What's an online service you happily pay for?
Shill your favorite product and service. MLMs and corporate representatives need not comment.
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Comments220View original on sh.itjust.works
Shill your favorite product and service. MLMs and corporate representatives need not comment.
I donate $5 quarterly to Wikipedia. It's not much but I figure every bit helps
Your comment made me donate to them for the first time just now. Only $5 but it’s something, I guess.
I donate whenever they remind me. I love that site
I just donate a yearly sum of 30€. Glad to see others donating as well.
Kagi.com - excellent search engine. Yes, it shouldn't be needed, but in this day and age it clearly is. Excellent slop filter, and it let's you downrank and uprank certain sites in your search results. And I just found out you can see the most popular sites for each category, so it's fast and easy to see which sites probably are and aren't worth having in your results at all. It makes internet search feel like it did 20 years ago.
Namecheap.com - It's where I have my domain names. Mostly because they aren't godaddy.
EDIT: Forgot to mention hetzner.
My view is that is should be needed. Advertising is a bad business model, I'd much prefer paying for a service I used. I think we should all get more comfortable paying for the sites we use.
Yeah and when you're using 200 different services and apps and pay for each and every one of them suddenly you have -$2K in your bank account each month, it's not sustainable
You are paying for these services one way or another. But no one says you have to pay $10 for each service.
Agreed, and having heard of them for the first time today, their payment plan seems incredibly reasonable, crediting us for unused monthly plan credits means it's basically pay as you go with a limit to avoid surprise bills, while avoiding the feeling of overpaying because I'm not using a service enough
They only credit for months you do no searches at all, if you do one you pay for the full month, but it's a nice touch. Personally I can't think of a situation where I'd do no searches in a month!
For something as important as search, paying $5 or $10 a month seems entirely reasonable to me. I've been a Kagi user ever since their unlimited plan dropped to $10 a month when they reached enough users that they could do that.
I see, I misread their site. Still, that seems very fair
Same. Love Kagi. Tried going without for a while, and the difference was stark. Re-upped, and all is now right with my search world.
I'd be careful with Kagi: unfortunately, collecting your payment information and attaching it to an account is directly at odds with maintaining privacy on the internet. I used Kagi for a year and did enjoy the search, but ultimately didn't renew due to privacy concerns.
They do have privacy pass, which claims to alleviate some of the privacy concerns, but then you lose all the customization functionality (my main use for Kagi) and there appear to be some issues with it (see this thread https://piefed.social/post/1204472).
Names heap also offer to hide your domain owner details from the public for fred
What I pay for:
What I "pay" for (through donations, if that counts):
I don't really subscribe to much, but I'm definitely looking to expand the latter list, so I'll probably start donating to the maintainers of ad blocker filter lists and seek out more organizations fighting the good fight.
Oh shit I forgot, Mullvad is such a given that I didn't even consider it a paid service, it's more like a utility bill for me, like electricity or broadband access.
I cannot overstate how legit they are, if there is one company on the planet I trust like my family it's them. Don't ask how I know, but I have first hand information the lengths they go to to protect their customers. It's run by Swedish 80's OG hackers who have NO need for the money, they're involved in other projects and have fuck you money, this is an idealist run outfit and they are legit as a MOTHERfuk. Trust that. They are on OUR side, they are TRON as far as I'm concerned, they fight for the user!
Honestly I'd love if more companies could adopt their payment model. Phreeli looks like a solid cellular provider and I'm sure their double-blind armadillo thing is legit, but if I could just mail them an unmarked envelope with nothing but a numeric account identifier and some cash I'd like it way more. Same with Tuta. But I understand there's some possibility for logistical concerns there (what happens if the user loses their account identifier? Too many banks still use SMS 2FA, etc. etc.).
Hahaha yeah I love that. What other VPN provider can boast "cash in an envelope" as a payment option for absolute privacy? I'm telling you these guys take privacy very seriously, I know first hand.
Well I'm not gonna lie, I envy your firsthand experience, lol. I've looked at jobs they have open from time to time, but alas, they generally either don't fit my experience or are more aimed at candidates from Europe.
Just FYI they have a lot of remote employees from all over the world.
Ah, then it must have been my relevant experience that was lacking (I knew it was one of the two, lol).
Do you donate to piefed?
I will be for sure! I've been trying out the different Fediverse "reddit clones" (for lack of better terminology) to see which one I liked the most (I started with just Lemmy) before I settled on which one I was going to support, but I'm pretty confident Piefed is the winner.
Similar for me.
Me too!
Me three!
Nebula. There are only a handful of creators on there that I watch regularly, but even then, it's worth it for the price.
I really need to give this and/or Curiosity Steam a try. I still get a lot of use out of YouTube Premium (oh, boo yourself 😄) but for documentary type things, it's so hard to sure through the AI generated stuff anymore.
I initially got both when they had a curiosity steam/nebula annual bundle. I gotta say, some of the curiosity stream stuff is hit or miss for me. Some categories/genres have more/better documentaries than others. Overall it’s nice for when I just want to throw on something interesting while I eat. Nebula, I loved so much that when they stopped doing the bundle with curiosity stream I just got the lifetime nebula subscription so that I can always have it. Getting to download the videos for offline watching is super nice for long flights
Thank you for the input!
It's one of those things I've been meaning to do since the 2 services were bundled, but whenever I got bored with YouTube or whatever other streaming things I was using, I'd take a break and read a book from my backlog or play a video game and then forget to try them.
I just want longer content to put on in the background or while I do chores, I just don't want it to be AI slop.
I really wish nebula polled the community ornhad some way to offer feedback on including some other streamers. There are a handful of varied channels i would love to watch away from yt.
Dropout.tv
The only streaming service I won’t pirate.
I've been considering it, Game Changer is pretty good
They have a few days trial, and encourage account sharing. So you could give it a crack and split it with a friend. Quite a few shows and podcasts they do are worth the price.
Besides, they pay the talent far better than anyone else in Los Angeles, if that kind of thing is important for you.
Plus, when they raised their subscription price to pay for more shows, anyone who was already a member kept their original subscription price. They even gave folks a month or so to sign up and lock in the lower price. A lot of people love the channel so much they wanted to pay the higher price. It’s my favorite streaming service.
Oh, and about paying the talent: last year they did a profit share and anyone who earned money from Dropout got a cut. They pay people to come to auditions, so even those people got some of the profit sharing.
Dropout is the gold standard of streaming services.
I have been watching so much of their stuff free on yt this week... Would love to somehow split a membership with someone someday to support them.
Does the VPS provider that runs part of my self-hosted infrastructure count? I've happily paid one of them for almost 14 years now.
I honestly think that's my last online service other than a couple Patreons for music.
It certainly does. Which do you use?
RamNode for all but one of them. They're not the best, but they've been solid for years.
What do you do with the VPS? I'm just curious.
I run my own piefed and vaultwarden through yunohist on a 5$/month vps from OVH
That can handle the traffic or do you have additional data costs per month?
Yes, ovh gives you, for my vps model at least, 400 mbps bandwith and unlimitted traffic. I have experienced no additional costs.
https://us.ovhcloud.com/vps/
Oh shit, I might check this out. Thanks!
I have had great results from them, the vps is fast and reliable, support is good, no complaints.
Kagi. https://kagi.com/
Best search engine I've ever used.
Plus one.
my personal economy is hanging by a thread so no expenses that are not strictly necessary.
I've been there. Hope it gets better for you.
Ill tell ya. I have been here before myself. More than once. But also not. never this bad before.
YouTube Premium. No ads and the creators I watch get paid more.
Yes, I'm aware of all the apps out there that give you the Premium perks without actually paying for it. Here's the thing: the VAST majority of my watching is done on my TV via an Apple TV and I really CBA to go through all the hoops to make any of those apps work with my setup.
I don't watch any other streaming services and I don't watch cable / network TV. I'm okay paying for Premium to get the best experience.
I pay for that too but I wouldn't say I'm HAPPY about paying for it. Because I remember when YouTube used to be free and had no ads.
They were not profitable though, you can only do that for so long before you fold and then no one gets anything.
It's still free and with no ads if you use Firefox + uBlock Origin on desktop, ReVanced on Android, SmartTube on Android TV.
YouTube is a miserable clunky experience on desktop.
I don’t like it, but YouTube family is by far the most bang for buck for our family in hours watched vs price.
And not having to watch any shitty ass ads on any YouTube client wherever I log in is amazing.
Privacy.com. I pay 10 bucks a month and never have to expose my debit or credit card numbers, I just use virtual ones. Plus, I get about $10 cash back each month, so really, it pays for itself.
I used privacy.com for years happily until one day they said they would freeze my account if I didn't provide a lot of personal info. I let them keep it.
It used to be free, they made their money from CC surcharges. You have to pay now?
No they still do a free version. I paid to upgrade so I can use the cards in my Apple Wallet and get a few other features.
My citi credit card used to do this free. Now I can't find the option anywhere so I assume they killed it.
Kagi Search, it's such a small thing but it radically de-sloppifies your browsing experience
I enjoy it but it also feels overpriced at $10 USD.
that is a valid point tbf
but you can halve it if make a family accoubt with friends :)
The price of a search engine
Not really, as they include a bunch of AI extras, like $10 USD in LLM tokens usage. I would much prefer a $5 USD option without that, just a search engine.
Is the starter pack not exactly that?
Not exactly. The starter pack is only 300 searches/month and also includes $5 USD LLM tokens credit.
IMO, the swetspot would be $5 USD unlimited searches and no LLM token credit, or their familiar plans (which sadly I have no one to buy with).
I've been here the whole time.
Hetzner VPS and their Storage Box, that is, managed Nextcloud instance.
Mailbox.org email service.
PBS Passport for $5/month is so worth it.
I forgot about this! Admittedly I rarely watch TV so I don't stream anything but PBS is awesome.
Mullvad
Mailbox.org
I used to pay for a lot more until the last election and I found out how many companies backed fascism. Not with my dollar you wont!
edit: $5 a month for PBS also.
donations to soma.fm, listener supported free music streaming/internet radio out of San Francisco
My wife finally got me to give up my 20 year old tshirt I had from them. It was more hole than shirt. I should order another.
They are awesome! Feels like a little island of the old internet.
Ha i just commented SomaFM because Thistle Radio was on during a stressful part of a long drive and it was soon good.
I played Dragon Age:Origin with Symphaera in the background instead of the game music
Yeah most of the stations are pretty good even if it's not my usual genres and I'll skip around, but Groove salad and defcon are my usuals, i like beat blender for an alarm and mission control for background music while working.
Mission Control is so much fun
Email.
As someone who has been self hosting some stuff and generally aspires to work in IT, it is simply unfeasible to expect services like this for free
Would it cost me less to host such a server divided by x users? Yes
Do I have x users I can sustainably service without burning out? No.
So its either a managed server for like 15€ per month + a bunch of work or a paid email provider, in my case fastmail.
What does paid email offer over all the free options?
Email addresses, masked email addresses, folders and email rules for where to put Them, storage, etc
A seedbox
This. €6,95/mo and mine has rutorrent set so you can associate magnet links, so I click a magnet link in my browser and it gets sent to the box. It also has Emby on it, so I don't have to download, I can stream right from the box.
bitwarden, wikipedia
also, not really paying for patreon, but I'm using it to pay DJPeachCobbler for his amazing videos on history
I'll pay for Mullvad and Usenet/indexer
Steam games/Valve.
I dont know if this counts/its a hot take.
It really depends on the game tbh(some regret some dont)
I appreciate their work on Proton.
And Steam is the only website I can really buy video games from.
A few bucks a month for https://piefed.social/
Keep your software evolving and instances running!
Currently, Mullvadvpn.
I've paid for Proton Unlimited but I'm letting that expire and moving to alternatives.
I looked at Windscribe's site. I find black theme too difficult to read. If I can't investigate a service for whatever reason, including website design, I don't use it.
There's a lot of stuff I wouldn't mind sending money for, such as WMF, Internet Archives, AO3, and varying creators, and/or, of course, Lemmy, but as I don't like using credit cards and online payments, I'm hindered.
I wonder if there's some card (preferably paper instead of plastic) that I could buy at the store for $10, $20, or like, and use the number as payment. I've thought of sending cash by mail to the WMF, but I'm not sure if they would take it. I sent cash to Miraheze a few years ago, and they said they got it, but they don't seem to have put it in their reports (I hope they used it for Miraheze).
I forgot the name, but someone in this thread mentioned an online service where you generate payment cards that allows you to pay for stuff with more privacy.
Yeah someone mentioned privacy.com, it piqued my interest too but I don't know anything about them
A few YouTubers seem to have P.O. boxes that I suppose I could use too.
There are those Visa cards that charge you like $4 every time you load money on them. Western Union does a similar thing too. It's how people with bad credit/no ID get a card.
I don't know if this would solve your gripe with online payments, but most banks let's you create a virtual cc that you can delete right after your payment.
But I think I still would have to give my name and info.
(Also, FWIW, I'm in Canada.)
I don't know if it would work in Canada, but I just buy a Visa gift card and use that.
RackNerd for my VPSs (3 of them right now)
Mullvad VPN
NextDNS
https://www.fullhost.com/
I switched away from NameCheap to a Canadian domain registrar after swearing off American software where possible. They've been great. It's a smaller company so I've gotten really quick responses on tickets I've put in
Good reminder, my domain is up soon and I need to do the same.
... and my employer pays my Kagi.com account 😁
How does posteo compare to mailbox.org?
I'm a posteo customer since many years, so I can tell you why I've chosen it, but can't compare it to mailbox.org too deeply
Right now the only thing I have a subscription for, as a college student fortunate enough to be living at home, is Proton. Don't like the whole Lumo AI thing and don't really trust they ain't scraping all my data for it, but I still have months before my subscription ends.
The VPN is nice enough and the attached email is kinda cool, I guess. Definitely been making use of both, so no complaints for now.
A domain.
Got any suggestions on hosting that's not squarespace or otherwise ridiculously expensive? just need a simple site and some links... already own the domain
What do you want to host?
If it's a simple text-only/Javascript website, you can host through Codeberg/Gitlab/Github on a custom domain free of charge.
interesting, never knew that was possible. will look into it!
Hetzner webhosting starts from 1,60€/month.
ty!
https://www.webhostingtalk.com/ is still a good resource for that. Geared toward discussion about servers rather than just hosting, still, it can help find a decent host. Some fly-by-nighters fly through there... by night, of course.
ty for the link
Not really. I self-host with a reverse proxy.
Ultimate Guitar. I got a lifetime membership for like 30 bucks over a decade ago and I use that shit all the time. Their pro-tabs are awesome.
Damn. Looks like they ended the lifetime sub in 2018. I just picked up my guitar for the first time in probably 15 years after retrieving it from my parents' basement. I remembered U-G pro tabs but it seemed so much more pervasive than before. But kinda seemed worth it. Idk about 30/yr at this time. I quickly remembered why my interest faded: my go-to music doesn't sound great on a single guitar.
Funny sequence, though. I was trying to find tabs for current interests. My recent stream has had more Slipknot than 2010. I'm used to lots of Drop-D tuning and don't enjoy adjusting. Turns out, between either Duality or Before I Forget and then The Devil In I, I got to enjoy detuning to Drop C and then Drop B. Didn't even know those existed. 5 strings 5 frets lower and 1 string down 7.
30 bucks a year seems a bit steep, I don’t know if it’d be worth it at that point over buying a tab book every now and then, or just using the free version. They still have a ton of great and accurate tabs and you can build your own library if you setup a free account.
I can see Slipknot sounding a bit incomplete on just guitar. Zoom makes some good multi effect processor pedals that can sample and do drum loops, but that gets a bit technical and sort of a whole thing in and of itself, I have a great time fucking around with mine, though. Not sure what your metal tastes are, but if you’re into any doom or sludge that stuff translates well to just guitar practice and playing, a lot of three piece bands with heavy guitar emphasis. Wizard Fight by Weedeater is a quick and fun song to learn, if you’re looking for something simple and heavy to get back into things with.
Also, C standard is king.
Thanks, that song has my attention. I think I've been somewhere in the doom or sludge genre with Heriot and Faetooth but the definitions are fuzzy around here. Some Mastodon songs seem to have persistent guitar so I was headed there next. Colony of Birchman, probably. I'll have to see how long this interest phase. Metal is forever, but playing might be a phase.
Ooo, feel like selling me on it?
Whether you’re just starting or you’re a master shredder, there’s something for you. I haven’t used any of their lessons, as I found them after I’d been playing for a long time, so I can’t attest to the lessons themselves, but going through their options they have a lot of lessons for learning scales and practice exercises, and can build your own library of tabs and lessons so you don’t have to search for the same song over and over while learning or refreshing on it. A lot of the features are free, so even without the membership it’s still a great resource for any guitar player.
For me, the meat and potatoes is in the tabs library and the pro tabs option that you get with a membership. It lays out the full song in bar format and you can have it play a midi tone version of the song from what’s in the tabs so you can hear the notes and watch the tracker to know exactly where that tone is supposed to land with proper timing. It helps so much more than straight tabs, as you can see and hear where and how the sound structure comes together for things that are hard to translate when you’re just looking at numbers on a page trying to figure how to play those with proper timing and placement, especially for complex things where it’s a million notes in a cluster with nothing to translate timing.
Like any community tabs archive, not everything is always a correct tablature, but the selection is better than everything else I’ve dug into. I’m not sure what the monthly is, but I see the same lifetime deal I got pop up from time to time.
Hell yeah, thanks!
Happy shredding!
picks furiously at a Taylor GS Mini
I don't think this is shredding :(
Haha nah I'm an ancient metalhead, put the ol axe down many years ago, but now the lil one suddenly wants to learn. Thing you shared is gonna do us a real treat, just the thing we needed!
(Sidenote, this little Taylor is exactly the thing for this, what a lovely little instrument)
That’s fuckin’ awesome! Tell them I think they’re rad.
START WITH SCALE LESSONS FIRST!!! I can’t stress that enough. I wish I had had someone to teach me when I was first learning that stressed the importance of learning scales, once you have a scale down, or even just a phrase of one, learning a song on it comes so much more easily and efficiently since you have the roadmap of it.
NextDNS, Kagi.
Proton - the whole suite. I use it all.
crabshack.ai - an easier, better version of openclaw/ personal ai agent.
Don't put all your eggs in one basket tho
Its a fair point, I also have my own M365 tenant and multiple other things, I just really appreciate Proton.
Any tips for how to not end up doing this?
Just... Don't?
If you use proton for mail that's fine. But, don't also use their VPN, browser, password manager, calendar, cloud storage...
I see no reasons not to as long as you have backups. Email can be moved, files, calendar, etc.
Is kagi any good to filter out AI generated slop web pages?
Another Threma user! With me, my wife and the other one I found on Lemmy we are four!
I got this in the Threema channel today (just like last year): https://three.ma/slang
It's not a particularly difficult easter egg hunt this time, I figured it out in like 5 mins, but I'm not going to spoil it :P
Mealime.
Meal planning app. Has a database of hundreds of easy to make, healthy, tasty recipes. Tell it how many people you want to cook for, for how many days. It builds a whole meal plan, adjusts the quantities of all the recipies, builds a shopping list for you, and will even forward the list to Instacart for you if you're into that.
It also builds the meal plan based on reducing food waste, so if you have one recipe that uses half an onion, it will automatically find another recipe that uses the other half. You can also define ingredients you don't like/allergic to and it will avoid recipes that use those.
MASSIVELY increased the amount of at-home cooking I do by getting rid of all the boring/annoying parts. Kinda like Blue Apron, but you just go buy your own groceries. Best $2 a month I spend.
It's $3/mo
I spent a few minutes on going through my "invoices" directory in my mail, but I couldn't find anything else. These four are all my online subscriptions. Everything else is IRL (water, electricity, rent, etc).
Imgur - $2/mo to get rid of ads. Ads are what causes the app to be crashy. No ads, no crashes. It's absolutely worth it to me for that price.
Covers almost everything I need online
Namecheap
Proton for mail hosting and VPN
Used to do a couple podcast subs and let them expire. Should pay for more, this thread might be the social pressure to throw $10 at like 8 different things.
Currently, I'm paying for a vps where I run a test environment for my homelab. I also pay for mail and vpn services, support some FOSS projects and buys music a couple times a month.
My DNS root. Good mail hosting.
Which root server letter did you get assigned?
Ah, bummer. Slightly put wrong and you called me out rightly.
My tld to be provided on a root. I was in the wrong mindset. Apologies!
I wasn't meaning for it to be calling out so much as attempted humorous way of misunderstanding / literally interpreting your post 😅
I'm still not fully sure what you mean though. Does "root" mean VPS here (a system which you have root access to), and "tld" a domain name or even the DNS server for it?
Ah, no worries! It's purely about DNS!
If you own a DNS zone you need to have that hosted somewhere in a datacenter.
So say you own example.com you need to have a server (but usually a more redundant setup) that is queried for everything regarding that: which ip(s) is www.example.com, where does the mail go, some other settings (time to live), all subdomains, text records (various purposes).
I give monthly to my Mastodon instance.
Crunchyroll is fairly inexpensive for how much I use it. Been keeping up with current running seasons a lot more than when I yarhar'd everything (though I keep a small stash of my favorites on one hard drive).
I've gladly donated to some of my favorite YouTubers (Legends of Avantris, MinMaxedRPG, and others).
Bit warden & Nabu Casa. Both great & they support really good OS projects
I knowww it's shit on, and I hate that the price went up. But I can't get rid of Spotify. I don't love it, but it's definitely the best music app I've used. I do love that it shows local concerts based on the music I listen to.
Check out qobuz, I switched from Spotify long ago and most of the same catalog was available often at better quality for the same subscription price, there was a tool to transfer likes/playlists/etc, non US based, and they pay artists a reasonable rate compared to others.
Spotify has lossless now, but still occasionally struggle to do gapless playback with downloads.
Depends on how you use Spotify and your stance on Piracy but you could sideload (both IOS and Android) the Spotify app (so no restrictions and zero ads) and use Spicetify on PC and Mac.
Just checking because a lot of people miss it but the big boon with having a paid account is that you can get very high quality streams (not sure if its 320kbps or lossless) but you need to find and set that in the settings because they don't want people to use that obv and try to sneak hide it because of the way higher bandwidth- they also like to reset playback quality back to "normal" (=shit) every now and then, scumbags as they are. So make sure you set it to max. The diff in audio quality is massive.
Joplin cloud. I use the shit out of it and it's a great project.
Yeah I just wish they had more options to use à custom cloud
They do, I was using nextcloud for a long time but wanted to support the project directly. You can also use, local, pretty much if it can store files you can use it.
Which plan do you have? Is the Pro version better with "Email to note"?
Curious because I used that in the past but stopped I don't remember why.
I just have basic. The pro plan really doesn't have features I would use.
"Happily" rules out most streaming services I do pay for, but Nebula is still a valid answer.
A Hetzner box i use for offloading hobby crap calculations to.
Various patreons and patreon-like things for people who make things I enjoy and/or strongly believe should exist: Garbage Brain University, Octavius King, Pivot To AI, Master Hellish, and a few more but I forget.
Chess.com. Its totally worth it for the game review which is the part of it I'd consider a "service", but there's other good stuff in there if you like to play.
I don't actually pay for this, because the free tier is good enough for my personal needs, but Tailscale is amazing and has totally changed my relationship with self-hosting and web services.
I know that you can roll your own VPN WAN using wireguard or whatever, but honestly Tailscale makes it pretty foolproof, and that's allowed me to access all of my self-hosted stuff from anywhere with minimal screwing around. The first time I logged into my Jellyfin and Finamp from outside the house, I was pretty much hooked. If I could easily and safely host public game servers for my wider group of friends I would be even more into it and would definitely pay for a higher tier.
Services only or one time purchase apps too?
There are three that I've happily subscribed to for years:
Adguard Kagi Mega
I use all three daily and they all more than make up for their price.
What do you use mega for? Just curious...
Not the person you asked but I drop some of my already encrypted files there as an additional backup
My domain names and web/email server hosting.
Not having to worry about all the horrors one is subjected to when they depend on a free service for online presence, email, etc. is worth a great deal to me. Any free service can disappear or kick you off at a whim leaving you with nothing, social media sites and apps come and go (and/or enshittify) while as a consumer of a paid service you not only have a quality of service beyond freebies (privacy, no ads, what I want to put online is exactly what goes online unadulterated, people who want to find or contact me can always do so at my own site on my own terms) you also have consumer protections if things go wrong.
While I'm not self-hosting my web stuff on my own hardware, the host I use is a small business owned by an old friend and fellow hacker which means I'm not at the mercy of some faceless corporation's TOS either. My host and I see eye-to-eye on what's appropriate for me to put out there via her machinery, and she's also not extrajudicially sharing my private crap with fascist government forces like the big tech monoliths and most free services do.
I won't say where I rent my servers from so as not to "shill", but yeah. Good little company run by one old guy, I think. Maybe he has some help, but seems like the rare times I've had to contact, it's probably just him. Totally self-managed, but the prices reflect that and I've got a couple of really decent dedicated servers for $25 and $35 per month. Webmin on top and it's so much better and cheaper than a decade or more ago I was paying $200/mo for equivalent level.
NextDNS. $20/year for basically no ads on any device.
Any experience vs ad lists on pihole?
They are equal. I used pihole before, but wanted something with less management overhead and something easier to manage for devices family members use.
Honestly that seems worth the $2/month.
I also use uBlock Origin, but yes, absolutely worth it.
Email.
Bunch of open source projects.
None.
Youtube red, not only for the removal of ads but because it pays the youtubers I watch way more then ads do.
Does it? I'm pretty sure Google played with subscriptions people could pay to remove ads from the internet and the value they came to for break even was far more than anyone was willing to pay
Also, I'm pretty sure things like Patreon will put more money in creators hands
I've seen a few creators mention that a YouTube red view is worth around one thousand normal views.
Ha. I guess me deleting YouTube Red must have been a bigger hit to Google than I'd hoped (avoiding US tech, especially those that pay Trump directly), otherwise they wouldn't bias the algorithm that way
Dr demento show. For 15.00 a month you get new and all old episodes.
This man has earned my money for all the years of entertainment and laughs he has provided.
Star trekkin across the universe!
Various Patreons and also Dropout. I also regularly donate to the xkit lady for her work making Tumblr usable. Oh! and Dominion.games.
is there an online service that eliminates capitalism?
https://online-go.com/
To get AI analysis on my games.
ProBoxTV is a YouTube channel with boxing. 4 shows in the next month. Next one is in a few hours. It’s free but you can donate to their channel.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JPkSAbh3aRg
VPN
Online collectives like riseup and disroot, providing privacy focused services, are doing the lords work. I gladly support them.
My hyperlocal newspaper.
I'm imagining that's just your kid reporting on the happenings in the house.
Roll20. I play D&D twice a week, and the paid features (increased storage & dynamic lighting) are absolutely worth it. It's not even super expensive; just $60/year. Totally worth it for how often I use it!
Real-debrid
I like how it is like real madrid
Kagi, Soundcloud, Bear.
Bear is so much better than Apple Notes.
Proton and Signal. I think that's it.
Vultr vpn for Rustdesk server and Wireguard.
Hello deanonymising AI 👋
The service needed to get online in the first place.
That’s about it, I think.
Currently Proton Duo and Humble Choice. Considering dropping Humble.
Dashlane password manager. Just worth it.
I use YNAB for budgeting. There is a version of a related software you can self-host and you can subscribe to a bank-info-linking service on your own as well, but I don't want to have to administer something as boring as budgeting.
The support is also pretty good!
The one bad thing is price. About $100 a year :<
Nebula
It supports independent creators and I get to watch Jet Lag a week early
PocketTube and DeArrow.
I used to happily pay for YouTube premium. Back in 2008 someone told me he uses YT to listen to music and I was like "You silly man, the youtubes are fore watching not listening." Some time in the early 2010s I realized he was right. I can't get through a work day without some nice ambient something or other on in the background. It also used to be a phenominal source of info about any sort of topic you care to name, with videos posted by actual humans who were interested in those topics. It fed my sundry ADHD hyperfixations very well.
Now I still pay for it, but I'm not sure it's worth the money anymore between them foisting shorts onto us and the torrent of AI slop. The other day I wanted to watch videos on Australian lungfish and was met with AI voiceover after AI voiceover. It's made me wonder if I should quit, but where else am I going to find 8 hours of server room ambience or an hour long video of a dog chewing on a bone?
YouTube Premium.
I pay for this, and two other family members pay for two other services. Theirs have each blocked the other 2 of us... So what was once 3 of us buying 3 family plans has become just me doing it. And the second YouTube blocks them, I'm canceling it.
Dreamhost.
More than a decade ago they had a big fuck up where they accidentally charged tons of users multiple times when their contracts weren't when finished. So one day I woke up and they'd taken a few hundred dollars from my account. That put me in the negatives.
When I called them, they verified my identity, and let me complain a little. (I'm not much of a complainer. But their customer service person was great.) They paid me back the charged amount, and asked how much I'd had in overdraft fees, and paid me that too. And they let my hosting plan date reset at that date for the year-long renewal. So they basically have me like 9 months on top of it.
Mind you, I wasn't using much at the time. Just a few blogs and a podcast. So it's not like they're not making free money off of me. But they handled it so damn well. Didn't even ask to see a bank statement about my overdraft fees. Just "and how much was that? Got it." I'm sure it was just a case of cost and smart business... But fuck yeah, reward smart business.
SomaFM
Backblaze B2
Torguard.com VPN. Going on 8 years of use, many terabytes of data transfer, no complaints.
Proton for email Signal for messaging (donations) Bitwarden for passwords Currently trailing Kagi for search after the comments on this post Random donations to my instance
mullvad vpn.
i be sailing them seas with no abandon.
My email provider (and domains), Bitwarden and Obsidian.
Less happy:
Spotify and Spotify Premium (If I could I'd get rid of the YT music part)
Hetzner for my VPS Mullvad for my privacy
Windscribe VPN
Filen cloud storage
iCloud 50gb plan (ok I don’t happily pay for this, but I need this)
Incogni
Probably saily if I start travelling again.
Proton stuff.
I’m going to be switching all my nord stuff to proton I think as I’m finding nord getting incredibly unstable on their marketing. One moment they have meshnet. Then nope. Next moment yes. Oh but now incogni is no longer included. Probably because nord is unstable.
Apple One Premier bundle and YouTube Premium are the two subscriptions I deem essential in my life. I wouldn’t say I shill for them, but I definitely do think they’re essential for me.
Apple One Premier has:
Apple TV (I use a lot)
Apple Music (I use a lot)
Apple Fitness+ (I use moderately)
Apple News+ (I use a lot)
Apple Arcade (I use moderately)
2TB of iCloud Storage (I use a lot)
Optional Peacock reduced subscription fee (I don’t use)
All of it is sharable with 5-6 Apple family members too.
YouTube Premium
Did you know that when you start to skip forward on in-video sponsor messages it gives to a button that skips ahead to the end of the message?
I mostly watch YouTube on my TV via my Roku, secondarily on my phone and rarely on my computer.
976-HOT-MILF
Edit: Downvoters probably don't know to ask for Missy