Seeking the productive life: Some details of my personal infrastructure (2019)
writings.stephenwolfram.com
writings.stephenwolfram.com
I have two teams reporting to me, and each have a 30minute morning meeting where we decide what needs the team attention during the day. There is also room for small talk to keep it a bit social.
Those meetings do not need screensharing very often. When they do, we can manage to look briefly at a phone screen.
It has been wonderful and it is something I would miss if I ever had another job. I encourage the others in the team to do the same thing.
Walking in the forrest have two benefits; less risk of getting hit by a car, and, it’s more quiet of a background for when I unmute.
Highly recommended!
If I run in to someone, I politely say hello, and that’s that.
Not as egregious as the mountain bikers who blast music from speakers on the trails as they ride, but still.
Really. Your comment kind of annoys me because it seems you have no experience of this, while I have several years experience of it, yet you are sure that you know better than me what my experience of it is?
Edit: Also, my teams know about it and all agree with it, some of them do walks themselves.
I’m on mute most of the time anyway, I speak maybe 1/7 of the time on the calls. If I meet anyone in the forrest, I politely say hello to them, and that’s that.
More than that, it's very cathartic and peaceful. I used to live next to a big park on the Puget Sound and I would do a similar routine, in addition to occasionally taking a stroll through the park (effectively a forest) at lunch.
It had a very calming effect, def miss that!
Why you have to talk with your team on a daily basis? That’s too frequent and into weeds. The earliest should be weekly. Delegate and plan for long term.
> Walking in the forrest have two benefits; less risk of getting hit by a car
There’s a risk with everything. You just switch one with another.
I once had a bit of fun with it on a 20-core Raspberry Pi cluster, and sometimes I think it would have been amazing to run some ML workloads on this kind of environment: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2016/08/10/0830
I use a Scarlett 212 mic and sound card paired with a decent pair of speakers and my working room works like a charm. Everything is set up so if I start a call any device I can walk though the office and have a conversation with someone like they're in the room. 10/10 would recommend.
I imagine you can hear your partners quite well, but I want to be heard well also.
HQ mics are great because you can fine tune the volume. It's high enough for my voice to come across strongly, but low enough to avoid background noises, people hearing themselves through my speakers, etc.
The idea behind my set up is to have a hands-free and always-on working room. I just walk in and know that everything is ready to start a call. Just click a button to make a call or accept it. No need to fiddle with headphones, adjust volumes, check if sound is working well, etc.
The only exception to this set up is when I have a confidential call, in which case I use my phone or headphones.
Everything is wired, as wireless sound devices are just not there in terms of quality and avoiding annoyances (see the HN thread called 'The first minute of every phone call is a torture now)
(Also it meant I could call my search engine Dogsheep Beta, as opposed to Wolfram Alpha - and I enjoyed that pun so much I spent quite a significant of time writing the software to support it: https://simonwillison.net/2020/Nov/14/personal-data-warehous... )
I can't relate, it is not my cup of tea, but I can understand it and refrain for judging.
Yikes? He's smart, so I'm sure he's protected it adequately, but auditing the surface area of this much software seems insane.
The rationale is, because I want to.
The system has evolved over the years, current configuration is: Several 1080p SONY cameras with hacked firmware that stream video to a capture device. An older view of the camera rig that has since evolved again, is here: https://youtu.be/dGRDB1vVxyY
Some 4K webcams connected over USB that I don't stream. I capture one full frame every X milliseconds.
Two Kinects set to be out of phase capturing the entirety of the office as a depth map.
Two Rode shotgun microphones capturing audio and feeding it in to a Focusrite box.
Custom built USB "keyboard" with a few arcade buttons that permit "pause/unpause", "forget a little bit" and "forget five minutes."
Two LED lights to indicate recording status for both myself and anybody walking in the office.
Timesnapper on Windows, and a little custom C++ capture program for macOS and Linux that takes a snapshot of my desktop every X seconds.
All that data gets stuffed on to a secured drive on a file server. The data goes back more than a decade. Nobody has access to that data but me.
I use an NVidia Jetson to analyze everything: the desktop images, build up a map of applications, analyze people in the room, identify who they are, what clothes they are wearing, identification of activity, OCR of images, transcription of spoken word to text, identification of websites, identification of music playing, "oh hey, he's listening to the following artist, let me pull that artist's social feed and put it on the ambient screen in the hallway", which is kinda creepy when the software identifies my own music https://soundcloud.com/justinrlloyd and then stalks me and puts up my own social feeds on the household ambient screen. I also have the Jetson watching the front door via the Ubiquiti doorbell camera and can switch on the TV in my office if someone comes to the front door so I can see who it is, and also will notify me that a package is on the doorstep ready to be brought inside via the second high viewpoint door camera performing a "what changed in this scene, is that a package? That looks like a package. Package! ZOMG! Package! Package!!!" That algorithm has one job and it does it really well. Like a hunting dog staring at squirrels.
Lots of this stuff is readily available as ML models, for the most part I just strung them together with simple scripts to move data around.
I have a "virtual assistant" that I wrote, using NLP and key phrases with a speech recognition model that understands specific commands and some free form speech, an early prototype of my virtual assistant is here: https://youtu.be/uhl8wN7Uvv8 and I state for the record that it has gotten far better in the intervening years. And then a text to speech model when absolutely necessary to give me voice prompts.
This virtual assistant can control cameras, e.g. tally lights, zoom and focus, recognize the fact I am holding a receipt from a grocery store, or a book, and take a high resolution picture and tag it with meta data.
I keep a near real-time backup of my computers, and that data goes back probably three decades, any time I retire a machine I take a full drive dump and store that.
Out of office, I take a snapshot of my desktop on the laptop (Microsoft Surface or Macbook Pro), which is then automatically copied to the server when I return to the office. I built my own Sensecam-like device using a J2ME device almost two decades ago, but have since moved to using an Autographer for life logging.
This is just amazing. You've basically built your own JARVIS, and I really want to know how much you would charge to replicate this ? ... its almost impossible to turn something so bespoke into a purchasable product, so I'll never be able to walk into a store and walk out with this entire thing, but its like art, you can pay the artist to make you one thats pretty similar since they know how to do it... I suppose that does open a more interesting question for the wider audience.
How much effort does it take to maintain this?
With regard to maintenance, I don't know, I haven't touched it in months. Maybe every once in a while I get some weird, catastrophic failure of "I can no longer talk to the ambient screen, but I am still sending commands" and then I have to spend a half-day debugging what the issue is only to realize that the CNC in the workshop stole the IP address because I forgot to lock that IP to the device's MAC when I switched out the old screen for a new screen.
I hear tell of a 19th century English gentleman who manually recorded the level of rain water and the barometric pressure in his garden, a dozen times a day, including the wee hours of the morning, waking up several times a night as though afflicted with the worst UTI possible, through all weathers, all seasons, all ills, all trials and travails, any and all privations that life could send his way, and did so for 40+ years. Obssessively and compulsively some would say. Or we may say diligently if being generous. I am sure that at some point someone asked "why do you do this? what do you feel it adds to your life?"
Because I can. And because I want to.
My father is building a small sailboat model (the Santísima Trinidad), and if someone asked “What does that add to his life?” I personally would pity that person, for its lack of empathy and views on a successful life.
In questions of code and of life, we should ask "why about code" and "what about people."
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There is a breed of fox out there, with big bushy tails.
In which the wind pushes them backward, like big billowing sails.
They can seen where they've been, but not see where they'll be.
There are those that sail-walk North
There are those that sail-walk South
And they think they control the way that they're going for
But really they lack all form of direction, no less and no more
When one day came a fox, who was lacking a big bushy tail
It was all scrawny and thin, and made the lousiest sail
"Where do you come from? From where do you hail?"
Cried a crowd of bushy foxes, fighting the winds to stand still
As our new little fox, with a scrawny thin tail
Ambled slowly past them not knowing the question
He didn't stop for a minute, not even to rest
Just kept on walking, simply walked into the West
"What why did you do that?" asked a North-North quick walker. "Don't you know that walking Northwards is best?"
"Best?" shouted a Southward slow stalker "Everyone knows that is as wrong as can be."
"But if you walk North, or if you walk South, we know that West is not the best place to see."
"Why do you walk West? Why do you do that?" puzzled both North-South walkers.
"I don't know, I just like walking West. I came out of the East, just over yonder, and I'm heading out West, to take a quick gander."
"But what's over yonder? From where you came. And what's over yander? Is it the same?" quizzed the South-North slow and quick walkers.
"I don't know. I'll go take a look. I come back when I'm done, I'll walk back to my East."
"But what if you keep walking? What if you run out of ground?"
"Then I'll just keep walking, on into the West, my feet out in front of me, until I come right around."
* /^ ^
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This extra layer was a game-changer for me, I hesitate for long, but finally switched few years ago and so far prove to be flawlessly. I still miss fancy UI/ML tools, but anything is at my fingertips locally, I can make quick slides if needed directly in org-mode, I can click code-executing links (elisp:), running code blocks (org-babel) and anything is integrated to a level NO ONE modern software can reach due to modern systems archaic, limited and limiting designs.
This is a great tip. Get a desk with pull-outs. I have them on the left and right. They're 1/2 an inch think and strong enough to leave a heavy book, laptop, or whatever until you're done. When both sides get pulled out, some paper-heavy task is occurring, such as taxes.
The Clockwork Orange eyes held open forced to watch screens device comes to mind.
One of the things that impresses me the most is exemplified by these two examples:
> [...] including for example the issue of my elementary school magazine from Easter 1971.
> [...] school geography notes from when I was 11 years old, together with the text of a speech I gave
When he was 11 he had the foresight to realize that he might want to refer back to this stuff and decided to keep it and store it somewhere that it could be found again. When I was 11 I'd have likely thrown it out during the end-of-year desk/locker clean out and not given it a second thought.
While I don't necessarily aspire to his level of productivity, I'm very envious of how meticulous his record keeping is. Whenever I try to get organized like this I quickly get overwhelmed and give up.
So I'm hoping that AR glasses will do the trick before long. If they can project non-jiggly text into the world so that I can rapidly context shift between them with little refocusing, and let me input by wiggling my fingers, I'd pay a lot for it. But I guess lines of code per hour will decline with speed.
Once you get older and the knees start wearing out it's a great alternative
- Writing correspondence, essays, docs, todolists? The voice-to-text feature works great on iPhones.
- Reading blog posts or articles? Extract text then run it through the iPhone's screen reader.
- Moving trello tasks around? Do it through the phone app. etc.
Siri can't even get simple text messages write (pun intended)
If I have access to a nice screen, full keyboard and a mouse, the only reason I need to use my damn phone is developers who prioritize their phone apps over computer based applications (see Apple Music, etc).
I have the problem of flat surfaces, I've been trying hard to figure out a better way for incoming papers (bills, to read, to investigate, to shred).
Seeking the Productive Life: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26045380 - Feb 2021 (63 comments)
edit: ahh yeah... this is some dense/context specific stuff
the language design review ones are fun though... the tangents
Being productive is not a good. It leads to wanting to attach a computer to oneself while going on a walk outdoors!
- The pro-productivity people are more involved parents and family members
- The pro-productivity people are more involved in hobbies
- The pro-productivity people create many more things
- The pro-productivity people lift more, go outdoors more, travel more
It appears, empirically from my sample set, that being pro-productivity correlates with spending one's life meaningfully. Having chosen to model myself on those I know like this, my life has gotten better.
This class of advice (anti-productivity) therefore appears to me to be in the same class of advice as other Internet advice: "kick your kids out at 18 to teach them personal responsibility", "don't take on debt", etc.
To make it worse, you only have to scroll approx 1 page down before you have a picture of Stephen Wolfram outdoors.
The separation of work and play that so many online commenters form is perhaps key to this whole thing. Work is not a thing I do for money alone. I feel happy and fulfilled when I do it. It is fun!
I dunno, he's clearly not your average Joe. I also enjoy my work but it's more stressful than going for a walk or playing the guitar. At work there are expectations and deadlines, and I have to plan and manage my time, and update the right people when there are delays or scope changes etc etc. Going for a walk you can just be whatever you are in the moment, you don't have to do or be anything that's asked of you for a few hours.
[1] https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2012/03/the-personal-ana...
I haven't seen this amongst several people I know as pro-productivity. The productivity tends to be hyper-focused on work and side hustles/creative, and family/parental duties seemed to be neglected as a result. But I couldn't find any data on this with a quick search, so it's just conflicting anecdata to your anecdata.
Your other bullet points do align more with my experience, but not this one.
It's interesting to me that you think the opposite of "pro-productivity"--which I define as people who are constantly engaging in life hacks to increase their perceived "productivity", and thus treat productivity as some kind of end unto itself--is "anti-productivity".
Could we agree that the healthy thing lies somewhere in the middle?
I really wish I could get into this mindset instead of dreading work. I find no fulfillment from work, in fact the most fulfilled i've felt was when I had no obligations to anyone or anything (taking a break from work)
When you get to lead the vision of your “baby”, with support from 800 people, work is completely different from your typical middle manager of individual contributor.
That's not "online commenters". It's like 95+% of people who work for a paycheck.
I think many people have wildly different ideas about what makes a life meaningful and even more about what is a productive use of time.
Perhaps you mean that being maximally productive -- that is, seeking productivity over all other goals in life -- is not a good? Because productivity is definitely a good. Without it, all crumbles away to the natural state, which is chaotic and for human purposes "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short".
What makes an action good? It always or necessarily produces good things. Very few actions are good in themselves.
As to the Hobbes quote: too much for now! I'm at work. :)
What’s wrong with attaching a computer to oneself while walking outdoors? Does he have the same intrinsic motivators as you? Probably not. Does it matter? Probably not.
What about people that go outside and just read? Is that not a good life?