[rudenoise]

It's hard to respond to this piece. It makes some very clear observations that seem hard to counter.

I've collected two other posts that seem to overlap http://rudenoise.uk/low-tech-minimal-computing.html

Covering: Why the Office Needs a Typewriter Revolution http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2016/11/why-the-office-needs-...

The Analog Spaces in Digital Companies http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-analog-spaces...

For all the work that gets done in offices there's a corresponding lack of self-awareness related to the impact that it has. As an Information Worker it seems to me that there isn't nearly enough diversity in approach.

[Tharkun]

The Typewriter Revolution article is a real beauty. It covers a nice history lesson as well as making some good points.

One thing I take offense to is this statement:

> Opening multiple windows on a computer screen doesn't work for back-and-forth cross-referencing of other material during authoring work, both because of slow visual navigation and because of the limited space on the computer screen.

That's a problem that's easily solved with a half decent window manager.

[tonyarkles]

Yeah, I recently changed my main dev environment to be a 27" 2560x1440 monitor (Asus PB278, if anyone's curious) attached to a Mac Mini. There's enough space to happily keep a browser, evernote, and a terminal side-by-side (three vertical pillars); this has had very noticeable impacts on, if not my efficiency, at least my feeling of "not having to context switch". Everything's just right there and I just need to shift my eyes left and right.

[digler999]

I'm rocking a 46" 4K tv at 4096x2160, using xmonad in split-screen mode so I have two viewable displays and 9 virtual displays. The hardest part was finding a 4K videocard with HDMI 2.0 output. I got the video card and TV for under $1k total and I'm very happy with it.

[tonyarkles]

I'm oddly jealous! That sounds amazing! I'm just looking at the wall behind my monitor and scratching my chin... It's Black Friday...

[digler999]

it works fine for software dev. there's some tearing when playing videos, not sure if it's the card (most likely) but it doesn't bother me at all. I dont do gaming, but I've heard the lag can get bad with tv's.

[BugsBunnySan]

Focus-Follows-Mouse for the win :)

Which is even available on the crippled window manager that Windows has...

[a3n]

Still waiting for Focus-Follows-Gaze.

[kruhft]

As am I. I found some expensive hardware solutions that do eye tracking but can't justify the expense to see if they work. Other systems include mounting a dot in the middle of your forehead and moving your head around...impractical for most cases.

[flukus]

> Which is even available on the crippled window manager that Windows has...

It is?

edit - Found it: http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?t=1150437

But it's not quit the same. It will bring windows to the front when you mouse over them.

[BugsBunnySan]

Yes, but not if you don't want it to:

http://winaero.com/blog/turn-on-xmouse-active-window-trackin...

[danudey]

I've always found focus-follows-mouse to be a detriment rather than a boon. If I'm going to mouse over a window, it's trivial for me to just click the window, but using your mouse cursor to change window focus seems vastly less efficient than using the keyboard.

What time savings do you find that you can't key with keyboard shortcuts?

[BugsBunnySan]

The awesome thing about focus-follows-mouse is that it doesn't raise the window that gets the focus (which clicking in it usually does). So I can type into a partially hidden window, while keeping another window on top.

For example because the window on top is a web browser and I'm referencing some API, or the window on top is another emacs window with another module I'm working on that I'm using, etc...

So I can tell the window manager where I want to type, decoupled from what windows I want to be stacked on top of each other in what order...

And, for example, right now, I have 6 emacs windows open for the project I'm working on, plus a few terminals to run the code, plus firefox. I don't see an efficient way to quickly shift focus to what I want, without tab-ing through all the windows looking for the one I need, potentially messing up the order I have the windows in...

Also, for me personally, using the mouse to tell the computer what I'm looking at, while the keyboard tells the computer what to do there is almost instinctive...

The result of more hours spent playing FPS games and the like than I care to think about. At one point, sitting down at a computer, without thinking about it, my left hand would automatically land on wasd and my right on the mouse XD

[flukus]

The behavior I like is more mouse-wheel-follows-mouse so you can move the mouse over to a web browser and scroll. Especially with a touch pad. Windows still treats the mouse wheel as part of the keyboard.

[Roboprog]

Cmd+tab (OSX) / Alt+tab?

or

Cmd+<back-tick> (OSX) / Ctl-tab?

I tend to work more with the keyboard than the mouse, though. (a few things like web-browsers excepted)

[deathanatos]

Cmd+backtick only works if you're switching between windows of the same application; if you are, it works well. However, I find more often the case is that you're not. (In my case, it's usually between the terminal, the browser, and the editor, or some subset thereof.)

Cmd+Tab switches only between different apps, and brings to the foreground all windows of that app, even if only one is required, sometimes obscuring way more of the now-backgrounded window than desired.

I really miss having a key to switch to the next window in the Z-stack, ala Alt+Tab on Windows/Linux.

[thescriptkiddie]

But not on OSX! Yes, really. No, not even with 3rd party software.

[noelwelsh]

Here you go: https://github.com/koekeishiya/kwm

[thescriptkiddie]

Unfortunately kwm cannot do real focus-follows-mouse, it can only raise windows to the top. That works okay if you're using tiling mode exclusively, but with floating windows it's unusable.

https://github.com/koekeishiya/kwm/issues/476

[koenigdavidmj]

Seems like there would be quite a few moments where it's hard to get to the menu bar without accidentally hitting another window.

[delish]

i use amethyst, an xmonad-inspired wm with pretty good focus-follows-mouse.

i tried kwm, and couldn't get the keybindings to register, nor get FFM to work. xmonad is better than all of them for what it's worth.

[thinkmassive]

Coming from i3, I tried Amethyst for a while when I had to use a Mac at my previous job. It seems like the best solution within the constraints of OS X, but it always seemed like enough of a hack that I ended up battling both it and the real window manager, so I ended up disabling it after a few months. The focus-follows-mouse never came close to working as expected for me.

Fighting with window size, positioning, and focus is such a productivity killer. Now I'm glad to be back in a real tiling window manager.

[crpatino]

Your average office worker does not get decent screens. Even if the Windows default settings for the desktop have been kind of acceptable for many years, it does you little good if you are looking at it through a 9"-by-5" rectangle.

Multiple monitors are beyond any discussion for most, even if we programmers have gotten used to those and find'em indispensable.

[slededit]

Accountants often have 3 screens. Perfect for doing tax work - the form your working on, the customer's documents, and any relevant instructions/legal presidents for whatever they are doing.

Of course different firms will vary.

[douche]

Or with multiple monitors.

[gkya]

That one's covered in the article, wastes too much energy. I submitted this article yesterday and it went by with no upvotes because people probably thought it suggest we return to typewriters and paper piles, which it doesn't (I could've editorialised the title but guidelines say not to). It basically describes how energy inefficient today's offices are and how we can fix them.

[Retric]

Edit: Driving just one mile further to work is significantly more energy than a huge monitor and nobody thinks a 11 mile commute is vastly worse than a 10 mile one.

Modern monitors are very low energy usage. The lights above you likely use more power than two 27" LED monitors, especially as overhead lights are often on more than your ~25-50w monitors are. Note, monitor brightness does impact usage.

PS: 27 inch 4k monitors start pushing 75+w, but that's higher end than the average office setup. ex: https://www.energystar.gov/productfinder/most-efficient/me-c...

[BoorishBears]

My main monitor at work is a 34" ultrawide, marginal increase in power consumption, but with Spectacles for OSX I'm able to use it as 2 monitors (I have secondary monitors but I hardly need to use them

[Retric]

The energy use numbers are kind of silly.

Nuclear is ~20% of our electricity gen, so 1/4th of that is 1/20th or 5% of US electricity aka not really that big a deal. Energy wise getting to an office is generally far more expensive.

Further they talk about BTU for heating ignoring heat pumps generally being over 100% efficient and running on electricity.

[brokenmachine]

> heat pumps generally being over 100% efficient

Que? How can anything be over 100% efficient?

[elric1v]

Because efficiency is measured by how much heat you get compared to the electricity you put in, and heat pumps cheat by moving heat in from outside. So you get more heat than you could from the energy input.

[sean_patel]

TL;DR anyone? Like seriously.

I ran this through the read-o-meter => http://niram.org/read/ and it says "Estimated reading time: 20 minutes, 38 seconds. Contains 4128 words".

How many of you here actually read the entire article? Just curious, not trolling.

[Roboprog]

Nope, got about 1/3 to 1/2 in, and it started to seem repetitive.

Good points, but needed editing.

[Retric]

200 words per minute is kind of average, but for this kind of content it's easy to beat. I would practice a little as hitting 350-400+ as a fairly comfortable pace. It should be easy for most people and it really does add up.

As to actual content I kind of skipped over 2/3rds of it as it's really repetitive.

[amitdeshwar]

I read it. It's good focus practice (and I enjoy it).

[omouse]

IBM did a study on work spaces and how they affect productivity. It would be nice if universities did the same as a joint project of the Architecture and Computer Science departments but everyone seems to be interested in coding to get a job rather than studying these issues that are faced daily by millions of devs.

[jwatte]

Why would you need to counter it? If it's right, it's right!

The fact that US offices are designed to maximize return on real estate investment, not knowledge worker productivity, is well known.

I wish our screens were better so there's not the continual battle between daylight and readability. E-ink for coding?