Why minus ? hacker news community is like googles fanboys.. hn starts to be like g more and more..
150 days of living and coding in a van
431–440 of 445 posts
Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van
#432Why minus ? hacker news community is like googles fanboys.. hn starts to be like g more and more..
Nothing new.. you have to just follow agenda..
Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van
#433Good for him... I would totally hate the lack of space and comfort. I'd sleep really poorly at night when it's super hot in summer and cold in winter. I'd hate it to have to look for a good internet to work. I'd miss my friends all the time. I'd dislike having to socialize with random van neighbors every time I want to not dine alone. I wouldn't last a month of this...
I bought a van, converted it into a camper with a surf board, and did a loop around Australia. It was an amazing experience, and you learn a lot about people, culture, and yourself. One of the things I realized is that life always offers you options to complain about: I think the greatest inconveniences and discomforts of our ancestors of 200 years past have now been solved, but then taken for granted. We just adjust…
I've gradually come to the conclusion that accepting a little discomfort in your life is a probably good thing.
Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van
#434I've met a few people living in vans/converted trucks when I've been in France. There's quite a few countries around with great regulations that let you park up in lots of places, e.g. in France there are regular places you can stay along the major roads for free, usually with decent facilities. I met a girl there this year who had converted a truck into a mobile home. It even had window boxes for her plants! Unfortu…
> it's much more awkward in the UK Except Scotland. There's no law of trespass in Scotland. Also, a lot of it is pretty empty!
and it has more interesting weather :)
Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van
#435Hey everyone! I'm the author of that article. I just started the blog and still have a ton of things to write about. I like all the (critical) feedback. That inspires me for further blog posts. Thanks for reading!
Hey, I am actually interested in the details. Though my situation was different, I actually lived in a van for 5 years. So: - How do you manage having no home address? Do you use PO boxes, do you have relatives who provide you with an address for administrative tasks (taxes, ...)? For me, I used my parents' address. - Winter is coming! How do you plan for cold weather? Gas heater? And while going to the toilets or sh…
"RVs are not always welcome"
Where? How come? And are campervans more welcome? :)
Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van
#436Earlier quoted context omitted.
>80% of the material in solar panels is recycled from old solar panels. That doesn't pass the sniff test. Solar cell production is on a strong upwards curve, if 80% is recycled from other panels then supply would be bounded by old solar stock recovery, which is not the case. I can't see how 80% of solar panel material, even if we're talking exclusively about the PV cells and not the surrounds, could be from old solar…
In fact it is 90% http://earth911.com/eco-tech/recycle-solar-panels/ and there are nee processes that reach 96%.
That's 90% of the material being recovered from old solar panels, not 90% of new panels being made up of recycled material.
That's still great news, but nothing like:
>80% of the material in solar panels is recycled from old solar panels.
Which implies new panels rolling off the production line consisted of 80% recycled material from old panels. That's not possible. If you have 10 old panels coming in to be recycled, and you recover 90% of the materials from them, and you're producing 100 new panels (since production is increasing), at best you're gonna get 9% recycled material into your new panels.
Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van
#437Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van
#438Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey, I am actually interested in the details. Though my situation was different, I actually lived in a van for 5 years. So: - How do you manage having no home address? Do you use PO boxes, do you have relatives who provide you with an address for administrative tasks (taxes, ...)? For me, I used my parents' address. - Winter is coming! How do you plan for cold weather? Gas heater? And while going to the toilets or sh…
"RVs are not always welcome" Where? How come? And are campervans more welcome? :)
In an RV, it is clear that someone is sleeping there. Someone who would be better off staying in one of the hotels and spending money. There are some places where such vehicles are associated with prostitution, or other "undesirables" like gypsies.
Some beaches explicitly prohibit RVs, or put gates that make it impossible for such large vehicles to pass.
Campervans are less problematic, because unless they are heavily customized they look like regular vans, so you can park almost anywhere without raising too many eyebrows. They also tend to have a smaller profile, which helps with road restrictions.
My parents toured Europe several times and they use an almost stock white cargo van for the reasons I stated above.
Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van
#439Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't really get this rationale. You're basically saying that you know that you are hurting yourself, but on the plus side, you are able to be hurting yourself anywhere.
I mean that I am a real developer still (and have been one of the world's relatively best paid), and 13" works fine for me to get stuff done. Here I am 200 miles from home in a hotel right now with all my tools. No monitor lugging required. Yes, laptop ergonomics aren't ideal, but neither is life. There are always trade-offs. And I have some colourful language memories from earlier sysadmin jobs getting horrific shoc…
The screen-space-as-a-distraction argument sounds to me more like an excuse for not being able to keep one's attention on the task at hand. If a person can not resist filling the screen space up with useless clutter, it's that person's problem, not the problem of having the screen space. Someone else is able to use that extra screen space productively.
All in all it seems a "I can't have it, so I convinced myself that having it would be bad, so I don't miss it as much" self-deception.
Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van
#440Earlier quoted context omitted.
But only if you're abroad temporarily. Living in a van could mean that you use more data abroad than in your home country. Roaming rules don't apply so you'd have to get a sim card from the country you're in.
There's also usually limitations on how much data you get for free while roaming. After you go above that it's up to €7.50/GB, so it's usually cheaper to get a local SIM.
I always went with local sim. This is a great resource - http://prepaid-data-sim-card.wikia.com/wiki/Prepaid_SIM_with...