This was a lovely piece. I'm only surprised by paucity of interesting comments here. If Joran or anybody sees this late comment: I'd appreciate any other references to the approach. Surely it wasn't invented by TigerBeetle?
Hey thanks for the kind words, I am happy you liked the article. You are correct, we did not come up with the rule (but Joran did come up with the name) but drew from the rich history of transaction management systems.
A wonderful paper that I highly recommend is A Transaction Model from Jim Gray, that illustrates like no other than transactions are all about coordinating actions and when to externalize their results to a user. The mental model presented in this paper frequently informs my thinking when designing systems
acting as a juror wasn't a fun experience for me, because I kept getting asked questions without seeing any results, or having any indication of whether/when you'll see results.
I like this too. If a knob is too obtrusive/expensive, could do the same with two buttons. One button for forward and one for back. Make them sensitive enough that it's likely that a casual press will visibly scroll multiple minutes, but not too sensitive to prevent setting a specific minute with a quick tap.
