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Not sure if they're illegal yet, but foreign made routers. I only say that because Trump doesn't want us to have them, therefore we probably need them.
Er... not that I think the current administration doesn't blow donkey dick, but I don't think buying things based solely on what someone in power wants is a particularly good strategy. I think the general consensus is that building your own is the end-game here, but I've been recommended some pre-built options too.
Buy a Fully FOSS 3D printer. It's pointless to purchase any peice of tech to "avoid future regulation" if it still runs proprietary software you don't control. I would highly recommend checking out Voron printers. Fully FOSS at every level, firmware, hardware, schematics, etc. Voron Design
The catch is that you have to build it from scratch yourself. However, there are many places online to buy high quality premade kits, and the community is massive and thriving, you'll be able to follow guides easily.
I would also buy some bulk, long term digital storage if you don't have it already, and build yourself a simple NAS. The digital crackdowns are coming soon, and you're going to thank yourself for having terabytes of digital media and software that is impossible to get down the line.
ServerMonkey currently has 6TB refurbished enterprise HDDs for $175, and 24TB Seagate Exos CMR HDDs for $625 (even cheaper per TB.) if you don't need crazy performance, you can throw a few of those in an old PC with a few hundred bucks of hardware and be totally fine using it as a NAS/home media server.
Learn how to securely torrent if you don't already. If you're into LLMs at all, download current LLM models that are good at different sizes, even if you can't currently run them on your hardware, they will likely be banned in the near future because they represent a "threat" to the USA's corporate power and influence.
Download a local copy of Wikipedia and other online sites with something like Kiwix. Purchase pre-LLM era physical books on foraging, cooking, home and auto repair, electronics, child care, etc. Highly practical skills that will be useful to know as the general population becomes further dumbed down and reliant on proprietary, corporate slopware.
For those on a very tight budget, used is your friend. Old computer equipment is still quite affordable. You can pick up used t480 Thinkpads on Ebay for $175-$300. If you've got kids who need a laptop for school, pick one of those up and throw Linux on it.
If you're willing to swap, haggle, and hunt locally, you can get even better deals. Check if your area has a government surplus warehouse. When I was a kid, my family lived 15 minutes from one. They had literal pallets of government mini-pcs you could buy, 40 towers for a few hundred bucks. You could buy individual machines for $40-$75 there. Yeah they were old, beat up, janky, but they worked. And as a 14 year old kid who's only money came from doing random yard work for friends and family, it was a gold mine.
Check with your local businesses and schools and ask somebody there if they have "e-waste computers" they are looking to get rid of. Often times they do, and they will happily give you them for free. Normally, they have to pay a company to take those off their hands, so they will have no issue with you just taking them for nothing. I've gotten a bunch of old computers this way over the years. Don't be afraid to even ask the IT department where you work too. Some places have strict e-waste policies, but most don't. As long as there's no storage installed that could contain company/organizational data, they usually couldn't care less if an employee wants to take an old "junk" PC home with them.
Purchase pre-LLM era physical books on foraging, cooking, home and auto repair, electronics, child care, etc.
Get E-books released right around 2022 (but not after) on Anna's Archive if your money is low. It's important that the info is somewhat fresh. A lot has changed since the 1980s
Downloading LLM's because the US will censor them seams unlikely. Censorship will pretty much always be bypassable with vpn's or tor.
Maybe I just don't have the same threat model as you.
The government could force Huggingface to implement KYC. This would probably push people to start uploading torrents of models, but the problem is that there are dozens of quants for each model. Depending on what GPU you have, how much VRAM and RAM you have, the perfect quant for your machine might not be available on these third party download sites. So might as well grab them now while you can.
Nvidia just bought huggingface.
Closed source printers can still be flashed with open source firmware. Creality printers can be flashed with octoprint. Also since they aren't connected to the internet they can't force a bad update.
Very true, but it's better to use and support a fully FOSS platform if possible.
With the way inflation is going, nearly everything is better bought now rather than later. Especially appreciating assets.
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?
like water, air, and freedom?
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 others they physically pay for their experience and expertise to give them purchasing advice 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 me 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.
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.
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.
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 camera 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.
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.
Buying a house is always advisable if you can afford it. And on the privacy front I think it is the best protected space we have. Not just by law but also by robust doors.
Not having to worry about a landlord who feels entitled is also pretty great.
For privacy purposes it's better to buy an unit in a condo, than a house. In a house your neighbors can easily look out their windows and see who visits you, whose car is parked in front of your house. In a condo it's much harder because the same main entrance is used by many people and it's difficult determine which unit a visitor entering the main entrance is going to, so it's harder to connect the dots.
Couple caveats about buying a house
- Make sure you have some money saved to deal with surprise expenses before you buy so you can handle things like appliances dying randomly.
- Don't buy a house unless you plan on keeping it for at least 7 years. Selling a house is pain since you have to act like you don't live in your home and usually real estate commissions and closing costs Eat up all the appreciation if you sell too soon
Bidet, it's like 1000 times better and you can worry less about Costco shortages.
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.
Agree. Italians are the biggest users and use less paper ... :-)
Came here to say the same. I bought my first pre pandemic. When the pandemic came I was so grateful lol.
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Books, vinyl records, CD's, DVD's, bluray, hard drives (oké maybe not now now). Tools.. Especially battery power tools.
And if you are abble, solar panels and batteries.
This wil make your life pretty low tech and non traceable. Also there commodities that are tradable for goods and services with others in your communitie.
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Dash cam.
I say as I have yet to replace my broke one for the last 6 months... thanks for the reminder lol
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.
You are absolutely correct about the second part. But the first? Ehh... out of sight out of mind, lol
I break a lot of laws already. I dont mind breaking more of them.
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this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2026
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Privacy
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