google tech talk

Google engineers describe Google's internal build system, a unified, language-agnostic system used across the company. It was presented as a 2012 NYC tech talk.

A Google Tech Talk by Raymond Blum on how Google backs up massive amounts of data such as Gmail and Picasa. It covers scaling challenges, failure types, and approaches that did not work, including tape.

Conan O'Brien and Andy Richter visit Google's Mountain View headquarters in 2010 for a comedic Q&A. Conan jokes with the interviewer and the Google audience.

Barack Obama, then a presidential candidate, presents his innovation agenda at Google and takes questions from Eric Schmidt and employees in November 2007.

A 2006 Google Tech Talk by Robert Bussard on inertial electrostatic confinement (polywell) fusion as a cheap, clean alternative to conventional thermonuclear reactors. He argues it could be made viable with modest funding.

Larry Wall speaks at Google's Chicago office in 2008 about the Perl community, the language, and Perl 6. The talk touches on grammars, macros and error messages.

Frank Abagnale, the real subject of Catch Me If You Can, speaks at Google about his life as a con man turned FBI fraud and cybersecurity expert, including advice on fraud, breaches and credit cards.

Robert Bussard's 2006 Google Tech Talk on inertial electrostatic confinement fusion, a compact approach he argued could be cheap and clean, using boron-hydrogen fuel without neutron radiation. It runs about 93 minutes and covers the physics, funding history and his proposed development path.

Noam Chomsky gives a Talks at Google lecture covering his work on politics and language. It touches on his linguistic theory, including universal grammar, alongside his political criticism.

Randall Munroe, creator of xkcd, gives an Authors@Google talk in 2007 about the webcomic and his background, followed by audience Q&A. Donald Knuth and Guido van Rossum ask questions during the session.

Noam Chomsky speaks at Google Cambridge in 2017 about his political development and the control of information and media. It is a wide-ranging talk with audience discussion.

A Google Tech Talk by Steve Weis that introduces modern cryptography and its use in practice and at Google. It covers proofs of security and security definitions and a special topic. HN commenters treat it as a talk on verifiable electronic voting.

A 2009 Google Tech Talk by Nicholas Zakas on the hidden performance pitfalls of JavaScript. It covers what is fast and slow in the language and how to avoid common bottlenecks.

A Google Tech Talk arguing that the best interface requires the fewest clicks and choices, with Google search, Facebook, the iPod and Firefox as examples. It shows how minimizing interaction makes interfaces easier to learn.

A 2008 Google Tech Talk making the case for the liquid fluoride thorium reactor as an abundant, safe source of electrical power. It covers the technical motivations and design of thorium molten-salt reactors.

Anand Giridharadas presents his book Winners Take All at Google, arguing that the global elite's philanthropy and 'win-win' framing preserve the systems that create inequity. He challenges the audience, including Google employees, to examine their own role in that system.

Neal Stephenson visits Google in 2008 to discuss his novel Anathem as part of the Authors@Google series. He talks about the book's world and takes audience questions.

Geoff Hinton's 2010 Google Tech Talk on deep belief networks, learning layers of representation one at a time from unlabeled data, and extending them with multiplicative interactions.

A 2006 Google TechTalk in which SQLite's author Richard Hipp introduces the embeddable, zero-configuration C database library. He covers its history, strengths and weaknesses, and where it beats client/server databases.

Slavoj Zizek discusses his book Violence in an Authors@Google talk in New York. He covers ideology, including his idea of the unknown knowns.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb talks at Google about his book Antifragile, on systems that gain from disorder and volatility. It draws on themes from his earlier books.

Ray Kurzweil presents his book How to Create a Mind at Google, on reverse engineering the brain and using that understanding to build intelligent machines. He shows his graphs of exponential technological progress.

A seven-minute Google I/O 2014 talk by Simon Newton on how developers can make use of Google's global network. It describes the network's footprint and some of the services running on it.

Christian Schafmeister's Google Tech Talk on designing spiroligomer molecules and building Clasp, a Common Lisp on LLVM that interoperates with C++, to program molecular design. It covers the chemistry, automatic differentiation for force fields, and how the compiler is built.

Lawrence Lessig's Talks at Google presentation based on his book Republic, Lost, arguing that money in politics corrupts Congress and eroded public trust, and outlining what could be done about it. It supports the argument with data on political donations.

John Ousterhout, Stanford professor and creator of Tcl, presents the ideas of his book A Philosophy of Software Design in a Talks at Google session. He covers managing complexity, deep modules and interfaces, and what he teaches in his Stanford software design course.

David Graeber's Talks at Google presentation on his book Debt: The First 5,000 Years, covering the history of debt, the myth of barter and the Jubilee tradition.

Economist Richard Wolff's Talks at Google lecture on his book Democracy at Work. He critiques capitalism and argues for worker-run cooperatives as a path to a more democratic economy.

Cory Doctorow's Talks at Google lecture on the coming civil war over general-purpose computing. He argues that locked-down devices, DRM, and surveillance threaten user control of computers.

Kelly Starrett's Talks at Google presentation on staying healthy while desk bound, mixing anatomy and practical mobility advice. It shows how to set up a desk and sit and move to avoid pain.

Climber Chris Warner talks at Google about his book on high altitude leadership and the 2007 K2 expedition, where eighteen climbers summited and two died.

Daniel Kahneman's Talks at Google lecture on his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, covering System 1 and System 2 thinking and the psychology of judgment and decision making.

Eric Brechner, a Microsoft Xbox development manager, presents his Kanban approach for agile project management at Talks at Google. He covers using sticky notes to organize work, estimate and meet deadlines.

Charles Marohn of Strong Towns presents, in a Talks at Google session, the ideas from his book on why many North American towns struggle financially despite decades of growth. He argues for incremental, bottom-up city building as a path to local prosperity.

Steven Pinker presents his book The Stuff of Thought at Google in 2007. He covers language as a window into human nature, including taboo words, swearing and the psychology and game theory of indirect speech like bribery.

John Searle's Talk at Google on consciousness and artificial intelligence, hosted by Google's Singularity Network. He presents his philosophy of mind and Chinese room argument that computation is syntactic and cannot capture semantics.

Sean Carroll's Talks at Google presentation of his book Something Deeply Hidden. He gives an accessible introduction to quantum mechanics and argues for the many-worlds interpretation and the emergence of spacetime.

Mark Blyth's Talks at Google presentation based on his book on austerity. He argues that government debt came largely from bailing out banks, and that budget cuts are a misguided response to the financial crisis.

Joseph Henrich's Talks at Google presentation of his book. He argues that human success comes from collective brains and cultural learning across generations rather than individual intelligence.

A Talks at Google visit by Douglas Engelbart, inventor of the mouse. He presents his lifelong aim of augmenting collective human intelligence, followed by a Q&A.