At 5:30am each weekday in the early 1970s, a bus pulled up to a stop in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and a young man lugging a bag that bulged with papers mounted its steps. He was making the two-hour commute to New York City, where he worked at the investment banking firm of Drexel Firestone. The train would have provided a more comfortable and faster ride; but, for those very reasons, it also offered more opportunity to meet other Wall Street acquaintances. They would want to engage in the kind of idle small talk that commuters share to pass the time. The thought must have been intolerable. He did not wish to be rude, but he wanted no interruption.
As soon as he had settled into his seat, being sure to take one with an empty one adjacent, he unloaded a mountain of prospectuses and 10ks (annual Securities and Exchange Commission filings) onto the seat next to him. On winter mornings the sky was still pitch black and the light on the bus was too dim for him to be able to read. He wore a leather aviation cap with the earflaps down; he had been bald for years, and although he wore a toupee his head always felt cold on these frosty mornings. Now over his aviation cap he fitted a miner's headlamp -- strapped around the back of his head, with a huge light projecting from his forehead.
Unfortunately I can't program on a bus, I get motion sickness. Subway works very well though! It insulates me from most distractions. The only problem is that the longest subway commute I ever had was about 45 minutes; solid 2 hours would allow for so much more! :)
He said the benefit was being able to spend more time with his family at night when he got home. He knew he would have some time on the train, so not having to crack his laptop to get in some coding after dinner allowed him to spend a lot more time handling the kids and spending time with his wife.
"Work/Life balance achieved!" he used to proclaim with a big smile when we'd sit and chat.
Anyway, I just flag/downvote and move on.
But I can sometimes code until like 4AM. Weird.
I also find the idea of "forcing" yourself to read rather peculiar, but we're all different people. I wonder if there's genuinely something different in how the brain reacts.
I read the Zodiac book by Robert Graysmith in less than two days over break in college. Could not put it down.
I've gone through so many books it's crazy :)
With audiobooks I can start listening the second I step out of the door and stop while I take my jacket off in the office. With e-books I usually just read on the train.
Most books aren't that long, around 5 hours a week of reading just during your commutes is quite a bit.
The book that stood out the most. Sugar Barons.
i need a couple of hours to do any technical reading
20 minutes, maybe, maybe .. good enough if i am reading fiction or something
> good enough if i am reading fiction or something
Looks like you got there in the end.
I've seen a phone jacking in this exact scenario and nobody moved to stop the guy running. Nobody on the train can help cause the doors have closed, and nobody on the platform has any idea anything just happened, or if they do the guy is well gone before they can put two and two together.
For me I always pocket my phone or e-reader at each stop, unless I'm in Japan or Taiwan.
I once was on a MARC train at DC Union Station. Some train cars have electrical sockets, so I plugged in a bike light I had since I'd be taking a bike for the last part of the trip. The train hadn't left the station yet. I was standing near the seat with the socket. Some unassuming looking guy was walking through the train car, like probably 100 did before him, when he grabbed the light, unplugged it, and kept walking. I immediately confronted him (I was in his path) saying something like "What are you doing?" Without a word, he handed me the light and walked off the train. I found a conductor like 15 seconds later and they called security, who apparently detained the guy.
This guy was way more brazen about stealing something of little value than I had expected. I was standing near the seat and watching it! I guess he didn't expect me to be the owner.
Cafes... I'll go to the bathroom or whatever and just leave my stuff all out on the table, meanwhile with my high-end bicycle parked unlocked and out-of-view outside.
It, of course, isn't like this EVERYWHERE in Japan, but many many places.
You should be worried about getting actually robbed, or even being attacked for no reason, while you're not paying attention.
Also, yes, nobody's going to help you. Some of it is because of general unawareness, as you point out. Then, it's difficult to know who's the aggressor. Even if that's all crystal clear, you're almost certainly going to deal with months or years of legal hell if you intervene. Successful interventions often lead to prosecutions.
You say this but I've seen countless videos of Apple stores getting raided by thugs who steal all the devices. We all know those devices will shut down and be inoperable but they don't know and/or care.
Are you aware of any law enforcement agencies that would risk loss of life for material objects? Even in the case of harm prevention, it's a failure if the perp dies. That's still seen as a policy or op failure.
The case of Daniel Penny cited above is straightforward: "Neely boarded the car Penny was riding and reportedly began threatening passengers. After the train had left the station, Penny approached Neely from behind to apply the chokehold, and maintained it in a sitting position until Neely went limp a few minutes after the train had reached the next stop."
That's exactly what a successfully stopped threat looks like. That the threatening person ended up dying is unfortunate, but they did ultimately bring that upon themselves. They were free to stop being a threat to others at any time.
But then I don't know what you're trying to imply with the loss of life to protect material objects comment. Seems like an attempt to troll, because nobody is talking about that.
From the thread (edited for clarity):
-> I've seen a phone jacking in this exact scenario and nobody moved to stop the guy running. Nobody on the train can help cause the doors have closed, and nobody on the platform has any idea anything just happened, or if they do the guy is well gone before they can put two and two together.
-> I'm not worried about the laptop. Pretty much everyone knows that any valuable laptop is a tracking device anyway. You should be worried about getting actually robbed, or even being attacked for no reason, while you're not paying attention.
-> Are you looking for examples? Off the cuff, in the past 2 years we've had 2 high-profile incidents: Jordan Williams and Daniel Penny.
Theft -> examples of loss of life during "successful interventions".
> That's exactly what a successfully stopped threat looks like.
We might be getting caught up on how to define successful here. If by successful you mean that the outcome was legal then I agree, and would say the outcomes of these trials were likely the appropriate outcome.
But if by successful you mean the best outcome, which is what I take it to mean, then I disagree. A successful intervention would be one where no-one was injured. I've spent years riding trains in Chicago where there's a pretty regular cohort of individuals suffering from various mental illness. I even lived in a building that partially served as a half-way house for such individuals. I've seen people do what Jordan Neely was claimed to do a couple dozen times without altercation. I've also seen people assaulted and knifes get pulled. There are ways to de-escalate a situation that doesn't result in a lethal outcome. That should be the definition of successful here.
> Random passerby are not law enforcement professionals, they're untrained and therefore can't be held to such standards.
The standard is the law. Vigilantism doesn't get a pass on the law just because it was good natured. Perhaps the law gives good natured people caution, but the alternative is much worse. "Legal hell" as it was put, is appropriate when involved in the death of an individual. That's just a consequence of living in a society that values human life.
Crazy to think back to 2007 when iPhone users were advised to buy black earphones so the white ones wouldn't give them away as targets for theft. How far we've come/how commoditized our electronics have become.
You could attach it to something bulkier or something that you could put under the seat, maybe. I don't remember if New York subway seats have an exposed bar underneath that you could lock it to. I'm sure locking it to the vertical poles in the center of the car would be extremely antisocial.
Although I'd highly recommend putting some cloth around it, or fitting it through the belt loops of jeans/trousers to soften the inevitable 'yank' when it comes.
Sure, maybe it will deface the stolen item when it gets ripped off, but for a thief, the device is still usable, and it can be sold for parts or at a discount. We are talking about the sorts of people that steal bicycle wheels and seats.
Their utility is in keeping honest people honest. For example, keeping office workers or customers from just walking off with or moving assets.
Check the Youtube video in my comment above.
Anyway. A) it was ancient and worthless and B) if anyone tried anything it was heavy enough it could do serious damage.
Laptop on the other hand... Many times working on the train i've been thinking about some accelerometer based emergency lockdown. Can't be that hard to do.
What also helps is having one that's full of stickers or overall looks fairly (ab)used. A pristine MacBook is going to be much more of a target than a random ThinkPad with a sticker, greasy keyboard and 20 scratches.
The article suggests the laptop is about $300, and he uses it about 1hr/day.
If the laptop is stolen less than once a year he spends less than $1/hr for coding on the go, which I would consider a fair deal.
It would be interesting to see if that would deter a thief.
Vibe coders feeling a great disturbance in the force.
I spent the first year at that job commuting into DC 2-3 days/week, which involved about an hour drive, then an hour regional commuter train, then some Metro transfer and walking — then back again in the evening. I spent that train time offline (as it was 2004) learning the Apple Cocoa frameworks, as in another twist of fate, the company was entirely Apple laptop-based, which was fairly rare for 2004, and I built tools for the team and myself. The focus possible because I was offline, with comprehensive docs, was pretty intense and was a huge part of many aspects of my career to follow.
I wanted a Lisp to be my new platform language for rapid systems research. And I had to spend most of each day on my laptop, from cafes and parks around town, with very little Internet access.
So I got all the docs locally, and I kludged up Emacs as a power-efficient "IDE" (including avoiding having to run a bloated Web browser), to help keep the hard drive spun down and CPU slowed.
Then I simply did a lot of programming, without distractions like open plan offices and pointless meetings. Even though I might be sitting against a tree in a busy park, and then have to move to a noisy cafe to recharge battery. Still so much less distracting and less stressful than an open plan office.
I agree it was for you, but it had well-earned the “eight megabytes and constantly swapping” reputation 35 years ago.
I’ve had phases of my life where I was lucky to have periods of absolute and undisturbed focus (grad school, summers during college, etc.). It’s easy to forget how valuable that type of focus time is until it goes away!
The commuting... not so much. Moved into DC proper after that year, which itself was a great adventure. Leaving the house at 5:30-6:00am and returning at 8:30-9:00pm was no way to live.
As I use Gentoo I also usually have the source code for anything on my system, so I can dig into that if I'm missing some docs, as there's frequently a docs/ folder in the archive.
If I'm missing documentation, I make a note of it and see if there's a way to make it available locally, somehow.
Now I program casually in public spaces, including the underground, on my GPD Micro PC [0]. It, too, has attracted numerous glimpses and been a conversation starter on some occasions.
[0]: https://blog.danieljanus.pl/2022/08/18/i-love-my-gpd-micro-p...
The subway produced so many repeatable network connection edge case problems. It was fantastic.
It was essentially forced meditation, and it helped me a lot in reorganizing my thoughts.
I had moved next to the office later, and noticed that I’d really missed those meditative hours. I saved maybe 1.5 hours of commute every day but my net productivity had declined.
I don’t think it would be as easy to achieve the same effect today as it was back then. We now have phones and interactive ads, and that dopamine driven economy.
I miss that about those times.
I've been trying somithing similar, but more active - beach walks in the in the early eavning. there are still people there but not too many. my goal was to acknoledge everything and enjoy the moment. i was not quite successfull though, it was still too much for me to acheive tranquility :)
Suffice to say, after almost two years of this, I was extremely tired and sleep deprived as this ate away at my available time more than what is reasonable. Using the time for personal projects didn't compensate for it. Never again, it's really not worth it.
Losing 2-3h per day commuting is not something I am gone miss anytime soon.