A couple of weeks ago, I decided to do away with my Netflix subscription. I simply was barely using it, and whenever I did it was more out of habit than it really being the thing I wanted to do with my time. Sure, there's still some decent stuff on there, but the vast majority of it feels absolutely moneyballed. Good, but somehow too good, and with no character.
As much as I'd love to elaborate on why I think Netflix is evil, that's not todays topic. What I wanted to share is how for approximately the price I was paying for my subscription (€19.99), I've snapped up three subscriptions that I'm using on a daily basis. They're all pretty much interchangeable with other alternatives. The main thing I want to highlight is the individual slot they each fill out for me.
1. A subscription to Zed Pro (~€10)
Frankly, I haven't really put too much thought into whether the unit economics are the best here. The main point is, these are €10 that make my coding experience more pleasant, and get me writing more code in my spare time. In that sense it's money well spent.
Does it matter if you get a Cursor subscription, or a Zed one, or whatever else is in vogue when you're reading? No, just get the thing that will get you excited to get your hands on the keyboard! To me, Zed feels more intentionally built than the VSClones: things flow nicely, it feels snappy, the ui is less cluttered... It's just nice.
Editor preferences aside, the main takeaway is, invest in a hobby you actively engage in. Make that little bit more appealing and you have one more reason to be spending your time doing the thing that makes you feel good, rather than letting a couple hours a day evaporate watching another forgettable show.
2. A Kagi subscription (~€5/month)
I think we can mostly agree google kind of sucks nowadays. Whenever I search, I automatically scroll down to skip the sponsored posts and SEO maxxed websites, and still don't fully trust what I get. Maybe that's why we all started appending “reddit” the end of our searches.
Are the search results themselves better with Kagi? To be honest, I can't tell yet, others have written far more informed takes on the topic. What does it for me is the simple fact of being able to pay directly for a service that I use, and value, rather than having to trade my attention in and endure a wall of ads. Especially if it's something I use over and over, every day. That's what I mean to highlight here: we can support products that we enjoy by paying for them (who would have thought?) rather than letting them lobotomize us via ad feeds.
3. A cheap server on Hetzner (~€4/month)
Again, the choice of provider here is secondary. The point is, I finally have my little stake on the internet. It's relatively barebones, and I like that. It forces me to learn and engage. In fact, that is where my blog is hosted!
So to sum it up: We don't have to default to a streaming subscription because that's become the standard human-being thing to do. For the same money you can build a suite of useful, well crafted tools that help you: – Get the most out of your hobbies – Spend less time looking at ads – Build things you can share with the world
P.S. Not one word here was written by AI. I plan on keeping it that way for anything that goes on this blog. So, if anything reads like slop, it's my slop :)