Meet the minimalists living out of a hard drive • Hacker News Board

Re: Meet the minimalists living out of a hard drive

#41

Post by Tyrannosaurs » Mon, Aug 16, 2010, 4:12 PM UTC

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…

The other thing is that this "minimalism" doesn't seem to have reduced his consumption at all. He owns less physical stuff but he still owns music and books.

Indeed given that he has no home and therefore no kitchen it's likely that he eats out more and is more dependent on other services and spends considerably more in some areas than he would otherwise.

He's not as culturally interesting as Mark Boyle for instance: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/green-living-blog/2009....

Re: Meet the minimalists living out of a hard drive

#42

Post by pchristensen » Mon, Aug 16, 2010, 4:12 PM UTC

hugh3 wrote: post #32

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.

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...

http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html

Just because space is expensive doesn't mean you should have none.

Re: Meet the minimalists living out of a hard drive

#43

Post by lzw » Mon, Aug 16, 2010, 4:14 PM UTC

Daniel42 wrote: post #28

Dornkirk wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Same thing for me. I just got my CS master degree and now I want to discover the world with only my bike, my laptop and my reflex camera, a few month to a couple of years at the same place... But I'm worried by the first move. Where I live I got a lot of job opportunity but I don't know if I will be able to find a job in another country quickly enough and it doesn't work very well remotely.

Countries love tourists but they are often wary of anyone who wants to "steal the jobs". Best to be in a situation where you're earning income without having to "work" in the country.

If you have a popular web service or a iphone app you could do it.

Since you just got your degree, my honest advice is this: 1) Be slow to accumulate stuff. 2) Exploit the location where there are a lot of jobs, but do it in a way that doesn't tie you down for 4 years. Do consulting or contracting, or become a co-founder of a startup that is a virtual company such that the company isn't tied to this location. You need some good work experience, which you might have gotten while getting your CS degree, but if not, get it, and get some savings to boot. 3) Start practicing it. Start working away for a week at a time.

Unless you're independently wealthy you can't really spend your time without any work, so the challenge is working while you're a nomad.

You might find this useful: http://microship.com/bike/index.html

Re: Meet the minimalists living out of a hard drive

#44

Post by mikaelgramont » Mon, Aug 16, 2010, 4:15 PM UTC

I like how the reasoning behind the move to MP3s instead of discs is that MP3s don't wear out. Because, you know, hard disks don't wear out either... And with the whole move-to-digital thing, you might think you have less stuff, but what you're doing is transferring your belongings from one device to the next over time. Over the course of your life, you're gonna own dozens of laptops and the energy and the chemicals released to build those aren't free. Compare that to books and disks you bought once and for all (granted they don't wear out). Maybe the move to all-digital is for the better, but it's just not that obvious to me.

Re: Meet the minimalists living out of a hard drive

#45

Post by gaius » Mon, Aug 16, 2010, 4:20 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #31

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…

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.

Well, you can try this if you like. Find another programmer, and you write code for him, and he writes code for you, and neither of you sell any services to third parties, and see how long that remains viable. There's "value" being created, you're both learning new stuff (for example).

But without someone to sell to, there's no money in this system, and therefore no way to get goods and services you need that can't be met within your microeconomy. So, not everyone can be a programmer, just as not everyone can be a bohemian.

Re: Meet the minimalists living out of a hard drive

#46

Post by lzw » Mon, Aug 16, 2010, 4:24 PM UTC

One of the biggest efforts in making this kind of a transition is the digitization of your life. This is a huge project, and some of the work is still ongoing.

1) Music and Movies. About the easiest as ripping CDs and DVDs is not that hard.

2) Photographs. There was a time when I shot on film, and so for all the images taken before then, they needed to be scanned. Scanning paper photos on a flatbed is not too bad, but scanning negatives is very slow and a very hands-on process. But it does produce the best results.

3) Books. This is the hardest. I stopped buying books about 5 years ago because ebooks weren't really ready to meet my needs then (I hate the kindle) and only started buying again now because the iPad does.

But all these physical books. Scanning them is really a pain. Most of them just got tossed. We had huge collections of old instruction manuals that are long out of print and obsolete as well.

Unfortunately, the books were an almost total loss. We flatbed scanned a few pages here and there and that's it.

4) Storage and backup. We've iterated several times in our strategy here. This is something to consider very carefully. The solution isn't the same between even the two of us, so you'll have to find your own.

But keep at least 2 copies of everything in such a way as you always know what the prime copy is.

Re: Meet the minimalists living out of a hard drive

#47

Post by lotusleaf1987 » Mon, Aug 16, 2010, 4:28 PM UTC

funkdobiest wrote: post #37

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.

It looks like a black Macbook to me. It just seems like more effort than getting a studio apartment and living lean. Simplicity is key. I need consistency.

Re: Meet the minimalists living out of a hard drive

#48

Post by Tyrannosaurs » Mon, Aug 16, 2010, 4:29 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #38

jdietrich wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 viney…

In the case of some of the lawyers I've worked with, 20 vineyards would be a conservative estimate.

I'm not sure the assumption that he's consuming less is accurate though. He's consuming differently but he's still earning, he's still eating and drinking.

He owns a keyboard, two ebook readers, a Mac and a rucksack full of designer clothes, a bike. The fact he's a DJ and the fact he has two ebook readers suggest that he still buys music and books (just digitally rather than physically). All of this ploughs revenue back into the economy.

In addition he has no kitchen so he likely eats out more, no car so potentially uses public transport more, maybe pays for a PO Box for mail, cell phone bills are higher than landline bills.

He's changed his pattern of consumption but he's not ceased it.

The only way in which it doesn't scale is that he tends to sleep on friends couches. Replace this with cheap bed and breakfast accommodation and it would seem to scale fine.

Re: Meet the minimalists living out of a hard drive

#49

Post by andresmh » Mon, Aug 16, 2010, 4:30 PM UTC

lzw wrote: post #34

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…

Do you travel only to places with good internet connection?

Re: Meet the minimalists living out of a hard drive

#50

Post by rmc » Mon, Aug 16, 2010, 4:41 PM UTC

mikaelgramont wrote: post #44

I like how the reasoning behind the move to MP3s instead of discs is that MP3s don't wear out. Because, you know, hard disks don't wear out either... And with the whole move-to-digital thing, you might think you have less stuff, but what you're doing is transferring your belongings from one device to the next over time. Over the course of your life, you're gonna own dozens of laptops and the energy and the chemicals…

Yes harddrives wear out, but you can easily get a new harddrive and copy the stuff across seamlessly. It's like shelves for records. If you shelves that your records are on break, just get some new shelves and copy (i.e. move) your record collection across.