Maybe it's just me, but the heart of going camping, adventuring, out into the wild, going to the beach, etc (essentially, getting away from it all), seems in nearly direct opposition to having internet at every single one of these places.
I often work from campsites. I no longer have to rely on if there is 4/5G signal, and can borrow a family members Mini (and pay for a month of service).<p>That means I can now head out on Wednesday after work, drive 3-5 hours to the middle of no-where, and work Thursday and Friday. But each of those days, I am able to be done working and then at a camping site with my family. Go on hikes, fish, swim, etc.<p>So now my whole family can enjoy being in the wild, and I don't have to burn up vacation days. And we don't have to try to jam it all into a weekend were you feel like your just travelling the whole time.<p>Side note.. Having no signal on the west coast can actually be extremely dangerous, with how fast some wild-fires have spread. You can have one 10 miles away and not know it with the wind blowing the other way, and if it shifts direction, you can have a very limited time and path to get away.<p>Being able to check tools like WatchDuty and weather reports from the middle of nowhere is a safety feature.
Long before Starlink I actually tried something similar: book a hotel or airbnb in a place with good natural beauty. Work remote for the day, log off promptly at 5pm and then go on a hike or bike ride. I felt that I did not enjoy it at all. Work is emotionally draining enough that the quality of an after-work hike is far below a hike on a weekend. I stopped doing that.
I feel the same. But doing a half day each works great for me.<p>Ski 8-noon, then work in the warm.<p>Desert hike 6-10 then work in the cool.<p>That way if work is engaging - maybe you get into a nice flow state - you can keep going into the evening and your body already got the outdoors it likes.<p>I really like this mode a lot.
I have done a variation on this. Take a vacation, drive to a national park, and go camping. Then go to an airbnb with good natural beauty, work thursday and friday, go hiking on the weekend, then take a travel day to come home.<p>This allowed me to take a longer vacation while still separating work time from hiking time. The emotionally draining work days coincided with much-needed recharge time in between the strenuous camping/hiking days and the weekend of more hiking.
I had coworkers who worked east coast hours but lived on the west coast, so they were off at 2 every day. A lot of them initially had all kinds of plans for what they would do with their free afternoons, but in the end, seemingly all of them did about what those of us who work til 5 do after work, just with an earlier bedtime.
I worked with the reverse! Boss was on the west coast and I on the east. Honestly much preferred it. Having the open morning and starting work after a no-rush breakfast, some exercise, etc. was divine.
I am not a morning person, and I have dreamed of that setup. I think I would choose to sleep in until 10 or 10:30 most days and I would use my late evenings to enjoy that last bit of open time at the climbing gym where it's a bit quieter. I really like night time, but when I have a regular work schedule I have to go to bed a couple hours before I would really like to.
This is my ideal work schedule
Thats a good observation - the capacity to appreciate something is probably as important as just being (in this case) in a beautiful space.
Different strokes for different folks. One of my favorite vacations involved working out of hotels during the day and driving around the Colorado Rockies in the afternoon/evening.
Workation doesn't work...
You can still go on hikes on the weekend
Sure, but in the parent's post, the family is able to enjoy the camp time, and they're able to somewhat enjoy the time, not have to drive 3-5h on Friday during rush hour when everyone else is doing the same, and not have to turn around and pack up camp <48h later.<p>I've had good and bad remote work vacations. My best was when I was able to link together 11 days out of town and only have to work 2 of them.
Same. I've done what parent post said with much success, but when I try to make it my own vacation, it's always short. It is nice to let the family enjoy it though
But you know what I’m gonna call this for what it is. Greed. Everyone wants everything all the time. But what cost are we paying for that? Astronomers can’t view the night sky anymore. And not to mention the power we give an oligarch.
may I ask, how is your productivity in this arrangement, I suppose you are not wilderness camping correct?
The family aspect is the crux here for me...it's great to get the family out enjoying things while us poor saps left back at the campsite just enjoy a slightly different view behind our laptop screen for most the day.
Better than not, I guess. But it would better still to have more vacation days (if you're American, then most of the world probably has twice as many as you do)
I always dislike the European vs American commentary. There are tradeoffs and we could easily go back and forth on those.
There are approximately ~250 weekdays in a year (so excluding weekends). 250/30 =
~8.3% of the days. So if you had 30 days PTO a year, that's be an 8.3% difference vs. having 0 days PTO. I find it hard to believe that an 8.3% difference in working days would make a huge difference to overall productivity.
Trade-offs? Like better quality of life? I was amazed 30 years ago when I went to Italy and all these Germans were lounging around for a month on Sardinia imagine getting a month vacation every year and spending that quality time with your family instead of being stuck behind a computer why your family is often enjoying itself?<p>Starlink is only extending work time when it should be vacation time
Yes trade offs. Labor market is generally better for employees in markets like Europe. You pay for it with less innovation and risk bets by companies. Employees benefit by more safety nets, some of the trade off is less optionally in companies and jobs available.<p>It is just tradeoffs. It’s ok to have those.
You're lucky that commentary isn't here then, as "most of the world" isn't just Europe.<p>But broadly speaking, life is better in most first world countries that aren't the US.
I do agree when comparing developed wealthy nations the US ranks poorly on average vacation days per worker.<p>But on a <i>global</i> standard across <i>all</i> peoples, even those in the informal economies? US probably works out better.<p>Not that being a bit better off than subsistence farmers in extreme poverty is a high standard to cross, it's still a pretty low bar. I'd still recommend scoping your claims accurately.
The demographic of Americans who use a Starlink to work from the wilderness probably has more vacation days than the mean European.
Joke's on you, I have "unlimited" vacation days...
The next time a company tells me I have unlimited vacation, I will ask them the minimum number of days I need to take off a year. If they can't answer, then their "unlimited vacation" is just an accounting trick to take the financial liability of PTO off their books.
That explains European economic growth vs the US over the last decade.
It explains the growth in the Quality of Life surveys of Europe vs the US over the last decade.
Who is living better, typically?
Agree, they've got their priorities straight over in Europe.
I go truck camping and do a lot of day trips to places where there probably will never be traditional cell phone service. I was against taking a starlink out for a while, but on a couple of weeklong trips over the last couple of years I started to dread my phone coming back online as I was driving out of the woods and all the attendant notificiations. For better or worse I would rather get online and go through all my texts and any emergency work stuff once a day than have to sift through 7 days of catching up on context. It's easy to say "just don't catch up" but it's difficult in practice.<p>I spend enough time in these places that I'm happy with the balance. I don't run the dish mounted all the time. I don't go out to watch movies, though that could be nice when you are north of the 45th in winter and nights feel like they are 16 hours long. Also it's nice if you forgot to check if your offline maps are still downloaded.
You need to take care of yourself and learn to switch off man. It's quite liberating to tell your colleagues "my laptop is going in the closet for 2 weeks and I'm uninstalling teams from my phone." If my team cannot survive without me for a week, then we have a huge problem.
To clarify, I have never pulled the starlink + laptop out to address anything and I would never bring a laptop on, say, a canoe camping trip with the starlink. Some light guidance here and there via the phone. I'm pretty happy with the arrangement.
Okay but you can take real vacations and ALSO do what the parent is doing.
Add to that, I take my work laptop when out on trips, not to work. But if I get stuck I don't need to call in sick and can still get something done if I need to wait out a snowstorm or road closure.
do you have a stressful role at work? I am dreading this also
These days with AI it's a lot easier to come back after missing several days. It can often do a good job distilling things, especially if it already knows the kinds of things you'll really care to hone in on and prioritize.
> north of the 45th in winter and nights feel like they are 16 hours long.<p><i>Cries in Ireland</i>
This is a great example. There's nothing wrong with having connectivity. This skill is just using it when you need to.<p>Even if we think about trackers that people will wear when going hiking and things like that for help, they have their utility in their place.
A lot of folks here making arguments for safety and convenience, but ultimately for me the issue is around what I might call "plausibility of unreachableness": basically whether being genuinely offline and unreachable is normal and socially expected when you're doing certain activities, the number of which has dwindled over time.<p>It's obviously possible to <i>say</i> "I'm going to be unreachable", but people don't really like that, and it becomes a push-pull unless you're doing something where you genuinely have no service or connection. For a long time, being on an airplane allowed this sort of ability to disconnect: even if there were $5/minute in-seat phones, nobody reasonably expected to be able to reach you if you said you'd be on a flight. A few hours where you could fully tune out the noise of the world, no questions asked.<p>Wilderness backpacking trips have maintained this sort of unreachableness fairly well–I've had a Garmin inReach for years, and used it to keep family apprised of our movements, and once to coordinate a fairly serious situation where a large wildfire kicked up near our exit, but ultimately the slow messaging and short length limits prevent any real communication. Cell phones have also started getting satellite functionality, but it doesn't work very well, yet, at least as far as I've seen.<p>I see this march towards internet everywhere all the time as ultimately leading to expectations of connectivity, even in the most remote places–then "will you have made camp by 6pm on Tuesday? If so can you join this quick call?" becomes a real question people feel entitled to ask, notifications start coming through when you turn it on to check the weather, "I'm going back to my tent to check a few emails before bed" might be something you hear around the campfire...
I do a fair bit of wilderness backpacking, and I always put my phone on airplane mode as soon as I walk into the woods, and take it off airplane mode when I get back to civilization. No Garmin InReach, but I do have a PLB for safety (here in NZ land SAR advises everybody who is in the backcountry to carry a PLB), but it has no functionality beyond "press this in case of emergency."<p>I once had a hiking partner on a classic hut to hut hike on the north island (Tongariro Northern Circuit, it's where they filmed mount doom and mordor) who walked out of the hut at night to find a ridge to get service to do a job interview with a company in the UK.<p>The disconnection from real life is a huge part of why I like to wander off into the woods, and I pray that I will never be expected to have internet in these remote places.
You shouldn't have to justify or explain not being available when it is not working hours. Turn that shit off at 5pm Friday and turn it on 8am Monday.
That's a cultural problem. You will never overcome culture problems by blaming technology.<p>Frankly in Switzerland, we already have connectivity everywhere, and people don't expect that.<p>Also its up to yourself putting up boundaries.
The other day I sat on a bench at sunset at Albany Bulb and watched as San Francisco slowly turned on the lights and day gave way to night. After some photography and quiet moments with the view, I took a few minutes to test the latest rev of my mobile webapp. Then I used voice mode to give feedback to my coding agent, and it started working up fixes. I looked up from the phone and was struck with the beauty of the view once again.<p>Products like Apple Vision Pro promised working on productivity apps with beautiful views of Yosemite displayed behind the virtual computer screens. But now with a cell phone and voice mode (I don’t have starlink but I have enjoyed it in the past), I can work on my app while I’m taking a break in the middle of a bike ride.<p>I often say I love the work that I do but I don’t like being at the computer. Specifically that the best work I’ve done is sitting at a desktop in one place for hours at a day for years on end. To me, things like voice mode on mobile is a revelation. I long dreamed of doing productive work on the go, and this is a way I can do that. I’m not sure I want starlink personally, but I can certainly see the appeal of setting up at a park and getting a few hours of work done before putting it all away and doing a hike to the summit.
A co-worker of mine is traveling to parks all around the country and basically camping full-time. StarLink on his fifth wheel allows him to work during business hours and then walk off into a forest at 5pm.
That seems like it would be a tax nightmare.<p>I've thought about doing something like that but having to file personal taxes in those states and triggering some kind of issue for my employer who only has a presence in two states has stopped me from doing it.<p>Am I misunderstanding something or are people just less risk averse than me when it comes to taxes?
Probably a DADT situation for the employee and company. Unless he's super highly-compensated, it would be immaterial for all involved.
I think it's a 6-month thing. So if you winter in your actual residential state for at least 6 months, you're probably fine.
This is a great example. As long as you have internet you can put outside, this is very useful.<p>Of course, a mobile hotspot will work both indoors and outdoors, but not have the Coverage.<p>There's no shortage of people that work in extremely remote areas that are effectively isolated or cut off or Reliant on Wi-Fi wherever they can find it in between cellular covers that might be spotty at best.<p>We have to remember that there's more land in the world that people don't heavily occupy compared to the land where people do heavily occupy it.
When I worked remotely, I liked going camping for weeks at a time during the summer and working from the campsite. At the time all I had available to me was shitty mobile data, which made it challenging but not impossible. Starlink would have been a godsend.
It's not just you. I am deeply saddened that there will no longer be any true wilderness anymore. If I stumble across someone on a work call or prompting their agents 30 miles from the trailhead in the Sierra I think I will go mad.<p>Technological changes are always ecological, never purely optional. They change expectations, mores, etc.
You are free to feel sadness however you want, but please don’t talk on behalf of others?<p>For me, PERSONALLY, I love having connectivity just for the peace of mind. And no, I didn’t carry work laptop on vacation. After a day outdoor, I loved to be able to retreat to a corner for online activities at night. I don’t want to stare at the dark night the whole night, every night.
> I am deeply saddened<p>If a complete stranger's personal choices about internet access deeply sadden you, you might want to consider some therapy.
You might want to consider reflecting more on how technology changes the world far beyond personal choices.<p>Behaviors that were opt-in become opt-out. Behaviors that were opt-out become mandatory.<p>Think about how cell phones or social media changed social etiquette. Even if you opt out of those things personally, you're still living with the changes.<p>Admittedly this won't have an effect so widespread, but for those of us who spend a lot of time out in the mountains, deserts and forests where there is no service, I'm certain we'll see an effect.<p>I'm not sad because some guy somewhere will check his Slack messages on a hike. I'm sad because of how this will change the world.
Working remote in the desert on a motorcycle is absolute therapy.<p>Starlink + 60w foldable solar + battery bank in the sidebag of an adventure bike is the meta.<p>But yes - leave it at home when "getting away from it all".
It’s the opposite for me and my family, but more so because of safety. I bought my mom a Starlink mini and portable battery because she does a lot of road trips and camping in remote places. Many times there’s no cell reception. If she needed to look anything up or communicate with anyone in those places, there are limited options.<p>Yes there’s satphones, but then might as well have the entire internet for the same price or less. The $10/mo Starlink standby plan seems well worth it for insurance
There are many many uses that aren't camping. People work in places with no cell or wifi doing jobs that require driving or walking or helicoptering in. Then they want access to data to look something up. Geology / oil industry for example.
Me too. But Starlink definitely makes our group more confident when we go camping deep in the forest or mountain. If you are discipline enough to just treat it as a much more capable emergency satellite phone then it's a great addition to your camping kit.
I don't why they have to be opposite.<p>Going into the wild and having internet is awesome. You can enjoy the wild, internet, and alternate. It's not like you have to enjoy the wild for 24 hours straight.
If nothing else it means you can ditch the $20/mo Garmin Inreach plan, which got you PITA text messages at best. All the people going on about the virtues of disconnecting have never been <i>so</i> disconnected that they have to think about medical emergencies or rescue from weather / mechanical trouble / etc.
Starlink minis on the dashboards of pickup trucks have become very common recently in some of the more remote western states.<p>I think a lot of folks underestimate both how large the US is, and how bad high speed cell coverage is, in many of those areas
Yea also, a few years ago I traveled around the entire US with a 4g hotspot and had service in nearly every place I visited, even in many remote national parks. With 5g being significantly faster than starlink, it does seem that this is an incredibly niche product.
Cell service requires radio connectivity to a cell tower, which depends on distance and local terrain. It's quite common to have connectivity on a ridge or mountaintop, but lose it in a valley. Starlink works as long as you can see the sky.<p>Also 5g speeds in a suburban or urban area are significantly different from the wilderness. I have some property an hour drive from Portland. While some people can get a signal and their phone says "5G", the distance to the cell towers is great enough that actual connectivity is extremely spotty. It takes minutes to download a single photo. Starlink is much more consistent. You actually get better performance if you're farther from civilization.
National <i>parks</i> in the US are pretty well developed, and often crowded. You and I may just travel differently; my preferred camp sites are usually far away from cell coverage.
Indeed. There's plenty of National Forests (not National Parks) with near zero cell service, and often even less once you start venturing into undeveloped BLM land.
oh i absolutely was in BLM land and Forest Service land all over Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Oregon - with the right cell network service is fine in most places - just look at a coverage map - its pretty ubiquitous at this point.
I don’t trust coverage maps. Just driving around southern Indiana, something I do dozens of times a year, I regularly find large dead spots in cell coverage. I’m surprised it’s better in the much sparser west.
If you live on the road you can work remote now.
You can camp and get some work done to finance your forever camping lifestyle.
To me, it's nice to know if you had to connect and get a message out you can. There's also the drive out there and the drive back which can be boring for a passenger with no signal.
Considering glamping is getting traction a lot over the last few years, there's probably a lot of people who want to watch movies and such while outdoors.
Binary thinking clouds judgment. Having the <i>ability</i> to access the internet is not itself in opposition to adventuring in the wild.
Travel with family, kids, and work commitments… Starlink unlocks options for those of us who have lives that don’t look like a postcard picture.
I have left jobs that required me to do work that impacted my time with my family. I quit one job while on vacation because my immediate supervisor kept calling me and giving me directions to a hotel business center an hour away from where we were camping.<p>Unless you run a business that literally requires 24/7 connectivity, it's healthy and fine to step away. If your employer won't respect your time with your family, they don't respect you.<p>It's up to you to decide if you can live with that. I could not.
I've been contracting for nearly 10 years which means going on holiday costs you a lot more than the actual flights and accommodation. I'll be going camping with my kids for 3 weeks this summer (New Zealand). Starlink is like $350 NZD, absolute no brainer.<p>But I also agree with parent OPs sentiment - going offline, putting your phone away really connects you back to real world and family. This has been studied ad nauseam. Same as food, substance or any indulgent abuse - it's up to you to control yourself.
> <i>If your employer won't respect your time with your family, they don't respect you.</i><p>Why do you assume that OP's employed? And if they are, why do you assume that they can afford to just walk away?
For the first question, op talked about work commitments. So that's not a stretch to assume.<p>For the second, I get it. Not everyone can. I shouldn't have when I did, but it worked out okay for me after a few months of pain. And I'd do it again in a heartbeat. We had to downsize our lives and I switched to a field I never thought I'd work in. Turns out I love it, and have way more time for my family, even if we can't do massive vacations now.
Yes, that seems very arbitrary to me, while one is not willing to also forgo most other amenities of modern live.
On the one hand, yes. On the other hand, it's how you take "working remote" to the extreme.
That’s great! You should keep that up.
I found disconnection to be a factor creating hesitation to spend a weekend at a campground out in the north woods. The things I do online are a big part of who I am, and being able to do those things and also go paddling / hiking in the same weekend is wonderful. I don’t think people should worry about the purity of their nature experiences. If someone wants to go full bushcraft, or if they want to blog from a canoe, I wish them the most out of whatever experience they seek. Except generators, I hope they all blow a head gasket.
Then simply don't use it. It doesn't affect you at all then right?
If you live close to nature, but with an Internet connection, isn't that closer to the heart than living far from nature and going camping every once in a while with no connection?
Don't bring your starlink mini with you.
Why are you focusing on camping though?
I’m pretty sure even this v2 is optional to own/bring/use.
I saw a video recently about a silicon valley tech bro who goes hiking with a starlink receiver on his backpack so that he can prompt his agents while he hikes and never lose a single second of vibe coding productivity. It made me want to throw my laptop out of the window.
One could argue for safety, but there are satellite devices for that.
I've taken an Iridium phone when I've been truly off grid (e.g., hundreds of miles from a road, hundreds of miles from cellular service), for me I just liked having a lifeline in an actual emergency.<p>You don't need to use it. But nice to have.
I agree with you. As a homeless person who spends a lot of time in these natural places and campgrounds all I see now are people stuck in their vans and RVs with a Starlink antenna on their roof.<p>I’m going to say this with the knowledge that I will be attacked for it, but since Starlink came to these natural places, I’ve had a more difficult time sleeping. Plus my tinnitus is worse every time it’s around me. I know I am sensitive to electromagnetic fields. They caused me insomnia, tinnitus, and increase my anxiety and episodes of psychosis. I believe this is due to genetic changes I have in my calcium, potassium and sodium ion channels.<p>I’ve done all the double blind test on this I could and these KU bands really affect me. They spread out over 13 mile hexagonal shape whenever someone has a Starlink running.<p>When I’m in these places my phone has its data connection turned off, unless I’m doing something like posting on HN complaining about electromagnetic radiation.
That's because you view those activities as separate from your "normal" life, and those events for you are so short that you can put your entire life on hold to do them<p>What would you do if you went camping 5x as much?
Every year we go to campsites for about 3 weeks. Every year i have the dream to leave my phone at home. I am way too much into tech. Cant live without it. At least not at this point of life.
For me also, and for camping, it's not just for disconnection from work, etc.<p>There's a very different psychology when you're completely self-reliant, with no communication with civilization. It's hard to express precisely, but it's powerfully liberating and a much more immersive alternative from everyday civilization. The door is shut on other options for a few days, at least.<p>(Yes, there's risk - though that can be greatly overemphasized and there's risk in everything - and you need to rely on yourself (and your group) to mitigate those risks and respond effectively to them, not on others. One leading trainer I read said that, once you're out of harm's way, the first thing is think. Nothing is going to happen immediately; the ambulance isn't going to be there in 5 minutes; the doctors won't see you for days, at least.)<p>The risk isn't the focus. It's just you and world around you.<p>Not everyone can do that - they have responsibilities they can't turn off, they have health challenges, they may want a compromise, like one of those emergency pager devices. I'm saying the effect of actually being disconnected is real, powerful, and valuable.
Sometimes it's not just about having internet at all the places in just the use cases that you can think of or that I can think of.<p>Connectivity, when and where it's useful, it can be really extremely helpful. [BLANK_AUDIO]
While I generally agree, there is something magical/cool about being in remote wilderness without any signs of civilization, and writing code (or working on somethi technical) in that setting.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glamping" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glamping</a>
I agree. I carry only two things for off-grid camping:<p>1. My iPhone, which has exactly the right amount of satellite communication for me: SOS and simple two-way texting, only when I actively point it at the right place in the sky, and<p>2. Aviation band handheld radio as a true last resort. Have one anyway as a pilot, and I figure it's unlikely I'll go more than a few hours without seeing some airliner I can talk to. Illegal to use those bands for this? Technically. Am I worried about the FCC putting me in jail if I'm down to my last fallback to get a critical message out? Nope.
Not really, if the goals is to maximise getting away, being able to be productive _wile_ on location means you can go, work a bit there, and then be on the trail immediately, you can spend much more time in the mountains than otherwise.<p>Plus actually working in a nice place like that is in itself a luxury worth the price.<p>If only this incredible technical achievement could not be linked to such a toxic individual… eh one can only dream, maybe greatness requires a bit of madness.
Wrong audience to make this argument (I do agree).
Au contraire, if you are in general aviation, the last thing you want is to be caught with no radio contact whatsoever while you are stranded. Communication keeps you alive.
The heart of camping is being stranded. Knowing that if you had an emergency there'd be no way to get help. Starlink ruins that.
I've done every kind of camping, all over the world. I take a little Garmin puck with me to ensure I'm never ever stranded in an emergency. I suspect you don't actually go camping.
Agreed. I live in NZ where the rule of thumb is to keep a PLB on your person at all times and time from pulling the PLB to having a SAR helicopter overhead can be as low as two hours (it can be significantly longer depending on weather).<p>Most people I know who spend significant time outdoors here have one and keep it on our person whenever we're on something more intense than a well marked day hike. This is true of everybody I know from those of us who do 2-3 night backpacking trips between marked campsites to backcountry skiing to mountaineering. It's one of the first things that is advised to tourists here is to borrow one from a gear shop or visitor centre before going into the backcountry.<p>Here at least it is viewed as common sense safety on the same level as carrying layers and water.
You’re the exception, not the rule when it comes to camping.
I spend well north of 100 days a year in the backcountry in some capacity or another, from day hikes and skis to week+ trips on glaciers in Alaska in the winter being dropped off by plane and where the pickup time/day is "when we can get weather to get back in there" and that would be the same timeline for any kind of SAR response.<p>I couldn't disagree more with being stranded without communication being the heart of camping. Satellite comms have absolutely increased safety, and allowed for bigger expeditions to be handled. I have multiple mentors a few decades older than me who had friends die in situations that would have likely been recoverable today. I'm not planning on taking a starlink backpacking, but the one on my truck camper has been a transformative tool in how I'm able to recreate.
And the soul of driving is a V8? How about writing software? Is it bugs or compiler errors?