Velocity 2012: Richard Cook, "How Complex Systems Fail"

Why HN readers recommended it

HN people recommend it as a must-watch for anyone running complex systems, and some rewatch it regularly to remember its principles.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel

O'Reilly

Topic

complex systems failure

Format

talk

Level

intermediate

HN recommenders in dataset

3

HN mentions in dataset

7

Recommendation years in dataset

2013–2021

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

• The accompanying talk by Richard I Cook at the O'Reilly Velocity conference is here: [VIDEO] When I worked in operations, I would watch this talk every couple of months to remind myself of the principles. The principles are summarized in the list, but the talk …

• except every single good thing we have is built upon failure. got a gsm phone? broadband? how about a modem? a pc? basic chemistry? cryptography? the very notion of cryptography is embracing the failure of having private data leaked. did you know 802.11 was initially …

• Richards Cooks How complex systems fail from velocity a couple of years ago [VIDEO] and the paper that's the basis for it is also nice to have handy [LINK]