Ask HN: How would you spend a $2000 technology stipend?

Re:Ask HN: How would you spend a $2000 technology stipend? by jez on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @04:43PM (#34166394)

Depending on what peripherals you already have, something that has been working well for me is using a cheap MacBook Air to ssh into a custom-built desktop PC running Linux under my desk. For work you probably care more about memory and CPU power (vs the PC gamer who cares about a big graphics card). So for $1000 you can get an M1 MacBook Air and with the other $1000 you can buy components for a 12 or 16 core desktop.

SSH over LAN (while you’re at hone) is much snappier than you’d expect if your only experience with SSH is to an AWS data center. Slap Tailscale on both machines, and now you can access the home PC from anywhere on the road. Heck, you can even access it from a phone in a pinch with a mobile SSH client.

With this setup you get native macOS and Linux (no docker nor VM required), power, portability, and battery life. It’s not the best solution for everyone but it’s working pretty well for me.

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Re:Ask HN: How would you spend a $2000 technology stipend? by jyu on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @11:41PM (#34169622)

Is the Linux box setup similar to your work prod environment? Can you run a GUI code editor like VS Code on Linux and access it via MacBook Air?

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Re:Ask HN: How would you spend a $2000 technology stipend? by renaissance_tea on Thursday December 29, 2022 @12:42AM (#34169906)

Yes. vscode can be self hosted and accessible over http and run in a Docker container. You can ssh tunnel or port forward it

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Re:Ask HN: How would you spend a $2000 technology stipend? by tssva on Thursday December 29, 2022 @07:20AM (#34171921)

Although possible the more common workflow is instead to run VS Code locally on the MacBook Air and use the VS Code Remote SSH extension to edit and run code located on the Linux system.

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Re:Ask HN: How would you spend a $2000 technology stipend? by jyu on Thursday December 29, 2022 @10:36AM (#34173662)

Thanks, this option seems great while traveling!

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