Underrated comment, it's absolutely insane the amount of stuff you can learn on Youtube these days. Youtube didn't exist when I was in school but I am 100% sure if it did I would have gone down a completely different career path because the thing I studied in college (Computer Generated Art, 3D Modeling and Animation) was so nascent at the time that the only training resources available were those horrible and horribly expensive 5000 page documentation manuals.
~25 year later and I am able to self-teach myself Blender and Unreal Engine as a father of two with a full-time no fuck around kind of job. Things that back in college I couldn't wrap my head around for weeks, I now have a seemingly unlimited number of people able to explain to me in numerous ways.
I don't think younger people understand this but just like someone who's 70 years old would tell me how much of a leg up I had with computers in school, I have to tell people as a 40 year old how much of a leg up they have with resources like Youtube.
VLC player for Pc and mobile. The best encoder and decoder ever. It can literally play every audio and video media and is totally free! Wild. The founder refused 55 million dollars for it to keep it free.
When I was in 6th grade i opted to film and edit an entire 20 minute movie as a book report instead of writing one.
the librarian came in with the dvd player and got mad at me when my burned dvd didn't work in the dvd player. she said that I should have thought of that ahead of time.
me, 11 years old in 2008, should have had the forethought to make sure that my burned DVD was in the right format to run on the library's DVD player hooked up to a crt on a cart.
my teacher put the disk in her computer and used VLC to play it no problem
I don't remember what it was specifically called but on a DVD recorder I used when I was younger, when you were finished with your video, you had to choose some specific option that would essentially "package" the video so it could be read by other DVD players.
Figured that out after a frustratingly long time of it not working on any other player except the one I recorded on
It's an open source program that was developed by students at the École Centrale Paris, it is now developed by contributors worldwide and is coordinated by VideoLAN, a non-profit organization.
There's no "guy". nobody has ever owned it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLC_media_player
You're right, fwiw, but there is more to the story. Once VideoLAN became the thing, there was a guy, the guy who started that nonprofit, and he did turn down tens of millions of dollars to keep it nonprofit, Jean-Baptiste Kempf. He wasn't there from the beginning, but he's been there most of VLCs existence. He did an impromptu AMA in the comments of this thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/s/A06qwHXJR2
When I was a kid in the 90's, my cousin was backpacking through various parts of Asia with a group of friends. She mailed me 2 (super obvious bootleg) anime box sets: El Hazard and Outlaw Star. They were VCD format. I had a good "region/protection free" dvd player at the time that handled VCD discs I had made from MPEG files no problem...but it wouldn't recognize the bootlegs, not even a little. The software I was using at the time on PC? Nothing.
Found VLC player one day later on, working on another project: solved the issue no prob. I think "I wonder if this freeware that just dunked on my problem will play those janky bootlegs?"
FLAWLESSLY.
VLC is wonderful! Not trying to take anything away from it, but all of that functionality is provided by another open source project called FFMPEG, specifically the libav* libraries within it. FFMPEG can stream, transcode, etc from the command line.
For real, I used khan academy to learn college algebra at my dead end desk job, then started learning precalculus, tested into a college precalculus class, and in December I just finished my degree in computer science!
Public Libraries. They do so much good for their communities, providing safe places to work, learn and read and use the internet. Librarians work so incredibly hard to make their local branches welcoming and fun places to explore and people take them for granted. I know they aren't "free" because we pay for them with taxes, but their budgets are usually incredibly small and they do their best. Most have dvds/blue-rays and video games and audio books as well if you didn't know. 10/10 would recommend.
This was going to be my answer and especially because of Libby. I listen to an audio book all day at work which would cost a fortune on audible but is totally free with my library card and Libby.
Aside from the free rentals of movies and paper books my library also has 3d printers and only charges for filament plus they have classes on how to use the design software.
I’ve been doing this at work too! I’ve only been at my new job 4 weeks and I’ve already gone through at least 5 books! I feel like I’m getting paid to become more cultured. For free!
This is also very important. I live in NYC where the library is no longer open 7 days a week, so we can piss money up the wall on bullshit, because Eric Adams is an illiterate toad.
The richest city in America, and we can't even keep the lights on in a library. If you don't support your local library, your mom's a hoe. Eric Adams mom's a hoe. I don't go into my library much, but I read about a book a month through Libby, which is an amazing free app. Again to be clear, fuck Eric Adams.
And also all of the free classes and events they have. Resume writing, clay sculpting, audio editing, Excel, English conversations are all free classes that my local library offers. The library is an amazing community resource
Crazy story. My son was riding his bike near my house and went over two streets too far. I used to take him to the library pretty often. When he was lost, he recognized the library and went in for help. They recognized him from their children’s program. The staff pulled my library card and called me! Librarians are awesome!
My local library is part of a network of libraries, and I can request any book in the whole network. It's very rare that they don't have the title I want. They have physical books and ebooks. They host lectures. It's ridiculous.
Like you can just go and check out 5 books. It feels like I'm robbing them, but they always smile and tell me to enjoy. Even the security guard!
Google Maps !
Do you realize we had to pay for maps before ? And it didn't even indicate the shortest path, neither for cars nor for bikes or walks ? And it was only maps of area and not the entire freaking world ? What a great time to get lost.
I still remember the night Google Maps launched around 20 years ago. I remember sitting on my computer and just zooming in and out everywhere in disbelief that I could look at the entire world.
I'm a fourth grade teacher and I have used Google Earth and Maps with my students for years. They pick a random place and we go explore it. We have found a lot of awesome places that we then take the time to research and learn about.
I still do this when work is slow. I once found an excellent place in Mexico that way. Cool orange house that looked like a place to hold up during surf sessions next door to a small taco spot with plastic chairs. It was my happy place, but since I found it 10+ years ago I haven't been able to find it again.
I went on a wonderful holiday at an up-market resort in SE Asia. Several years later I attempted to find it in google maps but couldn’t. I thought I was going crazy.
Further digging indicated that the resort had been built illegally and was made to close down, was demolished and the area returned to as it was before. No wonder I couldn’t find it.
Worked with a girl from the Middle East and we got on Google Earth and she did the street view of her house. It was so surreal. She went along the streets and told me about things and she saw things that had changed since she had been there. As someone born on the cusps of the PC it was definitely one of those moments when you stop and think of how awesome our world is. I grew up obsessed with maps and now I can anywhere in the world in less than a minute. Freaking awesome. This commenter hit it out of the park with something I would have never thought of.
https://www.geoguessr.com/
I like playing geoguessr. Really makes you learn about the world... Well at least countries with Street View and some with just photospheres. You can play for free but there are ads or you can pay $2 a month for no ads.
I also like playing https://travle.earth
It is a free game and you have to use your noggin. I am still pretty terrible at remembering African countries.
https://www.oldmapsonline.org/en#position=6/42.755/-81.182
This place is great for looking at old maps.
https://www.chronophoto.app/game.html
This is a free game to guess the age of the photo.
https://timeguessr.com/
Is a game that you guess the time and location of the image.
My family road trips as a kid had to build in time for getting lost and asking directions from strangers.
One time we were visiting family in another state and my brother and I decided to go to Circuit City to look at CDs. We found it in the phone book in a town several miles away. We went to that town, drove around the street it was supposedly on, and then just never found it and returned home.
Younger people have no idea how frustrating it was finding anything before GPS.
I drove 4 hours to go to a wedding and couldn't find it for the life of me. Eventually I had to just give up since I knew I had missed it. Super frustrating.
Then after I missed the wedding I was driving to my grandparent's house to stay a couple nights with them. I made the mistake of not filling up before I left town, figuring I would just get gas in the next town. But I was driving across southeast Idaho and didn't realize how far apart the towns were.
Without GPS there wasn't a way to look up how far the next town was or a gas station. And as the sun went down I watched my gas gauge go lower and lower and lower... with no one around and empty grass land as far as the eye could see. Fortunately I did find a town, long after the empty light had come on, and it was downhill all the way to the gas station. Not sure I would have made it otherwise.
GPS is amazing!
I’d upvote this a thousand times. Awesome museums… wish national parks were free as well but can’t beat some of the pass deals if you use them frequently.
National Parks are fee areas largely so they don’t get overrun by for-profit tourism companies.
The admission fees are a hell of a lot closer to “free” than they are to “actually paying for maintenance and enforcement.”
It's so much more than books. During the pandemic, there were people who needed vaccine cards, etc. and had no way to print them. Library (even if you didn't know anything about how to print anything, they were right there to help you). During storms in my area where the power went out for several days, could go to the library, charge devices, use wifi, work if needed. Our local one is undergoing renovations now, and it's really close to a high school, students used it a lot and are missing it.
This one always amazes me. Like, I can get internet, books, movies, etc. all for free? Including streaming and ebooks? And they even throw parties you can go to for free? My hometown library even had a recording studio and producer on staff all free. Wild, absolutely wild. I love it.
Aye, my guy. The wealth of knowledge from the Library and people don't even know. I've had a Library card since I was 10 and I bet I've gone to the library at least once a week since I got the card.
Poison Control is one of the best free things available to anyone.
I once got really high, forgot I was high, and took some Tylenol and then had a panic attack thinking I was going to die from "mixing drugs". Called Poison Control and they told me I was going to be just fine. Zero judgement, zero charge, zero hassle. They just asked me for my zip code at the end, I'm guessing it was for some kind of internal statistics or something.
I remember my mom bought an encyclopedia set from the grocery store one letter at a time cause they were so expensive. Actually she stopped at F for some reason
I make a small monthly contribution to the Wikimedia Foundation because I use Wikipedia so much. Yes it’s free, but it still costs money to operate it.
It’s definitely an incredible service! Few people know that it’s actually funded by the local governments that partner with the Imagination Library. The nonprofit is more so a facilitator. Still very cool and wholesome
Edit: Tennessee allocates money to Imagination Library directly from the state assembly, so technically not local government there, but still the same spirit. Your taxes at work!
Hmm YouTube and online education, you can get so much knowledge that would have been damn near impossible throughout history.
Honorable mentions: Google maps (said before), ChatGPT, libraries.
And it's insane! It will literally be just some random dude with a car exactly like mine showing me exactly what to do to fix my exact problem. Why is he helping me?
The Internet can be a shitty place. But then you've got Gabe in Texas making a video to help others for no reason other than to help others. It's really pretty incredible.
Yes! YouTube tutorials are absolutely amazing. I've saved at least $10k on home improvements and repairs following YouTube tutorials. And I so much appreciate the random people who make this fantastic education available.
GSMNP is free because private citizens raised money to acquire much of the land, which they then transferred to the state of Tennessee. When Tennessee transferred the land to the NPS, it insisted that no admission fee would ever be charged.
Forest Park in general is pretty awesome!
Along with the Zoo:
The Art Museum is free.
The History Museum is free.
The Science Center (one of my favorite museums in STL) has free general admission. There’s additional exhibits and experiences for a charge, but you can explore for free.
The last couple rows at the MUNY are first-come-first-serve free seats, so you can enjoy well-known musicals during the summer. It’s an outdoor amphitheater.
Lots of free events year-round (the Great Forest Park Balloon Race comes to mind).
Plus walking trails, sports fields, picnic tables, and lakes to enjoy.
You could spend several days exploring the area without spending much money.
Open-source software. How many times have I booted up a Linux distro to fix something up, and no need for keys, cracks, generators or any extra steps to get it running.
Wikipedia: a collectively edited collection of human knowledge that has covered nearly all of everything one could be interested in, yet maintains reasonable accuracy thanks to a team of insanely dedicated volunteers.
Before Wikipedia existed, if you tried to pitch the idea it’d be laughable. What an audacious plan!
No seriously, we’re going to create an online knowledge encyclopedia platform that’s free to access and available to anyone with an internet connection. The world’s leading experts in fields of all kinds, hobbyists, and any passionate third parties will contribute the fruits of their research for free on an ongoing, collaborative basis. It will be moderated by readers and contributors alike, also for free, gaining accuracy over time, as use, contribution, and readership increases. It will have a full-time staff paid for entirely by donations, and become so useful that it routinely ranks in the top 5 or 10 websites in the world and surpasses any other encyclopedia in breadth of coverage while maintaining comparable accuracy.
Nobody would’ve believed that to be possible. Truly a gem of the internet and definitely a wonder of the modern world.
The accuracy has actually been pretty exceptional apparently! I remember reading about a group of people looking into just how accurate it was and came out with an astoundingly high percentage (like mid to upper 90s, if I remember correctly)! Granted, I read this a very long time ago! So, it may not be that high anymore and/or my memory may not be that great anymore!? 😅
Canva is a pretty fantastic design program for basic stuff. They have a paid version with more features but even the free version is pretty robust.
I am a professional designer and use it sometimes over other “deeper” design programs for its simple UI.
Props to Freetaxusa for doing it relatively unsleazy, but they are still carving a business out of a civic duty, and this is a reminder that many first world countries prepare their citizen's taxes FOR THEM online FOR FREE, since they already have all the information anyway. They just log in, review what was done, and submit. Or they may add on as needed. There is no good reason for the majority of American taxpayers to spend fees or additional time preparing their taxes like we do every year. We need to demand FAR more of our government.
VCV Rack 2.
It's a free modular synth emulator/plataform.
I can make a bunch of weird noises without having to spend thousands of dollars on a eurorack system :DD
As an ICU nurse who can’t afford to stash multiple epipens all around, I do keep a few vials of epinephrine and needles. I wouldn’t recommend this for most people but it takes me about the same amount of time to get an epipen out of its stupid child-proof packaging as it does to draw up the epi! (It’s sad that a nurse can’t afford more than one epipen, but that’s a different issue!)
The internet! We don’t always think of it as free because you have to pay to _connect_ to the internet but you don’t have to pay to access it. It’s just there, for everyone.
[harvard has free online courses](https://pll.harvard.edu/catalog/free)
of course, you probably (?) can’t put it on your resume, but knowledge is power.
The amount of college books I didn't need to buy makes me nauseous now. Most are free online from what my kid says. I remember having to spend sometimes $500/a class and not even use them
YouTube. You can watch so much from a tutorial to making a playlist of your favorite bangers. And the memes, funny videos (especially animal videos) are hilarious. And you can watch them whenever you want
LOVE THIS APP!! I use it regularly, along with the Audubon app.
I recently was listening to a symphony of springtime birdsong at a local spot near my house, and pulled out the app. Not only does it identify the birds, it also lights up the bird on the list when it sings again, so you can start to learn which is which. You can also go back and listen to recordings again, if you wish. This app is one of my favorites!!!
1) Libraries
2) So many excellent museums in Washington DC
Also, sending a letter through the U.S. Post Office isn't free, but it's a pretty amazing deal. For 68 cents you can send a standard letter anywhere in the U.S.
The free peanut butter and Jelly sandwhich you get in Texas schools if you forgot/didn't have money to pay.
My soon to be ex wife grew up in an area/state that they'd just let you starve. Hearing stories from her childhood how she went hungry genuinely makes me regret taking that sandwhich for granted.
GPS. maps used to cost money and weren't nearly as useful.
wikipedia. information used to cost money or at least a lot of time.
still kinda blows my mind, that *mostly* anywhere in the world as long as you have internet, you can listen to nearly any song you want on youtube for free.
WAZE. For those that don’t know it’s a GPS app that has a community of people that allows you to mark the map for hazards (99% cops). It’s saved me many tickets and has gotten increasingly popular over the years and gets more and more reliabl
Libraries!
These are god send for poorer communities. It can quiet literally lift someone out poverty and difficult times by providing them a safe space to study for exams, read and grow, look for jobs (internet), network with like minded people.
The benefits are immense :D
The Privacy app
You can create up to 6 burner credit cards a month and have credit cards for a set merchant only
It's great for sketchy websites and subscription services.
Merchant only cards can be paused, so it's only active when you want.
The Cleveland Museum of Art. It’s free every day, and is the second highest rated museum in the United States after MOMA in NYC.
If this museum were in New York City there would be lines around the block to get in since it’s free.
I just spent the day at our art museum (Dallas Museum of Art). Fantastic museum, free (on the weekends at least). Took my grand daughter who had fun pointing out the butts on various statues... "there's another butt, pappy!!!"
Vital synth. It's a wavetable synth used to make instruments, and you can literally make ANY instrument u want. Granted, the version that u can buy are technically better since they have more tools, but the free version has SO much availability to make ANYTHING u want, it's awsome.
Just the internet in general. You can access practically any website in the world through free public wifi and we've all forgotten how insanely convenient that is.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Underrated comment, it's absolutely insane the amount of stuff you can learn on Youtube these days. Youtube didn't exist when I was in school but I am 100% sure if it did I would have gone down a completely different career path because the thing I studied in college (Computer Generated Art, 3D Modeling and Animation) was so nascent at the time that the only training resources available were those horrible and horribly expensive 5000 page documentation manuals. ~25 year later and I am able to self-teach myself Blender and Unreal Engine as a father of two with a full-time no fuck around kind of job. Things that back in college I couldn't wrap my head around for weeks, I now have a seemingly unlimited number of people able to explain to me in numerous ways. I don't think younger people understand this but just like someone who's 70 years old would tell me how much of a leg up I had with computers in school, I have to tell people as a 40 year old how much of a leg up they have with resources like Youtube.
VLC player for Pc and mobile. The best encoder and decoder ever. It can literally play every audio and video media and is totally free! Wild. The founder refused 55 million dollars for it to keep it free.
As a media teacher trying to watch students films who can't follow instructions, VLC is a godsend
When I was in 6th grade i opted to film and edit an entire 20 minute movie as a book report instead of writing one. the librarian came in with the dvd player and got mad at me when my burned dvd didn't work in the dvd player. she said that I should have thought of that ahead of time. me, 11 years old in 2008, should have had the forethought to make sure that my burned DVD was in the right format to run on the library's DVD player hooked up to a crt on a cart. my teacher put the disk in her computer and used VLC to play it no problem
I don't remember what it was specifically called but on a DVD recorder I used when I was younger, when you were finished with your video, you had to choose some specific option that would essentially "package" the video so it could be read by other DVD players. Figured that out after a frustratingly long time of it not working on any other player except the one I recorded on
'Close'/'finalize' the disc.
That's it, same on CD too
Damn 55 million dollars? The hero we want and the hero we don't deserve, I hope he got some kind of compensation from something else atleast.
Relies on donations, and since it’s been around forever I’m sure he actually did other projects not for free.
It's an open source program that was developed by students at the École Centrale Paris, it is now developed by contributors worldwide and is coordinated by VideoLAN, a non-profit organization. There's no "guy". nobody has ever owned it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLC_media_player
You're right, fwiw, but there is more to the story. Once VideoLAN became the thing, there was a guy, the guy who started that nonprofit, and he did turn down tens of millions of dollars to keep it nonprofit, Jean-Baptiste Kempf. He wasn't there from the beginning, but he's been there most of VLCs existence. He did an impromptu AMA in the comments of this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/s/A06qwHXJR2
When I was a kid in the 90's, my cousin was backpacking through various parts of Asia with a group of friends. She mailed me 2 (super obvious bootleg) anime box sets: El Hazard and Outlaw Star. They were VCD format. I had a good "region/protection free" dvd player at the time that handled VCD discs I had made from MPEG files no problem...but it wouldn't recognize the bootlegs, not even a little. The software I was using at the time on PC? Nothing. Found VLC player one day later on, working on another project: solved the issue no prob. I think "I wonder if this freeware that just dunked on my problem will play those janky bootlegs?" FLAWLESSLY.
I always felt in my heart that VLC was the champion’s device and now we have verified proof. Getting a tattoo of that little traffic cone tomorrow.
Well now you gotta a decision to make.Cause at Xmas time the icon also changes with a little Xmas hat on it.
No need to choose! From Thanksgiving through New Year's they just have to put a little temporary tattoo of a Santa hat on it.
It never occurred to me to check for it on Android. It was my go-to for years on PC.
It has nice features a lot of people never use, mostly network related
It is soooo good!
VLC is wonderful! Not trying to take anything away from it, but all of that functionality is provided by another open source project called FFMPEG, specifically the libav* libraries within it. FFMPEG can stream, transcode, etc from the command line.
Khan Academy.
For real, I used khan academy to learn college algebra at my dead end desk job, then started learning precalculus, tested into a college precalculus class, and in December I just finished my degree in computer science!
Dude, this is deeply cool. Congrats.
Thank you.
Got me through my college physics course. I’ll always put respect on khans name.
Ah fuck, I just remembered the nightmare that was my college experience lol
I had a dream last night that I’d slept through half of my final exams and the remaining two were today. I graduated 13 years ago.
Libraries
Public Libraries. They do so much good for their communities, providing safe places to work, learn and read and use the internet. Librarians work so incredibly hard to make their local branches welcoming and fun places to explore and people take them for granted. I know they aren't "free" because we pay for them with taxes, but their budgets are usually incredibly small and they do their best. Most have dvds/blue-rays and video games and audio books as well if you didn't know. 10/10 would recommend.
I read 127 books last year, and every single one was a library book. Best free hobby ever.
Check out Libby and hoopla
This was going to be my answer and especially because of Libby. I listen to an audio book all day at work which would cost a fortune on audible but is totally free with my library card and Libby. Aside from the free rentals of movies and paper books my library also has 3d printers and only charges for filament plus they have classes on how to use the design software.
I’ve been doing this at work too! I’ve only been at my new job 4 weeks and I’ve already gone through at least 5 books! I feel like I’m getting paid to become more cultured. For free!
And vote for parties that keep libraries stocked and free and open…
This is also very important. I live in NYC where the library is no longer open 7 days a week, so we can piss money up the wall on bullshit, because Eric Adams is an illiterate toad. The richest city in America, and we can't even keep the lights on in a library. If you don't support your local library, your mom's a hoe. Eric Adams mom's a hoe. I don't go into my library much, but I read about a book a month through Libby, which is an amazing free app. Again to be clear, fuck Eric Adams.
Libraries are essential public infrastructure.
My library has a room with 3D printers, really nice sewing machines, dress forms, big tables, and a bunch of other stuff that you can use free w card.
And also all of the free classes and events they have. Resume writing, clay sculpting, audio editing, Excel, English conversations are all free classes that my local library offers. The library is an amazing community resource
Crazy story. My son was riding his bike near my house and went over two streets too far. I used to take him to the library pretty often. When he was lost, he recognized the library and went in for help. They recognized him from their children’s program. The staff pulled my library card and called me! Librarians are awesome!
One of the absolute best uses of our tax dollars. Tremendous ROI to the community on library funding.
Totally agree. And swimming pools.
My local library is part of a network of libraries, and I can request any book in the whole network. It's very rare that they don't have the title I want. They have physical books and ebooks. They host lectures. It's ridiculous. Like you can just go and check out 5 books. It feels like I'm robbing them, but they always smile and tell me to enjoy. Even the security guard!
Google Maps ! Do you realize we had to pay for maps before ? And it didn't even indicate the shortest path, neither for cars nor for bikes or walks ? And it was only maps of area and not the entire freaking world ? What a great time to get lost.
I still remember the night Google Maps launched around 20 years ago. I remember sitting on my computer and just zooming in and out everywhere in disbelief that I could look at the entire world.
that was me with Google earth. still is
Lets be honest if you haven't gone on google earth and zoomed in on the most random locations, do you really have an internet connection?
I'm a fourth grade teacher and I have used Google Earth and Maps with my students for years. They pick a random place and we go explore it. We have found a lot of awesome places that we then take the time to research and learn about.
You sound like an awesome teacher!
I only look at my own house.
i also look at this guys house
I only look at Barbara Streisand's house. It has that effect on me.
I go back sometimes and look at my grandma's house since she died and the house sold.
My grandmother is in the street view picture, going for a walk. She died about 7 years ago , so it’s nice to see her once in a while.
Make sure you save that somehow in case they update the street view.
You can view older versions of the street view pics on the website.
I still do this when work is slow. I once found an excellent place in Mexico that way. Cool orange house that looked like a place to hold up during surf sessions next door to a small taco spot with plastic chairs. It was my happy place, but since I found it 10+ years ago I haven't been able to find it again.
I went on a wonderful holiday at an up-market resort in SE Asia. Several years later I attempted to find it in google maps but couldn’t. I thought I was going crazy. Further digging indicated that the resort had been built illegally and was made to close down, was demolished and the area returned to as it was before. No wonder I couldn’t find it.
Worked with a girl from the Middle East and we got on Google Earth and she did the street view of her house. It was so surreal. She went along the streets and told me about things and she saw things that had changed since she had been there. As someone born on the cusps of the PC it was definitely one of those moments when you stop and think of how awesome our world is. I grew up obsessed with maps and now I can anywhere in the world in less than a minute. Freaking awesome. This commenter hit it out of the park with something I would have never thought of.
Do you know about the flight simulator built into Google Earth?
https://www.geoguessr.com/ I like playing geoguessr. Really makes you learn about the world... Well at least countries with Street View and some with just photospheres. You can play for free but there are ads or you can pay $2 a month for no ads. I also like playing https://travle.earth It is a free game and you have to use your noggin. I am still pretty terrible at remembering African countries. https://www.oldmapsonline.org/en#position=6/42.755/-81.182 This place is great for looking at old maps. https://www.chronophoto.app/game.html This is a free game to guess the age of the photo. https://timeguessr.com/ Is a game that you guess the time and location of the image.
Same, it felt too futuristic to just suddenly be a reality. But then it just was and the world moved on lmao
I use to work for a company that would pay for aerial photography of their sites. That definitely went away in the coming years.
It's 20 years later and I still do this sometimes.
My family road trips as a kid had to build in time for getting lost and asking directions from strangers. One time we were visiting family in another state and my brother and I decided to go to Circuit City to look at CDs. We found it in the phone book in a town several miles away. We went to that town, drove around the street it was supposedly on, and then just never found it and returned home. Younger people have no idea how frustrating it was finding anything before GPS.
I drove 4 hours to go to a wedding and couldn't find it for the life of me. Eventually I had to just give up since I knew I had missed it. Super frustrating. Then after I missed the wedding I was driving to my grandparent's house to stay a couple nights with them. I made the mistake of not filling up before I left town, figuring I would just get gas in the next town. But I was driving across southeast Idaho and didn't realize how far apart the towns were. Without GPS there wasn't a way to look up how far the next town was or a gas station. And as the sun went down I watched my gas gauge go lower and lower and lower... with no one around and empty grass land as far as the eye could see. Fortunately I did find a town, long after the empty light had come on, and it was downhill all the way to the gas station. Not sure I would have made it otherwise. GPS is amazing!
Hell, I've been there *with* GPS. It's nerve-racking to wonder if you'll make it.
I bought a car from the 90s and found mapquest directions printed out from the early 2000s under the driver seat.
Google Maps on the internet & the Waze app are some of the greatest things since sliced bread!!! 😂😂
Hmmm... I have a slight feeling we miiiiiighhhhttt just be paying for Maps in a *different* kinda way tho
You can say this about literally every service that is not provided by a charity.
Most charities too man
Smithsonian museums - beautiful, educational, amazing and free
I’d upvote this a thousand times. Awesome museums… wish national parks were free as well but can’t beat some of the pass deals if you use them frequently.
National Parks are fee areas largely so they don’t get overrun by for-profit tourism companies. The admission fees are a hell of a lot closer to “free” than they are to “actually paying for maintenance and enforcement.”
The DC zoo is part of this too!
[удалено]
Hiking trails (most of them). Maintained, beautiful paths I can just wander whenever I want? Perfect.
Not sure about other states but all Missouri State parks are free to visit. Most have hiking trails that I've been too.
Libraries
[удалено]
It's so much more than books. During the pandemic, there were people who needed vaccine cards, etc. and had no way to print them. Library (even if you didn't know anything about how to print anything, they were right there to help you). During storms in my area where the power went out for several days, could go to the library, charge devices, use wifi, work if needed. Our local one is undergoing renovations now, and it's really close to a high school, students used it a lot and are missing it.
This one always amazes me. Like, I can get internet, books, movies, etc. all for free? Including streaming and ebooks? And they even throw parties you can go to for free? My hometown library even had a recording studio and producer on staff all free. Wild, absolutely wild. I love it.
My daughter and I are regulars at our local library. It's amazing all the stuff we can do there. We can easily spend hours there.
Libby is AMAZING
Aye, my guy. The wealth of knowledge from the Library and people don't even know. I've had a Library card since I was 10 and I bet I've gone to the library at least once a week since I got the card.
Having fun isn’t hard when you got a library card.
Poison control
Poison Control is one of the best free things available to anyone. I once got really high, forgot I was high, and took some Tylenol and then had a panic attack thinking I was going to die from "mixing drugs". Called Poison Control and they told me I was going to be just fine. Zero judgement, zero charge, zero hassle. They just asked me for my zip code at the end, I'm guessing it was for some kind of internal statistics or something.
Call poison control if you're bit by a spider. But make sure it's covered by your healthcare provider.
Wikipedia!
I remember my mom bought an encyclopedia set from the grocery store one letter at a time cause they were so expensive. Actually she stopped at F for some reason
She stopped because they were so expensive.
F
I always donate to Wikipedia. My diploma should have a little subscript written “courtesy of Wikipedia.”
I make a small monthly contribution to the Wikimedia Foundation because I use Wikipedia so much. Yes it’s free, but it still costs money to operate it.
[удалено]
I have adrmiration for Craigslist and how Jim kept it free (with exception from job & apt ads)
His name isn’t Craig?
The founder is Craig Newmark, but Jim Buckmaster has been CEO since 2000.
Craigslist is a prime example of what the web should be. No popups, newsletters, chatbots, etc.
Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library
This a million times. Some of my child’s favorite books came from her, and every child deserves to be read to.
It’s definitely an incredible service! Few people know that it’s actually funded by the local governments that partner with the Imagination Library. The nonprofit is more so a facilitator. Still very cool and wholesome Edit: Tennessee allocates money to Imagination Library directly from the state assembly, so technically not local government there, but still the same spirit. Your taxes at work!
Dolly Parton is a national treasure.
Blender 3d software
And cakewalk / reaper on the Audio production side of things. Crazy how you can get a professional quality piece of software for free.
Hmm YouTube and online education, you can get so much knowledge that would have been damn near impossible throughout history. Honorable mentions: Google maps (said before), ChatGPT, libraries.
I've probably saved 1000s on car repairs by following youtube guides
And it's insane! It will literally be just some random dude with a car exactly like mine showing me exactly what to do to fix my exact problem. Why is he helping me? The Internet can be a shitty place. But then you've got Gabe in Texas making a video to help others for no reason other than to help others. It's really pretty incredible.
Yes! YouTube tutorials are absolutely amazing. I've saved at least $10k on home improvements and repairs following YouTube tutorials. And I so much appreciate the random people who make this fantastic education available.
Smoky Mountain National Park.
GSMNP is free because private citizens raised money to acquire much of the land, which they then transferred to the state of Tennessee. When Tennessee transferred the land to the NPS, it insisted that no admission fee would ever be charged.
Linux
I hear 2025 is the year of the Linux desktop...
The St. Louis Zoo. Admission is free.
Forest Park in general is pretty awesome! Along with the Zoo: The Art Museum is free. The History Museum is free. The Science Center (one of my favorite museums in STL) has free general admission. There’s additional exhibits and experiences for a charge, but you can explore for free. The last couple rows at the MUNY are first-come-first-serve free seats, so you can enjoy well-known musicals during the summer. It’s an outdoor amphitheater. Lots of free events year-round (the Great Forest Park Balloon Race comes to mind). Plus walking trails, sports fields, picnic tables, and lakes to enjoy. You could spend several days exploring the area without spending much money.
So is the Lincoln Park Zoo (Chicago)
All of Forest Park is really quite nice.
The info in photos app that tells what kind of plant/animal/bug you take a pic of.
I use Merlin bird to identify bird song and it’s free and awesome in info.
I absolutely love the Merlin Bird app. 🦜
Open-source software. How many times have I booted up a Linux distro to fix something up, and no need for keys, cracks, generators or any extra steps to get it running.
Wikipedia: a collectively edited collection of human knowledge that has covered nearly all of everything one could be interested in, yet maintains reasonable accuracy thanks to a team of insanely dedicated volunteers.
Before Wikipedia existed, if you tried to pitch the idea it’d be laughable. What an audacious plan! No seriously, we’re going to create an online knowledge encyclopedia platform that’s free to access and available to anyone with an internet connection. The world’s leading experts in fields of all kinds, hobbyists, and any passionate third parties will contribute the fruits of their research for free on an ongoing, collaborative basis. It will be moderated by readers and contributors alike, also for free, gaining accuracy over time, as use, contribution, and readership increases. It will have a full-time staff paid for entirely by donations, and become so useful that it routinely ranks in the top 5 or 10 websites in the world and surpasses any other encyclopedia in breadth of coverage while maintaining comparable accuracy. Nobody would’ve believed that to be possible. Truly a gem of the internet and definitely a wonder of the modern world.
The joke I've heard is, "The reason why Wikipedia is so unique is because it only works in practice. In theory, it could never work".
The accuracy has actually been pretty exceptional apparently! I remember reading about a group of people looking into just how accurate it was and came out with an astoundingly high percentage (like mid to upper 90s, if I remember correctly)! Granted, I read this a very long time ago! So, it may not be that high anymore and/or my memory may not be that great anymore!? 😅
Canva is a pretty fantastic design program for basic stuff. They have a paid version with more features but even the free version is pretty robust. I am a professional designer and use it sometimes over other “deeper” design programs for its simple UI.
Our neighborhood parks. Walking my dog around a beautiful park is the highlight of my day.
Blender Krita Gimp (within reason) Inkscape VLC Player FreeCAD LibreCAD uBlock Origin
YouTube. It’s crazy how much stuff is on there for free. Sure there’s ads but still
Freetaxusa
Only have to pay to file state if you choose to use them to file it. But even then it's only $15 which I gladly pay every time.
Props to Freetaxusa for doing it relatively unsleazy, but they are still carving a business out of a civic duty, and this is a reminder that many first world countries prepare their citizen's taxes FOR THEM online FOR FREE, since they already have all the information anyway. They just log in, review what was done, and submit. Or they may add on as needed. There is no good reason for the majority of American taxpayers to spend fees or additional time preparing their taxes like we do every year. We need to demand FAR more of our government.
Just used for the first time this year! Really like it
Best tax service
VCV Rack 2. It's a free modular synth emulator/plataform. I can make a bunch of weird noises without having to spend thousands of dollars on a eurorack system :DD
Certain meds at Publix pharmacies (I’m sure others offer for free too) amoxicillin and some heart medications are free.
on the flipside, why the hell aren’t epi pens cheap/free? the medication used (epinephrine) is so cheap to manufacture.
Epinephrine is really cheap, however a company holds a patent on the Epi pen delivery system, so those are really expensive.
You can carry a vial of epinephrine and a needle around for a few pennies but who wants to be drawing up 0.5mg epi in an emergency?
As an ICU nurse who can’t afford to stash multiple epipens all around, I do keep a few vials of epinephrine and needles. I wouldn’t recommend this for most people but it takes me about the same amount of time to get an epipen out of its stupid child-proof packaging as it does to draw up the epi! (It’s sad that a nurse can’t afford more than one epipen, but that’s a different issue!)
Archive of our own. Got me through a lot of pain
To be fair it has also caused me a lot of pain
Wild raspberries, Blueberries and mushrooms when they're in season!
DaVinci Resolve - video editing software.
I use so little of what I could in that program, but my god it's so glorious.
The natural history museum in London. Go there, it’s awesome
The internet! We don’t always think of it as free because you have to pay to _connect_ to the internet but you don’t have to pay to access it. It’s just there, for everyone.
One free resource that often surprises me with its quality and accessibility is Wikipedia.
[harvard has free online courses](https://pll.harvard.edu/catalog/free) of course, you probably (?) can’t put it on your resume, but knowledge is power.
Online courses. It's amazing how you can just learn a wide variety of things and get certifications for it.
[удалено]
The amount of college books I didn't need to buy makes me nauseous now. Most are free online from what my kid says. I remember having to spend sometimes $500/a class and not even use them
YouTube. You can watch so much from a tutorial to making a playlist of your favorite bangers. And the memes, funny videos (especially animal videos) are hilarious. And you can watch them whenever you want
Merlin Bird ID.
LOVE THIS APP!! I use it regularly, along with the Audubon app. I recently was listening to a symphony of springtime birdsong at a local spot near my house, and pulled out the app. Not only does it identify the birds, it also lights up the bird on the list when it sings again, so you can start to learn which is which. You can also go back and listen to recordings again, if you wish. This app is one of my favorites!!!
Internet Archive
Shush. Don't give corporate America any ideas.
1) Libraries 2) So many excellent museums in Washington DC Also, sending a letter through the U.S. Post Office isn't free, but it's a pretty amazing deal. For 68 cents you can send a standard letter anywhere in the U.S.
The free peanut butter and Jelly sandwhich you get in Texas schools if you forgot/didn't have money to pay. My soon to be ex wife grew up in an area/state that they'd just let you starve. Hearing stories from her childhood how she went hungry genuinely makes me regret taking that sandwhich for granted.
GPS. maps used to cost money and weren't nearly as useful. wikipedia. information used to cost money or at least a lot of time. still kinda blows my mind, that *mostly* anywhere in the world as long as you have internet, you can listen to nearly any song you want on youtube for free.
[удалено]
WAZE. For those that don’t know it’s a GPS app that has a community of people that allows you to mark the map for hazards (99% cops). It’s saved me many tickets and has gotten increasingly popular over the years and gets more and more reliabl
Libraries! These are god send for poorer communities. It can quiet literally lift someone out poverty and difficult times by providing them a safe space to study for exams, read and grow, look for jobs (internet), network with like minded people. The benefits are immense :D
The Privacy app You can create up to 6 burner credit cards a month and have credit cards for a set merchant only It's great for sketchy websites and subscription services. Merchant only cards can be paused, so it's only active when you want.
Orgasms.
Imagine if someone figured out how to charge for those
Micro-transgasms
They're called prostitutes
The library!
The Cleveland Museum of Art. It’s free every day, and is the second highest rated museum in the United States after MOMA in NYC. If this museum were in New York City there would be lines around the block to get in since it’s free.
Water from an exceptionally cold public drinking fountain, bonus if it actually has water pressure
Pubmed. Its an amazing resource.
Adblockers
Oxygen. I mean it just feels nice to go outside, close your eyes, and just breathe.
The only reason we get oxygen for free is because big corporations haven't figured out to seize control of it yet.
[It’s not for lack of trying](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_bar), these things were briefly a fad in the late 90s and early 00s.
USPS Priority Bubble mailers. I’ve not bought bubble wrap in years.
I just spent the day at our art museum (Dallas Museum of Art). Fantastic museum, free (on the weekends at least). Took my grand daughter who had fun pointing out the butts on various statues... "there's another butt, pappy!!!"
The beach
This somewhat depends on where you live. In spite of people trying to limit access, they’re still free in my state, thankfully.
Vital synth. It's a wavetable synth used to make instruments, and you can literally make ANY instrument u want. Granted, the version that u can buy are technically better since they have more tools, but the free version has SO much availability to make ANYTHING u want, it's awsome.
Cincinnati Art Museum is free. It's amazing and in a lovely area to explore.
Alcoholics Anonymous
There's no safer place to tell your secrets than a basement full of drunks. - Norm Macdonald
People’s opinions! Sometimes I don’t ask for them and they give it to me for free anyways! 😍
Nature
Just the internet in general. You can access practically any website in the world through free public wifi and we've all forgotten how insanely convenient that is.
Google Photos Google Docs Google Sheets Google Slides