Other than you could write a curl statement in all of 2 minutes, post it on HN and then it defeats the purpose of said coding challenge. The smart cruft will get in... they'll just do it by piggy backing on those who do the work and post it online.

They'll always be able to get in. Which isn't a problem. The problem is buisness guys outnumbering technical guys. Reducing their numbers is all that's required.

A key problem with Google I/O is that they give you enough free stuff while you are there to pay you back for the price of the ticket multiple times over: this pricing arbitrage creates miserable incentives, and causes a lot of people to register for the conference for the sole purpose of being able to obtain free stuff, after which they either immediately ditch or scalp their ticket.

It looks like they upped the price. We will see if it influences demand.

Yes; however, the result is still less than the resale value of the equipment they gave everyone for free last year (especially if you went to the talk that gave away the Xperia Play): what they really need to do is not make the conference a net-negative "cost" to attend.