Connect with us

Tech

Five years of remote work? Try 25 years.

Published

5 months ago

on

A cat sitting on a woman's body in pajamas next to a laptop

For a comic strip starring stick figures, Randall Monroe's xkcd has long been unusually relatable. Never more so than five years ago this month, when the strip offered its iconic response to COVID lockdowns around the world.

"Experts are saying people may need to self-isolate to combat the virus," says a TV reporter in the first panel. A stick figure viewer takes a beat, then announces: "I've been practicing for this moment my whole life."

Introverted homebodies everywhere could relate. But I could relate for another reason. As the pandemic broke out, I had been living the brave new world of working from home for exactly 20 years.

"I have watched, shocked, as the world has basically mandated that my life apply to everyone," I wrote in my diary at the end of March 2020.

SEE ALSO:

Remote work helps the environment. Here's how.

The times were dire — but for an introverted work-from-home journalist, life actually became easier. Almost every source, for almost every story, was stuck at home too, eager to talk. I didn’t have to drive to a single interview, suggest a lunch spot, pick a bar. Companies had to send their products for review without the interminable in-person demo. The publishing industry suddenly discovered it could instantly send PDFs of upcoming books rather than making reviewers wait for hard copies — the bulk of my once-bulging mailbox.

And there was no longer any FOMO about the endless parade of evening events available to someone who's supposed to keep up with the exhausting luminaries of Silicon Valley. I expressed my feelings with a line from an episode of Doctor Who: "Did you wish really hard?" Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) asks the Doctor in "The Doctor's Wife," after his beloved TARDIS takes human form.

I must have wished too hard, I concluded. And then a much older line, from Aesop, also popped into my head: be careful what you wish for. “Now I’m like a cat," I wrote. "Told that I can’t go out, I scratch at the door that held little interest before.”

Working from home, the first 20 years

As the new San Francisco bureau chief for TIME magazine in March 2000 — arriving just in time to witness the dotcom crash — I'd been given a choice. My job was mistitled; the bureau was basically me, and I could work from anywhere in the city. We'll rent you an office downtown, New York HQ said, or you can work from home and we'll put what we would have spent towards your (even then) sky-high San Francisco rent.

Well, I replied, "let me think about that for five seconds." It was a no-brainer, especially for a night owl who hates commuting. I found an architect's home with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge I never would have been able to afford on my own. It was workplace heaven.

And I spent the first few months dealing with a feeling I hadn't expected: crushing guilt at my own good fortune. In the year 2000, according to that year's census, a mere 3.2 percent of people in the U.S. worked from home most of the week. Office dronery was all around me. Driving to Silicon Valley a few times a week, I shuddered at the nightmare of Highway 101.

What about all the other night owls, commute haters, homebodies, or introverts stuck on that clogged freeway at rush hour in both directions? Didn't they deserve what I had? (Perhaps that's when I started wishing really hard.)

There were other challenges to overcome, as months of WFH (we didn't have that acronym yet) turned into years. How not to fall into the dispiriting trap of wearing pajamas all day? Get review products delivered throughout the day, so you always need to be dressed for the UPS guy. How not to overheat your thighs when working with old-school laptops on a couch? Cushions are your friends.

And then there was the question of how not to feel lonely, which I'd sometimes do when I looked up from a raucous conversation in Campfire (a predecessor of Slack) to find that I was not in fact in an office full of jokers. My favorite solution was an IRL one: find artists who wanted to co-work. Obsessed with creating their latest thing, unlikely to want to chat about tech or news, Bay Area artists were great for getting into a state of flow; they also often came with a hard drive of MP3s I could add to my stash.

And then there was the never-ending challenge of how to draw a bright line between work life and home life when they happened in the same place. In part, this was a problem of my position. Any major news event could upend my week at any time; if a major earthquake struck, I had to be ready to hire a helicopter to survey the damage.

Some editors in New York didn't understand time zones, and would call the bureau phone by my bed when they got into work. I became very good at sounding awake at 6 a.m., and a day when I could have coffee before my first call instantly became a very good day.

Regardless, the fact that WFH was more productive, at least for me, became clear when I spent the occasional week at New York HQ. The aimless watercooler and kitchen conversations seemed to eat as much of my day as the commute I was suddenly taking. My diet was worse, not aided by all the sugary goods that office life often presses upon you (who could say no to birthday cake?).

I walked less overall: no afternoon constitutionals around the neighborhood. And desks with no optional couch? C'mon, how are you supposed to work in a vertical position after that much cake?


View this post on Instagram

Eleven years into my WFH lifestyle, 4.3 percent of Americans were working from home most of the week, up from 3.8 percent a decade earlier. The pace of change was strangely slow; the office lifestyle had America in its grip. Still, I'd moved on to other publications, and acquired a manager who heartily approved of couch working: my cat, Mowgli, who loves to gaze into the screen and supervise the writing process, purring when he likes a paragraph.

This can be so conducive to long productive laptop sessions — more so than coffee, more so than any perk in any office — that cats should probably count as a business expense.

Granted, Mowgli was sometimes less keen on the keyboard part of laptops. Sometimes he would lean his head on it, looking reproachful; other times, more of a helicopter boss, he would use his paw to redirect my hand. When I wrote How Star Wars Conquered the Universe from that couch, Mowgli began trying to push the laptop out of his way with his back.

I gave him a shout-out in the acknowledgements, for being a true Jedi master and helping me find a way to let go of my conscious self and reach out with my feelings.

When the world went WFH

The percentage of WFH workers ticked up over the decades as the internet seeped further into our lives, but never as fast as I expected. Then came the pandemic, the moment I'd been unintentionally preparing for. A quarter of U.S. employees were WFH full time in 2021; by 2023, with the pandemic largely over, that number had ticked up to 28 percent. The trend seemed irreversible (whether it actually is or not is a different story).

SEE ALSO:

Remote work helps the environment. Here's how.

I tried not to be a WFH hipster as social media filled up with accounts of people learning all the pitfalls I'd dealt with for decades. They also discovered new ways to deal with them, beyond the saving graces of Slack and Zoom. I'll never forget one stylish friend's solution to the pajamas/sweatpants problem, as described in her Facebook post: "I am promoting all my evening gowns to workwear, effective immediately."

It reminded me of the surrealist artist Rene Magritte, who was very deliberate about putting on a suit (and the meticulous mindset that went with it) to go paint in his home studio between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.

It was good to be ahead of the game, to know what was most necessary. The more we work from home, the more structure we need: this was clear a month into the pandemic, when I wrote about my new time management system. Paradoxically, the more we work from home, the more loosey-goosey we can be about when we actually do the work.

By 2020 no one in my New York HQ was calling me at 6 a.m. PT anymore, and work became something that could be done on a night owl's schedule; I also wrote about how the pandemic could de-throne the larks.

By that time, the cat-like restlessness with being inside once I was told to be inside, as noted in my diary, was reaching critical levels. And so I began constructing the most epic outing I could imagine: a series of end-of-day hikes that would together comprise the entire Bay Area Ridge Trail, a 250-mile loop through San Francisco and all its surrounding counties.

Because when you've been working at home for decades, regular off-sites become more necessary than ever.

This column/article/etc reflects the opinions of the writer.

Related Topics:
Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Tech

Multiple porn sites sued by Florida attorney general

Published

11 hours ago

on

August 6, 2025

By

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier is suing several porn companies, according to a press release on Tuesday.

Uthmeier states that these porn sites aren't complying with Florida's age-verification law, which went into effect on Jan. 1. The law, HB 3, requires sites that publish a "substantial portion" of material that is "harmful to minors" to use a method to prove that visitors are over 18. HB 3 requires this method to keep personal information anonymous and be conducted by a nongovernmental, independent third party.

SEE ALSO:

Supreme Court upholds Texas age-verification law for adult content

Florida's version of age verification is similar to that in other states, but some are more specific in that they require scanning a face or a government ID. These laws started to sprout up in states in 2022, beginning with Louisiana, and since then, free speech advocates and adult industry workers have told Mashable that the laws won't work for their intended purpose. A preliminary study out of NYU also suggests that age-verification laws don't work.

One reason is that they can be circumvented with software like VPNs, so visitors can pretend to be elsewhere. Another is that not every single website will comply.

Now, Uthmeier is suing companies that operate out of the Czech Republic, including the parent companies of XVideos and XNXX:

  • Webgroup Czech Republic (which operates XVideos)

  • NKL Associates (XNXX)

  • Sonesta Technologies, Inc. (BangBros)

  • Traffic F (an advertising network)

The AG is also suing GGW Group and GTFlix TV, distributors of GirlsGoneWild. The latter apparently also operates out of the Czech Republic.

The press release states that Uthmeier wrote two letters to two of the companies in April, demanding that they comply or face legal action.

"Multiple porn companies are flagrantly breaking Florida's age verification law by exposing children to harmful, explicit content. As a father of young children, and as Attorney General, this is completely unacceptable," Uthmeier stated in the press release. "We are taking legal action against these online pornographers who are willfully preying on the innocence of children for their financial gain."

When SCOTUS upheld Texas's age-verification law in June, experts told Mashable that it was a blow to free speech, as such laws quell adults' free speech, while also not actually stopping minors from accessing porn. Yet, these laws have also extended outside the U.S., as the UK has enacted age verification just last month. Already, internet users have found a way to bypass the law: using a photo of a video game character.

Continue Reading

Tech

Leaks may have revealed the iPhone 17 lineup release date

Published

11 hours ago

on

August 6, 2025

By

According to leaked documents, Apple may be gearing up to unveil its iPhone 17 lineup — including the iPhone 17, 17 Air, and 17 Pro — on Sept. 9.

The rumor originates from iPhone-Ticker, a German blog, and was picked up by 9to5Mac, which reports that a local wireless carrier leaked internal documents pointing to an early September reveal.

SEE ALSO:

Apple's iPhone 17 could come with a $50 price hike

While still unconfirmed, the date tracks with Apple’s usual playbook. The tech giant typically holds its iPhone launch events in the second week of September, excluding 2020, which was disrupted by COVID. The company also favors Tuesday announcements, though last year’s reveal was pushed due to the presidential debate.

If the leak holds true, we could be just weeks away from Apple’s next big drop.

This year, the spotlight is on the iPhone 17 Air, Apple’s rumored ultra-thin flagship measuring just 5.65mm thick. As Mashable’s Alex Perry put it, "that’s even thinner than a pencil."

Meanwhile, if you’ve been paying even casual attention to Apple leaks, most of the iPhone 17 and 17 Pro details are already out in the wild. One of the most eye-catching leaks is the new orange finish for the Pro models, which, to some (mostly me), is similar to the color scheme for the Charlotte Bobcats.

Aside from that, 9to5Mac notes that if the rumored Sept. 9 reveal date holds, Apple will likely stick to its usual rollout pattern—meaning pre-orders could open that Friday, Sept. 12, with the official launch landing a week later on Sept. 19.

Continue Reading

Tech

Delta and other airlines are working with an AI startup that personalizes prices

Published

11 hours ago

on

August 6, 2025

By

Artificial intelligence may soon play a bigger role in your air travel fares.

Airlines are reportedly working with AI companies to deliver "personalized" prices to customers by using AI tools to analyze their personal information and data.

Delta Air Lines is currently using AI technology from the Israeli startup Fetcherr for some domestic flights, said President Glen Hauenstein in an earnings call last month. Hauenstein said the technology is still being tested, but told shareholders that Delta intends to expand its use of AI by the end of this year. As of now, the airline uses AI for only 3 percent of its domestic flight fares, but wants to increase this to 20 percent, according to ABC News.

However, in a recent letter to members of Congress, the company denied using AI tools to price-gouge customers, as Reuters reported last week.

Fetcherr is one of the prominent suppliers of AI-powered dynamic pricing, and it already works with several airlines, including Delta, Azul, Virgin Atlantic, WestJet, and Royal Air Maroc, according to Aviation Week. Delta has said it doesn't share personal customer data with Fetcherr.

But the airline has come under scrutiny for its rhetoric around using AI to optimize some fare prices. US lawmakers, including Democratic Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego, have accused Delta of "telling their investors one thing, and then turning around and telling the public another," said Gallego, who also said he believes Delta is engaging in "predatory pricing."

In a letter to Delta CEO Ed Bastian, Senators Gallego, Mark Warner, and Richard Blumenthal cited a comment made during an investor conference last December by Hauenstein, who said the company's AI price-setting technology sets fares by predicting "the amount people are willing to pay for the premium products related to the base fares."

"Consumers have no way of knowing what data and personal information your company and Fetcherr plan to collect or how the AI algorithm will be trained," reads the lawmakers' letter. The senators asked Delta to explain what data it collects and uses for its fares. Delta hasn't specified what data it relies on to set these individualized prices.

In response, the airline assured US Democratic senators that their ticket pricing "never takes into account personal data" but also spoke of the merits of using AI to set prices.

"Given the tens of millions of fares and hundreds of thousands of routes for sale at any given time, the use of new technology like AI promises to streamline the process by which we analyze existing data and the speed and scale at which we can respond to changing market dynamics," read Delta's letter to lawmakers.

While Delta insisted to US lawmakers that it’s not fixing prices with AI, recent revelations about Fetcherr raise serious questions about its technology.

Bloomberg reported this week on an alarming white paper by Fetcherr co-founder and chief AI officer Uri Yerushalmi. In the paper, Yerushalmi describes working with an unnamed airline to use artificial intelligence to create a pricing structure so complicated that it would “go beyond human cognitive limits,” according to Bloomberg.

So, even if AI isn’t used to “fix prices” in the traditional sense, it could still be used to make fare pricing so complex that consumers inadvertently end up paying more.

Rival airlines have also expressed concern. American Airlines CEO Robert Isom said using AI to set individualized fares could have an impact on consumer trust. He also said the strategy is not something AA would do.

Dynamic pricing has long been a part of the airline industry's strategy, but the use of AI has the potential to drastically change travel bookings. As airlines look to maximize revenue by harnessing AI, many policy experts fear consumers could face much higher prices, as expressed to The Lever. Another looming concern is that AI-powered pricing schemes can lead to price collusion between companies. Some, like Scott Keyes of Scott’s Cheap Flights, believe prices could actually be lowered, as he wrote in Time.

Last week, Democratic lawmakers Greg Casar and Rashida Tlaib introduced the Stop AI Price Gouging and Wage Fixing Act, a piece of legislation that would ban companies from using AI to fix prices or wages based on Americans' personal data. The lawmakers cited Delta's plans to increase their use of AI to set prices.

"Giant corporations should not be allowed to jack up your prices or lower your wages using data they got spying on you," said Congressman Casar in a statement. "Whether you know it or not, you may already be getting ripped off by corporations using your personal data to charge you more. This problem is only going to get worse, and Congress should act before this becomes a full blown crisis."

Continue Reading

Trending