Always nice to hear when justice prevails.
Curious why the laptop was damaged though… 
dimitarvp
bunnylushington
To answer your question about data on my home machines: there is none. All data remains on networks managed or approved by my employer. Example data I might need to develop or test locally is artificially generated. I’ve attended too many HIPAA trainings to flirt with being liable for data disclosures. (And honestly, New Orleans being what it is there’s no sense in pretending that the power isn’t going to go out for a week every so often. Relying on anything here would be foolish!)
Source code exists only on my work issued laptop which is managed by corporate IT. We have contractually agreed that their security measures are sufficient. With strong password enforcement, encrypted drives, and secure comms it probably is. It helps that we’re a fully remote workforce and IT has done a pretty good job of balancing security with ease of use. Being remote is the baseline.
Heard that. I ended up in Phuket because I know people there but am really happy with the choice. It is a tourist mecca but along with that comes a ton of things to do and people who can either speak English or gently help me with my nascent Thai. (Ironically north Phuket where I’m at is a whole lot less touristy than New Orleans.) The outlying provinces are equally beautiful and fortunately very easy to get to.
1
tj0
Been traveling about 40%-50% of the year for the past 20 years. Regarding security, reading this thread is making me paranoid. 
The main countries I travel between are Canada, US, and India. At some point I lost count, but I’m guessing I’ve probably been to between 10-20 countries. I’ve had friends who had to travel to China and as a matter of work policy they never brought their main laptop or phone. Once upon a time, I use to think about it a lot, but I haven’t for at least a decade. I’m just not that important. 
I’m more concerned about having things break while I’m remote. I have full and incremental backups of my laptop and I’ve only had to restore from scratch once. I keep a cloud and physical backup. My phone use is also fairly minimal.
I actually do have a pretty crazy homelab setup with DMZ and fairly complex vlan / vpn setup, but now I rarely use it or any cloud servers. 
Travel tips
- Travel light
- I have a 44L backpack with which I have spent 6 months on the road. Goes in as carry-on in all airlines I’ve tried. I use probably about 25L. You may think you’re going to need some item, but you’re not. The first time I went to Africa I had probably 60L of gear, including a mosquito net. Well, mosquito nets are super-cheap in Africa. Also, don’t waste so much time optimizing the exact perfect gear, you can always get it on the road. For instance, I just buy sweatpants, etc. if I need them when I land.
- I know I just said travel light and you’re not going to need it. Well, you never really know what type of accommodation you may end up with. So I always have a silk sleep sack with me. It has come in exceptionally handy a few times.
- Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy recommended having a towel. I also whole-heartedly recommend getting a towel. I have a full-height wool shawl that I borrowed from a friend about a decade ago. I’ve used it as a blanket, an extra layer in the mornings/evenings, as a makeshift towel, mosquito coverup at night, etc. If I was going to optimize space, I’d probably get a smaller one or a fancy ultralight towel, but this one has sentimental value now.
- I really like this versatile piece of headwear. I use it as a tuque in cold times or cover it in water and use it as a semi-turban in summer-time. On planes it substitutes as a eye mask and on motorcycles it is a nice face covering.
- Get one of them foldable daypacks. If an airline forces you to check in your bag for whatever reason, you can grab your laptop / electronics / etc.
- Also, I hate multi-country adapters. They are bulky. They are heavy. And they are mostly useless.
- Phone
- When staying long-term, get a local sim. However, e-sims are awesome if you have a dual-sim phone. I use Roamless. Also, for the first time in my life, I’m also going to share a referral code Global eSIM, eSIM App | Roamless
- I now use https://jmp.chat/ as it works on all my devices. This is what Google Fi and previously Google Voice used to do. If anyone wants to try jmp.chat, I have a bunch of invite codes that give a free month.
- Carry a battery pack with you. I prefer this one that doubles as a charger.
- General safety
- Have some emergency cash with you. I know the world is fully digital, etc., but you never know when you’ll need it.
- Have emergency cards and ID completely separate from your everyday wallet.
- Keep digital copies of your ID.
- Front-pockets only for wallets and phones. Phones in certain places are targets if you’re carrying them around and not paying attention.
- Also, there are so many different types of scams if you look like a tourist. A friend of mine just got scammed in NYC by a guy who gave him a “gold necklace” for money because he needed gas.
- Health
- I carry a mini-medkit with me now with antibiotics, diahrea medication, allergy meds, painkillers, etc. Fits in an altoid container.
- Have a workout routine that you can do while traveling. Otherwise, when you come back after a long time, it will suck. I usually have to lose 10+ pounds after traveling. I’ve recently started doing burpees while travelling https://busydadtraining.com/ .
- Sleep is important. Melatonin and earplugs are your friends.
Probably should make a blog post or something, I’m sure there’s tons of stuff I’m forgetting.
1
nwjlyons
re: VPNs. I can recommend setting up your own private VPN server with Outline (created by Google I believe). You create an account with some VPS provider. eg. Digital Ocean. Download Outline Manager. Link to your VPS account. Then it is essentially a one click process where it will create a VPS and install VPN software on it for you.
The benefit with this is you get your own IP address that isn’t “tainted”. A lot of other VPN IP addresses are blacklisted (eg. Proton) and you will frequently need to disable your VPN to use some websites.
You do have a fixed IP address with this approach. So you are trackable to an extent. So I normally delete and recreate my VPS every now and then to get a new IP address.
3
sbuttgereit
Remembering this happened all the way back ~1998… laptops of this generation still used PCMCIA cards including for networking… and WiFi was just first emerging so wasn’t really a thing in most corporate networks. I was still plugged into the store network via a PCMCIA network adapter… we assume the thief was trying to be quick and in the process just yanked the network card out rather than figure out any of the release mechanisms.
3
ppetrov
In my case i do work with a lot of travel (close to home but still in the are of 300 km around my current city). I don’t like to have my development kit installed on my local machine and since not required i keep it as clean as possible. However i do have a clone with all production requirements on a remote vps. This way i keep the same OS and settings the same as the production host. Remotely connecting to it via VPN so that is the only exposure on my machine (should anyone actually is able to take over it). So i keep it in the cloud. This way i can access it from anywhere and it will be the same environment as stage and production. And since i like vscode the only bit is that i have to eventually install it on the dev machine so i can use a tablet if i have to code but haven’t got to that requirement so far.
1
AstonJ
I’ve heard the outskirts are really nice and a nice balance for many, especially those who still want to go into the city every now and again.
Were you affected by the recent earthquake at all? Hope you’re ok!
Ah nice! You and @sbuttgereit could start a podcast about it 
Sorry! 
Awesome, thank you so much for sharing! It’s really handy having it all in one post!!
You really should! I am sure lots of people would be interested in hearing all about your adventures and any tips you’ve picked up along the way. You could probably get away with using something like Hugo on a free hosting tier, though I think there are some inexpensive cloud hosts that include a domain name as part of the costs should you want to use something like Wordpress (which is actually pretty good now).
Great thing about a blog is you can use it to post guides you use frequently yourself or for when not at your computer (or in the process of changing/upgrading computers) - two such posts I use fairly frequently are:
- Clean macOS install – the easy way – (via @AstonJ)
- How to set-up a Ruby and Elixir dev environment on macOS – (via @AstonJ)
Nice! Thanks for sharing - I hadn’t heard of Outline.
Sounds a bit like what @jdumont was doing with his iPad - using a thin client with a remote environment?
2
ppetrov
Not really the same. I am using vscode over ssh connecting to a remote VM which has all the production packages and config. So more of DevOps perspective rather a dev point of view. So when i have to run the code is not a container but the real VM which i will use in stage and production. I don’t like to have containers and stuff that will do half the job and afterwards i will have to do loads of config post-deployment. All that said i have all work in the “cloud” directly and can connect to it from anywhere (after just few configs on the client ofcourse).
2
budgie
Hell yeah! Haven’t had a home in 5 years. Spent most of that time climbing, paragliding (if anyone is into the same super keen to chat), and living in South and Central America and a bit in Europe. Have met so many amazing people, wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Security practices, nothing out of the ordinary, but some parts of the world you have to assume your stuff might get stolen at any moment. Secure backups of important data and also hardware authenticators and OTP codes in case the crap hits the fan. Also have a shitload of payment cards and only carry 1 or 2 on you.
Also on the visas, I’ve never even bothered with them. Most places I’ve been it’s possible to stay for 6 months per year with no questions asked. Depends on where you plan to go though.
5
Cochonours
This reminds me of a place where neither VISA nor MASTERCARD was accepted. So I would advise at least 1 VISA and 1 MASTERCARD, plus a fair amount of cash divided into several pockets to limit the risk of losing everything.
Did anyone try to create bank accounts in the country they were visiting? I assume they need some paperwork proving your are a resident and not a tourist, but maybe I’m wrong.?
2