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Ask HN: Where are you getting your money's worth?

91 points by Fergusonb 5y ago

There are very few services / products where I feel my money is being well spent; like ultra-cheap VPS' for personal projects. What do you enjoy paying for?

stunt 5y ago
Gigabit internet The money I spent to upgrade home WIFI and have Ethernet for my desk Lexus The money I pay to book Tennis court every week Donations All my ergo equipments (chair, monitors, standing desk, lighting, keyboard, mouse ...)
mam4 5y ago
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 ?
- randomopining 5y ago
  Feeling those end ones for sure. Alcohol is terrible, esp like 14 bucks for a cocktail. 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.
  - beamatronic 5y ago
    There is a middle ground. You can get a nice hotel (Hyatt) nearly for free, using their credit card program.
    - randomopining 5y ago
      What's the best one for that?
LaFolle 5y ago
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.
- rdiddly 5y ago
  Just saw this on HN yesterday I think it was: https://github.com/mendel5/alternative-front-ends#youtube https://github.com/mendel5/alternative-front-ends#youtube
- mam4 5y ago
  The "youtube vanced" app does that for free. Dont feed the tech giants dark patterns
  - moonchrome 5y ago
    Dark pattern of paying to have add free content ? If anything I want more of that.
    - mam4 5y ago
      Why do it if its free. Thats posturing
      - moonchrome 5y ago
        It's not free - if everyone blocked ads and nobody paid they would have no revenue, you are just freeloading by using stuff like vanced.
        mam4 5y ago
        Youtube had no revenue for years, they dont NEED money magically right now. If you can freeload something from a big co just do it. Its not a morality debate
    - 5y ago
rjbwork 5y ago
Spotify. Steam. Dev tools: GitKraken. Linqpad. Sublime Text.
socks 5y ago
Hah, my example is exactly the example you listed. A single cpu, 2gb ram, fixed ip VPS for $30USD per year.
- whitepoplar 5y ago
  Oracle Cloud (crazy, I know) will give you a 4-core ARM VPS with 24GB memory and 10TB bandwidth per month for free!
  - socks 5y ago
    This is great - thanks very much for mentioning it. Creating an account now! ARM might be tricky but for zero dollars might be some fun.
  - juice_bus 5y ago
    Then you're just waiting around for the lawyers to figure out how to screw you - safer to just avoid it all together.
    - whitepoplar 5y ago
      Are Oracle's lawyers really a concern for people? How can Oracle's lawyers screw you if you're simply using one of their VPS's?
      - elitepleb 5y ago
        Case in point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29514359 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29514359
  - ac29 5y ago
    That's an insanely generous offer - they seemingly also let you split it up into 4VMs if you want. Any gotchas other than Oracle generally being icky? I would seriously consider moving a couple small Linodes I use for work over that way. I quite like Linode, but free is compelling.
ShaneMcGowan 5y ago
Rider IDE for C# development, my god is it a dream compared to using visual studio
- keraf 5y ago
  I absolutely love Rider. I was very reticent to spend that amount of money (140$) 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.
adventured 5y ago
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.
mynegation 5y ago
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.
- buf 5y ago
  Uniqlo anything
  - ac29 5y ago
    I've found some of their basics to to be cheap but low quality. I'd rather pay more for nicer stuff, good quality clothes can last many many years.
- lots2learn 5y ago
  FYI Uniqlo is suspected of using forced labor in Xinjiang. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/02/fashion/xinjiang-forced-labor-Zara-Uniqlo-Sketchers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/02/fashion/xinjiang-forced-l...
fxtentacle 5y ago
JetBrains IDEs, Hetzner servers, mobifone (3GB LTE for $3 monthly), PCB prototypes, good food :) Samsung SSDs
- cain 5y ago
  I've heard good things about Hetzner. How do they compare to Linode?
  - maciekpaprocki 5y ago
    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.
    - fxtentacle 5y ago
      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.
  - osivertsson 5y ago
    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. Works great for me!
  - fxtentacle 5y ago
    It's not even the same category anymore. 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...
cdiamand 5y ago
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.
- bonestamp2 5y ago
  > DigitalOcean Depending on what you need from DigitalOcean, AWS LightSail is cheaper
  - slenk 5y ago
    DO has better uptime lately
- Fergusonb 5y ago
  I like these. 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.
  - mustardo 5y ago
    L.E.B. (Low End Box) https://lowendbox.com/ https://lowendbox.com/
- maneesh 5y ago
  Vultr has definitely replaced my need for digitalocean
  - vivab0rg 5y ago
    Vultr accepting crypto payments deprecated all other VPS providers for me. Very happy customer here!
leet_thow 5y ago
Whatever is on sale this month at Costco.
- jon9544hn 5y ago
  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!
scottmsul 5y ago
Factorio. Cost me $30, played around 1500 hours.
throwaway984393 5y ago
App subscriptions to worthwhile products made by individuals and small teams. Podcast Addict, Rain Alarm, Before Launcher, AllTrails.
erehweb 5y ago
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.
- asavadatti 5y ago
  I’d gladly subscribe but I’ve heard that these are a nightmare to cancel (unless you live in California)
  - abendy 5y ago
    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.
  - jawns 5y ago
    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: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2021/10/ftc-ramp-enforcement-against-illegal-dark-patterns-trick-or-trap 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.
  - erehweb 5y ago
    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.
booleandilemma 5y ago
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! Well worth the $12/month or whatever I’m paying.
whitepoplar 5y ago
Tower, Postico, Arq, 1Password, M1 MacBook Air, Hetzner servers, HHKB Hybrid Type-S, eero WiFi Systems
beamatronic 5y ago
Hyatt loyalty program and credit card
mesaframe 5y ago
Xbox Game pass - Gives bang for the buck Books - Teaches you variety of stuff that will save you money
- keraf 5y ago
  Xbox Game pass is fantastic. I bought a Series S alongside a Game Pass Ultimate subscription, one of my best purchases ever. Ultimate gives you access to the console and PC libraries, EA Play and Gold (required to play online on console) for only 15$/mo[0]. I also discovered some incredible games I would have probably never played without the Game Pass, such as The Artful Escape[1]. [0] https://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-game-pass#join https://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-game-pass#join [1] https://www.xbox.com/en-us/games/store/The-Artful-Escape/9NGH2MTP0T44 https://www.xbox.com/en-us/games/store/The-Artful-Escape/9NG...
simonebrunozzi 5y ago
iCloud.
hstaab 5y ago
Not a service 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.
igvadaimon 5y ago
SmoothScroll app on mac.
dotBen 5y ago
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.
- ozzythecat 5y ago
  What is the benefit of enterprise grade Wi-Fi at home? Is it for have better coverage for a larger space or general performance?
- joezydeco 5y ago
  I just got 1gig fiber installed yesterday and it's worth every penny to me. What do you recommend for enterprise grade wifi? My current setup isn't great.
  - gonehome 5y ago
    Ubiquiti Unifi setup is the sweet spot, good hardware and software at a decent price.
    - seattle_spring 5y ago
      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.
songzme 5y ago
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/ 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.
- 542458 5y ago
  That site just rubs me the wrong way. “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.
  - songzme 5y ago
    > Myopia being primarily down to the eyeball growing too long is extremely, extremely well supported by research Here's a link to a research about the eyeball shortening in adults: http://europepmc.org/article/med/3688185 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.
- dotBen 5y ago
  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.
ducharmdev 5y ago
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).
- 542458 5y ago
  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.)
- bradlys 5y ago
  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.
  - Zircom 5y ago
    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.
stanpinte 5y ago
Patagonia clothes, they last so long
fauria 5y ago
Apart from some of the services already mentioned, I can definitely recommend Stratechery newsletter and Instapaper.
Nav_Panel 5y ago
Seedbox. $15/mo for 2TB storage + 5TB/mo outgoing bandwidth. Super fast network connection. One click install for Jellyfin so I can share my library via streaming with all my friends. Plus it's a regular Linux box so I can ssh in and keep an IRC session up via tmux.
- hotpotamus 5y ago
  Which provider if you're willing to share?
  - Nav_Panel 5y ago
    Check my profile and DM me or email me.
beebeepka 5y ago
As far as subscription go - nothing. Although I will say that Steam is my preferable place to shop for games because they spend actual effort fixing other people's shit. From joypads and AMD GPUs to wine/proton updates. Yes, gog doesn't have DRM but also expect me to use windows. I wasn't a huge fan of Valve until MS pushed them into this direction about a decade ago
- gaws 5y ago
  > Yes, gog doesn't have DRM but also expect me to use windows. Wine exists.
wepple 5y ago
Fishing & Hunting licenses and excise taxes. The US has 640 million acres of public land, most of which is available for anybody to enjoy.
gonehome 5y ago
Flighty - far and away the best app for flights, not even close. The plus subscription is worth every cent. Bottomless - my internet connected coffee scale, I love this thing. Stratechery - probably the best tech/software newsletter available. Sam Harris, Persuasion, and Astral Codex Ten - writers and podcasts I like a lot. YouTube Premium - I’ll pay for a no ads version of any service I use that allows me to. Gigabit internet, ubiquiti networking hardware, T-Mobile cellular (actually super fast now compared to Verizon with 5Guc - I can get 600mbps and it doesn’t require being a foot from the access point).
- gaws 5y ago
  > my internet connected coffee scale Why?
xwdv 5y ago
Tinder Platinum. Cheaper than bars and clubs, way better results.
- ok_dad 5y ago
  For what? Bars and clubs are well known, for generations, to be bad places to meet nice people. The best way to make long term relationships is by doing things you enjoy (group events like sports or maybe hobbies) and having friendships grow into more. Not trying to be a dad here, but random fucking eventually gets old.
  - xwdv 5y ago
    I do not enjoy group events. I enjoy solitary hobbies in the comfort of my own home. So what is my solution dad I also do not have time to fake enjoy a group hobby or event for years in hopes that a hot single woman will eventually join and become friends with me and blossom into a relationship.
    - ok_dad 5y ago
      I get you, I’m the same, I guess my advice sucks, honestly. Of course, just looking for hot singles is part of the problem. As an old man I can tell you looks don’t last but personality tends to.
      - xwdv 5y ago
        Personality definitely fades. People change, become less fun, grow into different people. Everything fades, so just get the best you can now and hope for the best. Tinder Platinum sounding like a better value proposition now?
        ok_dad 5y ago
        Not really, I’m married so I don’t need those, but everyone I know has had poor luck with them and I never had good luck with the previous generation of dating sites. The two rules of dating sites basically preclude my ugly ass from getting decent results anyways. Don’t listen to my bored crappy advice, clearly you know what works for yourself.
stanpinte 5y ago
Surfboards
boardwaalk 5y ago
YouTube Premium was already mentioned. Definitely that. The YouTube Music it comes with isn’t as good app-wise as the alternatives, but the recommendations are aight. I’ll add: Mint Mobile in the US. $15/mo (paid in larger chunks, I pay annually) for 4GB data, unlimited voice/text. With working from home it’s really quite enough for me.
toomuchtodo 5y ago
Our nanny. Best money I’ve ever spent besides our EVs.
- erehweb 5y ago
  Our au pairs were some of the best money we've ever spent. The biggest cost is that you need to have the extra room / living space available for them.
spurgu 5y ago
Donations to Signal.
robg 5y ago
Jura espresso machine. Use it every day, one push button, easy to maintain. In 14 years have had two issues, once they did a complete refurbishment at no cost, the other they gave 30% off a new machine. With great beans, anything at coffee place tastes awful by comparison.
findjashua 5y ago
1. Alfred Powerpack - clipboard manager, snippets, workflows 2. Chase Sapphire Preferred - rental car insurance, free memberships for Doordash (12 months), Instacart (6 months) etc 3. IWI multivitamins
psyc 5y ago
Games. Minecraft: 1 cent per hour, 10+ years of free content updates. Satisfactory: 1.4 cents per hour. Factorio: 1.8 cents per hour. Elder Scrolls Online: 10 cents per hour. Bannerlord: 8 cents per hour. Shenzhen IO: 15 cents per hour. All of the major streaming services. I rotate amongst them depending on what I want to watch. Unbelievably cheap relative to the amount I binge.
stentotre 5y ago
Digital services/products: - Last.fm - Spotify - Cloud storage - Figma for teams - Managed hosting - Fiber-optic broadband Physical things: - Audio gear - A good bike - Food and drink - Anything for my dog - Computer + phone - Home gym, paid for itself after two years - Experiences - BIFL quality items, like clothing from brands that will happily repair stuff if it breaks or send you replacement items if you can fix it yourself. - Skilled laborers/consultants of any kind. Plumbers, electricians, financial advisors, lawyers or specialized health personnel like manual therapists. I will happily spend hours just to do that initial research, to find a brand that is less likely to disappoint or fall short of my expectations. If I can maintain and service it myself I will gladly pay a premium price. Examples could be a leather belt or shoes, hardwood flooring or anything that can be repaired and serviced like tools and knives.
- senorsmile 5y ago
  What are some of your BIFL items? I've mostly loved darn tough socks.
- gaws 5y ago
  > - BIFL quality items, like clothing from brands that will happily repair stuff if it breaks or send you replacement items if you can fix it yourself. Can you list some items? > - Skilled laborers/consultants of any kind. Plumbers, electricians, financial advisors, lawyers or specialized health personnel like manual therapists. What's the best way to separate the reasonably priced experts from the overpriced crooks?
seattle_spring 5y ago
An "America the Beautiful" annual pass from the parks service. $80 for unlimited day-use to all national land, including National Parks, National Forest, and BLM land.
- akvadrako 5y ago
  In what part of the country do you pay to go to parks?
  - seattle_spring 5y ago
    I'm... Honestly not sure if you're kidding, so I'm not sure how to respond. I don't think there's a single National Park in in the US that had free entry.
    - akvadrako 5y ago
      Well I grew up in NH and went to national parks about once a month without paying. My guess is you're in the west of the country.
      - derwiki 5y ago
        Which parks? There are very few National Parks in the NE—- Maine is the only place that comes to mind.
        akvadrako 5y ago
        I was referring to the White Mountain National Forest, though I see now officially it's not a park. Still, in NH the parks are free, they just are run by the state instead of the federal government.
      - seattle_spring 5y ago
        Which national parks did you go to? You would have had to travel out of state because New Hampshire doesn't have even one.
suchire 5y ago
Fastmail. Excellent features, fast performance, and very reliable
- ethics13 5y ago
  I use gmail, besides privacy what other benefits can I get from FastMail.
  - gaws 5y ago
    You can use your own domain.
  - ioman 5y ago
    Fast, excellent customer support.
Beefin 5y ago
A quality mountain bike and road bike. Quality hiking/backpacking gear. A stand up paddle board and camper van to lug it all in. Solid hiking shoes, a great foot insole and trekking poles. Outside of that, over the ear wired headphones are used everyday. Mine are 10 years old and work and sound fantastic.
Nullinker 5y ago
Last year I invested in upgrading my home office after working from home for several months messing with USB-C dongles without enough ports, don't always work and interfere with the WiFi signal. I expected to go back to the office after getting vaccinated. But that much took longer than expected, and now again we're stuck in a lockdown waiting for booster vaccines to become available. Keyboard: Keychron K1 mechanical keyboard. Slim enough so that no additional wrist support is needed but still feels great to type on. Screen: Dell 27" U2720Q 4K screen. Good quality screen, charges the laptop with one cable and connects keyboard mouse etc. with built in USB hub. But the best feature is the optional soundbar with built in microphones and noise cancelling like a teleconference unit you find in a meeting room. It allows me to talk to people without having to plug things in my ears all the time which was a giant bother before.
pharmakom 5y ago
Audible helps me go to bed on time and that is worth at least 10x what they charge.
georgewsinger 5y ago
1. pernos.co: Time travel debugging with a beautiful, online interface. Simply record a bug locally, then upload it to this website, and you can travel through the execution forwards and backwards (with source file labeling and other views at each step). 2. Wolfram One: Symbolic computation for everything. A high-level shell which can run almost any basic computation with great visuals and natural language input.
- amerine 5y ago
  Can you explain more about how you use wolfram one day to day? I’m very curious.
  - georgewsinger 5y ago
    1. I use it to caption images for blog posts (e.g. the images in https://simulavr.com/blog/technical-overview/ https://simulavr.com/blog/technical-overview/) 2. I use it for easy image hosting that I can control in the Wolfram command line (vs. imgur, etc). 3. I use it to upload lengthy text files (e.g. error outputs when programming) over things like pastebin. 4. Until very recently, I used it to manage our site's email waitlist (setting up an email submission form was 1 Wolfram function). 5. I use it to visualize personal data (productivity stuff, timelog data, etc). 6. I use it to run mathematical computations when reading technical materials. Wolfram can do things like "show how this integral is derived in a human-readable way", which makes it easier to understand steps glossed over in math proofs. 7. I use it to collage images together when sharing them with other people (https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/ImageCollage.html https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/ImageCollage.html). 8. I use it to make timelines when making back-of-the-napkin Gantt charts (e.g. https://www.wolframcloud.com/obj/george.w.singer/business/png/milestones_timeline.png https://www.wolframcloud.com/obj/george.w.singer/business/pn...), or histories (e.g. https://www.wolframcloud.com/obj/george.w.singer/business/png/historical_timeline.png https://www.wolframcloud.com/obj/george.w.singer/business/pn...) Hope this is helpful =)
    - amerine 5y ago
      Was very enlightening, thank you!!
roberto 5y ago
YouTube premium, to watch videos without ads. As a bonus you get Google's music streaming (YouTube Music) for free. Hoppy.network, so I can give the Raspberry Pi running in my closet a real IPv4 address. Monthly donations to Ardour.org, my favorite DAW.
- Areibman 5y ago
  Check out YouTube Vanced for Android or YouTube++ for iOS. Been living ad-free for 3 years now
  - amf12 5y ago
    And how do you expect content creators to get paid? I am for adblockers, but I also pay for such subscriptions because I want to support the creators and news industry.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - not_really 5y ago
      I could care less about giving YouTube a cut of creator revenue. Contextual/integrated advertising is something many creators already do - in a lot of cases it's because they have no choice (their videos have been demonetized for etc). Mind you, there are ways to get around that too, but I don't mind. After all, as you say, they need to get paid.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - slenk 5y ago
    By paying for Premium I am not actively harming content creators like you.
- osivertsson 5y ago
  Trying YouTube premium now and I would probably continue to pay after this trial period if it wasn’t for the terrible audio quality. Some things sound ok, while others are encoded with some painful loss of fidelity. It is like it is 1999 again and you try to encode MP3 at 112 kbit/s to squeeze a full album into your 64 MB player, that bad. I read somewhere that it uses Youtube as the source material and reencodes that instead of sourcing it properly as in Google Music.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
A good pair of wireless earbuds. I bought a pair of Galaxy Buds+ a few years back on Black Friday sale (think I paid 90 bucks or so), and I've enjoyed them so much, I didn't feel the need to upgrade them for the later models. I bought my girlfriend a pair of Airpods to upgrade over her cheap Bluetooth earbuds, and it's a massive improvement as well. So I don't recommend any particular brand. Just get a good pair that works well with your phone, has decent battery life (at least eight hours between charges), and provides either ANC or good passive noise cancellation. It's a real quality of life improvement for me to have these things that can be in my pocket all the time and can pull out any time I need a distraction for whatever I'm doing. A good microphone on them is also a plus, as it allows people to hear me through my mask.
maneesh 5y ago
Setapp.com is awesome for Mac users Soyoustart for fair priced bare metal
- jon9544hn 5y ago
  +1 for SetApp! Love it and the iOS complimentary apps are always a bonus
MrDresden 5y ago
An account at musicbrainz.org for easier tagging and organization for my music library - 4$ p. month. I also value my Digital Ocean nodes, but they get torn up and down based on what I am doing.
- gaws 5y ago
  > An account at musicbrainz.org for easier tagging and organization for my music library - 4$ p. month. Have you tried beets?
number6 5y ago
Good military grade clothing - someone designed them to be robust, well fitting and usable. It's like good software: * HAIX P3 Shoes - best shoes I ever had. * UFPro P40 Pants * Eberlestock F3F FAC
amboo7 5y ago
Poweramp Equalizer app (much more bang per buck than any headphones)
pengo 5y ago
[1] Top quality laptops (high spec XPS13s running Linux) rather than cheap ones. [2] A good (non-electric) bike in my small flat town. [3] SailfishOS rather than a surveillance or walled garden phone. [4] Intel Synology NAS with maxxed out RAM and storage. [5] Brix laptop bag. [6] Standing desk and wobble board.
RhysU 5y ago
Gasoline for my motorcycle.
- jon9544hn 5y ago
  Literally looking for a cafe racer for the summer lol
throwaway55421 5y ago
Educational subscriptions. I used to be a huge miser and resent the idea of paying for, well, anything digital or knowledge based. Now I realise that, well, I'd spend £5 on a pint in a pub, what's £10 a month? Even if there's only a 1% chance I actually learn XYZ that's better than nothing.
Ancalagon 5y ago
I actually think HBO Now is a super great value for the price
fuzzfactor 5y ago
USB flash drives.
avl999 5y ago
GCP E2-micro compute instance- GCP gives it to you for free and is an excellent place to throw things up for which you don't expect much load.
sbfeibish 5y ago
YouTube Premium Google Fi Fairfax Connector bus service ($1 as a senior) WMATA (non-rush-hour service, or )
- sbfeibish 5y ago
  or as a senior)
ssss11 5y ago
Happy I paid money to: Fastmail Backblaze Synology Not happy I paid money to: Sonos Samsung tv
morninglight 5y ago
Goodwill Industries - They have liberated me from all the crap I'd acquired.
- RickJWagner 5y ago
  And, as an added bonus, they offer a ton of different books for a dollar or two. Goodwill is great.
drakonka 5y ago
* Pet insurance. Saved my ass several times. I would've found a way to pay for my cats' emergency treatment regardless, but it was nice not to get stuck with a sudden several-thousand-dollar bill after emergency surgery. * AWS S3 - nice, cheap hosting for my personal site. * HBO Max, especially after I took advantage of their new member deal after they phased our HBO Nordic recently. * Polyver boots. So warm. So comfortable. So ugly, but so worth it. * Patagonia Insulated Prairie Dawn parka. I've had this thing for years and it's held up really well and gotten me through several Nordic winters.
aoki 5y ago
AoPS and Beast Academy.
JSONderulo 5y ago
Patagonia. Money-back guarantee, super high quality. Completely committed to the environment. Certain publications (Economist) and Substacks.
keraf 5y ago
Jetbrains IDEs (Rider for me) and the Xbox Game Pass have already been mentioned here, they are totally worth the money. Hetzner is my favourite VPS provider. Performance and great quality of service for a little price, I've never looked back since I switched from OVH to them a few years ago. I also use Hetzner for my NextCloud instance[0]. Price for storage is worth it, you own your own data, and it removes the hassle of maintaining your NextCloud yourself. [0] https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share
Krisjohn 5y ago
Software: Directory Opus, Connectify, PTFB Pro, DisplayFusion, ClipboardFusion
- gaws 5y ago
  > Software: Directory Opus Did you buy a lifetime license or are you stuck paying for annual updates?
authed 5y ago
https://www.lowendstock.com/ https://www.lowendstock.com/ (I pay $10/year for my VPS') ... and I think I have better uptime then Amazon.
jftuga 5y ago
AWS EC2 Spot Instances at about 0.004 cents per hour. For personal use, I only need to use them for a day or two at a time. I have some Terraform code that can quickly spin one up and then destroy it when I am finished. https://github.com/jftuga/terraform_ec2_spot_instance https://github.com/jftuga/terraform_ec2_spot_instance
RickJWagner 5y ago
Streaming tv. We pay for a handful of inexpensive channels, get an incredible array of shows for a fraction of the price we used to pay for basic dish. It's awesome.
beeboop 5y ago
VPN that lets me torrent anything I want without dealing with a million different platforms.
soramimo 5y ago
I generally try to live a decluttered life and minimize the number of "things" to deal with as I value my time above anything else. That said, here are some things I value: - Spotify. At ~$10/month, a great deal that makes listening and discovering music really easy. Have a shared account with my wife. - Gaming. While gaming hardware isn't cheap these days (~$2k for a decent build) games have incredible value. Playing competitive online games once a week with friends kept me sane through the pandemic. Incredibly immersive experience. - Guitar and Rocksmith. At ~$300, let's you hook up an electric guitar to your computer and learn how to play the guitar in a fun way. Really elevating experience. - Electric Bike. These aren't cheap either ($2k+), but this purchase made commuting by bike exclusively (pre-pandemic) practical (cutting down my commute from ~55min by regular bike to about ~35min). - Climbing gym membership. About $70/month. Such a fun way to stay in shape and socialize while doing so. - Wired headphones that work well while biking. Let me keep in touch with aging parents on daily basis. Never need to worry about charging. - Relatedly, Pixel 4a. Comparatively cheap ($400) phone with a headphone jack. Camera is great. It's very light which makes reading before sleep pleasant. - Books. Unbelievable value. Authors' life's insights distilled into something you can buy for ~$10. The hard part is finding good ones, but lots of good recommendations on HN. - Good food. Other things that I don't have yet, but am considering: - Mail forwarding service (~$30/month). We've been moving around a bit since the pandemic started. These services let you maintain a permanent address, scan or forward mail if needed. Still deciding which one to get since it's not an easily reversible decision. - Fiber. Not offered yet where we live, but would get it in a heartbeat. This may sound cliche, but luckily some of the greatest things in life are free (spending time with family and friends, playing volleyball on the beach, going for hikes in nature and all the great content online such as on HN).
- andrei_says_ 5y ago
  Could you recommend good wired headphones with a good mic usable on a bike ?
  - soramimo 5y ago
    I own Philips Pro 6105 headphones. While they are nothing special and aren't expensive (~$30), their shape keeps noise levels from airflow low while biking. I've owned them for about 3 years now and they are still going strong.
mprime1 5y ago
Backup using rsync.net special Borg pricing 100GB for <$20/year https://www.rsync.net/products/borg.html https://www.rsync.net/products/borg.html
tpoacher 5y ago
Anything that isn't a "subscription" for no good reason other than greed.

91 points by Fergusonb 5y ago

There are very few services / products where I feel my money is being well spent; like ultra-cheap VPS' for personal projects. What do you enjoy paying for?

stunt 5y ago

Gigabit internet The money I spent to upgrade home WIFI and have Ethernet for my desk Lexus The money I pay to book Tennis court every week Donations All my ergo equipments (chair, monitors, standing desk, lighting, keyboard, mouse ...)

mam4 5y ago

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 ?

randomopining 5y ago
Feeling those end ones for sure. Alcohol is terrible, esp like 14 bucks for a cocktail. 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.
- beamatronic 5y ago
  There is a middle ground. You can get a nice hotel (Hyatt) nearly for free, using their credit card program.
  - randomopining 5y ago
    What's the best one for that?

LaFolle 5y ago

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.

rdiddly 5y ago
Just saw this on HN yesterday I think it was: https://github.com/mendel5/alternative-front-ends#youtube https://github.com/mendel5/alternative-front-ends#youtube
mam4 5y ago
The "youtube vanced" app does that for free. Dont feed the tech giants dark patterns
- moonchrome 5y ago
  Dark pattern of paying to have add free content ? If anything I want more of that.
  - mam4 5y ago
    Why do it if its free. Thats posturing
    - moonchrome 5y ago
      It's not free - if everyone blocked ads and nobody paid they would have no revenue, you are just freeloading by using stuff like vanced.
      - mam4 5y ago
        Youtube had no revenue for years, they dont NEED money magically right now. If you can freeload something from a big co just do it. Its not a morality debate
  - 5y ago

rjbwork 5y ago

Spotify. Steam. Dev tools: GitKraken. Linqpad. Sublime Text.

socks 5y ago

Hah, my example is exactly the example you listed. A single cpu, 2gb ram, fixed ip VPS for $30USD per year.

whitepoplar 5y ago
Oracle Cloud (crazy, I know) will give you a 4-core ARM VPS with 24GB memory and 10TB bandwidth per month for free!
- socks 5y ago
  This is great - thanks very much for mentioning it. Creating an account now! ARM might be tricky but for zero dollars might be some fun.
- juice_bus 5y ago
  Then you're just waiting around for the lawyers to figure out how to screw you - safer to just avoid it all together.
  - whitepoplar 5y ago
    Are Oracle's lawyers really a concern for people? How can Oracle's lawyers screw you if you're simply using one of their VPS's?
    - elitepleb 5y ago
      Case in point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29514359 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29514359
- ac29 5y ago
  That's an insanely generous offer - they seemingly also let you split it up into 4VMs if you want. Any gotchas other than Oracle generally being icky? I would seriously consider moving a couple small Linodes I use for work over that way. I quite like Linode, but free is compelling.

ShaneMcGowan 5y ago

Rider IDE for C# development, my god is it a dream compared to using visual studio

keraf 5y ago
I absolutely love Rider. 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.

adventured 5y ago

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.

mynegation 5y ago

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.

buf 5y ago
Uniqlo anything
- ac29 5y ago
  I've found some of their basics to to be cheap but low quality. I'd rather pay more for nicer stuff, good quality clothes can last many many years.
lots2learn 5y ago
FYI Uniqlo is suspected of using forced labor in Xinjiang. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/02/fashion/xinjiang-forced-labor-Zara-Uniqlo-Sketchers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/02/fashion/xinjiang-forced-l...

fxtentacle 5y ago

JetBrains IDEs, Hetzner servers, mobifone (3GB LTE for $3 monthly), PCB prototypes, good food :) Samsung SSDs

cain 5y ago
I've heard good things about Hetzner. How do they compare to Linode?
- maciekpaprocki 5y ago
  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.
  - fxtentacle 5y ago
    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.
- osivertsson 5y ago
  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. Works great for me!
- fxtentacle 5y ago
  It's not even the same category anymore. 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...

cdiamand 5y ago

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.

bonestamp2 5y ago
> DigitalOcean Depending on what you need from DigitalOcean, AWS LightSail is cheaper
- slenk 5y ago
  DO has better uptime lately
Fergusonb 5y ago
I like these. 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.
- mustardo 5y ago
  L.E.B. (Low End Box) https://lowendbox.com/ https://lowendbox.com/
maneesh 5y ago
Vultr has definitely replaced my need for digitalocean
- vivab0rg 5y ago
  Vultr accepting crypto payments deprecated all other VPS providers for me. Very happy customer here!

leet_thow 5y ago

Whatever is on sale this month at Costco.

jon9544hn 5y ago
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!

scottmsul 5y ago

Factorio. Cost me $30, played around 1500 hours.

throwaway984393 5y ago

App subscriptions to worthwhile products made by individuals and small teams. Podcast Addict, Rain Alarm, Before Launcher, AllTrails.

erehweb 5y ago

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.

asavadatti 5y ago
I’d gladly subscribe but I’ve heard that these are a nightmare to cancel (unless you live in California)
- abendy 5y ago
  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.
- jawns 5y ago
  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: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2021/10/ftc-ramp-enforcement-against-illegal-dark-patterns-trick-or-trap 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.
- erehweb 5y ago
  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.

booleandilemma 5y ago

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! Well worth the $12/month or whatever I’m paying.

whitepoplar 5y ago

Tower, Postico, Arq, 1Password, M1 MacBook Air, Hetzner servers, HHKB Hybrid Type-S, eero WiFi Systems

beamatronic 5y ago

Hyatt loyalty program and credit card

mesaframe 5y ago

Xbox Game pass - Gives bang for the buck Books - Teaches you variety of stuff that will save you money

keraf 5y ago
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]. [0] https://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-game-pass#join https://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-game-pass#join [1] https://www.xbox.com/en-us/games/store/The-Artful-Escape/9NGH2MTP0T44 https://www.xbox.com/en-us/games/store/The-Artful-Escape/9NG...

simonebrunozzi 5y ago

iCloud.

hstaab 5y ago

Not a service 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.

igvadaimon 5y ago

SmoothScroll app on mac.

dotBen 5y ago

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.

ozzythecat 5y ago
What is the benefit of enterprise grade Wi-Fi at home? Is it for have better coverage for a larger space or general performance?
joezydeco 5y ago
I just got 1gig fiber installed yesterday and it's worth every penny to me. What do you recommend for enterprise grade wifi? My current setup isn't great.
- gonehome 5y ago
  Ubiquiti Unifi setup is the sweet spot, good hardware and software at a decent price.
  - seattle_spring 5y ago
    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.

songzme 5y ago

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/ 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.

542458 5y ago
That site just rubs me the wrong way. “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.
- songzme 5y ago
  > Myopia being primarily down to the eyeball growing too long is extremely, extremely well supported by research Here's a link to a research about the eyeball shortening in adults: http://europepmc.org/article/med/3688185 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.
dotBen 5y ago
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.

ducharmdev 5y ago

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).

542458 5y ago
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.)
bradlys 5y ago
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.
- Zircom 5y ago
  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.

stanpinte 5y ago

Patagonia clothes, they last so long

fauria 5y ago

Apart from some of the services already mentioned, I can definitely recommend Stratechery newsletter and Instapaper.

Nav_Panel 5y ago

Seedbox. $15/mo for 2TB storage + 5TB/mo outgoing bandwidth. Super fast network connection. One click install for Jellyfin so I can share my library via streaming with all my friends. Plus it's a regular Linux box so I can ssh in and keep an IRC session up via tmux.

hotpotamus 5y ago
Which provider if you're willing to share?
- Nav_Panel 5y ago
  Check my profile and DM me or email me.

beebeepka 5y ago

As far as subscription go - nothing. Although I will say that Steam is my preferable place to shop for games because they spend actual effort fixing other people's shit. From joypads and AMD GPUs to wine/proton updates. Yes, gog doesn't have DRM but also expect me to use windows. I wasn't a huge fan of Valve until MS pushed them into this direction about a decade ago

gaws 5y ago
> Yes, gog doesn't have DRM but also expect me to use windows. Wine exists.

wepple 5y ago

Fishing & Hunting licenses and excise taxes. The US has 640 million acres of public land, most of which is available for anybody to enjoy.

gonehome 5y ago

Flighty - far and away the best app for flights, not even close. The plus subscription is worth every cent. Bottomless - my internet connected coffee scale, I love this thing. Stratechery - probably the best tech/software newsletter available. Sam Harris, Persuasion, and Astral Codex Ten - writers and podcasts I like a lot. YouTube Premium - I’ll pay for a no ads version of any service I use that allows me to. Gigabit internet, ubiquiti networking hardware, T-Mobile cellular (actually super fast now compared to Verizon with 5Guc - I can get 600mbps and it doesn’t require being a foot from the access point).

gaws 5y ago
> my internet connected coffee scale Why?

xwdv 5y ago

Tinder Platinum. Cheaper than bars and clubs, way better results.

ok_dad 5y ago
For what? Bars and clubs are well known, for generations, to be bad places to meet nice people. The best way to make long term relationships is by doing things you enjoy (group events like sports or maybe hobbies) and having friendships grow into more. Not trying to be a dad here, but random fucking eventually gets old.
- xwdv 5y ago
  I do not enjoy group events. I enjoy solitary hobbies in the comfort of my own home. So what is my solution dad I also do not have time to fake enjoy a group hobby or event for years in hopes that a hot single woman will eventually join and become friends with me and blossom into a relationship.
  - ok_dad 5y ago
    I get you, I’m the same, I guess my advice sucks, honestly. Of course, just looking for hot singles is part of the problem. As an old man I can tell you looks don’t last but personality tends to.
    - xwdv 5y ago
      Personality definitely fades. People change, become less fun, grow into different people. Everything fades, so just get the best you can now and hope for the best. Tinder Platinum sounding like a better value proposition now?
      - ok_dad 5y ago
        Not really, I’m married so I don’t need those, but everyone I know has had poor luck with them and I never had good luck with the previous generation of dating sites. The two rules of dating sites basically preclude my ugly ass from getting decent results anyways. Don’t listen to my bored crappy advice, clearly you know what works for yourself.

stanpinte 5y ago

Surfboards

boardwaalk 5y ago

YouTube Premium was already mentioned. Definitely that. The YouTube Music it comes with isn’t as good app-wise as the alternatives, but the recommendations are aight. I’ll add: Mint Mobile in the US. $15/mo (paid in larger chunks, I pay annually) for 4GB data, unlimited voice/text. With working from home it’s really quite enough for me.

toomuchtodo 5y ago

Our nanny. Best money I’ve ever spent besides our EVs.

erehweb 5y ago
Our au pairs were some of the best money we've ever spent. The biggest cost is that you need to have the extra room / living space available for them.

spurgu 5y ago

Donations to Signal.

robg 5y ago

Jura espresso machine. Use it every day, one push button, easy to maintain. In 14 years have had two issues, once they did a complete refurbishment at no cost, the other they gave 30% off a new machine. With great beans, anything at coffee place tastes awful by comparison.

findjashua 5y ago

1. Alfred Powerpack - clipboard manager, snippets, workflows 2. Chase Sapphire Preferred - rental car insurance, free memberships for Doordash (12 months), Instacart (6 months) etc 3. IWI multivitamins

psyc 5y ago

Games. Minecraft: 1 cent per hour, 10+ years of free content updates. Satisfactory: 1.4 cents per hour. Factorio: 1.8 cents per hour. Elder Scrolls Online: 10 cents per hour. Bannerlord: 8 cents per hour. Shenzhen IO: 15 cents per hour. All of the major streaming services. I rotate amongst them depending on what I want to watch. Unbelievably cheap relative to the amount I binge.

stentotre 5y ago

Digital services/products: - Last.fm - Spotify - Cloud storage - Figma for teams - Managed hosting - Fiber-optic broadband Physical things: - Audio gear - A good bike - Food and drink - Anything for my dog - Computer + phone - Home gym, paid for itself after two years - Experiences - BIFL quality items, like clothing from brands that will happily repair stuff if it breaks or send you replacement items if you can fix it yourself. - Skilled laborers/consultants of any kind. Plumbers, electricians, financial advisors, lawyers or specialized health personnel like manual therapists. I will happily spend hours just to do that initial research, to find a brand that is less likely to disappoint or fall short of my expectations. If I can maintain and service it myself I will gladly pay a premium price. Examples could be a leather belt or shoes, hardwood flooring or anything that can be repaired and serviced like tools and knives.

senorsmile 5y ago
What are some of your BIFL items? I've mostly loved darn tough socks.
gaws 5y ago
> - BIFL quality items, like clothing from brands that will happily repair stuff if it breaks or send you replacement items if you can fix it yourself. Can you list some items? > - Skilled laborers/consultants of any kind. Plumbers, electricians, financial advisors, lawyers or specialized health personnel like manual therapists. What's the best way to separate the reasonably priced experts from the overpriced crooks?

seattle_spring 5y ago

An "America the Beautiful" annual pass from the parks service. $80 for unlimited day-use to all national land, including National Parks, National Forest, and BLM land.

akvadrako 5y ago
In what part of the country do you pay to go to parks?
- seattle_spring 5y ago
  I'm... Honestly not sure if you're kidding, so I'm not sure how to respond. I don't think there's a single National Park in in the US that had free entry.
  - akvadrako 5y ago
    Well I grew up in NH and went to national parks about once a month without paying. My guess is you're in the west of the country.
    - derwiki 5y ago
      Which parks? There are very few National Parks in the NE—- Maine is the only place that comes to mind.
      - akvadrako 5y ago
        I was referring to the White Mountain National Forest, though I see now officially it's not a park. Still, in NH the parks are free, they just are run by the state instead of the federal government.
    - seattle_spring 5y ago
      Which national parks did you go to? You would have had to travel out of state because New Hampshire doesn't have even one.

suchire 5y ago

Fastmail. Excellent features, fast performance, and very reliable

ethics13 5y ago
I use gmail, besides privacy what other benefits can I get from FastMail.
- gaws 5y ago
  You can use your own domain.
- ioman 5y ago
  Fast, excellent customer support.

Beefin 5y ago

A quality mountain bike and road bike. Quality hiking/backpacking gear. A stand up paddle board and camper van to lug it all in. Solid hiking shoes, a great foot insole and trekking poles. Outside of that, over the ear wired headphones are used everyday. Mine are 10 years old and work and sound fantastic.

Nullinker 5y ago

Last year I invested in upgrading my home office after working from home for several months messing with USB-C dongles without enough ports, don't always work and interfere with the WiFi signal. I expected to go back to the office after getting vaccinated. But that much took longer than expected, and now again we're stuck in a lockdown waiting for booster vaccines to become available. Keyboard: Keychron K1 mechanical keyboard. Slim enough so that no additional wrist support is needed but still feels great to type on. Screen: Dell 27" U2720Q 4K screen. Good quality screen, charges the laptop with one cable and connects keyboard mouse etc. with built in USB hub. But the best feature is the optional soundbar with built in microphones and noise cancelling like a teleconference unit you find in a meeting room. It allows me to talk to people without having to plug things in my ears all the time which was a giant bother before.

pharmakom 5y ago

Audible helps me go to bed on time and that is worth at least 10x what they charge.

georgewsinger 5y ago

1. pernos.co: Time travel debugging with a beautiful, online interface. Simply record a bug locally, then upload it to this website, and you can travel through the execution forwards and backwards (with source file labeling and other views at each step). 2. Wolfram One: Symbolic computation for everything. A high-level shell which can run almost any basic computation with great visuals and natural language input.

amerine 5y ago
Can you explain more about how you use wolfram one day to day? I’m very curious.
- georgewsinger 5y ago
  1. I use it to caption images for blog posts (e.g. the images in https://simulavr.com/blog/technical-overview/ https://simulavr.com/blog/technical-overview/) 2. I use it for easy image hosting that I can control in the Wolfram command line (vs. imgur, etc). 3. I use it to upload lengthy text files (e.g. error outputs when programming) over things like pastebin. 4. Until very recently, I used it to manage our site's email waitlist (setting up an email submission form was 1 Wolfram function). 5. I use it to visualize personal data (productivity stuff, timelog data, etc). 6. I use it to run mathematical computations when reading technical materials. Wolfram can do things like "show how this integral is derived in a human-readable way", which makes it easier to understand steps glossed over in math proofs. 7. I use it to collage images together when sharing them with other people (https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/ImageCollage.html https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/ImageCollage.html). 8. I use it to make timelines when making back-of-the-napkin Gantt charts (e.g. https://www.wolframcloud.com/obj/george.w.singer/business/png/milestones_timeline.png https://www.wolframcloud.com/obj/george.w.singer/business/pn...), or histories (e.g. https://www.wolframcloud.com/obj/george.w.singer/business/png/historical_timeline.png https://www.wolframcloud.com/obj/george.w.singer/business/pn...) Hope this is helpful =)
  - amerine 5y ago
    Was very enlightening, thank you!!

roberto 5y ago

YouTube premium, to watch videos without ads. As a bonus you get Google's music streaming (YouTube Music) for free. Hoppy.network, so I can give the Raspberry Pi running in my closet a real IPv4 address. Monthly donations to Ardour.org, my favorite DAW.

Areibman 5y ago
Check out YouTube Vanced for Android or YouTube++ for iOS. Been living ad-free for 3 years now
- amf12 5y ago
  And how do you expect content creators to get paid? I am for adblockers, but I also pay for such subscriptions because I want to support the creators and news industry.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - not_really 5y ago
    I could care less about giving YouTube a cut of creator revenue. Contextual/integrated advertising is something many creators already do - in a lot of cases it's because they have no choice (their videos have been demonetized for etc). Mind you, there are ways to get around that too, but I don't mind. After all, as you say, they need to get paid.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- slenk 5y ago
  By paying for Premium I am not actively harming content creators like you.
osivertsson 5y ago
Trying YouTube premium now and I would probably continue to pay after this trial period if it wasn’t for the terrible audio quality. Some things sound ok, while others are encoded with some painful loss of fidelity. It is like it is 1999 again and you try to encode MP3 at 112 kbit/s to squeeze a full album into your 64 MB player, that bad. I read somewhere that it uses Youtube as the source material and reencodes that instead of sourcing it properly as in Google Music.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

AdmiralAsshat 5y ago

A good pair of wireless earbuds. I bought a pair of Galaxy Buds+ a few years back on Black Friday sale (think I paid 90 bucks or so), and I've enjoyed them so much, I didn't feel the need to upgrade them for the later models. I bought my girlfriend a pair of Airpods to upgrade over her cheap Bluetooth earbuds, and it's a massive improvement as well. So I don't recommend any particular brand. Just get a good pair that works well with your phone, has decent battery life (at least eight hours between charges), and provides either ANC or good passive noise cancellation. It's a real quality of life improvement for me to have these things that can be in my pocket all the time and can pull out any time I need a distraction for whatever I'm doing. A good microphone on them is also a plus, as it allows people to hear me through my mask.

maneesh 5y ago

Setapp.com is awesome for Mac users Soyoustart for fair priced bare metal

jon9544hn 5y ago
+1 for SetApp! Love it and the iOS complimentary apps are always a bonus

MrDresden 5y ago

An account at musicbrainz.org for easier tagging and organization for my music library - 4$ p. month. I also value my Digital Ocean nodes, but they get torn up and down based on what I am doing.

gaws 5y ago
> An account at musicbrainz.org for easier tagging and organization for my music library - 4$ p. month. Have you tried beets?

number6 5y ago

Good military grade clothing - someone designed them to be robust, well fitting and usable. It's like good software: * HAIX P3 Shoes - best shoes I ever had. * UFPro P40 Pants * Eberlestock F3F FAC

amboo7 5y ago

Poweramp Equalizer app (much more bang per buck than any headphones)

pengo 5y ago

[1] Top quality laptops (high spec XPS13s running Linux) rather than cheap ones. [2] A good (non-electric) bike in my small flat town. [3] SailfishOS rather than a surveillance or walled garden phone. [4] Intel Synology NAS with maxxed out RAM and storage. [5] Brix laptop bag. [6] Standing desk and wobble board.

RhysU 5y ago

Gasoline for my motorcycle.

jon9544hn 5y ago
Literally looking for a cafe racer for the summer lol

throwaway55421 5y ago

Educational subscriptions. I used to be a huge miser and resent the idea of paying for, well, anything digital or knowledge based. Now I realise that, well, I'd spend £5 on a pint in a pub, what's £10 a month? Even if there's only a 1% chance I actually learn XYZ that's better than nothing.

Ancalagon 5y ago

I actually think HBO Now is a super great value for the price

fuzzfactor 5y ago

USB flash drives.

avl999 5y ago

GCP E2-micro compute instance- GCP gives it to you for free and is an excellent place to throw things up for which you don't expect much load.

sbfeibish 5y ago

YouTube Premium Google Fi Fairfax Connector bus service ($1 as a senior) WMATA (non-rush-hour service, or )

sbfeibish 5y ago
or as a senior)

ssss11 5y ago

Happy I paid money to: Fastmail Backblaze Synology Not happy I paid money to: Sonos Samsung tv

morninglight 5y ago

Goodwill Industries - They have liberated me from all the crap I'd acquired.

RickJWagner 5y ago
And, as an added bonus, they offer a ton of different books for a dollar or two. Goodwill is great.

drakonka 5y ago

* Pet insurance. Saved my ass several times. I would've found a way to pay for my cats' emergency treatment regardless, but it was nice not to get stuck with a sudden several-thousand-dollar bill after emergency surgery. * AWS S3 - nice, cheap hosting for my personal site. * HBO Max, especially after I took advantage of their new member deal after they phased our HBO Nordic recently. * Polyver boots. So warm. So comfortable. So ugly, but so worth it. * Patagonia Insulated Prairie Dawn parka. I've had this thing for years and it's held up really well and gotten me through several Nordic winters.

aoki 5y ago

AoPS and Beast Academy.

JSONderulo 5y ago

Patagonia. Money-back guarantee, super high quality. Completely committed to the environment. Certain publications (Economist) and Substacks.

keraf 5y ago

Jetbrains IDEs (Rider for me) and the Xbox Game Pass have already been mentioned here, they are totally worth the money. Hetzner is my favourite VPS provider. Performance and great quality of service for a little price, I've never looked back since I switched from OVH to them a few years ago. I also use Hetzner for my NextCloud instance[0]. Price for storage is worth it, you own your own data, and it removes the hassle of maintaining your NextCloud yourself. [0] https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share

Krisjohn 5y ago

Software: Directory Opus, Connectify, PTFB Pro, DisplayFusion, ClipboardFusion

gaws 5y ago
> Software: Directory Opus Did you buy a lifetime license or are you stuck paying for annual updates?

authed 5y ago

https://www.lowendstock.com/ https://www.lowendstock.com/ (I pay $10/year for my VPS') ... and I think I have better uptime then Amazon.

jftuga 5y ago

AWS EC2 Spot Instances at about 0.004 cents per hour. For personal use, I only need to use them for a day or two at a time. I have some Terraform code that can quickly spin one up and then destroy it when I am finished. https://github.com/jftuga/terraform_ec2_spot_instance https://github.com/jftuga/terraform_ec2_spot_instance

RickJWagner 5y ago

Streaming tv. We pay for a handful of inexpensive channels, get an incredible array of shows for a fraction of the price we used to pay for basic dish. It's awesome.

beeboop 5y ago

VPN that lets me torrent anything I want without dealing with a million different platforms.

soramimo 5y ago

I generally try to live a decluttered life and minimize the number of "things" to deal with as I value my time above anything else. That said, here are some things I value: - Spotify. At ~$10/month, a great deal that makes listening and discovering music really easy. Have a shared account with my wife. - Gaming. While gaming hardware isn't cheap these days (~$2k for a decent build) games have incredible value. Playing competitive online games once a week with friends kept me sane through the pandemic. Incredibly immersive experience. - Guitar and Rocksmith. At ~$300, let's you hook up an electric guitar to your computer and learn how to play the guitar in a fun way. Really elevating experience. - Electric Bike. These aren't cheap either ($2k+), but this purchase made commuting by bike exclusively (pre-pandemic) practical (cutting down my commute from ~55min by regular bike to about ~35min). - Climbing gym membership. About $70/month. Such a fun way to stay in shape and socialize while doing so. - Wired headphones that work well while biking. Let me keep in touch with aging parents on daily basis. Never need to worry about charging. - Relatedly, Pixel 4a. Comparatively cheap ($400) phone with a headphone jack. Camera is great. It's very light which makes reading before sleep pleasant. - Books. Unbelievable value. Authors' life's insights distilled into something you can buy for ~$10. The hard part is finding good ones, but lots of good recommendations on HN. - Good food. Other things that I don't have yet, but am considering: - Mail forwarding service (~$30/month). We've been moving around a bit since the pandemic started. These services let you maintain a permanent address, scan or forward mail if needed. Still deciding which one to get since it's not an easily reversible decision. - Fiber. Not offered yet where we live, but would get it in a heartbeat. This may sound cliche, but luckily some of the greatest things in life are free (spending time with family and friends, playing volleyball on the beach, going for hikes in nature and all the great content online such as on HN).

andrei_says_ 5y ago
Could you recommend good wired headphones with a good mic usable on a bike ?
- soramimo 5y ago
  I own Philips Pro 6105 headphones. While they are nothing special and aren't expensive (~$30), their shape keeps noise levels from airflow low while biking. I've owned them for about 3 years now and they are still going strong.

mprime1 5y ago

Backup using rsync.net special Borg pricing 100GB for <$20/year https://www.rsync.net/products/borg.html https://www.rsync.net/products/borg.html

tpoacher 5y ago

Anything that isn't a "subscription" for no good reason other than greed.