Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting • Hacker News Board

Re: Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting

#151

Post by wil421 » Mon, Jan 30, 2017, 5:26 PM UTC

delinka wrote: post #145

alistairSH wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eek. I would never counsel a somebody to lie at the border. That's a recipe for trouble. My understanding is legal advice is usually along the lines of "tell the truth in as few words as possible."

If you're assuming that I'd espouse lying, how are the "lies of omission" that you imply any different? The Right Thing To Say does not involve lying. It involves being careful; not oversharing. "Tell the truth in as few words as possible." Exactly this. No need to ramble on about your detailed itinerary. For example: You're here for "education." Will you be the teacher or the learner? You'll be sharing your experien…

It wouldn't be a lie of omission if you said "I'm a speaker at a technology conference". Then let them ask you other questions if they want more information.

If you said "I'm a well paid speaker headlining DefCon haking conference" or something similar, you'd probably get a different response. DefCon is just an example that could raise an eyebrow.

Re: Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting

#152

Post by Silhouette » Mon, Jan 30, 2017, 5:27 PM UTC

ryandamm wrote: post #149

refurb wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

all of whom were openly racist, xenophobic Thank you for taking the first step at bringing both sides together! If we can just convince one side they are wrong and frankly evil, we can start the healing process.

I actually think we suffer from false equivalency in the US. The two parties are radically different, the rhetoric is radically different. It's not that we suffer from a lack of consensus, it's that the right in the US has swerved sharply right, while the left has meandered a little left lately (but rightward across a ~30 year time span). The first source I could find, it's not universally agreed upon, but here: http…

The irony of your comment is that while you might well be right about the trends, by global political standards the two main parties in the US are barely distinguishable, except for a few clear dividing lines like guns or abortion.

Re: Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting

#153

Post by alistairSH » Mon, Jan 30, 2017, 6:04 PM UTC

delinka wrote: post #145

alistairSH wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eek. I would never counsel a somebody to lie at the border. That's a recipe for trouble. My understanding is legal advice is usually along the lines of "tell the truth in as few words as possible."

If you're assuming that I'd espouse lying, how are the "lies of omission" that you imply any different? The Right Thing To Say does not involve lying. It involves being careful; not oversharing. "Tell the truth in as few words as possible." Exactly this. No need to ramble on about your detailed itinerary. For example: You're here for "education." Will you be the teacher or the learner? You'll be sharing your experien…

Alongside your comment about keeping payment outside the country, I construed your comment to mean you would attempt to hide the fact that the speakers are paid, and avoid the question of work visas completely.

Re: Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting

#154

Post by matt4077 » Mon, Jan 30, 2017, 6:19 PM UTC

FabHK wrote: post #116

I think one good criterion (among others) for deciding in what country to hold a conference is the number of countries whose citizen can enter without visa. There's a list on Wikipedia that you can sort by that criterion [1]. For the USA, it's 42 (what else). Canada, 52. For Schengen area (most of EU), 92. Hong Kong, 148, Indonesia, Cambodia even more. China only 12. So, South East Asia or Europe seem reasonable on t…

Having organised a pretty large student conference in the past, here are some further considerations:

- Obviously the specific countries behind those numbers matter. If you're organising a conference on 14th century Flemish literature, the Netherlands will be more important than North Korea

- Not all restrictions are created equal. Specifically, the activity I was involved in (University Debating) has a sizeable Israeli community, who would argue that travel restrictions that jews encounter across the muslim world should be considered more harshly than most other travel restrictions, which tend to emanate from a fear of economic migration.

- beware self-fulfilling prophecies: If you chose a location that is hard for sub-saharan african nationals to reach because they're underrepresented in your audience, you are also perpetuating that underrepresentation.

Re: Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting

#155

Post by iamatworknow » Mon, Jan 30, 2017, 6:37 PM UTC

camus2 wrote: post #112

msie wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's this show about the Canadian border services and they regularly go through people's phones: 'Border Security'

And computers too, some French guy was caught with "anime porn" on his hard drive at the border, went to prison for a few month.

Canadian customs once searched my brother's laptop at the border, in his presence, and their method was as trivial as doing a Windows file search for "boy" and "girl".

Re: Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting

#156

Post by petercooper » Mon, Jan 30, 2017, 6:49 PM UTC

deong wrote: post #138

petercooper wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few years ago I raised the idea (on Twitter) of Iceland being a nice "neutral" venue that's equally (in)convenient for both US and European attendees, very liberal and progressive, and, at the time, cheap for a Nordic country. I have since seen a handful of industry conferences take place there, but it hasn't really blown up (one reason, I suspect, is it's reasonably expensive to stay there now - Iceland's decline…

I've actually organized a machine learning conference in Iceland (AISTATS and MLSS 2014), and I can probably shed some light on this. One, it's hideously expensive now, for almost anyone in the world. Second, it's incredibly small -- 320,000 people in the entire country, and maybe 220,000 of those in the Reykjavik area. Due to the "big fish in a small pond" aspect of Reykjavik being the capital, there's more infrastr…

Fantastic response and insights. Thanks!

Re: Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting

#157

Post by astrodust » Mon, Jan 30, 2017, 6:54 PM UTC

bjshepard wrote: post #70

astrodust wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will . It does not right now if you're talking about conferences. Participants are still largely from the Americas and Europe. Also this entire argument is utterly absurd. If you're upset about brutal domestic policies the last place you should be arguing in favor of is China.

China has very sane, good government, come actually experience it and stop believing CIA lies. The firewall is a rational way to keep the US deep state out.

While I'll grant you Chinese government officials are probably more educated and experienced than your average American ones, there is no justifying the pervasive political censorship in China.

The CIA is not responsible for suppressing the Tiananmen Square incident. Stop spreading bullshit.

Re: Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting

#158

Post by FabHK » Mon, Jan 30, 2017, 8:02 PM UTC

ryandamm wrote: post #149

refurb wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

all of whom were openly racist, xenophobic Thank you for taking the first step at bringing both sides together! If we can just convince one side they are wrong and frankly evil, we can start the healing process.

I actually think we suffer from false equivalency in the US. The two parties are radically different, the rhetoric is radically different. It's not that we suffer from a lack of consensus, it's that the right in the US has swerved sharply right, while the left has meandered a little left lately (but rightward across a ~30 year time span). The first source I could find, it's not universally agreed upon, but here: http…

Yes. A fine example is that Obamacare is basically Romneycare (the health care system Mitt Romney had instituted in, what, Massachusetts?). That is, the most progressive health insurance scheme that Democrats could politically push through is basically an old Republican scheme, and they now denounce it as some terrible socialist abomination (even though it is far less comprehensive than what nearly all other developed nations have, with better results).

Re: Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting

#159

Post by FabHK » Mon, Jan 30, 2017, 8:18 PM UTC

ryandamm wrote: post #147

chx wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, people book Uber still. Unfathomable.

Well, to be fair, it's because someone's handing out free money in the form of subsidized rides. The fact that hailing a taxi is more expensive (nevermind less convenient) is a strong argument when the consumer is making a choice. Wrapped in that argument is the obvious idea that Uber is burning investor money to capture the market, but you can't expect consumers to protest by paying more. That's what's so insidious…

Agreed. As I like to say, Uber screws their drivers (already, but wait for autonomous cars...), Uber screws their competition (subsidised), and their investors, too.

For now, they don't screw their customers, but let's see what happens when they've gotten to monopoly market share.

I've also argued before that it is somewhat of a natural monopoly insofar as the biggest player will typically have more cars nearer you, and their app will offer the shortest waiting time. To combat that, one could regulate taxis like a public utility, and require that all providers submit their data to a register that collates the data and lists all cars and all riders centrally. Then one could have different companies and different apps compete on a level playing field.

Some people disagree with that. I think it boils down to the definition of monopoly (barriers to entry? decreasing marginal cost? network effect? ...?), but at the end of the day definitions don't really matter -- what matters is a better outcome for consumers, and I fear regulation is required for that at some point.

Re: Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting

#160

Post by nodamage » Mon, Jan 30, 2017, 8:31 PM UTC

imron wrote: post #111

nodamage wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The uproar is not about blocked visas.

That's right, surely the uproar is about all the bombing and killing that the US has been doing in 5 of the 7 countries listed on the visa ban list. I mean human lives are worth more than visas right? And if that bombing had never happened, we wouldn't have the humanitarian crisis that led to so many refugees coming from those countries. Well, at least that's what I wish more people were concerned about, but where we…

I'm amazed by the cognitive dissonance necessary to equate people who are legal permanent residents of the United States with militants who are the targets of military action in ISIS-controlled territory.

I also think it's hilarious that the right is now all of a sudden pretending to give a shit about all the "bombing and killing the US has been doing" when they clearly supported the invasion of Iraq and all the military actions in the Middle East undertaken by Bush that have lead us to where we are today.