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Comment by iamshs | Hacker News Reader

I am only 10 minutes into this talk, but John is one awesome speaker. No PR talk at all, he is speaking his mind freely and in fact started with shortcomings of the product. The segue between different sections is so smooth. I do not have background in VR, but he explains things so smoothly. He is just freely talking about supply chain, and what the product constitutes. And he has been standing in the same spot. What a genuine speaker. Also, looks like Facebook's influence has been minimal. There is just no iota of bullshit in him. I like him already. My first John Carmack video, and I am already hooked. Now onto watching the full video.

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If you liked his talk, definitely check out his QuakeCon keynotes and his talk about physically based lighting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt-iVFxgFWk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uooh0Y9fC_M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyUgHPs86XM

I finished watching first one, and my admiration for him grows even more. Immense knowledge with a gift of presenting mere facts. What a likable personality. Thanks for the links.

I've watched the one on lighting twice, just cause it blew my mind so much. I finally (think I) understand light.

When I first read that, I thought "lighting" was some kind of mind altering drug. It is, if you do it right! ;)

What's great about his talks is how smooth they are. I'm not sure if that's a good analogy, but his talks are like waves in the sea. They are rolling from one topic to the other, nice and clean.

That's what it looks like when person knows what he's talking about and quite passionate about it - such person wants to share his thoughts and experiences.

It also requires strong intelligence, mental processing speed, vocabulary and frankly just giving a damn about not only the subject but clearly articulating it to the audience.

After I read "Smart Guy Productivity Pitfalls"¹ it became apparent to me that John he has quite an acute awareness of life's smaller details.

Too many people care too little about a lot of things. There seems to be a common perception that a passionate-about-the-reasonably-small-details attitude is simply being "anal" or "OCD". Finding people who are intensely passionate about their work-- not just the paycheck-- is insanely difficult. It'd be nice to have the company of more people who fall into John's category (though statistically unlikely at his level). I'm not saying that to hold him on some kind of pedestal, just giving him credit for his hard work.

¹ http://bookofhook.blogspot.com/2013/03/smart-guy-productivit...

Absolutely agreed on the mental processing speed and acute awareness of smaller details. Look at this point in the video:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=nq... He has just opened the floor for questions, and the questioner does not have a microphone and hence audience cannot hear the question. John starts answering the question, but immediately recognizes the situation and then repeats the question for his audience.

Thanks for the link, very interesting read.

Agreed, he presented so much information and did not stumble once, used no filler words, and did not deviate from the topic. It was commendable how freely he was talking about Android, Samsung and about each minute aspect of the device.

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