Youtube premium. $12 CAD/month. No ads + videos can play in the background.
On the other hand it wasn't worth for us to spend time/money on Netflix/Amazon prime (streaming stuff) so we just killed the subscription and channeled it to Youtube.
Yeah YouTube premium is where I put my money where my is. Always said I would prefer if I could pay for content outright rather than be advertised to. Well, this is it.
but it doesn't do it on all platforms. PC only sure. Red works on smart tvs, phones, tablets, xbox, computer..
and you get the youtube music with it.
it costs me about 20 min worth of work once a month to remove ads from my primary media consumption site.. totally worth it, and don't have to mess with 3rd party BS. Completely changes the youtube experience
Once upon a time (about 10 years ago), I could turn off my iPad’s screen and still hear YouTube playing without paying Google for the privilege. Used to be HN would never accept such a thing, but here it is on a list of things we are happy to pay for. Amazing how times change.
It makes way more sense to do value analysis purely on what what you gain vs what it costs rather than trying to factor in the cost of making or implementing said item.
I don't care if the bill of materials is really high, that's no reason for a consumer to be any more sympathetic for a price; similarly, costing almost nothing is no reason to deride a price. That's the company's problem.
It's optimal to just focus on what you get for what you pay.
Deezer, concerts, Family pack of Office 365. Cheap home gym. Illegal techno parties in the forest. MDMA pills at 10 euros vs overpriced alchool in Paris. Traveling in central / south america for suoer cheap.
There are a lot of smart good plans in life if you care looking for it.
Is there a subreddit ?
I was very reticent to spend that amount of money (140$) in an IDE, but when I started daily driving Linux, it was the only viable option for C# development out there. I fell in love with it and I couldn't imagine myself working on .NET projects without it, even on Windows. Worth every single penny, made me a lot more productive.
unfortunately the 2gb RAM is the one thing I feel constrained by - I mostly use it with code-server and even the default TypeScript language server is a bit too much sometimes.
Really happy with recently moving from DigitalOcean (I had been using DO for eight years or so) to Hetzner's new US datacenter. DigitalOcean's value proposition was already fine by me, and what I'm getting with Hetzner is just that much better (my sense is that I'm getting around 2x the value with Hetzner, give or take). I last used Hetzner roughly a decade ago, and had been waiting for them to open up a location in the US. Their service interface has improved a lot (vs what I had used previously) and is quite smooth and easy to use.
Aldi has come to town. DigitalOcean has a serious challenge on their hands.
In no particular order. Spotify. Lululemon sportswear. Casual wear from Club Monaco. Uniqlo hoodies. Contact lenses. Good coffee. Netflix. Chocolate. Accountant. Gifts to people I love. Travel to see the people I love. Favourite restaurants and bakeries.
I agree about hetzner. Specially servers auction. I developed websites that were terrible backend performance wise, just because i knew 20 pounds can get me so much comouting power that i never have to optimise it. i cringe at that now, bht starting your own business without much of a reputation you need to cut corners. When using server auction though make sure you have good backup as its bare metal.
Their "remote hands" service will buy you hardware repairs within the hour. Plus most servers have hardware raid and hotplug HDDs. So I've launched some customers without any backups because they deemed up to 1 hour of occasional downtime fully acceptable.
If you are a US customer you can currently get a beefy server with 256GiB of RAM, a few years old Xeon, and a huge amount of traffic included for €50 a month on Hetzner auction. If you are in EU you need to add local sales tax, still dirt cheap.
For the price of the smallest dedicated CPU Linode, I get a 64GB AMD Epyc 16 core server from Hetzner.
So Linode is roughly 16x more expensive.
That said, I rent a lot from Hetzner so I get special pricing. But also aside from the price, all of my servers are in their own cage with biometric access check plus I have private dedicated 1GBit LAN between my nodes. And their uptime was better than our Amazon AWS and Heroku instances...
Eurocircuits for NDA stuff. They are slow to work with and expensive, but I trust their integrity and they produce fully inside Europe.
Aisler is super fast and cheap, but I need to solder myself, so I use them for small interface boards
pcbway is in China, but I can send in my own components. I used them for example for an usb3+fpga+RAM base board. They are great for stock modules like USB interfaces, but have no NDA options.
jlcpcb is in China and cheap and fast, but you can only use components in their list. So I use them for larger batches of boards that I prototyped with aisler. Also no NDA option.
Spotify. The ads haven't gotten jarring enough that it makes sense.
DigitalOcean. While I'm sure it's not the MOST affordable option, I think the value is pretty good. (If anyone has more affordable option please throw it out there!)
Minecraft. Bought the windows 10 version to play with some friends and check out the new world generation. Infinite creativity for ~20 bucks.
I use a no-name vps provider that offered a deal for 3core, 2G mem, 40G ssd kvm for 23/year. Could up-in-smoke any time but I've enjoyed it for the last 1.5 years. I usually look for deals on LEB.
Minecraft as well; some of my college buddies and I do a book club and meet up on minecraft since we don't live nearby each-other anymore. 10 years of entertainment for maybe $30.
I moved 10years ago to a small town (Sacramento, CA > Springfield, Missouri) without a Costco, and we finally got one in town. It’s so worth it not to drive 3 hours to nearest one!
Cheap newspaper subscriptions. WSJ, Washington Post both had very low cost introductory subscription plans for 6 or 12 months, and I have a couple of local papers too. Sure, there's workarounds via archive or incognito, but at these prices (WP is currently running a $10 / year deal), might as well just pay the small amount.
I use privacy.com for those kinds of services. Always works like a charm. The WSJ ends up chasing you when the card declines (gets turned off), often with continued low monthly plans.
I used to work as an editor for my city's metro newspaper.
As someone who wants to see local journalism succeed, I would be willing to subscribe at a reasonable rate.
But the only subscription plan they offer is {ridiculously low rate for first 6 months} then {ridiculously high rate after that).
And I know what a hassle it is to cancel. No online option. You have to phone in, endure 20-30 minutes on hold, then resist a retention specialist's multiple efforts to get you to reconsider.
No thanks. I want to support local journalism, but this is not the way.
The FTC recently announced that it's ramping up enforcement of subscription services cancellation rules:
"Marketers should provide cancellation mechanisms that are at least as easy to use as the method the consumer used to buy the product or service in the first place."
I hope that these efforts do make a difference with news subscriptions.
Definitely a concern unless you're in CA. I do wonder if the newspaper industry as a whole would not be better served by allowing CA-style easy cancellation nationwide. Sure, you get more cancels, but you also get more people signing up initially, and a bunch of those probably don't bother cancelling.
Absolutely true, and this is where i found subscribing to those through Apple’s App Store helps. This way, i am subbed to a bunch of newspapers, and i can always easily cancel them with a single click from a single UI in the “My Subscriptions” section of the app store.
I did that experiment with NYT (note: not a California resident), where i signed up regularly through their website first and tried canceling, and then did the same through App Store.
With the first one (website), i had to call or email them to cancel, no way to do it through a UI. Took me a few days to get it done. With the second one (App Store), all it took was one click from “My Subscriptions” page that has all my subscriptions from App Store.
Netflix. When I first got it there wasn’t a lot of content and I’d spend an inordinate amount of time looking for something to watch, but nowadays it’s a lot better. I need to remind myself to not watch too much!
Xbox Game pass is fantastic. I bought a Series S alongside a Game Pass Ultimate subscription, one of my best purchases ever. Ultimate gives you access to the console and PC libraries, EA Play and Gold (required to play online on console) for only 15$/mo[0]. I also discovered some incredible games I would have probably never played without the Game Pass, such as The Artful Escape[1].
My Fujifilm x100v (or most of the previous x100 models), it’s been a fantastic family camera. I try to just leave it around the house for moments with the kids.
The coloring is superb and makes it seem like I know what I’m doing when I certainly do not.
Enterprise-grade home wifi and networking paired with a generous (1gig) ISP connection we don't really need but is never slow.
High-end espresso machine that makes coffee in one button but with all the settings configurable (grind, volume, temperature, etc)
Canon M50 SLR camera permanently mounted for Zoom calls - got the Mk1 open box, looks amazing on calls, wasn't insanely expensive (~$500).
Tesla Model 3P. We just got a flat at home, they came out and swapped the tire for a temp one within 2hrs and then came to the home the next day to repair/replace the flat. Sadly needed replacing but all we paid for the whole experience in the end was the cost of the tire and that was cheaper than local SF places (which are $$). There's so many other great things about Tesla: it's practically maintenance free, the P edition is faster than a Lambo off the line, it's super safe in a crash, carbon neutral when paired with renewable power source, etc. Might be out of scope for this Ask HN but I just feel it's worth every $ I paid for it, and it's apparently only lost about 5% of it's value in 2.5 years which is unheard of in the car industry.
Can you elaborate on the benefits you see from this setup? I ran a Unifi setup for about a year before tearing it out and replacing it with an older Linksys 1900ACS. The Unifi took an enormous amount of trouble to setup to provide worse coverage than the Linksys for 3x the price. Not only that but it was a huge eyesore, with 3 different units with 3 wall warts all intertangled with cat6 cable. All of that on top of the recent scandals and I couldn't be happier throwing it into storage.
I heard that Ubiquiti went through an outsourcing / cost cutting phase recently and a lot of complaints about their software.
So I spent a little more and went with Aruba Instant On and it seems good so far. I really just wanted the ability to make however many VLANs I wanted.
It's very easy for a 1gig connection to saturate residential hardware, especially if you have a symmetrical connection which I assume you do if it's fiber. Definitely look into Ubiquti, I posted above a bit more on my setup. I hear the concerns, there are other options but IMHO they have downsides. Going used is an option if you can locate working true enterprise equipment from an office but make sure there isn't a recurring software license on the equipment which many of the vendors implement. I've actually known of offices ripping out their perfectly fine, working equipment because it was cheaper to switch to a different vendor than continue to pay the license fees.
I bought an ASUS mesh system, I think it’s like the rx-92?, based on suggestions here previously. I love it, the ui is incredible and you can tweak lots of settings. For 2 units I get pretty good coverage in my home with masonry blocks all over the dang place and thick wood everywhere (it’s a 50’s home). I can even use ddns and an OpenVPN connection on it with very little work, and it supports a lot of other things like printer sharing and file serving from a usb drive. It’s about 400 bucks. It’s not “enterprise” but it’s just as good and has none of the cloud bullshit.
This is probably my fourth full automatic espresso machine, definitely the best I've owned. Amortize the price based on how much coffee you drink (I drink 4 a day) and cost of coffee shop vs machine + beans. Factor in well used machines probably last 3-5 years and then they do need replacing.
I make a personal rule that I only buy $$ coffee from coffee shops if I'm wanting to sit and work/meet (less likely these days) or if I'm really on the go and need a pick-me-up. Otherwise I make a latte on the machine and bring it with me in a vacuum container when I am out and about.
Well, the battery is actually the most problematic part of the environmental footprint. Repairs/maintenance are very minor on a Tesla.
The way we look at it is a family of 3 with a young baby needs a car, we only have one car, and it's the most environmentally friendly one we could get as all cars have some manufacturing overhead. It was also manufactured 60 miles away so the delivery footprint was small too. We're trying our best!
Seeing as a few people are asking for more info on the enterprise home wifi.
Main objective is flawless heavy-usage (Zoom, streaming media) from multiple clients within the home, plus support of lots of clients (we have over 150 assigned IP addresses in the house).
My setup is a server cabinet consisting of Ubiquiti EdgeRouter to handle >1Gbps connection, ISP's preferred modem (so they can't shirk out of full support for the connection which they do if you provide your own equipment), Ubiquiti 24 port POE switch, Ubiquiti Cloud Key Gen2+, Synology NAS, Multicore server running docker containers.
I then have 4 Ubiquiti AP AC PRO wireless access points dotted throughout the home (3 level home) all on wired backhaul to the 24 port switch powered by POE and 2 Ubiquiti 8 port switches at different locations for media center, office etc.
I would imagine the total setup is about $1500 which for a large home we both use to work out of too is very reasonable. It was legitimately tax deductible as well.
My satisfaction with Ubiquiti is declining, in part because of the security issue last year. However there isn't really anything I would replace it with because the main draw of Ubiquiti at this class is that it doesn't have recurring licensing fees like Cisco Meraki does (which are $$$$). I could try to roll my own on some of this but I'm too old/busy to run pfSense and a *-WRT flavor etc. If I was buying a new Ubiquiti setup, which if you rely on home internet I would still advocate for, I would buy a Ubiquiti Dream Machine Pro which negates the router, switch and cloud key as separate purchases. It wasn't available when I purchased this setup a few years ago.
ADDED: Some people below said their Ubiquiti equipment was hard to set up, I actually found it super easy and there is a GUI to help you. I'm am/was happy sysop'ing servers over SSH so YMMV. One strong suggestion is to use their dedicated administration device the Cloud Key rather than roll your own on a docker container. The most problems I have in my entire setup are things running in docker so I try to not have them as dependencies but I am running PiHole for DNS which causes problems if it goes down.
Dream Machine running NextDNS and Tailscale on the device itself feels a little bit like living in the future. It finally feels like a culmination of promises and desire, simplified into something that is just non-discrete enough to disappear. There is an ebb and flow to wanting all your components interchangeable, and then longing for an all-in-one. Having your router itself be a Tailscale exit node is slick. When something goes wrong, there are three panes of glass, but only one hardware device to investigate.
The other home networking things I would throw in that people may find useful are: using MoCA to put access points in places that have an existing coax drop but running an ethernet line is impractical, you can have y and forked shaped networks without switches (although not the cheapest solution); and http://getchannels.com + an hdhomerun (tuner -> ethernet) plus a media server, nas, or nvidia shield.
It's interesting how "feeling futuristic" is a single network device that does everything and an over the air tv antenna, but the shit actually "just works" finally.
There are some things that has tremendous value to me but are offered for free.
A few months ago, I found out about https://endmyopia.org/ and have been following their principles to improve my eyes. I've since learned about how my eyes works and went from -2.75 to -2.25.
If I could have paid a service to heal my eyes naturally without lasik, I would have done it, but the site offered everything for free.
“Nearsightedness Is Not An Illness” - of course it’s an illness, an illness is anything that impairs the normal function of your body. A heart stent is just a little tube, and I don’t see anybody arguing that’s not real medicine.
“…classify bits of clear curved plastic as 'prescriptions'” - just about anything can be prescribed. I’m not sure why lenses aren’t eligible.
“An unorthodox approach” - not really, most optometrists will happily talk to you about vision therapy if they think you’re overminused. The only thing unorthodox here is how large his claims are. Vision therapists would love to make claims this huge - but they don’t, because almost nobody will see deltas as big as what he’s describing.
He’s also being pretty misleading about how he’s citing those studies on the main page - while the quotes are there, the studies in general don’t support this idea that myopia is entirely lens induced and/or mental in origin.
Actually, the more I read the more crank-like this gets. Myopia being primarily down to the eyeball growing too long is extremely, extremely well supported by research. This guy rejects that on the basis of anecdote.
I think you misread, there is no disputing the fact that eyeball gets longer, I remember him explaining that you have myopia because your eyeball got longer.
I spent 5 minutes on the site and couldn't for the life of me find any free resources to actually change my vision. They have a free 7 day course that tells you about the biology of the eye and how their program works, but nothing actually about anything practical. All I got was funneled into those familiar long-scrolly pushy sales landing pages that somewhere wanted to sell me a paid course.
An obvious one, but Spotify. They've solved so many problems in the music-listening experience, it's amazing.
I remember having to manage so many folders of mp3s, manually syncing them to devices. And paying $.99 a song meant a very limited selection. I often relied on free iTunes playlists to find new music, because I couldn't afford to buy new music at the time.
They've eliminated all of these problems. Pay $10-15 a month, and you can listen to whatever you want, wherever and whenever.
I say this purely from the consumer's perspective, though - I'm not super familiar with what artists' experience is like. On one hand I'm sure Spotify broadens your audience quite a bit, but I wouldn't be surprised if artists run into issues similar to creators on other platforms (e.g. YouTube).
My only frustration with Spotify is songs that I like disappearing from my library because a contract didn’t get renewed. Not Spotify’s fault, but still irritating. For that reason I still have a “offline” iTunes library.
(Well, that and that Spotify funds -and will not stop recommending to me- some podcasts that I find grating. I wish I wasn’t constantly reminded that I’m indirectly funding anti-science nonsense. Were it not that I’m paying for several other people’s Spotify accounts via family sharing I would have switched to Apple Music by now.)
The only issue with Spotify is that they are missing quite a few major artists. e.g. Garth Brooks isn’t available on Spotify. One of the best sellers of all time - not on there. Kinda annoying.
Regarding Garth Brooks specifically, the lack of availability of his music on streaming services is entirely his own decision. He owns a streaming service called Ghosttunes that exist /solely/ for hosting and streaming his own music and refuses to make his catalog available on anything else.
Edit: actually looks like he sold it to Amazon a few years ago and it was absorbed into Amazon Music where his catalog is now available. Regardless, Garth owns the rights to all of his music except for his 2014 album "Man Against Machine", so the lack of availability is again entirely his own decision.
I'm just arguing against the "and you can listen to whatever you want, wherever and whenever." statement. It's just literally not true. Tool wasn't available until a couple years ago either. Sometimes I stumble upon major artists and am like, "Oh, wow. Why haven't I heard them in so long?" And then I see that they just signed a contract to stream.
It's annoying. I can't keep track of all the artists I like and listen to. There's hundreds/thousands.
Music not being available due to licensing stuff isn't really a Spotify issue, sometimes (like the Garth example above) rightsholders won't play ball no matter what. And the original comment was clearly generalizing, no one is expecting literally every piece of music ever to be available on Spotify.
So if we're going to be pedantic, you can add local files to Spotify on the desktop app and they will sync to your phone, so technically you still can listen whatever you want on Spotify.
I came here to say this. Spotify is incredible. My only real beef with it is the interface, especially with classical music. I look at my phone to see a list of movement titles, all exactly the same. And with both classical and jazz it’s impossible to see a list of the personnel within the program—if I want to know who’s on drums I need to paste the name of the album into Google or something.
But Spotify changed everything. I recently saw a series on Netflix and liked some of the music used in it, but had no idea what it was. I just entered the name of the show and “soundtrack” into Spotify, and there it was.
> They've solved so many problems in the music-listening experience, it's amazing
And yet each of your comment’s 4 current replies describes a different “only” problem with Spotify that’s solved with folders of mp3s ;)
(Disclaimer: I listen to very little music, so I have no horse in this race except for loathing DRM, and I’m only guessing that the “missing quite a few major artists” problem is solvable by torrenting)
The key here is, how many mp3s are we talking about?
Even though I like music quite a bit, do I want to dedicate multiple terabytes and hours of my time building out and managing a personal catalogue of music I like? Because this is exactly what Spotify gives me for the majority of artists, with 0 effort.
206 comments
[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 314 ms ] threadOn the other hand it wasn't worth for us to spend time/money on Netflix/Amazon prime (streaming stuff) so we just killed the subscription and channeled it to Youtube.
Dont feed the tech giants dark patterns
If you can freeload something from a big co just do it. Its not a morality debate
and you get the youtube music with it.
it costs me about 20 min worth of work once a month to remove ads from my primary media consumption site.. totally worth it, and don't have to mess with 3rd party BS. Completely changes the youtube experience
I don't care if the bill of materials is really high, that's no reason for a consumer to be any more sympathetic for a price; similarly, costing almost nothing is no reason to deride a price. That's the company's problem.
It's optimal to just focus on what you get for what you pay.
https://github.com/mendel5/alternative-front-ends#youtube
you can do that by asking youtube to display the desktop version of the webpage or by using the Newpipe application...
I would never pay for Youtube, just for the fact that I am already paying for it by watching all the spam that ask me to pay for it.
Dev tools:
GitKraken. Linqpad. Sublime Text.
There are a lot of smart good plans in life if you care looking for it. Is there a subreddit ?
Travel can be so cheap and so good. The expensive hotels are so overrated. As long as there's a good bed, it's clean, i'm set.
I was very reticent to spend that amount of money (140$) in an IDE, but when I started daily driving Linux, it was the only viable option for C# development out there. I fell in love with it and I couldn't imagine myself working on .NET projects without it, even on Windows. Worth every single penny, made me a lot more productive.
I would seriously consider moving a couple small Linodes I use for work over that way. I quite like Linode, but free is compelling.
Aldi has come to town. DigitalOcean has a serious challenge on their hands.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/02/fashion/xinjiang-forced-l...
Works great for me!
For the price of the smallest dedicated CPU Linode, I get a 64GB AMD Epyc 16 core server from Hetzner.
So Linode is roughly 16x more expensive.
That said, I rent a lot from Hetzner so I get special pricing. But also aside from the price, all of my servers are in their own cage with biometric access check plus I have private dedicated 1GBit LAN between my nodes. And their uptime was better than our Amazon AWS and Heroku instances...
Aisler is super fast and cheap, but I need to solder myself, so I use them for small interface boards
pcbway is in China, but I can send in my own components. I used them for example for an usb3+fpga+RAM base board. They are great for stock modules like USB interfaces, but have no NDA options.
jlcpcb is in China and cheap and fast, but you can only use components in their list. So I use them for larger batches of boards that I prototyped with aisler. Also no NDA option.
DigitalOcean. While I'm sure it's not the MOST affordable option, I think the value is pretty good. (If anyone has more affordable option please throw it out there!)
Minecraft. Bought the windows 10 version to play with some friends and check out the new world generation. Infinite creativity for ~20 bucks.
Depending on what you need from DigitalOcean, AWS LightSail is cheaper
I use a no-name vps provider that offered a deal for 3core, 2G mem, 40G ssd kvm for 23/year. Could up-in-smoke any time but I've enjoyed it for the last 1.5 years. I usually look for deals on LEB.
Minecraft as well; some of my college buddies and I do a book club and meet up on minecraft since we don't live nearby each-other anymore. 10 years of entertainment for maybe $30.
As someone who wants to see local journalism succeed, I would be willing to subscribe at a reasonable rate.
But the only subscription plan they offer is {ridiculously low rate for first 6 months} then {ridiculously high rate after that).
And I know what a hassle it is to cancel. No online option. You have to phone in, endure 20-30 minutes on hold, then resist a retention specialist's multiple efforts to get you to reconsider.
No thanks. I want to support local journalism, but this is not the way.
The FTC recently announced that it's ramping up enforcement of subscription services cancellation rules:
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2021/10/ftc-r...
"Marketers should provide cancellation mechanisms that are at least as easy to use as the method the consumer used to buy the product or service in the first place."
I hope that these efforts do make a difference with news subscriptions.
I did that experiment with NYT (note: not a California resident), where i signed up regularly through their website first and tried canceling, and then did the same through App Store.
With the first one (website), i had to call or email them to cancel, no way to do it through a UI. Took me a few days to get it done. With the second one (App Store), all it took was one click from “My Subscriptions” page that has all my subscriptions from App Store.
Well worth the $12/month or whatever I’m paying.
Books - Teaches you variety of stuff that will save you money
[0] https://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-game-pass#join [1] https://www.xbox.com/en-us/games/store/The-Artful-Escape/9NG...
My Fujifilm x100v (or most of the previous x100 models), it’s been a fantastic family camera. I try to just leave it around the house for moments with the kids.
The coloring is superb and makes it seem like I know what I’m doing when I certainly do not.
High-end espresso machine that makes coffee in one button but with all the settings configurable (grind, volume, temperature, etc)
Canon M50 SLR camera permanently mounted for Zoom calls - got the Mk1 open box, looks amazing on calls, wasn't insanely expensive (~$500).
Tesla Model 3P. We just got a flat at home, they came out and swapped the tire for a temp one within 2hrs and then came to the home the next day to repair/replace the flat. Sadly needed replacing but all we paid for the whole experience in the end was the cost of the tire and that was cheaper than local SF places (which are $$). There's so many other great things about Tesla: it's practically maintenance free, the P edition is faster than a Lambo off the line, it's super safe in a crash, carbon neutral when paired with renewable power source, etc. Might be out of scope for this Ask HN but I just feel it's worth every $ I paid for it, and it's apparently only lost about 5% of it's value in 2.5 years which is unheard of in the car industry.
What do you recommend for enterprise grade wifi? My current setup isn't great.
So I spent a little more and went with Aruba Instant On and it seems good so far. I really just wanted the ability to make however many VLANs I wanted.
This is probably my fourth full automatic espresso machine, definitely the best I've owned. Amortize the price based on how much coffee you drink (I drink 4 a day) and cost of coffee shop vs machine + beans. Factor in well used machines probably last 3-5 years and then they do need replacing.
I make a personal rule that I only buy $$ coffee from coffee shops if I'm wanting to sit and work/meet (less likely these days) or if I'm really on the go and need a pick-me-up. Otherwise I make a latte on the machine and bring it with me in a vacuum container when I am out and about.
That's if you don't count manufacturing and repairs of course.
The way we look at it is a family of 3 with a young baby needs a car, we only have one car, and it's the most environmentally friendly one we could get as all cars have some manufacturing overhead. It was also manufactured 60 miles away so the delivery footprint was small too. We're trying our best!
Main objective is flawless heavy-usage (Zoom, streaming media) from multiple clients within the home, plus support of lots of clients (we have over 150 assigned IP addresses in the house).
My setup is a server cabinet consisting of Ubiquiti EdgeRouter to handle >1Gbps connection, ISP's preferred modem (so they can't shirk out of full support for the connection which they do if you provide your own equipment), Ubiquiti 24 port POE switch, Ubiquiti Cloud Key Gen2+, Synology NAS, Multicore server running docker containers.
I then have 4 Ubiquiti AP AC PRO wireless access points dotted throughout the home (3 level home) all on wired backhaul to the 24 port switch powered by POE and 2 Ubiquiti 8 port switches at different locations for media center, office etc.
I would imagine the total setup is about $1500 which for a large home we both use to work out of too is very reasonable. It was legitimately tax deductible as well.
My satisfaction with Ubiquiti is declining, in part because of the security issue last year. However there isn't really anything I would replace it with because the main draw of Ubiquiti at this class is that it doesn't have recurring licensing fees like Cisco Meraki does (which are $$$$). I could try to roll my own on some of this but I'm too old/busy to run pfSense and a *-WRT flavor etc. If I was buying a new Ubiquiti setup, which if you rely on home internet I would still advocate for, I would buy a Ubiquiti Dream Machine Pro which negates the router, switch and cloud key as separate purchases. It wasn't available when I purchased this setup a few years ago.
ADDED: Some people below said their Ubiquiti equipment was hard to set up, I actually found it super easy and there is a GUI to help you. I'm am/was happy sysop'ing servers over SSH so YMMV. One strong suggestion is to use their dedicated administration device the Cloud Key rather than roll your own on a docker container. The most problems I have in my entire setup are things running in docker so I try to not have them as dependencies but I am running PiHole for DNS which causes problems if it goes down.
https://github.com/nextdns/nextdns/wiki/UnifiOS
https://github.com/SierraSoftworks/tailscale-udm
https://tailscale.com/kb/1103/exit-nodes/
The other home networking things I would throw in that people may find useful are: using MoCA to put access points in places that have an existing coax drop but running an ethernet line is impractical, you can have y and forked shaped networks without switches (although not the cheapest solution); and http://getchannels.com + an hdhomerun (tuner -> ethernet) plus a media server, nas, or nvidia shield.
It's interesting how "feeling futuristic" is a single network device that does everything and an over the air tv antenna, but the shit actually "just works" finally.
A few months ago, I found out about https://endmyopia.org/ and have been following their principles to improve my eyes. I've since learned about how my eyes works and went from -2.75 to -2.25.
If I could have paid a service to heal my eyes naturally without lasik, I would have done it, but the site offered everything for free.
“Nearsightedness Is Not An Illness” - of course it’s an illness, an illness is anything that impairs the normal function of your body. A heart stent is just a little tube, and I don’t see anybody arguing that’s not real medicine.
“…classify bits of clear curved plastic as 'prescriptions'” - just about anything can be prescribed. I’m not sure why lenses aren’t eligible.
“An unorthodox approach” - not really, most optometrists will happily talk to you about vision therapy if they think you’re overminused. The only thing unorthodox here is how large his claims are. Vision therapists would love to make claims this huge - but they don’t, because almost nobody will see deltas as big as what he’s describing.
He’s also being pretty misleading about how he’s citing those studies on the main page - while the quotes are there, the studies in general don’t support this idea that myopia is entirely lens induced and/or mental in origin.
Actually, the more I read the more crank-like this gets. Myopia being primarily down to the eyeball growing too long is extremely, extremely well supported by research. This guy rejects that on the basis of anecdote.
Here's a link to a research about the eyeball shortening in adults: http://europepmc.org/article/med/3688185
I think you misread, there is no disputing the fact that eyeball gets longer, I remember him explaining that you have myopia because your eyeball got longer.
I remember having to manage so many folders of mp3s, manually syncing them to devices. And paying $.99 a song meant a very limited selection. I often relied on free iTunes playlists to find new music, because I couldn't afford to buy new music at the time.
They've eliminated all of these problems. Pay $10-15 a month, and you can listen to whatever you want, wherever and whenever.
I say this purely from the consumer's perspective, though - I'm not super familiar with what artists' experience is like. On one hand I'm sure Spotify broadens your audience quite a bit, but I wouldn't be surprised if artists run into issues similar to creators on other platforms (e.g. YouTube).
(Well, that and that Spotify funds -and will not stop recommending to me- some podcasts that I find grating. I wish I wasn’t constantly reminded that I’m indirectly funding anti-science nonsense. Were it not that I’m paying for several other people’s Spotify accounts via family sharing I would have switched to Apple Music by now.)
Edit: actually looks like he sold it to Amazon a few years ago and it was absorbed into Amazon Music where his catalog is now available. Regardless, Garth owns the rights to all of his music except for his 2014 album "Man Against Machine", so the lack of availability is again entirely his own decision.
It's annoying. I can't keep track of all the artists I like and listen to. There's hundreds/thousands.
So if we're going to be pedantic, you can add local files to Spotify on the desktop app and they will sync to your phone, so technically you still can listen whatever you want on Spotify.
But Spotify changed everything. I recently saw a series on Netflix and liked some of the music used in it, but had no idea what it was. I just entered the name of the show and “soundtrack” into Spotify, and there it was.
And yet each of your comment’s 4 current replies describes a different “only” problem with Spotify that’s solved with folders of mp3s ;)
(Disclaimer: I listen to very little music, so I have no horse in this race except for loathing DRM, and I’m only guessing that the “missing quite a few major artists” problem is solvable by torrenting)
Even though I like music quite a bit, do I want to dedicate multiple terabytes and hours of my time building out and managing a personal catalogue of music I like? Because this is exactly what Spotify gives me for the majority of artists, with 0 effort.