Kazakhstan built a futuristic city to host Expo 2017, but attendance is low | Hacker News Reader

Kazakhstan built a futuristic city to host Expo 2017, but attendance is low

foreignpolicy.com

127 pointsokket98 comments

I'm heading to the Expo in August, and to be honest I didn't expect to be inundated with crowds -- so this article is of no surprise.

With that being said; I think what Kazakhstan is doing with their foreign policy, tourism and re-imagining their capital is commendable though. They've just dropped tourist visa requirements this year, so many countries have unfettered travel access now; soon they will convert (back) to the Latin alphabet from Cyrillic to be more accessible in the global market; and Astana looks like a real jewel. Their economy and living conditions are rising, and for the ninth largest country in the world it's sad that basically no-one travels there.

Whilst the "if you build it, they will come" motto hasn't necessarily happened overnight, I think that the facilities that have been constructed for the fair will ultimately become a solid investment over time.

That hasn't happened with Olympics sites.

Sarajevo: [1]

Athens: [2]

Rio: [3]

Beijing: [4]

Huge, abandoned facilities, all of them.

London is getting some site reuse.[5]

[1] https://www.buzzfeed.com/jimwaterson/haunting-pictures-of-th...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/sport/gallery/2014/aug/13/abando...

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/sport/gallery/2017/feb/10/rios-o...

[4] http://www.theblaze.com/news/2012/07/13/decrepit-four-years-...

[5] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/davehillblog/2015/jul/23/...

Well it didn't hurt Atlanta. It definitely revitalized a lot of areas there.

OTOH their human rights record is still pretty terrible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Kazakhstan

> "jailed or fined dozens of people after peaceful but unsanctioned protests, and fined or detained worshipers for practicing religion outside state controls"

> "Torture remains common in places of detention"

Not going to be on my list of travel locations.

Apart from the religion bit, that could also describe Chicago.

Torture is common in Chicago's jails? Did I miss something in the news recently?

Homan Square: The Guardian reported in February 2015 that the Chicago Police Department "operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Police_Department#Homa... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/homan-square

Prolonged solitary confinement is among the worst forms of torture if you value your sanity, and is quite commonplace in the U.S. particularly for political prisoners, like Black Panthers, whistleblowers, etc.

"don't drop the soap" is such a commonly understood meme, you see it in kids cartoons!

The facilities in a city that no one lives in? It would be like building facilities in Naypyidaw or Brasilia, capitals built to escape from their people.

What do you mean Brasilia? It might have an empty feeling sometimes(especially compared to other crowded Brazilian cities), but it is growing and thriving, can't say the same about Astana or Naypyidaw because I've never been to either

Brasília for some time is trying to be less dependent on the government to grow, but I doubt it will be successful in any economic sector outside of public one. The stadium built there for World Cup is the biggest shame and example that GP is right.

Anyway, the assessment of building a capital to escape its population is correct regardless.

To be fair that is partly its own population to blame, some people will even looking at you funny if you're not in the public sector(personal experience, and not just me).

It was pretty obvious that the stadium would be a big failure, all stadiums outside of major football cities are(Cuiabá, Manaus), even stadiums in big football cities struggle to negotiate with clubs and end up empty most of the time.

I just can't agree that Brasilia was built to escape the country's population, it was built just to overspend abundant injection of foreign investment.

The Stadium is not only in Brasilia. All over the country they built stadiums for world cup that are underutilized or in places where there isn't even a league to play into it.

I've been thinking about visiting Kazakhstan for a while now, especially with more low-cost flights going there, to be fair I didn't even know about the expo, do you think the expo itself is worth it to fit this year or maybe leave it to when the hotel prices drop?

> they will convert (back) to the Latin alphabet from Cyrillic

They never had Latin alphabet. Kazakhstan (as a state, part of USSR) was using Turkic Alphabet in its initial 13 years of existence.

I wouldn't consider Turkic as a Latin alphabet. It uses some Latin glyphs but so does Cyrillyc.

> They never had Latin alphabet. Kazakhstan (as a state, part of USSR) was using Turkic Alphabet in its initial 13 years of existence.

> I wouldn't consider Turkic as a Latin alphabet. It uses some Latin glyphs but so does Cyrillyc.

Alphabets based on Latin are typically called Latin alphabets. Turkey uses the Latin alphabet as does English and Polish, despite them all having different variations.

Wow, I had no idea they upped the tourist visa days this year! I knew it was 15 days (for US citizens) when I was doing some research into visiting Kyrgyzstan, and found the number a little weird because it's not a multiple of 30 days like most other "visa free" countries. Now I might visit reconsider visiting Kazakhstan more fully.

Is there a lot of tourism in a place like Almaty?

It's also very beautiful. I've been wanting to go hiking there for a long time.

In the article, “There’s two big ways to piss off the Kazakhs. Mention Borat, or call the dome the Death Star.”

The title: "Kazakhstan Spent $5 Billion on a Death Star and It Doesn’t Even Shoot Lasers"

Laughed out loud.

Borat: Kazakhstan Spent $5 Billion on a Death Star and It Doesn’t Even Shoot Lasers

fixed for author

So first, the gov goes MiTM[1] all the way[1]. Then hosts a futuristic tech expo ? I don't know that current status is, but that doesn't make much sense.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10663843

They don't MitM now and I'm not aware of any MitM attempts in the past. There was strange page at telecom.kz, like you linked, but it wasn't implemented, at least not yet.

Last info I got from peoples who lived in Kazakhstan s that you need to use custom certificate from government to use HTTPS and such stuff.

This mean that MitM will be done for all HTTPS traffic there.

Some government websites use custom-signed certificates because of some stupid reasons, so if you want to use them, it's suggested to install those root certificates, so browser won't complain. That's the only reason I could imagine that someone told you about it. You don't need those root certificates for other websites.

Yep, it wasn’t live and no MitM is present in any provider service.

Just like The Millennium Dome, in a country far, far away:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Dome

This did not work and there was just a huge void of content that no amount of inspiration could 'fill'. I worked on it and did not go to see the finished work, I was that ashamed!

Compare and contrast with something like the German IFA trade show that really does show off the technology of the future.

Perhaps the problem is compounded when you have to make it nationalistic as is required for a world type of Expo. The world is too global for country pavilions to work, for instance, why would Ford Motor Co. build a stand on an American pavilion when they have been a global company for the last century and market themselves as local product in all of their major markets.

But the Dome was great, it was exceedingly fun!

The problem it had was incompetent management and fraudulent financial planning.

It's visitors still put it in the top 10 attractions for the year and no-one I know who went didn't enjoy it. Just because there were fraudulent and frankly stupid claims of how many visitors it would get (which nobody believed) doesn't put it in this category

Agreed. There seems to be this disingenuous memory of the dome from a lot of the population. I remember visiting as a teenager and had a fantastic time. Like you, I've never spoken to anyone that visited who didn't enjoy it. Now it remains an iconic London landmark and is used for events every week - providing somewhat of a legacy.

I wish it had remained as some kind of national science museum. It would have had a longer lasting cultural impact.

I think it's because tabloids harped on that it was going to be awful for 2 years and the swirled on ANY info after the fact that could criticize it.

Obviously it was not a sensible financial investment but it was a significant cultural touchstone (and the space is still in use as well as being iconic)

Absolutely right. There's just one little smidge of a problem: these "global" events have to happen somewhere.

I remember people in my office complaining about how bad the Millennium Dome was, when I asked none of them had visited it.

And the value of the Millennium Dome should be assessed on the basis of anecotal evidence (a personal visit) as against an independent balance sheet of costs and benefits for British citizens as a whole?

The whole idea of a world expo seems pretty outdated these days. Nobody cares anymore.

I thought the same as well, but I've been to Shanghai Expo and it was actually quite an experience even though every line was at least 2 hours, until VR and haptic feedback can truly build life-changing experiences, going to the Expo is actually quite interesting. I think its more a marketing and branding issue.

As the article mentions, for the developing world (where people can't necessarily easily travel to anywhere anytime), they still have some relevance. For us, it's also a good opportunity to develop business with developing countries. Then again, they don't always have very open markets, so this applies more to folks in fields that are already largely multi-national.

Anyone authoritatively speaking of "nobody" and "everybody" automatically makes me think less of them.

> With internet and TV I don't think there are any new things to be learned from an expo. Same for trade shows.

You can't see the benefit of new VR or stereoscopic displays from home.

You can't see the difference in wider and deeper color gamuts from home.

You can't hear the difference from new positional audio systems.

You can't experience any new tech that involves a physical aspect, like tactile feedback for VR, from your home.

With internet and TV, most people are limited to whatever their crappy sRGB 1080p 60Hz displays and stereo speakers can show them.

When did people care and why do they care less now?

In 1900 a world expo was a great way to find out about new stuff you never had heard about. With internet and TV I don't think there are any new things to be learned from an expo. Same for trade shows. In 1990 you saw some real surprises. Not anymore.

Indeed. And so went the media coverage. I remember Sevilla '92 was a big thing, lots of coverage before and during it. But then... first time I heard of Milano 2015 was when it closed, I had no idea there was a World Expo and it was there; I think the article was about a demonstration against the expo...

Yeah. You can think of a World Expo as a very poorly implemented web site. You have to travel to the data, not the other way around.

Before we could instantly ship data anywhere, it made a ton of sense to put many things in one location so you'd only have to travel to one place, but now it's rather pointless.

I agree, the idea behind the expo was to have worldwide showcases for stuff most people would not have been able to see otherwise, but with the internet that seems pretty useless.

Showcasing just for the show is a little bit outdated, I suppose they could pivot around some concept, like major sporting events are still very popular(Olympics and World Cup).

It's sort of like what Facebook did to class reunions.

Definitely, I've been to one such reunion where you just kinda awkwardly answer "Yeah, I saw that on your Facebook page" a lot of the time, there's still some value to face to face interaction even for those things anyway.

Yes, you can finally punch in the face the one guy you hated at school, and who didn't get any better 20 years later.

That how class reunions usually end, do they not?

Maybe we'll reinvent it in VR.

What a terrible waste. Especially in Kazakhstan that money could have had some serious positive impact if spent wisely.

There's a joke in Kazakhstan: Wanna see your pension? Visit Expo.

Nazarbaev wants to promote Kazakhstan as one of the regional leaders. May be it'll yield some benefits in the future. But right now many citizens share your view.

That echos the sentiment many Romanians have towards the palace in Bucharest.

The city considered tearing it down but it turned out even that was too expensive so now - reluctantly - they are using it for some government functions. It's super inefficient though, the energy bill alone is monstrous, especially in the winter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_the_Parliament

Couldn't parts of it be turned into condo's or offices? Wouldn't it be a pretty iconic (desirable) place to live/work?

Well, approximately 70% of it is still empty so I'm sure they'll welcome your bid :)

The same could be said of almost anywhere, and almost any public event that is more for show than for benefit.

EDIT: I agree with jacquesm's sentiment ... but I feel we are too forgiving of these kinds of wasteful spends when they're in our own backyards.

like Olympics, f1, world cup, TED, etc etc.

it was 5bi spent for entertainment. Just like lots of other billions are everywhere in the world.

just because it was in a country you perceive as poor and failed it shocks you.

yeah, it probably had corruption and half that money disappeared, just like on the rich events I listed above.

But, this is the same mentality that demonize food stamps and social programs for the poor in your rich country that are not 100% focused on making those poor people complacent and effective workers.

(ps: "you" used as in the undefined plural subject form. I don't know the person I'm replying :)

> like Olympics, f1, world cup, TED, etc etc.

It's disingenuous to claim that I lump those in the same category.

Let's focus on my 'more for show than for benefit' qualification.

> it was 5bi spent for entertainment. Just like lots of other billions are everywhere in the world.

Do you mean 'just like other billions everywhere else spent on entertainment' or 'just like other billions everywhere else spent'. I'm not sure you're accurately reflecting my views by suggesting that I think entertainment has equal value to non-entertainment activities.

> just because it was in a country you perceive as poor and failed it shocks you.

Yeah, so stop right there.

I was working for the treasury department for NSW at the time that we were gearing up for the Sydney Olympics (later re-branded the NSW Olympics (later re-branded, as funding was sought further up the chain, as the Australian Olympics). There's nothing imperial, us-or-them, poor-vs-rich country about this. Take that particular card off the table.

> But, this is the same mentality that demonize food stamps and social programs for the poor in your rich country that are not 100% focused on making those poor people complacent and effective workers.

It really, really, is not.

you kind of proved my point. I do lump all those events in the same bag and my point was that most people fail to see it and see the ones they like as culturally enriching and the ones they don't fancy as waste.

the only problem on the article's event was lack of public. but I bet lots of local people wanted to go but lacked the means. just like the Olympics. but it doesn't show much because the Olympics manages to import rich foreigners just fine.

How did anyone prove your point? You are just repeating yourself to claim that there are two voices in agreement.

> you kind of proved my point.

That was not my intent.

> I do lump all those events in the same bag and my point was that most people fail to see it and see the ones they like as culturally enriching and the ones they don't fancy as waste.

Are you genuinely suggesting TFA describes a non-wasteful event?

Care to elaborate why you think Expo is less beneficial than the events listed in the comment you replied to?

There are more than two categories. Grading the set objectively seems infeasible, and not very useful. I've lived in two cities as they hosted Olympics, but didn't attend either. I've been to a world expo. I've not been to a world cup or an F1 event (though I once worked in an office overlooking the F1).

I think this Expo was a waste of resources. I suspect most TED conferences are not. I understand that Olympics, World Cup, F1 are highly lucrative for a handful of people, but typically a net negative for the host city / state. The corruption associated with at least two of those three is legendary, and well documented. If you would prefer to separate 'the event' from 'the corruption involved in the event', then good luck with that.

The point is more along the lines that the money was grossly misspent in this particular case, not that it being spent on entertainment is necessarily bad. Had the Expo been a massive success, it would still have arguably been a waste, but not a tragic one.

Here the failure is especially glaring since the secondary goal of the event is to make the nation look dynamic and well managed.

Or even public financing of NFL stadiums.

On Kazakhstan's GDP it is a huge amount.

Undeniably.

Also undeniably, there's an abundance of complicated financial analyses, and emotional responses, to these kinds of events.

My mention of the Sydney 2000 Olympics was on point -- official figures peg it at somewhere north of $2b, but official figures hide all the infrastructure spend that wasn't formally attributed to the Olympics. You can probably take that figure upwards by close to an order of magnitude in terms of real costs / set back to the local economy. Other Olympics have exhibited similar effects, with Barcelona being perhaps the perfect storm (it's undeniably complicated, with many infrastructure projects bundled into that event, but conservative estimates suggest it was around 12 years to pay that event off).

I don't doubt that there's a hugely convoluted and complex arrangement with various players in Kazakhstan and BIE, with precious little chance of an accurate summary of the financials for the event ever coming to light.

i've followed this Expo indirectly because a professional fighter i follow (Gennady Gennadyvich Golovkin) is from Karaganda, a small mining town in KZ. Golovkin, aka "GGG", is regarded by many (most?) current and former professional boxers and boxing commentators as the best fighter in the world regardless of weight class (P4P). Several months ago, GGG's promoter (K2) said via press release that they were in serious discussions--with an expectation of success--to have GGG's next fight in Astana during the Expo.

the economics of fight promotions is mysterious, at least to me, but i should think getting this fight in Astana during the World Expo would have been a massive economic boost to offset the Expo's staggering cost

more than that though. GGG is not just a professional fighter from Kazakstan; he's the stuff of legends: Olympic silver medalist, World Amateur Champion (2X), amateur record of 352 wins, five losses, and a current professional record of 37-0. For eight years--from 2008 to 2016--he won every one of his fights by knockout. About five years ago when GGG Was just a contender, he called out Sergio Martinez, the current champion in GGG's weight class, SM's trainer said publicly "there's no way i'm putting Sergio in with that animal".

in an interview a couple of years ago (available on youtube), when a reporter asked Manny Pacquiao about GGG's, Pacquiano just shook his head in disbelief.

during a fight with the British Champion, Matthew Macklin, Jim Watts, former LW world champion and ITV commentator said "Matthew Macklin is a terrific fighter, but there's nothing he can do, this fellow [GGG] is just on another level which until tonight i didn't even know existed"

About a minute later, GGG hit MM with a left hand to the ribcage (GGG is a right-handed fighter!) MM went down immediately and remained there for about 20 minutes.

needless to say, he's idolized in his home country and to have him return to fight in KZ (for the first time since becoming a professional) during the World Expo--you couldn't write a better movie script.

and yet the deal somehow fell through on the Expo side. All of the money spent on the Expo and none of it earmarked to underwrite this sporting event--disappointing

It would have been harder for corrupt officials to get a cut of that pie as opposed to the empty stands.

Boxing does not make headlines any more nowadays. I have absolutely no idea who current champions and challengers are.

I was considering visiting Kazakhstan until they announced that all Internet users would have to accept a government self-signed certificate authority to use the network.

I understand why’d you think that it did/does really happen but in the reality, it doesn’t. As most of other political activity in Kazakhstan, words often get lost and don’t lead to any actions. That’s the case with MitM page that was published by the biggest provider in the country. It never actualized and I bet it won’t as the backlash from the worldwide community makes the country look bad. Leaders simply don’t want that, nobody does actually. So, please, give it another consideration.

That's wrong, you don't need that. But some websites, notably including most popular porn sites are banned.

AFAIK you require to use it by the law.

If you have other information please point to the source, it would be nice to know it for sure.

I'm from Kazakhstan and I've opened https://news.ycombinator.com using Kazaktelecom (largest internet provider) without installing any root certificates right now. I can't answer for other operators, but mobile operators don't MitM either.

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10663843

Btw, the article is blocked in Kazakhstan...

I've read it just a few hours ago. Doesn't work now indeed. What a shame.

TIL there is Expo in 2017, completely forgot that this is still a thing in age of internet. Seem like even bigger nonsense than dictat...pardon Olympic games

Great success

Since the title isn't very informative about the content of the article: it's about the 2017 world expo which is held in Kazachstan and the steadying decline of visitors to these events.

I hadn't even heard of the fact there currently was a world expo in Kazachstan if it wasn't for this article. For previous expo's I at least remember them having quite some coverage in the news.

Same here, I hadn't heard of it.

Currently checking pricing for a trip.

Awful, awful website for mobile. I was redirected three times before I reached the article page, which itself popped and reloaded a few times before I could read anything. Then three separate modal windows pestering me to subscribe or log in or sign up to the newsletter stopped me because they wouldn't close.

How have we fucked up the mobile web experience so much?

I'm getting really tired of the "website sucks on mobile" comments.

Yes, a lot of sites are not optimized for mobile devices. That doesn't mean I want to read a rant about it on every 3rd article.

You know what? It's usually me thinking this about that kind of comment, but this one really is that bad. It's not that it's not optimized for mobile, it's like the site was optimized against mobile.

I couldn't have put it better. It's as if they're degrading the experience so you'll use some proprietary app. If I'd been prompted to visit the play store it would not have been a surprise

I understand your point and would agree in most cases. I am usually pretty forgiving of mobile popups, etc. However, in this case I gave up before even making it to the real article. I felt like I was in a loop of modals that wouldn't relent until I subscribed. Give it a shot and let me know if I am wrong.

I'm with him/her. This website makes me angry and the HN-comments are the only way to express these feelings.

If people don't complain, developers won't know they need to fix their shit. Push the pain back on bad devs.

That assumes the devs read here, no?

You'd be surprised how many devs do.

And if it's not specifically the web devs for this site lurking, discouraging others from following the same path isn't bad.

I personally got two screen-filling pop ups on this site, the second of which was a survey before I was even able to browse. If anyone out there is considering doing this on your site, consider that I added this site to my growing list of filters and will never visit it again.

This assumes they want to fix the issue, or have a credible incentive to do so.

Exactly, this could well be by design

Although AMP has a lot of problems discussed often on this website, it seems adding /amp at the end of the URL fixes the problem.

(Also been trying this regularly on desktop as well to bypass the normal layout full of pop-ups and dark patterns. /amp is becoming a cheat code to get an old school light-weight page!)

I had no issue reading this on a mobile browser.

What platform, out of interest?

Not gp, but it worked well for me on iOS safari.

Nor did I (iOS).

Nice page. My mobile browser janked immediately. Even back button didn't work.

Yeah, it killed my Chrome on iOS; there was no way to click the "close ad" button, and then it crashed my Chrome session. I restarted the browser and went back, but probably will just skip foreignpolicy.com links in the future.

completely disagree.

with mobile Firefox and the no-script extension (plus uBlock origin, but that only matters after I whitelist the site) the page rendered perfect, with images, and very fast.

;)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com