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Sequoia Alexander
Personal blog · tlalexander.com · on HN as TaylorAlexanderphilosophyeconomics
Sequoia Alexander's personal blog at tlalexander.com covers philosophy and economics. Since 2014, 4 different Hacker News readers have linked it 49 times, most often “Starting a Business in Silicon Valley”. The last post was in 2019, but the archive is still widely read.
49mentions?
4HN people?
2014–2024first – last linked?
Too few sampled comments (1) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Linked as the 2018 "Anatomy of a Mechanical Keyboard" post, which covers how keyboards are built, including 3D printing and PCB experimentation in DIY keyboard culture.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 1 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Let's reduce the human cost of living to zero
Most-linked posts?
- Starting a Business in Silicon Valley3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-11-29
What Hacker News says?
I think there are some differences between owning stock and owning the machines. Stock gives you abstract control through voting, and the board has much more power than you. When you own the machine, you can physically operate it yourself. It’s like owning a car versus owning stock in Uber - when you own a car you reap the benefits of cheap travel much more directly and in a very different way than getting a dividen…
Comment linking /corporation/
on “Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks”Submitted Starting a Business in Silicon Valley as a story · 257 points
HN discussionI love it! I am a super creative person and I spend a lot of time doing what the article suggests. I quit facebook and all other social media two years ago, though I still spend a lot of time scrolling through reddit. At any rate I also write, maintain a few websites, design and build 3D printed robots, and make youtube videos. The author really nails it that you can be creating every day. Today I installed a GPU in…
Comment linking /missing/
on “Consume less, create more”Submitted The Machine: On our collective efforts to save ourselves as a story · 39 points
HN discussionHey there. I'm not seeing a lot of hardware engineering positions in Mountain View. Do you think there is room for a robotics hacker like myself? Thanks. http://www.tlalexander.com/about/
Comment linking /about/
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (August 2016)”Submitted Robots for the poor? (2016) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI think we'd all be better off if basically everything was open source, by way of eliminating intellectual property protections provided by governments. As an alternate solution, those of us with engineering skills can work to create an open source economy with open source factories, computers, and products. This would never be a problem nor would it be likely to happen if genuinely competitive options existed for f…
Comment linking /machine/
on “Farmers look for ways to circumvent tractor software locks”Submitted The Corporation – a new way to live as a story · 2 points
HN discussionApple is, arguably, the largest tech company on earth. Their behavior has a significant impact on earth and on the market. And they are actively hostile to the concept of repair. Why wouldn't we criticize that? I do criticize other problems with our consumption online and in my published writing. I am not making this critique because it is "fun or hip to be anti-apple". I believe the consumption patterns of people i…
Comment linking /impact/
on “Podswap: Keep airpods alive and out of the landfill”It’s very good to see someone as influential as Sam talking about this. The idea that automation can be used (intentionally!) to lower the cost of living to zero has been a key component of my personal writing and work for some years now. [1] There is a lot that I agree with here and some things I disagree with. For example capitalism can encourage value creation but it can also encourage rent seeking. Since I have…
Comment linking /machine/
on “Moore's Law for Everything”Oh my god you act like I’ve never heard of libertarianism. A worker owned cooperative can be democratic without being a government. And I agree with authors like Murray Bookchin who advocate for a kind of anarchist communism where you have a “government” but not a state. I personally advocate for a state-free society and have no interest in rule by force. I wrote a story about a democratically arranged worker owned…
Comment linking /corporation/
on “Sweden gives employees unpaid time off to be entrepreneurs (2019)”Hey that was fun! I was pleasantly surprised to see the audio option as I’m too sleepy to read right now. Reminds me of a short story I wrote which is a transcription of a vivid dream I had: http://www.tlalexander.com/spooks/
Comment linking /spooks/
on “Crows possess higher intelligence, thought a primarily human attribute (2020)”To help change the system, we could build The Machine: http://tlalexander.com/machine/
Comment linking /machine/
on “Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous”If anyone is in to this I write speculative fiction about this kind of thing: http://tlalexander.com/sanctuary/ (I also build robots) :)
Comment linking /sanctuary/
on “Autonomous Robots Plant, Tend, and Harvest Entire Crop of Barley”Agreed! http://tlalexander.com/wealth http://tlalexander.com/machine
Comment linking /machine
on “How We Designed the Librem 5 Dev Kit with Free Software”I think this is a good idea. We use intellectual property protection to get money to developers, but then they charge money for things we could be duplicating for free. I think we could improve the lives of many people and lower the total cost of living a good life if for example everything productive was open source. I’ve written a story about this, with an all-capable machine as an allegory for an open source auto…
Comment linking /machine/
on “How solid is Tim’s plan to redecentralize the web?”Thank you so much! I wrote my own manifesto some years ago. http://tlalexander.com/machine/
Comment linking /machine/
on “A Solarpunk Manifesto”As a robotics engineer I too once bought in to the notion that automation would lead to a massive jobs crash. But the more experience I get the more I see how big the problem space is. There's a million simple tasks we cannot do with robotics, and even when we can do them the machine costs $100k. Instead I am beginning to understand that humans and machines will work together for a long time. I still think we can us…
Comment linking /wealth/
on “No Recent Automation Revolution”I think a basic income is a dangerous and bad idea. If we expect the wealthy class to give their money to the masses to fund their survival, the masses would become functionally dependent on that transfer continuing. At which point the wealthy class would have incredible power over the masses. Asking for a basic income is like asking to go to prison for the free food. It is not a good idea to become dependent on oth…
Comment linking /machine/
on “Why we should all have a basic income”Well I did have the help of Silicon Valley’s most talented RF guy, who had met me and agreed to lend me his time and lab to help test my product. I never could have gotten this off the ground without him. Even if I got things working with my first layout, I’d never have been able to solve the manufacturing problem I had when the fab house swapped the RF crystal for 5 different clones. I am forever indebted to Earl M…
Comment linking /content/images/2016/12/robots_sm.jpg
on “Starting a Business in Silicon Valley”I should note, I have seen that site before. Looking at your comparison pictures, I have a couple of thoughts: 1) I am very aware that machining and casting makes higher quality parts. My point is that for all mechanisms there comes a point where the quality is "good enough". 2) The printed gears you linked to have abysmal quality. My 3 year old printer has made vastly superior parts. See this thingiverse part, with…
Comment linking /files/portfolio.pdf
on “Underactuated Rotor for Simple Micro Air Vehicles”Oh, I forgot I have a portfolio of machine parts online now too. http://www.tlalexander.com/files/portfolio.pdf
Comment linking /files/portfolio.pdf
on “Underactuated Rotor for Simple Micro Air Vehicles”Hah I made it up! I do a bit of sci if writing though. http://tlalexander.com/sanctuary/
Comment linking /sanctuary/
on “Alphabet spinoff Malta raises $26M for technology to store power in molten salt”Thanks! Yeah there’s lots of missing pieces here as this is all a side project for me on top of a day job and social life (hah). I talk about my intentions in the “Rover Reveal” video ( https://youtu.be/LIkX7wniYh0 ). This is for me an exploration in long service life 3D printed robotics as well as a software development platform for outdoor robotics. You can also read an essay that explains my motivations for worki…
Comment linking /machine/
on “Small robots may kill the tractor and make farming efficient”I’m all for this and am actively working towards it! I’m a robotics engineer and I want to live in a partially automated commune with some like minded people. I think there are real mental, economic, and ecological benefits to living this way. See my three essay series on the subject: http://tlalexander.com/wealth/ http://tlalexander.com/machine/ http://tlalexander.com/corporation/ See also the philosophy of Communa…
Comment linking /corporation/
on “The Economics of a Commune in the Ozarks”Here here! Let’s make it happen. http://tlalexander.com/machine/
Comment linking /machine/
on “Billions in U.S. solar projects shelved after Trump panel tariff”I can understand it feeling like a scam. It’s hard to tell from the outside. See this talk I gave in 2018 for my perspective just about 5 years after the campaign started. Text or video here: http://tlalexander.com/business/
Comment linking /business/
on “Adafruit Founder Limor Fried: Open-Source Hardware Revolution [video]”That's unfortunate about the surface mount. As a word of encouragement, I know one can do complex surface mount soldering with just a few specialized tools. I picked up a good stereo zoom microscope from craigslist. Mine is a Leica but I also recommend the amscope and similar models you can get online. They're a chinese rebrand but I've used those models and the optical quality is great. I recommend the models with…
Comment linking /content/images/2017/01/IMG_7344_edited_sm.JPG
on “Resources for electronic engineers and hobbyists”I feel strongly that the long term solution is to end our reliance on jobs for individual survival. If we automate the industries that produce what people need for survival, and we find some way of collectivizing those industries (I only support voluntary non governmental collectivization of industry via common share holding schemes), then we can make the marginal cost of living close to zero. To me it seems perfect…
Comment linking /machine
on “Foxconn unit to cut over 10k jobs as robotics take over”> But 3D printing solved the first problem and they are mostly soldered with wires rather than experimenting with pcbs. It doesn't really. Modern diy culture is ultimately about publishing. That is what puts you on somewhat equal footing with a large entity. What we mostly have with 3d printing is a do-it-for-yourself culture. That is why every institution will have an exclusive maker space, where you will get repri…
Comment linking /business/
on “Anatomy of a Mechanical Keyboard (2018)”
