Top all-time · #2471
Trevor Blackwell
Personal blog · tlb.orghardwarestartups
Trevor Blackwell's personal blog at tlb.org covers hardware and startups. Since 2007, 34 different Hacker News readers have linked it 43 times, most often “Self-Balancing Electric Unicycle”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Most-linked posts?
- Self-Balancing Electric Unicycle4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2009-07-30
- The best qualities of high- and low-level languages3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2007-02-28
- Building a Balancing Scooter3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-07-29
- Chopping the Numeric Keypad off a Microsoft Natural Keyboard3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-01-08
- Chopping the Numeric Keypad off a Microsoft Natural Keyboard3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2008-05-09
- /eunicycle.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-04-22
- TLB: The Miracle of Compound Interest2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-09-08
- Trevor Blackwell: Building a balancing scooter2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-02-26
- Why Spam Cannot Be Stopped2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2007-05-11
- Predictions (Trevor Blackwell)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-12-22
What Hacker News says?
http://tlb.org/#scooter2
Comment linking /
on “The Social Radar: What I Did at Y Combinator”Submitted Balancing Scooter Version 2 as a story · 27 points
HN discussion"Yet C++ is also frequently reviled both by those who never use and by those who use it all the time." I was once listening to RMS speak at a conference. One guy got up and said that this was one of the n great talks he had been to.He mentioned that Stroustrup as another speaker who had impressed him upon which RMS said "You need to get your head checked". Sometimes a great hacker community can help overcome the sho…
Comment linking /faq.html
on “C++ in Coders at Work”Submitted TLB: The Miracle of Compound Interest as a story · 15 points
HN discussionYep. Alternative phrasing: it's not about how much you work but how immersed you get. That's what you have to optimize for. If it was just about how much work you get done startups would get done in twice the time if you worked at half the pace. But the result qualitatively changes if you never get immersed enough to find the important insights. Hard work is just a means. If it takes real work to find immersion, don…
Comment linking /busywork.html
on “ Working hard is overrated”Submitted Building a Balancing Scooter as a story · 7 points
HN discussionI'm a big fan of adding noise to systems to make them more predictable (it was the topic of my thesis: http://tlb.org/#papers ). But, I believe it's not needed here because the arrival times of /newest voters are already sufficiently noisy. You only need random noise of +/- 0.5 to get predictable results, and voter arrival patters give more than that already.
Comment linking /
on “Why Hacker News should use a different Deterministic Algorithm, Not a Random One”Submitted Chopping the Numeric Keypad off a Microsoft Natural Keyboard as a story · 5 points
HN discussionFor those who haven't seen it: http://tlb.org/eunicycle.html
Comment linking /eunicycle.html
on “Segway by Honda”Submitted The best qualities of high- and low-level languages as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThis is Trevor Blackwell we're talking about. Perhaps you should be careful before casting aspersions. http://tlb.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trevor_Blackwell Ad-hominem attacks are not the kind of thing Hacker News is about. Please keep that in mind.
Comment linking /
on “Oscilloscope”Submitted Trevor Blackwell: Building a balancing scooter as a story · 3 points
HN discussion"Not a good reason, in Jobs's view, because the code could easily be reverse-engineered. No it couldn't, said Tim. Could, said Jobs." I don't know where Jobs gets his instincts about this stuff, but he was totally right: http://tlb.org/scooter.html
Comment linking /scooter.html
on “Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos meet "Ginger"”Submitted Predictions (Trevor Blackwell) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThese days, most people need the opposite. They're probably using systems optimized for spinning disks but they're running it on flash, and all the layers of complexity added over the years to optimize disk latency are just slowing things down. Like, this is the kind of bullshit people used to do research on: https://tlb.org/docs/usenixw95.pdf (I'm an author). This paper (and 100s of others) exist only because seque…
Comment linking /docs/usenixw95.pdf
on “Ask HN: Books on designing disk-optimized data structures?”Submitted Trevor Blackwell's Incredibly Accurate Predictions as a story · 2 points
HN discussionYow, the electric unicycle cited in the article is over $600! The Torker is $90. Maybe it's possible to build an electric one cheaply? I wonder how much tlb's cost... EDIT: http://tlb.org/#eunicycle "All together the components, in single unit retail quantities, cost about $1500." I wonder how expensive it would be today?
Comment linking /
on “AirWheel electric unicycle review”Submitted Why Spam Cannot Be Stopped as a story · 2 points
HN discussionRelated: http://www.tlb.org/busywork.html
Comment linking /busywork.html
on “The Whittling Part Of the Brain”Submitted DIY Segway tested at Burning Man as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe idea is not new. For building systems, tlb argues there should be a random component in all arbitrary decisions. http://tlb.org/tlbImages/thesis.ps
Comment linking /tlbImages/thesis.ps
on “Why HN Should Use Randomized Algorithms”Submitted Chopping the Numeric Keypad off a Microsoft Natural Keyboard as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIt's unmentioned in the article, but Trevor Blackwell's PhD thesis, Applications of Randomness in System Performance Measurement [1] was advocating this in 1998: This thesis presents and analyzes a simple principle for building systems: that there should be a random component in all arbitrary decisions. If no randomness is used, system performance can vary widely and unpredictably due to small changes in the system…
Comment linking /docs/thesis.pdf
on “How randomness improves algorithms (2023)”Submitted Self-Balancing Electric Unicycle as a story · 2 points
HN discussionA practical, robust method for separating essential complexity from accidental complexity in software engineering. Trevor Blackwell has written about something like this: http://tlb.org/busywork.html
Comment linking /busywork.html
on “Ask YC/HN: What's a problem, any problem, you'd like to see someone solve?”Submitted Building a Balancing Scooter as a story · 2 points
HN discussionhttp://www.tlb.org/eunicycle.html http://www.paulgraham.com/segway.html 50% as dorky. 0% as smug.
Comment linking /eunicycle.html
on “Self-Balancing Unicycle Only Half as Dorky as Segway”Submitted Trevor Blackwell: Random writings, not really worth reading as a story · 2 points
HN discussionBitcoin solved the byzantine generals problem. That is a brand-new invention. It enables you to achieve distributed consensus in all kinds of problems. The problem space is vast, and any new solution is worth not underestimating. It's hard to predict the future: http://tlb.org/#predictions July, 2002: CDs and DVDs compatible with today's will remain the most common way to buy or rent music or video through 2020.
Comment linking /
on “The Can’t-Lose Way for Your Business to Pop: Add Bitcoin to Its Name”Submitted The Electric Unicycle as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
