What's something that's free that everyone should know about?
I'll start by plugging Harvard's free courses catalog as well as Udemy
Edit: Gonna add 2 more I remembered-
Blender - I wish I had more time to learn it, but I did start the infamous "Donut Tutorial" once!
Watch Cartoons Online - Lots of good older stuff!
In terms of fully free, obligatory mention:
Your library may offer more than books alone, depending on how well supported they are. Borrow music, movies, sometimes even video games. For music and movies they may also offer these to borrow digitally as well via online services they coordinate with.
In the U.S. they may even offer things like State Park passes.
My library offers art! Like, original art pieces (paintings and sculptures) by local artists which you can borrow for up to three months.
That's such a great idea!
Our library does audio books, 3d printer, sound recording (like a small studio), and passes to provincial parks. Some can offer a lot!
I moved to a new town in 2022 and I STILL haven't been to the local library. I need to get on that. I went to libraries so much as a child and in my teens.
You might be able to apply for an account online and not have to go in, unless you just want to meander through their not-book- things available to check out.
My library has a lovely assortment of things. Anything from camping gear to ghost hunting "equipment" like a spirit box or emf meter. My city doesn't have a fully outfitted maker lab tho, but I am eligible for an account at the neighboring city that does have a kickass maker lab (3d printers, laser engravers, sewing and embroidery machines, Cricuts, and even a professional recording studio).
Making sure to keep it legal, right?
Let's stick with Project Gutenberg - Public domain ebooks and other media, spanning centuries. They're incredibly important for keeping our literary past alive.
I might have more later.
There's also LibriVox for audiobooks of public domain books read by volunteers. They vary in quality but some of my favourite audiobooks are from there.
I mean, I'm down for illegal mentions too, but Lemmy might not be?
Not on your instance, no. The Canadians don't care.
I kinda forgot Project Gutenberg is a thing. I read a bunch of stuff on there in the late 90s/early 2000s, Arabian Nights, Paradise Lost, etc.
Don’t forget Hathi trust. No one outside of humanities knows if it but it has a ton of material
VLC Media Player
Even better, MPV Media Player. Vlc has bad color reproduction
<3 VLC, been using it for decades at this point.
Closing your eyes, slowly taking a deep breath, and calmly, breathing in, and breathing out, while focusing on the sensations in your body, and how much more relaxed you're feeling right now
i.e. meditation
thanks now i feel more relaxed on my toilet
" Come on in, take a breath, the oxygen is free! "
Nah. Intrusive thoughts are a bitch.
Let them come, then let them go
I’m surprised no one has mentioned it yet:
With just a cheap computer you can have your own Netflix and Spotify.
How is it different than Plex?
Does it find the movies for me, or do I still need to figure out the Usenet or BitTorrent?
Jellyfin Is completely open source, fully self-hosted, and free. With Plex the software still has to phone home to a central server for authentication and some features are locked behind a paywall.
No streaming software is going to find movies for you (without paying for content they've licensed) because that would be a sure fire way to get the project taken down for copyright violation.
It’s a FOSS plex alternative.. yes you will need to stock your own library Then install SonArr, RadArr, some other Arr 🏴☠️just learn Linux nub. Jk but not really
Since no one really answered you, there are generally two routes.
If you use newsgroups you can run sabnzbd, which is a service that downloads from newsgroups. I've been out of the loop for a while but there used to be something like CouchPotato for movies or SickBeard for TV (which migrated to SickChill, though you shouldn't use that anymore as it installed a crypto miner last I heard). Lastly you sign up with a news indexer (look up Nzb.su or nzbgeek.info). CouchPotato could be linked to your imdb watch list.
Plug all of those together with API keys, and now movies on your imdb watch list just show up in your plex library as they become available.
Now if you use Torrents instead of newsgroups, there are similar things that all exist, I'm just less familiar with them.
Aside from the FOSS that people love.
I will add something real world. I have Plex and Jellyfin running. Now Plex works fine for the most part but certain codecs when I am watching on iOS just has issues and freezes a lot so I have to use Jellyfin, but the UI in Jellyfin is pretty sparse and not as polished.
Is Jellyfin good with remote access?
You can do that with VPN. I’m using Tailscale, just had to make an account and install it on the computer I mentioned and on my phone.
Can you ELI5 for me what this does? I don't quite get it.
So when you use Spotify and Netflix, what your doing is streaming from their computers, which costs money hence why they charge you monthly.
They also add profit and licensing costs and all that to it so it adds up.
But what if, you used your own computer?
Very easy to do using just your wifi, some more complexity if you want to steam over the internet.
Libraries. Most even rent video games, power tools, audio/video hardware, baking utensils...SO MUCH STUFF. All free.
On a whim I googled my city's library and "tools" and I found a non-profit society that specializes in lending of hand and power tools! This is incredible and I wouldn't have known about it without this prompt: thank you!
My local library loans dongles! Now if I can just manage to check one out without snickering ...
👍
Our library loans out state parks passes for a month so you can go to parks for free. It also loans out hiking gear, provides immigration resources, and oddly, a ukulele.
This is amazing, I had no idea.
Ours lends them out for all the city museums! And my old local library had a seed library, the deal is that you saved seed from whatever you grew and gave some back.
I have questions
I once rented a whole reflector telescope.
That is...fucking crazy awesome.
Technically not free, but because so many people think it is it's a great poster child for proper use of tax dollars and socialist programs. Libraries rock.
Adding the library-libby nexus. Most libraries have an eBook collection connected through Libby. I've got a Kindle and zero books bought from Amazon. It's great.
Protip, if you went to any form of formal education (college) then you probably have alumni library account access. My Libby has three library cards logged in. I never wait for a book.
Nope. 15 Euro a year (Freiburg, Germany), which doesn't automatically renew and it's a bloody pain.
Yeah, Germany is quite backwards in this aspect.
Even if you don't go to the actual library the ebook apps are great.
Pi hole
Does a pi hole combine with a VPN? I assume the pi hole can't see what's in the VPN traffic and therefore can't block anything?
You could have the vpn daemon running on the pihole itself rather than on connected devices.
It's great, customizable, I sent a suggestion to the volunteer development team, and they made it happen.
Worth noting: Android only
I second this one. Only one I'll use.
I tried so many other podcast apps, at least 3 of 4 others. The only thing I dislike is that about AntennaPod is that there is no comprehensive removal button that deletes, marks as played, and removes from queue—but all the other apps failed at even consistently downloading eps or playing them back. AntennaPod crushes all competition by light years.
Let me be perfectly honest: If you like AntennaPod, just stick with it, OK? You'll save a lot of frustrations and headaches.
I used to use AntennaPod and listened to lots of podcasts.
Then one podcast host mentioned some other app, I tried it, and liked its Web interface, even when it didn't have all of the AntennaPod features. I think it didn't have "stop playing a podcast at the end of the episode, even if it's queued". (I like to queue stuff and listen to them at no particular order. I'm a whimsical girl like that.) Then I think this app got discontinued/went pay only, I can't remember.
Went with Google Podcasts. It was a pretty limited and janky experience (also no ability to stop at the end of the queued episode), but it did its job and I hoped it'd get better over years. It didn't. It got discontinued. Google sometimes can't do a good thing.
I manually migrated my subscriptions to some other app. (As one last hurrah Google then implemented OPML takeout.) Wasn't happy with this app. Couldn't help but notice my podcast listening habits were drying up due to all these minor snags. ADHD thing I'm sure.
Then I remembered AntennaPod and how perfect it was and how happy I was using it. I wanted to export OPML from this other app. It had OPML import but no export of any kind. Shit.
So I imported my subs manually again. And screw me if I ever have to do that again. But I'm happy again and that's what matters. I don't think I'll need to migrate again, I'm glad AntennaPod has nice backup features. (Which I already used to move the app from my tablet to my phone.)
Own your own ebooks. Make sure all devices work with whatever format you need.
Good call on that one, calibre is one of my favorite pieces of software. I, uh, acquire ebooks through creative means and use calibre as both an ebook catalog and format converter to then load them onto my kindle.
I try to support publishers that give you the full ebooks like baen library.
Calibre helped me back up my entire amazon library in a way my kobo can now read instead of just kindle. Both are excellent devices, but I wanted a backlight after 7+ years with the same ebook reader. And I'm not about to purchase all those books aain for the privilege of using the kobo bookstore. Plus Calibre makes it so no matter what you get (pdf/ebook/proprietary format) you can get a good old fashion ebook format for future preservation.
lichess.org is a fantastic online chess platform for players of all skill levels. it's free and---what's more--it's ad-free (unlike the parasitic organisation that's squatting on the chess.com domain).
it has one-on-one on-demand match-ups, tournaments, puzzles, user-published training courses, multiple chess variants, and so much more.
it's one of only two online resources to which i deem donating regularly worthwhile (the other being wikipedia).
do check it out. chess is one really healthy mental habit to inculcate.
It's great! Also for anyone that happens to be in the overlap of people that enjoy chess and go, and want to play go online as well, there's online-go.com.
I don't know that it has all the features that Lichess does, but it does have puzzles, tournaments, custom games, and so on.
cool!! thank youu
I find the dynamics of lichess.org vs chess.com very interesting.
They are similar in terms of features. Both have decent interfaces, puzzles, matchmaking, live viewing boards and broadcasts for tournaments, training programs, etc. But chess.com has ads, and features locked behind subscription paywalls where lichess.org does not. (Everything is free on lichess, except for the little logo next to a user's name to say they have supported the site with donations.)
But on the other hand, chess.com seems to have a higher number pro players; and probably a larger number of players overall.
I think its very interesting to think about why that is the case. Why would more people choose the version that is more expensive, but does not have more features?
I've thought of a few reasons, but I think probably the biggest effect is that chess.com has more money to splash around (because it sells ads, and asks for user subscriptions), and it uses big chunk of this money to advertise itself. eg. by sponsoring players and streamers, offering larger prizes for its own tournaments; etc.
And although I definitely think lichess is better, since it is generously supplying a high-quality product without trying to self-enrich, I do sometimes think maybe what chess.com is doing is ok too: in the sense that it is not only self-enriching, but also supporting the sport itself a bit by paying money to players, events, and commentators. Lichess does this too - but less of it, because they have less money.
(Note that chess.com also does some really crappy stuff, such as censoring any mention of lichess in the chat of their twitch broadcasts. That definitely does not help support the sport.)
Why would more people choose the version that is more expensive, but does not have more features?
It's chess.com. We are the tech-savvy Lemmy weirdos who dig around for alternatives. I'd put my money on people just literally not knowing or thinking to check for an alt.
There's also an ego thing. Lichess starts you off at 1500 elo whereas I think chesscum starts at 1000. So if you're rated 1000 on Lichess you're a lot worse. There's a mentality that the better players are on Chesscum.
this of course isnt true, there's plenty of competition and actually around the 2000-2200 elo level Lichess actually overtakes chesscum. there's also fewer cheaters!
I definitely highly, highly recommend Lichess.
There's also lishogi, if you want to learn that game.
does lemmy have a chess community? I'm so tired of chess reddit. reddit is all Hans Nieman fan boys, because of course they are. I'm so tired of looking for chess conversations and hearing about how white males are oppressed
I'm subbed to anarchychess which is probably the largest chess related community on lemmy I don't even play chess with any regularity :>
It's all shitposts about chess but still pretty amusing nonetheless.
I love how chill and helpful everyone is here.
Not being a dick is free too.
Oh yeah?? That's good to know.
Yeah, I found some cool stuff for audio/music production
Free Office Suite which is excellent for personal use. If you are on mobile Collabora Office if you want an Android/iOS version
I know lemmy is social media for people with a favorite Linux distro so I’m preaching to the choir here, but so much software is free as in speech it is truly wonderful. It’s like the only thing I love about being a millennial
Gonna take this as a jumping off point to mention some software.
Wanna get into video editing? Shotcut's pretty solid in my experience.
Into mind-mapping stuff? You might give Freeplane a look.
Have a drawing tablet & want to use it to take handwritten digital notes? Check out Xournal++.
Cross-platform Notepad++ alternative? Might give CudaText a try.
Could list off more but will leave it at a few for now.
Dang, I wish I knew about Freeplane years ago. Thanks!! I'm also entrenched in Kdenlive but I wonder if Shotcut has a better UI...
An alternative to shotcut is Kdenlive, I'd say try both and use the one you prefer.
I don't have a fave distro because I must back up my PC's stuff first. I plan to try Bazzite, due to issues I've heard that my laptop has with Mint...
Great resource for really well taught contents on an extensive variety of fields
Pretty useful.. when one site fails the other usually work.
what is it
A treasure trove of internet
That is amazing, thanks!
What3words.com and app
Basically the earth has been segragated into 10 foot x 10 foot squares that are easily identified by 3 words, super accurate, easy to tell emergency services. No more need to know lat/long to tell someone where you're at.
I learned about this from a can of ///Fear.Movie.Lions beer from Stone Brewing:
What 3 words pinpoint where this indelible beast was born? The location is printed on the can. There’s a 3m x 3m square in our Richmond, VA brewery with these three words painted on it. What three words? Exactly! For the uninitiated, that's What3Words.
earth has been segragated into 10 foot x 10 foot squares
I think you're inadvertently advertising a cylindrical model of the earth 😁
Ooh like that. Interesting concept. Too bad people can't spell 😅
Not working.
///life.before.death doesn't exist
///journey.before.destination took me a couple miles east of Pittsburgh.
I was expecting Urithiru :<
Totally unusable
Your neighbor's trash. It's stunning what I find and fix, refurbish, repurpose or sell. Had a friend that used to cruise her hood on trash day, her and her husband would load the truck, sell it back to 'em on a Saturday garage sale. 12-14 hours biweekly work, ~$400 every other weekend.
My wife's friends dumpster dive at Walmart, though I question how that's possible. Most big box stores make that impossible. Dunno. In any case, it's wild what these stores chunk out. If Lowe's would let me, I'd haul home a pickup full every week.
People think I'm some sort of TV repair wizard but it's very easy to fix up dumpster TVs if you have a little patience and space. Broken TVs fall into two categories - broken screen or broken board (doesn't turn on, error screens, flickering). Stick to more popular models and when you find a broken screen, take the board and note the model. When you find a broken board of the same model, just swap it. It usually really is that easy. You can work in the opposite direction too and collect good screens waiting for good boards, but that starts to take up a lot of space quick because you're storing whole TVs at that point.
You will also inexplicably find a fully working 55" TV sitting at the dumpster 10% of the time.
My 55" was thrown out by a neighbor, power issues. $8 in eBay capacitors fixed it, but I did something wrong and shorted it while hanging, lost the magic smoke.
Fine. For $60 I got a new board off eBay. Still have a unit in my bedroom waiting to fix.
On that note, never bring back mattresses, anything upholstered, or anything else that has a lot of unsealed cracks/gaps. Way too big a risk of introducing bed bugs into your home.
So many people just dump seemingly nice mattresses/sofas etc. out on the curb. They're obviously not going to label these things as infested with bed bugs for a scavenger's benefit and alert the whole neighborhood to their shame. Do not take these items. It is not worth the potential nightmare you're setting yourself up for.
I have a pro tip for mattresses! Thrown it down in your driveway, take a box knife and strip it to the bare metal springs. Boom! You now have a plant trellis. First try only took me 20 minutes.
Saw a posh resale store that took twin mattress springs, sprayed 'em black, hung vertically and spaced 2' apart over a standing flower bed. Now sure what the plant was but it sure looked cool.
Trying it for the first time this year on the ferns and blackberries on the side of the house. Already have a solid start!
Learn a little docker and start self hosting stuff! Pihole is a great one to start with, but there are lots of other awesome projects out there:
How do I "learn a little docker"? Where do I start?
Check out NetworkChuck's channel on YouTube. He has a bunch of videos on docker and docker compose.
I agree, you can use an old desktop, laptop, or if you don't have something I had good luck with the local university surplus store.
A little late but OpenTaxSolver - free desktop tax software that gives you a printout of tax forms that you can mail in. And it includes a few states too. Way easier than the annoying corporate sites that constantly log you out and charge a fee for every little thing.
Edit: To my non-American friends, you don't need to worry about this
LMMS - free and open source garage band. It's a little weird on how you do a song, but it's pretty great.
Tips: Look at Beats and Baselines Editor and Piano Roll Editor first to probably get you where you want to be.
And if you need some free virtual instruments, Plugins4Free and Vital.
Porn
People that pay for porn on the Internet are like people that pay for WinRAR
Holding the entire "product" together?
Perfect comparison 👌
Well, yeah, if you're lucky enough to find an old magazine in the woods, but that doesn't count, because it's not usually free otherwise.
In most eu countries the law requires businesses that give out food to also allow you to order free tap water. If youre in a city and dont want to spend money on a bottle of water, walk into mcdonalds and ask for free tap water. A lot of european countries also have strict laws about tap water so for example in france unless otherwise indicated with a warning, tap water is always potable.
Not true everywhere, actually never heard of it here (Germany and Austria).
But if you walk into a place and ask for a paper cup of tap water, a lot of workers are willing to give it to you, regardless of the laws.
Vienna has tap water straight from the mountains btw and it tastes amazing. Recommended.
Here in the US, this seems so normal that it didnt even occur to me that this may not be true everywhere else. And not need to be enforced by law.
Arizona has several long-standing laws on the books requiring both public government properties and businesses to provide drinking water without cost or other barrier to access. Businesses can't even charge for the cup.
Common courtesy unfortunately doesn't go far enough, especially when it matters most, so law is required.
Then there's Germany where restaurants charge you 6€ for a jug of tap water.
Yep, can confirm for Portugal.
Yucata - online boardgames, take your turn when you can, no pressure.
Yucata is fine for asynchronous play but if you're looking for live online action
Is the way to go. Just can't start certain premium games yourself but you're fine to join any game that other people start
Well that 2 hours flew by without me realizing it. Thanks! 😆
Oh nice! Finally I can play Backgammon with people (no one IRL ever wants to play)!
There are also Ludo and Parcheesi, which are effectively heavily modified variants of Backgammon for up to 4 players.
Syncthing.
Connect any two devices' folders together wirelessly, from anywhere.
Don't have a server? You don't need one. Every device is an individual node.
Backup? If you do have a server, offload some of your content and keep on rolling, or set scripts to move files by age.
commenting to remind myself about syncthing for when I can look into it later.
very underrated piece of software! its been a total game changer in how i have my computers set up.
also great for some apps too. things like keepass or newsboat (terminal RSS reader) or anything that stores its data in a single file or folder. its really great not having to rely on a connection to a server
Oh wow! Thank you for sharing it! Glad to see there are still useful and free to use utilities available.
To add a couple more FOSS programs, OBS Studio and kdenlive are both really robust video production and editing software.
Hah, I used kdenlive in like 2008 to make a 3 minute clip out of a bunch of pre existing material. It was buggy as hell, and crashed every 5-10 operations. But I just saved a lot and got it done. Glad to see it's still going (and presumably a lot more stable!)
Just used it recently to recut something super simple and it's pretty good. Worth picking up and learning
In Canada, crown land camping and Christmas trees. You can camp on crown land and cut up to 10 cubic metres of wood a year.
Huh... Can I come? Always hated how free camping isn't legal in England. Stealth camping sorta is, if you don't get caught no problem but if you get caught you kinda have to move or you are committing a criminal offence.
Your local city college may or may not offer free classes (in San Francisco, you just need to show proof that you live in the city with some legal status).
Some public transportation is free for certain groups (youth and folks experiencing homelessness can get free passes here).
"First X of the month" at the zoo/a museum/whatever --- lots of venues have free events.
A jog, bike ride, hike --- lots of great stuff outside!
I live in the Philly area. Senior citizens can use SEPTA (buses and commuter trains) for $1 a ride.
I second the biking ... but that shit ain't free. Even used bikes cost some money to buy and maintain, and brand new bicycles are solidly in the "insane" category these days.
Good point --- it is "incrementally free," although I guess if you count tire wear and tear that's not even true.
Public Transport is always free for everybody.
Maybe this is sorta dumb, but meditation is a free way to feel good and spend time, and also a free method of stress relief and to reduce suffering.
It's not free in terms of your time & energy, and it might cost some money to learn, but the best meditation manual I know of is free online, or at least it used to be - it looks like it was locked down on archive.org (where it used to be freely available), but you can still find it on Anna's Archive, and you can probably find it at your local library. Either way, you can learn to meditate for free, that's how I did it.
Running is likewise relatively free (you do generally have to pay for running shoes, and athletic clothing can be expensive, but it's relatively cheap over the lifetime of those items, and it's cheaper than most other activities). A great and accessible way to feel good and stay healthy.
Plug for Medito, which is a free non-profit for guided meditations. Not sure if the apps are open-source but still, they're a good organization in stark contrast to the many other meditation companies that are very much for-profit.
Kanopy - a website where you can stream movies and TV shows, which is free if you have a library card.
And Hoopla Digital! They each have some things that the other one doesn't.
The cats and dogs out in the street are free. You can just bring a friend home. /hj
/hj = hand job?
I've like never seen this abbreviation used any other way 🧐
HUEHUEHUE please do NOT give stray cats and dogs handjobs.
But as the other poster said -- It means "half joking"
I believe it's "half joking".
Hugs
Not free as in freedom, but gratis. Also only works for people who are on Discord - FreeStuff Bot will notify you every time a game on one of the popular PC platforms is available for free.
KDE Connect. its an app that lets you share lots of different things between your devices, and it does this over your home network without needing any "cloud"
RIP kimcartoon, I spent half my life there. WCO has been a good replacement, but the lack of comments makes it feel too sterile.
This is a great thread!
Not foss, but PortSwigger Burp Community
I know its a major security tool widely used but it bugs me it's not open sourced
Bugs me, too. I only use it when I absolutely have to. But it is free.
Me
MIT has; https://ocw.mit.edu/
CBC Gem, which is our country's public news corporation's streaming service which is a catalog of Canadian television. There's also CBC Music which is the radio app, and you can even listen to the live streams of the Metropolitan Opera on Saturdays.
Free as in FMHY
Thank you dear sire! I was finally able to find a good source of the anime Heidi
Cleaning after yourself before you leave the property as a tenant.
you're gunna charge for it anyway, parasite. might as well help you get a actual day's work in once in a while.
Landlords have guaranteed that tenants won't bother to clean the place up by establishing the precedent over many years that they won't refund your deposit no matter how spotless you leave the property. Everyone knows it and after getting screwed enough times, tenants are incentivized to leave a mess as an act of defiance.
Emmie. Please. Get help. Arguing with strangers on the internet for no reason isnt cool. It wont make your children love you. Please seek therapy.
We are all concerned for your wellbeing.
Are you tired? You sound tired, don't you think you need a lie down?
Honestly maybe I need a little vacation, thank you for a reminder ☺️
Can't you basically deduct anythign from the deposit? I used to tell them it will cost more than the deposit to clean up and they immediately hire some cleaning service and get it cleaned and of course you still return only 50% even after that because there are something which they cant clean completely