Time & Money

For work on the PlayStation build of Nuclear Throne, I need access to a PlayStation 4 devkit, a physical device much like a modified PlayStation. There’s one set up at our office, and I’ve ensured I can access it from anywhere through the internet via a VPN connection, which (simplified) makes a computer from anywhere in the world pretend it’s connected to the PlayStation devkit directly. Sadly, my VPN connection from Los Angeles to Hilversum, the Netherlands was slow. While it was definitely functional, it wasn’t great and only refreshed the output from the PlayStation once every 4-6 seconds. That meant that a lot of bugs would be hard to spot on the first try. Assume a Nuclear Throne build takes about 2 to 4 minutes, sending the executable over the internet adds about a minute, and I might have to restart the process a few times to ensure I didn’t miss anything.

I did some quick math with how much time it would cost me, took Vlambeer’s hourly income, and basically figured it’d be a sound choice to fly home to work on the actual devkit. Time is worth money too, and the amount and stress that’d come from running the VPN connection isn’t worth it. So, I’m flying 11,000 miles – 5,500 both ways – this week because my VPN is slow.

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