James Mickens' USENIX Speech [video] | Hacker News Reader

James Mickens' USENIX Speech [video]

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128 pointspfefferz27 comments

Mickens is brilliant. His style may be polarizing, but he has insight and makes good points.

Talks like this are a nice counterbalance to the most upvoted viewpoints expressed here a couple of days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18516177 where people view their skills only as a way to make money and basically do not care how it is done or how safe it is. How many money makers are running around right now preaching these stupid ideas just to make money without even considering the real life implications their selfish actions will have on millions of people. It's downright terrifying. Technical excellence matters.

Do yourself a favor and watch the video of the talk instead (the link is at the top of the transcript). Mickens is a hilarious and captivating speaker, and a mere transcript of his talk doesn't convey that experience.

It's also slightly wrong, and needs some proofreading.

Example:

  > Get at.

That's not what he says at the 24 second mark. If you can't get the first 30 seconds of an hour-long transcript right, why should I read on?

(btw, I get that it was an automated transcript [http://temi.com], and has some OCR-like errors, which is apropos, considering the context of the speech)

Yes, the transcription errors convey a vaguely machine-generated feel, and together with the weird typography (contrast insufficient, background too bright, line spacing too tight, timing marks every 30 seconds) you ask yourself if the whole speech wasn't a machine-generated prank. Considering the subject of that speech, that's ironic.

The best part is that this "Audio to Text" transcription service says on its web page:

Proprietary algorithm

Built by our machine learning and speech recognition experts.

Who are experts in learning new machines and can nearly always recognise speech, but generally prefer email.

As someone who has really enjoyed reading Mickens' highly-caffeinated essays, I was pleased to see that his speaking style is even better!

It just so happens it's the same James Mickens who wrote the Night Watch! What are the odds!

https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1311_05-08_mickens.pdf

... and many more Usenix writings, pretty much all of which are laugh-out-loud hilarious.

Links to those, and other videos of talks he's done, are available here: https://mickens.seas.harvard.edu/wisdom-james-mickens

For anyone who isn't familiar with him, you should definitely check them out.

All of his talks are incredibly good.

100%

It's Partick Thistle, not Patrick Thistle, Kingsely's gonna be right steamin'.

James better start running.

Kingsley will have found out pretty quickly too as he follows all the latest developments in machine learning. One of the few luxuries allowed into Kingsleys's padded storage cell is a workstation packed with GPUs that Kingsley tests the latest algorithms on, in order to calculate his ideal fantasy-football team.

Edit - Mickens will have called Partick 'Patrick' on purpose, of course. He's been gunning for Kingsley for a while now, as James is a long time supporter of Dunfermline Athletic.

> starbeast

Yellow, pointy... Oh shit.

Nahh, wrong starbeast. I'm more of a lummox. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/175328.The_Star_Beast

Found the format a bit distracting to read, so cleaned it up a bit (removing Speaker 1 ... etc) - https://pastebin.com/5nvvxSWB

Mmmh, that face looks familiar. He used to work at Microsoft, right? I remember reading a couple of his blog posts, and they as funny as they were interesting.

But he is so much better in person.

> He used to work at Microsoft, right?

Yes, same guy.

What a great talk. He brings up a lot of very important points that we all in tech need to consider and keep in mind.

Transcript:

http://www.zachpfeffer.com/single-post/2018/11/27/Transcript...

I love his work! Here's his page at Harvard that collects all of it: https://mickens.seas.harvard.edu/wisdom-james-mickens

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17785162.

God help Gritty when Mickens finds out about him.

I hope he can make some better life choices.

The speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajGX7odA87k

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