Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Meet the minimalists living out of a hard drive

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 110 posts

Re: Meet the minimalists living out of a hard drive

#31

Post by yummyfajitas »

gaius wrote: post #26
jdietrich wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't scale, it's not intended to scale. If millions of people were vagabonding, we could look at an array of possible options, the most obvious being an AirBnB-style approach to renting rooms for days or weeks at a time. If you're happy to share a house, it's already cheaper to spend a month each in Paris, Amsterdam, London, Berlin, Edinburgh and Barcelona than it would be to stay in Paris, including airfare. H…

I presumed no such thing. The people they left behind are doing service work remember: they're accountants, lawyers, bankers, and so on. But how many corporate workers drinking does it take to make a vineyard a viable business? Or vacationing, a boutique B&B? Because if you have two B&B owners who simply swap to go on holiday, or two vineyards who simply drink each other's wine, then you've invented a perpetual motio…

By this logic, the entire economy is a "perpetual motion machine" - the only difference between the entire economy and your hypothetical is that the real economy has more moving parts.

Re: Meet the minimalists living out of a hard drive

#32

Post by hugh3 »

pchristensen wrote: post #10
billybob wrote: post #6

An illusion. You're as attached to your digital possessions as you were to your physical ones. You just have different preferences.

That's fine, you just don't need to pay for space for stuff. Space is very, very expensive monetarily and psychologically.

Space is expensive monetarily, but how is it expensive psychologically?

I find _not_ having enough space to be psychologically expensive. Nothing better than going for a walk through your own house, knowing it's all yours and nobody can invade it. But hey, different people have different preferences...

Re: Meet the minimalists living out of a hard drive

#33

Post by hugh3 »

gaius wrote: post #5

The DJ has now substituted his bed for friends' couches How does this scale when no-one has free crash space to give...? It's like those TV shows where a family give up the corporate rat race and go and run a B&B or a vineyard in the country, who are their customers apart from corporate workers? It's not a revolution if only a small percentage of the population can ever do it.

How can he be a DJ if he doesn't have turntables?

Re: Meet the minimalists living out of a hard drive

#34

Post by lzw »

My co-founder and I have been doing this for three years. We have two backpacks and we are nomadic.

Interestingly, it isn't online services that have enabled this so much as a lifestyle choice. We value travel and figured it was cheaper to run our startup in most parts of the world than it was in our origin city.

We don't use a lot of online services for our business. Biggest one is Gmail, really, and hosting. Things we couldn't take with us.

I run a virtual machine on my laptop and under it I have a server that acts as our "intranet server" and so all of the collaboration tools, etc run there. I also start servers periodically while developing something that will eventually run in the cloud to test it out before running it online.

We're geared to be able to work full time without access to the internet. We're expecting to be in places where there is no internet. However, for the past 3 years that we've been traveling we've had pretty much full time internet access so far. When we're without internet we use an ad-hoc wifi network so we always have our "local network" with us.

Other than what fits in the backpacks we just have a couple boxes in storage. The most stressful experience has been going over all of our stuff and getting rid of it until we fit in the laptop. That took several months of work and because many of the possessions had a history it was not easy.

But now, we can go anywhere anytime we want, just about. It is very liberating!

Am willing to answer most questions....

Re: Meet the minimalists living out of a hard drive

#35

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

paulgb wrote: post #23
notahacker wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

besides which, two digital reading devices in addition to a laptop (and presumably a smartphone) isn't exactly minimalism...

It is compared to the bookshelves, CD stacks, filing cabinets, and shoeboxes full of photographs that it replaces. And that's not to mention the number of single-purpose devices each of these replaces: the smartphone is an alarm clock, watch, point-and-shoot camera, GPS, and MP3 player. The reading devices replace a printer (if you have access to a Kinkos when you really need a hard copy). The laptop replaces a TV, D…

Physically yes but not in any other sense. From the sounds of things he's not reduced the number of books and albums he owns, just changed the storage medium. It also mentions that he has a backpack full of "designer clothes" which suggests that he's just as hung up on the nature of the things he does have.

What's changed here is the medium but what would really be interesting is if there were a significant cultural shift but I don't see that - he still seems to be as much a consumer as he ever was.

Re: Meet the minimalists living out of a hard drive

#37

Post by funkdobiest »

lotusleaf1987 wrote: post #14

Slightly off topic...anyone know what kind of keyboard that is he had? Looks super useful being so small. Is it a Korg? This on: http://www.korg.com/nanoseries ? Confirmation?

It does look like a Korg. From that picture his laptop looks like either a Dell or IBM, yet the article says he uses a MBP. Also I think it's kind of funny, the irony of this guy being a travel agent in this world where that job is becoming absolete due to the same technology that keeps from having to pay rent.

Re: Meet the minimalists living out of a hard drive

#38

Post by gaius »

jdietrich wrote: post #30
gaius wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I presumed no such thing. The people they left behind are doing service work remember: they're accountants, lawyers, bankers, and so on. But how many corporate workers drinking does it take to make a vineyard a viable business? Or vacationing, a boutique B&B? Because if you have two B&B owners who simply swap to go on holiday, or two vineyards who simply drink each other's wine, then you've invented a perpetual motio…

It's called "The Economy". I have something that you want, you have something that I want. We swap, usually using a token of exchange, and we're both better off for the exchange. That basic exchange, multiplied by technology, is why nearly everyone in the world will be much richer than their parents and why their children will be richer still. Accountants, lawyers and bankers all perform services. Not fun services, b…

Yeah, you are completely missing my point. The fact is, if you set up a business that sells luxury goods that people spend their discretionary income on, then there have to be those people in the system. For every bohemian running a boutique B&B in rural France, there have to be 20 (say) yuppies elsewhere doing something else to pay for it as guests. Can one lawyer stay in 20 B&Bs? Or drink the production of 20 vineyards?

So this is why I say, the dream of dropping out of the rat race and doing that necessarily must remain a dream only for the majority.

Re: Meet the minimalists living out of a hard drive

#39

Post by lzw »

Dornkirk wrote: post #18
emanuer wrote: post #15

Since almost 4 years now I do not have any other possession than what fits into my two suitcases. Wherever my 30 inch monitor is, I call home. I am very comfortable with the fact that I don't need to manage my possessions. And Dropbox, Google Apps and alike even made my fears of data loss a thing of the past. I enjoy moving to a different country almost every year, thanks to being a digital vagabond. I am taking a wi…

Are you self-employed or do you work freelance or who do you work for and what do you do? I only ask because this is something I'm very much interested in doing myself, but I'm very apprehensive about making a big change like this due to job/money concerns.

There is a- for lack of a better word-- synergy that comes with this lifestyle change. It really is a different way of living. One of the things that you change is what your values are-- what you value. When we lived in a house a lot of money went into house stuff. For instance, by now we'd have bought an HDTV to update the old TV we had. Of course an HDTV wouldn't fit in a backpack so we haven't bought one, and the savings of that offsets some of the increased costs of being nomadic.

Like anything else, it is best to work into it a bit at a time. It might be worth trying a 3 month consulting gig and then, after saving that money, try 3 months on the road as a nomad and see if you can earn money consulting that way. This way the initial gig covers the expenses if the nomadic lifestyle turns into a vacation where you just spend money.

But for us, paramount to being able to do this is the ability to earn our expenses. Most startups look at burn rate, we are keeping a keen eye on revenue vs. living expenses.

Re: Meet the minimalists living out of a hard drive

#40

Post by pchristensen »

scott_s wrote: post #12
pchristensen wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine, you just don't need to pay for space for stuff. Space is very, very expensive monetarily and psychologically.

So is the psychological cost of never knowing where you will sleep.

There's a big difference between the space for you (important) and the space for 200 DVDs, or 60 changes of clothes, or a set of lawn tools, or rarely used sporting equipment, or ...
Post reply on HN