This seems pretty important to crowdsource and talk about, so I’m gonna go ahead and risk violating the no politics rule from a few days ago, because I don’t see a better community to ask this. My defense for it not “being politics” is, I’m asking you to keep it to purchasing decisions and how the details of how the tariffs are likely to work, as opposed to who did what. This thread has the potential to save people lots of money if it gets big!
Tariffs are gonna make things more expensive for Americans; what are you planning on buying now instead of later, or stockpiling a little of?
My personal desktop machine is a Linux box I assembled from $500 worth of parts about 14 years ago. I’ve increased RAM and added about 8TB of storage for an Emby instance.
It still manages to get the job done, but it is obviously way, way, WAY overdue for replacement. We’ve been struggling financially for about 25 years.
Now I’m thinking I need to finally pull the trigger and get it done before January.
Absolutely. Not because of Trump directly but because of Taiwan. China now has a card blanche basically.
Carte blanche, i.e. blank check. Just sharing in case that wasn’t a typo
Yeah, it was… autocorrect
Sorry to bother, autocorrect is dire these days isn’t it?
The easy way to save is to buy used. You can usually buy a super high spec one for 500 to 800 USD used. I think I spent 600 for mine with a 3070 (from hardwareswap, about 1k or so in parts)
Yep. Two weeks ago I was thinking I’d wait through at least one more gen of CPUs and GPUs before upgrading–I’ve got a 6700XT which works great, but everything else is basically 2012-era tech. Now I’m getting ready to pull the trigger on replacing basically everything but the GPU as soon as tomorrow. If the country is going to implode I may as well have some extra pretty distractions.
IMO there’s little need to buy new in the computer world unless you want to do something silly like have a snapdragon x laptop or have the disposable funds to go the gaming rig route.
My desktop is a retired business workstation, a HP Z420. I bought it for $250, installed a smaller SSD ($100 new) for the OS + apps, upgeaded to the “best” Xenon that fit the socket ($150 used), upgraded to 64 GB RAM ($107 used, yay ECC memory being dirt cheap on the used market), and a 1070TI ($225 used, purchased just before covid).
It’s more than fast enough for my needs still.
This was all about 4-5 years ago, so you could probably do even better with more modern hardware.
Fill up your pantry. Focus on grains which are labor intensive.
Once the deportations camps get rolling expect all the grocery prices to rise again. Having a full pantry will let you float for a while so you can adapt to newer recipes in your price range.
Yup, started focusing on that this week myself, just buying extra rice, pasta, canned goods at least until the election.
If you are willing to grind your own grain, whole grains can be stored in plastic buckets for years without spoiling. You’ve probably got to like whole grain stuff, sifting to get white flour is a pain.
I’m a federal employee and my wife’s a teacher so I’m trying to figure out how to very carefully and cautiously hide a PS5 Pro in the drywall and convince her I got a new controller for the Switch
Seems like a healthy relationship.
Wut
It’s called sarcasm. We aren’t buying stuff because obvious reasons, and if we did we’d have to hide it for obvious reasons
I’ve got a big pile of lumber I had milled that is almost finished drying. I’m buying up the remaining woodworking tools I need to process it into various items. The American made options are out of my price range.
Tools are a good idea. Probably should follow your lead on that…
Canadian grocery prices have increased something like 20% since 2019. At this point I think we’re all buying less, eating less, and making sure we waste less.
It’s only going to get worse here.
Americans could stand to lose some weight.
I don’t believe in such consumption unless it is warrant by some sort of real need.
ie, if you use the product over years and you know you will need it going forward, sure stock pile. but maintaining a stock pile has its own cost.
Also, using what you got until is fail is a valid strategy too for durable goods, most people don’t do this. We as society literally throwing money away.
I think one things anyone who has excess should be doing is buying US treasury bills or money markets, it seems people some people are still keeping their cash at boomer banks who won’t give you good rate unless you shop around etc.
While threat of tariffs is real, I doubt federal government will start fucking peasants outright in already inflationary environment.
US is food and energy sufficient. Them targeting china made plastic trash sold on Temu and Shein is or a domestic retailers really too, should be fucked tariffed the fuck out. You don’t need this plastic slop, sorry, not sorry.
Plus US can make all of these products home anyway, since some of these products do have strategic role within society. No joke, when Biden did his state aid package shit like trash bag manufacturing was covered. So US provided free money to corpo parasites to build or expand factories for this. While I don’t support state aid usage, at least this state aid result in more national security and pandemic resilience along with jobs for some peasants in more rural areas.
Oh my…
Where are you from?
Been archiving a lot of my favourite shows. I expect a lot of them to either disappear in ten years, or sit behind some subscription.
This is probably a different discussion, but anybody with tips, tricks, and details of where and how to do this safely, this might not be a bad place to show off what you know.
join us in [email protected]
How much does the setup cost? assuming I’m already self hosting and have some disk space.
VPN and a seed box?
Yes, you definitely need a good VPN service. I use Proton VPN and it works great. I don’t use a seed box or anything like that. I just see stuff right out of my media library that I keep on several external hard drives. So pretty low cost of entry and then you’re not paying any of the subscription costs for streaming or cable or any of that nonsense. Plus there’s movies they’re software there’s music there’s audiobooks there’s e-books. It’s a cornucopia my friend.
Can anyone recommend some stable general purpose instances that federate with dbzer0? I believe lemmy.world defederated, as the link doesn’t work for me. I had a kbin account, but that seems to be dead, and I’d like to minimize the number of accounts I have to use to access things.
Also [email protected]
Step 1. Get a VPN. Probably a paid one that aligns with the needs of the client. Step 2. Get an app for p2p/torrent downloads to make things fast. Step 3. Configure your app of choice to strictly use the tun0 (VPN) only and nothing else. Just in case you get a lapse. Step 4. Do it like it’s 2008 again baby!
Use mullvad. Pay with a fresh crypto wallet. And use Usenet.
most crypto is useless and practically a scam, it’s a rabbit hole in itself to find a worthy one. paying for vpn with crypto only helps if you use an untraceable crypto
if I would recommend one, it’s Monero, because it’s private by default and untracable, but nobody should believe me without doing their own research. I mean it.
“Crypto” is such a vague term it’s almost comical to imply it’s private. Sure there are ways to use crypto privately, but it takes a lot of steps.
Grab a VPN
I’ve definitely moved plans to build a storage NAS and some smaller custom home automation electronic devices up to start before December.
Yep. Me too. Looking to reconfigure my home storage setup
A portable SSD. I need a new external hard drive anyway, so adding that November sales have reduced prices currently and that announced tariffs are designed to raise them very soon, there really is no better logical time for me to get one other than now.
A pixel to load grapheneOS on.
Other than that, I need to save as much of my money as humanly possible.
you dropped this 👑, king.
Pixel gang! ♥️😎
In a paycheck or two! Till then, S22u
My big thing is a new TV. We have a 46” LCD from 2009 that often refuses to fully power on. I’ve been dragging my feet on replacing it, just cuz I know the research is gonna be demoralizing, with how dystopian a lot of the “smart TVs” are. But now there’s some real time pressure, so I guess I have to.
Coincidentally, I was already planning on upgrading my personal dev machine (to an M4 Mac Mini) and my retro handheld (to a Retroid Pocket 5), as well as my first dip into XR glasses with the Viture Pro. So I’m kinda ahead of the game there.
I’ve been (im)patiently waiting for the next version of the Orange Pi 800, but if tariffs hit before then I’ll probably just skip it. Analogue 3D is also likely to exit my wish list.
I’ll probably move up the timeline on adding storage to my home server if I can afford to. And some microSD cards, since I seem to always need yet another one.
I’ve got a few friends who were looking at upgrading their PCs this year, so I’ll probably be helping them shop and seal the deal before things get weird.
I wouldn’t expect many outrageous Cyber Monday deals this year. Most mfgs probably wanna stretch their inventory so they can delay price increases and stay competitive. That said, there’s also bound to be companies that are poised to strike early because they have already de-China-fied their supply chains. But even they are bound to be cautious.
Tap for spoiler
Also, imo, this is why a “no politics” rule is dumb. Policy ends up changing people’s lives, and dealing with a change in your life — especially one that others are also experiencing — is a big reason why people post on communities like this. “Superficial shit only” is a fine strategy for a massive site that can stand to prune meaningful user engagement for the sake of keeping things family-friendly for advertisers, but since Lemmy is not Reddit, wtf are we doing?
Just don’t connect the Smart TV to the internet.
My big thing is a new TV. We have a 46” LCD from 2009 that often refuses to fully power on. I’ve been dragging my feet on replacing it, just cuz I know the research is gonna be demoralizing, with how dystopian a lot of the “smart TVs” are. But now there’s some real time pressure, so I guess I have to.
check out commercial “pro” TVs. these are typically used for digital signage. they’re usually more expensive, but have a longer warranty time plus, no smarts! I bought the Samsung BE55T-H from Amazon. I think it came with a 3 year mfg warranty and I got the 3 year Amazon warranty that kicks in after mfg runs out.
I mostly use it as a monitor, but it has HDMI and DTV as well. I’m not a picky viewer so keep that in mind, even if it’s not pixel perfect 4k, it’s good enough for my uses.
5700x3d and a to be determined gpu
Tariffs on semi conductors? Any evidence to support this?
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do we have a list of categorizes subject to tariffs?
i have doubts big tech will let trump to impose tariffs tariffs unless they are stopping to building data center infrastructure which i don’t think is accurate or tariffs will only be imposed on consumer grade equipment?
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?
Food, but not primarily for cost savings as most regular used things things don’t last longer than a year, which cost wise won’t bridge the gap.
55 lbs of 00 flour in the chest freezer, still have about 25lbs of AP flour in there. 1 30lb bag of Jasmine Rice, 1 25 lb basmati. I still have a ton of beans and and dry pasts in mylar/oxy absorb sitting in barens cans for long term storage. When covid started, I had 1 million calories in storage. I don’t plan to go back to that, but I intend to be able to hunker down for a long time.
For work, I’m pushing to purchase more laptops before tariffs.
I’ve considered stowing fuel with a stabilizer but even if prices double on fuel, I don’t use enough of it to make a difference.
It would be a good time to buy any lithium ion batteries and finish off those ali-express/temu orders.
55 lbs of 00 flour in the chest freezer, still have about 25lbs of AP flour in there
Mmhmm, 12ga and xm855 “flour,” got it.
One doesn’t need to panic buy items that they keep in stock at sufficient levels. :)
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US produces sufficient amount of food to be self sufficient, ie fast majority of foods is made within US for US consumption… i doubt any base food will be affected anyway, that’s not what tariff policy is about here.
While US is self sufficient in fuel, US pays global market rate. But again, we are getting hit with tariffs here either.
As I said, not for cost saving, but more for not needing to go out when people start panicking, or being stupid
A large percentage of US manufacturing is food processing. Manufacturing has been struggling to fill open roles for years,1 and as a low-skilled job with tons of openings lots of migrants, both citizens and not work in manufacturing since the pay & benefits are hard to beat for not requiring any degrees. Its a similar situation with farm work. If the Trump administration actually performs significant deportations and cancellations of visas like he promised, food availability will be affected as farms and food producers struggle to keep up with demand
1 Here’s the JOLTS data showing as much as 200k unfilled manufacturing jobs. I can’t easily directly link my query, but here’s a screenshot of the data with enough info to replicate my query
Again… owners need cheap labour US in migration policy aint changing no matter what trump said… we already had him and nothing changed.
Manufacturing jobs actually pay pretty well. Like I said, it’s hard to beat the pay and benefits of working in manufacturing if you don’t have a degree.
The reason they struggle to fill these roles is because most people don’t want to work in industrial facilities working physically taxing jobs, often at odd hours filling second or third shifts and risking that the facility doesn’t sufficiently value safety leading to a serious injury or death
Noting like a job where your shitty boss’ cost cutting gets you killed by heavy equipment! Wonder why they can’t find anyone?
Yeah, but that just means that the cost of processing food is going to skyrocket. Whole chicken costs will go down while chicken wing costs will go up.
I can also see states leaning on their prison populations to supply some forced labor.
I’m in the process of buying land to homestead on. Solar, rain water, green house, etc. my goal is to be as self sufficient as I can be.
godspeed
Unfortunately plane tickets out of the country are already up.
Jk, mostly.
You’ll pay a premium for a flight on a Boeing plane, ironic
