I don’t know if never.
But I don’t want a smartwatch.
I’ve never carried a watch in general and I don’t see the appeal of it when I carry a smartphone all day anyway.
I was in the same boat until I started running. It’s very nice to monitor heart rate so you can stick to a target heart rate.
I would never buy the subscriptions that most people buy (YouTube Premium, Netflix or similar). It’s just too easy to pirate.
- 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?
To look at recipes.
Obviously.
Alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, Hulu, Netflix, Xbox, PlayStation, Disney+, HBO, Tesla vehicles, dating apps,
No drugs tho ? Dudes raw dogging life.
So you’re a teenager in the US… Got it lol
Tickets to sports events. Yawn.
And concerts. I haven’t seen a concert since the 90s. I’m lucky to have grown up in the era of cheap tickets.
In the 70s, I worked in a record store that sold tickets for the local outdoor summer venue. Lawn seats were $3, and it took 45 minutes to get there. If we worked the day shift in the summer, and got off at 5, and that nights show wasn’t sold out yet, we could grab a $3 ticket, and be at the show before it started.
I was also a fan of the local orchestra, who played there every week, and never fully sold out. I went to a LOT of those shows.
Hadestown is coming to town, and I’d love to see it, but the cheapest seat in the last row, off to the side, is about $70, so they can go fuck themselves. Entertainment is for the rich. I’ll just pirate the show, if there’s a proshot of it. Besides, I love the original concept album much better than the Broadway version anyway. Hades is far better in the original.
My local B league hockey team does discount nights with cheap seats and cheap options for beer/soft drinks and snacks. My wife and I will get tickets, have a few drinks and snacks and spend a total of maybe a little over $20. Even on full price nights it’s maybe $50 for the same.
Plus there’s the fights that almost always break out. Or, as the saying goes, there was a fight and a hockey game broke out.
Onions. I fucking hate them like I hate MAGAs.
- P*rn premium subscriptions
- Tinder premium
- Paper news subscription or any printed magazine
- Paid tv channels
P*rn premium subscriptions
If you can afford to pay for the content you consume it’s generally better to pay for it, especially with regards to the porn industry which takes every scummy practice of traditional media and is 10x worse because it’s not really happening in the open
any printed magazine
For some hobbies printed magazines are still the Pinnacle of media related to the hobby, so as long as the media company behind the magazine hasn’t changed hands and significantly degraded quality (looking at you Kalmbach publishing!) paying for a magazine so you get something fun to look at in the mail each month/quarter/whatever can be quite enjoyable
The maps are better in the print copy of National Geographic
NatGeo was the finest magazine on the planet for generations, then Fox got their hands on it and made it a religious rag, then sold it to some other company that managed to make it worse.
What an ignominious end to one of the greatest publications in the history of man, and that’s no exaggeration.
A TV and streaming subscriptions. (I do have a beamer and NAS, usenet, indexers and VPN subscriptions and I purchase music: something common people won’t buy anymore)
After building my first pc I will never buy a pre built again. I might never buy a pc again (pc of thesius!)
At some point if you decide you want a significantly newer or more powerful CPU or GPU (for example), there’s a solid chance you’ll need to replace the motherboard or the power supply. At that point, we’re playing Theseus.
Then again, mine was a 10 year old budget build and my hobbies changed significantly, so you might not actually need to upgrade at all if your computing needs aren’t hungry.
Yeah, replacing the motherboard is when I begin to consider building a new one and repurposing my current one. Because if I’m replacing the mobo, I’m probably going to have to replace the CPU and RAM, because the sockets will be different. And at that point, I might as well just go ahead and replace the PSU too, so the rating is up to date. Now I can rip out my old GPU and move it over, but that would leave my old build without one… And what if I wanted to use it for something that would potentially need a GPU, like a 4k Plex/Jellyfin server? My cooler can probably be repurposed, at least?
I built my PC in 2003. I upgraded it 3 times. I still use the same case.
you’re only saying that because you have the one computer
wait until you start running your own servers and whatnot. used prebuilts with some expansion room are the most cost effective
for my gaming pc, though? fuck no. just keep changing parts out as required
Alcohol, tobacco
- Phones on contract payment plans
- New monitors: Maybe my eyes suck, but my set of two 21-inch LCD monitors from 2005 is still going strong
- Third-party meal delivery: I’m fine sitting down with a microwaved meal or some canned soup if I don’t feel like cooking
- A new car every x years: My car of choice is old and relatively cheap, so I could afford to pay in full in cash. Bonus of being spyware-free, so I’ll just maintain it for as long as I can.
- Stuff from Aliexpress, Temu and the like: the user experience is horrendous, customer service is nonexistent, and discount codes are pure gimmicks
I was with you up until aliexpress.
There’s definitely junk on there, but if you look for high purchase volume plus good ratings you’ll get plenty of high quality stuff (minus the middle-man markup).
Am wondering, how do you complete a transaction on Aliexpress? On Librewolf and Firefox, something always goes wrong for me at some point, usually a bogus security check failing or buttons mysteriously ceasing to work.
Huh… FF is my main browser and I’ve never had an issue. Could it be an extension issue?
Am I the only one that would never change a car? Like you buy one, shouldn’t you keep it for 60 years? Why should anyone want to change a car? I had to change my car once because I’m Canadian so it rusted. It was awful.
Yeah, my 1st car died a rust death due to its winters in Syracuse (basically a Canadian climate). I’m 40 y/o and my 2nd car is still going strong (much to my wife’s dismay)
New monitors: Maybe my eyes suck, but my set of two 21-inch LCD monitors from 2005 is still going strong
Your eyes don’t suck. You just want to abuse them for some reason. Modern display tech is way easier on your eyes.
How so? I’d expect two monitors showing the same thing at the same brightness would be physiologically identical.
The monitor my work provided me is much more recent and it touts:
- Reduced blue light emissions (thought I don’t know how that should be achieved without affecting color accuracy)
- 90 Hz refresh rate
- Potentiometric brightness control to avoid PWM flicker
Some individuals are much more sensitive to the latter two, but I don’t feel much of a downgrade when I come home to my crappy old monitors, hence I joke that my eyes suck.
I got a OLED monitor and it gives me more eye strain then my old monitor. I’ve tried software and hardware setting and it still persists. Flux, dark mode, high contrast settings, brightness settings. Tried it all, unless there is something I missed.
I use it sparingly now while playing FPS games (picture is amazing by the way, wish my eyes weren’t like this)
My eyes would bleed at the sight of my laptop’s 1366x768 TN panel if I got used to anything better! Those are the “good” monitors haha.
A 144hz monitor has been the biggest upgrade to my computer since switching from an HDD to a SSD. It’s that big of a difference.
I bought a 144hz 4K 32" monitor a few years ago, it wasn’t cheap (800€) but I don’t regret buying it, everything just looks better on it than it ever did on the previous monitor.
Yeah, cant go back from that. I have one myself, 30 inch. Everything looks super crisp and smooth on it.
Not as dramatic of a shift, but going to 4k HDR OLED has made me so spoiled in terms of movie watching experience.
my problem is I can’t even find a car to replace my old one. been trying, but when 2012-2014 is the newest model they make of what I want… hard to find for a reasonable price
I just want a small wagon
I might end up looking at newer stuff, but… how tf am I going to avoid shitty touchscreens, spyware, LED headlights, and all that garbage?
As a fan of sedans and hatchbacks…car shopping is very interesting right now
how so? like just because nobody fucking makes them anymore?
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Slate Truck/SUV ends up being just marketing hype, but I’m keeping my eye on it since they promise a minimalist EV where you plug in the smarts in the form of your own smartphone. Otherwise, it’s just a dumb EV, which is how I’d keep it.
I am ready to be disappointed by it, but I’m not ignoring it. hope they can achieve it
This guy frugals.
To this day, I’ve never been tempted to buy a nice display, I’m right there with you. Like, I go to electronics stores for whatever and am dazzled by the bright colours on the modern ones, but not enough to need it when I’m posting on Lemmy, let alone pay an arm and a leg for it.
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.
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.
Yea, in my case im not sure what the impression of me was. I am single and work full time and don’t have the money or time to cook meals for 4 people let alone the dishes and stuff for that many.
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.
Not in my experience. I guess it might depend on the brand or affect individuals differently, but I’ve been using grocery store off-brand dish soap for this for like 10 years and never had a problem.
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.
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.
True enough. I haven’t had any problems in using it myself but I supposed you could ratio it with some water or something to make it not as intense for hands.
It’s a lot cheaper than hand soap too so in doing this you could probably get a tonne of hand washes out of it for really cheap.
The primary downside to it for me is that it lasts ages and I get kind of tired of the smell.
I couldn’t live without a dining table. Where else would I keep car parts when they come out of the dishwasher?
Soap and detergent are different things. A bar of soap is way cheaper than dishwashing liquid.
Yes but 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 a 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.
Not if you have a media player… I dont watch anything with ads.
Yes, that’s what I mean. I don’t pay for TV because I just put all of my media on a Jellyfin server as I also don’t want to watch ads, let alone pay to watch ads.
Anything apple
Apples are my favourite snack!
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.
Wage slaves
