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.
Operating systems and porn.
Online subscription models, gacha and AAAA price tag games.
Not everyone wants to be a cybercriminal, god knows I’m one of them, but every person has a backlog of games, an old classic that they want to experience again or community favourite that has gotten a lot of mods. And even if you want to spend money on something, why would you spend it on this year’s hyped up game when last year’s is still just as playable and at a discount?
That being said, I did buy Balatro full price, so I ought to know the answer.
Books.
Most librarians are knowledgeable and love helping you find something, or getting it in from another library.
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.
How are they at dealing with investments?
Do they do imports from like betterment and vanguard?
Water
Where can you get free water? Unless you have a well or something.
I think this persons means bottled water.
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 was actually enjoying Blue Apron for a while, mainly because it was stuff that I’d never thought to try making before, but the amount of trash generated from each box delivered was too much for my conscience. I wish they didn’t use so many plastic wrappers and had some way of returning the boxes with the insulation.
Did one for a while. It cut down on grocery store trips and meal planning so it gave some peace of mind, but I prefer either cooking simple meals or large meals (for leftovers) and they were neither. Most were delicious but took anywhere from 30-60 minutes. Most sea portioned for two so I ended up cooking nearly every single night and I hit a wall with it.
I can definitely see why people do it, sometimes the cost is worth the convenience.
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.
Gray market license keys for software. The money you’re paying for these will never make it to the developer, so you might as well pirate.
(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.
Microsoft Office and satellite radio.
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??
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.
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.
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.
I also hate cable, but you mentioned sports as being better on streaming.
I got into NFL this year and if I wanted access to be able to watch all the games I would also be paying an absurd amount of money. There is the NFL Sunday Ticket which is insanely priced, and then games exclusive to Amazon Prime on Thursdays, plus other games scattered throughout the season that are exclusive to a single streaming platform.
Assuming your dad’s 120 a month includes access to all NFL games nationwide (it might not and in that case it’s extra bad), he’s paying basically the same as what it would cost to watch an NFL season. Not to mention NFL has ads even on most streaming services now, so it’s not much better in that regard. This is only NFL though as I have no idea about any other sports streaming.
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
Bottled water to drink at home.
When you put tap water in a bottle and put it in the freezer, so you’d have a cold bottle of water for an entire summer day, the water from the tap tastes “saltier” for some reason, while bottled “spring” water doesn’t. The “saltier” taste is kinda unpleasant 🤷♂️
Also my city has some chemical spill into the river where the city gets the water supply from, they gave out a emergency alert very late, and the city wasn’t really transparent about that whole ordeal, some people in my city are already doubting the safety of the tap water, reminds me of Flint, Michigan, so I kinda just don’t like the tap water 😖
Not every country has safe tap water
Ok, so: bottled water to drink at home in countries with safe drinking water.
I have a worst example, people who showered with said bottled water when we had a water supply issue in my town…
Much better)
And even if it does, it might taste horrible.
Even Los Angeles tap water isn’t safe to drink, as I understand it. Flynt, Michigan, too.
This drives me insane. The 5 gal jugs are so cheap to refill and keep using. I used one of those with a hand pump and a thin 1.5 gal jugs for my fridge for constant cold water when I lived where tap water wasn’t doable. It was like 10¢ a gallon to refill the jugs and I always had delicious cold water at the ready. There is absolutely no need to create so much waste
YouTube premium.
Just get uBlock or revanced.
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.
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.
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.
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
No
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
Operating systems
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.
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.
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:
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
