
Show HN: TechYaks – Best of 50k tech talks ranked by confidence intervals - yaj54
https://techyaks.com
======
yaj54
Hey HN, here’s the result of gathering as many tech talks as I could find and
then trying a bunch of ranking heuristics to find one that produced reasonable
results. I’m currently using the lower bound of each talk’s Wilson score
confidence interval based on likes and dislikes.

I find good tech talks to be a combo of entertainment and broadening my
toolbox of programming concepts. When I hit good talk I generally do a double
take, “wha, I have not thought that way before.” There are definitely some
good talks in this list.

There are a few great “Awesome Talks” lists that I’ve enjoyed perusing, but
I’ve found that talk title intrigue does not seem to correlate with talk
quality. So in lists of 50+ talks I have a hard time finding the “next best
talk”.

I’m keen to get feedback on the site as is but also if there is interest in a
“top tech talks” in the last month (or X unit of time) style of digest.

Hopefully there is a talk in here that gives you a double take.

Enjoy, ~yaj

~~~
e12e
Maybe these are mostly too new, or you have different (more practical, hands
on?) definition of tech-talk - but from a quick look the only speakers I
expected - and found - were Sandi Mets and Rob Pike.

If it's practical, I'm surprised not to see the js "wat" lightning talk (which
I now can't seem to find...).

If it's more general "best of", I'd expect something like Guy Steele "growing
a language" : [https://youtu.be/_ahvzDzKdB0](https://youtu.be/_ahvzDzKdB0)

Douglas Engelbart "the mother of all demos": [https://youtu.be/yJDv-
zdhzMY](https://youtu.be/yJDv-zdhzMY)

Alan Kay "doing with images makes symbols":
[https://youtu.be/p2LZLYcu_JY](https://youtu.be/p2LZLYcu_JY) Or, if that's too
long, the much more condensed ted talk: "a powerful idea about teaching
ideas": [https://youtu.be/Eg_ToU7m1MI](https://youtu.be/Eg_ToU7m1MI) (Maybe
that's not a "tech talk"?)

Rich Hickey "simple made easy" :
[https://youtu.be/34_L7t7fD_U](https://youtu.be/34_L7t7fD_U)

To name a few of the top of my head.

~~~
yaj54
You're right those are all great talks (and fit in my definition of a tech
talk). I just checked, and none of them are in my dataset, which I'll admit
I'm surprised about. But they (and related ones) will make it into the next
round.

~~~
Tuna-Fish
The issue seems to be that they are not typically watched on youtube. For
example, the "simple made easy" linked above is a low-quality pirate youtube
copy, the proper place to watch it is here:

[https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-
Easy](https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy)

------
comboy
The good stuff is here[1]. But it sucks that the paper[2] is from 1927 and I
still have to pay to get access to it..

1\. [https://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-
rating...](https://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-rating.html)

2\. Probable Inference, the Law of Succession, and Statistical Inference Edwin
B. Wilson

~~~
Agnu
The paper is available on Sci-Hub.

~~~
dmos62
Also Library Genesis ([http://libgen.io/](http://libgen.io/)) should be on
everyone's list of places where papers (and books) can be found for free.

~~~
yesenadam
[http://libgen.io/scimag/index.php?s=Probable%20Inference,%20...](http://libgen.io/scimag/index.php?s=Probable%20Inference,%20the%20Law%20of%20Succession,%20and%20Statistical%20Inference)

------
aviv
Too many people get hung up on the perfect scalable tech stack. Most people
don't need to waste more time watching another tech talk. What they need is
more business skills and how to make money.

------
th0ma5
I was about to complain that my PyOhio video about dot matrix printers was
missing, but it is in the 2-month Python section.

So now that I'm ashamed of my ego... there were several talks that were much
better from that conference and it is a shame they didn't get more views. Mine
was picked up by Hack-a-Day so it got a boost, but many of the other talks
were better in all kinds of measures like amount of content, social relevancy,
etc... It sucks that we still don't have a good system other than view count!

Great project, however, well done regardless.

~~~
sweezyjeezy
The disguise on your self-plug is pretty thin man...

~~~
bastijn
He didn't link it. That's bonus to the stealth check. The DM approves.

------
robax
This looks awesome! I haven’t heard of most of these talks so I’m excited to
dive in this weekend.

Also, kudos on the UI. It’s minimal, easy to use, and works as advertised.
Good software!

~~~
O_H_E
> It’s minimal, easy to use, and works as advertised. Good software

It sucks that these are rare nowadays.

Maybe I could start a suckless list :)

------
mongol
Nice idea. Would like to see extended to broader topics. For example on talks
about history.

~~~
garysieling
I built something with a broader dataset but a different ranking technique,
basically a bunch of cruder custom ranking rules.

[https://www.findlectures.com](https://www.findlectures.com)

~~~
mongol
Seems quite popular right now!

~~~
garysieling
Oops, back up now!

~~~
mongol
The links in search result don't work on Android (neither Chrome nor Firefox).

------
angel_j
One thing I wonder about ratings is, are you measuring a user's individual
interests, or whether they think the content is good / bad / shareable?

And what do the users think they are ranking?

Personally, I'd rather be ranking for what interests me, so that I get more of
that; but I feel most networks are trying to extract a different signal, and
that this produces crappy recommendations and useless rankings.

------
icc97
Excellent set of links, plus I love the simple UI.

------
wolco
This is great. The formula to determine the best is going to miss the most
recent talks if likes/dislikes are what is used.

~~~
yaj54
True-ish. Since the formula uses confidence intervals[0] it does better with
recent talks than a simple (likes - dislikes). But you're right, breaking into
"all time" status is tough because there are a number of talks with many
hundreds of likes and 1 or 2 dislikes.

0: [https://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-
rating...](https://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-rating.html)

------
platz
It's telling that 95% of the most upvoted talks from 'all time' are all after
2010

~~~
yaj54
I'll admit, "all time" is slightly inaccurate. Actually, now I'm curious how
far back my data actually goes.

~~~
platz
In fairness, YouTube hasn't been around forever either, so I'm not sure the
difference between the upload date and the talk date is actually surfaceable

------
DerSaidin
Would be awesome if they were tagged, so I could look at topics I'm interested
in.

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zerr
Any 70s/80s/90s talks?

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angersock
Uncle Bob's stuff missing on purpose?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpkDN78P884](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpkDN78P884)
was kinda a classic for the Rails community.

~~~
yaj54
Not on purpose at all, I've learned a lot from Uncle Bob. 50k talks is
certainly not all of the talks ever, and there are many good talks not
included in the 6 lists I've generated (which is a total of only about 230
talks). I'd like to add more filters to be able to hone in on top talks for
different contexts.

~~~
suyash
What is "50k"? What's your criteria on selecting talks?

~~~
yaj54
50k is 50,000. Which is a lot of talks, but certainly not all of them. My
abstract criteria for a talk being considered a "tech talk" is a live lecture
given from the front of a room to a live multi-person audience with a subject
matter related to computing. The 50k is just the number my hacky talk finder
script found.

~~~
suyash
so your pool is limited 50k talks ?

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dstick
Nice! Is it possible to implement some kind of search based filter?

Just a simple string match would be awesome :)

~~~
yaj54
Not at the moment on the site, but there is a lot of potential there for sure.
I do have that capability on my local copy of the data and it's fun.

------
rb808
awesome awesome. I've given up going to meetups and conferences, looking at
youtube is so much better for finding good content.

I'd love other languages and software topics too.

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drexlspivey
That David Beasley talk at no 6 is sick. Dude is a wizard.

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ILikeConemowk
Nice!

Which sources did you focus on?

