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Comment by Shank | Hacker News Reader

Why does DEF CON have to happen in Vegas? I can understand staying after Caesars Palace abruptly terminated their contract, but in future years, is there any real glue that keeps people there? I mean supposedly this is one of the most paranoid groups of people congregating in one place. Wanting hotel room privacy should be something that should be factored into the venue-search in-general, right?

Are there any huge advantages to staying in Vegas? Why not another city, perhaps with negotiated privacy for rooms at choice hotels?

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BSides, BlackHat, and DEFCON happen yearly on the same week in August in Las Vegas, and many people attend more than one.

I would be happy if the location or date of all 3 changed. The peak temperature outside was around 110° all week this year.

Because August was historically Vegas's off-season, being a bajillion and a half degrees outside, and they could get a good deal on conference space.

Las Vegas has a uniquely scalable infrastructure for conventions. Lodging, restaurants, meeting spaces, entertainment.

Surely DEFCON has more limited attendance than any number more mainstream conferences.

Search results are saying that defcon sees some 30k people. The 2023 Chicago Auto Show had 300k. Major city with all the amenities.

https://www.chicagoautoshow.com/the-2023-chicago-auto-show-c...

Does the Chicago Auto Show host 300k people on a single day?

Nah, it’s about 30,000 per day for a week a half.

The Mccormick center is also hosting the DNC. (Alongside the United Center)

It's very capable to handle large conferences and does throughout the year.

There are other US cities that can support a convention DefCon's size.

Historically, Vegas had a cost advantage. I don't know if that's still the case.

Orlando could probably handle it, but DefCon seems a bit off-brand for Disney.

I agree that it's probably the best situated for that, but most conferences don't need the best.

Let's look at San Francisco. A city that is not as well-suited for conventions as Las Vegas. Dreamforce (Salesforce's annual conference) draws 40,000 people. DEFCON drew 30,000 this year. DEFCON could easily be held in SF. I'm not suggesting they'd want to or should move to SF, but it would be... fine.

As someone who (very) occasionally goes to conferences, Vegas is fun! I get that. I enjoy Vegas, at least for a few days before I get sick of it. There are good restaurants and shows, and virtually no puritanical laws around alcohol consumption like you find in nearly all other places in the US. It's a 24/7 city, the only one in the US. I see the appeal. (And also get why many people dislike it, largely for the same reasons many people like it.)

But c'mon, there are plenty of other US cities that have the infrastructure to support a conference like DEFCON. Conference organizers pick Vegas because they like it, not because other cities can't support them.

Vegas is a fantastic bang/buck proposition if you can stay away from gambling. It isn't that vegas has the absolute best of everything, it's that the average in vegas bests everyone else's mid-high end options.

Also understand that, the conference, no matter which conference mind, is half the draw, the other half is being in vegas itself. Move it elsewhere and it'll be much, much smaller for that reason alone.

With all the lines at def con, is it really a bad thing to be smaller?

The surface of the sun was booked.

Also, it’s always been in Vegas, so there’s inertia, and part of the draw is the attendance synergy with the rest of the hacker summer camp events like black hat, bsides, and others. There’s no good reason to change, and a lot of good reasons to stay.

They've stated the reason: Vegas is the only true 24/7 city in the US.

You can get more things at more hours in NYC than Vegas.

Except hotel rooms. NYC is infamously short on hotel rooms these days, and what few they have are horrifically high-priced.

Why can't they just move these conferences out of the US? Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested at one of these Vegas hacker conventions, in case people have forgotten after all these years. There are many other countries where these conferences could be held, and where all this security BS isn't much of a factor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Elcom_Ltd.

there is a shit-ton of hacker cons outside of the US, the most famous one being the CCC (Chaos Computer Club Convention) in Leizpieg/Hamburg, Germany just before new year's eve.

You mention Dmitry Sklyarov but more recently Marcus Hutchins (MalwareTech) has been also arrested by the FBI following its appearance at Blackhat or Defcon

Nyc has a hard shutdown at 4am. By law. With most things shutting down at 12/2. Especially post-covid.

If you're going to make such a wild statement where the laws are against you any any Google search of hours is against you, you've got to give a much longer and in depth explanation.

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