YouTube videos
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12/02/2025
Jensen’s talk at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (link).
My takeaways
- I find Jensen very interesting. He has SRK-like mannerisms, and probably a similar level of charisma (the latest silky, gray-haired Jensen, the Jensen from the mid-2000s, maybe not). He speaks very well, by which I mean he says mostly profound things with very little fluff and is able to talk and deliver his views without making anyone feeling worse. He gives off a huge “sweet talker” vibe (charisma), which is normally something I’ve not seen outside scammers, and to be clear I don’t think he’s anything close to being a scammer.
- “Do what you are uniquely positioned to do” (similar to thoughts I had, and also what Satoro Iwata had said). “The only question is, is this important work? And if we didn’t do it, would it have happened without us?” (23:38). “Your job is to make a unique contribution … to do something that nobod else in the world would do or can do” (at 44:50).
- Organizations should be structured to enable everyone to do their best work (get out of the way, remove obstacles) “(My job is) to create the conditions by which you can do your life’s work” (twic, at 34:30 and AGAIN! at 43:33).
- The CEO (& leaders) should be visible (to employees). “Leaders have to be seen” (27:42). “(if the stock price has dropped by 80%) The most important thing I have to do as the CEO is this: to come and face you, explain it (even if you don’t have a great answer)” (28:35)
- The CEO should not rely on secrecy. Information should be shared publicly. “(sarcastically) The knowledge, the information of a CEO is supposedly so valuable, so secretive, you can only share it with two other people or three […] I don’t believe in a culture, an environment where the information you possess is the reason why you have power. I would like all of us to contribute to the company and our position in the company should have something to do with our ability to reason through complicated things, lead other people to achieve greatness, inspire, empower other people…” (33:10)
- Regulations should be done by specialists in the field (53:05). Interesting thought. I agree and wonder why this level of nuance is not there in most governments (and for that matter most discussions) around the world. Why not have a young tech advisor or tech-enabler to allow governments to digitize and democratize access to information?
Other notes
He also looks back on life to decide what to do, which (to me) is similar to Bezos’ regret minimization framework. I didn’t understand his point about tokens floating in space (51:10). Quotes indicate I paraphrased something in the talk. They aren’t exact quotations as you may expect, so I have this note here.
11/02/2024
Scalene Python profiler
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVUnCXKuNOg
Great talk on a new python profiler (Scalene)
Main takeaway: When coding in Python, for performance, write your programs in C and call them :) (also, be wary of copies when crossing the language interface boundary)
11/2024 (date approximated)
HTML/React/CSS talk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8SmXOTM8Ec
Seemed like a code in search of a problem talk to me.
Main takeaway: Specific technical things about coding in HTML/react/CSS. Appreciate that there’s technical info to be shared, would be useful for devs that use I presume.
08/25/2023
Allison Kaptur - Clock Skew and You
https://www.deconstructconf.com/2019/allison-kaptur-clock-skew-and-you
Worth a watch if you work with distributed systems.
- SSL certs are affected by clock skew. This was solved by shipping a key with chrome, maintaining time servers in google’s DC to know accurate times, and prompting users to fix their client clock, which surfaced that most ssl issues are due to time.
- How NTP works (layers of computers from high accuracy to lower). SNTP differs in that it is P2P synchronization (? not explained in talk, independent research)
- Shows how to calculate clock skew, but only if skew is symmetric in request & response.
08/24/2023
Hillary Anderson - The Odyssey
https://www.deconstructconf.com/2019/hillary-anderson-the-odyssey-lessons-learned-from-learning
Didn’t find it too useful. About learning, working in the data science field.
Main takeaway: Teach others to learn better. Community helps.
Karla Burnett - 2-Factor 4 Humans
https://www.deconstructconf.com/2019/karla-burnett-2-factor-4-humans
Useful and highly recommended if you are new to security & interested to learn.
Main takeaway: Too many to list.
08/22/2023
Dan Abramov - The Wet Codebase
https://www.deconstructconf.com/2019/dan-abramov-the-wet-codebase
Somewhat useful
Main takeaway #1: Don’t abstract too early. Feel free to inline code (un-abstract), and then re-abstract later if needed. Main takeaway #2: Best practices might be summarized, so really think about the underlying reason for the best practice before applying it.
Vaidehi Joshi - Setting Up to Fail
https://www.deconstructconf.com/2019/vaidehi-joshi-setting-up-to-fail
Goes over some types of distributed system failures. Useful if you are a new SDE in the industry, working on distributed systems. Else, not.
Main takeaway: Distributed systems can fail in various ways and if you work with distributed systems, it may be useful to learn this (+ ways to address these, which the talk doesn’t cover)