EDIT: Why all those downvotes? Are famous developers not supposed to criticized on HN?
While John has a lot of interesting things to say, the presentation is awful, almost an imposition to the audience.
There's not a single slide, or any repetition to clarify structure, or any notable gestures to make up for that. A simple overview, just a damn simple list of keywords, would already go a long way. That would add a lot of structure and would make the talk so much easier to follow, especially for non-native speakers.
Just because one is so much respected by the audience that they will tolerate everything, one should not act like the audience will tolerate everything.
> You state your criticism like it's an objective fact, when in reality I'm sure most would disagree with you.
He stated his opinion, it's how people discuss things. Ironically, by saying "in reality, I'm sure most would disagree with you", you do the same thing (express your opinion as if it is fact), AND use the weasel words of "in reality" to add gravitas to your opinion. I didn't like the talk either FWIW.
As far as I know there's no clear meaning to what a downvote means and it seems like everyone has their own definition.
For some, downvoting is a way of "flagging" out of place comments, aggressive ones, etc. However for others it's just a way of disagreeing.
The guidelines don't seem to establish any particular definition to it, so it's kind of a community-driven thing.
At first I was certain that downvoting was a way for the crowd to silence unwanted comments, but "unwanted" has many values depending on the person. Personally, I prefer to downvote when there are clearly aggressive or out-of-place comments, and if I disagree I rather respond with my disagreement. That's the way to have a civil discussion in my opinion.
However, like I said, other people give downvoting a different meaning, so it's not so much that you can't criticize famous celebrities, but that the community seems to disagree with you. I don't see anything "flaggable" about your post so that's why I assume it's the reason.
But again, downvoting is an "undefined" behavior in HN. Guidelines don't mention what shoul or should not be downvoted so it's kind of up for debate.
Don't worry too much about it, as long as you are not clearly being uncivil, downvotes are probably just a lazy way of saying "I don't agree with you" :)
imho this isn't specific to HN, Reddit is plagued by "downvote to disagree."
Downvoting should be for, as you said, flagging aggressive, off-topic comments.
I've really lost interest in commenting on reddit, because if you say anything that disagrees with or goes against a certain sub-reddits current group think on a subject, you're just going to get downvoted into oblivion. It really just intensifies the echo-chamber effect.
You need to observe that the asymmetry is built into Hacker News itself, thereby contradicting the hypothesis that these are supposed to be symmetric actions. There is, now, no longer a downvote button against your comment here, for example; there is still an upvote button, though.
Personally, I watched it with rapt attention throughout and I'm eagerly anticipating having time later to do so for the other 6 parts of the keynote. Can't remember the last presentation that captured me so. I think he is a very good public speaker and the talk did not meander and was not hard to follow in any way.
I did crank the playback speed up a lot though, which helps considerably (I'm not sure I would enjoy it half as much if it were live, where of course I have to hear it at 1x speed).
> Just because one is so much respected by the audience that they will tolerate everything, one should not act like the audience will tolerate everything.
He gives these talks because there's a demand for them (from previous audiences). He's not on stage talking because he wants to force people to consume the information.
I suspect it's a trade-off between a talk of this format or no talk at all. Preparing slides etc. takes a time investment, and if it takes too much time, maybe he just wouldn't be able to do the talks.
I am not a native speaker. I watched the linked part while I was having my dinner (or whatever you'd call a couple of McBurgers at 10pm). I think it needs attention, but that is needed for anything that's not fluff.
While John has a lot of interesting things to say, the presentation is awful, almost an imposition to the audience.
There's not a single slide, or any repetition to clarify structure, or any notable gestures to make up for that. A simple overview, just a damn simple list of keywords, would already go a long way. That would add a lot of structure and would make the talk so much easier to follow, especially for non-native speakers.
Just because one is so much respected by the audience that they will tolerate everything, one should not act like the audience will tolerate everything.