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DEF CON 32 Was Canceled. We Un-Canceled it

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Re: DEF CON 32 Was Canceled. We Un-Canceled it

#51

Post by MattGaiser »

NanoYohaneTSU wrote: post #20
mrandish wrote: post #4

I suspect Caesar's dropped DEF CON because the DEF CON attendees likely have a fairly low "avg revenue per attendee" yield because fewer of them gamble compared to the avg Vegas conference attendee. They also probably spend less on high-end restaurant dining and bar drinking inside the hotel. Since the pandemic Vegas has had a pretty strong resurgence in general and this may be a sign that Caesar's is doing well enou…

Not everything is about money or the bottom line. Sometimes it's about politics. Vegas takes a loss on so many things. Nevada has grown more and more corporate over the years. This move doesn't surprise me at all.

Is DEF CON a highly political thing?

Re: DEF CON 32 Was Canceled. We Un-Canceled it

#53

Post by lolinder »

andy800 wrote: post #50
lolinder wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caesar's apparently explicitly said it wasn't related to anything the community did. It's possible that they're lying for some reason, but it's also possible that they're telling the truth. > We don’t know why Caesars canceled us, they won’t say beyond it being a strategy change and it is not related to anything that DEF CON or our community has done. https://www.reddit.com/r/Defcon/comments/1aj6ixn/def_con_was...

> for some reason To avoid any legal liability. Stating a specific reason would open them to possible "breach of contract" depending on whether the act(s) were significant enough or justifiable, based on the contract terms. Just say nothing, part amicably, everyone moves on without drama. With that said, they probably weren't lying. Most likely, months after ponying up $10 million to a sophisticated international hac…

> To avoid any legal liability. Stating a specific reason would open them to possible "breach of contract" depending on whether the act(s) were significant enough or justifiable, based on the contract terms.

This is how it works for at-will employment, but it would be a very weird contract that allows backing out only if you don't say why you're backing out.

Re: DEF CON 32 Was Canceled. We Un-Canceled it

#54

Post by loriverkutya »

caymanjim wrote: post #42
taywrobel wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without robust and easily scaled infrastructure in place ahead of time, an organic DDOS is one of the most difficult situations to mitigate. Not much can be done in terms of traffic shaping, rate limiting, or bot detection.

I agree. Protecting against DDoS attacks is incredibly difficult. I'm just enjoying the irony of Def Con, the premiere computer security and hacking convention, not being able to handle traffic. To be fair, I don't think they crashed; I saw a "sorry too much traffic try later" type message. Still amuses me.

To me this means they decided not to handle the traffic instead of can’t handle it.

Re: DEF CON 32 Was Canceled. We Un-Canceled it

#56

Post by Orlan »

mrandish wrote: post #4

I suspect Caesar's dropped DEF CON because the DEF CON attendees likely have a fairly low "avg revenue per attendee" yield because fewer of them gamble compared to the avg Vegas conference attendee. They also probably spend less on high-end restaurant dining and bar drinking inside the hotel. Since the pandemic Vegas has had a pretty strong resurgence in general and this may be a sign that Caesar's is doing well enou…

So… see you at Magic Live?

Re: DEF CON 32 Was Canceled. We Un-Canceled it

#57

Post by MrBruh »

taywrobel wrote: post #40
caymanjim wrote: post #14

I find it hilarious that defcon.org can't handle the traffic from being on HN.

Without robust and easily scaled infrastructure in place ahead of time, an organic DDOS is one of the most difficult situations to mitigate. Not much can be done in terms of traffic shaping, rate limiting, or bot detection.

I had my blog be on the front page for ~6-8 hours racking up 100k+ unique loads. It also managed to survive just fine on a $5 VPS so I would hope that other sites could survive.

Re: DEF CON 32 Was Canceled. We Un-Canceled it

#58

Post by rdl »

fortran77 wrote: post #34
mrandish wrote: post #4

I suspect Caesar's dropped DEF CON because the DEF CON attendees likely have a fairly low "avg revenue per attendee" yield because fewer of them gamble compared to the avg Vegas conference attendee. They also probably spend less on high-end restaurant dining and bar drinking inside the hotel. Since the pandemic Vegas has had a pretty strong resurgence in general and this may be a sign that Caesar's is doing well enou…

> They also probably spend less on high-end restaurant dining and bar drinking inside the hotel. I'm not so sure. There's a _lot_ of drinking at DEF CON

It's mostly with liquor bought from offsite and drunk in rooms/private parties, not via Caesar's venues or catering (there's a lot of that too, and this is summer dead period, so it still may be good).

Re: DEF CON 32 Was Canceled. We Un-Canceled it

#59

Post by andy800 »

lolinder wrote: post #53
andy800 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for some reason To avoid any legal liability. Stating a specific reason would open them to possible "breach of contract" depending on whether the act(s) were significant enough or justifiable, based on the contract terms. Just say nothing, part amicably, everyone moves on without drama. With that said, they probably weren't lying. Most likely, months after ponying up $10 million to a sophisticated international hac…

> To avoid any legal liability. Stating a specific reason would open them to possible "breach of contract" depending on whether the act(s) were significant enough or justifiable, based on the contract terms. This is how it works for at-will employment, but it would be a very weird contract that allows backing out only if you don't say why you're backing out.

Let's say Caesars states, "we just got hacked and, as has been reported in every major newspaper, paid $10 million as ransom. We have reason to believe one or more attendees of DEF CON were part of that group."

How does making this statement this benefit Caesars in any way? Now DEF CON can demand some proof of this claim, or sue for defamation, or state that without proof, Caesars isn't acting in good faith, whatever.

Re: DEF CON 32 Was Canceled. We Un-Canceled it

#60

Post by o11c »

paxys wrote: post #47
taywrobel wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without robust and easily scaled infrastructure in place ahead of time, an organic DDOS is one of the most difficult situations to mitigate. Not much can be done in terms of traffic shaping, rate limiting, or bot detection.

An HN front page “DDoS” is like 20K hits. This isn't some complex scaling challenge. Any website on the internet should be able to handle it, especially a purely informational one.

As a reference, 10K simultaneous hits was an achievable challenge back in ...

1999.

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