I was going through my Wal-Mart+ subscription plan that I got for free and I saw their offers. One of which was EMeals, that was a 60-day trial. I thought that this was like Blue Apron or other meal delivery services so I thought I’d take a crack at it and hope that it would get me on a path to eat better.
Turns out, it’s just a meal planner. And it’s absurd to me why and how would anyone pay for something when there are countless and countless recipes and meal planners readily available for free. Who’d the fuck would want to pay for a planner? That’s like paying for a calendar app.
My coworkers will walk into work with Dunkin or Starbucks lattes… we have not only free coffee at work, but access to an espresso machine with milk steamer.
It’s not that odd that they have a preference, even if it costs them. My work provides tea bags and milk, but I bring my own because I like them more.
Yeah, but Dunkin for coffee??
I think the problem is that some Starbucks fans are pretentious. There are better and cheaper coffee everywhere but some of them will just choose the more expensive one and flash their premium membership card to you.
So at my work the coffee is shit because it’s a fully automatic coffee machine and it is also not properly cleaned. I usually make my own at home and bring a thermos.
Yes, but I work at a restaurant.
Really depends on the workplace. I will not drink coffee and I’m no longer drinking hot chocolate even from my work. Mainly because a lot of my co-workers are slobs and everything is unsanitized. I had just witnessed last night, someone from day maintenance, had their gloves still on (presumably from touch dirty trash bins, scrubbing toilets .etc) just go about touching some things before realizing he needed them off.
And I ended up vomiting last sunday because nobody checks expiration dates on what we have and I ended up drinking hot chocolate that might’ve been expired. So, it depends on the workplace.
I do not get people who still pay for cable tv. My dad pays like 120 dollars a month for it and the programming is horrible, the ads are insane, all the best sports shit is on streaming services now, I do not understand it at all.
Inertia?
Or is there some local channel that they like that doesn’t have a youtube presence?No. And they also have Netflix. So they understand streaming shit. It boggles my mind
How technical is your dad?
Also honestly. Sometimes it’s a lot nicer to just push a button and have something come on.
One of the main reasons I use Plex is their random feature. “Wanna watch a syndicated episodic show and don’t care which ep? Press random” vs other streaming services you have to actually choose an episode.
Not very at all
That’s why. My folks still have cable and pay for HBO. That’s how me and my siblings are able to watch stuff we don’t want to download on max :)
My dad jokes that hes happy he knows how to turn on his phone … Now his TV since that’s “too complicated”
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Bottled water to drink at home.
Not every country has safe tap water
Ok, so: bottled water to drink at home in countries with safe drinking water.
Much better)
I have a worst example, people who showered with said bottled water when we had a water supply issue in my town…
I’ve showered with tap water when my shower was broken. I think it makes sense if it’s the only way they can shower.
Not every home in countries with safe tap water have safe tap water at home
Not even every state, look at Flint, MI …
And even if it does, it might taste horrible.
If it tastes horrible then there might be something wrong with it
Even Los Angeles tap water isn’t safe to drink, as I understand it. Flynt, Michigan, too.
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Undersink filter with a dedicated drinking water tap. Removes the chlorine taste that is probably what makes you think salty. You can get the whole setup for $75 and install it yourself. The filters are $40ish and last 6-12 months.
Some fridges have cold filtered water taps built in.
In my area in Greece, the water is not safe, my brother who used to work in the water containers says it’s full of rats. We all buy bottles. It would be nice to be environmentally conscious about it, but there’s no choice about it.
Microsoft Office and satellite radio.
I’m still waiting for a proper excel replacement. No, google sheets and libre office don’t cut it. I literally have a copy of office 2019 that I have to finagle to install only that app and nothing else.
Why doesn’t LibreOffice Calc do it for you?
It doesn’t have the same level of formulas, VBA, and data set linking.
You still listen to the radio?
Rarely, yes. Mostly I listen to free podcasts and music that I’ve paid for or otherwise acquired once. I don’t understand paying a subscription for a lower quality version of that. Maybe there are a few live programs that are only available on SiriusXM, but that’s a tenuous value proposition.
Operating systems
I know this sub, and basically most of Lemmy, are pro Linux. But honestly? It’s not as good as Windows and macos for everyday folk. We are kidding ourselves.
It CAN do anything they can, but it’s way too hard, and you might have to code your own drivers for some of it.
You pay for it to just work, and that’s why I 100% get why you pay for an OS.
Note: I don’t think anyone feel like they even pay for their OS, if it’s not enterprise. It’s preinstalled, nobody thinks further than that.
This is the main reason I still keep Windows around. The majority of my stuff “just works” much better on Linux, but every once in a while, you need to interact with someone else via some weird proprietary software and it’s not really reasonable to go “sorry, can’t do it because Linux”, nor is it reasonable to spend several hours figuring out for Linux when I’m likely only using it once.
Windows is completely free though. I don’t even bother to remove the watermark.
If you do decide to remove the watermark, here’s a one line command to do just that for free:
Over 3 different computers, I have never not had some bug on windows after a clean install.
Stuff like, text inputs not working on sticky notes, screenshots not working, now I’m having driver issues where some windows flicker black rapidly. I need to do another fresh install to fix it.
I can’t even think of a single bug I’ve had using Linux. If it were not for a single piece of software not working on Linux by any means, I’d be using that.
The only games I’ve not had work on Linux straight away are games with anti-cheat, so I understand windows gamers using windows to play them, but otherwise Linux gaming has been basically flawless.
Depends. My mother’s computer didn’t have the hardware necessary to drive Win11, so I explained the options, and she said she’d try Linux.
She’s on Fedora Workstation on both her Desktop and Laptop now, both relatively standard HP Computers (the Desktop being very, very old, however).
She can connect to her work server via Citrix and access the software she needs. She can take work calls via MicroSIP. She can edit documents locally with onlyoffice. She can do whatever else she needs in the browser. None of this needed any non-standard drivers or packages, except for MicroSIP, for which Wine needed to be installed, though it worked without any special configuration.
So it can work perfectly well. Depending on the use case.
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Yup. I work with both and I greatly prefer working with linux now but I get paid to stare at it, dig into config files, understand file systems, etc. The average consumer does not want to do this and doesn’t give a shit about internals, they just want to click install and work which windows is pretty good at. If you told them they needed to edit a config file and play with services your customer support lines would be jammed.
Small bits of code can be made and maintained as a hobby or a passion project, but larger things begin to require money. Although a lot of FOSS is maintained by volunteers, money still has its role in the equation.
Most big FOSS projects are done by developers who get paid for that.
They work at Red Hat, Canonical, SUSE, Google or Microsoft and write FOSS while on the clock.
Operating systems and porn.
Free porn tends to be full of abuse towards its actors. Not that paid porn is automatically ethical but there are definitely indie options where no one is being coerced into performing sexual acts they’re not comfortable with. Also if you have a niche fetish sometimes the only options are paywalled.
How is it surprising people pay for operating systems? The vast majority of computers sold are bundled with an operating system license, and most people just use what came with the computer.
I’m currently on Emporium. But I have paid for more porn than I’ve stolen. And porn is cheap.
So many people I know complain about windows having ads, that it’s auto installing bloatware, has annoying checks, forces you to login…
I paid the full price about a decade ago and haven’t been bothered by any of that. And yes, I’ve upgraded to windows 11
Water
Where can you get free water? Unless you have a well or something.
Tap water is so cheap it might as well be free, and it’s probably included in the rent in a lot of places.
I guess it’s not free in places that need to have a revolution first?
My water is inexpensive: 1 Cubometer of water about USD 0.29 and USD 0.13 to deliver it to the apartment (pipe system, water infrastructure).
I think this persons means bottled water.
Yeah ok.
In my 20’s I over-enjoyed a great many things.
Now in my 40’s I don’t drink booze, do drugs, smoke cigarettes, and also try to avoid sugar and caffeine. I also have kids now so I sold my motorbikes because that seemed irresponsible.
So yeah, I do purchase poncy imported italian sparkling mineral water because… it’s a nice indulgence.
As an American, Turbo Tax. I’ve been using FreeTaxUSA for almost 20 years with no problems, without paying for filing software.
But if I weren’t American, my answer would probably be: tax software.
It’s funny that the IRS has now been offering their own tax-free service. Intuit thought they could strong-arm people but even the IRS thought “no bruh, you’re crazy”.
I just never saw the appeal of paying for tax software/services, well maybe I can see it in services because there’s still a lot of people that have trouble with filing taxes and they may be in unique tax situations that they don’t understand.
But Tax Software makes it stupid easy to understand so it should not be something we pay for.
Most countries don’t have tax software.
They have a website usually. A free one, from the government. That calculates their taxes for them. You just have to check if it is correct from your side.
Right, that’s what I was getting at with my second part hah
Do they do imports from like betterment and vanguard?
The meal subscription services strike me as premade salads on steroids. You’re paying a premium for all the labor, ingredients, (excessive) packaging, shipping, their profit, etc and you still have to put it together and cook it. It really isn’t that hard to look up a couple of recipes, buy the ingredients (you’d probably be going to the store anyway) and prep for 30 or so minutes a night. If you make full recipes you’ll probably have leftovers so you won’t even have to cook the next day.
I agree for the big ones, but we have a local one I’ve subscribed to a few times, for a couple months at a time.
They pull all the ingredients from local farms, do local delivery or pickup at farmer’s markets, and they’re minimal on packaging, and they reuse the bags and ice packs. I haven’t done it in a while but it was pretty nice and it was helpful to break out of the routine of the same meals week in and out.
Streaming services. I’ve been balls deep into piracy since I was a kid but I remember once I was house sitting and my friend had netflix and I Was drunk and wanted to watch He-man. I turned on their netflix and it didn’t have it. I was like, why even pay for this shit whats it good for? I have been morally opposed to paying for streaming ever since. Ive been taking some classes recently and some of the Gen Z kids are like, baffled I don’t have spotify. I am baffled they can’t pirate songs. My friends, you dont have to pay for that single. I can download it during the span of this conversation with my phone.
Also on that note, any of WotC’s D&D tools. I remember the D&Dinsider debacle. 4e was a cool game but basically unplayable without some automation. They tried downloadable software but found people had way too easy a time hacking it. So they launched a constantly crashing version behind a paywall that ran on silverlight (so it couldn’t run on Mac. As a webapp.) And hackers still kept up the downloadable character builder with updates. It was more consistent, didn’t crash, and is still functional to this day. I ban D&Dbeyond from my games. I encourage everyone to use 5e.tools (if they must play 5e).
I default to piracy too, but I’m guessing you don’t listen to a lot of new music. The thing a music service offers isn’t just access, it’s discoverability. It didn’t replace my FLAC collection, it expanded it. What it replaced was listening to the radio to find new stuff.
For video I’m more with you. I’m happy to rely on word of mouth. Especially since the streaming services drop movies all the time and discriminate against watching in a browser. Getting a good rip means you can watch it anywhere, anytime, and not have to worry about it disappearing.
While this might have been true for a while, but payola is alive and well. My spouse has Spotify and still has to listen to music podcasts for real discovery. Otherwise she’s one more person swatting down Espresso playing over and over.
I recommend Spotube. It uses Spotify’s data API and YouTube, Piped.video or JioSaavn as an audio source so no ads or paying for premium.
Books.
Most librarians are knowledgeable and love helping you find something, or getting it in from another library.
I like owning my own stuff.
By that proxy you could also just rent your home instead of owning a living space.Not everyone has access to libraries. However anyone with internet access and a device capable of reading ebooks can read for free with libgen, zlib, and sci hub.
Also quite a few great books in the public domain. Here is a website that curates, fixes up, and publishes free copies of classic public domain literature: https://standardebooks.org/
As a library assistant, I second that message
Streaming. OS’s, disposable shavers/ head, prime. Very few subscriptions are a good deal and if they are a good deal thats just them cornering the market to eventually close in.
(Conditionally) journals, studies and some books. And, for that matter, most television, film and music.
Particularly when paying is not supporting the creator, only the publisher.
Ad-free internet stuff.
Computer Operating Systems
A lot of Software actually
Windows
