
Ask HN: Best talks of 2018? - avrmav
What&#x27;s your favourite talks of 2018? It can be anything, programming, management, life, anything.
======
stormbeard
"Q: Why Do Keynote Speakers Keep Suggesting That Improving Security Is
Possible? A: Because Keynote Speakers Make Bad Life Decisions and Are Poor
Role Models"

James Mickens

[https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity18/presentat...](https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity18/presentation/mickens)

~~~
cheez
This guy is a philosopher

~~~
pvarangot
He's fun for sure. Also there are actual philosophers like Jaron Lanier with
higher level and more poignant analysis of the same problem that I can't
recommend enough as at least a good read.

------
aeleos
Recent but great talk posted here, What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric
Computation Outside the Nervous System [1] by Prof. Michael Levin. He talks
about how long term low energy electrical networks between all cells in living
organisms shape how the organism grows. I think what he talks about will be
the future of medicine as it allows for an amazing degree of high level
control over how animals grow.

1\.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjD1aLm4Thg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjD1aLm4Thg)

~~~
kilburn
Wow, just wow!

I've often felt that we (humanity) have pushed the boundaries of our knowledge
right to some really hard lines to cross: relativity won't allow interstellar
travel anytime soon, we are making progress in "soft AI" but "hard AI" is
still insurmountable, even fusion seems as far as it's always been. Further
"real" progress seems sometimes nearly impossible, or very arduous and slow at
best.

Then this guy shows up, cuts a frog's leg, shines some weird lights on the
wound... and the frog regenerates it! (frogs do not normally regenerate legs).
This has been really astonishing to me. I hope this whole research area lives
up to my excitement after listening to that talk, because really awesome
things may come out of it.

I highly recommend this talk to literally anybody who has scientific curiosity
en general!

~~~
aeleos
I definitely agree with you, this feels like REAL progress. I feel like this
is a revolution in our understanding of how life as a collection of cells is
able to function with such repeat ability and reliability. What is even more
amazing is how this talk isn't even just going over our lack of understanding
in this area, its saying hey everyone we just filled in this massive gap in
our understanding, and look at what real things we can do with it.

It does feel like this research crosses a big line in science. Especially with
the recent articles about how gene editing can cause weird defects that we
don't understand, this shows we don't need to tinker at the lower levels when
life already has the tools for higher level control.

------
ttiurani
"Maybe Not" by Rich Hickey:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5WdGrpoug](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5WdGrpoug)

Another excellent talk by the creator of Clojure, and like the previous ones,
relevant for all programmers.

~~~
maxhallinan
I thought this was one of the notably bad talks this year. The whole premise
that a function of Maybe a should be a function of a without an API change is
neither intuitive to me nor really justified by Hickey. Different things are
different. It's sad to see someone build such a wall around himself when faced
by something (type theory) that he doesn't understand.

~~~
gnuvince
The sad thing is that Rich Hickey had some very good videos when Clojure was a
new thing back in 2008–2009. Unfortunately, I've disagreed vehemently with
most of his talks since then. In this case, it's completely illogical that a
function `Maybe a -> b` should be callable as if it were a function `a -> b`.
Do you want to know how I know? Because it would be just as illogical to allow
a function `Vec a -> b` to be called as `a -> b`. And Rich must agree because
Clojure itself does not support that!

I've learned that videos of his talks are just not worth my time.

~~~
nadagast
Why is it illogical to say that a Maybe a -> b should be callable as if it
were a -> b?

His point is that Maybe a should be composed of all the values of a, plus one
more value, nil. A value of type a is a member of the set (nil + a). Why
should having a more specific value reduce the things you can do with it? It
breaks composition, fundamentally. It's like saying (+) works on integers, but
not on 3. I'm saying this someone who really enjoys type systems, including
haskell.

~~~
dragonwriter
> His point is that Maybe a should be composed of all the values of a, plus
> one more value, nil

No, that's a simple union type. There are very good reasons for Maybe to be
different than unions (Maybe can nest meaningfully, simple unions can't.)

Maybe Maybe a is valid, and often useful, type.

Of course, if you have a function of type a -> b and find out you need a more
general Maybe a -> b, instead of a breaking change, you just write a wrapper
function that produces the correct result for Nothing and delegates to the
existing function for Some(a) and you're done without breaking existing
clients.

(Now, I suppose, if you're u had something like Scala implicits available,
having an implicit a -> Maybe a conversion might sometimes be useful, though
it does make code less clear.)

~~~
nadagast
I agree that there are reasons for Maybe a to be a different type from (a |
nil) but there are also good reasons to prefer (a | nil). Like most things,
it's a set of tradeoffs. What I appreciated about this talk was that he went
into the benefits of thinking about types in this way. It's (relatively)
common to see the benefits of Maybe a explained, but more rare to see the
benefits of full union types explained.

------
sn9
Some of my favorite talks from Strange Loop:

* Contracts For Getting More Programs Less Wrong: [https://www.thestrangeloop.com/2018/contracts-for-getting-mo...](https://www.thestrangeloop.com/2018/contracts-for-getting-more-programs-less-wrong.html)

* "It's Just Matrix Multiplication": Notation for Weaving: [https://www.thestrangeloop.com/2018/its-just-matrix-multipli...](https://www.thestrangeloop.com/2018/its-just-matrix-multiplication-notation-for-weaving.html)

* Hackett: a metaprogrammable Haskell: [https://www.thestrangeloop.com/2018/hackett-a-metaprogrammab...](https://www.thestrangeloop.com/2018/hackett-a-metaprogrammable-haskell.html)

* Git from the Ground Up: [https://www.thestrangeloop.com/2018/git-from-the-ground-up.h...](https://www.thestrangeloop.com/2018/git-from-the-ground-up.html)

From PyCon:

* Beyond Unit Tests: Taking Your Testing to the Next Level: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYucYon2-lk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYucYon2-lk)

* Dataclasses: The code generator to end all code generator: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-TwcmT6Rcw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-TwcmT6Rcw)

* Automating Code Quality: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1lDk_WKXvY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1lDk_WKXvY)

There are probably more I might add later as I remember them.

~~~
vitaminCPP
> "Beyond Unit Tests: Taking Your Testing to the Next Level"

+1 Very interesting. I will make sure to check the `Hypothesis` module.

------
GolDDranks
"The Hard Parts of Open Source" by Evan Czaplicki
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_4EX4dPppA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_4EX4dPppA)

------
CorvusCrypto
"Design Microservice Architectures the Right Way" by Michael Bryzek [1]

Really good discussion on event-collaborative microservice systems that scale
well for performance and maintenance as well as a good argument and use case
for server and client code generation.

Definitely my favorite so far.

[1] [https://www.infoq.com/presentations/microservices-arch-
infra...](https://www.infoq.com/presentations/microservices-arch-
infrastructure-cd)

~~~
ausjke
it's said microservice is phasing out to serverless?

~~~
CorvusCrypto
I think more and more it's a case of people realizing there is no definitive
"microservice" architecture. Because of that architects around the industry
are now focusing on the flow of data and using whichever tools are best to get
the right behavior in their business.

What was called microservices imo was just a higher level modularization of
code to allow easier parallel development and maintenance/scaling, but since
it needs a server that meant some boilerplate to initialize and keep the app
running. A lot of people went about this in different ways which made things a
bit chaotic to those new to the idea I think. The next logical step would be
to remove that server code by running on a serverless architecture to focus on
the functions that operate on data rather than having to maintain the
initialization code and other boilerplate as well.

Among all of this advancement, an architect thinking the way Michael Bryzek
does would have no problem using either approach since the focus is on the
data and how data is used.

Still, server-based microservices are still very prominent, and I'd argue they
are also much more platform agnostic if done right whereas (if I'm not
mistaken) much of serverless is done in specific platforms causing you to be
vendor-locked due to different deployment processes for each platform. I think
research is being done to make platform-agnostic serverless deployments
easier, but I haven't read much on it yet and am unaware of current
advancements in that area.

------
rrherr
From Deconstruct:

Nabil Hassein: Computing, Climate Change, and All Our Relationships
[https://www.deconstructconf.com/2018/nabil-hassein-
computing...](https://www.deconstructconf.com/2018/nabil-hassein-computing-
climate-change-and-all-our-relationships)

Tom 7: Reverse emulating the NES to give it SUPER POWERS!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar9WRwCiSr0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar9WRwCiSr0)

~~~
acobster
This. I was at Deconstruct too, and Nabil's talk got a standing ovation. It
ran way over time, and I didn't notice. Tech people _need_ to hear this. Tom's
talk is also amazing in its own right.

Let's Program a Banjo Grammar was also one of my favorites. :D

[https://www.deconstructconf.com/2018/ryan-herr-lets-
program-...](https://www.deconstructconf.com/2018/ryan-herr-lets-program-a-
banjo-grammar)

Edit: I just looked at your username...that you, Ryan? :)

~~~
rrherr
Yep, that was me — thank you for the kind words!

Gary Bernhardt had a creative concept for selecting speakers. Half were
invited, internet famous people like Tom 7 and Julia Evans. Half were people
who'd never spoke at a conference before, like Nabil and I. For the call for
proposals, we submitted 2 minute videos instead of abstracts. Gary invested a
lot of time mentoring the new speakers, which I'm so grateful for!

In September, I did another, kind of similar talk at Strange Loop, called
"Picasso, Geometry, Jupyter."
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYJ77F_8kq0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYJ77F_8kq0)

The topic and ideas were good, probably better than my Deconstruct talk. But
my execution and presentation were uneven and unpolished, so I'd like to try
it again at another conference. I'm submitting to PyCon — we'll see!

~~~
acobster
Hey, that's great! Even if the execution wasn't up to your standards, I'm
looking forward to watching! I heard from someone at the conference (maybe it
was you even?) about how Gary curated the talks. I'm really glad he did that,
because all around it was my favorite tech conference I've been to and I'll
definitely be back. :)

------
0XAFFE
Some of the better talks are yet to come

[https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2018/Fahrplan/index....](https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2018/Fahrplan/index.html)

~~~
pizza
Do you know of anywhere to watch them live? I found this
[https://streaming.media.ccc.de/](https://streaming.media.ccc.de/) but I'm not
100% sure it's what I want

~~~
Grollicus
That is probably the correct location for live streams. If it doesn't work,
[https://twitter.com/c3voc](https://twitter.com/c3voc) will know what's up.

The Streams will later be edited and uploaded to
[https://media.ccc.de/](https://media.ccc.de/) where they will appear
incrementally a few days (or sometimes even hours) after the talks are over.
So it's usually not a problem to miss a talk.

------
faitswulff
I rather enjoyed RustConf 2018's Closing Keynote, "Using Rust For Game
Development" by Catherine West:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKLntZcp27M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKLntZcp27M)

I learned about the ECS pattern and got to see some Rust refactoring in
action.

Previous HN discussion here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17977906](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17977906)

~~~
sn9
Jonathon Blow had a really interesting but subtle response to this talk:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t1K66dMhWk&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t1K66dMhWk&feature=youtu.be)

~~~
brodo
Thanks, very interesting. He is right, the Rust borrow checker can not deal
with arbitrary graphs and she added a memory management layer on top of the
Rust one. However, you would have to do the same in C++. It is an interesting
obervation. I spoke to Benedikt Meurer from the Google V8 team recently and he
pointed out the same for Javascript Engines. If you do not have DAGs, Rust
can‘t help you with safety. (at least it can not prevent use after free) I
still like the whole ECS idea and it makes sense for me that using ECS in Rust
will provide a performant and clean architecture.

------
blojayble
Lessons Learned Implementing Common Lisp with LLVM

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbdXeRBbgDM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbdXeRBbgDM)

~~~
drmeister
Author here - thanks folks! I'm glad you liked it.

~~~
blojayble
I will take this opportunity to thank you. Not only was your talk very
interesting and informative, I also found it very inspiring. It really made me
rethink what my goals are as a developer. Hope to see more from you.

------
vishnu_ks
Alex Hannold's Ted Talk on how he free soloed El Cap.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iM6M_7wBMc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iM6M_7wBMc)

Another favorite one of mine was Jimmy Chin talking about how they shot Free
Solo.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq_vvnxZ6I0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq_vvnxZ6I0)

~~~
krispbyte
To other people not getting what free solo is, it means climbing a cliff
without ropes.

------
markbnj
Kristen Jacobs' talk on low level container networking at Kubecon 2018 in
Seattle.

[https://kccna18.sched.com/event/GrWx/container-networking-
fr...](https://kccna18.sched.com/event/GrWx/container-networking-from-scratch-
kristen-jacobs-oracle?iframe=yes&w=100%&sidebar=yes&bg=no#)

~~~
ra7
YouTube link for this talk:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v_BDHIgOY8&index=255&list=P...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v_BDHIgOY8&index=255&list=PLj6h78yzYM2PZf9eA7bhWnIh_mK1vyOfU&t=0s)

------
open-source-ux
I really liked this talk about the history of programming and how so many
ideas we consider recent or modern are in fact much older than many of us
realise. Watching this talk merely amplifies the feeling that the programming
profession is in a perpetual loop - discarding or forgetting ideas or
concepts, then re-discovering them anew. What's also striking is how rich and
varied were the programming ideas that emerged from the 60s and 70s.

 _Kevlin Henney - Procedural Programming: It 's Back? It Never Went Away_
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otAcmD6XEEE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otAcmD6XEEE)

~~~
franky47
Although a bit repetitive from one talk to the next, Kevlin Henney's talks are
of great quality, both in content and form.

If you're interested in a deep analysis on software development behaviours,
through patterns either at the code or organisational level, his talks are
gold.

I particularly enjoyed his take on management analysis, it resonates with a
lot of "failure" situations that I had experienced in my previous job:

 _Kevlin Henney - Agility != Speed_
[https://youtu.be/kmFcNyZrUNM](https://youtu.be/kmFcNyZrUNM)

------
lathiat
Deviant Ollam - The Hotel Room Gourmet
[https://youtu.be/qtFV73wpEAw](https://youtu.be/qtFV73wpEAw)

Also not 2018 but his elevator with Howard Payne talk:
[https://youtu.be/oHf1vD5_b5I](https://youtu.be/oHf1vD5_b5I) (1h version)
[https://youtu.be/ZUvGfuLlZus](https://youtu.be/ZUvGfuLlZus) (2h version)

And the search for the perfect door:
[https://youtu.be/4YYvBLAF4T8](https://youtu.be/4YYvBLAF4T8)

~~~
unixhero
Deviant Ollam seriously needs an award.

------
localhost
"Deep Learning to solve Challenging Problems" by Jeff Dean
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jzi3cvCde4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jzi3cvCde4)

I'll watch Jeff Dean talk about pretty much anything, and his keynote "stump
speeches" are more or less a greatest hits compilation of recent stuff from
Google Brain.

------
throwaway010718
It's not a _talk_ , but worth a mention. Joe Rogan interviews Matthew Walker,
a Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of California,
Berkeley, and Founder and Director of the Center for Human Sleep Science and
author of the book "Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams".

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwaWilO_Pig](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwaWilO_Pig)

------
StreamBright
2018 LLVM Developers’ Meeting: C. Schafmeister “Lessons Learned Implementing
Common Lisp with LLVM”

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbdXeRBbgDM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbdXeRBbgDM)

------
twunde
I really liked Paul Hill's "Failure is not an option: Building a culture of
continuous improvement at NASA", the keynote from this year's DashCon:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMkgk-7aIBc&index=16&list=PL...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMkgk-7aIBc&index=16&list=PLdh-
RwQzDsaN-evaS8HbRZW6THM-L4Ine&t=101s)

It was really nice to see that the current Devops/SRE best practices are
reflections of engineering/operations best practices in other fields

------
chirau
Kelsey Hightower's talk on the "Path to Serverless".

[https://youtu.be/oNa3xK2GFKY](https://youtu.be/oNa3xK2GFKY)

~~~
chimen
I really enjoy Kelsey on all his talks. The most laid-back and funny
presenter. All my initial Kubernetes knowledge was drawn from his lectures.

------
gt5050
What bodies think about - by Michael Levin at NeurIPS 2018.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjD1aLm4Thg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjD1aLm4Thg)

I dont really know anything about biology, but this piqued my interest.One of
the most interesting talks of 2018.

~~~
leesec
Seconded. Had no idea what it was going to be about and thought it might have
been the most interesting talk I've ever seen.

------
lejalv
Why Germany cannot and should not pay to save the Eurozone, by Yanis
Varoufakis (Video in English)

[http://www.cesifo-
group.de/de/ifoHome/events/seminars/Muench...](http://www.cesifo-
group.de/de/ifoHome/events/seminars/Muenchner-
Seminare/Archive/mucsem_20180611_Varoufakis.html)

~~~
typon
Any talk by Varoufakis is worth listening to.

~~~
danaos
He is a very controversial figure in both Greece and Europe as a whole.

~~~
halfastack
Controversial in the very least. I also got the impression that he was quite
anti-EU with his whole Greece rhetoric during the discussions about another
Greek buyout. Maybe I got him wrong..?

~~~
elorant
The guy is a jerk. He fucked up in an unprecedented way, his whole negotiation
strategy was just a blackmail toward EU-Germany that eventually backfired. In
the meantime all his proposals for reforming the public sector were laughable,
like the idea of giving cameras to tourists to record tax evading shops.

He may be good at writing books or giving lectures but he was a complete
disaster as minister of finance.

~~~
mc32
Not sure about that. He was trying to get the best deal for Greece, Germany
called his bluff and he was left holding the bag, but he had the right
intentions. In retrospect he probably should have gone with the Grexit. The
Germans would have capitulated, and, had they not, you’d still be better off.

------
walterbell
The 2018 Turing Award lecture, by John Hennessy (MIPS, Stanford, Alphabet) and
David Patterson (Berkeley, RISC)

[https://iscaconf.org/isca2018/turing_lecture.html](https://iscaconf.org/isca2018/turing_lecture.html)

 _> Titled “A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture: Domain-Specific
Hardware/Software Co-Design, Enhanced Security, Open Instruction Sets, and
Agile Chip Development,” the talk covers recent developments and future
directions in computer architecture. Hennessy and Patterson were recognized
with the Turing Award for “pioneering a systematic, quantitative approach to
the design and evaluation of computer architectures with enduring impact on
the microprocessor industry.”_

------
qwertox
Not necessarily the best, but definitely one that should be watched "Escaping
the Global Banking Cartel" by Andreas M. Antonopoulos
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgI0liAee4s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgI0liAee4s)

------
agentultra
I thought Hillel Wayne's talk, Everything about distributed systems is
terrible, was probably the best talk for the motivation behind why you should
be using TLA+ to design systems:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfnldxWlOhM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfnldxWlOhM)

------
eranation
A Serverless Journey: AWS Lambda Under the Hood

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QdzV04T_kec](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QdzV04T_kec)

------
einstand
Eugenia Cheng: "The Art of Logic: How to Make Sense in a World that Doesn't"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHZKX0H6cUE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHZKX0H6cUE)

I saw an other version at Scala Exchange but that one requires registration
[1] and it's seems to be almost the same talk.

It's very impressive summary of her latest book ("The Art Of Logic") about the
importance of abstract logic in every day life and how abstraction can help us
to understand each other (together with emotions).

[1]: [https://skillsmatter.com/skillscasts/12089-keynote-
conveying...](https://skillsmatter.com/skillscasts/12089-keynote-conveying-
the-power-of-abstraction)

------
bkgh
The Best Way to Predict the Future is to Create It. But Is It Already Too
Late? by Alan Kay
[https://videocast.nih.gov/Summary.asp?Live=28442&bhcp=1](https://videocast.nih.gov/Summary.asp?Live=28442&bhcp=1)

~~~
contingencies
Kay begins at 4:00.

------
smilesnd
I love any talk with Joe Armstrong or Alan Kay in it.

Joe Armstrong - Keynote: The Forgotten Ideas in Computer Science - Code BEAM
SF 2018

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I_jE0l7sYQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I_jE0l7sYQ)

------
mprev
One of my favourites was James Governor’s Sympathy for the DevRel. A call for
people in tech to take better care of themselves.

[https://devrel.net/dev-rel/sympathy-for-the-devrel](https://devrel.net/dev-
rel/sympathy-for-the-devrel)

------
Asparagirl
“Be Human To Your Machines” — Scott Ganz at TedXSanFrancisco 2018.

[https://youtu.be/Y6eNSf4br5Y](https://youtu.be/Y6eNSf4br5Y)

Emmy-winning TV comedy writer becomes award-winning AI conversation designer,
frets about the dismissive way humans interact with computers and the
corrosive social effects of badly-designed bots. Explains why conversation
interfaces need to stick up for themselves and push back on bad behavior, for
the good of human discourse.

------
quaunaut
"How to Win" by Daniel Gross[1]

It's an approach to living your life in a way that lets you be effective at
accomplishing whatever you're after. Starting on something similar to a
Mazlow's heirarchy(in that you must establish each level before going to the
next one), you eventually find a way of not only living better and more
effectively yourself, but finding how to expand that to your team and those
around you. I didn't expect it to be good, but I liken it to Carnegie's "How
to Win Friends and Influence People"\- it gets to the core of the problem in
the best way possible.

1\.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH1bewTg-P4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH1bewTg-P4)

------
raghava
Blockchains Are a Bad Idea (James Mickens)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15RTC22Z2xI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15RTC22Z2xI)

I find almost all from GOTO 2018 very insightful.

[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=goto+2018](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=goto+2018)

esp ones listed below.

GOTO 2018 • The Do's and Don'ts of Error Handling • Joe Armstrong

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTM_b7EJg5E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTM_b7EJg5E)

GOTO 2018 • Pragmatic Event-Driven Microservices • Allard Buijze

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSd_0zGxsIU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSd_0zGxsIU)

GOTO 2018 • Why Business Cases are Toxic • Chris Matts

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvOcjmpPQCc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvOcjmpPQCc)

GOTO 2018 • Unconditional Code • Michael Feathers

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnZ0uTOerUI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnZ0uTOerUI)

------
henning
I liked Erica Joy's keynote at Strange Loop a lot.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi02tn3K2b4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi02tn3K2b4)

------
cpeterso
A walk through of PDF's history and file format, check out Chas Emerick's 2018
Red Monk tech talk:

"Building 100 year systems in the shadow of PDF".
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EPn6plqkEs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EPn6plqkEs)

------
cpeterso
Jeff Vogel from Spiderweb Software gave an awesome retrospective on 24 years
of creating old-school-style fantasy RPGs at GDC 2018:

"Failing to Fill: The Spiderweb Software Way"
[https://youtu.be/stxVBJem3Rs](https://youtu.be/stxVBJem3Rs)

------
joaovitor
It is not only about the content but the energy and how to present it.

They rock presenting great content in a great way.

\---

Monica Dinculescu
([https://github.com/notwaldorf](https://github.com/notwaldorf))

PWA starter kit: build fast, scalable, modern apps with Web Components (Google
I/O '18)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we3lLo-
UFtk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we3lLo-UFtk)

\---

Kelsey Hightower
([https://github.com/kelseyhightower/](https://github.com/kelseyhightower/))

Keynote: Kubernetes and the Path to Serverless - Kelsey Hightower, Staff
Developer Advocate, Google

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNa3xK2GFKY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNa3xK2GFKY)

------
bibek547
I made a playlist of all the youtube links form this section:
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh6DLqe0B3ZCLi1bYvQrn...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh6DLqe0B3ZCLi1bYvQrnYPeTYjB5OrNF)

~~~
dawid-s
Thank you

------
RickJWagner
My favorite talk was called "Generations @ Work", presented at Red Hat Summit
2018.

It was about different generations in the workplace, what each grouping
typically liked, disliked, was motivated by, and how they communicated
differently.

I really liked it because of the content, but also because it was given by a
small panel, I was a member of it. :)

Why did I propose such a talk? I usually submit technical talks to
conferences, sometimes they are chosen. This year I did NOT have a technical
talk selected by the Summit committee, but on a whim I had submitted this
'softball/managerial' title. It was the one that got me a ticket to Summit!
You never know.

------
chillaxtian
AWS re:Invent 2018: Close Loops & Opening Minds: How to Take Control of
Systems, Big & Small

[https://youtu.be/O8xLxNje30M](https://youtu.be/O8xLxNje30M)

~~~
the_duke
I haven't seen the talk, but just from the title, a "taking control" talk
related to AWS is kind of ironic.

I'll have to watch it though.

------
rosiesherry
This one struck a chord for me, related to trying to share your
personal/health situation at work, not a topic that is talked about alot -
[https://ministryoftesting.com/dojo/lessons/i-have-a-
secret-a...](https://ministryoftesting.com/dojo/lessons/i-have-a-secret-
anusha-nirmalananthan)

------
jchanimal
I enjoyed Juan Benet’s Long Now talk about the permanent web
[http://longnow.org/seminars/02018/aug/06/long-term-info-
stru...](http://longnow.org/seminars/02018/aug/06/long-term-info-structure/)

------
ArtWomb
Inside The Fake Science Factory from DefCon 26. First you'll laugh. And then
you'll weep for humanity!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ras_VYgA77Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ras_VYgA77Q)

Also really dug Jeremy Rifkin's The Third Industrial Revolution: A Radical New
Sharing Economy. Outlines the rollout of a possible new engineering platform
consisting of free energy, satellite internet, and AI.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX3M8Ka9vUA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX3M8Ka9vUA)

Keep the links coming, please. Terrific counter-programming for holiday down
time ;)

------
casi18
Dave Ackley's Retirement Talk
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtzKgTxtVH8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtzKgTxtVH8)

------
unixhero
Joe Rogan has had an incredible year.

Joe Rogan interviews Dr. Andrew Weil
[https://youtu.be/WjYYdMNUXF8](https://youtu.be/WjYYdMNUXF8)

Joe Rogan interviews Elon Musk
[https://youtu.be/ycPr5-27vSI](https://youtu.be/ycPr5-27vSI)

Joe Rogan interviews James Hetfield
[https://youtu.be/5O6QPTawR14](https://youtu.be/5O6QPTawR14)

------
seba_dos1
2018 is not over yet and CCC happening again next week usually delivers talks
that place very high in my personal ranking.

------
anotheryou
The upcoming "chaos communication congress" always has a few gems
[https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2018/Fahrplan/events...](https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2018/Fahrplan/events.html)

------
notoriousjpg
I thought this was incredible: What's Next for Marketplace Startups
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl14Ty5-0Ko](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl14Ty5-0Ko)

Great explanation of this space and their views on augmenting existing
regulated markets.

------
suyash
Machine Learning for JS Developers :
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xm8ox1mmzE&frags=pl%2Cwn](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xm8ox1mmzE&frags=pl%2Cwn)

------
bhoflack
Teaching kids to code at goto berlin:
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=patyK226zeE](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=patyK226zeE)

------
lamby
I quite liked Johann Hari on Sam Harris's podcast on addiction, depression,
etc.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msP0-NqRhZE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msP0-NqRhZE)

------
dplgk
Sam Harris talks to leading AI theorist Eliezer Yudkowsky about why humanity
will probably be killed off by AI (if not by something else first)
[https://youtu.be/AaNLX71Hl88](https://youtu.be/AaNLX71Hl88)

------
simonebrunozzi
Most articles on Idlewords.com

------
abledon
joe rogan and jake the snake

------
allenleein
Peter Thiel on Trump, Gawker, and Leaving Silicon Valley

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0t5prZD57s&t](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0t5prZD57s&t)

------
wetpaws
Nothing can beat Charles Stress talk in my eyes:
[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2018/01/dude-
you...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2018/01/dude-you-broke-
the-future.html)

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Charles Stress_

A pretty apt typo given what feeling many of his blog posts induce in readers
:).

------
binarymax
Shameless plug for my talk in haystack in April, which was a couple years of
casual research rolled up. I really enjoyed giving the talk and I've had lots
of great feedback, so thought I'd share it with y'all.

"Algorithmic extraction of keywords, concepts, and vocabularies."

Sorry only slides and no video:
[https://www.slideshare.net/MaxIrwin/haystack-2018-algorithmi...](https://www.slideshare.net/MaxIrwin/haystack-2018-algorithmic-
extraction-of-keywords-concepts-and-vocabularies)

~~~
bialpio
You forgot to mention the talk's subject.

~~~
binarymax
Added, thanks for pointing that out.

------
TaylorAlexander
I am really proud of a talk I gave in March about my motivations for designing
open source 3D printed robots:

[https://youtu.be/V6HWLJqTASA](https://youtu.be/V6HWLJqTASA)

And this talk I gave about Starting a Business in Silicon Valley got a lot of
traction on HN: [https://youtu.be/V6HWLJqTASA](https://youtu.be/V6HWLJqTASA)

