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.
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.
Uhhhh you answered your own question. Why pay for an OS when it should either be included, or free Linux.
Therefore it’s surprising when people pay for an OS.
I use windows. I haven’t paid for a windows key since windows 7 iirc. Windows has been free for years. (I know you pay with your data etc. Good luck convincing average Joe who uses all social media services that this even matters)
Sames. I haven’t paid for a Windows OS since Windows XP.
The only way I ever got to the latest Windows OS, is either being given a machine with the latest version on it or I get a PC built but pirate a serial or a copy.
Exactly. Which is why it’s surprising to pay for windows OS.
Where are these surprising purchases then? People either use it for free, in which case they haven’t paid for it, or they bought it in a bundle with their PC, which is again very common.
Who is actually buying Windows standalone?
Exactly. You can buy windows OS standalone without it coming in a package with a pc. It’s rare. That’s why it’s surprising.
Fair enough. To me the fact people don’t do it and that it’s rare is perfectly expected. In other words, I would be surprised if people commonly did that, but they don’t, so I don’t see anything surprising. But I can see your point of view, it’s looking at it a bit differently.
Who is actually buying Windows standalone?
People who build their own PC and want to use an OS that they are familiar with. Especially when you want to game, windows is just easier than any free os and you can get a legit key for 20-30 bucks, while pirating windows has become a lot more complicated since XP.
Every time I saw someone I know built a PC, they reused the license key from their previous one. And the first one was a free key from their university.
It definitely happens though!
But “included” doesn’t mean free. You still paid for it.
That’s not the point. You’re buying a pc, it comes with it and sometimes costs extra.
This sub is about what’s surprising things people buy. Buying an OS is surprising, because it’s either part of the package deal for a new pc, or you can just use linux.
I think what you are trying to say is “buying an OS not as part of a package deal is surprising”. To that I would agree.
But most people are buying an OS as part of a package deal, so most purchases of an OS are not surprising.
I’m not “trying” to say anything lol. OP said operating systems. I’m talking about operating systems. Not a pc that is packaged with one.
I’m talking about operating systems. Not a pc that is packaged with one.
So yes, looks like I correctly understood what you are trying to say, and agree with you that buying a standalone operating system is weird. But nobody does that.
Looks like you consider buying something in a bundle to not be buying it, which is a valid opinion, though myself I disagree. Most OS purchases happen in a bundle with a PC, and every time I bought a laptop I asked for Windows to be removed from the bundle, which made it cheaper a bit (as I was going to install Linux anyway). If removing Windows from the bundle is making it cheaper, then clearly you were buying it and paying for it for when you don’t, as most people do.
Because they pay for a worse experience.
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
I’ve had the exact same experience. People on this site don’t like when others don’t hate Windows.
I like it because it just works.
It definitely “just works” alright. And damn do I appreciate that on the machine I like to use to relax
WinRAR
WinRAR is legitimately a great program and whomever made it deserves some compensation
Maybe it was good 10-20 years ago. What’s it got to offer today? Why should we use a proprietary format when there are faster and more space-efficient open formats widely available today?
7-Zip has long replaced WinRAR, for me.
I just cannot stand the 7zip UX
You mean you can’t figure it? It’s solely the best compression tool around that you can think of.
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Create archive:
7z a archive.7z file1.pdf file2.pdf file3.pdf ...
Extract archive:7z x archive.7zWhat is there to hate? It’s pretty much the same as every other archive tool that I’ve seen.
I compare features, speed and compression ratio’s of a bunch of options about twice a year. Up until now, winrar kept coming out on top, at least for my dataset
I agree that winrar is better (or at least historically better since I don’t routinely test like you do).
However the need to compress files is different than it has been. Storage space is always getting bigger and cheaper so I don’t need to store anything compressed.
Compression is best for sharing files, which that has evolved greatly since the creation of rar files. And recently windows has added native 7z support so it’s become the convenient choice.
Interesting. Mind sharing which compression algorithms you compare and how?
winrar, (almost) all options available in peazip, I explore the options available in the then latest tar and zip commands under debian, and I look around to try some novelty stuff or if there’s anything experimental.
I go one by one, setting up scripts to compress a directory with a particular algorithm and compression configuration. (and to record timstamps, check integrity, etc). Then collect a reasonably representative set of files from my ssd’s.
Writing those scripts takes a few hours, but after that I hit run, and usually just screen record to a seperate ssd. After (usually) about a little over a day I can look back and see how long things took, and also have a video of all of them. I scrub it just to make sure nothing glitched out.
I have to say though, winrar’s lead had shrunk a lot in my last test. Despite the new rar5 thing. Perhaps the next time will be different.
When is the next time? When I feel like it. After all, this is just a weird hobby I really enjoy.
What are the results?
I’d have to dig down my pc files for details. But winrar and 7z we’re at the top of the stack, and lzma was a surprising 3rd place. Apparently some updates were made to the algorithm
Books.
Most librarians are knowledgeable and love helping you find something, or getting it in from another library.
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
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.
If you have access to the internet you’ll be able to get access to library ebooks. There are some libraries that’ll give non residents access.
Any examples?
I researched last year and there were several libraries. Unfortunately I didn’t save my results. Check out Reddit heh.
Which country are you in? In the US, Harris County Public Library in Texas gives free access to basically anyone with an email address.
US. I looked, only found a link for $40/12m… nothing free unless a TX citizen.
It’s called the iKnow Digital access library card. Maybe they made it free to get during the pandemic?
Regardless, $40 seems to be a steal considering the cost of audible and other such services. Paid library cards being offered itself seems like a great service!
Usually only available to citizens of the same country. I don’t actually know of any libraries that allow access to people who are neither residents nor citizens of the country, but there may be some.
Every book I try to check out has a 3 month to 3 year wait-list. Not exactly a convenient way to read.
Where are you? My wait here (mid size city in Florida) is usually 0-3weeks, unless they don’t have it at all, then I request and it can be 6 weeks to infinity. But they will send hard copy books around between libraries not even in our county, and the electronic collection is huge too.
I’ve been trying e-books, usually when I find something I want to read it will say something like you are 38th in line. Minnesota.
I see this often as well. I usually put in holds on several things at a time. I often find that the had is passed to me much quicker than the estimated time when queues are long like this. I suspect people are in line for several things and just pass along when it becomes available and they’re reading something else. I similarly will pass on holds when the become available and I am reading something else.
Tldr, I recommend putting in the hold anyway, and seeing what happens. But put in holds on lots of options for best results.
Here when there is a big line like that, usually they will temporarily rent more licenses. So it will say 38th in line for one of 8 copies, not just 38th. If it’s a popular new book they do that. I read mostly sci fi and fantasy, occasionally smut, it’s been solid for those categories. Have found many enjoyable reads and those sorts of books are great to read on the device. Stories. Informational/resource books less so, for me it is easier to go back & forth with a paper book.
ETA I don’t know why someone would down vote you for sharing your experience, that’s silly.
I like owning my own stuff.
By that proxy you could also just rent your home instead of owning a living space.That’s a crazy comparison. If I could rent a home for free from the library I would feel like I’d won the lottery. I absolutely would do that. Is renting from the library not free where you are?
Depends. My local library is but the major library in the neighbouring city has a fee associated with being a member lending something. Entry is free though.
Books, though? If I had to buy every book I’ve read, I would be destitute and need a hundred storage units. Even with a concerted effort not to buy books I have a whole shelf of them.
Water
Where can you get free water? Unless you have a well or something.
I think this persons means bottled water.
Where I am the cost of water is rolled into the local authority tax. It’s not metered, so it feels free. It’s pretty good water too.
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).
Slightly more expensive in places with local water scarcity, like the American southwest. But yeah, we still need a revolution
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 somebody who grew up with perfect tap water and then moved to Detroit, I used to think this.
Edit: I guess I should say I still think this for a lot of places. When I go to my parents house the first thing I do is drink a big cup of their amazing tap water.
Hear hear. When I rented the water was great, didn’t use a filter. Out where my parents live, their water is brown occasionally.
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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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”
I’d like to see a clever implementation of one-button “channel surfing” in an app like Plex.
So… Iirc you can shuffle all of the episodes in a library … Not sure about cross library. I just have one for TV and one for movies.
I know you can definitely make a smart playlist for the shows you want to shuffle through and go from there. Like I have a bunch of a few episodic tv shows, added them through regex to a smart playlist and hit shuffle all the time.
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
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.
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
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…) 😅
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.
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.
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.
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
Their activation doesn’t “just work.” I paid Microsoft for a license. And I have spent hours with their support.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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).
For dnd, so you have a character creator that is as easy as dnd beyond? I’ve looked at some open source versions, but nothing come as close for ease of use. Thanks!
I do it manually with 5e.tools.
Have you tried dungeonmastersvault? It is really easy to use and with like half an hour on searching you can get all the source material in there
Just do it manually?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
And it’s way too much charge for the quality of the meat and produce. They give ground pork at beef steak prices and the produce isn’t as carefully selected as I would have picked.
The insulation alone with them and Hello Fresh had me hang them up for good after a couple tries. It was nice to try recipes I wouldn’t think to search online for but yeah, that packaging situation was god-awful.
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.
Adobe. Someone said they pay $60 a month for it, and are locked in for the year, which they didn’t even know about! All for editing photos. Just editing photos.
Holdup. It’s $60 a month for the adobe suite, which give you access to like 30 aps, including a video editor, DreamWorks, illustrator and a whole bunch more. It’s only $20 a month for thw photo suite, which gives you lightroom, photoshop, and bridge. The $60, a month for the suite is absolutely worth it depending on what you are doing.
It amazes me the amount of people that think theres no alternative to adobe, just for their casual use. I know that for professional it has some features that no other has.
I recently purchased Affinity photo, which did most of what I used to use Adobe for. No subscription, one time purchase, and I’ll likely never need to worry about that again.
I tried gimp a few times and found it frustrating to use.
(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.
Windows
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.
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.
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.
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.
Do they do imports from like betterment and vanguard?
How are they at dealing with investments?
For my simple needs (mortgage, 401k, couple different IRAs, and a managed investment account) it did great.
Sounds interesting. I’ll check it out.
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
In many other countries (such as mine) you dont use tax software. The government figures out what you owe or overpaid. Because they have all the info they need to know that.
