I know people prefer to complain instead of act, but what is something people don’t like but has an alternative?
Reddit
Oh c’mon… nothing holds a candle to Reddit. What other public forum can harrass, downplay, and degrade its contributors while 90% of them remain ignorant/uncaring of what is happening around them?
Yes, but what decent alternative exists?!?
/s
Going outside. :)
Air quality is too garbage from Canadian wildfire smoke to do that :(
Swallow an air filter.
There was an old lady who swallowed an air filter.
😁
/r/outside
Noooooo…
alternativeto.net is great for this
Amazon, sort of. It absolutely cannot be beat for convenience. Ordering something in 15 seconds, then having it shipped within 48 hours is unmatchable.
But if you plan ahead, and aren’t an impulse buyer, you can find alternatives with better products and similar prices. Most stuff on Amazon is absolute junk with clickfarm reviews.
Ironically Reddit was really good for finding niche websites for whichever product you were looking for. Hopefully Lemmy will reach that point eventually.
Would be interested in a community for general purchase recommendations (any product, no specific category). Having a thread site like this where actual humans who bought the product and don’t work for the company can write honest reviews/recommendations is extremely valuable
Not the same but which (which.co.uk) is a non-profit consumer group. You can pay them subscription and they do non biased and quite detailed reviews of all the normal electrial stuff. I’ve used them for a washing machine, freezer, earbuds, TV, handheld vacuum cleaner.
It’s a shit company with shit morals and shit practices, but I use it… If I have to. And usually that means I’ve checked locally, I’ve checked other big retailers, and if everyone fails me I’ll reluctantly buy it on Amazon.
I agree. Now disclaimer, I am someone who still buys tons from Amazon. There is no one alternative. But you can get much better deals if you watch and wait instead of impulse buy. Best Buy is now my go-to for gadgets.
<3 there was an “AnywhereButAmazon” subreddit that was reasonably good. My go-tos: BestBuy, Target, bookshop.org (abebooks is owned by amzn), eBay, local sporting goods stores, Google shopping
For those in DE/AT/PL/UK: https://geizhals.eu/
It shows many local online shops, including Amazon. Amazon usually isn’t the cheapest IME in Germany.
AliExpress is the alternate for Amazon if you can wait a month to get your crap. All the products are exactly the same except £2 instead of £20.
I wouldn’t buy any electronics from AliExpress though.
Cheap electronics is all I buy from Ali exp.
Every order I’ve ever made on Ali:
- Me: Place order
- Ali: it will be there in a month
- A few weeks later, Ali: Your order was cancelled.
- Back to Amazon
But if someone makes a version of Ali that works in the states, Amazon’s online store is already a dinosaur and can easily be dominated.
really?
Ive ordered probobly 100 things from Ali. Takes a while to arrive, but only had a couple items disappear in shipping, and never had them not at least ship.
Yes really
Amazon recently removed a filter I used heavily - the “Sold by” filter. When searching for most things, I’d filter on “Sold by: Amazondotcom”, and that would weed out all the junk by the keyboard-smash sellers. I’m really bummed that they removed that filter.
the convenience factor has tanked massively in recent years, at least in my region. prime shipping has become meaningless and most of the stuff I would get off Amazon ends up being shipped from china so I may as well use AliExpress and pay 3 bucks instead of 35
Ordering something in 15 seconds, then having it shipped within 48 hours is unmatchable
you mean like online shopping in general?
I assume they mean having it arrive within 48 hours, which is not typical of most online shopping.
Even more so for free shipping. Most places will charge you a fortune to get express shipping and a moderate price to get shipping that takes like 2 weeks. If they even have free shipping, you’ll have to spend a hefty amount to get it and even then, good fucking luck if you’re not American (a ton of sites ship to both the US and Canada, but exclude Canada from any free shipping options, plus charge us extra to boot).
It feels like Amazon has no real competition where shipping speed and price are concerned.
which is not typical of most online shopping.
not
iPhones. Love my Pixel and I don’t care how much my co-workers removed about bubble colors.
As an European, I always find it funny how iMessage seems to be so prevalent in the US that the “bubble colors” issue is even a thing. Here, almost everyone uses WhatsApp. Better for communication across different device types, probably worse for privacy. But at least no artificial discrimination because apple hates open standards ¯\(ツ)/¯
apple hates open standards
What about WhatsApp is open?
I think they are maybe referring to Apple’s reluctance to integrate with RCS.
Not an unfair complaint against Apple, but ignores Google’s/Android’s problematic “support” for RCS, and in this context of this comment seems to imply that What’sApp isn’t “closed” like iMessage.
Yeah, that’s true. Pretty much every messenger has that issue, Signal, Telegram, etc. Ideally there would be an open standard like email, SMS and you could choose your preferred app and have cross messaging and group chats.
RIM made a similar play when they kept BBM closed to their phones and it backfired but Apple seem to have the opposite effect from keeping it all in house.
I’m certainly not trying to be an Apple apologist here, as iMessage has plenty to critique. But it bears consideration that iMessage falling back to SMS is a certain amount of openness, is it not?
Yeah, they are both essentially doing the same thing (iMessage and RCS using Google messages app), default to proprietary message, SMS back up.
Maybe the telecoms industry needs to get involved with moving on the standard. Although, when the created MMS it was (and still is) priced out of being useable.
Back when WhatsApp charged an annual fee you could get a 1 year subscription for about the same cost as 1 MMS picture message
Just thought I’d come back to share this if you haven’t already seen it. They’re at it again!
Yeah, they are both essentially doing the same thing (iMessage and RCS using Google messages app), default to proprietary message, SMS back up.
Maybe the telecoms industry needs to get involved with moving on the standard. Although, when the created MMS it was (and still is) priced out of being useable.
Back when WhatsApp charged an annual fee you could get a 1 year subscription for about the same cost as 1 MMS picture message
I mean, RCS is garbage, And googles messaging woes are entirely of their own design, see: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-of-instability-the-history-of-google-messaging-apps/
A lot of reading there, I’ll be honest, I cherry picked a few bits.
It is for the most part not the best but I still use it for sending uncompressed images. If you use the Google messages SMS app it does offer a bit more. I still think they should get a bit of Kudos for trying but at the same time. The iterative death, rebrand and rebirth of Google messaging platforms has been terrible. Allo was the worst in my opinion.
Yeah it’s weird. I mean I use Google Message (RCS) and it has visual differences for conversations that are using RCS vs ones using SMS but I honestly don’t care about the color. I care more about using a modern cross platform standard than falling back to ancient SMS because Apple wants to use a proprietary locked down system at the expense of their user’s experience. WhatsApp might not be bad but no one I know really uses it so I would have to start convincing people to switch. That’s more than a uphill battle. It’s completely futile. The only thing that will change the tide is Apple either opening up iMessage or Apple incorporating RCS into iMessage. I don’t see either happening anytime soon because they simply don’t care about interoperability.
I (American) just attended a strategy meeting and one of the ice breakers was “are you a green or blue bubble?”.
I had no idea what it meant, similar to others that are android users. While it was a fun and engaging session, I was kind of shocked that was a thing. I’m obviously not oblivious to Apple vs Android convos and opinions, but I had never been asked that question.
Our group, BTW, was pretty evenly split. 😅
The alternative to that is using Signal, Telegram, or WhatsApp. I didn’t even know it was a thing until I read American news on Apple being it’s regular anti-consumer self.
In the US,I phone is a social status. They’re judging you because it’s like you don’t own a car and just have a unicycle in their minds. What amazing marketing. I’m an Android pixel owner since the beginning and still am. There’s some articles written about it too
It’s strange as flagship Androids are just as expensive.
But there are a lot of Androids that aren’t expensive, unlike iPhones.
Yeah Apple people are very clickie. If you don’t have one you’re a freak. Lol I’m fine being a freak. I never cared much about fitting in anyway. Fuck the Joneses!
Is spending money for social status, just something I’m to mid western to understand?
Like your expected to say all you did to get a good deal when talking about any major purchase here.
Not to mention the slavery going into making them that apple lobbies so hard to maintain.
Went back to android with the first pixel. After five different phones (microphones and speakers kept breaking) I went back to iPhone.
Sounds like you had issues exclusively with hardware, perhaps you should’ce gone for a different manufacturer. My personal anecdote has never seen anything break (that I didn’t cause myself).
I mean, it’s google’s flagship phone. My experience with Samsung in their other products has never been good. Which is why I went back to the product that has always worked for me.
I think you just got unlucky most people don’t have anything close to that experience
Yeah, conversely my kids use iPhones and they, and their iPods back in the day, are more troublesome than my and my wife’s Androids (Galaxies, Pixels, One+)
The kids are only on iPhones because they were the smallest form factors for sale at the time. Little kids have little pockets
Yeah it sucks that apple stopped the mini line they were really the only option for a good small phone
I understand that - but it’s why I won’t go back to google’s hardware.
All 5 were Pixel’s?
Yes - only because they were still under warranty so google kept shipping me more.
This is why I don’t buy Android.
The software isn’t optimized enough from smoothness and battery consumption perspective.
Also, the ROM that’s usually comes from the manufacturer is either spyware, bloated, or just crap. You need technical knowledge and risking bricking your device to install custom ROM.
The hardware, which is my least concern, depends on the company you buy from.
My SONY smart tv (with apps disabled) would phone home like ~200 times a minute.
Fellow Sony Smart tv owner here. Whatever that google tv os thing is, it phones home like crazy. And with my Pihole enabled on the network some of the tv functionality doesn’t work. I just banned it’s MAC address from my network at the router and don’t use it’s “smart” features.
I did use pihole to block it. Sadly, not everyone have the technical knowledge to do so.
That’s why I’d recommend apple products even though they’re not that great.
Aside from firmware updates, I don’t know why anyone uses smart tv apps. 99% of the time they are terrible and buggy. Get an apple tv or shield, or even a fire stick. I’d love to find some kind of private tv device (at least the device itself, I know the apps are the data siphons) if anyone has suggestions.
For tech savvy people it’s no brainer to get apple tv, etc…
They issue is with normal people who know nothing about data collected and mostly the smart tv apps does the job for them.
I’m now working on a mini pc with debian as os and adblock and sponsorblock to enjoy my Saturday afternoon.
This is the same thing that happens with Windows and Mac. Your issue was hardware; you could have tried any of the other manufacturers who make Android phones. It’s like saying you stick with Mac because you don’t like Dell - there are other hardware brands who use the same operating system.
As I mentioned elsewhere - this was google’s FLAGSHIP phone. The other big hardware manufacturer for android is Samsung - I’ve had plenty of their products (including a phone) and have not had good experiences.
As for your other comparison, I actually use Mac because after 7 years my MacBook runs like the day I bought it whereas the 4-year-old Lenovo l have takes about 15 minutes to boot and struggles to open Word.
I’m not sure but the iPhone bubble colour debate seems so US centric. In the UK, I’ve never heard of anyone bringing it up
It is 100% exclusive to iPhone users in the US and it’s so bizarre and ridiculous. Apple has even brainwashed children with this shit to the point that kids are bullied for not having iPhones.
I wouldn’t be surprised if teens in Canada felt the same way. Not necessarily the Hubble colour bu indefinitely sense iPhone is a status thing.
I’m Canadian and I’ve never seen the bubble debate here but iPhones are definitely a status symbol.
I can see reasons why people would prefer android, e.g. ability to install apps outside of the manufacturer’s App Store, and there are some android models that are cheaper than iPhone (less so since iPhone SE, but still true).
But the post asks about alternatives for companies that people don’t like. I.e., where it’s the company that has a problem morally. Do people generally think that Google is morally better than Apple? Sure, Apple is anticompetitive about hardware and software access because that’s how they make money, but Google is anticompetitive about data and advertising because that’s how they make their money. I kinda think they’re both bad.
Hoping I don’t come off as antagonistic here. I’m genuinely curious what people think.
I didn’t see anything in the original post about morals. I answered based on the fact that Apple is a company that some people don’t like and Google offers an alternative for some services and products.
If we’re talking strictly about morals I would have to think of a different answer.
I feel like google used to be the good guys relative to apple. They were more open and truly supported open source & standards. But I don’t feel like there’s much difference anymore.
One of their slogans used to be “don’t be evil”
Obviously they dropped that a while back.
You can save so much money and add so many customization options by switching to android.
I’m old, and think of my phone as a piece of equipment. In terms of looks, status, and stuff like that, I’m more interested in what protective case to buy.
I’m very much so looking forward to a switch to a pixel pro in the next couple of weeks! The camera and the ecosystem seems so much nicer than my 2020 iphone se
They also complain about spam calls. Even on non-pixels the Google Phone app has tremendous spam blocking.
Broader than a brand, but I think it fits here…
Everyone hates banks. Credit Unions are better in every possible way.
I cannot agree more. Maybe if you need some massive loan, you should go to a bank, but otherwise, credit unions are great. I love that I don’t have to pay fees for just having a damn account.
Been with my credit union for a decade and perfectly content
Might depend on the country though. I grew up where credit unions were really common and just assumed they were the best. I had to switch to something else cause I moved across the country and my credit union was only on western Canada. While shopping around, I realized that the big Canadian banks were offering way more than my credit union ever was. Plus their website actually felt modern.
Well one disadvantage of credit unions is that you might not be able to get a debit card. Loan interest is usually way better though.
Huh? I’ve used 4 different credit unions, and I never heard of being unable to get a debit card.
Really? Of the credit unions I can join based on common bond they only allow savings accounts basically and loans but very good rates on loans. I hear that in Germany at least they give all the advantages of banks
Dungeon and Dragon. There is a ton of TTRPG out there and things like Level up 5e are direct replacement with better content.
Ha I run a game store and it’s finnally good to see things like Blades in the Dark, Mork Borg, Alice is Missing, Avatar, Cyberpunk, and Pathfinder knock a percent or two into the D&D Market share.
Hell even just D&D 3.5e is better than 5e imo. Though I mostly play Pathfinder 2e nowadays (I’d be happy with Pathfinder 1e as well).
Just 5e is boring as hell to both DM and to play.
undefined> 5e is boring as hell to both DM and to play.
My experience this is 100% the group, the system is secondary to the quality of DM and other players. A good group will have fun in any system.
Out of curiosity, are you using some kinda app? Cause I’ve been seeing comments, including yours, contain “undefined>” and it doesn’t seem to be either a Lemmy or kbin thing. Maybe a misfunctioning app?
I’m not using an app. Though the website occasionally throws an error and wont load a comments section. I wonder if my add blocker or other privacy tool is to blame?
Sort of. I personally a more engaged with the system if it’s more mechanically intensive and provides a lot of character customization options (such as feats at every level or every other level from leveling up), with lots of actual hard rules to follow and not just guidelines.
5e is not mechanically intensive enough for me.
Pathfinder’s action system is just a lot better than D&D’s.
Also, the way it handles critical failures or misses is more fun. IIRC, D&D is just 20 and 1. Whereas Pathfinder makes 10 over DC or 10 under DC a critical success/failure respectively. And in fact it’s not just a yes or no thing, but a scale that can even cancel out (so a nat 1 but 10 over is just a normal roll). Many spells and such have special effects for critical success/failure.
Frozen veggies over fresh. I’m so fucking sick pf buying veggies then having a ticking clock on them. Frozen gives me all the nutrients and I can leave them in the freezer for months and not lose anything.
For me it’s the watties frozen stir fry mix. Cheap and has a good range. I do however pick out the pea pods because they suck.
There was a medditarrian mix that was amazing to cook in the air fryer but after buying 8 bags in a week they took it off special and it went from $4 to $8
Aren’t frozen veggies usually fresher as well. Like they are frozen within a couple hours of being harvested?
Pretty much only buy frozen veg now
“Fresher” probably isn’t the right term, but freezing (and canning) usually has some advantages since the flash freezer is closer to the farm than your house.
They can be picked closer to ripe. Riper foods often contain more nutrients and taste sweeter.
Also, frozen veg can be made of varieties that are not as tough (required for transportation), so they can be selected for other traits such as flavor.
But you can also get those advantages by having a garden.
Yes, but some veggies “translate” thought the freezing process better than others. Peas, for example, cook up really nicely after freezing.
Watched an episode of come dine with me which had a birdseye pea farmer in the episode a couple years ago so don’t quote me but. Basically he said frozen veg is better cus it locks in the freshness.
Edit: fixed my drunken splelling misstakes
I used to get Costco veggies and was the best, but with the inlaw failing kidneys the doc suggested him fresh if he wants the rest of his life to be a bit more manageable.
Google. Use Searxng for search, Firefox/Librewolf for browser, Newpipe for Youtube, Graphene instead of default Android, literally anything for calendar and notes, and FDroid for apps. Don’t let Google’s services destroy your privacy.
❤️ Google -> Brave search. Stock Android -> LineageOS (CalyxOS, DivestOS, GrapheneOS). Chrome😬 -> Mull (LibreWolf). Google notes -> Joplin.
Bings actually pretty good now and less bloated than Google.
As much as Google results have decreased in quality over the past years, it is still miles ahead of Bing. Bing rarely even understands the context of what I’m searching about.
I also have been trying to convince people to try Kagi. It is so much better than google results, has no ads, and is very pro-privacy.
Only downside is that you have to pay for it, but honestly it’s worth it to me for how much better it is, and no ads or psychology against me is a big bonus
you have to pay for it
You’ve already lost 99% of people’s interest, including mine. No one wants to play $5 a month for a limited number of searches
Ha I actually pay $25/m for unlimited searches, even though I only use like 6-800 on average with lots of dev & debugging searches. But I also pay for email with Fastmail ($50/yr) instead of a free service, so I’m probably the weird one.
I just prefer the model of paying for services entirely & being a customer of the business, instead of having my data harvested and used to manipulate me for profit (by also making the service worse). But lots of people aren’t willing to make that trade-off, which is fine too 🤷♀️
Brave runs on chromium. Better to use DDG.
Seconded for SearXNG and Librewolf. Way better than the alternatives in speed and privacy.
Yup. To add more: Brave for searching because it has it’s own crawler. OrganicMaps and OSM for maps. Joplin for notes. AsteroidOS for WearOS. NextCloud for Drive (including some auto-syncing/back-up stuff like mobile contacts). Proton or Tutanota for mail.
Windows -> GNU/Linux
KDE/Gnome -> JWM
TV -> Reading books
Twitter -> Fediverse
Coke/Cola -> Tea/infusion
Amazon -> Local bookshop
Amazon needs a bit more than bookshops to replace it. Need a whole shopping mall
Thankfully for things other than books (and maybe also for books), a lot of companies offer two day shipping now. Sometimes there’s an order minimum for that but I find that most of the time my purchase exceeds the order minimum anyway.
A shopping mall and a dumpster full of worthless crap, but you often can’t tell if you’re looking at an item from the shopping mall or the dumpster.
People hate KDE? I’ll check out JWM, but KDE is incredible.
Both KDE and Gnome can be seen as pretty bloated. They come pre-packaged with a lot of programs and tools that sit around unused, possibly even having corresponding daemons running for no reason.
For someone who doesn’t want to think about their computer, and just want to know it’s prepared for anything, they may want that. But if they left windows/mac to have a smaller, simpler OS that isn’t wasting CPU cycles or disk space on superfluous stuff, then KDE/Gnome might not suit them.
Edit: that said, I’ve heard of a lot of alternative DEs/WMs, but I’ve never heard of JWM. I’ve heard good things about Budgie, might also check that out.
I always love the Linux communities obsession with bloat.
The definition for it is so fluid its almost useless anymore. “Neovim is bloated!” “systemd is bloated and slow”
(This isn’t a jab at you btw. It’s a commentary on silly Linuxisms)
Coke/Cola -> Tea/infusion
Wut
Nah but seriously, they’re not interchangeable. A Coke replacement would be another cola.
i’m an absolute cola addict and unfortunately nothing else scratches the same itch for me. i am a fan of iced tea though
It’s the fizz. I love iced tea, hot tea, and a variety of other drinks. But I was a huge soda fiend.
I switched to sparkling water and HATED it for like 6 months. Now I’ll drink more of it than I was drinking soda.
I still have cola mixed with alcohol, but that’s it.
It’s the fizz. I love iced tea, hot tea, and a variety of other drinks. But I was a huge soda fiend.
I switched to sparkling water and HATED it for like 6 months. Now I’ll drink more of it than I was drinking soda.
I still have cola mixed with alcohol, but that’s it.
+1
Reddit -> Lemmy
I’m downvoting you simply for suggesting an alternative to Coca Cola.
Good day.
Could’ve been worse, could’ve said Pepsi
shudders
All soda is basically addictive poison. I still drink it occasionally (addictive), but I’m always mad at myself for it.
I decided long ago that I’ll only drink soda with alcohol. Since then I mainly do ginger ale, and usually a can every week or two.
Canada Dry for the win!
I decided long ago that I’ll only drink soda with alcohol. Since then I mainly do ginger ale, and usually a can every week or two.
Why the KDE hate?
They’re using a window manager over a full DE, so it’s likely the usual case of preferring minimalism to the very complete desktop environment (which many consider bloated). I’m a window manager person myself, but I’ve been giving KDE a good honest try for the past couple of weeks. It’s definitely very nice if you want the full DE experience.
I went the WM route for a while. At a certain point, it was too much bother getting everything set up Just So. I wanted something that would work and had undergone thorough testing with minimal effort on my part. If I want to tinker with something, I want it to be more interesting than a WM config file.
lmfao the 10 downvotes
Some people hate books.
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My suggestion for a cola replacement would be soda water. I do a wedge of lime in soda and it’s chef’s kiss. Might take some getting used to the lack of sugar, but coke is sickly sweet to me now and I feel a lot better not consuming 60g of sugar in a bottle.
Steam OS to me is almost perfect, the only thing it can’t do for me is install printers easily, otherwise it would replace windows for me everywhere. I use Rasbian otherwise 😄
And I wish flavor water was more popular instead of soda. And not Vitamin Water, I mean just water lightly flavored and not sugar with water added.
They sell sex toys and bulk sour patch kids at the local bookstore?
Moving to Linux sounds cool and is cool until you realize 2 things, one, you can fuck yourself in ways you didn’t know possible.
2, windows is dominant and you will lose access to a fair portion of games immediately upon switching.
Unless you really need to lower background bloat, develop code, or got something vehemently against windows, its not worth the swap for 90%+ of the population, you will go back.
I didn’t mind the learning curve, realizing the sheer amount of programs and games that have no development plan for Linux was what made me swap back.
Gaming has come a long way now in Linux with steam and proton, most games are playable. You can check out protondb to see what games don’t work, but it’s amazing compared to even a few years ago.
@demonicbullet 2 is becoming ever less revevant with Steam Proton.
Nowadays, it will basically launch anything bar the anticheat-protected games.
This is pretty much what I was trying to say, but better.
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That teaches you to not be an idiot and think before you do.
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Almost my entire library plays on Linux just fine. Games made for Windows can often run on Linux with the right setup, so don’t be discouraged by the lack of plans for Linux develipment. Gaming on Linux has come a huge way the past few years really. Especially with DXVK, and with Valve getting into Linux gaming developing Proton and nagging Nvidia to fix their drivers. Most stuff nowadays works out of the box with Proton or Lutris, which both provide 1 button-press installments.
I only have a minimal amount of games left that run Windows only and that’s not even because the games can’t, but because some of the mods I run can’t. Most notoriously ENB because it’s code is actually full of issues, if that’ll be fixed it would be parsing trough DXVK just fine. Sadly Boris isn’t know for his great reactions to anything that’s even slightly critical about his work so I doubt it’ll get fixed 🥲.
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That’s why whatever you need to do that requires windows can be done in a VM. It’s my plan for when I inevitably move to Linux. As to how I get the OS files, well, I am not allowed to share that information because copyright.
I wouldnt describe wms as an alternative to DEs. As an alternative to KDE/GNOME I think things like cinnamon, xfce or lxqt make more sense
I have been trying to get into Linux for a decade. I constantly install distro’s and I truly don’t see the appeal. However, I received a copy of windows XP professional back in the early 2000s, and I haven’t had to pay for windows since, so I may have a bias—but I 100% prefer it.
There are some definite pro’s and con’s, but I feel the cons outweigh any benefit of Linux unless you already know what distro you’re going to use, the purpose for which you’re installing that distro, a good understanding of how the repository works, and how to use google.
Can you clarify - do you mean hate because it’s paid for marketing and there’s much better products for a similar price,(sort of BIFL maybe?) or hate because the company is anti consumer somehow and there’s a better company or free version?
Like for the first, Kitchen Aid stand mixers. Way overblown because marketing and resting on laurals from 50 years ago when they’re not built like that anymore. Bosch Universal Plus is a much better spend if you want robustness imho.
For the second the obvious is Microsoft, and a community driven Linux as the alternative.
I could go on I suppose.
Was explaining that to a customer how things that used to be bad ass but now are shit but expensive as hell because they are using the name and the reputation from 50 years ago to sell the shit.
Like Maytag, and Whirlpool used to be the best brands to buy. Now they are crap won’t last ten years.
Ten years? You’d be lucky to make it 12 months out of warranty. Our Whirlpool dishwasher was the biggest pos I’ve ever used. Switched to Bosch and can’t be happier. Hard to tell it’s even on.
I feel like I got in on the last of well built Whirlpool before it went downhill. The washer and dryer and dishwasher that came with my house twenty years ago are still going. Yeah, I have to fix something minor in the dishwasher every six months or so, the washing machine has an occasional leak if it’s not sitting just right, and the dryer rattles something awful, but they still get the job done just as well as they did when we moved in.
Kitchen stand mixers - in Europe at least Kenwood are great and very solid. Used and abused my one for years.
Kenwood? Her in the US Kenwood is known for electronics like car stereos. Kenmore is known for appliances here.
Didn’t know if the Kenwood was a typo or if they really make stand mixers and car radios.
Either. My Steam Deck is giving me more hope for the future of Linux spreading to more people 🙂
TurboTax. I used freetaxusa this year and I’m never going back.
I’ve used freetaxusa for almost 20 years now. I’m always surprised more people don’t know about it (granted, from the name, it does sound like a total scam).
Wish we didn’t have to file taxes at all though…we have the technology.
Have a care with some of those.
One year I tried a couple of those free services, and they told me I owed over $5k. Not even exactly the same number. But turbo tax told me I only needed to pay $2k. Guess which one I used?
Not saying it’s always that way, but made me a lot more cautious about the smaller tax filing sites. It’s worth doing your taxes twice or more before submitting them to see the difference.
Dyson vacuums are crap. Pretty much any bagged or canister vacuum will beat them in every category.
I agree, unless you are talking about dyson cordless vacuums, they are always on top in just about every real word test ive seen for consumer grade cordless vacuums.
Yeah, I used to work retail and even internally the general notion was you either buy a Dyson, or buy a regular vacuum with coord and sack (which we didn’t even stock from Dyson, never seen those?). All other wireless sackless ones always had some issue with them, they where never worth it. We only stocked them because people wanting to be fancy without being willing to pay for Dyson…
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Dyson fans too. Cheap fans are quieter and produce more airflow.
The handheld V series are pretty good IMO, I have a Sebo which is obviously better and more reliable but sometimes the convenience takes precedent
Okay yeah, important caveat, I’m talking full vacuums. Their dust busters are the best.
Not every vacuum can be a Carber Vac Hot Dog Vacuum.
Got sick of the SEO spam from Google so I switched to Kagi. It lets me block all the blogspam and Pinterest junk when I search.
1.5 cents per search query. hmmm… not sure if i could switch my mind to be careful about searches.
I guess I would start using local calculator and dictionary more.
With the $10 plan, it’s 1 cent per a search for the first thousand, and maybe a thousand searches a month doesn’t sound like a whole lot but supposedly the average user on Google does 3 to 4 searches a day (who knows what the actual source for that is). Thought in that case the $5 plan would be better.
Google doesn’t seem to provide a dashboard which summarizes how many searches one has done personally over a period of time, though it does list them all on https://myactivity.google.com/product/search if you haven’t opted out.
Most browsers also provide an easy way to switch between search engines, though personally I would suggest always using Kagi if you’re going to spend the money, because some of the of value comes from generally having better results, in addition to being able to filter out SEO garbage for specific search topics (like programming queries).
Also, to be fair, Kagi is not perfect. Google’s calculator and unit converter are better in my experience, for example. And I still use Google at work (software dev) because I refuse to use personal accounts on work devices, but even then I find myself using my phone sometimes to search Kagi when Google is not turning anything up.
However, I’ve watched Google’s search quality drop for a long while now, and I like what Kagi is doing, so I support them.
P.S. If you’re worried about unlimited spend, Kagi provides settings to cap pay-as-you-go costs.
Adobe design products, there’s Affinity, it’s great, professional and a lot cheaper.
I made the mistake of saying I use Photopea instead of Photoshop on a forum. The adobe mafia slammed me into oblivion for that one 😆
I’m gonna check this out, I assume its stuff like photoshop?
WhatsApp for me. I hate it but in my country all people use it.
I’ve had some success getting people in some social circles in Canada to use Telegram.
then just don’t use it…
“just don’t talk to your friends, bro”
because whatsapp is the only way to talk to your friends…
It’s not that is the only way to talk to your friends. In some countries Whatsapp is the default way to communicate with other people because of SMS prices so if you need to talk to your friends, distant relatives or complete strangers you know you can reach them using that app.
In some cases the fastest way to communicate with a company’s customer service is through Whatsapp.
It effectively is in some countries.
When I was in Europe, not only were people repelled at the mere idea of using SMS, but it also didn’t work at all more often than not. I still don’t know why. I got a local SIM, so it wasn’t an international roaming issue. Shit just didn’t work, no matter how I entered country codes in my contacts. While I’ve never had an issue sending SMS in the US, I just reinstall WhatsApp when I visit Europe because I cannot count on SMS working.
It’s also used very heavily for groups chats.
