Saigonauticon @ Saigonauticon @voltage.vn

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2 yr. ago

I have some admittedly unusual work habits.

I spend all of my day working, but the catch is that maybe only 3-5hrs a day is doing work for my clients. A lot of that 3-5 hrs is spent automating client work, so I can spend less time on it tomorrow.

The rest I work on or study whatever feels important or interesting at the moment. I'd say I spend an additional 3-6 hours a day on that. This is the secret behind always being able to say "Oh, I have a thing that works a little like that (but not very like that -- so I'll need a budget)" whenever a client wants to do something new.

Often it's little sequential puzzles I invent and then solve in my head. For example today, my goal was to find the way to take the rolling average of a certain number of bytes, with the minimum number of CPU cycles (and no 'divide' instruction). If this and 2 or 3 other puzzles have decent solutions, I'll be able to do realtime audio analysis on a cheaper and smaller chip than "should" be possible -- although I have no practical implementation in mind at this time. If it comes up one day I'll look like a real hero though, surely :D

In principle, I work 7 days a week, because I have a hard time remembering what day of the week it is. I just track the day of the month. This is much less stressful because there's always tomorrow to get something done. When I don't have "work", I just solve puzzles mentally all day or try to build random things.

I also allocate about an hour a day to answer questions on Lemmy / Reddit, mainly about engineering (I classify this as a from of "work"). That exposes me to new problems that I might not encounter in my formal workplace. Also it helps me learn to be patient with people that want to do something technical, but have varying levels of ability.

Yeah I was pretty impressed by how awful the air was in Beijing some years ago. Glad to hear it's getting better.

Suddenly, living in a sprawling Asian metropolis doesn't seem so bad. Today's AQI was mid 50s, which is pretty good for my city.

Right now it's rainy season so it's not that smoggy. Gets worse toward the end of dry season though.

The first time I flew over a vast expanse of red dust that was once part of the Amazon, I wept.

Perception. Everyone knows what they think they heard you say. Very few people are privy to why you said it. The perception of what you did has a far greater reach than the intention, and is therefore the more important thing to control. This was as true in antiquity history as it is today -- although the Internet certainly amplifies this effect.

Did Nero really fiddle while Rome burned? Did Marie Antoinette really say "Let them eat cake"? All that matters is public perception.

Machiavelli covers a lot of things like this very well, I feel he's unfairly maligned -- most of The Prince is ethically-neutral and practical leadership advice.

I make them in a factory. I buy the raw bits at a bulk discount, and then workers assemble them into numbers by hand. Then we export them to people who need manufactured data, like elementary schools and consulting companies in North America.

It's not super exciting, but it's a living.

If you look at the numbers, the % growth in terminal multiplexers in the last hundred years has been absolutely staggering. Way more than just a fad!

(I love tmux)

Well, I'm from a neighboring country (Vietnam). We have the CVP. I immigrated here a bit over a decade ago to start a business. I do speak and read Vietnamese, but poorly. It's not 100% on topic, but I can share my experience for what it's worth, in case you don't get tons of replies from our Chinese colleagues.

In practice, most of my interactions with government bodies have been positive. They've helped me figure out the tax system, granted me legal status and various licenses here, some tax cuts, and so on. I got married at a People's Committee (UBNQ), which is sort of our equivalent to a town hall.

At the start, most other non-nationals I knew told me it was impossible to do anything legally (full stop), or without constantly paying bribes. I ignored them, filled out forms and submitted them without 'extra fees', everything worked out just fine. So I mostly ignore "what people say" about bureaucratic processes, and just call my lawyer for advice -- they usually tell a very different story.

It's not a carefree paradise, we're a developing nation and life has it's difficulties. However on a daily basis, my main concerns are traffic, workplace politics, air pollution, and occasionally neighbors singing karaoke. Top things I struggle with on longer timescales are things like home ownership, maintaining my health, and planning for retirement. I live in a slum, but it's safe and people seem "big picture" fairly happy and decent. Except for one mean lady in the market who gossips all day -- there's a good term in Vietnamese for this kind of person that roughly translates to "many stories".

Oh I also have to mention the big red propaganda posters! Most of them say things like "don't do drugs, kids", "don't drink and drive", and "try to eat less sugar / salt". Or "don't spit in public, that's gross". A few pertain to upcoming national holidays or anniversaries of historical events too. They're sort of like the "public service messages" we used to get in Canada, except with nicer artwork. Also if we're being honest, I probably should eat less salt.

So that's a slice of my life. My thoughts on the CVP remain moderately positive, but I'm not particularly political -- this describes most people I know here. I suspect it's a lot more ordinary than what you might think from all the angry politics online. I imagine it's similar with my Chinese colleagues (my main client is a Chinese company), but don't really know since we really only talk about work.

Well, I've got a boring answer for you today :D

Honestly the best thing you can do first is probably to learn accounting (and maybe tax law?). A business selling computers is a business first. I use GnuCash, it's very good enough. It's not that hard to learn from the manual:

https://gnucash-docs-rst.readthedocs.io/en/latest/guide/C/ch_basics.html

In terms of choosing products to sell? You can't compete and win with large companies -- you will only lose money. You can only create a new game that you can win at. For example, specializing in something specific -- retrocomputing, DIY kits, weird cooling, or maybe high-end commercial hardware produced for the Asian market, but sold to the US prosumer market. For example powerful embedded routers for hotels make fantastic home routers. I have one running OpenWRT and it blows any US-made consumer stuff out of the water.

Overall I'd choose an 'evergreen' product -- something neat from Asia that doesn't get obsolete fast at all -- that's why I chose routers as an example. Very generally we get a lot of neat stuff in Asia that you don't. "Store that sells cool stuff from Asia" sounds like a lot of fun to run :D

That brings me to the third thing -- establishing supplier relationships is pretty important if you're buying products.

Finally, B2B is way easier to make money that B2C (and less time consuming and more chill). So if you look at my commercial router example, you've got a cost advantage, it's a good product, it doesn't get obsolete fast, and some businesses need quite a few of them. So setting it up with some security cameras sounds at least like an OK 'lifestyle business', although maybe too boring for a hobby business.

Sadly I can't think of any solid course on these last 3 things, maybe there's a 'small business 101' out there somewhere.

If you're running a repair shop from home, the economics are bit easier, as you don't have to source product, just some tools. You need some decent Chinese tools (ping me and I will remember good brands for you), and some experience using them. It requires a lot of specialized skills, and doesn't make much money, but can be a lot of fun and can make a difference in people's lives. Learn at least how and when to desolder and replace capacitors, how to replace a laptop screen, and a bit of data and password recovery (personally I've required photo ID to do this last one). A good way to get started is to buy broken stuff and attempt repairs. Avoid microwaves, CRTs, and mains-power in general until you know how to deal with these safely.

Learning to repair electronics is an uphill battle these days. Most things are not made to be repairable. In a sense, that's what creates demand for your business if you can do it anyway. It requires a lot of creativity and knowledge, so there's a lot of cool stuff to learn. Learning to build electronics is as good a place to start as any, I guess. Adafruit and Sparkfun are good companies that offer lots of introductory material:

https://learn.adafruit.com/guides/beginner

https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/where-do-i-start/all

I thought about this for a while, but can't think of any term that is sufficiently specific, easy to understand, and can't be greenwashed away.

Maybe more terms isn't what we need?

Oh that's easy. Corporations would pick up and move to a jurisdiction without that law, and then just not comply. Or I'd make a lot of money running obfuscations services to technically meet publication requirements.

Personally, I'd try to find a way to use it to compel speech in the USA (I don't live in the USA but recall compelled speech being protected by the First Amendment). For example, your mind contains an algorithm that uses your phone to push content to your friends. In many cases, that algorithm contains a PIN code to your phone. Now publish it as open-source so the police can have it. Hopefully the pushback from this will result in the law quickly being repealed, but who knows.

Driving a motorcycle unsafely in mixed traffic without a license, registration, insurance, experience, or the ability to read the road signs. Saw two doing unsafe stuff on my way to work today. Not sure specifically where they are from, I didn't stop to ask. I can infer non-compliance from the license plate types with decent accuracy though. Generally plates that say NN (foreign resident), NG (foreign organization), or LD (local enterprise) are compliant and others are not. There are a couple of exceptions beyond that, but they are quite rare.

One nearly got hit by a bus as they cut across the road at an intersection. The other was just being pushy but didn't outright do anything that would get them killed -- not really out of the ordinary, just 'somewhat unsafe'.

This is becoming quite a thing here in Vietnam. We are starting to get quite a few undocumented migrant workers from the USA. It's slowly becoming problematic. I expect my compliance paperwork to increase in cost and complexity if the trend continues.

Also I see them die on the roads sometimes, maybe one per year. That's not an outcome I'd wish on them, but it's not surprising either.

Perhaps ironically, I live in a nominally Communist country that went through decolonization quite a number of times. It doesn't change much in my daily life (I'm not really political), although I arguably own some tiny slice of the means of production these days. So maybe in retirement I'll provide public access to those for working class people. That would be really fun, I think. Who knows what we might create together? Certainly if the machines are sitting unused in my retirement, they are creating nothing, and I would feel sad for the machines.

I don't do the whole 9-5 thing. That would stress me out! I work as long as I feel like, any day of the week I feel like. Generally, this is really nice for both managing stress (there's always tomorrow!) and steamrolling over any competition.

I'm just a mercenary (and a bureaucrat) though. You pay my fee in filthy lucre, and the job gets done -- legally, and reliably. If someone annoys me with politics at a client, I just try and replace them with a computer program. The result is that several of my best coworkers are machines these days. I foresee that trend increasing with time.

Yeah... I couldn't cope with that unfortunately (I'm a bit jealous, it sounds nice). I need to work long hours and make things, it's a compulsion. "Taking it easy" can stress me out to the point where I end up in a hospital.

So I sold all my worldly possessions and immigrated to the developing world on an investment visa (where things are made). My timing was a few years early, but I had no path to a decent life left except having my own company in a growth economy -- my entire industry vanished twice overnight in my home country due to changes in legislation.

Nowadays, looking at the local economy, there is no path to home ownership except for people who own companies, and maybe senior executives or senior software engineers. An average university-educated couple would have to save 100% of their income for their entire adult life to afford a nice home -- if they don't have kids. I think this kind of cruel equation is slowly coming to the West too -- although you guys have more land so I guess it takes longer.

One of the sad aspects of my job (in IT) is building tools to eliminate less stressful jobs, especially ones that pay well (usually management or accounting, in my case). Design has definitely been a specific target in recent years though -- off the top of my head I could at least imagine two approaches to writing a tool that automates color and font selection with results comparable to human expertise.

This is one reason it's a good idea to regularly study new things (IT or otherwise). I have to retool every few years as whatever I know becomes obsolete -- this used to mainly be a frustration in IT, but is rapidly becoming a necessary process in other fields. It won't be necessary to become an IT expert, but I would keep up-to-date on how to use the new tools technology provides... especially if I wanted to keep a job in say, graphics design or copywriting!

(Incidentally, my first job in this country was in marketing! It was high-stress and I did not earn 130k. I recall font and color choice processes vividly :D)

Oh, the paperwork that would cause... Easy to snap your fingers, but is he going to help fill out all the forms? Lazy purple good-for-nothing.

Hm, probably the first thing that would happen is that insurance companies would classify it an "Act of God", terrorist attack, or act of war to avoid paying out (depending on policy wording) -- forming a new record for "fastest paperwork filed by an insurance company".

Then next, that's a lot of people gone with no will. Estate law is going to be a mess, and we've got half the lawyers to deal with it. That is going to be a proper mess to untangle. If alive, I'll start a business process outsourcing company to pre-process the paperwork in Vietnam, assuming the Internet hold up.

No, but mostly for very boring reasons that have nothing to do with the technology:

1. I... don't even know two people outside of family I would trust with a deposit (any deposit, in any amount) -- e.g. pay me 10% in cash right now or I'll claim you breached the terms of use, keeping your deposit hostage.
2. Wonder if someone can find a way to do something vastly illegal with the cloud resources that makes me more money than the deposit? Or just blackmail me? So I'd need a normal legal contract with the other party's real name to avoid this liability. At which point the whole smart contract is arguably superfluous.
3. There ARE normal legal tools that handle this. You can put money in escrow at a bank, or use a lawyer. It's... actually a pretty normal thing to do in many industries. It's not particularly expensive as far as I know. There are problems with it, but none of them are of the form "Oh no, if only we used a trustless system with no middleman!"
4. Finally one technical point: smart contracts are only trustless if I'm a programmer and the smart contract source code is provided (in which case there's no money to be made providing the service, as I can just copy your work and it's a race to the bottom). Or if I'm familiar with assembly language (which I am), in which case it's an unproductive use of my time and a lawyer or bank is much much cheaper than my time spent as an auditor (I could be working on other things). So it's a bit hard to come up with any sort profitable enterprise, and most programmers I know strongly prefer to be paid for their time.

NB I've written various smart contracts for amusement (on various testnets only). I haven't found anything I'd want to use them for in production. It was a fun academic exercise though.

Anywhere between 7 minutes and 3 days.

I'm a level 15 bureaucrat. I've filled out government applications longer than my thesis, with only a pen and the bitter joy of precision.