The RSA Conference is the biggest computer security trade-show held annually in San Francisco.
It used to be pretty bad; there were “booth babes” and strippers – the venture-backed California code-bro culture that James Damore was so eagerly defending. My company used to send me every year, and I’d do interviews and started to get increasingly sarcastic, until finally I was relieved of the duty when I threatened to do booth duty wearing stripper heels and a knife-pleated skirt. [ranum]
2013, mjr and Gary McGraw talking to a very self-actualized hourly marketing expert who said “I don’t know anything about any of this stuff but they’re paying me $11/hr to stand here and I like money.”
Last year there were 4 or 5 booths that had some kind of ludicrously expensive sports car, or a flock of young women showing a great deal of spandex and curves. I suppose if a vendor has absolutely no real marketing message, that’s a substitute, but I suspect that even the most out-of-touch customer is not going to mistake a firewall (or whatever it is) speeds and feeds for that Ferrari’s top speed. How does dollars spent, length of inseam, or miles per hour, correlate to telling us something useful about:
– The quality of the product?
– How well it meets customers’ needs?
– How easy the product is to use?
– The company’s ability to innovate?
Actually – it tells me quite a lot. It tells me I’m looking at a company that has a marketing organization that’s as out of touch as the management team that approved that booth set-up. Here’s a good idea: replace the Ferrari with a cardboard cut-out of a Ferrari and use the money you just saved to hire a new marketing team.
I truly do not understand how I got a reputation for disliking marketing people. I hate the culture, not the individuals.
This summer someone I’ve done a lot of work for, in the past, asked me if they could put me on a panel they were proposing, and I said OK, so now I’m going to be going to RSA one more time next year. I love Yank Sing and there’s an amazing place in Oakland that makes hand-pulled noodles, so, “why not?”
The last time I went to RSA was in 2015, and there were a lot fewer booth babes, sumo wrestlers, and Ferraris. Unfortunately, the marketing geniuses of the world had decided to slant toward ultra-nationalism instead: there were companies openly advertising that their products would help keep evil Chinese hackers out of the network, including pictures of people in People’s Liberation Army uniforms (at least the Chinese hackers don’t wear ubiquitous hoodies, right?) It was brilliant marketing: let’s try to piss our important business partners off!
Once I got the notice that RSA had accepted the panel proposal, I had to go fill out a ton of speakers’ forms and authorize this and that, and there was:
This stifling political correctness is kind of refreshing.
Sexual harassment and victim-blaming are a problem in every community, including computer security. I tried to get a bunch of computer security speakers to agree to not support any conference that did not have a clear anti-harassment policy, and got a lot of push-back; it was a disappointing surprise. [ranum] The incident I am referring to there was well before the incidents with Jacob Applebaum or Morgan Marquis-Boire.
Is it just me, or was that question missing at least one more option?
And what on earth do they do with gender information, anyway?
Curt Sampson@#1:
And what on earth do they do with gender information, anyway?
AHA! That is a fascinating question!
I don’t know. And they probably don’t, either.
They make a lot of money selling their attendee list to marketers. Every time I go to RSA I get a flood of phone calls and emails from companies offering to let me attend a webinar where they explain some technology that I probably could have patented in the 90s. So, I know that’s part of it. And when they’re selling that info, I think the marketers expect certain fields to be filled in, so they can call me “sir” or “m’am” or “whatever” I guess – instead of crafting their message so that pronouns are not used. “Dear prospective victim…”
So, my guess is “because it’s expected” which is a variation of “tradition!”
Hmm, interesting. I self-identify as a genderqueer. I don’t live in a closet, I don’t hide it, I’m completely open about my gender problems. Yet in this form I would have to click on “prefer not to disclose” only because both other options do not fit me. In reality, I’d be perfectly fine with disclosing my gender identity. It’s no secret anyway. Yet this speakers’ form seems to indicate that people with unusual gender identities are expected to live in their closets and not disclose it.
OK, I was somewhat sarcastic here, and I know that I’m nitpicking. I understand that once you stop pretending that LGBTQIA people don’t exist, it turns out that there are a lot of options for gender identities. Listing all possible options would turn into a long list. And this speakers’ form is definitely an improvement compared to the usual situation, namely, being forced to choose between “male” and “female,” which, incidentally, is a huge annoyance for me. I don’t like how I’m routinely forced to pick between “Mr” or “Ms” with no other options out there. I’m neither of those, damn it.
Ieva @#3
Easy enough to have ‘other’ as an option, I’ve seen that in places I wouldn’t have though were that thoughtful.
Falsehoods marketers believe about gender, sex and sexuality:
….never mind, too depressing.
Instead, I refer you to “Obergefell v. Hodges: the database engineering perspective” available at https://qntm.org/support
which includes this in the prologue:
“In my 2008 essay Gay marriage: the database engineering perspective I went through more than a dozen database schemas for storing marriages, gradually iterating towards more and more flexibility. That essay starts with some laughably stupid schemas and ends up considering some dubiously probable futures, such as scenarios where Alice is married to Bob but Bob is not married to Alice, or where Alice and Bob are somehow double-married, such that after a divorce, they would merely be married.”
Curt Sampson @ # 1: And what on earth do they do with gender information, anyway?
I suspect it helps the promo writers and emcees with the dreaded inevitable pronoun problem.
if you’re using gender to work out pronouns, why not just ask about pronouns? ask the question you’re actually interested in
(though when cis people start asking about gender the question they are usually interested in is “do you have a dick?”)
Shout out to Yank Sing! I work very near there, and Moscone, for that matter. I’d for sure be up for dim sum (or whatever) if you have a gathering when you’re in SF.
What’s the place in Oakland?
I think you and Laurie Penny would get along just fine
https://breakermag.com/trapped-at-sea-with-cryptos-nouveau-riche/
CJO@#8:
Shout out to Yank Sing! I work very near there, and Moscone, for that matter. I’d for sure be up for dim sum (or whatever) if you have a gathering when you’re in SF.
What’s the place in Oakland?
Shandong Restaurant, 328 10th St #101, Oakland, CA 94607 — their pork and cabbage hand-pulled noodles are very yummy. My other favorite than Yank Sing is House of Hunan.
I was not planning a gathering per se but now that you mention it, it’s a good idea! I will try to post something a week or so beforehand; I’m pretty flexible. My panel is the afternoon of the 6th, and I think I’m going to come out a few days early with Anna, rent a car and drive down 101 to Monterey (the aquarium and Point Lobos are 2 of my favorite places) so probably the 5th or 6th.
Badland@#9:
One of the ways men bond is by demonstrating collective power over women. This is why business deals are still done in strip clubs, even in Silicon Valley, and why tech conferences are famous for their “booth babes.” It creates an atmosphere of complicity and privilege. It makes rich men partners in crime. This is useful if you plan to get ethically imaginative with your investments. Hence the half-naked models, who are all working a lot harder than any of the guys in shirtsleeves.
I’ve always been similarly suspicious of golf. But that’s one of those “don’t get me started on how much I hate golf.”
https://breakermag.com/trapped-at-sea-with-cryptos-nouveau-riche/
That’s a great article. And, John MacAfee, whoo-boy! So, one of the problems of being a computer security “old-timer” is, so is MacAfee. So, to journalists, he’s a “credible source” because he’s really rich. And you get written off as “probably just bitter” if you try to tell them MacAfee’s a crank who rolled 3 ‘double zeroes’ in a row – otherwise a very unstable character. That boat-ride sounds like ‘sociopaths on display’ – I’m sure the smell of testosterone blowing off the boat was probably driving sharks into a frenzy.
Most of my career (until the last 2 years) I was able to avoid those sorts of people. For a while, I could smell them a mile away because they were all poseur-smoking cigars. In the 90s they were the same jackasses who were slugging down bottles of Opus One. Yecch. The venture capitalists were the worst combination of lucky, ignorant, and arrogant…
Cool. Thanks for the Oakland Chinatown tip, I haven’t been to that spot. It’ll be a pleasure to say hi if you have the time.
Yes, I agree. That’s an interesting article.
Pay attention to the photo illustrating it. It’s an image of a ship, but notice the lights. They are literally shining beams of light towards the sky. Also the illumination of the ship itself is too much. This is a textbook example of light pollution.
My first ever scientific research paper was about light pollution. In Latvian “light” translates as gaisma, and “air” translates as gaiss. Back when I worked on this paper, I would tell people that I was writing about light pollution, and everybody would then ask me whether I mispronounced the word and meant “air pollution” instead. Back then, in Latvia nobody knew that light pollution even existed. People often don’t know about this problem, those who do often fail to care. Yet light pollution hurts nocturnal animals, it disrupts human circadian rhythm, it reduces the amount of melatonin our bodies produce (thus causing adverse health effects), it makes it harder for astronomers to observe the night sky, and, on top of all that, it’s also a huge waste of electricity. Yet it still exists, because, well, reasons.
I think that a photo of a ship creating light pollution is a nice metaphor for bitcoin—cryptocurrencies are also a huge waste of electricity that exists only because of, well, reasons.
The resources we have on this planet are limited and precious. Yet humanity is wasting them.
By the way, I have never seen The Milky Way in real life. There’s too much light pollution where I live.
Ieva Skrebele:
By the way, I have never seen The Milky Way in real life. There’s too much light pollution where I live.
It’s worth traveling to someplace with a good view.
I used to lie out in my yard with the dogs, and watch the stars. Out here it’s dark enough that the sky is brighter than the land, so it feels like you could fall upward from the dark into the starfield. Realizing that it’s mostly galaxies once you look away from the Via Galactica, is very comforting – being “so small you don’t matter” is a good place to be. Usually, after a few hours, one of the dogs would get bored and start a ruckus; they also understand the scale of a dog’s life, it seems.
Bitcoin. Ugh.
Bitcoin millionaires are basically con-men.
Marcus Ranum @ # 11: Most of my career (until the last 2 years) I was able to avoid those sorts of people. For a while, I could smell them a mile away because they were all poseur-smoking cigars.
Are such persons no longer cigars who smoke poseurs, or have you developed anosmia?
Pierce R. Butler@#15:
Are such persons no longer cigars who smoke poseurs, or have you developed anosmia?
I simply don’t hang out in places where I encounter splashy entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, any more.