What are some common things people buy that you would never buy?

The lottery people aren't looking for one person to buy all the tickets.

If you are buying 10 a month and a significant amount of people think like you then they are going to make bank on that.

If you win I expect a "Fuck You" reply and a picture of a ridiculous amount of cash

I buy one maybe a few times per year. Its also a very good gift to someone. You get a bit of excitement together and there is always that tiny chance of winning.

There are moments where the potential payout for a ticket is greater than the value of the ticket.

Has this ever happened in recent history?

In that mathematical moment, buy exactly one ticket.

I'd say buy as many as you can within the amount of money you're ready to waste. Same as with investing, pretty much.

Ahhhh but those devices don't have 'the ecosystem'. You know, that bloated software that locks you into apple everything by making a handful of tasks marginally more convenient for the tech layperson.

Yes, buy a secondhand google pixel, it's better for privacy/security etc with grapheneOS installed. But if you like apple hardware, nothing wrong with a secondhand iphone

Any advice? I’d love to stop paying for streaming services

My country has a huge piracy tradition, we have counterfeit of everything and no one gives a fuck. I have this satellite decoder that let me watch any satellite-broadcasted channel in the world, and the guys who made those are so awesome that they also offer a streaming service they upload everything from all major streaming services, and it's completely free, no subscription, you just buy their device and you have access to their private streaming

I'd say it's better, but not great. Environmentally it still comes with a giant plastic jug that needs to be disposed of, and we all know how plastic recycling is. On your wallet, if you think bout it, you're not just paying for the soap, but the water and the weight/shipping of that water to get to your home from the factories.

Powder is really the same thing, but you have water at home to mix it with, that happens in your washing machine. So, naturally it is going to be cheaper.

When I swapped to powder it was because I could buy a jug of All free and clear (cheapest brand for hypoallergenic that I could find) for $12. I don’t recall how many loads it did, but I could get the powder online, which was at least the same number of loads but probably way more, same brand same fragrance free formula, for $4.75. They don’t carry the powder in most stores around me, I assume because it’s so much cheaper nobody would buy the overpriced liquid. Same with cheap dish powder; just not available.

I don't know where you get yours, but I get 24 loads in a box of powder for $6. https://www.kroger.com/p/kroger-dishwasher-detergent-powder-lemon-scent/0001111080564

Those aren't bad but the container is too small for my liking. Keurig brewers are a pain to clean too.

At that point you're already putting in more work than a standard drop coffee maker would take! You literally put a filter in, pour grounds in and hit brew.

Optionally you can get a reusable filter and rinse it after each pot of coffee

Aeropress does this for me, and way better quality. Less waste too

You can do the same with a manual coffee brewer though- just use less coffee and water

Aeropress

Just to illustrate for anyone reading this that brewing coffee can be very easy and quick: I use one of these to very easily brew exactly one cup of coffee every morning in about 2-3 minutes - https://kalitausa.com/products/kalita-style-102-ceramic-coffee-dripper-white (mine is in the beautiful brown color, but I linked the white one because it's much cheaper and has many more reviews)

It says 2-4 cups but I think it's really only for 1-2 cups. It takes #2 filters that you can find at any grocery store. If you want to be even more environment-friendly, you can buy reusable cloth #2 filters online.

Procedure:

• Measure one cup of filtered water, transfer it to a pan or kettle, and start to boil it
• Set up the cone and filter on top of the cup and put one heaping tablespoon of coffee grounds in the filter
• Pour the boiling water in the filter (with a small open pan on the stove top, it takes me about 1-2 minutes to boil one cup of water)
• Optionally, flavor the coffee to taste

When I first decided that I wanted to start drinking coffee I way overthought it, spending all kinds of time and energy researching all kinds of different brewing methods, grinders, etc. It's easy to get lost in the wilderness when it comes to coffee. But I ended up choosing the easiest option available and have been happy with it for years. Hot, fresh, easy, just about any variety and strength of coffee, and no added microplastics from sending boiling water through plastics.

I just wait until I am at work, it's much simpler because the coffee at work is free and I just have to press a button and wait for the cup to be full.

Not hard to find single cup brewers for loose grounds (I own one) and they're cheaper because they don't have to work with Keurig for licensing and compatibility.

I'd also like to adhere to the feeling: Fuck Nestle. Nothing more to add.

Yeah, my car is 18 years old, has almost 300k miles on it, and because it's desirable and not made anymore, it's still worth about half what I paid for it 14 years ago.

Pretty unlikely to find a second hand system with the highish specs I’d want.

But if you mean if someone just needed a computer, then yes used would be much cheaper given how quickly things advance.

I went this route. I don't need something powerful to scroll Lemmy and watch downloaded TV/movies.

Made sure it had two display port outputs for dual monitors. Added another 16GB of RAM because why not. It is way more than I need. Probably could have gotten away with used micro PC.

I also have a NAS and micro PC "server."

How so? I'd expect two monitors showing the same thing at the same brightness would be physiologically identical.

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.

Yeah, cant go back from that. I have one myself, 30 inch. Everything looks super crisp and smooth on it.

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.

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.

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)

My last car was 35 years old when I ditched it, the underside was rusted to a point of no longer being safe. Plus the exhaust kept falling off.

As a fan of sedans and hatchbacks...car shopping is very interesting right now

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 might end up looking at newer stuff, but… how tf am I going to avoid shitty touchscreens, spyware, LED headlights, and all that garbage?

And going to get harder to avoid a lot of that stuff once enough of them eventually get into the much cheaper levels of the used market. Though by then (and even currently in the higher priced used levels) most of the stuff will no longer even be supported to use (even if you for some reason did find a need to use them and be okay paying).

I got a 2015 Rogue SV that stuff like nav or whatever other stuff doesn't even have access to the apps from Nissan to set them up. And was like one or two years behind Android Auto or even Apple's stuff. So can't just have the main screen just cast my phone's maps. Really only irritates me when I need to go into settings and see stuff for features I can't use if I wanted to do so. But the backup camera and phone pairing over blutooth for calls and music works, so that is nice to have and useful daily.

I am torn on replacing the head-unit like I did with my much older cars in the past. But those were so much more easy and "normal" to replace. I mostly worry that since it is much more integrated, that beyond just not flowing with the design, that there would be more problematic issues caused with the electrics (especially after seeing how much just replacing headlights with LEDs messed up a lot of cars when they were not a standard part) and the main computer.

Had really randomly bad issues with my last car's computer towards the last four or five years that I never had with much older cars before. But is also possible that aside from my much more abusive driving while being younger, that I just hadn't had something with any computer element (just the main one as it wasn't anything built-in with lots of features.

Yeah. I moved into a city and region with enough transit for my needs but my family still lives in a place where there hasn't been a coach or trains in 30 years. There were before but not anymore. And going to other regions or cities without a car is also becoming more and more difficult, if not impossible.

Unfortunately my province and country only care about cars. I really don't want to drive but I fear that I won't have any other choice at some point in the future because my other options are actively deteriorating.

And people actually use that as an insult. "You're not an adult until you own a car". Which is a sad way of seeing millions of people that have been living without a car for their whole life.

And the freedom feeling depends mostly if you live in a region that is offering you ways not to be car dependent. Where I live, we have a very decent network of bike paths in the city but also going into the countryside and traversing the province. I live on the island of an archipelago and can pull my inflatable kayak with my bike trailer, explore the islands around, access nature nearby. I can also go camping and hiking and into the wilderness 200 km away by using this cycling network. I often go visit my parents and family 140-170 km away by cycling there. I could have start to drive and bought a car 25 years ago but I moved somewhere I wouldn't need one, and my bike represents freedom. I'm free from having to pay big oil to fill a tank to go anywhere. I'm free from monthly parking fees. I'm free from paying the plates and the insurance.

Over the years, what I learned about cars don't make me see them as freedom. I see them as a way to keep people perpetually paying for gas, sending billions to big oil. I see them as an endless sea and stream of pollution. They pollute the air and the sound. They are bad for mental and physical health. They take an ungodly amount of space. They kill about a million people every year. On the planet, every 30 seconds someone is killed in a car related "accident". Every year, two billion animals (yes, billions) are killed by cars.

Going to see my nephew for his birthday in the suburbs where my sister lives is comical. Twelve people invited to go park their cars around a house that only has space for the cars of the occupants. You have to find parking everywhere you go for this thing, then whine that there's no parking anywhere. Going to a funereal is also depressing, but even more so because you can see the traffic and congestion created by someone that died.

Cars are a horrible for humanity. They're like a drug that everyone tells you to try. You'll see. They're so useful. Of course you can't go back.

So I guess never by a car so you can live without one.

You need a car to feel grown up?

Moving to a car centric city has been significant downgrade for me. I'd much rather walk or cycle than be stuck using a car.

Hook up an Xbox/PlayStation controller using Bluetooth XD

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?

wait until you start running your own servers and whatnot

Oh yeah I forgot about that, I've already bought several computers by that metric.

So who do you mean by shareholders? The ETF that I buy so I don't have to manually buy the whole market, or a pension fund? Funds are the only other thing I can think of that I'd describe that way.

You can get phone batteries from Aliexpress for very cheap. They are typically not too difficult to replace (as long as the back panel is not glass). Give it a go!

My phone is a Galaxy S9+ from 2018 that I bought used in 2020 for about $200. The battery life is diminished but it lasts through the day.

I will likely need to buy another refurbished phone soon though, as support for this device is getting cut from my banking app. I try to buy them at $300 or lower.

You will still need a good grinder for your beans and those things are expensive. Assuming you don't want plastic bits in your grind.

I have one that just sits on top of my coffee cup.

But why? Why is having static-y clothes a problem.

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.

It makes mine dry as fuck, but you can always moisturize with lotion after

In my personal experience, it absolutely does. Only time I've ever had seriously painful dry skin on my hands was when I was out of hand soap for a week. But I do wash my hands frequently.

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.

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.

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.

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.