Systems, Networks & Security: what Hacker News watches
10 topics, 661 videos. Pick a topic for a focused list, or scan the 100 best-scored across the whole area below.
- 12 HN recommenders 11 months 2014–2024HN treats it as the canonical talk on simulation testing and a mind-blowing example of how far rigorous testing can go.
- 10 HN recommenders 11 months 2014–2023HN commenters cite it as the talk that convinced them of immutability and functional programming.
- 12 HN recommenders 9 months 2019–2025The go-to recommendation for learning DynamoDB data modeling, with many saying it made access-pattern-driven design click.
- 9 HN recommenders 9 months 2015–2025Commenters repeatedly cite it as the talk that reframed how they think about caching, derived data and event sourcing.
- 3 HN recommenders 7 months 2017–2020Treated as the go-to approachable yet deep primer on CRDTs and collaborative editing, recommended repeatedly in threads on Automerge, local-first software and OT versus CRDT.
- 6 HN recommenders 6 months 2020–2023C CMU Database Group · lectureFrequently recommended as the best free university course on database internals, praised for depth and Pavlo's presentation.
- 6 HN recommenders 6 months 2015–2021HN repeatedly recommends it as a balanced, beginner-friendly overview of SQL versus NoSQL, and some teachers assign it to students.
- 5 HN recommenders 5 months 2020–2026F Fred Overflow · talkCited as the classic rant on maps versus objects in discussions of data modeling and OOP.
- 2 HN recommenders 6 months 2023–2025T TigerBeetle · talkHN commenters, including TigerBeetle people, recommend it as the explanation of a methodology for building defect-free, high-assurance software.
- 4 HN recommenders 5 months 2014–2026HN recommends Cantrill talks generally for their mix of industry history, technical depth and entertaining delivery, and this one is a favorite for storage and data integrity threads.
- 5 HN recommenders 5 months 2015–2024M Michigan Engineering · lectureHN points to it as a thoughtful, first-principles take from a Turing award winner that cuts through NoSQL and big data hype.
- 6 HN recommenders 5 months 2016–2019Recommended as a fantastic introduction to declarative and Datalog-based distributed systems and failure modeling.
- 6 HN recommenders 6 months 2018–2025C Code & Supply · talkA perennial HN favorite whenever firmware, disks, ECC or opaque hardware come up, valued as both entertaining and sobering.
- 4 HN recommenders 4 months 2016–2026D Deirdré Straughan · talkHN recommends it as the definitive explanation of ZFS design straight from its inventors, with war stories about data integrity.
- 4 HN recommenders 5 months 2016–2020C Citus Data · talkHN commenters point to it as a first-hand overview of Heap's Postgres/Citus architecture and its distinctive indexing approach.
- 5 HN recommenders 5 months 2014–2023Recommended as a detailed, candid case study of scaling a real system from zero users to millions.
- 4 HN recommenders 4 months 2016–2022C Code on the Beach · talkHN developers recommend it as the talk that changed how they model systems, and as a clear intro to event sourcing's motivations.
- 4 HN recommenders 4 months 2017–2024M Method · talkHN recommends it as an enthusiastic, funny talk straight from the creator, and cites it for facts like the name's pronunciation and Airbus support.
- 7 HN recommenders 3 months 2025–2026T tripflag · demoHN commenters call it a model demo video and the quickest way to see how much one developer packed into a self-hosted file server.
- 4 HN recommenders 4 months 2012–2020HN points people to it as the clearest account of why Datomic is designed the way it is and of the problems with conventional database architecture.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2016HN readers recommend it as a thorough, practical introduction to Postgres fundamentals and optimization for application developers.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2018–2023R Redis · talkRecommended in graph database threads as a mind-blowing case for expressing graph analysis as linear algebra.
- 2 HN recommenders 3 months 2018–2024S Siebel School of Computing and Data Science · lectureCited in many threads about academic incentives, paper counts and why academia struggles to produce working software.
- 2 HN recommenders 3 months 2020–2026C CMU Database Group · talkHN recommends it as the definitive talk from the implementer on DuckDB's motivation and design.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2019–2020L LuceneSolrRevolution · talkHN recommends it as an instructive, easy-to-follow look at Lucene internals from a core committer.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2019–2024Recommended in cache-algorithm threads as a fun, informative walk through caching strategies and ARC.
- 2 HN recommenders 3 months 2014–2023T Tavis Rudd · demoHN points to it as a lost example of intuitive low-code tooling, and as inspiration for newer products.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2023–2025HN commenters recommend it as the main resource on Swift as an incremental successor to C++ and on how the interoperability works in practice.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2020–2021S southeastlinuxfest · talkRecommended for the SQLite author's reasoned case for a different approach to version control, and as an introduction to Fossil.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2019–2023HN commenters recommend it to developers unfamiliar with how much leverage and intelligence there is in a SQL database.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2019–2022HN recommends it as a sampling of truly different programming paradigms beyond mainstream OOP.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2022–2024T The Power of Prolog · tutorialHN recommends it as the best short introduction to what makes Prolog unique.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2014–2022N New Relic · talkHN recommends it as an elegant argument for simple Unix tools replacing heavyweight Hadoop-style pipelines.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2018–2023Recommended as a compact preview of Kleppmann's data systems material, including from his book on the subject.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2014–2018K krueggen · demoUsed as a reference for an ahead-of-its-time end-user database tool, brought up in threads on Access clones, Smalltalk and data-entry tools.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2012–2023HN recommends it as the definitive explanation of XFS metadata performance fixes and how XFS was developed and made robust on Linux.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2019–2020Cited as a demonstration of the Pathom/graph approach to connecting APIs, as an alternative to GraphQL.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2020–2026Shared in outage and accidental-deletion threads as a relatable, well-told horror story.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2008–2013HN recommends it as a rich, concrete look at real-world system design and as evidence of YouTube's early Python stack.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2016–2023HN points to it as a solid, if long, introduction to B-epsilon trees and why BetrFS is built the way it is.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2016–2022O OpenZFS · talkRecommended whenever ZFS encryption comes up as the authoritative explanation of how it was added and its trade-offs at scale.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2018–2025HN recommends it as an approachable talk on a total functional generalization of Datalog, by the language's author.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2019–2022HN points to it as a detailed, captivating talk by the Noria author, including a good explanation of deduplicating data between maps using unsafe.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2022–2026P Palantir · demoPointed to as the clearest explanation of what Foundry actually is, and for its polished software, though one commenter calls it dated now.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2019–2023Recommended as the best introduction to modern SQL standard features that textbooks skip.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2021–2023F FreeBSD · talkHN points to it as the video explanation of how RAID-Z expansion works without block pointer rewrite.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2018–2022HN points to it as an authoritative look at DynamoDB internals and as evidence it is a complex distributed system.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2024–2025L Local-First Conf · talkCited in sync-engine threads as the origin story for Zero and for hybrid local and remote queries.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2020–2023Pointed to as the authoritative history of FFS from one of its original creators.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2020–2022A AWS Events · talkRecommended as Rick Houlihan's definitive talk on modeling relational-style data in DynamoDB.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2015–2024HN cites it as Nubank's account of building a bank on Datomic and Clojure, and for what Datomic's temporal model enables.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2015–2026HN commenters list it among the best introductions to event sourcing and use it to illustrate storing read-only events instead of mutating state.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2020–2024HN points to it, including Gjengset himself, as a more digestible way into partially-stateful dataflow than the thesis text, mostly in caching and database threads.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2011–2021Cited as the memorable case for moving to SSDs and as an example of how swearing can make a talk stick.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2016–2026D Domain-Driven Design Europe · talkHN commenters cite it in event sourcing threads for Young's views on when to use it, including advice against cross-application event sourcing.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2025L Local-First Conf · talkCited in sync-engine and local-first threads for Kleppmann's argument for a generic, standardised sync protocol or service.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2016–2020A Arthur Gleckler · talkPointed to as practical talk on off-heap memory and database programming in Lisp by experienced engineers.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2018–2022Cited as a useful taxonomy for pinning down what an event-driven design actually is.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2014–2017A Andrea Ross · talkRecommended as a talk from SQLite's main author, and cited for the project's focus on backwards compatibility and for deployment anecdotes.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2018–2025U Uber Engineering · talkHN points to it as the detailed explanation of why hexagons suit map grids, in threads about H3.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2014–2021Cited in backup and data-loss threads as a rare inside look at Google's backup practices, including its use of tape.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2019–2021HN refers to it as an honest, candid account of the common story of losing precious data to storage failure.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2011–2018Recommended as a first-hand intro from SQLite's creator that also teaches how a database engine is built.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2023–2024K Kevin Fang · comedy videoShared as a funny, accurate retelling of a classic outage, especially on a bad ops day.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2018–2020C Confluent, an IBM Company · talkHN posts it in Kafka-as-database debates and as an introduction to event logs and CQRS.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2023–2025Cited in ZFS and filesystem threads as the go-to source on ZFS limits and tuning for NVMe.
- cited 3× 0 months 2017–2024HN cites it as the example of physically trucking data when network transfer is impractical.
- cited 4× 0 months 2014–2023O OpenZFS · interviewCited as the authoritative explanation of why block pointer rewrite is so hard to implement in ZFS.
- cited 4× 0 months 2016–2022Cited as the origin of the compilers-as-databases idea in discussions of IDEs and incremental tooling.
- cited 20× 0 months 2013–2026Posted as a classic meme whenever MongoDB, NoSQL hype or tech fads come up.
- 16 HN recommenders 14 months 2019–2024It is HN's favorite pitch for Elixir and the BEAM, credited with convincing many people to adopt them.
- 6 HN recommenders 10 months 2014–2022The go-to talk showing how Erlang let a tiny team run a massive messaging system.
- 10 HN recommenders 9 months 2013–2025HN recommends it as a key Hickey talk on system design that changes how people think about distributed state and interfaces.
- 9 HN recommenders 9 months 2012–2025The canonical recommendation for learning Go concurrency, praised as entertaining and clarifying when to use channels versus mutexes.
- 7 HN recommenders 7 months 2020–2023HN treats it as the best introduction to Unison, with commenters finding hash-addressed immutable code mind-blowing.
- 6 HN recommenders 6 months 2013–2024D Diego Ongaro · lectureRecommended as a clear, lucid way to learn Paxos and Multi-Paxos, ideally alongside the companion Raft video.
- 5 HN recommenders 5 months 2015–2025HN recommends it as the best video introduction to the actor model, straight from its inventor, and revisited it after Hewitt's death.
- 4 HN recommenders 5 months 2013–2024HN regards it as one of the best technical talks, a deep and clear walkthrough of scalable lock-free hash tables built on compare-and-swap.
- 5 HN recommenders 5 months 2021–2025M Martin Kleppmann · lectureHN regularly recommends the series as a free, accessible, theory-oriented course on distributed computing that complements his book Designing Data-Intensive Applications.
- 5 HN recommenders 6 months 2020–2025M MIT 6.824: Distributed Systems · lectureRecommended as the standard free course for learning distributed systems from real papers.
- 4 HN recommenders 5 months 2018–2023Recommended for its practical strategy for preserving state on ephemeral containers, and for the live demo.
- 4 HN recommenders 5 months 2023–2025G Groxio · talkHN recommends it as a rare real-world look at a large fault-tolerant Erlang/Elixir system with no downtime in healthcare.
- 5 HN recommenders 5 months 2015–2026HN points people to it as Lamport's own case for thinking and writing a spec before coding, and as an entry point to TLA+.
- 4 HN recommenders 5 months 2015–2022HN recommends it as a fascinating explanation of queues, flow control and overload that applies well beyond Clojure.
- 5 HN recommenders 5 months 2016–2023HN treats Hamilton's annual talks as the best window into how AWS regions and hardware are actually built.
- 4 HN recommenders 4 months 2022–2025HN considers it one of the best game networking talks, with insights that carry over to distributed systems generally.
- 5 HN recommenders 5 months 2018–2024HN recommends it as a transparent MMO postmortem and as the source of the story that the term 'shard' originated with Ultima Online.
- 1 HN recommenders 4 months 2019–2024HN recommends it as an excellent talk on generalizing deterministic simulation testing, and Antithesis hiring posts link it to explain the work.
- 3 HN recommenders 4 months 2013–2021HN people recommend it as a must-watch for anyone running complex systems, and some rewatch it regularly to remember its principles.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2018–2020Strongly recommended as a clear, accessible survey of the CRDT landscape.
- 3 HN recommenders 4 months 2020–2023Recommended as an approachable introduction to CRDTs and the local-first idea behind apps like Actual.
- 4 HN recommenders 4 months 2019–2020R Reactive Summit · talkHN recommends it as an illuminating, approachable explanation of distributed consensus.
- 4 HN recommenders 4 months 2013–2025D Diego Ongaro · lectureHN commenters recommend it as a clearer introduction to Raft than the paper and as part of a well-designed understandability study.
- 4 HN recommenders 4 months 2013–2023HN points to it as an accessible explanation of microkernel isolation and fault-tolerant design, and as Tanenbaum's answer to performance objections.
- 4 HN recommenders 4 months 2012–2022HN recommends it as a classic look at systems engineering at Google, whose fundamentals have held up well despite its 2010 date.
- 4 HN recommenders 4 months 2013–2026U uncertainyesterday · demoA beloved classic that HN recommends as the quickest way to see why Erlang is special.
- 4 HN recommenders 4 months 2017–2024HN engineers recommend it for its core insight that limiting concurrency naturally yields request-rate limits, and for its link to queueing theory.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2019–2026HN recommends it for getting the inventors of major concurrency models together, disagreements included.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2017–2023E EMPEX Conference · talkRecommended as the best short overview of why the BEAM and Elixir stand apart from other runtimes.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2020–2024M Martin Kleppmann · talkRecommended as an excellent first education on CRDTs and their limits.
Showing the 100 best-scored of 661. Use search to find the rest.
Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.