Gary's guide is probably the best source of tech events in NYC (apart from meetup). I used to go to quite a few of the events here before I got my current programming job.
"You realize that Java requires a nontrivial bytecode verifier too, right? IIRC the bytecode verifier, and certainly the compiler, require abstract interpretation to convert the stack-oriented bytecode to a virtual register-based one."
It seems like you are talking about Dalvik VM (Android). Java class files (stack bytecode) are actually converted to Dakvik's register bytecode ahead of time. (Before installation on the mobile device.) I'm unsure if Dalvik bytecode is verified or not.
No, I'm talking about the verifier [1]. In particular: "There are no operand stack overflows or underflows." That requires abstract interpretation.
And every performant Java interpreter is required to convert the stack machine to vregs in order to perform register allocation. That requires abstract interpretation too.