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.
Streaming services esp for millennials considering most of fnem have the know how for sailing the high sees.
I agree but also you’d be surprised how many actually piggy backed off a friend. I know because in my circle of friends-acquaintances of about 60 people in high school only 1 other besides me was actually competent enough with technology to the point of trying to pirate. Everyone else just got burnt cds and usb sticks from us.
To this day when I meet other millennials there’s honestly more tech illiterate than not and I think it’s the small but vocal minority that exist on places like this and reddit that carry the stereotype that all millennials are good at technology.
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.
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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.
I’d like to see a clever implementation of one-button “channel surfing” in an app like Plex.
Not very at all
YouTube premium.
Just get uBlock or revanced.
Okay, to preface I really hate giving Google money, but I hate ads more, and paying for Premium also removes ads on YouTube apps across platforms. It also in some minuscule way rewards the creators I watch, but real support comes from Patreon.
YouTube charges too much. It costs more than Netflix! They need like a $6/mo plan or something.
In Australia they offer premium lite for $9 AUD a month that removes ads on normal YouTube but still has it on shorts and music.
I mean, it depends on how much you use it, no? I use YouTube more than Netflix and the like (most of the time anyway). Not that I have YouTube premium but still.
It also gives a “free” music service, and while it’s not excellent by any means, that keeps me from spending MORE money on another music service.
I just like that I can log in on my AppleTV and it works immediately with no ads or bullshit.
Yeah I’m with you. I know there’s some way to block ads on any device if you are really dedicated but I don’t want to get a PHD in ad blocking just to not have ads on YT on my phone
Install Revanced, it’s literally better than the vanilla youtube app because you can customize basically everything
I can’t find it on iOS
*you can’t find it in the app store / apple safe space. If you’re in Europe, you can sideload apps. Otherwise, you might need an upgrade
No
YouTube + HDMI Cable from PC to TV + UBlock/Firefox = win.
The maintainance and unreliability is annoying
There is literally a discord, with a link here on Lemmy, with links in said discord to download sources. Plus there are help and troubleshooting threads.
And happen to need exactly none of that, thank you very much. I pay the fee and forget about it
I’m at a point in my life where I’ll pay for the media I’ll watch. If I’m not willing to pay for it, I won’t watch it. I also don’t want to watch ads.
"Ah, yes I see I see, and that’s very understandable. Thank you for paying us by the way.
Now, since you’ve been so loyal for all these years…what about [slides agreement across the table] you pay for it…AND you watch ads?"
– Basically every streaming service hopping on the bandwagon at this point
Streaming services are raising prices because prestige television was expensive and are using ads as a way to reduce the bill.
And you don’t have to pay for streaming if you don’t find it too be worth it. I’ve cancelled subscriptions because the increased price wasn’t worth it.
Sidenote: Lol I’m getting downvotes for mocking streaming giants and ads on Lemmy. That’s different 🤔.
Honestly, I hear you. Media isn’t easy to make and takes a ton of talented people a lot of hours to accomplish. I also drop off of subscribing to stuff if it was really nice but “enshittified” into forcing ads into every interaction.
Something needs to change fundamentally though, because we’re once again on the cable-TV slope of “20 minutes of entertainment extended to 45 minutes by interrupting it with the exact same ad of a mega corporation pretending to be an underdog influencer.”
My personal take is that if your average person were paid fairly, they’d have the money to spend on entertainment where ad-pollution wouldn’t be necessary, and if the entertainment distributors/platforms/whatevs asked the fair amount required to pay everyone involved fairly, everyone would be happy.
Lol a guy can dream.
And I wish that kind of world existed where people could fund that kind of media landscape.
I’ve just been aware that, for over a decade, streaming prices weren’t sustainable because they were subsidized by cable and broadcast.
Maybe the television being produced ought to stop being garbage that nobody wants.
I have lots of ad blockers. But my father watches YouTube on the LG TV app. I don’t live there anymore and hearing the ads from the other room became offensive to the family.
It was easier to just buy a premium family plan and call it a day.
Doesn’t work if you’re using a smart TV or console to view it.
Just solved this problem actually. Smart tube app. Download on your tv with a browser and sideload the apk. Dunno about console but I’m sure there’s some solution.
Yeah, not watching it on console. /s
Seconded on Smart Tube TV. Frankly, it works better than ublock on Firefox most days as YT doesn’t go out of its way to slow it down.
Also, I feel like it’s more lightweight too. The regular YT app was lagging a lot, Smart Tube TV was running great.
Porn
If you have specific interests it’s sometimes helpful.
Vr porn makes it worth it
If you want to be reasonably certain it’s ethically made, you kind of have to pay for porn.
Edit: also, if you want something specific that free sites don’t cater to. Like lesbian porn that isn’t obviously only meant to appeal to men.
Just because you’ve paid for it doesn’t mean it’s been ethically made.
It didn’t say that. I said the opposite: you can’t be sure it’s ethical when it’s free, because it’s much less transparent then.
ethically made
lesbian porn that isn’t obviously only meant to appeal to men
freeGirls Out West
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.
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.
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.
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??
It’s like the yuengling of coffee. Nothing special but it’s cheap and inoffensive.
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.
If I worked at a restaurant I would take advantage of free espresso.
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.
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.
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.
You wont win this one. If you think of the number of internet users in the world once you eliminate apple users, people who do everything on their phone or a tablet, people who use chromebooks but have no idea that its linux, people who “just buy a new one” whenever their laptop/desktop acts up and people who will never touch anything that isnt a prebuilt with a warranty you are left with an abysmally small number of people in the grand scheme. Thats the filters you have to apply before you get to people who might run Linux… and they are all on Lemmy.
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.
Generally I agree, but
you might have to code your own drivers for some of it
is a bit hyperbolic. Most of the time, most users will be using pretty standard hardware to do pretty standard things. They won’t need fancy drivers to do it.
In my experience, Linux Mint “just works”. What you’re describing are distros like arch.
I know gaming has gotten better, but I still run into trouble. It “just works” on Windows.
Their activation doesn’t “just work.” I paid Microsoft for a license. And I have spent hours with their support.
i don’t think it “just works” on windows, but people (even regular people) are used to the workarounds that you have to do to get windows to work as they want
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:
I think the opposite. It works well for every day folks, but those of us with extra hardware, gaming peripherals, macros, etc have a real struggle getting it all to work, easily, out of the box, on the first try.
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.
People pay for streaming and then complaining that their shows keep disappearing. Knowing full well that they are only allowed to watch the shows as long as the streaming service allows them to watch.
I truly don’t understand it. If they wanna do it go for it I’m not going to sit here and rip on them. I just don’t understand why. I say go by the disc so that way you own it. Then rip it to make your own digital file. Now with that digital file, you can do anything you want with it.
I get your point of view, and I personally use Jellyfin with my own library. But I have a different perspective about people complaining about shows disappearing from services.
People like complaining about things, it’s cathartic, and it doesn’t necessarily mean they have to do anything about it.
Imagine you have a favourite restaurant. One day you go in and that thing you really love isn’t in the menu anymore. You can grumble about it to the staff, complain to your friends, but you’ll just order a different item.
If next week your next favourite thing disappears from the menu, you’ll complain some more, or maybe just start going to a different restaurant. Yes, there is always the option to get the ingredients and make it yourself at home, but that’s a whole extra level of effort. But for most people, the effort to complain a bit and choose a different thing from the menu is far less than making it yourself at home.
There are legit services where you can buy digital content and keep “forever.” No subscriptions. That’s how I prefer to consume my content. AFAIK I still have access to everything.
I’m not familiar with ones like that. Which ones allow you to download and keep it offline so it will still work if that company goes out of business.
Not trying to be a jerk I just haven’t heard of one that does that.
Completely agree. I’ll never pay for entertainment, with the sole exception of videogames and the rare content creator I want to support. Everything else, I’ll do everything in my power to have offline and backuped so I never lose access.
I paid for my calendar app, cause it had a feature I needed no standard app had plus it’s pretty good in other regards. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’m curious the feature.
I had a job with fixed days of a month shifts. And at least at the time, a lot of calendars couldn’t create repeating events for let’s say every fifth Saturday of a month. they all knew first, second, third or fourth but fifth, no luck. And aCalendar+ knew and knows that.
Microsoft Office and satellite radio.
You still listen to the 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?
The funny thing is, after few years of using the Google Sheets, I can’t go back to Excel, because it has some weird behaviours and some shitty UX that drives me crazy.
Of course I am not saying that you can even do 1/3 of what Excel can do, but for basic uses I find it much easier to use.
Oh for sure. Excel is hot garbage when it comes to UI. I really want a replacement so I don’t have to rely on Microsoft. I use Libre Office for every other office app, and a more sane experience.
Antiviruses
- Books
- Porn
- Streaming Services
- Bottled Water (if you have access/the means of purchasing a filter)
- “Buy now, play later.” Just buy it later and avoid the fees.
- A lot of “Courses.” There are so many free resources online.
Yes, porn is free, but the companies that host it are utter garbage. They pay next to nothing, claim ownership of the content, and don’t care if a person is being exploited. Finding a person that you think is awesome/sexy and supporting their content means custom tailored and personal fun-times; that the adult content creator is the one who gets paid; and that it’s unlikely they’re being forced/pimped/trafficked.
Free porn is perfectly cromulent and there’s a lot of variety; but if you can afford it, supporting a person is better overall. I used to create erotic cosplay photography for a living, so I’m all too familiar with how screwed up things are for sex workers.
Tax return filings in the US. There are free options provided by the paid companies… So that they can prevent real changes.
Kinda like pharmaceutical companies when the public demands cheaper prices. The pharmaceutical companies fight back with “what if instead of that we set up some programs that people can use for cheaper medicine! Win win! Then you don’t have to make any real changes that might hurt us?”
Same with taxes. The accounting software companies and advisors companies said “wait hold on, you don’t need to make taxes simpler and tank our business. Keep them complicated and well offer free alternatives that are just as easy as our paid services that people can pick if they don’t want to pay! Win win!”
Which obviously I think is a crap solution. However if you are paying for someone to do your taxes you should stop. There are a lot of easy free services out there that make it pretty much effortless. They are just as good as the paid services now.
This year I haven’t worked any traditional employment, but have done various projects for friends in exchange for money.
When I just had a typical job, taxes were almost fire-and-forget easy…but I’m a little worried about that whole process this year to be honest.
A lot of times the free one only covers that “I have a typical job” case…but anything different and they’re like “OH YOU NEED BUSINESS-OWNER PREMIUM PLUS” or something.
(I haven’t started a business and earned maybe 4 figures this year…) 😅
Tax return filings in the US. There are free options provided by the paid companies… So that they can prevent real changes.
https://directfile.irs.gov/ (Or Google “IRS Direct File” if you don’t trust links)
Directs File goes directly to IRS, without going through a third party company.
If your state doesn’t have direct file, then you’ll have to find a “IRS Partner” that gives a free option:
https://apps.irs.gov/app/freeFile/browse-all-offers/ (Google “IRS Free File Trusted Partners”)
Remember: Government sites always ends in .gov
Ad-free internet stuff.
Computer Operating Systems
A lot of Software actually
Social media.
Windows
