After trying out GitHub Codespaces for work, it’s clear that—while impressive—it is not a suitable replacement to developing locally. It’s slow to set up. It’s also very expensive.

When using Codespaces with a monorepo that uses docker-compose to run services (e.g. a database, frontend app, and API server) you want to have everything running so you can develop as soon as it boots. However, every Codespaces container builds the entire docker-compose each time which takes time for any non-trivial setup.

If you try to set your .devcontainer to your project’s docker-compose.yml, Codespaces doesn’t expose the running docker services in an accessible way and you are attached to a single container with no way to switch. You can’t see logs (e.g. docker compose logs {service}) or execute code in another container (e.g. docker compose exec {service} {command}). You can’t change which container the Codespace is attached to so running setup or maintenance scripts is difficult.

You could use the default .devcontainer and call docker from within the Codespace terminal, but then you push the build latency to after the Codespace boots and the user has to remember to call it for the set of services they need.

GitHub is also working on a feature to pre-build devcontainer images, but who knows how much that will cost in storage.

Adding up the costs of using Codespaces full time shows that it’s more expensive than buying MacBook Air M1s. At the default 4 core VM at $0.36 you’re looking at roughly $1,000 per engineer per year. Not to mention and you still need to buy and maintain a work laptop.

There is an argument to be made that you save money on time spent dealing with local configuration issues. This makes sense at larger organizations, but for a small startup, probably not.

See also:

• Why aren’t remote devboxes used more often?

We can come up with a valuation of remote work by looking at a few signals: what you would forgo, what do you gain, what others gain, and what others lose.

What you would forgo:

• American workers are willing to take a pay cut to work remote
• Google employees could face pay cuts due to working remote
• low psychosocial safety is associated with a threefold increase in risk of major depression

What you would gain:

• Not having to commute for five hours is equivalent to a 10 percent raise
• Places that will pay you to move and work remotely

What others gain:

• Topeka Kansas estimates a 10x return on relocating remote workers to their city

What others lose:

• Organizational support of remote work correlates with reported productivity
• Remote work resulted in a 30% increase in hours worked and 20% decrease in productivity
• inequality of remote work

In aggregate:

• 45% of jobs can be done remotely
• 20% of US workers are expected to work from home permanently
• 84% of moves during the pandemic were within the same metro area
• remote work is not necessarily better for the environment
• Two-thirds of remote workers want to continue to work remotely
• Half of Millennials and Gen Z would consider quitting if employers don’t allow remote work

The reaction to the recent announcement that Apple would begin scanning iCloud photos for CSAM was not just because of privacy concerns, but because it legitimizes other service providers to do the same.

Read Internet of Snitches.

See also:

• In a similar way a data dividend law would undermine privacy and encourage acceptance of exploitative behavior.
• More client side scanning would contribute to more social cooling.
• If privacy is the right to be imperfect, then an internet of snitches produces more extreme value signaling.

In a recent article in Business Insider, a leaked pay calculator and interviews found that some employees face pay cuts if they continue to work remotely. In one example, an employee based in Stamford, CT would face a 15% pay cut unless they worked from the NYC office (1 hour commute). Former San Francisco employees could face as much as a 25% pay cut.

See also:

• American workers are willing to take a pay cut to work remote
• Not having to commute for five hours is equivalent to a 10 percent raise
• Meanwhile, some cities are paying to relocate remote workers to them
• what is the market value of working remote?

In TypeScript, a Record type used with an enum for keys is exhaustively checked. That means if you forget an enum variant in the Record it’s a compile-time error.

enum Status {
  Todo,
  InProgress,
  Done,
}

const StatusIcon: Record<Status, string> = {
  [Status.Todo]: "todo.svg",
  [Status.InProgress]: "in-progress.svg",
  [Status.Done]: "done.svg",
}

See also:

• Static types make it easier to work on projects sporadically
• Exhaustiveness checking helps TypeScript pass the airplane test

A study performed on Australian workers that looked at contributing factors to developing major depression symptoms found that low pyschosocial safety climate was associated with a threefold increase in risk of development major depression symptoms.

The study also found that long working hours (41-48 hours and greater than 55 hours worked per week) was not factor overall when removing mild cases.

Finally, that high work engagement was correlated with longer working hours (which is a factor in developing major depression symptoms).

Read the study Predicting new major depression symptoms from long working hours, psychosocial safety climate and work engagement: a population-based cohort study.

See also:

• Remote work resulted in a 30% increase in hours so remote work could contribute to increased risk of depression.
• Working hard is required to do great work so high-effort workers are at higher risk.
• Organizational support of remote work correlates with reported productivity

A survey found that 38% of remote workers regularly work from their beds. 45% regularly work from the couch.

This highlights one of the challenges of remote work—having space to work. Some have roommates in a living arrangement that did not consider permanent work-from-home. Others can’t afford to move.

See also:

• This is an example of the inequality of remote work and why a work from home stipend is not enough for some workers.
• Yet two-thirds of remote workers say they want to continue to work remotely.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is a major ocean current that could be close to collapse resulting in severe climate impact (extreme weather, ocean levels rising).

The AMOC has two modes. A strong mode and a weak mode. Scientists believe they can observe early warning signs of the transition from strong to weak (the weak mode is the thing to worry about). All eight indices like sea-surface temperature and salinity data, showed that over the course of the last century, we are at a point close to a critical transition.

Read Observation-based early-warning signals for a collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation published in Nature.

A survey by Breeze, an insurance company, found that 65% of people would take a 5% pay cut, 38% would take a 10% pay cut, 24% would take a 15% pay cut, 18% would take a 20% pay cut, and 15 % would take a 25% pay cut.

The median household income in 2018 was around $60,000 so 65% of people value remote work at roughly $3,000 per year, 15% of people value it at $12,000.

See also:

• Not having to commute for five hours is equivalent to a 10 percent raise so the average worker is breaking even at 10%.

While not having to commute is equivalent pay raise, it’s not necessarily better for the environment.

During COVID-19 lockdown last year, carbon dioxide emissions from transportation dropped 15%, but we should not expect that to continue as the economic recovery continues.

In addition, moves out of city centers come with larger carbon footprints—homes in the suburbs consume three times more energy and typically have less access to clean energy sources.

Finally, remote teams that get together every quarter will take more flights which is many times worse than car travel. “A round-trip flight from Chicago to Los Angeles releases nearly as much CO2 as three months of a 10-mile driving commute.”

Read Is remote working better for the environment? Not necessarily in The Guardian.

See also:

• A study found that working fully from home can reduce your carbon footprint 58%
• 20% of US workers are expected to work from home permanently, will that have a measurable impact on climate change?

While just 5% of the workforce in the US worked from home prior to the pandemic, 20% are expected to work from home permanently.

Read the paper Why Working from Home Will Stick.

See also:

• 45% of jobs can be done remotely so there is still much room to grow.
• Two-thirds of remote workers want to continue to work remotely but not everyone who wants to continue to work from home will be able to.
• Not having to commute for five hours is equivalent to a 10 percent raise and the paper notes a 4.6% increase in productivity (although that is debatable).
• The 20% will be mostly highly educated workers leading to growing inequality due to remote work.

Much has been written about a great migration out of San Francisco. The population shrank by 1.4% between July 2019 to July 2020, but like most moves during the COVID-19 pandemic, they were within the same metro area. As the economy recovers, San Francisco and San Mateo counties added 17,200 jobs.

Mark Twain had a deep appreciation of Lake Tahoe.

“As it lay there with the shadows of the mountains brilliantly photographed upon its still surface, I thought it must surely be the fairest picture the whole earth affords.”

Macro forecasting is an area where it is easy to be as right as the consensus, but very hard to be more right. This highlights that consensus macro forecasts provide no value—it doesn’t tell you anything everybody else doesn’t know so there is no information advantage.

Read Thinking About Macro by Howard Marks.

See also:

• Nobody grades an economist and they lack a published track record of their predictions to be believed.

A time crystal is a repeating pattern in the time dimensions which breaks symmetry with the law of conservation of energy. Besides the energy used to set up the experiment, the repetitions appear to require no other energy to loop forever.

See the video of the first recorded space-time crystal.

Remote work seems like a natural extension of death-cult politicians to rail against remote work like they did against masks and vaccinations. Similarly, it seems like remote work should be an essential part of any liberal platform.

Why haven’t we seen either side take it up? What are we to make of this?

There is every evidence that intelligence can be embodied materially. Our intelligence and mind comes from matter. We know the rules that govern matter sufficiently well. We can even build and represent complex systems inside computers.

We tend to think of artificial intelligence as something that needs to be constructed or built.

Human intelligence is just a special case of artificial intelligence—the same rules about matter apply. However, we naturally evolved into intelligence rather than being constructed.

Watch the video with Frank Wilczek

See also:

• AI is usually described as singular, but really it will be a multitude of AIs.
• There is no special ‘power of mind’ that is not governed by physics, but thoughts do create downward causation.

Having ‘good taste’ is difficult to define. Taste is subjective, it is only confirmed by assent from others (from Immanual Kant) a kind of determinate negation.

Taste is also essential for building great products.

In Creative Selection, Ken Kocienda describes what it means at Apple. Taste is three things 1) judgment 2) balance 3) and wholeness.

A refined sense of judgment leads to good decisions repeatedly. Balancing important dimensions and trade-offs means building for people and not building to build. Finally, it’s pleasing as a whole—it all fits together and pleasing not because of a thin veneer, but because design is how it works.

See also

• A cathedral for creation a bazaar for growth explains why organizations have an impact when it comes to ‘good taste’
• Taste is important in the early stages of product development too. A minimum remarkable product is obviously better.
• There are suprisingly few product engineers which comes down to a matter of taste.
• Engineering managers should also expect their engineers to have a refined taste and it can’t be outsourced to designers.

Steve Jobs was quoted as saying “Design is how it works.” Design is not a step in the process to make it look nice after it’s already been built, but an imbuing process that happens as a matter of course. In that way design is substantial and not a gimmick or afterthought.

According to Creative Selection, this was a mantra repeated often during the building of the iPhone. In order for the whole product to be really great, how it worked and every little decision needed to be thoughtfully designed.

See also:

• Taste is the refined sense of judgement and finding balance that produces a pleasing and integrated whole

Because the COVID-19 Delta variant is much more transmissible (translating to a higher R rate of 50-100% higher than a year ago) and mRNA vaccines are 90% effective, we need 90% of the population to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity. Unfortunately that seems unlikely due to the politicization of the vaccine.

Read Delta Variant - Everything you need to know.

In sales, the difference between hitting your numbers and not has more to do with the volume of your top of the funnel than anything else. Since a third of sales comes from doing nothing at all, simply increasing the amount of prospecting and appointment setting will improve your sales numbers and can make a big difference.

See also:

• Cold Calling Techniques talks about the importance of prospecting and how your current results is actually the culmination of prospecting weeks before.
• Founding Sales

In 2019, Americans spent an average of 55.2 minutes per day commuting. During the COVID-19 pandemic, remote workers have completely eliminated morning commutes which is like a 10% raise (or higher if you are like 10% of Americans that commute two hours per day). The monetary value of saved commuting time would be equivalent to the largest tax cuts for the middle class ever.

See also:

• 45% of jobs can be done remotely although this might increase inequality of remote work
• Two-thirds of remote workers want to continue to work remotely
• Remote work resulted in a 30% increase in hours worked and 20% decrease in productivity

Using codespaces, you can open a web-based VSCode session, open a terminal and install emacs.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kelleyk/emacs && sudo apt install emacs27

Then set the option for using the option key as meta in Settings.

Install dependencies for vterm:

sudo apt install cmake libtool libtool-bin

Then clone my .emacs.d:

git clone https://github.com/alexkehayias/emacs.d && mv emacs.d .emacs.d

Then open emacs (which installs packages with use-package):

emacs

Now there is a full emacs with my config and a vterm running in the browser using GitHub Codespaces.

Other tweaks

• Add your ssh key so you can push/pull to a remote git repository.
• Fix M-BKSPC not working like it does in macOS
• Fix magit can’t open the commit dialogue
• Install other OS dependencies needed for writing (e.g. efm-langserver, aspell)
• Go full screen CTRL-CMD-P (there’s still no way of removing the top heading, but it’s close to fully full screen)

Alternatives

It’s possible to run a Linux container and run it through the browser using Kasm (an easier remote desktop kindof thing). It can be customize to launch emacs directly. I haven’t tried it but seems promising for self-hosting and running privately behind tailscale.

Product engineers solve user problems, but why are there so few of them?

As recently as 1999, The Inmates are Running the Asylum told the tech industry that engineers were the reason websites and products were bad. Engineers were not trusted with knowing about users and their problems and yet, they are blamed for poor solutions to solving them.

The way we organize engineering doesn’t help. As companies grow, engineers specialize and are closely managed by project managers and product managers. It’s difficult to build anything significant that requires action across teams and departments.

Altogether that means we lack the trust in engineers to understand users and the experience pool to cultivate a strong product engineering discipline. Status quo preserving behavior will continue to keep engineering as they are, which doesn’t bode well for users.

See also:

• Most companies treat engineering as delivery.
• Startups have a much better shot at building capable product engineers because startups value generalists early
• Automating cooperation might help larger companies resist these tendencies