Work from home

My recent live/work experiment in the all-electric VW ID Buzz wouldn’t have been possible without BioLite’s first portable battery and solar panel. It was needed to provide continuous power to my Starlink internet, laptops, phones, and more because the Microbus can’t when parked. The BaseCharge 1500 has some minor quirks, but if it’s specced and priced right for your needs then it’s worth considering.

“Most companies have settled into a hybrid work strategy that shows little sign of fading,” says a new report in the WSJ.

About 58 percent of companies now allow hybrid work schedules, according to Scoop Technologies’ monitoring of 4,500 companies. Just 42 percent of companies require a full-time office presence. Low unemployment gives workers leverage and they choose flexibility, duh. 

No actual products were announced, but I can soon imagine an all-electric Winnebago fitted with an EcoFlow Power Kit that can be expanded with EcoFlow solar panels, batteries, AC, heater, fridge, freezer, ice maker, and smart generator as owners venture further off the grid.

Days are numbered for diesel-powered white-plastic RVs and this is the kind of push the industry needs. Details coming in July.

I’m currently a lawful neutral, but drifting towards a chaotic neutral later this year.

I have one question about this, though: Where are the superultrawide lunatics (of which I used to be one)?

40 percent do so part time. That compares to 16 / 28 percent for the rest of the UK, according to data released by the Office for National Statistics. Only 12.5 percent reportedly worked from home pre-covid.

Older, well-educated professionals earning above £50,000 annually were most likely to work from home, while those aged 16 to 24 and making less than £10,000 were least likely. 

Joshua Spodek writing for Ars about going off-grid in Manhattan: 

I allowed myself one cheat: I could plug in my laptop and phone when working at New York University. Otherwise, my only electric power came from the [200W] solar panel and [576Wh] battery. I still used my building’s hot water but not my gas stove.

Context: the average US home consumes 886,000Wh per month.

Until Volkswagen finally turns the ID.Buzz into the electric microbus of our hippie dreams, there’s the Ququq BusBox-4. It adds a cooker, fridge, water supply, and bed for about $3,000.

EcoFlow’s all-in-one Power Kit has proven itself to be a turnkey solution that takes most of the guesswork and complexity out of installing and using a battery-based solar generator inside an RV or off-grid cabin in the woods. It’s not cheap, but owning one could be the first step in starting a whole new life.

I’ll believe the $24,000 Space Camper is real when I see it ship. Nevertheless, I do love the idea of an add-on that transforms Tesla’s Cybertruck into a giant off-grid solar generator, complete with bed, kitchen, and toilet. Someone has to be the next Landrover, so why not Tesla?

How badly do you want to just pack it all up and get away? What if you could unpack everything in just 10 minutes, complete with a full kitchen, double bed, and enough solar power to keep everything running? Better start saving because the BunduTRAIL doesn’t come cheap.

That’s a 131 percent increase from pre-pandemic 2019, according to MBO Partners. Lots of employers not named Elon Musk have made remote work a permanent option. Just make sure you’ve considered the tax and legal implications of taking your career on the road before moving to that shack in Mexico or buying a van.

Slack’s video huddles feature, which was announced back in July, just hit our instance today and after two video meetings in it, I’m not sure I ever want to use Zoom again. Of course, there are things Zoom still does better, like letting me record a meeting or handle many more thumbnails on a single window, but the Slack video huddle just feels much more effortless. And the chat is saved as a thread in Slack.

Zoom is at the same time trying to attack Slack from the other direction, by adding chat and other features. But if I had to guess, I’d wager Slack might replace Zoom first.

Starlink can be expensive, but for me, paying an average price of €53/mth this year for fast internet from the remote beach where I work and play during the summer is totally worth it (read my review here). When my Starlink RV service is active, it costs €105 each month. But autumn is approaching so I’m closing my surf shack and pausing my subscription until April. With any luck, the price will be reduced again by the time I fire it back up.

Yes, Zoom is probably smart to go all-in on chat, and try to keep more people in its ecosystem all day. (Also, sorry, changing the name from Zoom Chat to Zoom Teams Chat isn’t going to accomplish... anything.) But I can’t help but be bummed to see Slack, Teams, Zoom and even Google Workspace all basically turning into the same overbearing all-in-one work app. Are there just no more new ideas in this space?