Show HN: Workstation – Showcase Your Setup | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Workstation – Showcase Your Setup

workstation.is

206 pointsdope133 comments

If anyone's really into "setups", I'd highly recommend checking out usesthis.com. There's some great discussion on why people like certain tools, and some high-profile people on there from all walks of tech life (writers, podcasters, musicians, mechanical engineers). Here's a few of my favorites:

Aaron Schwartz: https://usesthis.com/interviews/aaron.swartz/

Mike Hoye (Mozilla): https://usesthis.com/interviews/mhoye/

Drew DeVault: https://usesthis.com/interviews/drew.devault/

Naomi Wu: https://usesthis.com/interviews/naomi.wu/

Thanks!

The improvements section/conclusion in Aaron Schwartz article is actually very possible today.

>I wish all my hard drives were consolidated onto one big drive. I wish I had SoundSticks. I wish my G1 was much, much faster. I wish that Terminal would have built-in support for screen so that different screens would appear as tabs and it would auto-reconnect. I wish that there was decent todo management software that deeply integrated with my email. I wish that everyone had perfectionist levels of attention to detail.

Phones are much, much faster, NAS’s (synology for example) allow you to merge a whole bunch of drives on a network. And Iterm is integrated with tmux, which makes it feel supremely native.

Not sure about the todo or attention to detail though.

Org mode is a great answer for the todo wish.

I think most “to do” / productivity software integrstes with email these days (ie Asana has plugins for both GMail and Outlook and I think lots do), and slightly related emails has also become more easily “actionable” when Mailbox created the whole “swipe to action” email gestures that Apple and google then learned from etc.

I enjoyed Joey Hess's interview on there.

https://usesthis.com/interviews/joey.hess/

An interesting juxtaposition of working on technology in a decidedly austere living arrangement.

You can't really see it in my article there, I use a rolling cart with my laptops (Apple or Xiaomi depending): https://i.imgur.com/0OB23tw.jpg

Better look: https://i.imgur.com/ydgpMus.jpg

I avoid having a desk surface because it just gets overwhelmed with crap. This way I can't just set things down- they need to be put somewhere. Also I can move it out of the way for shooting YouTube videos, roll near the window when I want more daylight, roll near the printers when I am tweaking them etc.

It looks neat and cool but I prefer a sturdy surface than the flimsy coat hanger

Yeah there's a bit of wobble, I could see that annoying some people.

It is crazy that we have some trade war and xenophobia going on at the moment, I think your channel and comments here are helpful in challenging assumptions commonly held in the West.

I have a rig like yours with a hospital style adjustable height table that has wheels and can be used in a bed (if need be) to pile the junk on. The lip around the edge of the table top stops small things rolling off, plus it has a cup holder, unlike most tables.

I will be subscribing even though your content is not my normal fayre and I commend you for making the world that bit more interesting and surprising!

Thanks Theodores! It's a bit crazy, I'm trying to be very, very careful...

Derek Sivers' interview (founder of CDBaby) was the one thing that got me into Linux for the first time years ago (and Arch Linux even). Since then it's been my primary OS.

https://usesthis.com/interviews/derek.sivers/

Hey, another site that was built on a Mac and not tested on anything else.

So, Avenir Next is not a system font on Windows or Linux. On Windows, this means you get the browser's default stylesheet fallback, which means Times New Roman. So your site essentially looks like a Word 97 document to all your Windows visitors, and who-knows-what on the various Linux distros.

Take a look at https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/system-font-stack/ https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/11/using-system-ui-fon... and get yourself looking correct for those non-macOS users!

What did you use to build that stylesheet? A framework of some sort?

Fixed! Thank you for flagging that. I'm actually just using custom CSS files per component pulling in a global variables.css file.

Suggestion:

a) let the user add their commentary and

b) get folks to mention which chair, too. Some of us invest in ergonomic chairs, and those who don't would benefit from opinions on which chairs are good

For what it's worth, I got this chair recently (a Torch Iris Gold) in Hong Kong, and found it incredible value for money, at least compared to a Herman Miller Aeron, Mirra etc; : it has a bunch of adjustments that the Aeron and Mirra do not. Obviously, this advice isn't that useful if you're not in Hong Kong.

https://shop.freemax.com.hk/eng/product/%E9%9B%BB%E8%85%A6%E...

Indeed. Added my setup just now, comments (and votes) would make this much more interesting.

Also please fix scrolling in the submission form on mobile (iOS) with the -webkit-overflow-scrolling CSS property.

Please tell me you're stripping EXIF tags from all images; otherwise this is just a "rob these people now" list.

First image I checked for this, full EXIF data is intact, including GPS data.

Kinda surprising, as many web-applications forget to add that meta-data after e.g. resizing photos. Still, not a good idea to upload pictures with GPS data to an online service (unintentionally).

iOS includes it by default.

It disappoints me that there apparently isn't an option on iOS to track photo location using some scheme other than EXIF. I really like being able to organize photos by location on my phone, but I dislike relying on image hosts and social networks to strip EXIF data when I post them to the web. Couldn't iOS store locations for photos it's taken out of band, in a sqlite db or something?

You can strip your own exif, there are many apps. Do not trust anyone else to do so, or not to keep that data for themselves even when they do. Cougfhaceboockough.

So iOS does it one way, Android does it another, and your old DSLR still stores data in EXIF? Sounds like a great way to be locked into a certain vendor.

I wish cameras wouldn't default to include location data. Most people don't even know pictures can include that type of info. It really should be an opt-in feature.

I'm not, I completely overlooked this :/ I'm adding this to the upload form now and I guess will have to go through and manually remove everyones exif data. Thanks for raising this.

Can't you just script the removal with something like the tools mentioned here https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2654281/how-to-remove-ex... ?

You can easily do it with exiftool:

exiftool -all= "$@"

It's in most *nix repos.

There is nothing extraordinary though, especially for HN crowd.

There is a lot of "fake" workstations: everything is so clean! No Fritos bag, no Coke bottles, no paper, no trash, ... just clean desks! Fake! lol :D

Not everyone lives like slobs ;)

Here you go:

https://workstation.is/station/4s1IHxshFb4BrTxTHjeG

Did you draw the figure drawing on the wall? It is wonderful.

It's also kind of NSFW.

Hello, haters. A NSFW warning is a detail of etiquette on the internet. It has nothing to do with being judgy about the content. It is solely about protecting someone's job while they surf the internet.

Thanks.

Actually I don’t think that’s the case! I find keeping my workspace relatively beautiful and clean (in my eyes - I’m sure it’s still a little bit messy by some standards) makes me feel better and more productive - and I think there’s science somewhere as well that says that messy work places adds to stress (I think the last place I saw it mentioned was in the book Deep Work, but it’s been known for ages).

At a previous job, when I was working on a complete rewrite of a critical backend financial data system for a hedge fund, I had a massive tower of empty mountain dew cans on my desk. It nearly reached the ceiling and was probably around 30 cans at the base. I had to stand on my deal to add new cans. It stood as a monument to all of the sugar and caffeine I consumed on the project (I was planning on taking it down post release).

Sadly, CEO was bringing some investors around and was mortified, and I was ordered to take it down. I didn't receive any backlash beyond bring told to take it down. Also, sadly no photos exist as it was against company policy. It Took something around 2.5 50 gallon garbage bags to dispose of.

Today, my desk is spotless. Just a notepad and pen on it when I go home at night.

I have a directory full of photos of every desk "setup" I've had since 2002. They all look very tidy, like in these photos. Nothing like the project-strewn desk I'm sitting in front of now. I realized this is because the only time I ever take a picture of my desk is right after I have set it up.

Honestly having a collection of photos on this site that backlogs this far back would be incredible. Not just saying that because I built it (but I also because I built it)

Images aren't loading (anymore I guess)

Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 402 (Payment Required)

relevant commit strip: http://www.commitstrip.com/en/2019/05/20/monitoring-everythi...

Haha - that strip is perfect. but yes, fixed!

Sorry for the NSFW image, it's been removed. Also temporarily removed the ability to add a station while I figure out next steps.

This is a cool idea. One suggestion though, it would be nice when viewing a setup to be able to use arrow keys to advance to the next setup.

I love the single-screen setup. I have tried dual-monitors, laptop + monitor, etc., but found that everything else on the screen is just a distraction. Most of the time I'll just work on my laptop or plug in a monitor & close my laptop!

That’s me as well.

The battlestations subreddit has a lot of really epic setups.

It really does! It's massively inspired by that subreddit and /r/macsetups too. I wanted to create this to hopefully fill the gaps a little when talking about your setup in detail. It's a very early Alpha so it isn't very feature rich but planning to build on this more in the future.

Most of those I saw were pretty much the same. Towers with windows and those ugly LED wall triangles, often aiming for a "vaporwave"/CGA look.

There was definitely more variety when beige cases were the rule and you had to paint and dremel things yourselves…

And /r/retrobattlestations !

There also used to be deskography.org

r/cyberDeck/

I am a bit surprised there is no vertical multi-monitor setup there yet. I have my 2nd monitor above my first since a few years now and I don't want to go back to the traditional horizontal layout.

The only thing I might change is adding more monitors or increasing sizes, but that isn't really a priority as I tend to have enough space most of the time.

However, I love the idea, of this site as the photos offer a better impression of the work experience in those places (e.g. compared to usesthis.com).

I tried a vertical monitor for a day once, but I found I ended up holding my head at an uncomfortably high angle too much.

Try using a monitor arm and angle that monitor in such a way at such a height, that you would not have to adjust your head along the vertical axis. It only works with monitors up to a certain size, though, which is the biggest limitation.

Actually, my lower monitor is my primary monitor for my desktop PC. But for a while, I used a similar setup with a Thinkpad as my lower monitor and that worked just fine for me too even though I used the large upper monitor as the primary monitor then.

Could you explain why you like this better than a traditional multi monitor layout? And how wouldit compare to vertical monitors horizontally next to each other?

For reading longer articles/text or even just code, I prefer it vastly. My current (work) setup is one landscape monitor in the middle and two portrait mode monitors on the sides. The only change I would personally make is add another landscape monitor right above my current one.

> Could you explain why you like this better than a traditional multi monitor layout?

With the (traditional) horizontal layout you have to turn your head or your complete body towards a monitor. With a vertical setup, you can always sit/stay in a symmetrical way towards your monitors and instead of turning your head you have to tilt it.

In the end, it all comes down to how your body fits into that setup, but I feel a lot more comfortable if I don't have to turn my head. Tilting just feels better (less asymmetrical stress on my shoulders when you keep your head in a fixed position).

> And how wouldit compare to vertical monitors horizontally next to each other?

I never worked with vertical monitors for a long time so far, but I guess three would be a better choice for me than two, as I could have one centered monitor. A pro for vertical monitors would be that at least they would reduce the angle I have to turn my head.

I tried that once, lots of neck pain after a couple of days. It turns out my side to side neck muscles are much more developed than my up down ones.

Edit: this was two horizontal side by side 27” displays in portrait. I’m sure it would have been just as bad as verification side by side landscape.

Heh, I feel very tempted to go all in with pictures.

After 15 years of using nothing but the latest and greatest, I'm now stuck with a refurbished HP desktop that smells like burned plastic and an arbitrary collection of questionable-quality accessories on top of a retired kitchen table with a garden chair to sit on.

And the only thing that really bothers me is that the computer might stop working any second and I can't afford a new one.

Life moves in mysterious ways :)

It’s interesting to see that’s there are not so much systems with ergonomic keyboards mice... Are people underestimate importance of that?

I don't use an ergonomic mouse. I am using my keyboard probably ~20x more than my mouse, so it just doesn't seem that important. Mostly I am using my mouse to scroll around and navigate webpages, but when coding it's mostly Vim, tabbing between windows, typing commands in the terminal, etc...

it was about keyboard/mice :-)

I'm pretty much switching between stuff using keyboard, and mouse is mostly for "fine" scrolling, selection of bookmarks, and links, in most cases just page up/page down

There are other ways to deal with that, like physical conditioning. Ergonomic keyboards don't cut it when you need to carry a laptop.

As a regular visitor on /r/macsetups, I find your site's navigation cool! I look forward to more setups :-)

Something's up with the retrieval of images. Getting errors (402 status code) from Firebase storage / Google. — EDIT: seems to be fixed!

Fun project though! What are your plans with it? Like to hear about your ideas.

Some – unsolicited – suggestions (feel free to ignore):

- describing (primary) usage(s) – e.g. workstation, gaming, web dev, music, audio, etc.

- describing setup components by selecting items from a parts list

- adding benchmark results

- filtering / searching setups by varying properties

- breaking down components even further.. there's a huge community around mechanical keyboards for example, these come in all kinds of shapes.. users may have desires along the lines of: "I'd like to see setups with wireless 60% keyboards"

- listing similar setups ("if you like this, you might like..")

- capturing setup updates (and displaying VCS-style diffs :-))

- recently updated systems

- in the same vein: build logs

- image annotations

- up- / downvoting

- comments

Fun stuff to come up with.

These are great suggestions, thank you and it's exactly what I've posted it for tbh - It feels like this project could have endless possibilities but I also want to know what others care about too.

My next steps (I posted below but happy to post here too)

- Multiple image upload support

- Like setups

- Build collections out of setups

- Search (tags, product names, setup titles etc)

- Tagging products on setups (like how Facebook does but you know, respect peoples data etc)

I think after that or even during, I'll need to definitely come up with a more structured roadmap.

Again, thank you for the suggestions!

+1 for comments. Would like to be able to ask questions.

Cool, but I’m sad that a picture of my “workstation” is basically just a Thinkpad.

Pfff, amateur. My "workstation" is just an iPad.

This would still be cool to upload imo :)

Mmmmm, Thinkpads :-)

The computer itself isn't the only interesting part of a workstation setup, your desk layout can be pretty interesting too

Just a bare desk and an occasional smart phone next to the laptop :(

Soooo... everybody's a neat freak with a Ph.D. in cable management.

Might be a little bit of self selection bias going on here.

Everyone willing to post their photo, at least. My hardware setup isn't that different than images, but I have 2 laptops KVMed to one monitor and the resulting pile of cables. I have no desire for the world to see my chaos, or my messy office, or my pile of diet mountain dew cans, because somehow admitting to such vices on HN is OK, but documenting them via a photo feels wrong.

Not here: https://workstation.is/station/vbNm9bew5artQwD02SqW

This is the best keyboard I've ever used.

You see the same principle behind people's Instagrams. People shoot, re-shoot and meticulously edit their uploads so they're as flawless as possible. I think Reddit has something called 'r/shittybattlestations' as a joke sub to counter the deluge of samey "minimal IKEA desk w/ hyper-expensive equipment" content on the main subs.

Suggestion - one-click navigation from one setup to the next would be nice, instead of having to click back, reload the list, and choose another...

I wish something like this exists for UI or work bench setup. How people work with different screens and how editor or other tools setup

Working on the image fix now slowly dying inside

Edit: Fixed!

I was expecting this to be about software customization, but I guess not.

BTW, what is that on the wall below the desk on the 2nd picture? I'm not even sure how to describe it. It looks like a cat door with 4 mini laundry baskets stacked on one another and like a plastic bag in a hole on the top. What is that?

It looks like an old fashioned natural gas heater? My grandmas house had something very similar, it was like a little decorated alcove with an open natural gas flame in it. The bag at the top probably covers what used to be an old vent or something?

Victorian (probably) bedroom coal fireplace that's been painted over. There's even a few hearth tiles still in front of it.

Random image of a restored one: https://www.oldfireplaces.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/2...

Great idea. I used to be active on the CGTalk forum back in the day and always loved the workstation threads.

Awesome. A feature suggestion. Add option for users to enter details of their laptop, keyboard, mouse model etc when they submit the photo. You can probably create a rank list of popular gear from this. Also can link the gear to Amazon and make some money via referral links ;)

While I think this is cool (workstation porn :), it seems an overkill, you could achieve most (if not all) with a simple tumblr blog/account. Even NSFW upload protection and affiliate marketing. Aren't you folks tired of so many accounts?

I was greeted with an extremely NSFW picture but it seems to be gone for now. Not sure how to guard against that except to be vigilant in deleting such images. Love the website though! Reminds me of /r/battlestations on reddit

I think it's currently technically feasible on top-of-the-line phones to implement real time nudity detection and hiding by default. I can see it being a solved problem in 5 years. Maybe it will display at first but be blacked out after a few milliseconds.

I sure hope this blocking thing is opt-in ;-). How will adu.. ahem .. entertainment websites live otherwise ?

I imagine it will be like SafeSearch on google and bing, where it's opt-out.

I wish the cabling could be made a little neater with desktop setups. Power cables, video cables, USB cables. I use a KVM so even more cables. Hopefully Thunderbolt/USB4 will simplify things a bit in the future.

Unfortunately, all the images are returning "402: Payment Required" for me [1].

[1] https://i.imgur.com/WWuN4Tw.png

Thanks for sending that over - fixed now!

Just an FYI- there was goatse as the 3rd image when I loaded the site, username was also goatse. You'll probably want to remove that.

All seem to be nice and ordered places, which is definitely not my case.

A nice setup is something I'm really, really looking forward to once my student life is over. So I can't upvote this, viewing it makes me too sad :'(

The first image on this page is goatse and there's no way to report an image. What's your plan for content moderation?

Not much to see there... (No wonder, when in a movie they want to destroy a computer, they attack the screen.)

This is a refreshing fun project. What are your plans for this site if you don't mind me asking?

Thanks! It started as a conversation between a friend mostly off the back off /r/battlestations and how I'd love to be able to see more of peoples setups.

Initial steps where just to throw something together to allow people to upload multiple setups and view others.

Next steps on the roadmap

- Multiple image upload support

- Like setups

- Build collections out of setups

- Search (tags, product names, setup titles etc)

- Tagging products on setups (like how Facebook does but you know, respect peoples data etc)

Later later steps would probably be allowing the user to build collections out of popular products that get uploaded.

How do I upload my own setup photo? I see nothing under profile or on the website itself.

I had some trouble earlier with people uploading dumb images, so in order to upload images now, you need to verify your email address. There should be messaging at the bottom of the screen and I probably need to make that design clearer.

Cool! I am working on almost the exact same thing. Grats on shipping!

How is this different from /r/battlestations?

Weird, no images load for me on this site.

I would like to see likes :)

Might need some moderation as an image in the first row was about as NSFW as could possibly be and not remotely related to computers.

Flag it!

I backed out quickly and don't intend to go back as I am at work and I don't think it would look great if someone walked by with that on my screen.

I meant: flag it here in HN. That's what I did...

I suppose that's appropriate. HN's moderators can bring it back once they remove it and put a hold on new submissions until they fix it.

OK, we've turned off the flags now. Thanks!

It is simultaneously depressing and delightful that you've got goatse on the first page.

indeed. classic. i never have and never would never post goatse so i don't actually condone others posting it though.

Or to use some web service to detect nudity in images.

I was getting my college degree during peak goatse and have gotten good at tuning out goatse, so it hasn't hurt my impression of the site. It's a great idea to bring usesthis to the masses, and I wish success for OP. I'd consider excluding things that are primarily gaming because there are already places for people to show off their gaming rigs (such as battlestations on reddit).

IIRC Google Cloud, Azure, and (least certain of this one) AWS have machine learning driven adult image detection (among other things, like recognizing famous people's faces) as a service.

I just had it sitting open on my big ass monitor for about 15 minutes and had no idea it was up for the whole company to see.

Seems to be gore/porn on the frontpage... perhaps some moderation wouldn't be a bad idea?

Jesus! NSFW!!

Oh man you may want to make sure you are monitoring for bad actors. Really didn't need to see that before hopping on a call.

This has been around for years and you'll spend just as long trying to find something worth looking at and, perhaps, replicating. Most of them are just as drab and dreary as you'll find making the site, to some extent, pointless without doing any vetting for something unique.

You might want to consider adding some form of moderation. Viewed this at work and some very classic nsfw images were uploaded instead of workstations.

You have a NSFW image in there...

yeah seriously... RIP my job - waiting for that ASK HN: Who's hiring June 2019 edition.

Very NSFW image has been added

It's been a long time since I've been linked to goatse.

Nice nsfw frontpage

oh, great, first image it's extremely explicit NSFW. I guess there's no moderation nor machine learning to check the upload.

Thanks for the goatse lol

First thing I see is goatse.

Nice.

wow nice goatse on the front page...

NSFW

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