For me, it’s an electric toothbrush. It doesn’t matter if you go with Sonicare or Oral-B, once you start using an electric toothbrush, regular toothbrushes don’t ever feel like they clean your teeth properly. The smooth plaque-free top layer of your teeth that you can feel after using an electric toothbrush can’t be replicated with a regular toothbrush.
20 computers. I can’t stop getting more computers I need help there’s so many computers they’re in every room and they’re computing aaaaaaaa
You certainly won’t regret buying 20 computers.
I mean, they’re not 40 cakes or anything!
I had this same disorder. I cured it temporarily by giving them away to everyone I know. Christmas, birthdays, Thanksgiving, everyone’s getting a computer, doesn’t matter if you already have one.
They’re starting to pile up again though and now I don’t know what to do because all my friends and family won’t talk to me because I keep giving them computers.
Go to church parking lots in early summer and put them in people’s back seats, you will have to take some zucchini out to make room though.
Wait, when did I leave this comment?
Someone I know (who isn’t close to me geographically) said their laptop just broke and now they only have their phone… I wish I could get to them. I have like six computers waiting to be used for stuff, the rest of them I’m playing with/learning with!
Oh I have this problem too hahah
a magic wand vibrator. truly next level stuff
Oh I am sure it gets you on the next level!
A bidet. Hands down the best $35 I’ve ever spent
Does a bicycle count? Changed my life.
As a Dutch person I would assume everyone already owns at least one bicycle.
_At least _ one.
Thermal printer. I play a lot of tabletop rpgs and wargames and it helps having the ability to print out handouts without worrying about how much ink I have left!
There’s actually a pretty cool community sort of tangentially related to this! !buyitforlife@slrpnk.net
Anyway, my pick is definitely just a GOOD mp3 player. Whether that be an open hardware one you can crack open and repair, a proprietary one that can at least be Rockboxed, or bare minimum a proprietary one with a good iFixit rating.
What’s the advantage over a smartphone?
- Better quality DAC
- Don’t have to drain my phone’s battery
- My music collection is big enough to fill my phone’s storage, and they don’t come with SD card slots anymore
- Smaller and lighter than a phone
- Definitely will last way longer and is easier to
- My phone doesn’t have a 3.5mm jack 😭
That’s everything I can think of right now
well yeah. But most phones w/o a 3.5 mm jack don’t have an integrated DAC anyways, so the choice is up to you.
But the storage and the fact that it’s all in a light weight bundle, that’s indepedent of your phone is pretty convincing.
I remember having on, back in the day, that ran on a single AAA battery for a week an was marginally larger than one of these. Unfortunately I tinkered with trying to run it on an external power supply when I knew to little about electronics and ran a few too may Volts through it. Otherwise this thing would probably still work fine. I kinda never looked back since was content enough with my phone for listening to music. But I do have fond meories of those things, and I miss the 3.5 mm jack on my most recent phone, maybe I should reconsider…
Maybe so! If you do pick one up, you’ll have to tell us how it goes, I’m curious
I guess it’s not for everybody, but for my specific context it’s pretty great. I think if I did have a phone with expandable storage, a 3.5mm jack, and still had an unlockable bootloader I could run Graphene/Lineage/Postmarket/etc on, it could probably replace the music player easily enough. I’d probably still end up eating a lot more battery that way though
Durability I imagine. My 10+ year old MP3 players still work fine. My phones from 5 years ago don’t.
For me, the primary benefit is that it’s NOT my smartphone. Music is a separate, intentional thing, divorced from the pocket distraction machine. YMMV.
Also wondering this, VLC can run so many formats too
- Warm white christmas lights. Diffuse lighting is so much better.
- Induction cooktops. Because gas cooktops are toxic both inside and outside the home.
I found gas struggles to do low temps too, minimum power in the smallest ring is still too hot for rice unless you want to keep stirring it. Induction I just get it to a boil then leave it on low and it won’t burn without stirring and leave it for 15 mins.
Second the warm white Christmas lights.
They can quickly make a depressing apartment feel like a warm home.
I still suggest a plug-in induction burner, because they have temperature and autooff timer.
Honestly, my favorite purchase of the past years is the Steamdeck. Can take it to work, play in my lunch break. Can take it on trips, play in the plane or train. Also got a dock at home, where I play coop games with my kid. So I guess if you are a gamer not playing any not supported games (there aren’t that many), go for it.
I bought a used one and it gave me the confidence I needed to move over to Linux. I tried Pop os and wasn’t really feeling it, and now I’m on Mint and I’m mostly happy. I want to build a desktop and do cachy os instead of getting a PS6.
Steam deck is an impressive little thing, but it’s not quite powerful enough for what I’d like to do with it. I would trade the portability for more power. But a handheld PS4 is absolutely nothing to sneeze at!
Any coop game recommendation?
Untitled Goose Game is definitely a blast. Pizza Possum is just crazy fun. Moving out is also great.
We just started playing KeyWe, seems short but so far pretty fun too.
To play with a kid? Untitled Goose Game, Lovers in a Dangerous Space Time, River City Girls.
I was going to say the same thing. I regret waiting so long to buy one. Between that and Bazzite I never play my consoles anymore.
I am currently in the process of making an arcade cabinet for my Steam Deck! I bought it for my wife, but she basically stopped gaming for now. So, I decided to turn it into an arcade cabinet instead. Love that thing
Instant read digital thermometer.
Game changing.
No more over-cooked meats and ending up with tough chicken and rubbery fish. No guesswork if something has reached safe internal temperature. A must have in the kitchen.
Robot vacuum. My floors are spotless except for some areas you’d never walk on and I only need to do some spot cleaning every month or two.
Dishwashers are awesome too, watch Technology Connections’ video on YouTube if you think your dishwasher doesn’t do a good job. It’s likely just how you’re using it. Priming the hot water before running, using powder detergent instead of liquid or packs (booo), and using the pre-wash and rinse aid will have even the gnarliest dishes coming out spotless.
I was so excited when first got a roomba 5 or 6 years ago, but that faded so fast after it turned into an endless stream of notifications that it was caught under furniture, stuck on a cliff (the edge of a rug), full of dirt, couldn’t find its base, or trapped under a maze of dining room table legs.
I love the idea, but man that was $500 wasted. I’m sure they are better now, but I cant bring myself to buy another one.
Later gen w/ lidar has way better mapping and avoidance. I am 100% satisfied with my roborock.
Love my robot vacuum! As someone who works 12+ hours a day, it’s such a life saver. We have had our Roborock for 4 years now and it has 0 issues. Any issues I had were easy fixed by just opening the thing up and cleaning inside.
Absolutely love watching Technology Connections. Dude improved my dishwasher game by 400%
My first roborock met the fate of dog poop and an idiotic husband who thought he could just hose it 🙃 my second one is doing great.
Second husband, presumably.
While I did get a divorce, it was not over there vacuum 🤣 we’re still besties just not in love
My Roborock actually also went through doggy diarrhea, but I was able to open it up completely and clean it up with a lot of rubbing alcohol and paper towels. Never had an issue with it again
When I cleaned it I also had no issues. He wasn’t as smart about it lol.
If you’re in car land, a good solid jump pack.
I recommend Napa .
Mine is also a portable compressor, a flashlight, and it’ll charge your phone. And it’s way more powerful than jumping off of a small car battery using cables.
Those are great !!
I had a combo unit that was all of that, AND a car jack!! It was VERY slow and there’s no way I’d go near a car using it as a Jack, but as an absolute emergency it was useful
Electronic countertop scale for the kitchen. Start cooking by mass rather than trying to decide if that’s a half a cup packed or unpacked.
If you regularly store things in jars, a canning funnel. So much easier to pour sauces into jars without spillage.
Bone conduction headphones. Listen to music or talk on the phone hands-free while still leaving your ears open to what’s going on around you.
If you’ve got sore muscles, a percussive massage gun. It looks like a horse vibrator, but it does wonders on a sore back.
A warhammer. Don’t get a sword unless you are actually trained and know how to use and maintain it. A warhammer isn’t going to get bent, chipped, or rusty, and even if it does, it’s still a warhammer and will still smash things just fine. Don’t smash melons or coconuts unless you’re prepared for the biological mess that will get left behind; smash blocks of ice frozen inside of old yogurt tubs instead. Wear goggles.
A smartwatch or band. You’ll never have to hear notification or ring tones on your phone anymore. In addition, sleep, heart rate monitoring, sports tracking etc. are a big bonus. Cheapest bands are very affordable and obviously there’s no upper limit if you’re a wealthy pig.
Even though I love my old square G-Shock, the pros of wearing my Garmin Vivoactive over it just outweigh the cons.
My Garmin goes with me everywhere. I would recommend a Garmin to everyone. As someone with ADHD who forgets to charge their electronics, having a watch that only needs to be charged once in 8-10 days is absolutely amazing.
Not cheap, but a robotic vacuum. It’s a life saver with a shedding dog.
I’ve been thinking about getting one lately, any suggestions?
This is our third one. I would look for one that can be serviced, is self emptying and has mapping technology.
Electric kettle. Fast at boiling water, especially if your stove heats slowly. Great for things like tea or instant noodles/lunches.
This is quite a strange comment to see as there isn’t a single house in the UK that doesn’t have an electric kettle in it.
Over here, you’ll find a pot of water on the stove more common. Our regular outlets are 120v, but our stoves are typically 240v. A water kettle here would be about half as fast as our stoves (generally speaking). Over there, yeah, with 240 being the standard, a kettle makes a lot of sense.
At least here in Finland a decent amout of stoves are 400v. Still, even at 120 a kettle is faster than an electroc stove. An induction stove is a different story
400 is crazy for residential service! That actually sounds awesome.
Even with 120v the kettle is still faster. Pot on the stove has a wild amount of waste heat. Perhaps excepting an induction stovetop.
Australia also. It’s like owning knives and forks. It’s a basic necessity
Are we both thinking the same kind of kettle or is it British/American English different? What I’m talking about is a pitcher with an electric heating unit in the bottom?
Yeah that’s the one. Literally every household.
I think they would be more popular in the US if they worked as quickly here. I have one, but it takes about 4 minutes to heat 2 cups to boiling. It’s still worth it to me, but it’s not much faster than the stovetop for us. There’s something about the electric service in the UK that allows electric kettles to heat much faster there.
240V vs 120V. For an equivalent amount of current, 240V supplies twice the amount of power to the heating element.
Is no one going to post the Technology Connections video???
Okay, then
Also https://youtu.be/RpoXFk-ixZc
And maybe channeling electro boom: https://youtu.be/INZybkX8tLI
Not a fan of microplastics or extra unnecessary gadgetry…
Seems like silly waste to be the next lemming without any substantial difference to the age old system of boiling water, same with rice cookers.
Unless I don’t hav a stovetop they’re basically not needed, a waste of money and another point of plastic contamination.
They come in glass or metal aswell, rice cookers always have an aluminium basket, the lid might be plastic and rubber but those parts are usually not mechanically strained. The microplastic argument seems weird here
I don’t see how that it’s weird but to each their own. Every plastic and/or polymer based product sheds/leeches microplastics, especially heated or constant usage.
Aluminum is hardly better and health wise causes other harms and contaminants in the body.
Glass, stainless, cast iron is gtg…plastic and aluminum not so much.
Whats wrong with aluminium, like 80 of the earth’s surface is basically some aluminium oxid
Iirc there was something about aluminium in deodorant sprays a while ago that turned out to be not that bad, but what’s wrong with solid sheets of the stuff?
Not arguing, but I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a plastic one. Mine has a plastic lid, but the inside is still sheet metal. I can’t even imagine one with plastic parts that aren’t just cosmetic. Plus they’ve got to adhere to some kind of safety regulations lest they be penalized by some federal agency. 🤔
Most (though not all) in the UK since at least the 90s are plastic except for the heating element and electronics, microplastic concerns aside they’re considered more efficient since it’s a better insulator. Regardless of material every home has one I can tell you that.
They heat efficiently rather than transfer through the stove and the pot, etc. And so fast.
i was always totally with you on the rice cooker, then i got a tiny one from aldi for my partner who doesnt cook much. now i use it all the time. haha
I can confirm, pretty much every UK household has one of those, they’re just one of those things you have in the kitchen.
I think this must be an American thing, because I have actually never known anyone who doesn’t own an electric kettle. It’s just so much more efficient!
