Top all-time · #2051
Don Lancaster
Personal blog · tinaja.comhardwarescience
Don Lancaster writes Guru Lair - Homepage, a personal blog at tinaja.com about hardware and science. Since 2009, 39 different Hacker News readers have linked it 81 times, most often “The Incredible Secret Money Machine”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Guru's Lair Home Page
Most-linked posts?
- The Incredible Secret Money Machine5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2013-02-12
- /4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-06-06
- /ebooks/tvtcb.pdf3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-12-30
- Think of "using dollars" as "spending gasoline" [pdf]2 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2009-07-12
- /ebooks/cvcb1.pdf2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-12-07
- /patnt01.asp2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-12-22
- /ebksamp1.shtml2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-01-18
- Don Lancaster's Guru's Lair Hydrogen Resources Page2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-03-07
- /magsn01.shtml2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-07-23
- /glib/waywere.pdf2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-03-03
What Hacker News says?
I always like the book The Incredible Secret Money Machine very much. The first rule for making money: never do it for the money. A free download is available: http://www.tinaja.com/ebooks/ismm.pdf
Comment linking /ebooks/ismm.pdf
on “Golden Rules for Making Money (1880)”Submitted Don Lancaster's Guru's Lair Home Page as a story · 104 points
HN discussionGreat work! This reminds me of a book I read over 40 years ago: https://www.amazon.com/Cheap-Video-Cookbook-Donald-Lancaster... Apparently Don has made the above book available on his site: https://www.tinaja.com/ebooks/cvcb1.pdf
Comment linking /ebooks/cvcb1.pdf
on “Analog TV Station on ESP8266”Submitted Don Lancaster's “Guru's Lair” Archive as a story · 28 points
HN discussionKeep this in mind when thinking about hydrogen: https://www.tinaja.com/h2gas01w.shtml
Comment linking /h2gas01w.shtml
on “Hyundai Nexo sets new world record 887.5 km travelled on single tank of hydrogen”Submitted Don Lancaster's Guru's Lair Free Classic Reprint Downloads as a story · 15 points
HN discussionI always thought Don Lancaster's electronic "cookbook" series were top-notch examples of accessible, educational technical writing. Still kicking at 'Guru's Lair' https://www.tinaja.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Examples of good technical writing?”Submitted Think of "using dollars" as "spending gasoline" [pdf] as a story · 9 points
HN discussionI'm probably being unpopular writing this, but I never quite liked the 555. Not diminishing its value and the ingenuity that went into its design; I rather found myself much more attracted by CMOS gates, also in analog circuits. One day I was playing with PLLs and to better understand how phase detectors work, I built a proof of concept motion detector off a single quad xor chip (4030 probably), 1st gate working as…
Comment linking /ebooks/cmoscb.pdf
on “555 Timer Circuits”Submitted The Incredible Secret Money Machine as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThe acoustic modem is back in style [1]! And, of course, same frequencies (DTMF) [2], too! DTMF has a special place in the phone signal chain (signal at these frequencies must be preserved, end to end, for dialing and menu selection), but I wonder if there's something more efficient, using the "full" voice spectrum, with the various vocoders [3] in mind? Although, it would be much crepier than hearing some tones. [1…
Comment linking /ebooks/tvtcb.pdf
on “Ggwave: Tiny Data-over-Sound Library”Submitted Fundamental Factors Underlying Recent Technological Innovation [pdf] as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI think this is right. In 01980 you needed a lot of people working on a magazine and buying ads in it to get Don Lancaster's columns out to the teeming unwashed masses. Now Don just posts them on https://www.tinaja.com/whtnu21.shtml#05.23.21 and he can publish lots more than he ever could back in the newsprint days. (The only loss is that he could use a proofreader.) I don't know how much Don spends on hosting† to m…
Comment linking /glib/waywere.pdf
on “Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie”Submitted How to Bash Pseudoscience as a story · 3 points
HN discussionWhatever they go with, the tech is going to make a really killer subwoofer amp. Looking at the requirements (mostly the high DC input) it seems that an IGBT class-D would be the logical starting point, but those are hampered by a 150kHz-ish max switching rate. I think Don Lancaster's Magic Sinewaves ( http://www.tinaja.com/magsn01.shtml ) meet the distortion requirements while offering the slowest switching requirem…
Comment linking /magsn01.shtml
on “An open competition to build a smaller power inverter, with a $1M prize”Submitted Don Lancaster's Guru's Lair Hydrogen Resources Page as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI think the book 'Incredible Secret Money Machine'[1] by Don Lancaster is one of the best startup books related to this. For example this strategy: 'strategy secret - have: 0.834 employees'. Of course this book might be the half truth, but imho it has a lot of value for startups. [1] http://www.tinaja.com/ebooks/ismm.pdf (10.4 MB)
Comment linking /ebooks/ismm.pdf
on “You Don’t Need a Master Plan, You Just Need to Start”Submitted Hydrogen Energy Library Directory as a story · 2 points
HN discussionDon Lancaster's TTL Cookbook and CMOS Cookbook would be good companions for the Ben Eater series. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0672210355/ref=dbs_a_def_r... https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0750699434/ref=dbs_a_def_r... Actually both books are available from Lancaster's website as a free PDF: https://www.tinaja.com/ebksamp1.shtml
Comment linking /ebksamp1.shtml
on “Show HN: 1.5kb Microkernel for Ben Eater's 6502 Computer”Submitted Don Lancaster's Guru's Lair: Cubic Spline Library as a story · 2 points
HN discussionOldie but goodie. A contrarian view of business from a prototypical hacker, Don Lancaster. I re-read this every few years to regain perspective. The Incredible Secret Money Machine http://www.tinaja.com/ebooks/ismm.pdf more of Don: http://tinaja.com/ -G
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What are your recommended reads that are available for free?”Submitted "Guru's Lair: Sampler and Tour" as a story · 2 points
HN discussionHe had a lot of prescient advice about patents, way before they became the giant sucking nuisance that they are today. http://www.tinaja.com/pasamp1.shtml
Comment linking /pasamp1.shtml
on “Incredible Secret Money Machine”Submitted Magic Sine Waves as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSite seems to be down or overloaded. Here's the Google cache copy: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://... And the direct link to the "Incredible Secret Money Making Machine" by Don Lancaster: http://www.tinaja.com/ebooks/ismm.pdf I'm considering whether this might be a good business read for middle/high schoolers.
Comment linking /ebooks/ismm.pdf
on “Incredible Secret Money Machine”"Imagine letting loose a swarm of quadrotors in a large building and having a complete map and textured 3D model of the interior and exterior within just a few hours." This reminds me of: "I’ve long been interested in Navicubes, which is what I call a small and not-quite-here yet $5 box that always knows where it is, which direction it is facing, and which way is up. Besides vehicle nav, intelligent toys, and roboti…
Comment linking /navcub01.shtml
on “Aerial robots swarm the stage at TED [video]”See also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_home_computers_by_vi... Note Don Lancaster's technique used for video in some computers https://www.tinaja.com/ebooks/cvcb1.pdf such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX80 In some strange sense this is like using a microcontroller to implement a CRTC except you're using the main CPU to do the work.
Comment linking /ebooks/cvcb1.pdf
on “Apple II graphics: More than you wanted to know”A lot of material about Bézier curves here: http://www.tinaja.com/cubic01.asp
Comment linking /cubic01.asp
on “A primer on Bezier curves”One author at http://www.tinaja.com/patnt01.asp feels that the break-even point for patents is $12 to $14 million.
Comment linking /patnt01.asp
on “Court: Microsoft violated patent; can't sell Word”I guess you could say this is the modern version of the TV Typewriter: https://www.tinaja.com/ebooks/tvtcb.pdf
Comment linking /ebooks/tvtcb.pdf
on “ESP8266 Analog Broadcast Television Interface”
