Syria just hosted its first international tech conference in 50 years | Hacker News Reader

Syria just hosted its first international tech conference in 50 years

restofworld.org

71 pointsdonohoe18 comments

I find this title incredibly offensive!

Syria before war was normal middle income country. It had income from petrol. Tourists from Arabic countries come there for shopping. That was 15 years ago!

Here is a list of international conferences I found in 10 seconds googling. Some of them are technical: https://www.syrleb.org/site/english/index.php?node=115522

The text of the article says it's the first time "a free Syria hosted an independent tech conference", implying that any tech conferences under the Assads didn't count.

But yeah, it's a clickbait headline.

> implying that any tech conferences under the Assads didn't count.

Why shouldn't it count exactly?

Most people would not characterize Baathist Syria as "free".

And the jury is still out on if that label applies to the current lot.

Why not? Honest question. I assumed it was his attitude toward his southern neighbor that sealed his downfall, both politically and in the court of public opinion.

And in Germany we are still debating if Syria is safe enough to send asylum seekers back there :D

What was the 1975 Syrian international tech conference? Article didn’t say.

A reminder that thanks to the Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015, any travel to Syria will make you forever invalid for US ESTA (visa-free entry) and you'll need to go through the grueling, incredibly slow and expensive regular US visa process instead.

Don't they do like Cuba yet? I.e. not stamp your passport but rather a card that is removed on exit, leaving no trace on your passport. (Obviously you still leave traces in airline databases if flying direct, but that can be avoided.)

Where I am from, like probably the majority of the world, you cant use ESTA.

Hundreds of millions of people living relatively close to Syria can use ESTA, so it’s a relevant warning.

I always wondered, how would they know you’d been? Not like Syria is sharing arrivals lists with the US gov

Stamp in passport is the obvious one. And then you're really screwed, because now you've lied on your application too.

Sure but if you don’t have a stamp for whatever reason, which is increasingly common

Man, HN is downvote-happy these days. To state what I thought was obvious, I'm not saying I approve of this state of affairs and in fact I'd love to visit Syria, but until the US drops their policy, I realistically cannot.

Any female speakers of note?

Seems like they are featuring some speakers on their instagram https://www.instagram.com/sync_sv/?hl=en

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