Ask Lemmy @lemmy.world cll7793 @lemmy.world 6mo ago

What free things online should everyone take advantage of?

What free resources do you know on the internet that everyone should use?

Potential Category Ideas

FOSS Software
Quality of Life
Public Services
Other List of Lists
Personal Finance
Github Awesome Repositories
Firefox Addons
Free Research/Books
Piracy Sites & Lists
Real Life Resources

Links and Resources

66 comments

A library card and library resources such as Libby
- Also kanopy.com lets you make a free account with a library card or university login, and you can watch movies for free.
  
  Hoopla is similar option used by some library systems.
- Having fun isn't hard, when you've got a library card.
- is this an american thing?
  
  Not sure. May be worth checking if your library system or government has licensed/uses Libby or some other such system for digital lending/licensing
If you're in the US, you can sign up for Informed Delivery with USPS so you know when to expect incoming important mail. This can help if mail theft is common in your area.
- UPS and FedEx also allow you to sign up for similar alerts based on your address so you don't have to necessarily rely on tracking numbers for everything.
- It also helps if you are too lazy to bundle up to go outside to check when it’s cold as nuts, but are waiting for something specific. 😁
  
  And if you just never check your mail (I get almost exclusively junk mail, so I check it every week or two. All my bills are autopay, and all communications are paperless when possible).
You can always take advantage of me.

I'm free and online.
Open Library allows you to digitally borrow a ton of books for free. It's not the greatest experience since the books they own are scanned and not digital copies, but it's good enough, and their catalogue is not half bad.
- Why would you need to borrow and return in this scenario?
  
  Just legality. These are paid books that they can't give away for free, but acting as a library they can let you borrow them, read them, and "return" them.
  
  In practice you'll rarely feel this system because you can just re-borrow it whenever you want to read it.
If piracy counts: Piracy.
- In the words of Ubisoft we need to feel "comfortable with not owning your game". If buying is not owning then piracy is not stealing.
  
  Got any recommended resources for piracy sites/lists?
  
  i've been told these are the ones to stay far awy from ;)
  
  https://fmhy.net/videopiracyguide/
  
  https://rentry.co/megathread
MIT Open Courseware

https://ocw.mit.edu/
https://fmhy.pages.dev/

basically this thread, already filled out. Free media, heck yeah.
Free Covid tests if you live in the US.

https://www.covid.gov/tools-and-resources/resources/tests
- I just ran out and needed more. Thank you for reminding me of this!
  
  That is awesome! This is why Lemmy is the best social media site. Thanks @[email protected] for the resource!
https://www.khanacademy.org/

Anyone can learn anything. For free. Education is a human right. We are a nonprofit because we believe in a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. Instead of ads or subscriptions, we are supported by individual contributions from people like you. Please join us today.
- Are you the original Khan?
  
  The vertical line next to the text means it's a quote
All the piracy and freemediaheckyeah subs

Archive.org
Free tier cloud services like AWS, GCP, Oracle Cloud, and Azure. I use free tier VMs to host random services like VPNs, Mastodon instance, etc.

Tailscale has a free tier to connect your devices, VMs, and home servers.

GitHub pages is great for hosting any simple website for free.
- Free tier VMs are limited, so are you just signing up for new AWS accounts once a month?
  
  GCP compute engine is completely free for the basic tier.
  
  AWS & Azure don't offer free VMs but they offer other always free cloud services. I use Oracle Cloud's Always Free VMs which are great. You can get two AMD-based compute VMs and one Arm-based compute VM with 24GB of RAM. I've been using them for nearly 2 years now. GCP also has a more basic always free VM offering.
- Don't forget about cloudflare. With their free caching and cdn a well optimized site can run for barely anything. With GitHub actions and pages you can have a fully static site hosted completely for free.
Just shared this earlier but under certain conditions (in the US), you can actually file taxes for free.

https://apps.irs.gov/app/freeFile/browse-all-offers/
- Freetaxusa does this too, you only pay for state as far as I know.
  
  Been using that my entire adult life. Fuck turbo tax.
  
  It's completely free if you live in a state with no income tax
https://github.com/auctors/free-lunch

Found this a whole ago.
- Any similar ones for Mac?
Internet Archive - Very useful for general usage internet but not for specific needs (check fmhy).

Have I Been Pwned? - Periodically use this to check whether your email/online presence is compromised or not.

Bitwarden (or if you want to self-host it use Vaultwarden) - Personally I used this password management so I can keep my pass and you can auto generate passwords with custom parameters if needed.

Curated OSINT resources - You want to ID someone online? this resources can help you to do so, though you also need to understand the basics. It may not work if person you're looking for does not have a much online presence.
For ebooks versions of books that are no longer under copyright: project gutenberg.

https://www.gutenberg.org/

And similarly for audiobooks: Librivox. It's a website and is also available as an app.

https://librivox.org/
- Many of the ebooks available on Project Gutenberg are a little rough. I recommend Standard eBooks instead.
  
  That's a nice find, thank you :)
MOOCs.

They're free unless you want a "certificate", which has no practical value and is mostly useful if you want to motivate yourself a bit more and want to support their business model.

Go browse Coursera and edX and learn to your heart's content.

Also, if you're coding, watch recordings of conferences about your programming language, e.g. CppCon/C++Now/CppNorth for C++, PyCon/PyData for Python etc...
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/special/index
https://baby-journal.app if you have kids and value privacy (disclaimer: I've written the app).

Edit: It's an app for tracking your baby activities, like feeding, sleeping, diaper changes etc. Fully end-to-end encrypted and fully open source and self-hostable, installable on both iOS and Android.
- What's this do? There's no explanation or screenshots or anything.
  
  Added a description.
- "Try my app because I wrote it"?
  
  No, use the app if you value privacy and don't want companies to sell data about your kids just so they can give you better ads.
  
  But you do you, for all I care, people twisting other people's words are not really someone whose opinion I care about.
If you’re not a fan of your current email provider, I’ve created one that automatically organizes your email and helps prevent spam and phishing:

https://port87.com
Awhile ago, a user on r/casualuk posted a list of UK based stuff that was either free or cheap (food/entertainment/etc). They mirrored it in a few places and I bookmarked the github mirror. Doesn't look like it's been updated for a year or so though and I ain't prepared to head to reddit to check the original.
- I just checked the Reddit thread and the OP took it down in protest of Reddit's API changes.
  
  Ah OK. Glad I bookmarked the mirror then.
The colourblindness simulator.
yt-dlp for downloading video/audio from a number of sites, not just YouTube.

Screw YT Premium.
Internet is beautiful communities and subreddit mirror on lemmy.
Also, if you want to get in shape:

Couch to 5K: https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/exercise/running-and-aerobic-exercises/get-running-with-couch-to-5k/

the "8 Minute" guy: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSkOCul_mRMIVCSy0f3tqQoauOzKRsMWe
This free software and media helps a lot: http://perthfreeculture.org/
Any torrent site ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ
If women want free penis pictures and rape threats they can visit any 'incel' community and state "I am a woman" then sit back and wait.

I do not recommend this.

66 comments