People love working remotely - <AUTHOR> https://usefyi.com/remote-work-report/ <comment><USER2> I was full-time WFH for 6 wonderful years. I was happy, my productivity was off the charts, I was saving tons of money because I didn't have to spend it on my car and clothes, I had extra time that I wasn't wasting on my commute, etc.

Then, we had a big shake-up. A bunch of senior people left, and new "leadership" came in to "transform" our workplace. All WFH was cancelled in our division (in spite of still being officially encouraged by corporate policy). The big boss said "a 15 minute fact-to-face is better than a multi- day email chain". My response to that is "What about the other 99.9% of my work time, when I don't need to interact with anyone?" Sigh.

Since I had left the office, they had redone everything to be open plan, low walls, brighter lights, white noise over the speakers, etc. Contractors are packed like sardines, the noise is insane. We're also "Agile" now, so we spend a ton of time in useless meetings.

I'm not very happy anymore.

<comment><USER3> 25 years of this and not once has someone responsible for implementing the open plan included themselves in that plan. Sales and marketing somehow require offices as well. I've heard of the mythical "president in a cubicle" but never seen it.

I would really have more respect if they just came out and said, "we're going cheap."

<comment><USER4> Our sales and marketing is in an open floor plan actually. HR, however, is not.

<comment><USER5> Same, HR and c level are the only ones left with real offices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Elephant in the room: how many of these people would prefer it to having a _private office_? Strangely, this article/survey/infographic never mentions that option.

I'd prefer remote work, too, over sitting in an open floorplan office, but I'd much prefer an actual office to either one. The easy "why" is: despite all the drawbacks, a lot of us will do pretty much anything to get out of an open floorplan.

<comment><USER7> I don't know. For me commute is the most pointlessly wasted time a person could do. And I have played lineage.

So as long as your commute is 10 seconds home office beats real any time. At least until we get the whole teleportation thing nailed down.

<comment><USER8> A benefit no one has mentioned, afternoon delights with the wife.

<comment><USER9> assuming your wife is also WFH or not working

<comment><USER10> Mine comes home for lunch. Quick break brightens everyone's day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _> Why Everyone Loves Remote Work ... 91% of remote workers said working remotely is a good fit for them._

There's a large gap between "the small fraction of workers who are remote love working remotely" and "everyone loves working remotely". My wife works remotely, and likes it a lot. I've worked remotely, don't like it at all, and am back in an office.

(For me, I'm just happiest if I'm in the same place as my coworkers. The place I worked at remotely seemed to do everything right, but I still felt disconnected and lonely.)

</comment><comment><USER12> I love remote work too. But I strongly believe it's not for everyone. Not even 50% of the population. It would be a mistake to assume that it's easy for everyone. For me, going in the office means putting my headset on and doing my work till I need to leave, while having as few interactions as possible; so there are pretty much only perks on working from home. Most people crave engagement without even realizing it.

It also really depends on the job and the company. If remote working means never going off, I think it's a company culture problem rather than a problem of remote working itself. It might be true that since remote work is relatively new the boundaries and the culture might not be fully formed yet for many companies but I think everyone that works remotely should realize this and set expectations and boundaries accordingly.

<comment><USER13> Totally agree. I love remote work but you have to be cut out for it. A lot of people aren't.

I also may enjoy going to an office more if I actually had an office with a window where i could feel comfortable instead of staring at a gray cube wall and listening to my loud neighbors the whole day.

<comment><USER14> These strange claims with no evidence. Working from home has to fight existing inertia, you couldn't WFH prior to the internet age, so no one did. Now it's possible and suddenly not everyone is cut out for it.

Not everyone is cut out for a 9 to 5, not everyone is a morning person, not everyone likes sitting in a chair all day. But they deal with it, because it's their job. The same will be 100% true for WFH, cut out for it or not, they'll adapt and make it work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've been working remotely for my entire freelance career (~20 years). Very occasionally I'll go on site for certain local clients but that's not the norm.

There's huge wins for working remotely that everyone has already stated but the isolation factor is real, especially if you're single.

It might seem fun for a while (couple of months) to not wear pants at work and be able to put in 4 super productive hours of work before 10am if you wake up early and those are great things but I have to wonder if working remotely has long term mental health issues.

To get human interaction I force myself to leave the house (I walk a few times a day for exercise), have some friends and hobbies, run errands etc. but it's not the same as being out of the house for 8-10+ hours a day. I'd like to see a test done on single people who have been working remotely for 5+ years and seeing if they have higher levels of general anxiety than anyone working a job where they need to commute full time.

Even if you have a private office where you spend 95% of your time alone for ~8 hours, that's so much different (arguably better) than not leaving your house or apartment except for occasional short duration activities.

<comment><USER16> I worked remotely as a consultant for 12 years, before going back to full-time in an office job. The main driving factor for going back was the lack of consistent social interaction. I started my remote career in San Francisco, where I had non-work activities that were very active in the local community for nearly a decade. I was going out regularly and had many close friends. Being in a walkable area with decent public transportation was perfect for ease of social interactions.

I later moved to a city in southern California, which was a more suburban environment. It wasn't walkable, you had to take a car everywhere and I didn't know anyone other than my partner when we first moved here. I now was in a situation where I had to re-establish my social connections without my previous activities (I had stopped being involved a few years before the move) and I also didn't have a work environment where I had also made many social connections over the years.

For the first 5+ years, this was fine, I was able to make a handful of new friends but many of them started moving because of cost of living and starting new families. At this point, I feel like it really started to become determinantal to my mental health. Honestly, it took a long time for me to even notice and admit it was affecting me, but eventually, it was pretty debilitating. This wasn't the only source, but it was a major factor to be sure.

That being said, after being back in the office for 2 years (they have pretty strong no work at home policy) I am ready to go back to remote work. I loved the benefits of remote work but I also now am much more aware of the importance of getting out and finding more social activities to balance this out. Also, I wouldn't go back as a consultant. Having a rotating cast of people you interact with made it much harder to form longer-term social bonds and also there was never dedicated time planned to meet in person at regular intervals, as a lot of remote-first companies do.

I love and really miss the flexibility of my schedule and if I can find an environment that supports stable interactions with people and I continue to re-engage in more social activities outside of work, I would jump back into remote work in a heartbeat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Remote work can be great, but it requires two key things. First is the ability to actually do useful work at home or other non-office location. This is not hard (I suspect some people working remotely do goof off, but I suspect those people are not super useful sitting in the office either).

Second, much harder, is the employer support. Direct manager of remote workers should know how to manage them (which is a rare skill) and be interested in doing it. It means parceling work in a larger, independent chunks, planning integration and communication as needed and spotting and resolving problems early enough with no/rare face to face contact (and face to face _does_ help for this).

Fail either of those and working remotely is inviting failure. My 2c.

<comment><USER18> >First is the ability to actually do useful work at home or other non-office location. This is not hard (I suspect some people working remotely do goof off, but I suspect those people are not super useful sitting in the office either)

You'd be wrong to suspect that. I am very productive at work but I just end up getting distracted at home. It _is_ hard. It's a mentality thing. Additionally, when I'm at the office, I can talk to another person and just ask a question in 5 seconds that would take possibly hours to get a reply otherwise.

<comment><USER17> Agreed, clarification needed. I meant "many/most", but made the sentence read as if I meant "everyone".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I like flexibility.

I don't want to be forced into a open floor plan office. But I also don't want to be full time remote, or forced into a singular private office.

I want to be able to go into an office when I feel like. Work out of a small office/conference room when it gets noisy. Sit in the open when it makes sense. Work from home when I need to be heads down.

I wish management would stop looking for the "productivity magic bullet" and just start offering options based on their employees. There is no one-size fits all solution here.

<comment><USER20> We do that, and to be fair, it's really positive. We have an open plan area, booths if you want quiet work, meeting rooms for, well, meetings - and then you can WFH whenever you want to.

It's a great approach, and I've enjoyed it for a good 3 years or so. It has the effect of damaging collaboration though - which for some roles is perfect (where I am, some roles you can be ignored for a good few days), but for ones like mine, it actually makes it hard. It also scratches out pretty much all sense of camaraderie, so it depends whether you want to feel connected with colleagues or not.

This kind of agile working is a double edged sword, the benefits give rise to different challenges, challenges I never thought I'd see as such previously.

That being said, working from home from 7:30-9, then heading to a coffee shop for an hour, then coming into the office for a bit, and then going home is freedom it'd be hard to give up.

<comment><USER21> Sounds like a dream. I went from private office to WFH (2 years), and now back on-site in a cube farm. My focus, productivity and happiness went from high to very high, then all time low. The cubes I sit in are a mixed environment with developers, reception, IT, etc. so the noise is almost unbearable. I tend to do my best work in complete silence (sometimes low music). Considering asking my boss for a private office and if not then seeking alternative employment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I have been working remotely for 3-4 years, and I am currently job hunting.

I did not like working remotely honestly. As an extrovert, I did not like the isolation. However, the major drawback was not being able to steer any of the tech/political discussion because I was remote. I had poor managers/CTO that needed a good smack to the head because they were too scatterbrained, but I was not there to do it. Impossible over Slack.

Now that I am job hunting again, I am wary of remote jobs. Of the three roles I am pursuing now, only one is remote. I have a good feeling about this one since there already is a sizable part of the office that is remote.

<comment><USER23> The cost savings to employers is so extraordinary ($0 per square foot in office space, $0 on HVAC, electricity, $0 on corporate wifi and the building's ethernet, $0 on cleaning bills, $0 on toilet paper, ink, toner, desks, etc etc - the employer literally is happy to buy all of the above), and to employees a free 5-20% reduction of work hours due to the total loss of mandatory unpaid commute, plus all transportation costs, that I can't help but think something must be missing.

Any employer that could leverage remote workers could have the equivalent of a $1 trillion headquarters employing 1 billion people, tomorrow: at a cost of exactly $0.

So it stands to reason that there is SOMETHING keeping remote-only workplaces from eating their competitors for lunch. Something turns off that growth or ruins the economics.

What is that something?

<comment><USER24> Here's my hot take:

In places that I've worked, WFH is usually reserved for divisions that are expected to be intrinsically-motivated high performers. Some companies can afford to be staffed with nothing but these types of people; other companies are not so lucky.

WFH only works if the people that are W-ingFH are motivated enough by their work to do it without being supervised.

And for some job roles in some organizations, the savings from not having to hold an office for a role, are more than offset by the lost productivity from having that role as a remote hire.

I'm not trying to say that all HN-ers are magical special large-brained unicorn employees; but I've worked at several places where certain key roles are staffed by people that couldn't figure out how to effectively work remotely if their lives depended on it.

<comment><USER22> > I've worked at several places where certain key roles are staffed by people > that couldn't figure out how to effectively work remotely if their lives > depended on it.

For me it was the opposite: I was highly productive, but the onsite managers did not know how to work effectively (if at all honestly)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Having millions of people regularly commuting into major cities is a disaster.

You create all this traffic, congestion on trains, sometimes people packed liked sardines for what? To sit in an office and work less than you would in the peace and quiet at home.

Much better if governments encouraged people to work from home, maybe have local hubs where people can go to if they can't work at home.

Cut down on the traffic and let people enjoy more of their lives.

When I don't WFH, I commute 4 hours a day, in and out of london - i'd rather spend that with my kids.

<comment><USER26> Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker is pushing a tax credit for employers who allow employees to work remotely as a strategy for reducing transportation congestion. I'm not sure I agree with the technique but it is an interesting idea to create financial incentives that encourage remote work.

[https://www.wbur.org/bostonomix/2019/07/25/governor-baker- wo...](https://www.wbur.org/bostonomix/2019/07/25/governor-baker-work-from- home-transportation-mbta)

<comment><USER27> That seems like it just subsidizes the cost of suburbanizing a city, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This piece has the feeling of being written by "every Friday is Hawaiian T-shirt day" after his employer went all remote and he needed a new task.

I have worked remotely more than not and it's not ideal. I suspect that if teleportation machines existed, then remote work wouldn't be a thing. Once you leave the office for the day (or leave the house to go to the office) then the logistical problems start (where do I find an affordable place to live.) Logistical problems for employees become logistical issues for employers. Working remotely is a trade-off and much of the time it works well enough.

I'm guessing that most early remote workers get relatively cushy setups with allowances for equipment and good salaries. As remote becomes more common, then I bet that gets squeezed. Employers shouldn't expect that the average person can make it work. If you don't have a dedicated quiet office area then it gets real difficult. Pets are a distraction. Other people in the home are a distraction (and it's not their fault, they have the right to "be at home".) If you have a significant other living at home full time and that person is in a grumpy mood, then good luck.

I feel that people who can make it work are those who either live in a cave with no other living creatures or they have the bread to get a big enough house and funds to create an operations center in a dedicated room. Everyone else should at least get a desk at a co-working space.

There's also a lot which gets lost in the communication of remote working. The communication you do have is much more mercenary. A group of special operators can carry out a mission together and even do so with mostly radio silence. But these people lose out of a lot of the more interesting elements of civilian life. Alice is an avatar and emoji's who can get stuff done in remote space. But you don't get to see her world class key short-cut skills from which you could open up a whole new way of thinking about your own operations. You don't see the real pressure your boss or manager is under and you get far less information about how things work because they won't be casually confiding in you at the water cooler. You don't need a NORAD display to show major events and weather conditions around the world to see what challenges your collaborators will be up against in getting things done the coming day.

Remote work kind of sucks. Where do I take the survey? ;)

<comment><USER29> Wow, there are a ton of assumptions in this argument, and you seem to be projecting a lot of your personal beliefs and feeling as well. I don't have children, but my girlfriend and pets have never bothered me or been a distraction nearly to the extent of distractions that occur in an office. I definitely don't have a big house and lots of money to build an "operations center." I have a little room that I use as my office, homelab, and to home a few other hobbies. I would absolutely hate working in a co-working space, and my productivity would certainly go down. Of your examples of "lost communication," none of those are things I feel I would be missing out on and I've never had issues communicating with my coworkers remotely.

<comment><USER28> There's a difference between being distracted at home and being distracted at the office. If you're getting distracted at the office, you're still doing your job. It might even specifically be your job description to be distracted. If you get distracted all day at work and get nothing scheduled done, then you still did your job. If you get distracted half the day at home (still less than a full day of distractions at the office,) then you have a major problem which is entirely your fault.

> I have a little room that I use as my office, homelab, and to home a few > other hobbies.

That you have a spare room is entirely my point. That's a luxury that not everyone has. If you don't have this, then you are at a disadvantage for being successful with remote work. A workplace is a sort of equalizer, though certainly not perfect. Rich or poor, all you have to do to work at McDonald's is show up. The workplace provides everything else. Sure, your employer may provide allowances for your home setup, but not all will do that and they certainly can't create a spare room in your house. The closest they can get is to pay for a co-working space.

> Of your examples of "lost communication," none of those are things I feel I > would be missing out on and I've never had issues communicating with my > coworkers remotely.

It's undisputable that you lose information with remote communication vs face to face communication. We communicate with body language and emotion which doesn't carry over well even in a video feed. People are more willing to share certain things in different modes of communication. Some people don't like to use messaging at all. Remote work is still "good enough" but you do lose information. Losing information doesn't necessarily create "issues communicating with my coworkers remotely" but it does have an adverse effect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think it's especially popular in the US where they've always had long commutes. I work remotely from time to time, and it works fine when I have a specific task to focus on, but I've never managed to replace the spontaneous talks or meetings by a whiteboard with any meeting tool (be it Slack, Hangouts, Skype, Webex, you name it).

<comment><USER31> I definitely agree with the part about long commutes. Between the drive to work and having to put on work clothes, brush my hair, etc, it's about 1.5-2 hours out of my day that is completely wasted when I can't work from home. I'm more productive at home as well, since I can take breaks as needed instead of having to look busy for 8 hours and getting bored after 4 hours at the office.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> What I hate is being lonely. They're shutting down our offices for cost savings. As such I've basically been straight work from home.

Working from home reminds me of the isolation of being homeschooled. I love having the flexibility to work remote on certain days, for example when I need to bang out a bunch of code. But, having a place to interact with people is invaluable for me.

I imagine countless others feel the same way, hence why companies still see offices as having value. So, for all the remote work evangelists on here: what do you do to counteract isolation?

<comment><USER33> Try working outside of your home, perhaps in a co-working space or coffee shop.

<comment><USER34> How anyone can do productive work developing software in a coffee shop, presumably on a laptop, is completely beyond me.

<comment><USER32> I have ADHD. I used to be the same as you. Now that it's treated I can write code in a busy cafe. I too didn't understand how people could be productive in a cafe. But apparently all our minds work differently (that's totally non- sarcastic, I'm always amazed at how hard empathy is)!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I've seen there are plenty of comments that disagree with that statement. I agree, though.

I love working remotely. I've been working remotely for a bit less than a year now. I had some few months break at the beginning of this year where I was working on my own product, but I was still at home.

Why do I love it? Well, my wife is staying at home with me and we get to spend so much more time together. I think over that period of time we've got closer together. We can chat during the day, eat meals together and stuff like that, it's super cool.

More reasons? If I can work asynchronously (not being dependent on the rest of my team) I can schedule my day according to my needs. Need a one hour walk outside? Well, why not:) Even though it's not my company I'm working for I kind feel like I am the boss. I don't have people staring at my screen, I don't have people talking next to me, I can go to a shop and prepare a nice breakfast if I want to. It's really good.

I do agree that it gets a bit boring without a chitchat with colleagues. But I try to compensate for it by meeting with my friends and family regularly.

</comment><comment><USER36> [Disregarding the click-bait title and & related bits in the article...]

Given the Right Set of Parameters™ (omitting for brevity's sake; much has been written about them), Remote Work can be the "panacea", and a path towards a more serene approach to work and life. FWIW, I'm a long-time remote worker myself, and won't nonchalantly say "would recommend it to a friend" without having a serious understanding of the said friend's propensity for it—lest I would lead them down a steep slippery slope.

The boring truth any reasonably experienced remote worker knows is that to be able to sustainably do it in the _long run_ —which is the critical bit—requires a certain "psychological profile": ability to tolerate spells of solitude, having the discipline to do the Right Thing when no one is watching, and so on.

So, saying "everyone loves it" is reckless. Not least because the article's sample size is a paltry 486 people.

</comment><comment><USER37> I don't think remote work is that good. It has its benefits like having more time, flexible schedule and work from where you want but this comes at a price: you work alone every day, your colleagues are in different timezones, you need to set hard rules on your work schedule and socializing is a must. Think of all the things you get for granted working from an office: colleagues, events, pair programming, face to face meetings, small talk breaks. Again I do agree the remote work has its benefits but everything comes at a cost.

</comment><comment><USER38> For me it's: Office with my own office > Working from home > My own cube > the middle of a busy construction site > open office

I'm currently in a cube, which is miles better than open office. I say I like working from home, only because I don't foresee getting my own office anytime soon.

<comment><USER39> I actually feel strangely productive working in busy cafes. Even though there's a lot of noise and people moving around I'm able to tune everything out. However in an open office because I know the people moving around and the noise has the potential to involve me I have a very hard time concentrating.

<comment><USER38> Couldn't agree more. For me the cafes aren't feasible due to confidentiality, but not knowing or caring about the people making the noise is a lot better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I am astounded that the only mention of pants is a tweet regarding "working in lululemon pants" as being a perk. I thought one of the chief benefits of remote work was that pants were entirely optional!

<comment><USER41> For me the main perk of remote work is that the status of pants is by design entirely unknowable.

In practice, this also covers data points such as status or style of shirt, whether I've showered that day, where on the planet I happen to be, whether I'm actually in a pool, how far from civilization I am, or whether I've injured my leg and didn't tell anyone because it's not a big deal and I don't mind typing while my leg hurts, or whether I have loud death metal playing at top volume.

I'm content with all of those things remaining a mystery for my coworkers because none are correlated with quality and timeliness of my work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Working remote for 4 out of 5 days is the sweet spot for me. It's good to come into the office and do a brainstorming and sprint planning session over a physical whiteboard once a week, but also to just do relationship maintenance with colleagues and talk to other people since loneliness can be a real problem over time when working remote all the time.

</comment><comment><USER43> To those complaining about the commute. You're complaining about city and transportation architecture, not workplace design.

We are social creatures. I don't understand the complete lack of addressing the issue: 8 hours a day I'm cut off from people except virtually. Prisons that force virtual visitation are criticized for this exact issue.

<comment><USER29> You're really comparing prisons that only allow virtual communication to working remotely? Lets brainstorm a list of ways that you can see people while working from home that you couldn't from prison.

1\. If you have any family members that will be home throughout the day you can see them

2\. You can step outside and talk to your neighbors

3\. You can take a 10 minute break to walk to a local store/park

4\. You can go out to lunch at restaurant

5\. You can invite anyone to come over at any time

6\. Before and after work, you can go anywhere you want, do anything you want, and see anyone you want as well as on weekends

So it seems it's not quite like a prison... not to mention you can also call, text, video chat, IM, or communicate virtually at any time rather than only during certain periods of time with certain people as told by the prison.

Also, if you're working in an office, how much time are you actually spending socializing and interacting with coworkers vs getting your work done?

I understand that some people have a need to interact with people daily, but many of us prefer the quiet/isolation while we work, and comparing remote work to prison is ridiculous

<comment><USER44> Many people need more than just their immediate family. Neighbors are a terrible source of social interaction. Where I am, our neighbors refuse to interact with us except to complain about something like noise or street parking.

Been to a park during the day? It's nanny's and mom's. How many are going to be like, "yeah, random dude approaching me and trying to chat me up. Great!" Most are sketched out unless you got a kid with you. I've been in this situation and they look at you very weirdly. (How desperate must you be to go to a park to chat with moms?)

Lunch requires friends who also can do such a thing. I go out to lunch with coworkers very often.

You can invite anyone who isn't working or can work remotely with you. Sure, I did do this for a bit. I'd drive 30 minutes away to see my friend and we'd work remotely together about once a week. But then I was actually going further than my commute to work! Hah!

And so can anyone with a non remote job.

You can have the quiet and isolation while not working remotely. It's just that it's not valued in many workplaces anymore.

BTW, I don't get how people think that working remotely means isolation and quiet?? When I worked remotely, there were plenty of days where I had to take tons of long Skype calls, had to chat endlessly with people over IM, and then send more emails on top of it. I barely got any "work" done and didn't get to focus because everything required my attention.

Isolation and quiet is more than an environment. It includes details around a culture around workplace communication styles and how much you prioritize immediate responses.

<comment><USER29> Those were obviously just examples demonstrating that his comparison was absurd. Do you really agree with him that remote work is as bad as prisons that only allow virtual visitation?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> > _" 91% of remote workers said working remotely is a good fit for them."_

Right, and 97% of current ferret owners say that ferrets make great pets [0]. I'd like the survey to include people who worked remotely in the past and no longer do. Count me in that group. I worked remotely for a six months at a remote-friendly but not remote-first company and here were my findings:

* It was lonely being at home. And I wasn't as productive. After a month, I rented space at a WeWork, which helped with both problems. But it requires that you be outgoing to meet people who work in your space but aren't your coworkers.

* I didn't like being physically separated from my colleagues. It meant that I wasn't privy to many of the important conversations in the company.

* I was always afraid that come a round of layoffs that it's easier to fire the folks who work 1000 miles away.

* In a company that isn't remote first, it limits your career growth (most of the time).

* Maybe it's just me, but I find it much easier to explain difficult technical things in person. Yes, screenshares are very helpful, but sometimes a hard problem involves going back and forth between monitors, for example. I also like being able to use a whiteboard [1].

* As a software engineer, it's easy to get siloed into only communicating with people on your team and remote work only increases this tendency. If you work in an office, you meet people from other parts of the business in the cafeteria/break room/etc. and that allows you to have a more full understanding of the company. And it's my belief that if you don't understand the business, then you don't understand what your software should be doing.

Overall, I didn't hate working remotely but it wasn't great either. I would do it again for a short period of time (e.g. a year while my wife is on sabbatical) without hesitation, but I personally didn't like it for the long term. That said, the ability to work remotely _on occasion_ is something that's very important to me.

I personally wouldn't apply to jobs at remote-only companies, but I definitely think this is the way to go if you want to make a career out of working remote as it solves a few of the problems above.

[0] Not saying that they don't, for some people. Just saying that asking people who currently own ferrets means your sample is biased.

[1] Sometimes old fashioned is best. One of my companies moved to a new office and was thinking of installing "smart boards" at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars, thinking that the engineers would love them. To their surprise, the engineers protested and asked for good quality "dumb" boards instead.

<comment><USER46> I have worked from home for many years now and identify with ALL those drawbacks, but I still wouldn't want to change to a full time in-office position. The drawbacks of that (mostly an hour wasted commuting both in the evening and in the afternoon) is just too big.

Being able to work remotely on occasion, or perhaps the ability to _not_ work remotely on occasion (e.g. work remotely from a coworking space 2 days a week and from home 3 days a week, or work in the real office 1 day per week) would be ideal.

<comment><USER45> > "Being able to work remotely on occasion, or perhaps the ability to not work > remotely on occasion (e.g. work remotely from a coworking space 2 days a > week and from home 3 days a week, or work in the real office 1 day per week) > would be ideal."

Being able to work in an office one day a week makes a big difference. Some things are easier in person, but they can be delayed until that day you are in the office. I had a boss at a previous company who did two days at home and three in the office and it was an ideal mix. He could get the benefits of being able to do things face to face and the benefits of being able to do deep work at home (personally, I do deep work better in the office, but I understand why many people do better at home).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I work remotely 2 days a week. I'd quite like to go to 3 and might soon.

But without being in the office a couple of days a week for collaboration, a lot of stuff just wouldn't work. Conference calls, slack and email are no substitute for the face-to-face conversations that can resolve blocking issues in a few seconds versus a few hours.

I'd definitely recommend partial remote working. Not sure I'd want it fully.

<comment><USER48> > Conference calls, slack and email are no substitute for the face-to-face > conversations that can resolve blocking issues in a few seconds versus a few > hours

I don't doubt this is a real challenge for certain teams or types of work. However, in 5+ years of working remotely at fully-distributed orgs I have never experienced this. Not once have I encountered a scenario where being in a room together would have dramatically changed/improved/whatever the discussion. Perhaps it just comes down to having a team that can communicate effectively without being face-to-face, but this always interested me as a common criticism of remote work.

<comment><USER47> > Perhaps it just comes down to having a team that can communicate effectively

Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if you are working in a more functional team than the one I'm consulting/contracting with right now. I'm not going to name the organisation when I'm bad-mouthing them so much, but there are systemic problems going right up to the top.

If you asked me to name somewhere with smart, competent people throughout the org, working well within a lightweight but functional agile delivery process, I wouldn't name the folks I'm with right now. There are a handful of competent developers (all the devs really) and one or two decent ops guys, but everyone from the PO to the Security Architect, to the QA folks is a walking disaster zone, poor communication being a big part of the problem.

I'm just glad delivery comes relatively soon and I'm not trying to build a career with them...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I don't believe people love remote work as much as the article suggests, but this does match my own experience.

I absolutely love it. I used to work at a very chatty office before they let me work remotely. My productivity and ability to think deeply about problems has skyrocketed.

Remote work isn't a catch all solution but it can be really effective if you match it to the right job.

</comment><comment><USER6> "63% of US companies now have remote workers, according to a 2018 Upwork Study."

Hmm, I don't believe this number. According to the SBA [1], there are over 30 million small businesses in the USA (averaging just under 2 people each). These constitute the vast majority (99.9%) of US companies.

You probably can't do "an online survey of 1,005 workforce hiring decision makers obtained through a third-party, independent online sample" and get useful information about 63% of _all_ companies. This sounds like Sample Bias galore. There aren't even 19M (.63*30M) companies with offices in this country.

[1]: [https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/advocacy/2018-Small-...](https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/advocacy/2018-Small- Business-Profiles-US.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER50> If companies paid for commute time I'd feel a lot less strongly about in- office requirements.

</comment><comment><USER51> I actually prefer working at home in the morning and coming in to the office only in the afternoon. As a software developer, it allows me to focus on my software development and finish the tickets in my sprint without being stopped by support requests, wishlist feature requests, and other distractions from co-workers.

When someone has to put a request in writing on Slack or with an email instead of just going to my cubicle and bugging me, it makes it less likely they will bother me with stuff that is not important.

In terms of a daily standup, they work just as well using a video conference call, or, better yet, as a written report posted to Slack every day.

</comment><comment><USER52> My current job -- now 12 years -- has always been work from home, but I'm not sure if it's necessarily "remote work."

I say this because this company has no office space anywhere. EVERYONE works from home. We're small (~10), but spread out over the whole US. I have coworkers I've never actually seen in the flesh, and I only see my boss a couple times a year.

This works very well for us. I'd have a hard time going back to an office. But it's not "remote" in the sense that some folks are in an office and some folks aren't, which I think makes our WFH different from "remote work."

</comment><comment><USER53> I've been WFH for about 6 years.

I enjoy the trust I am given to get work done that I promise to get done. I'm in a different TZ, so I enjoy the quiet time I get when the others on the team aren't working. However, as hard as we try, I still miss conversations that happen away from a computer or phone. Also, I do sometimes miss working in person with the people I work with. Finally, I do miss having a proper lab. I look around at the RF equipment laying around my home office and get a bit depressed.

Remote work works. Anyone who says it doesn't has an agenda. Like non-remote work, you just have to hire the right people.

</comment><comment><USER54> I'm currently remote for a grant funded initiative at a University. The work is great, but I'm the sole developer. I move around a lot and don't keep a home office. I like it, it's technically satisfying most of the time, but there are only so many days I can spent _just_ working through technical problems at a coffee shop. It's also really great if I want to go off on a road trip or something. I'd like a bit of diversity in the types of problems I'm working on, and miss building something up with people who have different skills or knowledge than me. So I'm looking for work that's at least partly onsite, but that lets me do whatever I want to isolate myself and work through a problem on my own if necessary (in Vancouver if anyone's looking). At a previous position, eyebrows were raised when I chose to take my laptop away from my desk to sit in the lobby and code so I could get away from Bill, the jackass who brought in a mechanical keyboard and screamed through sales calls on his bluetooth earpiece. Bill, of course wasn't a jackass. I eventually brought him aside and simply asked him to be a bit quieter.

</comment><comment><USER55> I am in the process of making a major life change to focus on remote first work. I've recently moved and I am currently looking to purchase a house in a small town from where I plan to work full-time.

I think the caveats people bring up are serious and require careful consideration. They are part of why I am trying to find a company that is "remote-first" and I would prefer to avoid companies where I am one of a handful of remote employees while the rest of the team is co-located in one or more offices.

My major fears are:

* I suffer from isolation and loneliness and it impacts my mental well-being

* I find my career progression stalled

* I miss out on more lucrative compensation

* I find my coworkers making decisions without consulting me

* I experience an increase in general anxiety

* I find my productivity and focus to be significantly less

* I am unable to balance work/life when they are combined in the same place

The worst case scenario is that a combination of my fears being realized forces me to recognize my unsuitability for remote work. I would then be stuck in a smaller city with less opportunity, potentially with a mortgage. I might be forced to sell my home for a loss, to move back into a bigger city and to attempt to find a normal job to rebuild my retirement savings.

My plan to mitigate these is to be aware of my fears and to put into place strategies that can deal with each one. I believe that companies that plan to be remote-reliant in the future will need expertise at the management level to deal with those issues throughout their workforce. Where there is legitimate fear there is also opportunity. I believe that all of the problems associated with remote work can be handled if they are openly discussed.

</comment><comment><USER56> IRC for whoever is live + good email lists + discipline on wiki|docs + good PM/ticket communications is faster and more reliable than anything in person. Non-remote is a productivity disadvantage to people who need fast communication. A team of people online can say more with no interupt-crosstalk that cripples in-person "collaboration".

</comment><comment><USER57> This article doesn't answer the headline statement. It just says people like it, would recommend it, and that record is in the rise. Simple survey stuff. Doesn't actually ever attempt to answer the question "why" people like it. Except at the very end, with the one question "top 3 reasons to recommend remote work"

<comment><USER58> Looks like an advertisement piece more than an actual research.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I work very far from my office, and on the 1-2 days a week I do go in, it's an hour and a half each way. For the wife, it's 2 full hours each way. Totally not worth it day to day, but it's a nice change of pace for the 1-2 days I go in. Keeps things fresh, and I take a bus the whole way there.

That being said, if my job was, say, a 20 minute commute, I'd go in probably 3 or 4 days a week, assuming the office was nice. I prefer working in person at times, it really depends on what I'm doing, but the option is what makes it work for me. 100% remote would only make me happy for so long, I think.

Also, rarely discussed in these types of posts is that your social abilities definitely diminish if you work from home a lot and rarely interact with people. I've noticed it in myself and made a conscious push to get into the office more often to offset that.

</comment><comment><USER46> I have done full time WFH for several years. My takeaways are now.

\- It's not all positive, but the upsides _can_ be bigger than the downsides.

\- If you have kids age 1-9 say, that need to be dropped off at school/daycare then WFH is fantastic. The commute time I instead spend working means I can drop kids off at 8 and pick them up and have dinner on the table at 5.

\- I'd not want to do it full time if I did _not_ have family. The isolation is real even though I do video calls a large part of the day.

\- If had a choice I'd do 1-2 days in an office, but unfortunately it's too expensive to pay a full time desk in a co working space and use it just part time. If I didn't need a big screen etc I'd probably go for a part time seat in a coworking space.

</comment><comment><USER60> If nothing else, remote work means much less sleep deprivation for a lot of people, because they can wake up a bit later.

If you have kids to take to school it might not change that much, but if you can take them close to the start of classes it might mean an extra 30 minutes to one hour of sleep a day.

No wonder people work and feel so much better, even if its due to that simple factor alone.

But of course, there are other things that come to play like the ability to concentrate, limited interruptions, being able to eat proper food, etc.

</comment><comment><USER61> Summarized thread takeaways are:

1\. Those that WFH mostly prefer to WFH. Not really a surprise. Akin to "Those that like cooking enjoy making food at home".

2\. Plenty of personal reasons why WFH working habits should be generalized across everybody because someone prefers it for themselves.

3\. WFH works out better when home is already a convenient place to work; not necessarily if someone lives in a 80 sq ft room or wants to meet people/do things in a certain place.

</comment><comment><USER62> Most comments here are "remote work is great, but"... That's ignoring the inevitability of technologies. This time it's different. Working from home was the norm for centuries, then the industrial revolution happened, and then the internet happened. Nowadays, way too many people don't work from home, _for no good reason_. As software keeps on eating everything, remote work will cause major disruptions in the way we live, the places we live and our lifestyles. For those of us that learned to work remotely, it is an irreversible change (and polls show that too). Lifestyle adapts to work, not the other way around. As such, we should be thinking about ways in which societies and lifestyles will switch from the 9-5/mon-fri, to something that is very asynchronous yet vibrant and fulfilling. Going back to the office just a dumb desperate solution, considering you are adding back commute time, office politics, useless distractions etc etc. Communication tools are already too good to be ignored. (Also, remote work is an onramp to freelancing/consulting/whatever. Because, if you can work remotely for one employer, why not work for another?)

Most of the complaints such as isolation and disconnection are because _society has not adapted to remote working_ rather than the merits of RW itself. Imagine a world where everyone whose job allows it works remotely. That 's basically the majority of workers[1]. Imagine the change in the pace of life and thousands of people feeling as lonely as you. The precipitous fall of real estate prices as commercial properties become vacant. The empty roads that don't need more than one lane. PEople reconnecting with their neighbors by spending a lot more time in physical proximity. Preschools and even schools becoming obsolete and replaced with home/small group schooling. Our current lifestyles are hostile to remote work. We don't want to return to the closed societies of small villages, but we also want to make working at home humane. We should be able to work on this problem and i look forward to the things that people will invent in the next few years. Changes like this have happened before

1\. [https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/4187653/7825806/IMG+...](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/4187653/7825806/IMG+graph+1+news+EMPL+A10.png/6c792596-03bb-430a-8807-99c15bf619d8?t=1508758339798)

</comment><comment><USER63> I love remote work, I really do, but it's definitely not for everyone or a golden grail of work structure - I've even put my thoughts about it on my website: [https://lukaszkups.net/notes/truth-about-remote- work/](https://lukaszkups.net/notes/truth-about-remote-work/)

(shameless share, but please let me know what do you think about it if you want ;) )

</comment><comment><USER64> At our company (I'm a cofounder), we encourage remote. Some people need f2f once in a while so there is a co-working space we have for that. I split my time 50-50 at office and home. Saved 1.5 hours a day in commute compared to my previous job. It is hard to scale well, unless we built a strong culture of communication and spell out a few things.

</comment><comment><USER65> Without making a statement for or against remote work, this:

> People like to harp on the failings of remote work. Loneliness. > Distractions. Not unplugging. Lack of collaboration. Dog hair.

> But in reality, people love working remotely. And they're willing to forgive > its failings because it's just that good.

does _not_ follow from a survey asking remote workers if they like working remotely.

</comment><comment><USER66> Has there been a survey of employers/managers/owners, assessing how remote work compares to non-remote? In terms of meeting goals, productivity, team cohesion, etc?

I'm all about a workers-first mentality, but workers and managers' perception of remote work could be vastly different.

</comment><comment><USER67> My main problem with remote work is there seems to be a lack of upward mobility. Most of the interactions I've had that have accelerated my career were face to face and wouldn't have happened over slack or email. Something to consider.

</comment><comment><USER68> I've worked remotely for 9 years. It is the single biggest factor in what I love about my work.

If I ever change jobs, the ability to work remote is going to be very high on my must-have list.

</comment><comment><USER69> Yes, but do their employers? It is easy to come up with things that employees or employers will love, it is pleasing the two groups simultaneously that is hard.

</comment><comment><USER70> I expected there will be more counter arguments to this, surprised that the most of the people agreed. Now, am I weird ?!

</comment><comment><USER71> Remote for 15 years, twice as a CTO/co-founder and there is no amount you could pay me to go back.

</comment><comment><USER72> I think the main gain from remote work would be to pour tax money into the countryside.

</comment><comment><USER73> Honest headline "People who choose to work remotely love working remotely."

</comment><comment><USER74> That's because, guess what, sitting in an office all day sucks.

</comment><comment><USER75> Working part-time is also a game changer.

</comment><comment><USER76> I don't

</comment><comment><USER77> Many friends from Latin America work via Upwork, but they barely make enough for a living as they charge around 30% commission (end-to-end). I would rather look for companies that focus on remote work. For example, I have a Mexican friend working remotely from SF at www.lionmint.com/en. It's a german IT consultancy that focuses on digital platform development. He told me they pay great rates and have top-notch projects.

</comment><comment><USER78> I "love" it in the sense that I can get paid while watching Netflix, playing games and do whatever I want. I instantly start slacking off and all my working hours become a game to make it look like I'm working when I'm not. This doesn't happen when I'm in a office where I'm "forced" to work.

Yeah, you can slack off at the office as well but why? I obviously can't do any meaningful leisure activities there. And yes, it's a tooling and management issue but I haven't come across a single organisation where it's not possible to game it unless your job output is extremely easy to measure.

I believe this is way more common than people think.

<comment><USER79> Found the manager.

<comment><USER78> So it's completely unbelievable that working from home makes some people (some, not all) slacking instead of working? I believe in remote work but it's not just for everyone like so many people seem to believe. I'm a living example of a dysfunctional remote worker.

<comment><USER80> Working from home doesn't make you slack off. You make you slack off. Own up to your own decisions.

While I don't want to flame you or attack you personally, I probably wouldn't want to work with someone with your attitude on either a distributed team or in an office.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Etacts (YC W10) Builds What I Want - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/05/etacts-builds-what-i-want.html

<comment><USER2> I sent an e-mail to the guys at Etacts thanking them for building what I wanted (their main product). It's amazing to me that Gmail hasn't built something like this yet.

Now, what'd I really like to see is Etacts on top of Apple Mail. That probably wouldn't make sense for them, but it's what I want.

<comment><USER3> I'd love this for Apple Mail too.

<comment><USER4> Just curious, why do you use Apple Mail instead of Gmail (with offline) or even Mailplane?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can you really trust a list of "important contacts" that's auto-generated? If I send a single mail to, say, an investor, and they reply to me, I want that unanswered reply to be in the list - even if I've only emailed them once.

Can you force etacts to consider certain emails as important?

<comment><USER6> They don't use the word "important", they use the words "top contacts", which I think more accurately refers to "frequent contacts." So you would know ahead of time that the investor's email isn't going to be in that list.

<comment><USER5> I'm not quite sure why I need a tool to remind me to stay in touch with people I'm already in touch with all the time... It's the others I need reminders for!

<comment><USER4> Hey swombat (super-wombat?) You can set reminders on any of your contacts in our interface (in fact, you can sort by days since contact to find people that you've lost touch with).

It also includes people you used to email a lot but have forgotten about recently.

Howie

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is one reason why developing for the browser is awesome. Even in the case of a browser extension, you can roll out changes so fast.

</comment><comment><USER8> The only problem I have with Etacts is that it forces you to use Google Chrome. At least Rapportive is integrated in Mailplane as well.

Don't get me wrong, I love Chrome, but once you start doing font management (I'm a designer) on your computer Chrome start screwing things up

<comment><USER4> We have a Firefox extension and bookmarklets for other browsers....?</comment></comment>


I Visited 49 Sites. Hundreds of Trackers Followed Me - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/23/opinion/data-internet-privacy-tracking.html <comment><USER2> And all in the service of vacuuming up tiny fractions of pennies in advertising revenue.

What a silly, fragile business model whose days are numbered.

It's amazing to consider how much revenue has been generated, predicated on completely unnecessary and (now) easily disabled browser features.

I have to imagine that like the cigarette manufacturers of yore, companies whose lifeblood is based on this kind of nonsense are kept up at night wondering where the money will come from when this house of cards collapses.

<comment><USER3> Sorry to disappoint you my friend, but the ads and paid subscriptions are just a small fraction of their income. The real money maker is in tracking user behavior and selling that aggregated data.

If worst comes to worse, they can just track your behavior on their website alone.

<comment><USER4> I keep seeing this claim. Where to sell this data and how much for example 1 million unique visitora / month worth?

<comment> vertex-four User data for a single website is probably not worth much. User data for every single website a user visits in a day? A bit more. Hence, advertising networks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What we need is a way to jam these trackers with generated data to the point that they are useless. Something like [https://trackthis.link](https://trackthis.link), but running 24x7 on countless computers, phones, raspberry pi, hacked routers, and virtual machines.

<comment><USER6> You can install the AdNauseam browser extension - it's a fork of uBlock Origin that can automatically click links for you. The idea is that you click on every single ad link while you browse the web, and completely muck up all of the data that trackers have on you.

[https://adnauseam.io/](https://adnauseam.io/)

<comment><USER7> I really don't understand how that tool is useful. So AdBlock blocks an ad, then this tool sweeps in and undoes any privacy benefit you get from not loading the tracker, AND wastes your bandwidth at the same time.

Edit: Yes, I understand that it is annoying for the ad networks to have to register lots of wasted clicks, but that doesn't benefit me at all. It just makes my own browsing slower. I figure at least 20% of the people browsing the web would have to use the extension for it to make any difference to the ad networks, and it's probably higher than 20%. That's never going to happen.

<comment><USER8> This paper by the creators of AdNauseum explains their approach and philosophy - [http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1873/IWPE17_paper_23.pdf](http://ceur- ws.org/Vol-1873/IWPE17_paper_23.pdf)

Individual people opting out of tracking doesn't meaningfully attack the ad tracking infrastructure, and will always be limited to a small percentage of technically proficient users who care about privacy.

A collective approach feeds bad data into their infrastructure, making their data less meaningful for ad tracking and also helping protect the privacy of everyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I imagine an alternative history where browsers simply never had the feature of cookies and similar tracking mechanisms available to servers or domains other than the primary one in the URL bar. Or even more severely, where all assets and scripts had to be loaded from the same domain. That would have various downsides but would also have created a much less tracking prone web.

<comment><USER10> I wish there were a way to enforce this client side.

<comment><USER11> uBlock Origin and uBlock Matrix can both enforce it. But you won't be able to read the news or check the weather.

<comment><USER12> That's why you use AdNauseum instead. I read news, check the weather, and generally live my life. Combine it with ExplodingCookies and life is better than it was.

<comment><USER11> In my understanding, it's trivially easy to identify and filter out those fake clicks.

Also I don't want to screw with advertisers' perception of who I am. If anything, I really like how ads are actually relevant to me -- it's a lot better than the days of penis pill banners. I just want them to stop following me around so closely and putting my "anonymized" data at risk of exfiltration by hackers or governments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Heya. I work for Heap (mentioned in the article). If anyone has questions for me. Let me know.

Heap doesn't sell or share data to third parties, we don't do any cross site identifiers, or fingerprinting. We aren't in the ad business, that's Google and FB.

In other threads folks have said "but you can't control what might be done with Heap data in the future" that's right. I'm happy and pretty secure, and will fall on a sword if Heap ever becomes an unethical company.

(I'm commuting for the next hour but will get back to reply soon)

<comment><USER14> > In other threads folks have said "but you can't control what might be done > with Heap data in the future" that's right. I'm happy and pretty secure, and > will fall on a sword if Heap ever becomes an unethical company.

This doesn't help me one bit, though :/

<comment><USER13> What would?

<comment><USER15> At the very least, a credible precommitment that Heap won't transfer data to other companies in the event of a merger, and that if Heap goes out of business that data will be destroyed.

Here's what Heap's privacy policy says:

> We may share or transfer your information in connection with a prospective > or actual sale, merger, transfer or other reorganization of all or parts of > our business.

You're banking on Heap being an ethical company forever, yet your privacy policy basically gives you carte-blanch rights to sell my data to any other company in the event of a merger. Heap runs into tough times and Oracle/Google buys them out? Any privacy guarantee you make here is immediately out the window.

You're asking people here to trust you, while your privacy policy explicitly states in legal language that you're allowed to stab us in the back. If you're not planning to stab us in the back, then why is that language necessary?

<comment><USER13> This is a great idea. I'm going to try to find if any other companies have language like you describe.

I understand that you are assuming any acquisition will lead to some malicious or unethical intent, but I'm not so cynical, that said, it's be nice to have some protections.

<comment><USER14> FYI: many other companies do have this exact language in their privacy policy and treat their data as an asset during acquisition negotiations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can't wait for ad tracking to be regulated. The rising awareness about how tracked we are suggest the Wild West days are coming to an end.

<comment><USER17> Don't hold your breath. Ad tech is what keeps the internet free. You might be willing to pay for content to keep from getting tracked, but consider the billions of folks out there that can barely afford to get online in the first place.

<comment><USER18> Fund publishing as a public good.

<comment><USER19> Publishing of what? Public funding of publishing isn't a complete non-starter, and can work very well in narrow cases, but there are serious problems involved in the state spinning up an infrastructure where it decides what speech in general is worthy of state funding. It's disheartening to see how common it is to see people throw out a vague "make the gov't do it" without acknowledging or grappling with the deep fundamental questions about how this would be implemented.

<comment><USER18> Publishing of everything generally public. "To publish" is literally "to make public": [https://www.etymonline.com/word/publish](https://www.etymonline.com/word/publish)

I'm aware this is an uphill battle. It may well be a hill I choose to die on.

For further thoughts / arguments:

Many of the arguments for Sci-Hub generalise to all information. This piece also specifically invokes the arguments of the CUNY Graduate Center and Joseph Stiglitz (Nobel laureate economist) on information as a public good:

"What the academic publishing industry calls "theft" the world calls "research": Why Sci-Hub is so popular" [https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4p2rwk/what_th...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4p2rwk/what_the_academic_publishing_industry_calls_theft/)

Generally:

"Why Information Goods and Markets are a Poor Match" [https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2vm2da/why_inf...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2vm2da/why_information_goods_and_markets_are_a_poor_match/)

"The Medium Is the Message: how the technological and revenue environments shape content" [https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/278e2o/the_med...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/278e2o/the_medium_is_the_message_how_the_technological/)

"Forbes asks: Why do programmers hate advertising so much?" [https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/24107v/forbes_...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/24107v/forbes_asks_why_do_programmers_hate_advertising/)

"A Modest Proposal: Universal Online Media Payment Syndication" [https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1uotb3/a_modes...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1uotb3/a_modest_proposal_universal_online_media_payment/)

"Specifying a Universal Online Media Payment Syndication System" [https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2h0h81/specify...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2h0h81/specifying_a_universal_online_media_payment/)

"Richard Stallman's "Internet Sharing" content syndication proposal (2012)" [https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3p0bp6/richard...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3p0bp6/richard_stallmans_internet_sharing_content/) [https://stallman.org/articles/internet-sharing- license.en.ht...](https://stallman.org/articles/internet-sharing- license.en.html)

A general problem of advertising, not otherwise addressed, is that it tends to produce shit content. Though this essay doesn't directly address that, it's very much a Tyranny of the Minimum Viable User dynamic: [https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/69wk8y/the_tyr...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/69wk8y/the_tyranny_of_the_minimum_viable_user/)

Another is that advertising tends strongly toward oppressive rather than liberating informational regimes: [https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6b32jo/what_ma...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6b32jo/what_makes_an_information_regime_oppressive_vs/)

And problems with other proposed payment alternatives, such as micropayments:

"Repudiation as the micropayments killer feature (Not)" [https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4r683b/repudia...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4r683b/repudiation_as_the_micropayments_killer_feature/)

A general bibliography on publishing and media:

"Media, Advertising, Sustainability, Externalities, and Impacts: A light reading list" [https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/7k7l4m/media_a...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/7k7l4m/media_advertising_sustainability_externalities/)

TL;DR: I've been thinking about this for a while.

Mind: _getting to_ public goods payment is going to be difficult. I don't deny that in the least. Partial approaches may well be a viable path there. Sci- Hub, ZLibrary, Library Genesis, the Internet Archive, libraries (public, offline, online), file-sharing, samizdat press, #pdfme, and other measures are appropriate.

And "how do authors/creators" get paid: UBI/GMI would be a good start. Performance/lectures are an option. Publishing-as-a-shingle (in the professional advertising sense) is an option. Patronage and grants are presently used and have a long and storied history. As discussed in the essays above, _both_ technology _and_ business model effect the _forms_ and _types_ of works created. Advertising has been tried and found wanting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So ironic that the NYTimes, where this article is published, is itself one of the worst offenders. The article clearly states this as well:

> Among all the sites I visited, news sites, including The New York Times and > The Washington Post, had the most tracking resources.

So hat-tip for the self-awareness. Now how about "sweeping your doorstep" ?

<comment><USER21> This comes up every time there's a NYT article. However, note that the management and the journalists are different people and the fact that th website of the NYT itself is reported as having trackers is a proof of this.

<comment><USER22> > management and the journalists are different people

That's clear and not being disputed. When people mention workers calling out management, it's sort of in a praising way. They're commending management for at least allowing workers to call them out.

Many institutions would not allow that to happen, so it's good to point out the _Times_ when they do.

<comment> so-impressed And yet nothing changes, so to feign self awareness is the height of theater.

They do it in the open. They say they do it. They tell you they know it's bad, this thing they do. And they do it anyway.

It doesn't make them better than others to pay lip service and not change. If anything, they lead by example and it makes them worse for having done so.

Shop lifting is a crime, but hey, everyone does it, so watch me pocket this candy bar. And some beer. And a TV. And maybe I'll just grab some money from the cash register. And yeah, I think I'll steal the assistant manager's car to get away. See? This is just how the world works!

<comment><USER23> Pray tell me how exactly should a news publisher survive without targeted advertising. Public should pay for stuff or accept targeted advertising

<comment><USER24> Subscriptions did not help save the 1,800 local newspapers that have shut down in the US since 2004.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Are there any reasonable, self-hosted alternatives that can provide me with information on how visitors use my website without submitting them to cross- site tracking?

<comment><USER26> Check out Matomo [1] (previously known as Piwik) or goaccess[2]. Matomo offer a web dashboard, while goaccess is terminal-based.

[1] [https://matomo.org/](https://matomo.org/)

[2] [https://goaccess.io/](https://goaccess.io/)

<comment><USER27> Actually, GoAccess has web interface as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> As a business owner, it bugs me to have Google and Facebook trackers in my code. But I feel like I need to buy ads, and then I also need to use these trackers to attribute purchases to ad installs. So using some sort of self- hosted tracker just doesn't seem like an option.

Is there an answer to this dilemma that doesn't involve foregoing ad purchases, which seem pretty important to growth and revenue?

<comment><USER29> > I also need to use these trackers to attribute purchases to ad installs

Why? What would happen if you didn't have that data?

<comment><USER30> An aspect of the many "trackers" on the sites, etc is that much of the tracking isn't about tracking you (the person browsing around) it's about tracking the company doing the ads.

Wrapping back around to your question: "What would happen if you didn't have that data?" The answer is that Facebook/Google/Any Given ad service could just make up numbers about how ads performed.

The attribution data gives you two hard data points:

1\. How much you paid for the ads 2\. How many sales/leads you received

Everything else like views, clicks, video views expanded with sound on in Guatemala, etc. are all prone to manipulation and mis-reporting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I find it ironic that NYT objects to my reading articles in private mode, but publishes pro-privacy articles.

</comment><comment><USER32> Silly Question: If online advertising is a near duopoly, why are there so many trackers?

<comment><USER33> Ad analytics and optimization goes far beyond Facebook and Google, although most of the resulting ads are run on their ad networks. Numerous established companies and startups in the space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> EFF's Privacy Badger and Firefox's (experimental) first-party isolation go _some_ way to mitigating this bad behaviour. But taking special measures shouldn't be necessary.

<comment><USER35> Question - how do they compare to "Cookie Autodelete" extension?

I recently reformatted, switched to Firefox, and installed Multi-Containers, Auto-Delete, and uBlock Origins; open to suggestions on what other robust, stable, mainstreams extensions I should try :)

Thx!

<comment><USER11> You'll also want an addon to clear "local storage" and "session storage", which is basically a shadow database where trackers can store identifiers.

<comment><USER35> Thanks! Any particular ones to recommend? "Cookie AutoDelete" extension does have a "LocalStorage Cleanup" option, but it looks to be somewhat experimental and temperamental...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I think if regular people start to care about this the next step will be pi- hole or some other filtered dns in the router. It makes a massive difference. Sites load in half the time, use half the CPU and some sites like anandtech, techradar, and just about any other news site trying to get a wide audience actually becomes usable.

<comment> Digit-Al That's great whilst you're at home but as soon as you go out and switch to your mobile network you're back to being tracked again surely.

Is there any _easy_ way around that?

<comment> Digit-Al Thanks for the replies all. I do appreciate the time taken out of busy lives. However, I did specify "easy" and as soon as you start talking about creating your own VPN and the like you've lost about 99% of the people out there who are perfectly intelligent in there own right but when it comes to computers they barely know what a sub-directory is.

Hell, I've been a software developer for years, and once built my own PC, but I balk at the idea of building a pi-hole. For a lot of people you may add well ask them to change the engine in their car.

Until there is a plug and play solution to privacy I do believe it belongs to the digital 1%.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> So? What's the problem?

If I go in public someone might photograph me or see me. If I visit a website, it might log information about my visit (to show me ads).

Sounds fine to me. I like reading free news articles, paid for with ads. If I don't like it I can stop reading them.

<comment><USER38> A single photograph of you in public is usually not a problem. But if I were to follow you around and take a picture every 10 seconds as you go through your day (including at home and in the bathroom), would you like that?

<comment><USER37> Advertisers don't follow us around and take photos of us, so that's not something we need to worry about. But CCTVs do have photos of us being taken every 10 seconds in public in major cities. It's not an issue. Nobody is publishing CCTV photos of me. Similarly, advertisers aren't telling your spouse what websites you visited. They just want to show you ads that are relevant to your interests.

My point is that the expectation of privacy is unreasonable in every situation. For example, it's unreasonable in public or when doing business with others.

<comment><USER38> It's only unreasonable insofar as "they totally could do that". Whether they _do_ do that is a matter of regulation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> How ever ad locking and do not track extensions does not block ip tracking. Say that you can read browser window size + ip that is unique enough to track you.

</comment><comment><USER40> It's much worse than this, this doesn't even discuss tracking by apps on mobile devices, which is an increasing percentage of overall Internet use.

</comment><comment><USER41> It really is crazy. For example, CDW.com has so many tracking websites whitelisted in its header that our firewall blocks it:

        Content-Security-Policy: default-src 'self'; script-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline' 'unsafe-eval' *.cdw.com *.richrelevance.com *.bazaarvoice.com *.qualtrics.com *.optimizely.com *.hotjar.com cdw.needle.com nexus.ensighten.com api.bluecore.com bluecore.com px.spiceworks.com *.liadm.com scripts.demandbase.com triggeredmail.appspot.com connect.facebook.net d31y97ze264gaa.cloudfront.net *.bounceexchange.com www.googleadservices.com *.doubleclick.net *.google-analytics.com st1.dialogtech.com bat.bing.com *.googleapis.com nsg.symantec.com analytics.po.st px.ads.linkedin.com po.st *.cnetcontent.com selectors.cnetcontentsolutions.com *.akamaihd.net *.google.com *.twitter.com *.justuno.com *.liveclicker.net www.netapp.com dpm.demdex.net *.d41.co *.cxense.com static.ads-twitter.com vault.pactsafe.io pactsafe.io *.webcollage.net *.ziftsolutions.com *.simpli.fi pixel.mathtag.com *.googletagmanager.com *.googlesyndication.com googletagservices.com t.sellpoints.com a.sellpoint.net media.flixfacts.com www.youtube.com media.flixcar.com *.flix360.com *.easy2.com *.go-mpulse.net *.cdnwidget.com *.rlcdn.com *.flixsyndication.net *.adobe.com *.hotjar.io *.eloqua.com *.swogo.net *.swogo.com *.nanovisor.io *.btttag.com *.gstatic.com; style-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline' *.cdw.com *.bazaarvoice.com cdw.needle.com *.cnetcontent.com *.justuno.com *.webcollage.net *.ziftsolutions.com t.sellpoints.com a.sellpoint.net media.flixcar.com *.easy2.com *.amazonaws.com platform.twitter.com *.typekit.net *.adobe.com *.nanovisor.io *.btttag.com; img-src 'self' *.cdw.com *.bazaarvoice.com *.qualtrics.com cdw.needle.com nexus.ensighten.com px.spiceworks.com *.liadm.com *.bounceexchange.com www.googleadservices.com *.doubleclick.net *.google-analytics.com bat.bing.com nsg.symantec.com *.cnetcontent.com selectors.cnetcontentsolutions.com *.akamaihd.net *.google.com *.justuno.com www.netapp.com dpm.demdex.net *.cxense.com vault.pactsafe.io pactsafe.io *.webcollage.net *.ziftsolutions.com *.googletagmanager.com t.sellpoints.com a.sellpoint.net media.flixfacts.com media.flixcar.com *.flix360.com *.easy2.com *.amazonaws.com platform.twitter.com *.linkedin.com *.tribalfusion.com *.company-target.com www.facebook.com events.bouncex.net *.cdnwidget.com *.rlcdn.com *.cloudfront.net *.adobecqms.net *.turn.com st2.dialogtech.com secure.insightexpressai.com px.gumgum.com *.bluekai.com k.intellitxt.com *.everesttech.net *.adnxs.com sync.fastclick.net simage2.pubmatic.com us-u.openx.net ads.yahoo.com pixel.rubiconproject.com *.advertising.com magnetic.t.domdex.com *.rfihub.com *.mathtag.com *.mathtag.co *.amgdgt.com *.casalemedia.com www.bluecore.com *.prod.bidr.io cdn.optimizely.com syndication.twitter.com x.bidswitch.net pe.intentiq.com loadm.exelator.com insight.adsrvr.org um.simpli.fi acuityplatform.com data: *.dotomi.com *.flixsyndication.net liveintent.com cbssports.com maxpreps.com wogo ce.lijit.com soma.smaato.net cs.admanmedia.com eb2.3lift.com live.sekindo.com *.adobe.com *.sc.omtrdc.net df7xs8p1yjitw.cloudfront.net *.core.windows.net *.nanovisor.io *.btttag.com; frame-src 'self' *.cdw.com *.bazaarvoice.com *.qualtrics.com *.hotjar.com *.liadm.com *.bounceexchange.com *.doubleclick.net nsg.symantec.com selectors.cnetcontentsolutions.com *.google.com *.twitter.com *.liveclicker.net *.cxense.com *.webcollage.net *.ziftsolutions.com pixel.mathtag.com *.googletagmanager.com googletagservices.com a.sellpoint.net www.youtube.com media.flixcar.com *.easy2.com www.facebook.com *.rlcdn.com rs.gwallet.com *.liveclicker.com pages.cdwemail.com www.emjcd.com *.dotomi.com *.flixsyndication.net cdw.zuberance.com *.hotjar.io *.eloqua.com *.swcontentsyndication.com www.cisco.com *.nanovisor.io *.btttag.com; font-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline' *.cdw.com cdw.needle.com *.googleapis.com *.cnetcontent.com *.webcollage.net a.sellpoint.net media.flixfacts.com media.flixcar.com *.easy2.com *.flixsyndication.net *.typekit.net *.adobe.com *.nanovisor.io *.btttag.com; connect-src 'self' *.cdw.com *.richrelevance.com *.bazaarvoice.com *.qualtrics.com *.optimizely.com *.hotjar.com cdw.needle.com nexus.ensighten.com api.bluecore.com px.spiceworks.com *.liadm.com scripts.demandbase.com triggeredmail.appspot.com d31y97ze264gaa.cloudfront.net *.bounceexchange.com www.googleadservices.com *.doubleclick.net bat.bing.com *.googleapis.com nsg.symantec.com *.cnetcontent.com *.akamaihd.net *.google.com *.justuno.com www.netapp.com *.d41.co vault.pactsafe.io pactsafe.io t.sellpoints.com a.sellpoint.net *.go-mpulse.net platform.twitter.com *.company-target.com www.facebook.com events.bouncex.net *.cdnwidget.com wss://*.hotjar.com p.po.st *.cdnbasket.net *.akstat.io data.g2.com data.g2crowd.com *.adobe.com *.hotjar.io *.swogo.net *.swogo.com *.nanovisor.io *.btttag.com; object-src 'self' a.sellpoint.net *.nanovisor.io *.btttag.com; worker-src 'self' blob: *.nanovisor.io *.btttag.com; media-src 'self' *.cdw.com *.cnetcontent.com *.webcollage.net media.flixfacts.com www.youtube.com blob: *.flixsyndication.net *.nanovisor.io *.btttag.com;

</comment><comment><USER42> Coming to you from my new install of the Tor browser...

How much does it reduce tracking? Or at least make it not useful to the tracking firms?

<comment><USER43> Depends on what you're doing. On some websites you actually stick out (all tor exit nodes are public and easily identifiable).

Depending on how closely you stick to the recommend configuration (default window size and such) it'll at least minimize _some_ of the tracking capability of most sites.

The best methods to prevent tracking IMO are ublock origin + decentraleyes + HTTPSeverywhere (Http is leaky) in incognito mode, periodically you should destroy the session (restart your browser).

Tor really only helps with the IP part, the rest are extensions + incognito mode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I just had a look at the article, Privacy Badger told me there was 14 trackers on the page.

<comment><USER45> yeah that's covered in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I fully expect future historians to call this era the Surveillance Economy.</comment>


The Nature of Lisp (2006) - b-man http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/lisp.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Commenting on the last paragraph: I honestly believe that one of the biggest obstacles for newcomers to Lisp is Emacs.

Don't get me wrong, I love Emacs and it is truly the superior environment to do work in Lisp. However it has a bit of a steep learning curve just like Lisp itself and fighting two battles (one with Lisp and one with Emacs) is no easy task for someone coming from a Java / C# and Eclipse / Visual Studio background. I know because I've been there. That's why I decided to start work on an open source Visual Studio add-in to support for Common Lisp in Visual Studio itself. I think being able to do the first steps in a familiar environment would be a great help for newcomers. I wonder what you guys think of the idea?

<comment><USER2> You want LispIDE

<http://www.daansystems.com/lispide/>

Hardly a substitute for Emacs/Slime, but for beginners, you can get a lot done. I use it when I am not plugged into in A/C outlet; it saves battery ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes I know LispIDE, however it is really nothing more than notepad.exe with syntax highlighting and some basic REPL integration. I think of the VS F# editor with REPL ("interactive mode" as it is called there) as an example of what I'm trying to achieve.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> An oldie but goodie. This helped explain a lot of the often-praised features of Lisp and functional programming that had never made sense before.

<comment><USER4> Yes. However keep in mind that Lisp has left the forefront of functional programming mostly to ML derived languages.

Common Lisp isn't even very functional. Not much more than e.g. Python. Scheme is a bit more functional oriented.

<comment><USER5> Clojure, OTOH, is beautifully functional. Also, it is supported by NetBeans and Eclipse, so no SLIME needed.

<comment><USER4> Yes, I forgot about Clojure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > After all, I was almost blinded by the infamous Lisp parentheses!

Lisp's parenthesis seem to share their deterrence factor with Python's significant indentation. Most people who have used one of them for a while don't even notice them any longer. At least not as a problem.

Interestingly, Haskell seems to be strange enough, that nobody fears its significant indentation.

<comment><USER6> Interesting. I _instantly_ liked Python's significant whitespace. It just made sense: I was already indenting for readability, so why not make it meaningful as well and do away with curly braces and semicolons?

<comment><USER4> It was the same for me. Plays nice with "Say it once and only once.".</comment></comment></comment>


Tikker – The wrist watch that counts down your life - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/259499751/tikker-the-wrist-watch-that-counts-down-your-life

<comment><USER2> I find "weeks of life" the most familiar repeating pattern.

Take a moment to realize there are "only" about 1000 weeks in 20 years.

Now think about your weekly patterns and start counting down.

Bonus depression for the morning, your chance of cancer doubles every decade.

<comment><USER3> Damn... now I'm depressed :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Depressing when it turns to 0 seconds. Ok now I'm about to die! If not, I will send a bug report!

</comment><comment><USER3> Watching the video I realised I am wasting valuable time watching the video... \- Also I would have preferred a grant total of seconds remaining rather than years / months / days / hours etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is this a joke?

This sounds like the perfect way to induce anxiety and hopelessness, ultimately resulting in depression.

This is a terrible idea.

<comment><USER6> depends on the person, I guess. Some people might think "not much time, so let me not waste it" and some might get stressed/depressed thinking about it, and waste even more time than before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does a deadline produce better work and happier employees?

I doubt that this kind of think will have a motivating a effect. Reminding you of the estimated point in time when your body degraded so much that you will die does not sound great.

It's also purely egoistic. How about making some else's life better by doing things you don't like?

</comment><comment><USER8> The time you have remaining is not a fixed number. It is increasing at about one year every decade at the moment, and that rate of increase might leap dramatically in the near future.

You can either be a freeloader, roll the dice and see where the work of other people on medtech takes you, or you can help to increase the amount of time you have left. Participate in initiatives like [http://healthextension.co/](http://healthextension.co/), or donate to the SENS Research Foundation.

It is interesting to see that in a community ostensibly focused on creating change the first response to length of life line items is usually that length of life and trajectory of life is fixed and immutable.

<comment><USER9> For a middle class person, they are probably better off saving their money rather than funding life extension research. Having money enough to get good health care in their old age will extend their life more than adding a few dollars to research they would barely speed up thanks to the small amount. Heck, the money might even be needed to buy application of the results of the research. If you are rich, OK, fire away at funding life extension research.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't need an Expiration Date clock counting down the seconds to remind me to Live Life.

When I want to feel depressed, er, motivated I just figure out how many weekends I have left until I'm 78.

From all the complaining I hear from people past a certain age there's quality of life issues well before that magic number though.

</comment><comment><USER11> Built a toy javascript utility along similar lines about a year ago. Breaks down your expected life remaining into blocks by month: [http://novorobo.com/projects/hitpoints/index.html](http://novorobo.com/projects/hitpoints/index.html).

</comment><comment><USER12> I made a little (free) Android App a couple of years ago that does something similar: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.amimetic.de...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.amimetic.deathclock&hl=en)

<comment><USER13> It needs a progress bar (more visual)

<comment><USER12> I hope a progress bar would be too slowly moving to be of any use!

<comment><USER13> That's not what I meant. "18262 days" doesn't say much, but a progress meter (or maybe a pie chart with "Life lived" & "Life left") is more informative IMO.

<comment><USER12> Ah. I agree it would be more informative but also more depressing: a countdown gives you a (inaccurate of course) number of days left to 'make the most of'; showing the number of days done gives you an (accurate) count of days you (perhaps) haven't made the most of.

But to be honest the App was something I quickly put together in a few hours and I didn't really consider alternatives to a countdown.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So incredibly depressing. Aren't we reminded enough already everywhere, that it will someday end?

<comment><USER15> Is simply "not thinking about it" the answer though? It seems to me that a lot of people deal with death by forgetting about it, and avoiding anything that reminds of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> At 1st look this is depressing, but strangely enough they've already raised 16k out of the required 25k, AND there's still 24 days left to go until the end of the campaign.

Perhaps the backers are looking at it in a different way: time left to treasure.

</comment><comment><USER17> Reminds me of this: [http://barefootfts.com/blog/memento- mori](http://barefootfts.com/blog/memento-mori) which is a bit more visual.

</comment><comment><USER18> Actually, I'd love a generalized countdown clock. Not necessarily for my lifespan, but set it up for goals like, "My side project will be profitable in 2 months."

<comment><USER19> What about an app that does that?

<comment><USER20> They exist. I use one that counts down to anniversaries, birthdays, and project milestones. It's not good enough to merit mentioning, but if you search the app store for 'countdown', you'll find several.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> clark-kent As eastern philosophers say: The only time that matters is Now. Now is the only time you can ever use.

I agree with other comments this is a terrible idea.

</comment><comment><USER21> "It's occasionally off by a few seconds, what with free will and all." \- H. Farnsworth

</comment><comment><USER22> Probably they won't get many customers, this will make many people go :-(

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm pretty sure Karl Pilkington first thought of this idea.

<comment><USER24> YES yes and yes!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> For Pebble owners, a "watch app" would suffice?

<comment><USER26> I was thinking about this too...

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I love to watch this age to be obsessed with time management, waste, gain or whatever anyone comes up with. Šhow for free, sometimes - too serious.</comment>


The 'Busy' Trap - <AUTHOR> http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/the-busy-trap/

<comment><USER2> "I write in the morning, go for a long bike ride and run errands in the afternoon, and in the evening I see friends, read or watch a movie. This, it seems to me, is a sane and pleasant pace for a day. "

Summary: reflective thought helps creative work. Modern communications can interfere with time for reflection. Many of us are secretly anxious about the value of our work and need to convince ourselves of the worth of what we do through having a lot of tasks to tick off.

</comment><comment><USER3> "I can't help but wonder whether all this histrionic exhaustion isn't a way of covering up the fact that most of what we do doesn't matter."

This man is treading dangerously close to some deep truths about late-stage, debt-ravaged, finance-dominated western economies (and societies.)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is why every time I return to the USA from Western Europe, I'm depressed for a few weeks. It seems that Western Europeans (UK excluded) have figured it out- they as a society have realized that an extra .05% GDP won't make that much of a difference at the end of the day. That's why at 4pm on a Thursday cafes are full, lunches aren't eaten in front of the computer and people actually go on vacation for more than a week!</comment>


How one-sided objects like a Mobius strip work - happy-go-lucky http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181026-how-one-sided-objects-like-a-mobius-strip-work <comment><AUTHOR> This was news to me and pretty striking:

> The concept of orientability has important implications. Take enantiomers. > These chemical compounds have the same chemical structures except for one > key difference: they are mirror images of one another. For example, the > chemical L-methamphetamine is an ingredient in Vicks inhalers. Its mirror > image, D-methamphetamine, is a Class A illegal drug. If we lived in a > nonorientable world, these chemicals would be indistinguishable.

<comment><USER2> > If we lived in a nonorientable world, these chemicals would be > indistinguishable.

True, but you might have to move such a molecule arbitrarily far ("all the way around the Mobius strip") in order to change it from one enantiomer to ther other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wait, am I crazy or is that metal strip actually not a Mobius?

<comment><USER4> as far as I can tell: no, it does not seem to be a Mobius.

Edit: They did change the image. In the last image, they showed a metal surface which wrapped two times and had not the properties of a mobius strip.

Edit 2: found it, the old image was this stock image: [https://www.istockphoto.com/de/foto/moebius-streifen-in- meta...](https://www.istockphoto.com/de/foto/moebius-streifen-in-metallic- optik-gm501799768-81548797)

<comment><USER5> > _Edit: They did change the image. In the last image, they showed a metal > surface which wrapped two times and had not the properties of a mobius > strip._

This is still a single-sided surface though (with the 2 twists).

Wikipedia: "the Möbius strip can also be formed by twisting the strip an odd number of times greater than one"

Not sure about needing to be "odd", I think 2 qualifies as well, so perhaps odd or even AND prime does it...

<comment><USER6> No, it has two sides. Pick a side and trace it with your finger - you'll never get to the other side.

(I'm talking about this image, from the second edit: [https://www.istockphoto.com/de/foto/moebius-streifen-in- meta...](https://www.istockphoto.com/de/foto/moebius-streifen-in-metallic- optik-gm501799768-81548797) )

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love these. Imagine a giant Mobius strip. Cut a hole in it and install a doorway. When you walk through that doorway where do you go? Not to the other side because THERE IS NO OTHER SIDE!

Personally I think you enter an alternate universe. Just thinking about it makes my brain dribble out of my ears.

<comment><USER8> Why not use sphere instead? It has no "sides" at all by your definition of "side".

<comment><USER9> A sphere has two sIdes: an internal side, and an external side. This is why there are theories of "hollow earth"!

<comment><USER10> huh? that would not be a sphere. A sphere has no internal sides it's solid all the way through

<comment><USER11> For what it's worth, mathematically a "sphere" is the set of all points which are equidistant from its centre — it's _hollow_ all the way through. The solid version is called a "ball".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Funny how skimming messes with how you read things. You kind of read things in pieces, at almost a random order, and then your brain tries to interpolate the missing pieces (sometimes successfully, sometimes not). When I first read this title I just picked up "Mobius strip" and "work", and thought (in an half- baked way) it'd be an article about how some kind of mobius strip-inspired scheduling pattern could make for a more improved working style.

Although this malfunctioning reading mechanism is often a cause for confusion, sometimes it's also an interesting source of creativity and weird ideas.

</comment><comment><USER13> Fucking _magnetic monopoles_ , how do they work?

</comment><comment><USER14> Ho can a coffee cup be transformed into a doughnut? is the "hole" they are referring to the handle?

<comment><USER15> Is it disturbing that when I read "coffee cup", I thought of those paper disposable things with no handle?

<comment><USER16> > Is it disturbing that when I read "coffee cup", I thought of those paper > disposable things with no handle?

No, because the usual term for the ceramic thing with the handle is a coffee mug.</comment></comment></comment>


1940 WPA San Francisco Model Now Online - <AUTHOR> https://www.davidrumsey.com/blog/2019/1/1/huge-san-francisco-1940-wooden-model-digitized <comment><USER2> No freeways! But it was different. The bay bridge had only opened a few years prior and the bay area pop was low enough not to need them yet. By the time "Bullitt" rolled around, the peninsula had begun to fill out.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am curious about the sand dunes on piece M6. It appears they were cleared and roads were put in, but perhaps the Great Depression led homes in that district to become abandoned, and the dunes took over once more?

<comment><USER4> No, the Outer Sunset just hadn't been fully developed quite yet.

[http://www.outsidelands.org/sunset.php](http://www.outsidelands.org/sunset.php)

<comment><USER3> That doesn't seem to jive with the aerial photos used to make the WPA model. Some roads are clearly covered by the dunes, which means the roads were built through the dunes without clearing the dunes entirely?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So much green.</comment>