I'm voting for Amsterdam. My fav conference of the year is Django under the Hood. The Dutch are supernice and the restaurant scene fabulous.
Schiphol has a very bad reputation for its security theater, either.
Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting
101–110 of 180 posts
Re: Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting
#102I'm a bit amazed by the panic here on HN about the blocked Visa's. I mean, I do agree that the initiative is retarded, but it's not like under Obama residents from Iran or Sudan could get in an out of the USA whenever they wanted. In my last job in the Netherlands I had an Iranian colleague who tried for seven years in a row to get a Visum to go to the USA, without success. The situation was already very difficult un…
The uproar is not about blocked visas.
Re: Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
The TSA are just the goons who search passengers at the airport. They have nothing to do with what you've talking about.
The TSA are not goons. They are just doing their job. If you have a problem with what they do, talk to their boss or vote for the right person. Most of the TSA people I know are normal people and have families,kids and stressful job with passengers being aggressive at them for no fault of theirs.
They're only following orders? I feel like I've heard that one before, I just can't remember when.
TSA employees are free to quit and find another job that doesn't involve fleecing the public to create security theatre, harassing people for no good reason, etc. They choose not to, and they are responsible for their choices.
Re: Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting
#104I fear this is the warning shot across the bow of those tech executives who supported this president. First, they come for your conferences. Then, your H1B visa-holding employees. Then...? Innovation thrives on freedom. Freedom of expression, freedom of movement, freedom of markets. And tech, in its best form, is about freedom, rather than market-capture and rent-seeking. Needless to say, none of these recent develop…
How many H1s are from Somalia or the Sudan?
I agree with your basic points, but on a practical level, how much does this actually affect things for H1 companies? We are talking 7 countries very few of which produce many H1 employees.
Re: Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been to a conference in mainland China. The firewall made it completely miserable (it was a tech conference). People from the west expect to be able to use Google/gmail/hangouts/github/ssh for more than 5 minute random bursts of connectivity. You can't expect people to go to tech conferences in those garbage conditions.
DevCon2? Lots of people on /r/ethereum were upset that videos of the talks were not available for weeks afterwards because it was in Shanghai.
No, it was for developing infrastructure tooling (e.g. K8s, docker, etc), all of which was mainly hosted on github.
Sounds like it's not an uncommon problem. Frankly I think the conferences are only as successful as they are because of the volume of mainland Chinese citizens and the novelty of a trip to mainland China for people outside of the country.
Re: Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We're a cheaper conference destination than the USA, Europe, or Japan Errr, our field's major conf is in Vancouver every other year and those hotel rooms are crazy pants expensive.
OK everywhere except Vancouver is cheaper... Vancouver is special.
Then you could say that Houston is cheaper than Toronto. This 'cheaper' argument is meaningless unless we say "cheaper than NYC or San Fran."
Re: Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting
#107I'm voting for Amsterdam. My fav conference of the year is Django under the Hood. The Dutch are supernice and the restaurant scene fabulous.
Schiphol has a very bad reputation for its security theater, either.
I don't know if it's a different experience for people traveling from outside Schengen but the comparison between JFK and Schiphol is stark. Schiphol is friendly in comparison.
Re: Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting
#108I'm a bit amazed by the panic here on HN about the blocked Visa's. I mean, I do agree that the initiative is retarded, but it's not like under Obama residents from Iran or Sudan could get in an out of the USA whenever they wanted. In my last job in the Netherlands I had an Iranian colleague who tried for seven years in a row to get a Visum to go to the USA, without success. The situation was already very difficult un…
Situation A: it's hard for me to get a VISA. Situation B: I have been a permanent resident for years, own a house and a cat, my family are citizens, I went to Europe for a few days and now the border authorities detain me and want to send me to Iran. How big does it have to be?
Horrible as B is, it's even worse than that:
> Even though they were ignorant of the termination [of their visas while in transit], they were still charged with violating U.S. immigration law and given a five-year ban to future admission.
https://theintercept.com/2017/01/29/trumps-muslim-ban-trigge...
Re: Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting
#109Wouldn't hosting in the US still make the most practical sense because it has by far the most software developers, and the middle Eastern countries involved don't really contain many at all? I don't like the EO, but doesn't this just ignore reality?
Just like all of these heated political posts today and lately, yes, it does ignore reality.
Re: Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Schiphol has a very bad reputation for its security theater, either.
I don't know if it's a different experience for people traveling from outside Schengen but the comparison between JFK and Schiphol is stark. Schiphol is friendly in comparison.
That's quite telling for JFK...