
Tripling Down Against USA Conference Hosting - robin_reala
http://robert.ocallahan.org/2017/01/tripling-down-against-conference.html
======
kika
The part about an initiative to look up visitors phones and social media is
BS. This measure was introduced in June last year when the president wasn't
Trump. Went into effect in December, when Trump already won but had no
authority. One random link from google:
[http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/foreign-travelers-
soci...](http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/foreign-travelers-social-
media-232930)

~~~
pessimizer
Virtually all of what Trump is being called out on has been consistent
bipartisan policy, or at the least supported consistently by recent Republican
administrations and by every Republican primary candidate, all of whom were
openly racist, xenophobic and anti-science. I think it's a good thing. Finally
an ugly, stupid face on ugly, stupid policies.

~~~
refurb
_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.

~~~
ryandamm
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://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/06/yes-
pola...](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/06/yes-polarization-
is-asymmetric-and-conservatives-are-worse/373044/)

It's really easy to try to be bipartisan and blame both sides, but the
Republican party has been changing rapidly. You could argue the Democrats
haven't been changing fast enough... but whatever is going on, it's not
symmetrical.

~~~
Silhouette
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.

~~~
croon
I think that's the point.

I'm going to make a derisive comparison: A parent trying to cooperate with
their child (if they can't assert dominance) will in many cases resort to move
closer to the childs position, like getting them a candy as a reward if they
put their shoes on. It doesn't matter much if the parent is in the right, if
there is no way to convince the other party. Then diplomacy on your part is
the last resort.

I'm not saying this is the right thing to do, but it does make logical sense.

If the GOP relentlessly moves to the right, and refuses to be bipartisan on
anything (even something as basic and frankly obvious as public healthcare),
then you're forced to move to the best they can agree on, as someone mentioned
earlier: romneycare. I'm in no way knocking the core ideals of: less
government spending, sane tax legislation, less hurdles to start a business,
more freedom over what to put in your body, etc. But that's not what any of
the GOP brass is about, at least not anymore.

It's fucked, but somehow tens of millions of people keep voting to fuck
themselves, on basically all issues other than gun control and abortions. As a
non-native, it's beyond baffling. But I guess Republican Jesus loves guns,
female subservience and anarcho-capitalism.

~~~
ryandamm
As a native, it's baffling. I think the only explanation is the breakdown
between input and output; when spin and now outright confabulation carry more
weight than facts, people can easily be swayed to vote against their own self
interest.

Basically, Fox News created the Tea Party. Which in turn helped the rise of
Breitbart and other, even more insane outlets. It's a howling echo chamber of
lies, whose fuel is hate and ultimate outcome is more inequality... which is
perhaps the real motive underneath it all.

So that's a series of guesses, but yeah, still baffling.

------
FabHK
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 that score.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travel_visa#Visa_policies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travel_visa#Visa_policies)

~~~
ryandamm
Self-centered American here, but wouldn't it make sense to weight it by
population, or even population of likely attendees? Not clear why, say,
Suriname (to pick a country out of a hat) should rank equally with Japan.

That said, I think the point of your post (and the original post) is just to
call out how ridiculous and sad the US's sudden policy swerve is. I hate how
often the US compares unfavorably with the rest of the developed world on all
sorts of indices; we're so strange. Strangely illiberal, even before November.
(I mean 'illiberal' in the political theory sense of the word, not left/right
political sense of the word.)

~~~
Silhouette
_That said, I think the point of your post (and the original post) is just to
call out how ridiculous and sad the US 's sudden policy swerve is._

One of the most alarming things about this whole issue is that it's taken this
long for "normal people" to realise something is wrong and do something about
it.

We're seeing mass protests now, when large numbers of people are literally
being held in handcuffs for extended periods despite obviously doing nothing
wrong. However, it's not as if border security at the US (and, to be fair,
here in the UK and in various other countries) hadn't completely lost the plot
already before Trump arrived.

Then again, I have long said things would have to get worse before they got
better. Let's hope that at least we have now reached that point and ordinary
people start questioning the whole way we look at security again.

------
ryandamm
I 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
developments are good.

~~~
lkrubner
Innovation thrives on the rule of law, independent courts and neutral arbiters
of contracts, habeas corpus and due process, the right to a lawyer, and the
right to uncoerced testimony.

Consider Jethro Tull, the farmer. In 1700 he was 26 and he was taking over the
family farm. He hired some local hands to seed the fields that spring. As had
happened for thousands of years, the workers took bags of seed and cast
handfuls on the ground. Jethro Tull became angry, because there were patches
of ground that had too much seed, and other patches of ground that had too
little seed. He went over to the workers and asked them to be more careful.
But they proceeded as before. Tull became more angry, and went to speak with
them again. But they still ignored him, and kept doing their work in the
traditional manner, as they had since they were children, and as had their
parents before them, and their parents before that. Tull was in a rage, but
saw he could not change how the workers did their work. Instead, he decided to
build a machine that would plant seeds at regular intervals. This was the
beginning of the Agricultural Revolution.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jethro_Tull_(agriculturist)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jethro_Tull_\(agriculturist\))

But now ask, why did this happen in 1700, and not in 1680 or 1660 or 1500, for
that matter? Was Tull simply smarter than any farmer that had ever lived
before that time? Or was their a new legal system on his side?

In the time of Tull's father, England was still burning witches. The last
great spasm of irrational fear and witch burning swept over Britain in the mid
1600s. But then Britain passed the Bill Of Rights, in 1688. Now everyone had
the right to a fair trial, and a right to a lawyer, and no one could be
tortured into confessing to a crime, such as witchcraft. And Tull belonged to
the first generation of entrepreneurs in history knowing that they could
depend on the rule of law -- the government could not take arbitrary action
against him, but was constrained by its own processes. Therefore Tull could
shatter tradition, and do completely new things, without the threat of being
burned as a witch.

I could cite an endless number of examples. Galileo made brilliant discoveries
in an illiberal nation, and was put under house arrest, Newtown made
discoveries in a nation of laws, and he became a national hero. Simply knowing
that laws will be enforced fairly defeats a lot of the kinds of evil scheming
that spring up under authoritarian regimes.

"Freedom" is an empty word. When talking about the kinds of environments that
cultivate innovation, it's best to try to be specific about that environment.
History teach us the raw ingredients: the rule of law, fair and independent
courts, habeas corpus and due process, the right to a lawyer, the right to
uncoerced testimony.

~~~
onion2k
That would be a compelling line of reasoning if Jethro Tull had actually
invented the seed drill, but he didn't. He perfected the design but the device
had been around Europe for 150 years before Tull's version, and in China for
2000 years before that.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seed_drill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seed_drill)

~~~
lkrubner
The same argument applies even more strongly. If a technology is known, but
fails to come into widespread use until there is a legal system that protects
people from persecution, then the new legal system clearly played a large role
in emancipating that technology from obscurity.

Do I need to list every example? I was assuming they were well known.

Consider what France lost by driving out the Huguenots. Consider what England
gained by offering protection to the Jews.

Consider this famous summary by Voltaire:

"Although the Episcopalian and the Presbyterian are the two main sects in
Great Britain, all others are welcome there and live pretty comfortably
together, though most of their preachers detest one another almost as
cordially as a Jansenist damns a Jesuit. Go into the Exchange in London, that
place more venerable than many a court, and you will see representatives of
all the nations assembled there for the profit of mankind. There the Jew, the
Mahometan, and the Christian deal with one another as if they were of the same
religion and reserve the name of infidel for those who go bankrupt. There the
Presbyterian trusts the Anabaptist, and the Church of England man accepts the
promise of the Quaker. On leaving these peaceable and free assemblies, some go
to the synagogue, others in search of a drink; this man is on the way to be
baptized in a great tub in the name of the Father, by the Son, to the Holy
Ghost; that man is having the foreskin of his son cut off, and a Hebraic
formula mumbled over the child that he himself can make nothing of; these
others are going to their church to await the inspiration of God with their
hats on; and all are satisfied."

That such a great market could come into existence was thanks to the legal
system set up in Britain during its revolutionary period, which ended with the
passage of the Bill Of Rights that gave most British citizens the basic rights
we nowadays assume.

Also consider what Britain lost, 90 years later, when Parliament suddenly
asserted that the Bill Of Rights was not a universal set of human rights, but
a specific set of liberties given to people living in the British Isles, but
not applying to the Colonies of North America. The people living in the
Colonies of North America were so outraged by this that they rebelled against
British rule and broke ties with the British government.

~~~
igravious
> Do I need to list every example? I was assuming they were well known.

That's not an argument, that's snark. I agree with onion2k that you do not
provide a compelling line of reasoning. You provide a just-so _narrative_ but
not a line of reasoning. Sure those events may have happened in chronological
order but that does not in any way imply causation.

Innovation and invention have both preceded and post-dated any notionally
enlightened legal landscape.

Also, the dire situation for Catholics and the existence of discriminatory
laws on the books within the British Isles puts paid to Voltaire's chummy
story of a motley crew worshipping before the altar of Mammon, likewise the
Bill of Rights.

You paint a good picture but I remain unconvinced.

------
noonespecial
Just the first ripples against the shore of what I expect to be a tsunami of
unexpected consequences.

Seems like a golden opportunity for another country to step up and become the
"conference center of the world". I'd LOL extra hard if it turned out to be
Mexico.

~~~
cperciva
_Seems like a golden opportunity for another country to step up and become the
"conference center of the world". I'd LOL extra hard if it turned out to be
Mexico._

Can I suggest Canada for this purpose? We're a cheaper conference destination
than the USA, Europe, or Japan; have a fluently English-speaking population
anywhere conferences would be held (most people in Montreal are bilingual);
have good infrastructure; and most international visitors to the USA _already
fly over Canada anyway_.

This would be unfortunate for conference attendees from Central and South
America, but they're far outnumbered by the conference attendees from Europe
and Asia.

~~~
Buge
Canada can require you to give up your phone password when entering. As far as
I heard, the US does not require that (but can confiscate your phone). Is
there possibly another country that doesn't require it?

~~~
twsted
Kidding? Ref please?

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

~~~
camus2
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.

~~~
iamatworknow
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".

------
NTDF9
This is a great opportunity for Canadian, Australian and top European
universities to step up their game.

Some universities in these regions have solid reputations but lacked the star-
power of top US univs. Hosting a few ACM conferences will shoot them on top of
global map.

Just checked, ACM is already on it:
[https://www.acm.org/conferences](https://www.acm.org/conferences)

~~~
Noseshine
Do universities that don't have to rely on the money they get form
international students have the same incentives as US universities?

From what I read that's a major consideration for US universities why they
want to attract foreign students. For German universities that would only be
of marginal concern, even if/when they take some money from foreign students
it's just pocket change and not nearly enough to finance the institution to a
substantial extend. Sure they still have an incentive, but it's much less and
not monetary.

I think, that's what I get from what I've been reading in comments over the
years.

~~~
jon-wood
At least in the UK international students are a big chunk of a decent
university's income. Tuition fees for UK residents are capped, while there's
no limit to how much a good university can charge Russian oligarchs to educate
their children.

There are some issues around that, specifically with business departments
being disproportionately well funded, but it does mean that other departments
also have more money to work with than they would otherwise.

~~~
Noseshine
I know that the UK situation for tuition is comparable to the one in the US.
My points is about universities in countries that don't have that financial
incentive and pressure. The UK is just one small somewhat "special" country in
Europe.

The difference between European countries can be quite high
([http://www.mastersportal.eu/articles/405/tuition-fees-at-
uni...](http://www.mastersportal.eu/articles/405/tuition-fees-at-universities-
in-europe-overview-and-comparison.html)), so my comment wasn't about any one
in particular. When I look at just Germany even within the same country there
is a lot of variation depending on the university and the particular program.
But in general universities in many European countries don't rely on income
from foreign students to the extend that US universities seem to do.

~~~
arethuza
"I know that the UK situation for tuition is comparable to the one in the US"

The rules around university tuition do differ quite a bit depending on where
you are in the UK.

e.g. Scottish students or students from the EU outside of the rest of the UK
do not pay fees at Scottish universities.

------
misja111
I'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 under Obama, Trump's recent initiative is
not as big a change as some make it appear.

~~~
Jare
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?

~~~
harlanlewis
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...](https://theintercept.com/2017/01/29/trumps-muslim-ban-triggers-
chaos-heartbreak-and-resistance/)

------
masklinn
The funny story is after friday's EO this is a case of "damned if you do,
damned if you don't": if you hold the conference in the US, people with links
to banned countries can not attend (and anyone arab-looking will get hassled),
if you hold it outside US residents with links to banned countries can not
attend either as there's a significant chance they would not be able to
return.

I suspect the latter population is much smaller than the former, but still a
shit situation for a conference organiser, no matter how you do it you will
effectively prevent a fraction of possible attendees out, unless you have your
conf' right on a border I guess but I doubt that's really possible.

What is the "border status" of Puerto Rico, could that be an option? Or maybe
a nearby carribean island which US residents could reach by board from Puerto
Rico without hassle going back?

~~~
danpalmer
You're right that it's an unpleasant situation to be in, but I think it's a
fairly easy decision. One option excludes attendees, condones racist border
policies, and brings business to the US, the other option does not condone the
policies, makes it clear that inclusivity matters to the conference
organisers, and to a small extent, boycotts US business.

------
jimjimjim
Australia and New Zealand.

That way if the world ends while you're away you'll be able to read about it
in the morning

------
nickpeterson
Wouldn'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?

~~~
ntelson1s
Just like all of these heated political posts today and lately, yes, it does
ignore reality.

------
dragonzooord
The EO is cruel and irrational and is something I'm firmly against. It makes
sense to not host your conference in the USA for moral reasons.

But, on the other hand, a lot of Americans don't have passports or their
employment contracts will only reimburse a number of domestic (non-
international) conferences a year. The set of those people who would be
excluded probably exceeds the set of attendees from the 7 countries in
question. So I'm not convinced it makes sense to do this just from a
conference attendance standpoint.

~~~
MagnumOpus
> a lot of Americans don't have passports [...] set of people who would be
> excluded

Let's keep it real: The contributors to a global science conference are
unlikely to be people who don't have passports - and in case that happens,
getting passports in the US is as easy as filling in a form and driving down
to the local post office.

Whereas even getting a business travel visa to the US is a month-long
bureaucratic nightmare for 80% of the world's population (basically everyone
bar EU, Japan, Korea and AU/NZ/CA).

------
Beltiras
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.

~~~
chopin
Schiphol has a very bad reputation for its security theater, either.

~~~
Beltiras
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.

~~~
chopin
That's quite telling for JFK...

------
MollyR
Every country should have their own primary tech conference, in a de-
globalizing world. It's pretty clear. The return of nation state sovereignty
and de-globalization is on the rise from the brexit, trump, le pen, modi,
duarte, putin are all anti-globalists.

------
tannhaeuser
This isn't some abstract thing, it already affects participation of key people
_right now_ ([1]). Tragedy is, the chair/hoster of eg. the Balisage conference
(what [1] is about) is as much opposed against Trump policies as could be (eg.
[2] which is really devastating). This doesn't look well for US cloud
ventures, at all.

[1]: [http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-
dev/201701/maillist.html](http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-
dev/201701/maillist.html)

[2]: [https://norman.walsh.name/](https://norman.walsh.name/)

------
sandworm101
Im heading to a US security conference in a couple weeks. I really dont want
to go but have to meet with a client there. If i am given any guff at the
boarder im going to tell that client why we can no longer do business.

------
peterwwillis
So... It's impossible to just hold two conferences? One in the States and one
outside? Call me unreasonable, but it seems like then you could just go to the
one that's safe for you.

------
uiri
Side note: Could the mods remove "?m=1" from the URL? On a mobile device, the
URL without that GET parameter redirects to the URL with that parameter to
show the mobile site. On a non-mobile device, the URL with the parameter looks
rather different from the URL without the parameter.

------
flukus
Do we need conferences at all?

~~~
Noseshine
Define "need". Do you need to breathe? Only if you think you need to live, and
the only reason you want to live is that you are wired that way (selection
bias, all those who didn't care enough have been removed). Life isn't
something objective, you can just decide on what's important to you, as long
as it doesn't interfere with your ability to go on living it does not matter.
Some people like cats, some people like ice cream. Some people like to talk to
other people in their field in person and go to conferences or far-away
meetings. Some people go far away for no reason at all (vacation)!

~~~
flukus
Need as in "do they offer worthwhile value", which I'm sure anyone not being
overly pedantic would assume.

You don't gain anything by seeing a live talk that you wouldn't on YouTube for
instance. It's weird that so many of us work from home but insist on traveling
to see a stage show.

~~~
obstacle1
The value of conferences isn't in sitting through talks. Depending on whether
or not you need conferences depends on how much you value networking. If you
want to network, then yes, conferences are hugely valuable.

~~~
dagw
Not just networking. Actually talking to the guy who wrote that interesting
paper gives so much more than just watching the guy talk about his paper.

------
kapauldo
He loses all credibility by boastfully declaring himself "christian." He is
guilty of the same elitism he decries the u.s. policy for.

~~~
grzm
Give him the benefit of the doubt. It's something he's proud of and wants to
be identified with. Besides, it's not even in the post itself. I don't see at
all that this is some kind of declaration of elitism, any more than the
"Hacker" and "Repatriated Kiwi" are. I could interpret those uncharitably as
well, but would consider it crass to do so, particularly without knowing more
about him.

