281–290 of 408 posts
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There are only two types of people: those that believe they can outsmart the house, and those that never gamble.
A strange game; the only winning move is not to play.
Also a couple of video poker variants have actual positive (!) returns with perfect play. https://wizardofodds.com/games/video-poker/basics/#playing-s...
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In my experience, programmers like poker, but not games of chance. This also describes me. Poker is a data-heavy game of skill and memory, Craps is about the opposite.
In my experience, potential gambling addiction has nothing to do with rationality or smartness.
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This is me being opportunistic, but I'm an organizer for indie tech conferences [0]. We're not selling tickets with set venue dates yet (although a fundraiser is happening.) If nothing else, you might join the newsletter to see if it's your cup of tea later in the year. [0] https://handmadecities.com
Thanks! I'm very unlikely to fly to the US for conferences though (in fact I've never been there in my life!). Especially to Seattle as it's so far away from me in Europe. I'm in Spain which is pretty much a low-wage country so things like intercontinental flights and foreign hotels are prohibitively expensive. Boston might be an option if it just happens to be around a time I might visit for work (but again I've nev…
In any case, thank you for entertaining the idea :)
After the impact of the MGM hack this year Cesars probably revisited their insurance on getting compromised. After the auditors and lawyers looked at all the risks they came across DEF CON and said no because of the wording of how DEF CON is marketed. Their choice was probably to drop them or loose coverage. DEF CON is listed as a "hacker convention held annually in Las Vegas, Nevada." where Blackhat is "Black Hat is…
Caesars was hacked by the same attackers that pwned Okta, and used the stolen keys and tokens to get into Caesars. It was nothing carried out by Defcon in any way. Anyone that takes this scene seriously knows Defcon is the place to be. Blackhat is a overpriced vendor circle jerk. The only way to make Blackhat relevant again is to kick out all of the vendors and if you can't do that, forbid them from collecting people…
The infosec industry sorta runs separately from the rest of tech in that it's entirely a status economy. Name recognition, certification and publication are the most important things to maintain stable employment.
On the other hand none of the planned programming at DEFCON has any professional value whatsoever and it's merely a metacon for connecting with people in varying niches in the space.
Bomb threat last year caused evacuation: https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/14/def_con_bomb_scare/ In 2018 we had aggressive room searches post the Vegas shooting that caused a lot of friction: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/security-theater... Point being that it’s been a rough ride over the last few years. Combine that with corporate events probably being far more lucrative for Caesars I.e suits drink…
The bomb threat wasn't even related to Defcon, though. I heard it both from Dark Tangent and several high level Goons.
You know, why the fuck is DEFCON in August, in Vegas? Like, you know a nice place to visit in August? Kodiak, Alaska. Portsmouth, Maine. Sydney. List of places I would never want to visit in August? Vegas. Houston. Vegas. New Orleans. Vegas. Mumbai? Maybe. Baghdad? Definitely not. Also, Vegas. My friends in Christ, why, does anyone, think Vegas is a good idea in August?
Why Vegas in the first place really. This city should not even exist.
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…
I doubt they would cancel a contract already in place for that reason. Not renew the contract - sure. But canceling an already scheduled event because of low revenue per guest doesn't seem very likely to me? Or maybe it was some sort of ongoing agreement and canceling it was effectively "not renewing".
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…
I doubt they would cancel a contract already in place for that reason. Not renew the contract - sure. But canceling an already scheduled event because of low revenue per guest doesn't seem very likely to me? Or maybe it was some sort of ongoing agreement and canceling it was effectively "not renewing".
The announcement effectively calls it "no-notice cancellation" and overall it reads like they were already deep in the planning phase when it happened, which seems unlikely if a renewal was pending.
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I doubt they would cancel a contract already in place for that reason. Not renew the contract - sure. But canceling an already scheduled event because of low revenue per guest doesn't seem very likely to me? Or maybe it was some sort of ongoing agreement and canceling it was effectively "not renewing".
>But canceling an already scheduled event because of low revenue per guest doesn't seem very likely to me? Not to be TOO snarky, but given how quickly corporate cancels employee labor despite rising revenue, it would not surprise me for other corporate to also cancel "low paying customers" for "high paying customers". Loyalty is beyond dead so cancelling a contract is just a cost of business if they feel the alternat…
If they canceled a year or so before the con, I could see that. But to cancel seven month before the conference? There's no way they will get a decent-sized substitute in the space before then, so I don't see how this would be anything but a money-loser. Not to mention other conferences might be less willing to commit to long-term deals if they see that the contract can be canceled on a whim.