets, a practice that Taylor Swift fans (among others) can attest is still all too common.
Reforming the ticketing industry became a political point-scoring item in late 2022 after Ticketmaster’s Taylor Swift fiasco. The Live Nation-owned service, which has a stronghold on the industry, melted down as millions of fans battled “a staggering number” of bots. Ticketmaster said presale codes reached 1.5 million fans, but 14 million (including those pesky bots) tried to buy tickets.
Live Nation President and CFO Joe Berchtold testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee in January 2023, where he largely passed the buck to Congress to fix the mess. He suggested the government strengthen the BOTS Act, which one of the Senate’s bills would try to do. During the hearing, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) needled the executive for dodging blame, accusing the company of pointing the finger at everyone but itself.
Representatives Gus Bilirakis (R-FL), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ) issued a joint statement on Wednesday about the House’s TICKET Act. “This consensus legislation will end deceptive ticketing practices that frustrate consumers who simply want to enjoy a concert, show, or sporting event by restoring fairness and transparency to the ticket marketplace,” the group wrote. “After years of bipartisan work, we will now be able to enhance the customer experience of buying event tickets online. We look forward to continuing to work together to urge quick Senate passage so that we can send it to the President’s desk to be signed into law.”
Artists publicly supporting legislation to combat the ticketing industry’s failures include (among others) Billie Eilish, Lorde, Green Day, Cyndi Lauper, Jason Mraz and Dave Matthews. “We are joining together to say that the current system is broken: predatory resellers and secondary platforms engage in deceptive ticketing practices to inflate ticket prices and deprive fans of the chance to see their favorite artists at a fair price,” a joint letter from over 250 musicians reads.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/us-house-passes-ticket-act-to-force-event-pricing-transparency-202852148.html?src=rss
Video game adaptation Five Nights at Freddy’s proved unstoppable at both the box office and on Peacock, and its follow-up hopes to repeat that success when it arrives December 5, 2025. The release date for Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is the biggest calendar addition for a slew of upcoming Universal Blumhouse releases,…
Reactions for Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis have begun to hit the internet and they are as all over the place as the film itself seems to be. Megalopolis is a sci-fi love story between architect Cesar (Adam Driver) and socialite Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), who become caught up in the plans that Julia’s powerful…
Grand Theft Auto VI’s return to Vice City is officially scheduled for fall 2025. On Thursday, parent company Take-Two Interactive wrote in its Q4 2024 earnings report that it’s narrowed GTA 6’s previously announced 2025 window to autumn of next year.
“Our outlook reflects a narrowing of Rockstar Games’ previously established window of Calendar 2025 to Fall of Calendar 2025 for Grand Theft Auto VI,” Take-Two Chairman and CEO Strauss Zelnick wrote in the earnings report. “We are highly confident that Rockstar Games will deliver an unparalleled entertainment experience, and our expectations for the commercial impact of the title continue to increase.”
The sixth mainline installment in the open-world series will be set in Leonida (Rockstar’s Florida equivalent), focused mostly on Vice City (Miami). The game appears to have a contemporary setting, as opposed to the charming ’80s cheese from 2002’s Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. You can catch a glimpse of protagonists Jason and Lucia in the trailer below.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/grand-theft-auto-6-will-arrive-in-fall-2025-205513138.html?src=rss
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