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Ask HN: Best Talks of 2020?

by sid6376 on 12/25/20, 4:13 PM with 170 comments

2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21858866

2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18740939

2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16045859

2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12637239

Ever: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18217762

It's been a weird year, wonder if there were still good tech talks in 2020.

  • by akritrime on 12/25/20, 5:10 PM

    For me, it was Art of Code by Dylan Beattie, but mostly because that talk has the best ending[0] I have seen. Also, introduced to me a side of programming that I instinctively knew existed but never sought out.

    [0]: https://youtu.be/6avJHaC3C2U?t=3366

  • by theodpHN on 12/25/20, 7:29 PM

    Jeremy Howard's "I Like Notebooks" JupyterCon 2020 Talk

    Howard makes the case for why even "real" programmers should give notebook environments a chance. In addition to supporting literate programming ("code as literature") and exploratory programming ("code as scientific notebook") in a live coding environment, Howard explains how notebooks can improve documentation, learning and sharing, testing, and deployment. And add-ins and tools, like Howard's own nbdev, can help address what's missing in Jupyter Notebook. As an example, Howard notes how fastdoc even enabled him to write and publish "Deep Learning for Coders with Fastai and PyTorch: AI Applications Without a PhD using Jupyter Notebooks." Excellent, inspiring talk!

    Jeremy Howard - Creating delightful libraries and books with nbdev and fastdoc | JupyterCon 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKt19-GsA1I

  • by curiousmindz on 12/25/20, 4:42 PM

    I am not sure if this qualifies, but I found the discussion between Scott Hanselman and Dr. David Kellermann on "Effective Remote Teaching with intention and creativity" fascinating:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LaTamAIinc

    They mix a number of fairly simple technologies to achieve some really cool new ways to teach remotely.

    Also, Scott Hanselman makes a series of well-made videos on "Computer Stuff They Didn't Teach You". His presentation style is down-to-earth, low tech and surprisingly relatable. Check it out!

  • by NotPavlovsDog on 12/25/20, 7:17 PM

    Paul Stamets, a legendagry mycologist and founder (A Scientist and entrepreneur that successfully founded a mushroom company that grew and grew and grew ). This talk is on psychedelic use, but there are multiple other sub-topic talks by him. Always a joy to hear about his new discoveries in mushrooms and an inspiration regardless of what you do.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT-qQWOf98Y

    You should check out all his talks if you like this one.

    If you are pressed for time, check out his shorter TED prsentations (not necessarily 2020)

  • by champtar on 12/25/20, 4:49 PM

    2020 is not over, rC3 (https://rc3.world/ https://media.ccc.de/c/rc3) starts on the 27 ;)

  • by janvdberg on 12/25/20, 4:42 PM

    Not sure if this fits the bill, but:

    How To Speak by Patrick Winston [1]

    I watched this 'talk' on 'how to give talks' last week. It was uploaded at the end of 2019 and recorded 2018 (Patrick Winston passed away in 2019) and it is really good. Anyone who gives talks can learn a few things from this.

    [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unzc731iCUY

  • by crossorigin on 12/25/20, 6:32 PM

    For me, it was the USENIX Security talk on intimate partner surveillance (https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity20/presentat...), which introduced me to the field of intimate partner violence (which is typically outside normal threat models) and the crypto keynote on crypto for the people (https://youtu.be/Ygq9ci0GFhA) which similarly introduced me to threats that I hadn't thought about before.

  • by neillyons on 12/25/20, 6:46 PM

    I don't want anything to do with cryptocurrencies but listening to the founder of Ethereum on the Lex Fridman podcast was fascinating.

    The way that guy thinks is just impressive.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3x1b_S6Qp2Q

  • by phoe-krk on 12/25/20, 5:40 PM

    Minor personal confession, and a minor shameless plug.

    I really enjoyed the Online Lisp Meeting talks[0] that have happened throughout this year. They show a lot of amazing and recent developments that have been occurring in various parts of the worldwide Lisp landscape, despite how much energy seems to go into repeatedly proclaiming the Lisp family of languages dead, over and over and over.

    It was a good choice to host these talks regularly after this year's European Lisp Symposium. I'm glad that I did the work related to that, and I'll be glad to do more of this.

    [0] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgq_B39Y_kKD9_sdCeE5S...

    (Disclosure: two of the talks there are by me; my above comment, naturally, doesn't refer to them.)

  • by Foxboron on 12/25/20, 7:35 PM

    I really enjoyed the talk on Linux kernel memory management from Chris Down that was held during this years Arch Conf. It's well structured, funny, and gives nice insight into how you scale when you can't throw more hardware on the problem.

    https://media.ccc.de/v/arch-conf-online-2020-6390-linux-memo...

    Disclaimer: I helped organize the conference.

  • by jtdressel on 12/25/20, 4:52 PM

    I really enjoyed the RustConf 2020 Closing Keynote: https://youtu.be/RNsEsZbXE-4

    It details how the Poikemon missingo glitches work. (In the context of how memory safe languages would prevent them)

  • by gilmi on 12/25/20, 6:14 PM

    I don't know, I haven't watched most of them! But the best one I did watch this year was Alexis King's 'Effects for Less' (Haskell).

    https://youtube.com/watch?v=0jI-AlWEwYI

  • by rayrag on 12/25/20, 4:39 PM

    I Pressed ⌘B. You Wouldn't Believe What Happened Next - Marcin Wichary, Figma (Config) YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVD-sjtFoEI

  • by Mkayxx on 12/25/20, 5:31 PM

  • by andrewnicolalde on 12/25/20, 4:39 PM

    I personally really enjoyed “HTTP Desync Attacks: Request Smuggling Reborn”[1]

    This was technically very late 2019 but I didn’t see it in the previous 2019 thread.

    [1] https://youtu.be/_A04msdplXs

  • by patrickaljord on 12/25/20, 11:38 PM

    "Recoil: State Management for Today's React - Dave McCabe aka @mcc_abe at @ReactEurope"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ISAA_Jt9kI

    Disclaimer: I co-organize the conference

  • by LonelyTree on 12/25/20, 5:46 PM

    I've heard a few good ones, especially for junior devs:

    1.David Guttman: How to Get a Better Job Without Learning Another Framework: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voep4CX5lEE&t=3s&ab_channel=...

    2. Junior to Senior Podcast w/ Eric Gradman: https://juniortosenior.io/7

  • by marius_k on 12/26/20, 9:45 AM

    Consciousness is Not a Computation (Roger Penrose) | AI Podcast Clips https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hXgqik6HXc0

    Full episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orMtwOz6Db0

    I don't take Roger's view about consciousness for granted but it is very interesting nevertheless.

  • by outside1234 on 12/25/20, 6:19 PM

    Some recency bias but I was blown away by the RFC talk for adding server components to React by Dan Abramov and Lauren Tan:

    https://reactjs.org/blog/2020/12/21/data-fetching-with-react...

  • by 0xbadcafebee on 12/25/20, 5:41 PM

    All Day DevOps happened online this year, all the talks are here: https://content.sonatype.com/2020addo

    Maybe I'm weird, but I really like talks like Outcomes over Outputs (https://content.sonatype.com/2020addo-ct/addo2020-ct-rangana...). Basically: are the metrics you're tracking helping the business, or just your team? (Also I thought this one was well composed and presented!)

  • by VBprogrammer on 12/25/20, 6:18 PM

    Ok, it wasnt technically this year but I have to share this one just incase anyone missed it, because it's quite possible the best conference talk I've ever seen.

    https://youtu.be/r-A78RgMhZU

  • by rkp8000 on 12/25/20, 6:42 PM

    Not a talk per se, but a great conversation between Brian Greene and Leonard Susskind about the state of modern physics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk48z8N-sl0 .

  • by nojito on 12/25/20, 6:12 PM

  • by carapace on 12/25/20, 7:55 PM

    Prof. Michael Levin's work, e.g. "Endogenous Bioelectric Networks & Regenerative Medicine" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKWyB9qLP_s

    Let's figure out how to regenerate limbs and organs, eh?

  • by albntomat0 on 12/25/20, 4:53 PM

    I personally enjoyed Halvarflake's 2020 OffensiveCon keynote: "Why I Love Offensive Work, Why I don't Love Offensive Work"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QRnOpjmneo

  • by suyash on 12/25/20, 6:43 PM

    My favorite talk this year was Snapchat Keynote primarily because of how they produced it given it was totally virtual but gave a feeling of being at a big event : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfvubHha69k

    Btw, I run this newsletter if you are interested in becoming a better technical presenter etc - breakdown great talks by tech speakers etc: http://tinyletter.com/suyash

  • by robertsdionne on 12/25/20, 6:11 PM

  • by alex_anglin on 12/25/20, 6:14 PM

    Not tech, but economics: Mark Carney, who is the former governor of the Bank of England and Bank of Canada, is the BBCs Reith lecturer this year[1]. Plenty of interesting points, questions and topical discussion in the series.

    [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000py8t

  • by iandanforth on 12/25/20, 5:43 PM

    Basically anything by Prof. Chelsea Finn for the sole reason that they represent the cutting edge thinking around getting robots to act in intelligent ways in the real world.

    https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=chelsea+finn&sp...

  • by JustinGarrison on 12/25/20, 7:10 PM

    I'm going to humbly put my kubecon talk here because it's unlike any conference talk you've ever seen and I'm really happy with how it turned out. https://youtu.be/VtedIghTPzI

  • by marios on 12/25/20, 5:13 PM

    I watched this in 2020 even though it's from EuroBSDCon 2019. I'm talking about Patricia Aas keynote "Embedded Ethics": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfNIiitVFtc

    Hasn't aged one bit. If anything Patricia is spot on pretty much everything. If you don't have time to spend on this, you may want to take a look at the slides: https://www.slideshare.net/PatriciaAas/embedded-ethics-eurob...

  • by quelsolaar on 12/25/20, 7:59 PM

    My answer to the question "Where do you get all your ideas?"

    https://youtu.be/MJmqaWq7PJY

    Its about creativity and how to think about ideas.

  • by eduardsi on 12/27/20, 4:20 PM

    The Leadership Guide for the Reluctant Leader: https://dev.tube/video/3PcL8UkorEg

  • by privong on 12/25/20, 6:59 PM

    It's not tech per se, but the "Golden Webinars in Astrophysics" series has a number of talks on a wide range of topics. The lectures are given by senior and well-respected people in their sub-fields. They are available in English and Spanish.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsYCyopp4jY&list=PLnuCZ3n0pW...

  • by terryedwin on 12/28/20, 1:45 PM

    Matti Picus' talk on Getting Involved with NumPy. It's one of the main libraries used in data science, so the talk is very useful. He discusses its start, development, governance, how to contribute and with an example of a pull request. It's a great resource on getting started with open source in python. https://youtu.be/lHJqOE5j6xE

  • by staticelf on 12/26/20, 12:54 AM

    I think the "talk" by Chris McCord should apply here "Build a real-time Twitter clone in 15 minutes with LiveView and Phoenix 1.5", while not really a talk this year was special and the demo completely blew my mind.

    it's available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZvmYaFkNJI

  • by neom on 12/25/20, 5:53 PM

    Equilibrium over Space: The Canonical Urban Models with Dr. Edward Glaeser:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMmXo1nHetE

    This is a very "tech" way of looking at space.

  • by jedberg on 12/25/20, 5:25 PM

    > It's been a weird year, wonder if there were still good tech talks in 2020.

    If anything there are likely more than ever, because a lot of the ones that used to be delivered in person and not recorded may have been recorded this year.

  • by derkoe on 12/25/20, 6:25 PM

    Linda Rising: Thinking Fast and Slow https://youtu.be/XjbTLIqnq-o

    (Just saw that this is from 2019 but it was the best I've seen in 2020)

  • by joshxyz on 12/25/20, 5:24 PM

    I cant recall if it was released this year but Lamport's Intro to TLA+ (uploaded on youtube) stands out for me.

  • by throwaway888abc on 12/25/20, 5:04 PM

    Brexit talks :-)

  • by Biba89 on 12/25/20, 4:45 PM

    My favorite is Naval’s talk at Tim Ferriss:

    https://tim.blog/2020/10/14/naval/amp/

  • by absolutelyrad on 12/25/20, 4:38 PM

    https://www.weforum.org/great-reset/

    Overall I agree with much of the tone that they set and some of the things are long overdue.

    ---

    Edit: duckduckgo censor the search query "the great reset" when you search for the first time. proof: https://imgur.com/UbsvTCz

    Edit2: Changed from "sometimes" to "when you search for the first time" in response to the comment below.