Ask HN: What software do you pay for personally? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What software do you pay for personally?

14 pointsleerob45 comments

- Spotify

- NordVPN

- 1Password

- iCloud Storage

- Netflix

View on HN

In order of happiness/perceived value for the money:

Bvckup2 (https://bvckup2.com/)

Houdini Indie

Redshift3D

Spotify

Windows 10

Jetbrains Complete Pack

Steam games (almost universally when discounted during sales)

Netflix

Adobe Creative Cloud

I suppose it isn't Jetbrains' fault I've switched to native vim, otherwise their suite is fantastic value.

The Jetbrains pack is amazing value; however the quality of PyCharm has dipped lately...

Mind pontificating on what is so amazing about the backup software? Doesn't seem to come with any cloud storage and seems to do basically what rsync does.

With pleasure: It's basically rsync or robocopy for Windows, but wrapped up in a nice GUI with additional features.

I've used both and still use rsync on a daily basis, and one thing I don't miss is meticulously sifting through command line syntax in order to ensure all my data isn't accidentally destroyed.

More to the point, the amazing part is the ethos and quality to which Bvckup2 is built. It's one of those rare gems that's essentially software excellence. It's fast, it's lean, it's very narrow in scope, and it has a mirror-shine polish. Software like that is a thing of beauty these days.

It's made my backup situation on Windows an absolute pleasure to deal with, so that's why I recommend it.

NordVPN is a data mining fraud, that is inadequately aggressively advertised from every corner, that owns many websites with VPN rankings, that lies about being in Panama, that decreases your privacy much by retaining logs. The only valid reason to use it would be to avoid geo-blocking. If you use NordVPN for any other reason (such as, for privacy), you have been fooled, unfortunately. If you find this comment helpful, help others by informing them.

Besides that, try to read some writes about why you should not to use any VPN services. It's easy to find promotional articles of various VPN providers about how they enhance your privacy, but instead try to look for arguments against. Only if you live in an very oppressive country and trust someone without name your exit point more, than your ISP (not sarcasm), or if you want to bypass geo-blocking, it makes sense to use VPN providers. Otherwise, you are harming your privacy and paying for an overpriced service to someone who does nothing but resells bandwidth and studies your traffic.

A little confused about what you're trying to say: Is NordVPN not a trust worthy VPN provider, or is VPN technology itself not trust worthy at all?

I'm confused about this too. I don't use a VPN, have been wanting to purchase a subscription to one for sometime but I haven't been sure which to get since I don't trust any of those rating sites.

It's wise of you not to trust the ratings. Practically all VPN provider rating websites give those score based purely of their affiliate fees [0]. I would recommend not to purchase any subscriptions. This whole "VPN for privacy" thing more and more looks like a meme created by the industry of useless entities that resell bandwidth. It's a very profitable industry because they do nothing but receive money, they don't protect you legally either; those who lie about their no-logs policy, without hesitation give your data away to the law enforcement agencies.

[0] http://vpnscam.com/is-purevpn-legit-proof-that-purevpn-bough...

I meant that using some paid VPN for privacy is not recommended because in most cases it doesn't improve privacy, only costs money. Obviously, there is nothing wrong with connecting to your own VPN server at home when you are away, in order to access your local network, or if you want want to browse Internet through your home ISP instead of your mobile ISP.

Now, if using paid VPN providers is just a useless advice, possibly partially spread by the VPN industry, using NordVPN is very harmful because it seems to be one of the least trustworthy VPN providers because of their close connections with the data mining industry. NordVPN seems to be the №1 because of their immense advertisement spendings that bury the controversy.

Very, very little. If I do pay for anything, it's because I may choose to help a particular developer rather than actually having to.

Everything necessary is free. I write some software and that allows me to donate back to the community in return.

In order of importance to me:

  - Spotify
  - Cloud VMs for hobby projects
  - Fastmail
  - KGS Go Client for Android
  - JetBrains IDEs
  - Windows 10 (bundled with Surface Go)
  - Desktop productivity utilities from time to time
  - Games that I support but hardly ever play
  - Netflix (I think about cancelling all the time)

Edit: I forgot about how I get one (Gran Turismo) or two (usually DLC) games for each PlayStation but then don't buy any more games.

Useful:

- Crashplan for Small Business (unlimited backups)

- Kerish Doctor (affordable Windows maintenance that works)

- a German email provider that I use since the 90s

- Netflix

Not really needed, but they were on sale and almost free anyway:

- several cheap & insecure VPNs for watching geographically locked content

- a not very well-known anti-virus

For fun / entertainment:

- lots and lots of games - I barely ever play them

- lots and lots of VST audio plugins I don't really need

> Kerish Doctor

Ouch... This looks like a classic snake oil optimizer, straight out of the late 90s.

Works perfectly fine. It's one of the few I would recommend.

1Password is my only software subscription, and over the years I've bought the paid versions of a couple of Android apps that I get a kick out of.

I have online subscriptions to a couple of newspapers too, which I suppose I should count if other people are counting Netflix.

* as donation to KDE (100€/year) * occasional steam game (native Linux only)

Spotify (music)

Sync (cloud storage)

Adobe Creative Cloud

I'm currently looking for privacy focused personal email suggestions if anyone has one. Protonmail looks promising

Main downside of Protonmail is you can search email contents or use normal email clients without adapter software. I know its not encrypted but I like Fastmail.

typo fix: *can't search email contents

Mailfence.

What is so great about 1Password? Why do you not use open source alternatives like e.g. keepassXC?

Furthermore: https://support.1password.com/pbkdf2/

Isn't PBKDF2 outdated in 2019? I thought today you should use scrypt or Argon2?

1. UX 2. Family sharing of passwords [1]

[1] https://1password.com/families/

SublimeText 3. pCloud.

In the past I paid for Spotify and Netflix.

And as an Steam user, more games than I remember.

Domains (no choice)

Google One (free 6 months from Local Guide, after that yearly)

Nova Launcher app

Texpander Pro app

- 1Password

- Ulysses

- iCloud storage

- BetterTouchTool (Single purchase but best software purchase of my life)

- Office365 - Sublime Text - Designer tools - Video editors

I have never in my life paid for software

I find that hard to believe.

there is a lot of free open source ware and shareware was a big thing, never paid for windows its always been on a system prior to my gleaning it from the crappile. It is very easy to not pay for software and remain non criminal if you eschew the chronic redirections and upgrades that are not functionally neccesary but make money for someone. Hardware is another thing. Ive rarely paid for hardware, and definately not full retail price.

The thing is a lot of commercial wares are full of features that are not needed, or are composites of "more primative" features

You must be fun at parties

thanx

BTW always check any cd drives that come into your possesion, there are often disks left in them. undeleting files from a hardrive or thumbdrive is another source of free-for-you stuff.

I'd be curious to read a list of all the free software you use.

first off not all is free for everyone, it is aquired for nothing. WIndows has been taken out as i dont need it anymore, ive gone full linux with wine and never went back

linux mint libre office vlc masm32 various browsers

these are my every day carrys, but the GNU FOSS ecosystem has everything i need and most of what i want, other than that i roll my own.

And how do you watch movies and listen to music?

VLC

I meant to ask where you get your music and movies. Do you pay for them?

nope, libraries are cool, so is the arxiv. there are also a lot of abandonded items about, i mentioned earlier, that old CDdrives and disc players often have a disc in them. and radio stations are just fine, espescially if you stock up on some of the late night airings

Photoshop SmugMug

- Windows

- Netflix

- Spotify

Fastmail

1Password

Dropbox

Mullvad VPN

FastMail

1Password

iCloud Storage

Netflix, Spotify

NYTimes, Apple News +, local newspaper

Backup software

Linode, AWS

Onivim 2 (Patron)

V language (Patron because curious)

Paste 2

Spotify

iCloud

PS+

PS games

Steam games

good songs on Bandcamp

- LinqPad

- Paint dot net

-Spotify

-Amazon Prime

-Smithsonian Channel

-Plex

-Pandora

-Bitwarden

-iCloud Storage

-Nest

-Digital Ocean

-GSuite

-ForeFlight

-A few flight training MOOCs.

-Notion

-Mailbutler

-Termius

-NYT & WSJ

-Audible

Reply on news.ycombinator.com