This morning I started to stir when my Casper Glow light turned on. But what really got me out of bed was when I heard the faint gurgle of my timed coffee machine auto brewing the first cup of the day.
Readit Newsmcrwfrd commented on Ask HN: Most effective and "non-invasive" morning wake up alarm method? · Posted by u/gangorgasm
mcrwfrd commented on My 3-year experiment as a digital nomad kapwing.com/blog/digital-... · Posted by u/justswim
As much as I can’t stand full-size pickups, a Chevy Silverado EV has the towing range to make towing the trailer a lot more practical.
One potentially interesting option that the author hasn’t tried is a yacht. Anybody seen any accounts of a cruising digital nomad?
Hundred Rabbits[0] have been an inspiration for me for a while. They work from their sailboat!
Getting any waves in BC or alaska?
There's no surfing in BC ;)
mcrwfrd commented on Ask HN: Seeking Advice – Relocating to Canada as a Software Engineer · Posted by u/engineerick
I live in Victoria which is one of the tech hubs in Canada, although definitely one of the smaller ones. The cost to living vs salary is not in a great spot right now but it's definitely doable.
If you are single or don't have any kids I think it is a lot more reasonable -- it's quite difficult to find housing for larger families. Even so, if you are capable of getting a good job working remote for a company it is possible to make it work.
I will say that Canada is in a bit of a flux right now. We are having an affordability crisis, and the cost of everything is going up.
It's not impossible to make a good life in Canada, but I think it's becoming increasing difficult and definitely not something that should be taken for granted.
You make a great point about finding remote work. I lived in the Victoria area before I left Canada and found that a lot of my peers worked remotely for US-based companies. During the pandemic, some were even able to get a US market rate salary instead of being paid based on the Victoria location. This made living in Victoria much more manageable.
mcrwfrd commented on Ask HN: Seeking Advice – Relocating to Canada as a Software Engineer · Posted by u/engineerick
Canadian software engineer here. About a year ago I moved away from Canada specifically because cost of living was too high compared to Canadian market-rate salaries in the software industry. Many of my Canadian peers have done the same.
Canada is a wonderful place with some of the best nature and some really lovely cities, but I would not move there to improve my financial situation.
mcrwfrd commented on About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off theverge.com/2023/10/16/2... · Posted by u/donohoe
Agreed. It’s one of the best music shows out there. Selfishly I hope Andrew Jervis wasn’t laid off but realistically it’s hard to imagine everything continuing as before with 50% of the company gone.
100% really hope Andrew Jervis is able to keep his show going. So much of the music that I keep coming back to is music that I discovered through his show!
Since it's not mentioned by any other comment: Bandcamp - https://bandcamp.com/
I follow a bunch of artists and labels there, and get notifications when new stuff get published by them. If I find a new artist, I usually look them up on Bandcamp, and follow the label too, looking through whatever other stuff they published.
If I find a really small artist on Bandcamp, I usually look through which Bandcamp users have supported the artist, and look through what else they follow/collected, been finding some gems this way too, but takes a bit more effort.
Bandcamp also has something called "Bandcamp Fridays" (https://daily.bandcamp.com/features/bandcamp-fridays-update) where more of what you pay go to the artists. I usually save up what I want to buy until next Bandcamp Friday and then go on a shopping spree based on my list.
Another vote for bandcamp. Definitely higher effort, but also higher reward in my opinion. One of my favourite things to do is sit on the sofa with my headphones on and actively listen to a few new bandcamp discoveries. It's really fun finding a new musician deep down a rabbit hole and having to try to decide for myself whether this is good music that I want to listen to again. Sometimes it's not, and that makes this method more time consuming, but I've also found most of my favourite musicians using this method.
Another great source is the Bandcamp Weekly with Andrew Jervis. If you're looking for something curated that is a little less effort, this is a great option.
> Office Space, Fight Club, American Beauty, and I Heart Huckabees satirized the dreary emptiness of white collar life. Didn’t my coworkers realize how ridiculous it sounds to use this jargon?
Fight Club had an enormous influence on me during my teenage years. It would kill the younger version of myself to learn the kind of white collar environment I operate in every day.
On one hand, Corpspeak is one of the most consistent forces of office life that beats the dying young punk voice that still whispers to me from time to time. Why don't we all just quit the tip-toeing and cut to the heart of each interaction? This way we would all be acting in our most authentic form. This would be a hardcore way to build something great together.
On the other hand, as the author describes, Corpspeak allows me to gloss over any bad feelings that may be felt or insinuated by myself or my colleagues. Although it feels inauthentic and may increase existential dread if pondered too closely, this "glossing over of feelings" makes the job less tiring, and enables me to show up for 40 hours, week after week. It also leaves me with tons of energy leftover to live the other 128 on my own terms — as long as I don't think too deeply about it all.
mcrwfrd commented on Ask HN: Anyone Considering Getting a Math/Phys Msc/PhD · Posted by u/markus_zhang
I completed a four-year honours level program at a research university. Math has always been one of my biggest passions, but I wanted some real world work experience before heading into grad school.
Fast-forward four years: I now work in software and, as others have said, I have tried and failed to find anyone who cares that I have studied high-level pure math/theoretical physics. So if I ever want back, it would be purely out of passion, not for any professional gains.
I have considered going back just to fulfill the passion side, but right now that passion does not outweigh the burden of potentially going without an income and paying out of savings to support myself and my family while I get a graduate degree, and I doubt that it ever will. I've done a lot of work to make peace with this fact of life. I have a lot of other passions, and I focus on those instead.
In theory, I think two good avenues for you to check out would be: 1) building physics and game engines at a company like Unity; 2) building the knowledge engine behind something like WolframAlpha/Mathematica. It's possible you'll need graduate school experience to be competitive for these jobs.
I'd guess that no matter what you're going to end up doing some kind of programming. I don't think formal education is required for this.