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Ask HN: Digital Nomads: What's Your Setup?

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Re: Ask HN: Digital Nomads: What's Your Setup?

#61

Post by cyberpunk »

jamal-kumar wrote: post #37
Shared404 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The heaviest things I own are probably books, but they're pretty sweet books so I take the weight. What are they, if you don't mind me asking of course.

I found this really old book from 1938 for learning German which is quite the artifact, one from 1944 on how to survive an atomic bomb which is also super old and has some funny advice/a picture on wearing a fedora to protect yourself from the heat flash... some book from 1924 on mathematics which takes a historical analysis approach to teaching called mathematics for the million which is pretty cool. It has a lot of…

Oh, thanks for the seed recommendation, I was looking for something like this!

Re: Ask HN: Digital Nomads: What's Your Setup?

#62

Post by ghaff »

asidiali wrote: post #45
jrwoodruff wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oops! You're correct. 600k is ridiculous. Honestly, If they just had a steady 5-10mbs -actually- unlimited option, I'd prefer that. Or, if they dropped it down to 2-4mbps instead, that'd be workable I think.

Agreed, just give me like 2-5mbps and I actually have a chance to get work done. 600kbps is nearly unusable on the modern web.

My dad's house had about 1mbps. Yes, it was barely usable. I couldn't really have seriously worked from there. (Very end of a DSL run in rural Maine.)

Some people do make do with conventional satellite. I worked with one person who bought a rural home with no broadband or hope of getting it. They had DirectTV and just mostly did without streaming video or other high bandwidth activities. Probably increasingly hard to do though.

Re: Ask HN: Digital Nomads: What's Your Setup?

#63

Post by james_in_the_uk »

Can you change some of the tools you use? It may not be quite as cool to use Office rather than G Suite but much easier to work offline with them. (Appreciate it may be limited by employer requirements). Also consider a decent external LTE/wifi aerial with adapters for your wifi and LTE dongles.

Re: Ask HN: Digital Nomads: What's Your Setup?

#64

Post by skizm »

FYI: Verizon has "business" plans that give you much more "premium" data. I'm looking at one plan which is unlimited, and you get 60GB of hotspot usage per line before being throttled. With the business versions of plans, you can usually just call up the carrier and ask to talk to a Sales person. They can even cook up some custom plans for you if you're willing to pay a bit more. Probably worth it given your needs.

Re: Ask HN: Digital Nomads: What's Your Setup?

#65

Post by skummetmaelk »

soheil wrote: post #51
lukevp wrote: post #46

I’m not living this lifestyle, but I feel that Starlink will drastically alter this market and open up so much more remote working environments. You should consider to at least sign up for the beta so you can get access sooner, theoretically you would get 100+ mbps anywhere in the US with no caps within the next year or so, and I’m guessing they’ll make a remote-friendly plan. Right now you officially can’t travel wi…

Do you really wanna be lugging a rather awkwardly big dish around every time you check into your next airbnb or hotel room?

Put it on your truck or your boat.

Re: Ask HN: Digital Nomads: What's Your Setup?

#66

Post by ghaff »

jzellis wrote: post #48

So it turns out that it's pretty easy to get around tethering data caps on phones in a couple of different ways, especially if you're on Android and have more control over your network settings. I'm in the UK now and use prepaid GiffGaff cell service, which includes 80GB of LTE hotspot data. I don't do Zoom, but i use it for tethering upstairs sometimes because wifi and stone 19th century walls do not mix. But honest…

>But honestly, if Zoom is your biggest bandwidth hog, just get a cell with unlimited data and use it instead of your laptop.

Or mostly just use a dial-in number and do without video. Doesn't help if a presentation is being given and hasn't been shared in advance of course.

Re: Ask HN: Digital Nomads: What's Your Setup?

#67

Post by res0nat0r »

jamal-kumar wrote: post #44
tayo42 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which part of Costa Rica? Funny I was just looking at spending a month or two on a work-cation after getting vaccinated. Looking at Santa Teresa or nosara, keep reading the internet is unreliable. That was my experience after spending a few days in Santa Teresa a few years ago

Yeah man I just hang out in San José for the most part. Pre-pandemic, fun party scene for sure which is probably one of the big things that kept me here. Now it's just nice to be able to spend like 5 bucks on an uber ride and go climbing nearby mountains and volcanoes when I get time off. Great climate in the city and surrounding area. I suggest here or some of the outlying cities and towns around Alajuela. Monteverd…

I have some coworkers in Costa Rica, it is close timezone wise to where I live in the USA now, and I saw this absolutely insane house at an unbelievable price a while back: https://www.coldwellbankercostarica.com/property/11337/

It looks like a fantastic place to live.

Re: Ask HN: Digital Nomads: What's Your Setup?

#70

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

usually I factor cost of data plan into the decision of where I go next for the reasons you mentioned. Since you say you're doing UI and frontend I think this is a big challenge when fetching and pushing binary data like static assets.

To reduce your data consumption and improve load times as well as security/privacy you may consider a /etc/hosts blocklist[1]. It's not going to help with reducing data in zoom calls, Netflix and podcasts but it adds up. Also don't forget application/service specific settings like switching all preferred resolution in video to the lowest quality etc.

DNS traffic can be reduced (and sped-up) with a local cache (dnsmasq - or better yet dnscrypt-proxy[2]).

[1] https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

[2] https://github.com/DNSCrypt/dnscrypt-proxy

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