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sprice | 7 years ago

Fork Yeah! The Rise and Development if illumos by Brian Cantrill https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc

Quote copied from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246

"As you know people, as you learn about things, you realize that these generalizations we have are, virtually to a generalization, false. Well, except for this one, as it turns out. What you think of Oracle, is even truer than you think it is. There has been no entity in human history with less complexity or nuance to it than Oracle. And I gotta say, as someone who has seen that complexity for my entire life, it's very hard to get used to that idea. It's like, 'surely this is more complicated!' but it's like: Wow, this is really simple! This company is very straightforward, in its defense. This company is about one man, his alter-ego, and what he wants to inflict upon humanity -- that's it! ...Ship mediocrity, inflict misery, lie our asses off, screw our customers, and make a whole shitload of money. Yeah... you talk to Oracle, it's like, 'no, we don't fucking make dreams happen -- we make money!' ...You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle."

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TimTheTinker|7 years ago

Although not strictly technical, this is a great talk. Bryan effectively communicates both the history and the mindset of Sun Microsystems and its open-source software heroes, and the bitter disappointment of being taken over by Oracle.

I love this quote (about 33:15) summarizing Sun Microsystems:

Kicked butt, had fun, didn't cheat, loved our customers, changed computing forever.

"It makes me very proud to have worked for a company for whom that is completely accurate. We should all be so lucky as to have that be our epitaph. That is all I want out of my life. That and my family. [...] That is Sun. But that's not Oracle." --Bryan Cantrill. (A very excellent Oracle rant follows immediately after.)

atonse|7 years ago

Oh Bryan Cantrill... (don't worry, not criticizing him below)

This is someone whose mind seems to be going at 500mph all the time. I used to love his (and counterparts') early talks on ZFS, but yeah, I've found that pretty much any talk by him is packed with interesting info, but you may have to watch it at .5x speed (even if you're a native english speaker).

His talks on dtrace, ZFS, containers, are all very interesting (most on YouTube).

hyperion2010|7 years ago

How did I know that I'd find this talk at the top when I poked my head in here :). I must rewatch that segment at least once every 6 months even when not prompted by people linking to Brian's other, often more technically rewarding talks.

insertcredit|7 years ago

If that's the best technical talk you've ever seen, I have to feel sorry for you. Cantrill may rant all he wants about Oracle but he's not exactly doing better, with all the peddling of node.js to the masses. It is rare for me to see someone come up with so much bullshit in one talk: https://vimeo.com/230142234

Since I don't want to end with a negative note, here is a personal favorite as far as best technical talks go:

https://tinyurl.com/hzpccxj

bcantrill|7 years ago

Would you mind be slightly more specific about the "bullshit" in the talk you linked to? In particular, that talk is emphatically not "peddling node.js to the masses", but rather explaining why we are moving away from node.js (and attempting to do so in a way that is thoughtful and reflective rather than reactionary and dismissive).

cipherzero|7 years ago

Could you maybe add a comment about what your favorite tech talk is? Right now I’m staring at a tiny url hoping I’m not going to be rick rolled.