But real Advil has the candy coating on the outside, and I haven’t found a generic that does =(

Otherwise 100% identical yes.

Not exactly. Just a fun fact and disclaimer that I use generics if at all possible. But my pharmacology class taught that generics can have higher tolerance of error in % of active ingredient. Not usually a big deal unless the drug has a very narrow therapeutic range, meaning too little doesn’t work and too much will harm you. 99.9% of generics is fine. But if you ever wonder if one batch of your med doesn’t seem to work as well this it’s likely that batch was on the lower end of acceptable.

Depends on the meds. I take concerta for ADHD and as I understand it, the generic doesn’t use the same release mechanism.

Also, a cheaper alternative is to eat less and eat healthier. I know we can’t all afford expensive healthy foods but just simply cutting out excess fats, sugar and empty carbs from your diet will add years to your life and also add better years to your life.

Aspirin and paracetamol I don’t think are patented by any one company now. Supermarket brand is super cheap.

Often made by the same.

The tools is good advice most of the time, but not if the tool would fail dangerously. Don’t skimp on car jacks, table saws, or other things that are likely to injure you if they fail.

Screwdrivers/drills/hammers/crowbars/etc. don’t need to be expensive if you are going to use them rarely as the professional grade is mostly about being used all day every day and being able to survive rough handling by tired workers.

Yup, buy most things at harbor freight the first time, if you break theirs buy whatever name brand fits your color scheme.

One of the benefits of living in the Nordics is tap water that can literally be of higher quality than bottled water (assuming you don’t have bad pipes.) The only time I’ll ever buy bottled water is if I get really thirsty when I’m on the go and don’t have a bottle of tap water with me

Hard disagree on body wash vs soap. Soap always leaves a weird filmy feeling on my skin no matter what brand I use. Plus having to lather up the bar is annoying and I don’t want to deal with wet washcloths in the shower. Give me a poof and a bottle of body wash any day.

I agree with everything but using Google sheets. It’s neither free nor open source. You don’t pay with money but with your privacy. Libre office is just as good as a desktop application and is actually FOSS. If you absolutely need the cloud storage, get a provider you can trust, buy the space and sync your files online, after editing locally.

Google sheets isn’t FOSS, right? Is there something comparable in libre?

But look at the chin on that dog!

Pets are best when you buy the cheap off brand versions. Purebred more often equals inbred and personally I don’t want that generic headache as a pet ages.

I own and train hunting dogs for upland and waterfowl hunting. I’ve also done breeding in my younger days. Bloodlines absolutely matter. A puppy from National Champion bloodlines has a far, far better chance of being very good at his job. This goes for ANY working breed that is actually expected to work at their job in real life. And they cost a LOT of money to buy, train, and maintain. But these aren’t foo-foo dogs bred strictly for looks either.

If all you need is a popcorn and movie and sleep on the bed pet, then it doesn’t probably matter very much. Find a nice rescue - they need a home and love too.

This used to be true, but unfortunately, like USB-C the game has changed completely.

The downside to standardization is that if you keep the same physical form for multiple iterations, the internals can change. The specs of the source and receiving ends have gone through tons of changes since 2015 and old HDMI 1.4 Cables don’t have the same standards to transmit high speed signals from things like PS5, Xbox, Apple TV etc.

Additionally because they require programming and HDCP (a verification handshake between the 2 devices it connects) when companies cheap out they may not properly program them.

That being said, you don’t need spend an arm and a leg, but don’t get shit either. Generally speaking, buy the cheapest version HDMI 2.1 from a reputable brand or vendor. Definitely not from Amazon anymore, a TON of products labeled 2.1 are actually 2.0 or worse, 1.4.

OK, this one is true until it isn’t.

HDMI 1.4 and arguably 2.0 specs were straightforward enough that it was rare to encounter a cable, no matter how cheap, that did not support all the features you wanted if it listed the right HDMI spec. That… is no longer a universal truth with HDMI 2.1 if you need something that will do 4K120 with HDR. There are cables that just don’t like some ports, particularly on PCs.

Length is also a way this can be wrong. Go above 2.5-3m and you may start losing the ability to hit some of the spec. I have a HDMI setup that requires a longer cable and there are basic cables that work and some that don’t for the application. To get a better chance on longer cables you end up having to go for powered cables or HDMI over fiber, which are both more expensive than normal cables and it can be luck of the draw even with expensive cables whether they will like your devices and be compatible with what you’re trying to do.

So console plugged directly to your 60Hz TV over 1.5m? Sure, cheap cable will do. Longer distances or higher bandwidth requirements? Be prepared to shop around and try different options, potentially getting very expensive.

This was pretty close to being true for 1080p and lower resolutions. If you get a 4k 120hz HDR display then bandwidth and signal integrity start becoming very important. The article you linked is rather old and really only considers media up to 4k 30fps. Cable quality especially matters at lengths above 4 ft for uhd and higher.

There’s a lot of snake oil so you can’t just trust marketing claims. I’ve had terrible luck with cables that claim to support high resolutions from amazon and even monoprice. I’ve resorted to buying cables from actual electronics suppliers like digikey since their speed ratings should be accurate.

To a degree. I once bought HDMI cables at Dollarama thinking the same thing. For $4, it should work good enough, right? It took me a while to realize that the random interference that was pixalating and distorting the image was the cable and not my media PC, but not before swapping the video card to test.

You can buy cheap cables, but beware that not all cables are the same quality.

“There are major durability differences between different cables and many manufacturers offer additional features, beyond the ability to carry an HDMI signal, that could add value and cost” says Park.

There can still be a difference in physical quality, even if signal quality is relatively unchanged.

I think HDMI cables is a rabbit hole subject you can really lose some time with. I don’t know how everyone is feeling about Linus these days (I never heard how his independent ethics audit went), but he did a big deep dive on this and found result all over the place. Some cables costing WAY more than they should being total garbage, and some cheap ones being relatively OK and meeting spec, with no real way to know who is safe without either 1) testing them yourself OR 2) finding someone doing a wide batch of testing.

Absolutely not. I finally got a 4K 120hz OLED TV which needs a HDMI 2.1 cable. Ordered a certified one and I couldn’t get 120hz to run whatever way I tried. I managed to force it one time and the TV screen black screened every two seconds. After doing everything else (reinstall GPU drivers, messing with settings) I finally ordered a different HDMI cable.

Plugged it in, set 120hz, it worked. Both cables are certified, but one was trash.

Even with the new cable I sometimes get a short black screen now, but I have no clue if it’s the cable’s fault or the TV. HDMI cables are a total mess when you actually want to use the full bandwidth :-/

I switched to 4K 60hz for now as I don’t really game on the TV anyway, it also allows me to use TrueMotion again (which seemingly doesn’t run at 120hz). Either way I get anxious about HDMI cables now, lol.

Spec yes, but how often you have to go jiggle the cord or having a cable so stiff it feels like you’ll break your port in order to run from near the wall makes some difference. The really cheap ones are touchy.

Not their (organic) eggs, at least in my area. They have pale, tasteless yolks. Other than eggs, we get Kirkland if it’s an option.

I’ll disagree to a point on liquor.

I like single-malt Scottish whiskey. I like Islays the most, followed by Speysides, Cambelltowns, Highlands, and Lowlands (in that order). I’ve found that, generally speaking, the longer a whiskey has been aged, the better it’s going to be at mellowing out the harsher flavors in a given distillery’s offerings. Compared to blended whiskeys–which are usually cheaper–single malt, and single barrel are a better experience in my opinion. I’m usually paying $50-200 for something that I’ll really enjoy, with most being in the $100-150 range.

But $5000 for a 40yo bottle of Macallen? Absolutely not.

IMHO, there are two price bands for wine: under-$10, and over. I have an unsophisticated palette, but I can tell a cheap wine from a not-cheap one. I can’t tell a not-cheap one from an expensive one, though. Some really expensive wines taste like crap to me, worse than the mid-range ones. That’s the only time I can pick out on expensive wine: it might taste bad, but it doesn’t taste cheap.

See The Judgment of Paris or Brochet’s study.

Just out of curiosity, do you avoid YouTube or just deal with the ads? I’ve been on a premium family plan for years and love it - we watch a lot of yt.

I would be careful with gadgets that have software on them like phones and laptops. God knows what kind of Chinese spyware they come with.

Can’t exactly say the same for Samsung phones though. I used to have their cheaper midrangers and after like 2 years they’d get horrendously slow in day-to-day tasks. I got an older flagship for roughly the same price as a new midranger by them recently and I hope it’ll last longer.

For podcasts and audiobooks and even incidental music listening $10 panasonic buds go the distance for me.

When I’m sitting down to enjoy music at home, then it’s the $80 sony studio monitors. Still excellent value.

Give me my headphone socket back, phone makers :(

I have multiple LG HB800 Bluetooth headsets that you wear around your neck. 50 backs a piece, great noise cancelling , great sound, and 5 years on and they’re still running for a complete day.

Last year bought a set of Sony Bluetooth earbuds, we’re reviewed everywhere as the best at 350 dollars. They have half the volume, half the time I can’t hear people on calls, the noise cancellation was shit, and battery life new was about 4-5 hours, and now after a bit over a year, battery life is 5 minutes so I can throw them away.

There certainly is a difference between regular and himalayan salt, with the latter tasting more, like…uhm…cavey? In a good way. The point of iodized salt is not the taste but the actual iodine, which supports your thyroid gland and other parts of the body.

Internet service may vary greatly in quality; also, for all pure and as-us things it’s the source that may matter. I’d pay a little extra for more green options (as in solar electricity, properly treated water, etc. etc.).

I love my speckled ax coffee beans, but if you didn’t go down the rabbit hole of a good grinder and coffee machine then expensive coffee is not worth it.

Salt isn’t so much a case of different flavours but of different uses. Like how you’d use rock salt on an icy path, it’s better to use maldon salt to garnish a salad and you’d chuck fine sea salt on a soup base. If you think MSG tastes like table salt, though, it’s time to hand your tongue in at the front desk. You can also get smoked salt and that kind of carry on.

I get a kilo of whole bean coffee from Costco for like $15 and it lasts me 2-3 months. I bought a pricey French press 3 years ago after using a keurig for years, and the press has paid for itself many times over with not having to buy k-cups. The improvement in taste is also night and day. I won’t even touch keurig coffee anymore.

I haven’t really done the math to price out each 20 oz cup of coffee I drink, but it can’t be more than like $0.25 per cup. If there’s a way to throw a quarter at something and wake me up more effectively than that, I’d love to hear about it.

table salt, iodized salt, himalayan… they’re all the same for me. I don’t think my taste buds are adapted to the subtle differences so cheaper ones are better.

Do yourself a favor and find some blue salt. It’s absolutely better/different in flavor vs those other ones!

But as far as salt goes, you have to know when and how to use it. Finishing salts are generally added on top of food, and not mixed into recipes. You also don’t want to use table salt as a finishing salt.

But try the blue salt. Seriously.

About salt, afaik there is no difference in taste, only in texture (by grain size) and color.