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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?

#91

Post by qorrect »

jrwoodruff wrote: post #29
a3n wrote: post #9

Semi truck driver. I have a laptop, and a phone. I use the phone's hotspot. "Being on the internet" is not part of my job, and many nights I don't bother to take the laptop out of its bag. I never use wifi because I'm paranoid. While driving I listen to podcasts or streaming. I never predownload anything. I don't know if I ever get throttled. Sometimes, even in this day and age, I'm out of cell range, and my podcasts…

Truth. I thought I'd be able to cut out more than I've been able to - we downloaded movies before leaving, I have over-the-air TV, etc. But, it turns out my habits rely on a lot of data - streaming spotify, streaming security cameras to check back home, streaming tools at work... it's kind of eye opening honestly.

I had a similar experience these last 3 months, I bought an RV thought I would toot around the country in, use a cell modem.

But I also want to work on my AI projects , which require bunches of nasdaq data. Or I want to work on a side project, but conda wants to download every dependency for every new environment I make.

I thought downloading TBs worth of media would be enough to make it work but I'm hitting my monthly cap about 10 days in every month.

Starlink might solve my problems, fingers crossed for that. But I almost need a local pip server that caches requests or something :S. And I guess an npm server also.

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

#92

Post by disabled »

iancmceachern wrote: post #84
pradn wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know if StarLink would help? Is it possible to set up a StarLink antenna on an RV?

Starlink does not allow you to be mobile. You have to give them a service address and that address cant change (often enough for RV travel) Edited - spelling

You have to give them a permanent address, but what you do with it is another story. People on boats are successfully using it: https://provscons.com/starlink-is-the-best-internet-for-boat...

However, it cannot be used extremely far off the coast, like on cruise ships. Starlink still requires base stations on land for use. They hope to solve this issue in 2-5 years, supposedly.

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

#93

Post by marcus_holmes »

I mostly nomad'ed around SE Asia, where free wifi in cafes is a given, and mobile caps are ridiculously huge/cheap (US$1 per week for 250Gb of download cap in Cambodia!)

Video calls from cafes suck, obviously, but also pretty common. You get used to it.

We got used to having "good wifi" as one of our primary considerations for Booking.com or Airbnb searches.

I'm using a Purism 14 laptop running PureOS, with an additional travel monitor when there's room. Linux wifi UI could use some work, but otherwise it works fine.

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

#94

Post by Sebb767 »

pradn wrote: post #88
iancmceachern wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starlink does not allow you to be mobile. You have to give them a service address and that address cant change (often enough for RV travel) Edited - spelling

Thank you. Is this for billing reasons or something technical?

I'd guess its about satellite load. On large assemblies (think burning man), it would probably break down their link all together and it's hard to quickly provision a satellite.

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

#95

Post by qorrect »

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…

That's weird, I was in Puerto Viejo when I found an original hard copy of "Where Wizards stay up late", something I couldn't find for sell in the US right before I left.

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

#96

Post by gamegoblin »

pradn wrote: post #88
iancmceachern wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starlink does not allow you to be mobile. You have to give them a service address and that address cant change (often enough for RV travel) Edited - spelling

Thank you. Is this for billing reasons or something technical?

They are currently doing a contract with the military to run Starlink on their airplanes flying around [1], so I assume it is not a fundamental technical limitation.

In the early days, before the constellation is fully fleshed out, it may have something to do with capacity management. I could imagine that there is a relatively low density limitation right now, so if everyone drove their Starlink connected vans to e.g. Yosemite National Park on a holiday, that would be too much density to handle.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-spacex-starlink-airforce/...

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

#97

Post by rektide »

asidiali wrote: post #8
rektide wrote: post #5

ergonomics are a key point for me. using a gooseneck tablet holder to hold an x86 tablet (i talked about the Dell Venue 11 Pro i used for many years recently[1]). a bluetooth keyboard (the Lenovo), small bluetooth speaker, bluetooth headphones, and usb-c battery pack make up the rest. in the future, i'd like to go dual-screen. Linux should let me use a second tablet as an extended desktop in my environment, Sway, and…

Verizon drops you to 600kbps after the first 15GB, and then further deprioritizes your traffic from there after you hit 22GB. See https://www.verizon.com/support/verizon-plan-unlimited-faqs/ FAQs 6+7

The 600kbps mentioned in FAQ 6 is for the hotspot plan. FAQ 7 specifically states you will not be throttled, but will be de-prioritized, but user reports that they are seeing 600 kbps speeds are all over the place. Perhaps they're incorrectly reporting the situation, but it feels to me like Verizon is being dishonest.

I really wish there were some good consumer reviews of these services, that include this critical behavior mode many of us will have to suffer.

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

#99

Post by synthecypher »

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…

Although at the moment Starlink does not allow for roaming.

I assume its to prevent beta users from selling their kits to musketeers.

"Your Starlink is assigned to a single cell. If you move your Starlink outside of its assigned cell, a satellite will not be scheduled to serve your Starlink and you will not receive internet. This is constrained by geometry and is not arbitrary geofencing."

https://www.starlink.com/faq

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

#100

Post by dan353hehe »

deanmoriarty wrote: post #98

I’m also interested in a mail forwarding service that can be used as residential address and won’t give any issue with financial institutions, if you have any to recommend :-)

I can't recommend any one in particular, as I kept my home address. But I know that a lot of full time RVers use South Dakota mail forwarders as their address without issue. I believe it's because of lower taxes in SD, and looser licensing laws on drivers. But don't quote me on that last one :)
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