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Full sun and sunglasses? There’s no way the guy on the left can see shit on his screen.
It’s because you’re a mouseclicker. I code for a living, i do everything in the cli, all i need to do to work on a sunny beach is increase the text size and invert the colors
I work outside all the time. It’s great. Use my laptop on the screened in porch. In the shade. Ceiling fan on. Maybe in the hammock. Doing whatever I want on the laptop while jiggler keeps my work laptop active in another room.
For those who can’t install much on their work laptop: just open notepad and put a weight on the space bar
Bonus point: you can see how long you’ve been away by looking at the character count, and try to beat high scores on slow days
I love sitting in my hammock or on a zero-gravity chair with my laptop on work days I don’t need 2 monitors.
I remember in ~2000 someone was in the parking lot of my office at a picnic table on their laptop and people commented how “cool” that was.
I’ve noticed since then that IT people qualify anything that drives work into personal spaces as “cool”.
2012: Wow, you can hot spot to your blackberry and connect your laptop to the Internet from the ferry, when you used to just let the wind ruffle your hair during your commute? “Cool.”
2026: Wow AI can write 78% of your code so you can produce twice as much shitty code while you spend even more time at your desk then you used to, for less money? “Cool.”
laptop outside is fine but on the beach? why don’t you pour the sand in manually at home?
That glare makes it impossible to see too
My boss gave me a RTO, so I retired. Union Yes, Baby!
This only works, if your job is sitting and waiting for other people to do the work.
Or making PowerPoint slides full of LinkedIn lunatic lingo.
I feel like we could double click on that statement and go granular!
Let me just do a quick recap here so we’re all on the same page.
I feel fully aligned.
Great! Now let’s leverage the key learnings into a win win scenario.
I’m dark mode all the way… except in direct sunlight.
Even if you have a high nits screen that laptop is gonna run hot in direct sunlight. Screens don’t exactly like that. Especially something like an OLED. It will degrade the screen faster.
Screens degrade? I’ve been using the same one for 10+ years and I bought it used for $20.
Yeah they degrade. Tech has improved a lot and they don’t degrade as fast as screens from the 2000’s but they still degrade. OLED more so than LCD. But if they degrade gradually and evenly you won’t really notice.
Note this doesn’t really happen to CRTs. Look I just want a modern CRT monitor.
Also doesn’t really happen to LCDs. It depends on the liquid crystal alignment technology to a degree and the backlight, but realistically, an LCD will not fail without operator error.
It’s the brightness and lack of cooling with my M2 MacBook Air. I have that, my iPhone, and my Galaxy S10. I’m on Lemmy on the S10. Even that isn’t as bright as my iPhone, but the typing is ten billion percent better.
I spent all my childhood life growing up on a dairy farm. Worked from home, got to do various types of exciting manual labor and operate somewhat dangerous machinery, AND I got to work outside no matter the weather.
So suck on that California. You ain’t that special.
Working outside can be fun. At least AS long AS you dont need that good of an internet connection, have a comfy place to sit in and are at a somewhat dark spot, so you can still see on your screen.
If and only if these three things are all given, than it can be quite nice to work outside.
Exactly, I used to hike to the top of a mountain find a shady spot and work till my battery died then hike back down.
Couldn’t agree more. Some of my best work and learning recently has been me on my back porch under shade with a box fan. While I have solid WiFi and power there, I also pack a portable monitor and can work without internet on much of what I do.
My mobile tethering is so good that I’ll usually do it even if I have access to WiFi. It’s just faster and more reliable. I could probably get insane speeds on the beach too.
If the sun is not out and it’s not too windy/cold it can be okay sometimes
Also, if you take any meetings, it needs to be quiet enough to communicate but also not disruptive to others if you’re taking loudly.
There are some very decent outside-internet solutions. I have one of those solutions at home and it’s a joy to work outside.
WiFi mesh networks can have impressive range outdoors, without walls and reflections blocking the wifis. And they can be powered by PoE (Power over Ethernet) so you only need to run 1 cable to hook it up.
But for most of my work, a cellphone hotspot is suitable, so long as it’s not so remote that I don’t get at least a strong 4G signal. Video conferencing isn’t very data intensive with compression and, if I’m not running the meeting, slight spottiness is fine.
Working outside your home is nice. But I think a lot of these comments are talking about working outside in public is a whole other problem.
A coworker of mine specifically built a little gazebo on their deck to be a summer-office. They wired a little wifi repeater in the roof, retractable shades and curtains, a ceiling fan, and got a desk that specifically fits a comfy deck chair. Obviously all of this can be moved out of the way for normal back yard stuff, but it’s become the absolute envy of all my remote colleagues.
The dark spot also avoids overheating
So it’s good if you are close to your router, have a comfortable chair, and have so much shade you’re basically indoors.
So if I just open a window in my office…
I get what you’re saying and acknowledge that that’s the best environment for some people, but for me there’s a different feel in being in your office and being on the back porch or out in the garage with the door open.
The fresh air, mild distractions on an easy day, and more natural light make me feel good. I think the beach would be a fucking nightmare for me. Same for things like a coffee shop. But if I’m in at least a semi private space and it’s not a balls to the wall day, I’ll take not being chained to the desk every time it’s practical.
The dark spot is only an issue if you’re using a laptop or something. Pen and a pad of paper is fine outside. Loose stacks of paper is obviously not ideal.
Unfortunately, most of us need to work using screens these days. I have hope for the future with these smart AR glasses. With the screen on the glasses, it shouldn’t be a problem to use them in bright light. And, feeling the sun on your skin is one of the best parts about being outside when the weather is good.
No, because then I want to do stuff that is not sitting with my laptop outside. If the weather is nice, I’d much rather play with my dog, climb a tree, or roll around in mud. Why’d I want to sit and do PR reviews?
If I’m ever envious of someone doing work in places where they should be relaxing, please kill me.
You must be someone who hates working from home, because home is the place where we should all feel relaxed, right? What about working in the garden? The garden is certainly a relaxation spot, but god forbid you get some rays of sunshine while you work.
I understand the desire to pity people who work at the beach. But then again, I pity anyone who ended up living near Silicon Valley. Think of all the money though!
That’s one extreme way to take the comment, I guess. I worked from home for a while and I think these return to office orders are stupid as hell, largely because going to the office needs unpaid commuting time, annoyances related to needing to bring a lunch, and it takes away your ability to do small chores and stuff during the work day that might be often impossible during the evening for one reason or another.
Look, if you want to work at the beach or whatever then go for it, but the idea that California is the “envy of nations” because people can do labour at a beach is insanity.
Gotta turn the brightness all the way up so you squint at your laptop for about an hour before it dies and you have a tension headache.
Not if you’re using a macbook…
they got e-ink screens now?
What does an eink screen have to do with anything? I work outside in a hammock during the summer on my mac and never have to bring it in to charge once, unless I forgot to the day before. That’s with running heavy applications like Jetbrains IDEs or Lightroom.
Laptops and screens can be pretty efficient. I got a pretty cheap run of the mill one (Arch btw) that easily does >8 hours at full blast HDR and no power saving.
I gotta add to this the app Brightintosh. It kicks up the screen brightness to the actual max brightness of the screen so a good 2x brighter. Major dif using in bright environments, less screen life and color accuracy theoretically
I use a MacBook Pro M4 from work, and the battery does last.
It’s also amazing that Apple Silicon can have similar power to a desktop RTX 5070 Ti in a laptop, except without a space heater PSU or a 16GB RAM limitation. If only it didn’t cost $4k and only have one Linux distro option. I’m hoping AMD RDNA 5 SoCs will be competitive and address both limitations.
What does that have to do with seeing the screen outdoors, and tension headaches?
I exaggerated the 1h battery life in my original post for comic effect. This person replied saying that’s not the case with a MacBook. I replied expressing my approval for MacBooks and couldn’t help but also going off on a tangent to express my other thoughts on the topic.
Oh, whoops, I didn’t look at names. Nevermind.
lol macs have the glossiest screens out there, almost like they make it a mirror on purpose
2022 brought one of the best screens for outdoor work… for a price, but of course
…why?
Cause mac laptops last like two days on a charge? If they lasted an hour people would return them. They’re not fucking dells.
Sun glare, sand, bad WiFi… yeah, it looks better than it feels 😭
