Facebook cancels in-person portion of F8 due to Coronavirus | Hacker News Reader

Facebook cancels in-person portion of F8 due to Coronavirus

developers.facebook.com

93 pointsgabea35 comments

This morning I was scoffing at my mother-in-law's suggestion to cancel/postpone our 4-year-old's upcoming birthday party as a precaution. Then I see stuff like this and wonder if she's right.

I think it's a matter of scale. Since F8 is an international conference there's more of a risk, and they have to make the decision sooner so people can get refunds on their plane flights and hotel rooms.

OTOH a birthday party is unlikely to increase the risk much compared to work/school. In a few months that calculation might look very different though, e.g. Japan closed all its schools. But the US is more spread out so a lot of regions will be protected by their isolation.

It's pretty much a case by case basis with events. RSA happened although some companies pulled out. I'm attending a smaller (but still fairly large) US event next week. It's still on but they're asking people to certify they aren't sick and haven't been to China in the last couple of weeks. (And some other precautions like a no handshaking protocol.)

This is the first one I've seen cancel that far out. (Well, I know another but I think there were other factors at play there as well.)

Why are there so many acronyms like AFAIK or OTOH? What do people do with all the free time they save from abbreviating as such? :P

To be fair, children's parties are a hive of disease sharing opportunities.. so even forgetting COVID-19, if you're not really into birthday parties and this give you permission to not have it, I'd take it ;-)

If you live in China maybe. Otherwise no.

Turning 4 or turning 5? If turning 4, canceling is reasonable. The kid won't really know what a birthday is and won't realize anything is missing or changed. The parties are almost more for the adults.

If turning 5, I'd probably keep it. On the other hand, you can scale back how you do it. The kid won't really know the difference. Besides, at that age, bigger isn't better. More friends is just overwhelming.

Speak for yourself my fourth birthday was the best.

Postponing is better than cancelling.

a 12 month postpone is in order

Better to postpone until summer. There's no indication that next winter won't be a much worse repeat of what we're seeing now.

> The kid won't really know what a birthday is

I've never met a 4 year old who wouldn't know what a birthday is.

There might be significant risk for any grandparents attending. All the older members in our extended family are preparing to hunker down for a while.

Maybe skip the bobbing for apples activity, but otherwise I would just keep an eye on things. If they’re still at school, then they’re plenty exposed there — so is a birthday party going to make the difference?

Our daughters’ birthdays are coming up as well, and for now I’m keeping the plans, but am at least preparing in case schools cancel, etc.

FWIW, in response to the other reply, as a parent of 3 children under 6, I can say with recent experience that a birthday can be very important to a three year old (depending on the kid obviously).

International attendance conferences should be scaled back.

Local birthday parties in cities without community spread are fine.

Once there is community spread if you city, then work from home, no birthday parties, maybe no school, etc.

I have a funny question. I have a FB internship this summer at the Menlo Park office. I know interns get health insurance but if I get Coronavirus while I'm doing the internship will they cover my treatment for the duration? I don't think my University provided health insurance will cover me while I'm in California...

This is a great question for your recruiter.

ah right right

There should be continuity between your FB-provided health insurance and your university-provided health insurance. I wouldn't worry about it, but if you are worried, by all means ask your recruiter.

I would suggest double checking the fine print for your university-provided insurance for the period between school ending and your internship starting. And coverage limits -- a hospital stay can get very expensive here.

Also check if your insurance requires you to call them for "pre-approval" in order for treatment to be covered.

If your university is outside of the US (say, Canada), then you may also want to check whether your university provides travel health insurance, or recommends a provider that will sell it to you.

This makes me think of an interesting point around the potential virus outbreak in the US.

If there is a non-trivial outbreak, then could it effectively be (for the US), not just a mass virus management exercise - but be followed by a mass-bankrupting due to medical expenses (which are already a big deal just for "normal" life events)

i had a funny thought on reading bloomberg's summary of today: this is going to ruin trump because he'll handle this so poorly and he'll be up against a democractic primary candidate (either sanders or warren) that supports free healthcare

Has anyone been able to get flights to a conference changed / refunded as a result of cancellations like this?

I got an email the other day from the Ruby Kaigi team, they are thinking of cancelling too which means I may have to do something about those flights to Japan I booked :(

If the airline suspends flights you will get your money back. Apart from that, trip insurance? Maybe your credit card offers it.

You have to be very careful with trip insurance and read the documentation to make sure it covers this case. Some insurance won’t necessarily cover pandemics, etc.

It depends on the airline. I've gotten no-hassle refunds from Delta and Cathay Pacific in the past ten days.

And I think I saw somewhere that United gave refunds to people who were planning to attend Mobile World Congress. It's mostly up to the individual airline but many of them seem to be being understanding. (Which isn't to say you'll necessarily get a refund if it's just a generic I don't feel comfortable flying any longer rather than a canceled event.)

When is the conference? I might wait and see if the airlines cancels your flight--which actually seems fairly likely to happen at this point--in which case your fare would be refunded.

FB/Oculus has been pushing remote events via VR heavily since day one.

Seems like a good opportunity to send each attendee an Oculus Go and do the whole event in VR.

Sure would save a lot of carbon, also.

Not sure if you’re serious, but would constructing a device really save carbon vs a round trip flight?

Yes, constructing a device (that is ~ 1L in volume) is definitely more carbon friendly than burning 3-4 liters of fuel per person per 100km for a passenger flight.

If you count shipping (some on air) it's less likely (though boxes are more space efficient than humans).

And, an Oculus can be reused hundreds of times.

Looks like GDC is falling apart as well.

And I was going to book tickets to the Qt conference, I’ve changed my mind on that one.

Some conferences are going ahead even with highly visible companies/sponsors pulling out. That seems to be the case with GDC at this point though who knows what another week will bring.

Postponed.

https://gdconf.com/news/important-gdc-2020-update

for once remote video and collab will have first class value

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