Anybody know of anything else that would be quite wise to purchase sooner than later, due to potential (or incoming) regulation that would be regarded as privacy-infringing to enforce? I was thinking about this because I’ve been pondering a high-quality 3D printer purchase for this reason.
Advice for varying levels of budget would be quite nice, too; I partially intend on this being a post people may want to revisit.
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With the way inflation is going, nearly everything is better bought now rather than later. Especially appreciating assets.
Dash cam.
I say as I have yet to replace my broke one for the last 6 months… thanks for the reminder lol
vasectomies
You serious? Why? Being genuine.
You must be new to earth
It used to be covered in plant life, the water, land, and air was filled with life. It was awesome… then 8 billion humans
Bidet, it’s like 1000 times better and you can worry less about Costco shortages.
Agree. Italians are the biggest users and use less paper … :-)
You don’t dry all that water off your ass?
set up a towel rotation
The better models come with dryers.
The bidets in Japan are on a different level.
Turns out that twerking does have benefits
Well, use goes from like a 10-15 square use without bidet to a consistent 3-4. Square consumption is the same from Taco Bell Tuesday to fiber Friday. You’re never going to punch a finger through trying to get yourself clean and you never need to worry about smells. A $45 dollar accessory has never punched above its weight class so well before, imo.
You certainly don’t want to use TP on your dripping wet asshole. Hand towels work best
I can’t tell if you’re serious because it’s super late where I am right now, but this is just lowkey good advice in general. Bidets rule lol
Came here to say the same. I bought my first pre pandemic. When the pandemic came I was so grateful lol.
I know it’s like a meme, but every time I have to go without a bidet I feel like a Neanderthal. I’m like kinda close to sneaking one onto the work toilet once I’m keyholder.
Before you buy anything make sure you research it first. Start buying things that you own the infustructure for. Don’t buy a 3d printer that doesn’t support Linux, or buy a 3d printer that won’t be effected by the 3d printing laws that try to stop gun parts from being printed.
That logic should apply to everything. If you are buying a IP camera make sure to get one that does PoE and doesn’t connect and ping hone to a server before sending you your data. Don’t buy a WiFi garage door opener unless you installed the ZigBee switch yourself. You should aim to be able to do everything yourself without needing subscription models or useless internet of things devices.
Things you likely want now before they get further ruined:
A google pixel phone to flash and de google.
A car before ~2013 that you plan on learning how yo repair when it breaks down.
A AMD based PC with a a 16gig GPU. Thats like the absolute lowest end you can use LLM’s and defuision models locally that don’t completely suck ass. And if you’re not much of a gamer or desktop user you can turn this PC into a server and run your own services in docker so you reduce your dependency on apps.
I just bought a 1972 tractor to work my vegetable garden. I’ve already learnt to service it, i’ve changed the clutch (took me 3 months on and off … its bloddy 4 tonne gear). Just to say that the future is sbout diy. Government control, robotics and inflation all force you to rethink your life model and that of your family. Invest in a small piece of land and become self sufficient. Its hard work but its life changing.
A tractor is still something on my list I want. I think I’d only ever be able to afford a old one like yourself and I imagine the relationship with the tractor to be adversarial at all times. Never use it until you need it and then you have to fight with it to work.
But huge satisfaction comes when it does work.
Anything worth while takes effort
Thanks for the somewhat lengthy reply! Makes sense. On the topic of AI…
I’m not fond of LLM and diffusion* technology right now because of where training data came from. However, machine learning is cool. I’d like to be able to run AI compute loads for things like security camera image detection and the like. Do you know of (I know what I’m asking here lol…) any feasible way to buy capable hardware for a somewhat less inflated price? I’ll buy things I must disassemble to save a buck. Local hardware for machine learning applications is something I’ve wanted for a while but keep waiting to pull the trigger on because of how fast progress is these days.
You want to look into frigate, and you don’t need much of a graphics card. You could use a old gaming PC with a gtx 1060 from 10 years ago.
There’s cameras with tensor cores in them too. I only played around with the pi ai camera but frigate uses the same yolo models. so you can have your server process the image detection or the server’s GPU.
It doesn’t take as much as you think. Its when you want to generate content that its important you need lots of vram or cram the entire model into context.
I am the biggest ai hater I know but local models, and old school ai technologies before LLMs are pretty cool.
What the hell does a WiFi garage door opener have to do with ZigBee. Two completely different technologies there.
I meant more or less don’t buy a WiFi garage door opener that sends data off to your servers install a ZigBee switch yourself.
I do not care to reread my long over opinionated posts they’re full of spelling and grammatical errors.
your mom
Fuck fuck fuck fuck dude shut up nuh uh stop it
Nah, she’s on permanent special offer.
AI and age verification free Linux Distro Installers.
Mullvad VPN let’s you buy 10 years in advance IIRC. So if the government bans VPN’s (but Sweden doesn’t) you might still be able to use them for a decade.
I don’t see how this helps anything
Not if they start using DPI and block VPN protocols. VPNs that use OpenVPN, Wireguard and other non-censorship-resistant protocols (including Mullvad) don’t work in China, Iran or Russia.
Mullvad and other mainstream VPN providers only work in free countries where VPN is allowed.
So what does work in those countries?
Protocols that mimic regular https traffic in a way that survives DPI. There are many variants like vless+reality+vision, naiveproxy, etc. It’s still cat-and-mouse game since government’s DPI systems are constantly improving.
Interesting. What would you recommend though, and how would you recommend searching for these services?
Just on the off chance that north america could become like the aforementioned countries.
You can self host xray or sing-box server (which implement many of the protocols) on a cheap vps. A lot of documentation is not great and is either in Chinese or Russian but it’s doable. There are also paid services offering vless with various degrees of reliability and sketchiness.
Of course the real challenge when living in an authoritarian country is how to pay for it. I.e.you need to buy a vps abroad. I guess it will be easier in USA then in countries under sanctions or with internal restrictions where people generally can’t use Visa or PayPal.
I’m actually wondering the same thing. I had the thought of buying a ridiculous amount of VPN time quite some time ago but ultimately decided against it for the reasons listed.
Mullvad had some anti-censorship option last I checked. Don’t remember what exactly it does, but it had some sort of option.
https://mullvad.net/en/help/connecting-to-mullvad-vpn-from-restrictive-locations
This is what I can find on their website. Last updated April 22, 2026.
Seems like Russia is mostly blocked and China is fully blocked.
This guide lists different settings and methods to connect to Mullvad VPN from networks and countries where connecting to a VPN is difficult. This includes countries such as China, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan.
But Russia, China, and Iran are listed here. So maybe works? I’m confused
It is a legitimate arms race. Things are changing weekly, you gotta understand what you’re doing and why and take other steps to connect to stuff sometimes.
Nothing you can buy can save you if a law is passed prohibiting it. They’ll outlaw possession/usage too.
People should start protesting today instead of waiting for things to get worse.
I break a lot of laws already. I dont mind breaking more of them.
Say it again friend.
You are absolutely correct about the second part. But the first? Ehh… out of sight out of mind, lol
Maybe flashable routers, phones, SBCs, noise generators if you’re an activist? Sorry if I’m not being concrete enough.
We should also consider tariffs and general inflation, which work (intentionally or not) to deprive people of “privacy-friendly” tech (along with everything else really). This is essential, knowing that basically most tech hardware comes from China, and we’ve seen how the govt can just say “uh actually this will be X bucks more expensive” without explicitly banning it, especially in the US and Europe
Any recs for flashable routers? I’m about to try and build my own but if cheaper pre-built options will suffice I’d love to save a buck. I’m not exactly raking in dough.
Honestly I have no idea, sorry. I never really took a personal interest, being a broke student sharing apartments and all
You might have luck asking in other coms though
That’s fine, don’t apologize. I am right there with you in the monetary department…
Thankfully I now have a job, good luck to you! 🫡
Thanks! o7
I have some GL. iNet routers and I like them a lot. Comes preinstalled with their flavor of OpenWRT but you can flash it to the standard image too. And they’re affordable (at least when I bought in last year they were)
You can’t consume your way out of this
Nobody can, dw, I’m aware. I certainly don’t like spending money personally. Just making sure I can obtain things that’ll be a PITA to get later on, y’know?
I know your hearts in the right place but this thread is worthless.
What will be useful or necessary to one person will be a waste to another. Without understanding what each persons needs are nothing even approaching good advice can come out of the question.
The availability of stuff and the regulatory frameworks that stuff and its users exist under are super variable. The thread staying up for longer than a week means it’s gonna be outdated advice that amounts to consumption churn.
Plus it’s a really bad format to be asking in because the upvote/downvote system means that old outdated input will have the most votes and therefore rise to the top and be what people see and act on.
Even if all that weren’t true, the general quality of the responses on lemmy as judged by a combination of replies and downvotes is dogshit. There’s a front page thread where someone says we should just get rid of blackrock and the reply explaining that their etfs are widely held by retirement funds and getting rid of that company would have serious knock on effects for the average person has a 1:30 ratio and someone directly replying saying “you have lots of downvotes so you’re wrong”.
You would be literally better off making purchasing decisions by flipping a coin.
I actually respectfully disagree! I think that if someone is to make any significant purchase in their life, they should take the time and do some research about what’s viable in the current moment. Having a thread like this already indexed and everything is important for people to start looking for things they might want to own sooner than later; hell that’s literally why Reddit is so popular.
I do agree, though, that some replies on Lemmy are simply complete ass. However, if you take everyone’s words as the absolute truth, you may not be ready to participate in forums, so I don’t think this is a big issue.
I agree with you that some understanding can be helpful (I actually 100% disagree and at the moment people should just rely on the input of people they physically pay for their experience and expertise but that’s neither here nor there. The thread is predicated on the assumption that a person can become informed enough to make a good decision so undermining the premise isnt helpful to people who already accept it. I’m basically in future perfect tense damage control.), but the thread can’t meet that need.
Like I said and you agreed, the replies are ass. If a person knows so little they will buy something on the input of a public Internet forum with awful reply quality then how can you reasonably expect them to sus out the wheat from the chaff?
There’s a person in this thread suggesting people buy voron 3d printers. Those are good printers but you need a 123 block and a surface plate to put one together right and it’s ~$700 for the kit. To what end? That’s an absurd suggestion for even a person who’s interested in 3d printing or who has dipped their toes in already.
Someone said guns and ammunition. Which guns and what ammunition? There’s a wild variation in laws, availability and best buying practices from county to county and that doesn’t even touch on accessories and use cases.
I could probably rip into every reply making an actual suggestion itt because without useful background information they are all just no context suggestions to panic buy.
The point isn’t to make you feel bad but to make it clear that this is really just an undirected consumptive message akin to what the bush administration said explicitly to the American people after 9/11.
Where you’re coming from actually makes a ton of sense. My intention with posting this was to get a starting point to see what would be wise to buy now that would actually apply to my personal life, with which I would actually be sensible about purchases for. I have hobbies that benefit greatly from tools like 3D printers and mechanical tools, as well as a sizeable interest in self-sufficiency (with the physical space to practice this!), so I figured mass opinions might point out something I’m missing.
I did some research into what Voron sells, and yeah, that’s not a committment I can dip my toes into right now even if I have the means (couple 123 blocks and don’t mind getting other things) nor is it something I’d ever recommend to someone dissimilar. I really shouldn’t assume people will behave the same as I, 'specially on the internet. Sorry if anyone saw this and thought I was encouraging panic buying! I’m just future conscious and like to be prepared when it comes to what I find pleasure in doing.
Hardware wallet
Guns and ammunition
Physical media and ways of accessing it (usb disc drive for example)
Older laptops and vehicles if you’re in the market
Absolutely. Old cars until they ban them because of CC.
This matches my experience exactly.
Though a double edged sword, an electric vehicle ic it exists where it doesn’t rely on the manufacturer connectivity. Being able go plug in and charge and get wherever is better than relying on fuel.
