Labubus
Alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, Hulu, Netflix, Xbox, PlayStation, Disney+, HBO, Tesla vehicles, dating apps,
No drugs tho ? Dudes raw dogging life.
Pre-built computers. I’ve just been building PCs for so long I can’t imagine buying something that meet my specifications within a reasonable budget. And it’s fun.
I have never tried building a PC myself but I have gotten into reviving old ones. I haven’t bought a computer in over a decade. I just inherit people’s old ones and bring them back to life with linux, maybe replace a dead PSU or something. I’m new to hardware stuff. I really wish I knew a way to get these computers into the hands of people who can’t afford to buy one and don’t know how to do this themselves.
I built my own because I wanted a gaming computer with a blu-ray drive. That was the only way. I also added a floppy drive for shits and giggles.
Wouldn’t a pre-built secondhand pc be cheaper, if your just starting out?
I went this route. I don’t need something powerful to scroll Lemmy and watch downloaded TV/movies.
Made sure it had two display port outputs for dual monitors. Added another 16GB of RAM because why not. It is way more than I need. Probably could have gotten away with used micro PC.
I also have a NAS and micro PC “server.”
Yeah me neither. I found a charity that refurbished oldish desktops for students and pensioners, for around $35 USD. It was a 2017 lenovo with 8gb ddr4, decent inbuilt graphics, and it came with a monitor, screen, keyboard and mouse. I just put linuxmint on it, and it is working well for some low end games
CSB: Years ago when my kid was in after school care I fixed a couple of their busted PCs. Nothing major, just made sure the hardware was OK, reinstalled Windoz, and then installed some FOSS games on them. I had enough stuff from the work scrapheap and mine to make a third. Kids loved it. I was a very-local semi-celebrity.
Just because the hardware doesn’t make the cut for heavy work doesn’t mean it cannot handle the needs of others.
Pretty unlikely to find a second hand system with the highish specs I’d want.
But if you mean if someone just needed a computer, then yes used would be much cheaper given how quickly things advance.
- A car
- Subscriptions of any kind (except a good VPN)
- New clothes (I always buy used)
- If the app is paid or even freemium I don’t use it.
- Food delivery (Really? $40 for a fucking burger)
- Guess that leaves rent and renter’s insurance which I have to have if I want a roof over my head.
Why would you need a VPN? Is it for pirating content?
Obviously.
To look at recipes.
So I first learnt to use a VPN on holidays at my grandmothers lake house in the Middle of now where.
She showed me how to make VPN the traditional way and after that i went on a holiday to France where I perfected my way of making VPN.
That’s not really where the story starts though in this recipe I will show you all the tricks I have learnt. It all started 13.8 billion years ago…
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Nestle and Goya products
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Lottery tickets
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New phones
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Anything from Temu or Shein
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I try to avoid the keyboard mash sellers on Amazon but for some products it’s pretty much impossible to find anything else.
Do you buy used phones? How do you deal with the battery? Used phones generally have old batteries, no?
I just buy a cheap/budget (mid?) phone, 200 EUR max, every 5 years or so…
You can get phone batteries from Aliexpress for very cheap. They are typically not too difficult to replace (as long as the back panel is not glass). Give it a go!
I try to avoid the keyboard mash sellers on Amazon but for some products it’s pretty much impossible to find anything else.
Oddly enough the keyboard mash sellers can be great value depending on the item you’re ordering. Basically any kind of components or anything that would realistically be purchased by another factory in China has a pretty decent chance of being good enough quality. Hand tools or individual components for making stuff for example are pretty safe bets
I like to get some scratchies every now and then - it’s one of the major funding sources for museums and sports in the UK, so I see it as a little donation with a dopamine hit rather than an attempt at winning big!
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I would never buy the subscriptions that most people buy (YouTube Premium, Netflix or similar). It’s just too easy to pirate.
Robot vacuum cleaner
Easily one of my favorite appliances, up there with dishwasher and washing machine. My floors are always insanely clean because that thing drives around every day.
Same. Mine vaccums, sweeps and mops. I refill the water tank once a week and replace the bag once a month. Everything is so clean.
It has eaten a few naughty things though. It are a USB cable, it dragged my laptop off a sofa, and it entangled itself in a plastic sheet that was draped over my coffee table and dragged some acrylic paints and a litre of wash water off onto itself. Made a big mess. I also changed its spoken language to Vietnamese for a laugh, then when I changed my wifi router, I had to learn how to follow instructions in Vietnamese to reconfigure it to the new SSID.
Is it sending a map of my house to the CCP? Probably. Is that useful information for them? Probably not.
What is this magic machine, and how much? Also, does it come with stupid firmware that can shut it down permanently?
Mine is the Roborock Q Revo. I paid about $1000 AUD for it. A regular decent bagless vac costs about $400.
Aren’t you afraid it will mess up the piano?
I’ve got two of them, idk if they’ve worked right in the last few days. More often than not they give up after about 30 minutes, and I have to hunt them down and put them back on the charger so they can commit suicide the next morning.
Do they work offline or are they just small data broker agents?
yeah. We recieved one as a gift. It was ok for a while, but you had to keep the floor clear, and it was always getting stuck. Now with small kids. Forget about it.
The shit smearers.
You got a lot of shit just laying around on your floor?
LOL. I complained so much to support about removing dog shit from a vacuum they sent me another to shut up.
It is a very cheap model that randomly wanders around.
The smart ones know how to avoid the shit now. I’m not testing that out tho lol.
You can find these old / used / open box pretty cheap now.
I got a 2+ year old model that originally sold for like $1500 USD, for ~200.
Honestly one of the surprisingly good things I’ve gotten.
That said, I have one of the dumb ones. It doesn’t map my house and upload it to the cloud.
Television. It’s like paying to see ads.
Hand soap. Dish soap works better and you can use it on dishes in addition to your hands.
A dining table. I eat at my desk or standing at a counter. I was pressured into buying one by family because it was apparently bizarre to them I did not have one. Got the cheapest one I could find to appease them. I have now owned it for 4 years and it has never been used once, it just takes up space.
I couldn’t live without a dining table. Where else would I keep car parts when they come out of the dishwasher?
Television. It’s like paying to see ads.
+. And the only couple of local channels I’d even consider watching can be viewed online for free anyway.
Not if you have a media player… I dont watch anything with ads.
A dining table is good for when family comes over and you want to eat something together. Now I also use it to eat something with my wife, but before I rarely used it. It helped that it was a hand me down from my mother though, so I didn’t have to pay anything.
Hand soap. Dish soap works better and you can use it on dishes in addition to your hands.
I was always told it would fuck up your hands. Does it?
It makes mine dry as fuck, but you can always moisturize with lotion after
I’d rather buy handsoap for a few cents than moisturize my hands every time.
In my personal experience, it absolutely does. Only time I’ve ever had seriously painful dry skin on my hands was when I was out of hand soap for a week. But I do wash my hands frequently.
Soap and detergent are different things. A bar of soap is way cheaper than dishwashing liquid.
Yes but there I think there is a miscommunication here.
I’m not talking about detergent/dishwashing liquid - I’m talking about liquid dish soap which I can purchase locally for about $3 to the litre and is different thing.
Detergent/dishwashing liquid is definitely much more expensive and probably would not be great for washing hands.
Bar soap is definitely still cheaper though overall, you are correct.
Not enough people watching Technology Connections in this comment chain…
Shame
Ah I seem to recall a video he did about dishwashers and why the pods are bad etc. I think he may have briefly touched on making your own detergent using bar soap and borax as well as the manufacturer recommendation to put some detergent in the bottom in addition to behind the spring loaded door.
He has a new video now with his new formula that’s part of ecogeek. Once I’m in the position to have a dishwasher again, I’m be going that route.
Oh neat, I’ll have to go watch the new one when I have a chance. I recall it working quite well and being absurdly cheap - I can’t recall if he did a cost analysis. Maybe I’ll watch the old one again and then the new one haha.
Just wanted to add that dish soap is actually very strong and removes all the natrual oils from your skin. If you are prone to sensitive skin it’s a bad habit to regularly use dish soap as it can aggrivate it. Every now and then isn’t going to hurt though.
I’ve had glasses for a long time and interestingly they clean better with hand soap. Many have suggested to use dish soap but it seems to be less effective. I’d imagine most of the stains come from being in contact with skin so I’m a bit surprised.
Fully automated coffee machines. I love coffee but these things suck, coffee tastes weak and they often break. They even mold inside.
The best pourover kits in existence cost like $25 USD max too. There’s no reason to not learn how to do it right.
You will still need a good grinder for your beans and those things are expensive. Assuming you don’t want plastic bits in your grind.
True. I have a decent hand-one for $50, but they can get pretty expensive.
Yeah. I have a somewhat cheap one at around $300, but if you don’t wanna buy, try looking for local roasteries. They usually offer ground options. Even some coffee shops will grind it for you if you ask nicely.
I have that option, but… supposedly… preground coffee is just not the same.
Use it within a week or so, and it’s very close. Hell, I’d say even two weeks is fine, but it may depend on your method of brewing, and sensitivity of palate. You can even freeze part of the grounds to keep them fresh for longer. James Hoffmann did a nice video about it.
Nice. Might try the freezing part. I’ve just been using a moka pot, nothing fancy.
I use an Aergrind by Knock ($150ish). It’s been fantastic for my Flair as well as pour overs. It is a manual grinder, but I don’t have the money to not do manual.
I have one that just sits on top of my coffee cup.
Making coffee like a barista is infinitely more satisfying. A combined coffee machine: grinder and pressured hot water is bound to be cheaper than a fully automated one. You can push the grains down yourself, and make the coffee as strong or weak as you like.
The pour over press is the best coffee flavor I’ve ever had. And so inconvenient.
Love my aeropress.
Anything that runs anything by Google
Thanks to Technology Connections - Dishwasher/Laundry pods. Soap with pretty colors, and probably more soap than you need per load. I’ve swapped to powder and literally cannot tell a difference at all, and instead of 8 dollars for 10 loads I now am getting an entire box with like, 40 loads for $8.
And if you want something convenient for laundry they have the laundry sheets that don’t release plastic into your water so that’s nice.
But personally if I want a known amount each time for each load I just use a scoop.
I looked into it after watching the video and here dishwasher powder is just a bad deal. More expensive than the tabs. Maybe you break even if you end up using less per wash but no bargain. Tabs are also only 6 cents each so maybe not the best place to look for savings.
I don’t know where you get yours, but I get 24 loads in a box of powder for $6. https://www.kroger.com/p/kroger-dishwasher-detergent-powder-lemon-scent/0001111080564
I bought a massive box of dishwashing powder a bit over a year ago and I’m maybe halfway through it, it’s like magic. Thank you technology connections!
Is liquid detergent still a bad deal? I have no qualms against using powder instead, but my family always stuck to using bulk laundry detergent liquid (I forget the unit size of the 100 load bottle exactly), and I thought that was a good deal.
I’d say it’s better, but not great. Environmentally it still comes with a giant plastic jug that needs to be disposed of, and we all know how plastic recycling is. On your wallet, if you think bout it, you’re not just paying for the soap, but the water and the weight/shipping of that water to get to your home from the factories.
Powder is really the same thing, but you have water at home to mix it with, that happens in your washing machine. So, naturally it is going to be cheaper.
Ah that makes sense. I do reuse the jugs tho, so at least those aren’t wasted.
That’s good, reuse > recycle. We had nothing to do with them so were just recycling these giant jugs all the time. Now we have a big container we pour the detergent into and just scoop it out as we go. Containers are cardboard for the powder
When I swapped to powder it was because I could buy a jug of All free and clear (cheapest brand for hypoallergenic that I could find) for $12. I don’t recall how many loads it did, but I could get the powder online, which was at least the same number of loads but probably way more, same brand same fragrance free formula, for $4.75. They don’t carry the powder in most stores around me, I assume because it’s so much cheaper nobody would buy the overpriced liquid. Same with cheap dish powder; just not available.
Expensive clothes or new clothes
I just wear no clothes like god intended.
A brand new car.
Buy used, let someone else take the depreciation hit.
With how complex (and unrepairable) modern cars are, in a few years the used car prices will probably shoot up because of flailing supply.
Yeah, my car is 18 years old, has almost 300k miles on it, and because it’s desirable and not made anymore, it’s still worth about half what I paid for it 14 years ago.
I doubt anyone will pay half the price of a 4 year old model if its 18 years old…!
A lot of things break on cars that old, so any buyer has to be a bit stupid to pay that price…
Want to see crazy used car prices? Look at small Toyota trucks in southern California. The prices are insane because many people want a small basic truck for work. The 22R and 22RE engines live long and if they do die it is easy to source a rebuilt engine.
Yep, and nobody makes a true equivalent to the small pickup anymore. Even the Ford Maverick is bigger than 90s Tacomas, and Rangers
Small trucks cannot be imported into the US due to the Chicken Tax. American companies will not build small trucks because they like the profits from large SUVs and trucks.
Yep. There also emissions vs weight or payload of the vehicle regulations that make it even less profitable to produce small pickups here.
A lot of things break on cars that old, so any buyer has to be a bit stupid to pay that price…
laughs in a 30 year old van, that gained about 40% of value since I bought it 3 years ago
If it was built well, and is simple enough, it’s not too much of a hassle and you can maintain a lot of it yourself. Most new cars are complicated garbage that breaks constantly straight out of the factory, and you have to take it to a mechanic to do anything because of their complexity and proprietary software. Compare that to my van, where I can read the OBD2 error codes on my phone over bluetooth with a $10 dongle, and can do most basic maintenance (oil, ATF, spark plugs, belts) with basic hand tools and a car pit.
Streaming services subscription.
Software subscriptions. I’ll buy a perpetual license if there’s no decent open source alternative as long as it will run offline. For example, $300 for Marvelous Designer back in the day was reasonable, but they can fuck right off with the subscription-only model.
