The Population Bust - <AUTHOR> https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/review-essay/2019-08-12/population-bust?spJobID=1701558439&spMailingID=60132624&spReportId=MTcwMTU1ODQzOQS2&spUserID=NTA0ODQwNzg0NDcS1&sp_mid=60132624&sp_rid=cm9iZXJ0QHRoZWJyb3dzZXIuY29tS0&utm_campaign=so_2019&utm_content=20190813&utm_medium=newsletters&utm_source=press_release <comment><USER2> I'd recommend "The Accidental Superpower" \- Peter Zeihan.

To summarize, he views the world economy as entirely enabled by the US Navy. The protection and projection of this naval forced has allowed an unparalleled level of relatively free global trade.

With the population bust, he predicts the US will turn inwards. The world economy will fragment. Less rigid economies will collapse. Global investment will all but dry up. His argumentation style is compelling whether or not you want to accept or debate his conclusions.

<comment><USER3> I find it unlikely that piracy and government navies imposing tolls on shipping lanes will return without a US Navy. The Petrodollar is dependent on the US Navy, but that is it.

Very few militaries have modernized, until recently, if the Falklands War occurred again, the British and the Argentines would be largely using the same weapons and equipment (partly from deliveries of the F-35), the greatest pressure on tyrants is access to their Swiss bank accounts, or whatever many apartments they own through shell companies in New York or London.

<comment><USER2> I think piracy is highly likely without a strong unified (not necessarily American) naval presence. It wouldn't be Somalian pirates. I'd guess it'd look more like the piracy of the 17th and 18th century where state-sponsored individuals create profit and havoc from interference with competing countries.

Shipping fragmentation also seems likely without a strong global navy. As you mention, the Petrodollar is dependent on the US Navy. The collapse or hampering of energy trade alone would launch the world into a great depression.

I'm not sure how you're trying to relate the modernization of militaries. From my understanding, the USA exports old versions of our military technology to many allies.

<comment><USER3> It requires very little equipment to fight a future war against pirates? Or even disorganized militia groups acting as pirates?

The US did more to hamper oil prices by invading Iraq than anything else.

<comment><USER2> It would require enormous resources to combat pirates. I'd look at the comment above about whales & efficiency as a better explanation than I can provide. Piracy would be more like terrorism than a traditional war. Extremely asymmetric costs & predictability.

As for oil prices, the Iraqi war did disrupt Iraqi oil production for about a year. In 2004, oil production reached pre-war levels and has been growing steadily since.

[https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/iraq/crude-oil- product...](https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/iraq/crude-oil-production)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _The green revolution has won a temporary success in man's war against hunger and deprivation; it has given man a breathing space. If fully implemented, the revolution can provide sufficient food for sustenance during the next three decades. But the frightening power of human reproduction must also be curbed; otherwise the success of the green revolution will be ephemeral only._

\-- Norman Borlaug, "Father of the Green Revolution", Nobel Peace Prize acceptance lecture. December 11, 1970

[https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1970/borlaug/lecture...](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1970/borlaug/lecture/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Soon it won't matter what the population is, automation will sweep through all industries, what you see today in automation is what people 30 years ago see in computers - slow, cumbersome, expensive. That's going to change.

<comment><USER6> What's the point of automating everything if there are no more people? I think ultimately people are the source of happiness for people. Material things are just an intermediary in the happiness exchange. So, if we get rid of people to replace them with material things we will become less happy.

Plus, it isn't obvious that all the important stuff can be automated.

<comment><USER7> I find my joy in people is inversely related to their quantity. If I'm hiking a sparsely populated trail, then anyone I meet is worth a conversation. If I'm on a crowded subway, I do my best to shut everyone out. At a minimum, I think joy is conserved. But I suspect it would actually increase if there were fewer people (up to a point).

<comment><USER6> As counter anecdata, my perception is people who come from large families and populous regions that are neighborly are much happier and friendlier than those who keep to themselves or ignore those around them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Relying on a larger and larger population to keep supporting endless growth is not sustainable. I know this is unpopular, but: We need to find a way to sustainably live on this planet with a reasonably sized population.

People keep talking about how the next generation needs to support all the debt and extravagances of the past generations but this unethical. the next generation was born without first being asked whether they want to take care of so many existing people. finding a sustainable solution would be both more practical and ethical

<comment><USER9> _> Relying on a larger and larger population to keep supporting endless growth_

The article talks about "growth" as though it has to be absolute growth, but it doesn't; it only needs to be per capita growth. If the population is shrinking, absolute growth can be negative but per capita growth can still be positive (all that's necessary is that the rate of absolute decline of the economy is less than the rate of decline of population). In other words, per capita productivity just needs to increase. Which it has been at least since the industrial revolution.

<comment><USER10> Per capital growth is also not sufficient. Such a metric could easily be achieved by slowly reducing the population to 1. I might propose some analog of total output minus population growth as a better metric.

<comment><USER9> _> Per capital growth is also not sufficient. Such a metric could easily be achieved by slowly reducing the population to 1_

Only if the 1 person can continue to increase their productivity with nobody else to trade with, which is absurd. Increasing productivity comes from specialization and trade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In a decade or so politicians may start fighting to tear _down_ the wall.

<comment><USER12> The one they refused to build?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I keep being surprised that this is surprising to anyone. This is a commonly- observed pattern in biology; a simple graph called the Gompertz function ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gompertz_function](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gompertz_function)) is often used to model it.

I guess most folks have always assumed that humans were somehow exempt from the natural laws, maybe because of the much greater degree to which we are able to reshape our environment to suit our needs (sometimes to our long-term detriment).

But so many growth-related things seem to follow a Gompertz function that I think it's likely we just don't yet understand all of the factors when figuring out our own carrying capacity.

I'm really curious whether our asymptotic population limit only applies to our population on one world, or if, were we to eventually become multiplanetary, we'd discover that a whole other planet wouldn't really increase our overall population that much.

I wish I could be around to see the answer to that question.

<comment><USER14> Unless I'm missing something, the Gompertz function you refer to has an implicit model that the organism's population stabilizes because of Malthusian constraints, a lack of some kind of resource.

But birth rates have been declining in first-world countries for a long time in the absence of this kind of constraint, and the Foreign Affairs article specifically notes that both Malthus and Paul Ehrlich's "Population Bomb" doomsday resource-shortage scenarios didn't come to pass.

The Earth certainly does have some kind of carrying capacity for humans, but that's not the limit that's being it, it's something else.

<comment><USER15> I think western population development has gone sustainable largely due to social advancements re women. Not all parts of the world have yet had that kind of progress, and are still happily multiplying in an unsustainable way. Unless we manage to export this kind of progress, I fear we will not be able to avoid all overpopulation issues. One problem is that costly (in loss of lives) regional wars over resources and the enslavement of women as a means of replenishment for your armies are a circular feedback mechanism. Unless the circle of war and patriarchy is broken, some cultures will probably expand to their malthusian limits.

<comment><USER16> > the enslavement of women as a means of replenishment for your armies

What society has ever done that?

<comment> crooked-v [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rape_of_the_Sabine_Women](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rape_of_the_Sabine_Women)

<comment><USER17> We're they raping in order to replenish their armies? The claim is rather far fetched.

<comment><USER15> The word "rape" in this context is taken to mean abduction. This is then followed by the integration of the abductees into the abductor's society.

From the article: "At the festival, Romulus gave a signal, at which the Romans grabbed the Sabine women and fought off the Sabine men. The indignant abductees were soon implored by Romulus to accept Roman husbands".

That the second phase may have employed carrots as well as sticks does not detract from the fact that the Romans have thereby managed to expand their reproductive capacities while simultaneously contracting that of the rival Sabines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This isn't a problem, it's just preparation for the next stage of evolution (AGI). Our task is nearly complete.

<comment><USER2> I often wonder what post AGI society will look like:

\- Will we become pets?

\- Will we become extinct?

\- Will we absorb into the AGI?

Maybe the AGI will just disappear and leave human affairs to humans and with some residual presence to ensure we never create a second.

I think much more likely than real AGI, we create an "intelligent" computer virus that locks up all networked computing power.

<comment> swagasaurus-rex Perhaps humans, with the aid of super powerful computers, can unlock our genome and in turn make us more competitive.

There will be some left behind, but humanity will continue on as an partially artificial GMO much like our own creations

<comment><USER2> In the near term, I agree that genetically modified humans make a ton of sense. In fact, this is already happening.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6331330/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6331330/)

Post-AGI, I'm not sure if life as we know it makes sense from a practical perspective. My post AGI assumptions:

\- You can fully emulate a brain digitally

\- The AGI will do this emulation with less power than our bodies naturally consume

\- Any physical interaction with the world will be carried out better with 100% robotics or networked bodies genetically modified to the point we can no longer consider them independent or human.

I really don't think the AGI will have any inherent practical use of keeping humans around in any form. The real question is what will the AGI want to do? It will literally be a god with no limits we are capable of understanding. What will this god want to do?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why does it have to be "the end of capitalism" ? The world population will not disappear overnight. It will take several decades (at least) for that number to go down at some point in this century, and it has almost nothing to do with global spending, at least not in the short term.

<comment><USER20> And it will take decades more to bring everyone up to western levels of consumption so there will be plenty of unsatisfied demand for a long time. Long enough to think up responses to this challenge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell." -Edward Abbey

<comment><USER22> this has always seemed to be kind of a silly quote to me. it's not untrue but it seems to imply that this is something unusual about a cancer cell. growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of _life itself_. I don't know of _any_ organisms that are capable of regulating their own species's growth/consumption for long term survival (although now that I've said this, I'm sure someone will respond with the odd exception).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's about time that people stopped regarding declining population as a threat and started treating it as an opportunity instead.

As my former boss often says, we don't have problems only challenges.

<comment><USER23> If we don't want the entire earth to looked like mumbai, i'd say it's even the only way to go.

Space is not going to save us any time soon, people suck at restraining themself and given our current situation we can approximate our planet to a close system with finite resources.

So yeah, I'd go with less babies. Or more deaths, but one is more pleasant.

<comment><USER24> > If we don't want the entire earth to looked like mumbai

If the whole world reaches Mumbai's density (75k/sq mile), we would host 15 trillion people. Now, no matter what projections you hear from anyone, you never hear a peak population of more than 50 billion, so you are off by a factor of 300.

Here's for example the latest UN prediction up to 2100. You'll notice a 95% estimate that we'll be below 13 billion.

[1] [https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/9...](https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/900)

<comment><USER23> I didn't express a scientific prediction, but used an image of extreme poverty and pollution to underline the caveats of overpopulation.

What's more, the vast majority of indian population consumme much less than the average american.

Democracy, health care, education, respect of the individual, peace... All that are affected, at various degree of overpopulation. There is not need to mirror your stats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Fertility is heritable. This, too, shall pass.

<comment><USER26> See my answer above; before natural selection kicks in and makes the population rebound, we'll already have hit the replacement problem.

<comment><USER25> See mine as well. Reduced population is not a problem. Life is easier, not harder, when there is less competition for resources. Our pension systems will collapse, though. People will adapt; pensions have not existed for most of human history.

<comment><USER27> From current levels maybe, but not always.

We cooperate as well as compete. A world with too few people would have its own struggles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Capitalism is about the allocation of capital in society. The article tries to make the point that Capitalism depends on ever increasing markets and/or labor forces. Capitalism is a self-organizing system and will allocate capital for products and services wherever the individual participants decide is the best place for them to put their capital to work. If fewer babies are born and more 60+ exist then capital will flow to adult diapers instead of infant ones. Capital can be destroyed as well so it's not like we'll have toxic waste dumps of unused capital. A shrinking population is a change and an opportunity, it's not the end of the world.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm not convinced that the decline in birth rates is just because more children survive; that's an assumption that as far as I know, nobody has ever rigorously checked. It smells fishy.

There are other possible explanations: birth control becoming available, women having to work full time, children are no longer exploitable cheap labor.

The big picture is that capitalism will only invest in something if the investor is able to also claim the gains. But the profits of having children go to society in general, not to a specific investor, therefore our children are under supported. The solution is probably going to either be socialism, or some sort of investment scheme where capitalists will pay people to have children but then they'll be indentured servants or something.

Go ahead and call me crazy then come back and look at this post in 50 years.

Edit: actually it would probably work something like: we, babycorp, will pay you 250,000 dollars to pop out a baby, she will go to the finest schools, she will want for nothing, but at the age of 30 she will have to pay back the debt, with interest. (Which she can do by having kids of her own). This is basically how capitalism thinks, admit it, it's not that far fetched.

</comment><comment><USER30> This phenomena is why I'm strongly pro-immigration. Speaking as an American, I want there to be more Americans. We're not making them ourselves so we need to import. The more we import now, the better since the current population is both younger and more numerous than it will be in a few decades when we'd actually _need_ the imported population. Doing it now means the Americanization of the immigrants will be more complete. We should bring them in and turn them American while we still have the numbers and dynamism to do so.

<comment><USER31> I'm Australian, have lived in the US, and now live in Denmark. I'm also pro immigration, both for skilled and unskilled workers. However Non-Western (as defined by the Danish Ministry of Statistics) has been financially costly for the welfare state, and the assumption that unskilled immigrant descendents will (as a whole) outperform their parents has not been realized.

There's blame on both sides. Denmark doesn't do a stellar job of integrating outsiders despite ample funding. Likewise there are cultural incompatibilities, such as the handshake-citizenship debacle in a country that has arguably the closest gender equality in the world.

My personal lesson is that immigration is really complicated. I truly believe people should be free to move wherever to realise their maximum potential. But in holding this standpoint you must acknowledge the very real costs incurred.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to)

<comment><USER32> By definition welfare is a net loss. Otherwise it wouldn't be needed.

How can it be bad for immigrants to get more than they put in, but not citizens?

The "immigrants will get more out of welfare than they put in" is exactly how welfare is supposed to work!

<comment><USER20> Welfare recipients spend every penny they receive so it contributes to the economy by keeping money moving.

It's not a zero sum game.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How cameras helped and sometimes harmed black people - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/black-images-matter-how-cameras-helped-mdash-and-sometimes-harmed-mdash-black-people/ <comment><USER2> This is just meandering junk, is this the latest instalment in Virtue Signalling? B grade magazines just put Black <random word> Matter and they get advertising $ and upvotes?

The Birth of a Nation is related to the killing of George Floyd because a $2,000,000+ (present day $) movie used a camera and random people on the street used a camera?

If you bothered to look specifically at The Birth of a Nation and movies you would see movies continually move civil rights in the correct direction, outliers like The Birth of a Nation have little effect overall. That for instance might be an interesting discussion.

<comment><AUTHOR> "... outliers like The Birth of a Nation have little effect overall."

Are you serious? Please educate yourself. Start here: [https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/02/08/383279630...](https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/02/08/383279630/100-years- later-whats-the-legacy-of-birth-of-a-nation)

Also, hilarious that you consider Scientific American, a 174-year old publication that's published Francis Crick and Albert Einstein, among so many other distinguished scientists, a "B Grade" magazine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have dabbled in photography, most cameras have "white balance", only half joking but maybe "black balance" needs to be a standard because how difficult it can be depending on persons skin tones.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_balance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_balance)</comment>


A Berlin Biotech Company Got a Head Start on Coronavirus Tests - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-12/a-berlin-biotech-company-got-a-head-start-on-coronavirus-tests <comment><USER2> "[Since January company] have produced 40,000 coronavirus diagnostic kits, enough for about 4 million individual tests."

"the kits, which sell for about €160 ($180) apiece."

Two USD for one test is cheaper than I expected. There's also a photo of a test kit in the article.

<comment><USER3> Indeed in other places I've read a cost of $ 200 for a single test. But maybe what's not included here is the labour and machine running time that has to also still be done.

<comment><USER4> Pinnacle BioLabs in the US is taking preorders for their rapid immunoassay kit. $40 a test or $20/ea in packs of 25.

[https://www.pblabs.com/products/pinnacle-biolabs- covid-19-no...](https://www.pblabs.com/products/pinnacle-biolabs- covid-19-novel-coronavirus-dual-igg-igm-rapid-test)

Investigational use only.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Based on what I'm reading online, it really seems like the CDC should be doing random testing to get a much better picture of what infection rates and distribution actually looks like.

Given I have no expertise on the matter, I'm eager to hear why this is a good or bad idea.</comment>


Amazon Vehicles - <AUTHOR> https://www.amazon.com/b?node=10677469011 <comment><USER2> Before you laugh that you'd never use this to buy a car, it may be worth taking the time to find your make/model and add it to your "Garage" on amazon. Amazon will then try to confirm or not if the cabin air filter you are about to buy is a correct fit for your car. Amazon tries to do the same thing with camera gear.

At least, that's the theory. In practice you still need to do 100% of the due diligence or you'll end up with spark plug wires that are for the _non- California version_ of the engine of your girlfriend's 2004 Outback, and then you have to build an awkward bracket over the motor because you're too stubborn to return them...

<comment><USER3> > Before you laugh that you'd never use this to buy a car, it may be worth > taking the time to find your make/model and add it to your "Garage" on > amazon. Amazon will then try to confirm or not if the cabin air filter you > are about to buy is a correct fit for your car. Amazon tries to do the same > thing with camera gear.

If that's the case, why didn't Amazon include older model cars? I know the Chevy Volt has models starting from 2012 or 2011, yet only 2016 and 2017 models are shown

UPDATE: I was wrong. The different models do show up if you search for it, but for some reason I did not see it while browsing.

I just wish that Amazon could start selling cars directly.

<comment><USER4> > If that's the case, why didn't Amazon include older model cars?

Given that I can add an 1896 Duryea ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duryea_Motor_Wagon_Company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duryea_Motor_Wagon_Company)) to my garage, I think it's safe to say they include older model cars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What's really interesting about this business model is not the fact that you can buy a car online, it's the price transparency that you create with this: Car dealers often have 10-20 % margin on a car sale, and they make most of their money by providing services to you after you bought the car, so they are usually able to give you some big discounts. Also, as they usually receive a bonus by the car maker for selling a given number of cars, they have a strong incentive to sell more. The money that they make for themselves depends therefore on the margin that they can achieve, which in turn depends on the customer's knowledge of the "fair" price. Having all the transaction prices out in the open would therefore be quite a nightmare for most of them, as it will allow customers to push the price down quite a bit. Especially for small dealerships (that have higher fixed cost in comparison to their sales and receive less bonus as they sell fewer cars than big dealers) this could be highly problematic, while it could be beneficial for the larger dealerships. Truecar has been doing this model for a while, and I guess Amazon finally wanted to have a share of this market too (and the data associated with it).

On the technical side it looks like they're using the JATO database for their search/configuration tool ([http://www.jato.com/](http://www.jato.com/)). A few years ago I also implemented a car configuration website/app for a German startup (which doesn't exist anymore) using this data. The most challenging aspect was the huge amount of possible configurations/options that exist for some models (especially BMW and Mercedes), which would also have very complex inter-dependencies (e.g. choosing package A + B means you can't choose package C except if you also choose D). To resolve this I had to write a dynamic constraint solver: Finally some abstract computer science that was usable in practice :D

As far as I understand, in the US there are usually less options to choose from, which makes extensive configurators unnecessary. Still, it was an interesting challenge.

<comment><USER6> You should never pay more than invoice for a new car. For that matter you should never buy a new car, it doesn't make economic sense.

<comment><USER7> > it doesn't make economic sense

People repeat this a lot, but it isn't that cut and dry.

People often ONLY include the direct cost of the two vehicles. They don't include the massively discounted loans on new vehicles (e.g. 0% APR), the warranties (e.g. 3-5 years bumper to bumper), sometimes better MPG (newer model, etc), cheaper insurance, skipping state inspection for the first three- five years, new tires & other consumables, et al.

Obviously you have to look at specific vehicles to know for sure; but when I last looked at exactly this (recently used Vs. new) without the externalities it was approx $2-3K cheaper (talking CarMax, non-negotiable pricing) but after factoring in all the things listed above it was damn close (within $500-800).

And as you go more used are you really getting a deal or just exchanging miles/wear&tear for cash? The asset also has depreciated in value by then.

Just to be clear, I am simply saying you have to look at each vehicle one by one, a lot of models/manufacturers depreciate at varying speeds (e.g. a Kia depreciates a lot faster than a used Toyota or Honda).

<comment><USER8> Cheaper insurance? I don't follow the logic for that one. If you have an older car you don't need full coverage = less out of pocket.

<comment><USER9> I think they're talking about the reduced-price (or even free) insurance you often get as part of the deal when you buy a new car.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yes please.

Anything that will get us closer to direct-to-consumer sales of cars. I'm ready for car dealerships to be a relic of the past.

<comment><USER11> Seriously. My last car (BMW) from seven years ago, I did entirely through email. Sent a handful of dealerships their cost sheet with the options I wanted, until I got the price I was looking for. Few months later when it was built and shipped from Germany, I drove my old car to the dealership, and drove off with the new one. Done.

As an aside, I just ordered a mattress site unseen from an online only company, and it turned out to be one of the best mattresses I've ever slept in. [https://www.saatva.com/](https://www.saatva.com/) $1000 for the luxury firm Queen, and that included shipping and taking the old one.

<comment><USER12> I tried to buy a car via email. I picked out four different cars (a Kia Optima, a Honda Fit, a Toyota Prius, and a Subaru Outback) and emailed all the dealerships for those cars within a three hour drive. None of them would give me anything other than MSRP by email. Most of them called my phone within 15 minutes of me sending the email and all they wanted was for me to come in and talk to them.

I eventually went to the Toyota dealership because although they wouldn't negotiate via email, they didn't phone me either. When I told that to the salesman, he said that he could get in trouble for that because he was supposed to call.

Like every other car buying experience I've had, buying the Toyota sucked. They want to know what payment I want and all I want them to tell me is the out-the-door price. We would go back and forth and eventually they would bring some paperwork with an offer and they had accidentally changed the term from 48 to 60 months. Whoops! I think it ended up taking close to 3 hours to come to an agreement.

To this day, I'm still getting emails and phone calls from some of the dealers I initially contacted and there seems to be no way to make it stop. I would happily pay a small premium to buy from Amazon or direct if I could avoid giving my details to a local dealer.

That reminds me, I'm always getting junk mail and phone calls from scammers trying to sell me some aftermarket warranty. How did they get my name, phone, address, and car information? Is that a public record? The dealer swears they don't sell or share their customer lists.

<comment><USER13> I bought a Honda Accord and many dealers would not quote by email at all. The remaining dealers quoted a price that did not include a $1000 package of addons that were worth much less (door guards, nitrogen tires, wheel locks, etc.) Every Honda dealer I have seen in this region puts these add-ons on each and every car.

People talk as though the "get quotes by email" thing makes buying a car painless but the simple fact is that it's still a minefield.

My experience with Honda dealers (sales and service) has been so awful that I doubt I will buy another Honda, even though I generally like the car.

<comment><USER12> I noticed that the window tinting on my car isn't factory tint (some bubbles have started). The Toyota dealer orders cars for the lot with no tinting then they add it themselves. I'm guessing this makes them more money.

The Kia dealer I talked didn't have a car with the upholstery I was interested in and I found out later that the quote they gave me included a charge for taking the car to a local guy and getting the seats re-upholstered.

My wife bought an Acura and so far that dealership seems very good. If they keep treating us right, that's where I'll buy my next car.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think it would be great to buy a car from Amazon. The WYSISYG pricing is something missing from car buying. Negotiating a car price can be a lot of fun if you're a good negotiator, but people who aren't might love this.

It also gives you a tool for negotiating if you DO plan to take the offer in to a local dealership.

<comment><USER15> Oops. Beaten to the punch.

\---

In the used-car market, this is what CarMax does.[1]

[1]: [https://www.carmax.com/car-buying-process/why- carmax](https://www.carmax.com/car-buying-process/why-carmax)

<comment><USER16> Forgot to note that it was only for the used-car market, but would also be great for the new car market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This will be a... clarifying moment for eBay. I make my living on eBay and gross about 10x the average USA wage. Used stuff is involved. eBay once loveed people who bought and sold used stuff. They are one of the biggest used car venues in the world. They want to sell new stuff and become Amazon. Now Amazon is beating eBay on its own turf. Maybe eBay will have to remember their roots and start taking care of both its sellers and its end users in the used stuff sector.

<comment><USER18> You make about $300k/yr by selling used items on eBay? Consistently?

<comment><USER17> More than that ($500k) for 9 years. Sorry, will not reveal niche. Douche move, I know

<comment><USER19> Sorry, but an unverifiable income brag is effectively made up from the perspective of readers. "I just click ads all day and make $5k a week" is basically the same thing.

<comment><USER20> My dad was making fantastic money on ebay selling used items, but that was only because he had a cheap source of them - we have a company that sells second hand clothing, but the thing is, when you buy a truckload of second hand clothes, it comes with all sorts of crap that people give away to charities - watches, jewelery, shoes, toys, handbags, electronics, board games, books, etc etc etc. So we bought it for say(not a real value) $1/kg, but then my dad would put all of it on ebay. Thousands and thousands of items per month. Since we were buying per weight but selling individually, the profit on it was huge, and you wouldn't believe what sort of nonsense people would buy - old broken watch from a brand no one ever heard about for $5? Sold!

<comment><USER19> :)

I have bought and old broken alarm clock off of eBay for parts to repair one with sentimental value to my father. So I can definitely see the watch thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Where's the one-click button? :)

Seriously though, if I were in the market for buying a car I would love to use Amazon. I wonder what the restrictions are for them to register as a dealership in each state...

<comment><USER22> People seem to be missing the point. You can't actually buy cars on amazon (at least not yet) its just a shopping tool where it lists details, reviews, and msrp

<comment><USER23> People aren't missing the point. The parent comment directly recognized that you can't buy the vehicle from Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Has anyone used Costco to buy a new vehicle? Their program isn't direct or anything, but you're supposed to get better prices than working with a dealership directly.

I've been curious how much below invoice they are. The closest one is 4 hours away from me, so I'm not a member (and can't see prices).

<comment><USER25> We weren't overly impressed. Costco price was ~$2k above what we ended up negotiating separately.

<comment><USER26> Did you bring your own financing, did you let the dealer find you the best deal? A lot of dealers bump the APR on your loan and get the majority of that higher APR back from the lender as a finders fee.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> here's some context: [https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/25/amazon-vehicles- announce...](https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/25/amazon-vehicles-announced/)

</comment><comment><USER28> I wonder if once Tesla fights back all the local monopoly regulation around dealerships, this will naturally transition to an online car dealership. They'll have to figure out test drives though.

<comment><USER29> easy. just crowdsource the test drives.

<comment><USER30> Car owners volunteer their cars for test drives and get a kickback if the customer purchases that model? Essentially crowd sourced micro-commissions, that's brilliant.

<comment><USER31> I dunno have you seen the average person take a car for a test drive? Half the times they don't really want to buy it and just want to play with it. I don't know that I would want tens or hundreds of people in my [figurative] Tesla, possibly beating it up only for a chance at some sort of small kickback.

Then again I didn't think Uber could work and now I take them all the time so who knows!

<comment><USER32> The kickback has to be large enough to make it worthwhile. You might not do it for $100, but maybe for $1000?

<comment><USER31> Maybe? Depends on what the ratio shakes out to be. If I have to let 10 people drive my car then maybe. 20? Probably not worth my time. This will also raise insurance rates as you have to be covered for other drivers on your vehicle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Serious question. What exactly is new here? I've used the My Garage to buy part from amzn before. Did they add a new homepage for My Garage? Some of the comments are suggesting this is a one-click direct car shopping but doesn't seem to be. Just wondering if I missed something.

</comment><comment><USER34> How do they already have so many reviews and content for this? Private Beta? Pulled from other sources?

<comment><USER35> I viewed some of the reviews. They appear to be spammers or testers. For example,

Five Stars

By wangchengxuan on July 21, 2016

lalala

<comment><USER36> The reviews for the car I looked at (Honda Fit 2008) all looked legit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I was just wondering yesterday, if there is a service out there, which would let me see the type and model of cars which are popular, and most-bought? I assume there must be such a dataset available somewhere through government sources? Or perhaps not. Such a data could be a valuable service based on crowd's wisdom. Amazon here seems to provide public comments, which is generally available via Google.

<comment><USER38> I doubt the government has any data, there's no need or desire for dealers to send them info on their sales. Look at things like Consumer Reports who go out and survey large audiences of everyday people to see what they purchased, how much they paid, how much they like the car, etc.

<comment><USER39> Doesn't the licence plate database include the make and model?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> How do I buy one? I don't see an "add to cart" button anywhere.

<comment><USER41> Via the aptly named Amazon Dash buttons* or by saying "Alexa... I wish I had a red Ferrari."

* keep away from pets and small children

<comment><USER42> I'm imagining somebody saying "Alexa..." and then playing Skee Lo "I Wish" and getting just a multitude of things shipped to their home.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> "like hell Tesla is going to be the only one selling cars online"

<comment><USER44> Not sure how they would pull off new vehicles though. I'm pretty sure existing dealers would take the manufacturers to court if they made amazon a dealer who could sell cars in their exclusivity region. Tesla on the other hand is the manufacturer so they can do it (where legal).

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I was hoping for Volvo Amazon vehicles :)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo_Amazon](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo_Amazon)

</comment><comment><USER46> There'll be a lot of people saying "I'd never buy a car on Amazon"...

The same people that said "I'd never buy a book on the Internet" back in 2000.

</comment><comment><USER47> In Germany you have a very nice service if you want price transparency before buying a car: [http://www.meinauto.de/](http://www.meinauto.de/)

Basically, car dealers register their offer on the portal and you can _shop_ without knowing about the dealer. Just at the end, you sign a _middle man_ agreement and the website is forwarding your request to the car dealer.

At the end, you need to travel maybe 300km to get your car, but you get it from a normal dealer with standard guarantees. If you still want to buy at your _home_ car dealer, this gives you a good idea of the discount you could try to negotiate.

</comment><comment><USER48> For high value items like vehicles reverse auctions can work, as long as you can specify what you want and are not too emotionally attached to the model that you want [http://blog.marketdojo.com/2016/03/buying-a-car-via- auction....](http://blog.marketdojo.com/2016/03/buying-a-car-via- auction.html?m=1)

</comment><comment><USER49> Didn't they actually have a car sales service at one time? It seems like I remember them doing something with this about 15 years ago.

<comment><USER50> Kind of. They partnered with Nissan to deliver a car to somebody in a huge box; it was never meant as a continual or long term thing just a marketing stunt.

Here is a truly horrid video about it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yISx15OYogU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yISx15OYogU)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Now, if they delivered one of these via Prime ...

<comment><USER52> In the not-too-distant future: "Amazon now largest car dealer in the US, and fleets of Amazonian drones flying cars across the country are now a common sight. Fatalities from dropped cars are down 25% on the previous quarter. More news at 11".

<comment><USER51> Or, self-driving cars deliver themselves, perhaps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Soon we'll rent cars, like we rent books. :)

<comment><USER54> Many folks do just that. It's called "leasing". ;-)

<comment><USER55> Why lock yourself into a lease? I can rent a private car w/ chauffeur right from my phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Does anyone know if they'll do Amazon Associates on a car sales? 5% of the purchase price would be very nice indeed.

</comment><comment><USER57> Boy, good thing Amazon does not need to ship them with USPS. "Pime Drivers" will drive them to your door steps.

</comment><comment><USER58> Hah! When I worked at Amazon, we occasionally used to joke that the only thing you couldn't buy in the Automotive and Industrial department was actual cars. That discrepancy has now been corrected :)

[edit] Aw. No, it hasn't: this is just a way to "See specs, read reviews, and ask owners" about vehicles. Pity.

</comment><comment><USER59> You can't actually buy a car, but could this be a prelude to a near future when you can?

</comment><comment><USER60> Was anyone else expecting this to be an announcement of an Amazon self-driving car project?

</comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash I wonder how long it will take until you can buy a house on Amazon.

<comment><USER13> Redfin would do this first.

Since they have a fair number of listings, I'm waiting for them to offer something where the buyer gets a substantial discount for buying it directly from the Redfin agent, without using a buyer's agent. Next step would be to sell listings exclusively through Redfin and not through the MLS, though this would be riskier.

<comment><USER61> I think this was the original business plan of Zillow & Trulia - they wanted people to list without the help of agents. It never really became successful enough so they sold out.

I don't understand how agents can charge 6% in America when they charge 1 or 1.5% in the UK.

<comment><USER62> It is rare to see a buyers agent earning their 3% in the US. The amount of information and tools available to consumers is nearly in parity with agents. The more hands-on you are with the process, the less value the agents bring. They can still provide value in competitive markets or through complex deals, but your inspector and lawyer are the ones doing the real work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Oh awesome, I can't wait to buy a knock off truck from "Ford-Motors" that has a handful of fake 5-star reviews and doesn't meet safety standards. Thanks, Amazon!

(See here for explanation: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11939829](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11939829))

<comment><USER64> The last few things I've bought from Amazon were all knockoffs--Hanes socks that wore out and the fabric pilled up immediately and gave me blisters, boxers, sunglasses, etc. Pretty disappointing. Now I try to avoid any Prime products fulfilled by third parties, but I'm not sure if buying directly from Amazon mitigates the risk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> So many 5 star reviews.

<comment><USER66> I would think if you're dropping tens of thousands of dollars for a product, you'd be satisfied with it or convince yourself you're satisfied.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I don't really get what this is - if I want to find parts for my car, I can just type something like '2012 Honda Accord Wipers'

I already have my car in my 'garage', they've had that functionality for years.

</comment><comment><USER68> It will surprise many that this is already a thing. e.g., vroom.com

<comment><USER69> Is there something like this for buying new cars online? I thought I something a while back about a company like this working directly with dealerships selling new cars but I can't find it now.

I'm planning on buying an EV car this year for the tax benefits, but I'm dreading the dealership.

<comment><USER70> Carvana ?

<comment><USER69> Maybe that was it. Looks like they only do used as well, but I might have been mis-remembering about new cars being available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Waiting for the time that I can referral link a car purchase.

</comment><comment><USER72> I don't believe those ratings. I was looking at Ram truck ratings the other day from (from an unbiased site) and they were 1.5/5.

<comment><USER4> What's the "unbiased site"?

<comment><USER72> [https://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/dodge_ram.html](https://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/dodge_ram.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> I couldn't find any Trabants for sale. Lame.

</comment><comment><USER74> Ever since CarWoo bit the dust I've been hoping for some actual innovation in this space. Let's hope this is it!

<comment><USER26> CarWoo wasn't exactly innovative. It was another middleman between you and the dealers that sold the cars. They had to be careful to not be too aggressive or they would lose their dealer partners. There are already multiple innovative companies out there acting as entirely online direct to consumer vehicle dealers. Just google buy a car online.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> I just added two Bentley's and a Porsche to my online garage, since I'll never have these in my real garage.

</comment><comment><USER76> no motorcycles? :(

<comment><USER77> Same question. Hopefully they are going to extend it soon, I see no reason why bikes are left out

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Getting through "The Everything Store" right now, and, yep. Wow.

</comment><comment><USER79> A number of people have commented about the quality (or its lack) of Amazon's "this fits/doesn't fit your car" data. Let me explain a little about how that works:

In North America, this fitment data conforms to a popular (but not the only) schema called ACES (Aftermarket Catalog Exchange Standard). It's a long and pretty well-defined XML schema that specifies things like year, make, model, and all kinds of attributes like engine configuration, fuel type, wheelbase, etc., as well as brand name, part number, quantity, and so on. Fitment data providers create an XML document according to this schema and populate it based on the products they say fit particular vehicles.

For example, say you are the manufacturer of a FRAM oil filter (FRAM is a common aftermarket filter brand in the US). It has a part number A123. You know it fits the 2000-2010 Honda Accord with engine XYZ. You add to your fitment XML document an entry for this filter that specifies brand=FRAM, partnumber=A123, parttype=oil filter, years=2000-2010, make=Honda, model=Accord, engine=XYZ. Now, you (or some 3rd party you designate that specializes in turning your catalog of products into fitment data), sends this fitment document on to companies that care about fitment information because they are selling your FRAM oil filter and want to be sure their customers can tell if it will fit their car or not (Amazon, Ebay, Rock Auto, etc.).

They take that fitment data and join it against their product database and out pops the yes/no fitment data you see on their website.

Now scale it up: there is no requirement that only one company produce these fitment records. Anyone else can produce a fitment record that says all the above, but for the 2000-2010 Honda Civic. Maybe that's a mistake, but as a receiver of the fitment data, Amazon or Ebay can't know it's a mistake--they can only presume the fitment data they are given is valid.

Now, complicate it further by adding the human element: e.g. some fitment data providers have fitment data in Excel spreadsheets. Some poor human fat- fingered that data from the spreadsheet into XML and maybe they left off the leading 0 on all the part numbers (because that's Excel's default for number cells). Oops. Now none of those fitment records will match to any parts in the database of the companies that sell them. Or they're entering this data off a piece of paper and can't tell if that's a 0 (zero) or an O (oh). Oops.

Or, worse: the fitment provider gets the wrong vehicle ID (because the schema is all based on IDs, not human-readable names) and submits fitment data that says that FRAM filter fits a 2000-2010 Tesla Model S. Well, that's extremely unlikely, but the receiver of the fitment data is a machine and the machine doesn't know that is completely ridiculous.

Or equally bad: the fitment provider says it fits a 2000-2010 Honda Accord, but doesn't specify the engine type at all. Now, Amazon's machines see that and think "the customer only needs to tell me their year, make, and model". A smart human knows it also needs the engine configuration, but the machine can't easily know that because none of its data specifies an engine configuration is needed for fitment. So Amazon sends out the filter because its data says "it fits!" and the customer is unhappy.

So, in the end, the customer is displeased because Amazon shipped them an oil filter that can't possibly fit their car, even though it told them it would because they can only go on what the data tells them.

A closely related problem is that sometimes a seller will have a product that they know should require fitment data (like an oil filter), but there has been no fitment data submitted for it. In that case, the company can neither say it fits, nor it doesn't fit--it doesn't have enough data to make the determination. This is common as the new model-years start to hit the marketplace: the car exists; you can buy it; you can buy parts for it; however, the aftermarket fitment data hasn't caught up with the car's attributes yet. It also happens when Amazon has fitment data for some models but not for others, even if the part will fit those other models--without data saying so, there's no way to say "yes that will fit your new 2017".

To complicate it even further, if you're talking about this stuff outside of North America, there are other schemas and data providers with very little overlap of the NA offerings. This is visible in the very different fitment experience you see in most EU countries on Amazon (for example, try [https://www.amazon.co.uk/auto](https://www.amazon.co.uk/auto) and select a car).

The takeaway? Unhappy customers result when you have complex data quality problems, and sometimes it's no fault of the implementation at all.

</comment><comment><USER80> Will the Associates program pay commissions for this??? If so.....

</comment><comment><USER81> Where does this leave the likes of Edmunds, AutoTrader etc.?

</comment><comment><USER82> Self-driving car market research under the cover?

</comment><comment><USER83> checkout [http://roadster.com](http://roadster.com)

</comment><comment><USER84> Can we buy car engines?

</comment><comment><USER85> Psh, no Prime delivery?

</comment><comment><USER86> Where are the Teslas?

</comment><comment><USER87> I would like an Amazon Prime Air to deliver my new car plz.

</comment><comment><USER88> Killer URL. /s Would it kill them to add a route?

</comment><comment><USER89> They need VR

</comment><comment><USER90> where's the lease offer?

</comment><comment><USER73> So if I buy the car with my amazon card, I get 3% back? woot!</comment>


Using server heat for domestic heating - <AUTHOR> https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=nl&sl=nl&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Ftweakers.net%2Fnieuws%2F102062%2Feneco-en-nerdalize-starten-proeven-met-serververwarming-in-huishoudens.html

<comment><USER2> I've been doing this for years. Unfortunately, my upgrade from some ancient fedora to linux mint cinnamon 17.1 reduced the effectiveness of my xeon box as a space heater.

Perhaps if I mined bitcoins on it, it would keep my room toasty warm. But just listening to music doesn't work anymore. With that old fedora, if I fell asleep with the door and window shut I would awaken drenched in sweat.</comment>


Learn FFmpeg the hard way - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/leandromoreira/ffmpeg-libav-tutorial#learn-ffmpeg-libav-the-hard-way <comment><USER2> >In summary this is the very basic idea behind a video: a series of pictures / frames running at a given rate.

>Therefore we need to introduce some logic to play each frame smoothly. For that matter, each frame has a presentation timestamp (PTS) which is an increasing number factored in a timebase that is a rational number (where the denominator is know as timescale) divisible by the frame rate (fps).

Constant framerate is a very dangerous assumption to make. It's true for video recorded by professional cameras, but if you check video recorded by most mobile phones you notice that it's wrong.

<comment><USER3> Any tutorial will not get very far if every corner case is spelled out every time. The point of "learning" documents is to give enough concepts and useful information for the reader to have a basis to start building additional knowledge on top of. Getting into the weeds quickly derails this process.

<comment><USER4> what's wrong with presenting everything in the correct abstraction to start with?

Whether you a public school math class, or a git tutorial online, you always get the same thing. A list of procedures for using the tools in the most common cases you are likely to encounter. This seems like a good idea in the move fast and break things ideology, but what do we notice about people's skills in the real world? No one knows how git works, and no one knows any math by the time they leave high school.

Give people a set of tools and _prove_ to them that it solves every problem in some domain. If they can't solve the problems using the most primitive, complete toolset you can give them, then the case where they solve the problem _is_ the edge case.

As an example, often, we will have students write fractions in "lowest terms", then only present students with fractions in which the numerators and denominators only share a few, small common prime factors. But checking prime factors is absolutely the hardest way of solving this problem, and unless you're exhaustive in your search, you can't have any confidence that you actually have solved it.

Students are intrinsically aware that this wold be tedious in general, and it gives them anxiety to know that they could have missed something, or not tried sufficiently large divisors. They have no confidence in their tools, and rightly so. The only reason they can solve these problems at all is because the instructor gives them problems which can be solved this way.

The origin of the question "when will I use this in the real world?" is the instinct that the tool you have been given is only for edge cases, and cannot be relied upon.

I think you are exactly wrong in your assessment. Getting into the weeds is the only way to learn, because almost everything in the world is weeds, some of those weeds just happen to be called crops.

<comment><USER5> > _what 's wrong with presenting everything in the correct abstraction to > start with?_

Nobody can retain the material that way. Each thing you learn has to be attached to other concepts you already have, and your skills build on one another.

Nobody teaches Peano's axioms of arithmetic to kindergarteners; they're still learning how to identify shapes, to compare quantities. When they eventually learn even the simplest proofs, they'll build on the basis of careful attention to detail that they learned while mastering basic arithmetic.

Nobody teaches general relativity on the first day of college-level physics class. Students are still learning calculus at that point; even if they already had a calculus course, this is their first opportunity to apply it.

And _nobody_ teaches the fundamental proofs of calculus on the first day of calculus class; you can use sloppy language like "infinitesimals" to establish a good intuition for how to use derivatives and integrals.

If you tried introducing this material from the bottom up, it wouldn't take. But if I'm wrong, sure, go try it and see how it works.

<comment><USER4> You're right, I shouldn't have said the correct abstraction, but you should at least provide a complete one. You don't have to build from the most fundamental possible assumptions to build from a set of tools that is _provably complete for some domain of problems_.

Doing otherwise is like giving someone a screwdriver that only turns clockwise.

Also, I challenge the notion that "no one can retain material that way". Have you ever met anyone who has retained the material any other way who didn't do it despite the system?

<comment><USER6> Essentially, this is impossible for anything that's not easily explainable all at once- so it's useless for any advanced domain.

You can't just give people a firehose of information. When you learn acoustic engineering, you have to first learn the prerequisite math needed to understand later concepts such as room architecture. It simply does not make sense to jam pack it all in at once, because 1) it won't make sense and 2) nobody has that kind of memory.

Next, if you want to cover all possible use cases, that could take forever in certain domains.

Last, some of this stuff is objective as to what's necessary, or what cases need to be covered.

No, what's better is to give general knowledge as needed, and the student can seek out knowledge for various corner cases. It would be ridiculous otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Having built programs that used the ffmpeg libraries (as well as x264) I have to say that a tutorial that is up to date and recent like this would have been very helpful at the time. Glad to see somebody is undertaking this effort.

<comment><USER8> I agree. ffmpeg can be inscrutable sometimes. Understanding the internal concepts is a big boost when using it. For example I've used "-avcodec" hundreds of times in the command line but I just now understood where that fit in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> All and all a good intro tutorial that gets into some of the common professional use cases. On "constant bitrate" assumptions and some of the subsequent discussion here, ANY transform-and-entropy codec like VP9 or H264 will ALWAYS be variable bitrate internally. In the pro broadcast world, where you can't go over your FCC-allocated radio frequency bandwidth allocation by even one iota (or nastygrams and fines ensue), this is "handled" by actually having the encoder understoot the actual target (say it's 5mbit), and then the stream is padded with null packets to get a nice even 5mbit/s. This also happens with LTE broadcast as well. The encoders that do this reliably are fabulously expensive and of a rackmount flavor.

<comment><USER10> I'd love to hear more details about those things. I'm guessing it's not as simple as wiggling the quality around to keep the output within a certain size.

<comment><USER11> That's basically it. All of the digital broadcast streams (over the air, cable, satellite) use a fixed bitrate per physical channel, and send an mpeg transport stream. A transport stream is built of fixed length packets. Within the transport stream you can multiplex different programs. OTA gets 20Mbps per channel, if you use that for one program, it's likely you may not use the whole thing, so you include null packets as needed to fill the stream. If you send multiple programs, you probably will fill the stream, so you have to reduce quality and/or play games with timing of i-frames and possibly adjusting program start times or commercial break lengths to avoid having multiple programs needing high bitrate at the same time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wrote about creating adaptive streaming over HTTP (MPEG-DASH) using ffmpeg and mp4box before [1]. It is nice to see that ffmpeg is incorporating more and more of the same features.

Has anybody got ffmpeg to create HLS out of mp4 fragments as well? It would save some conversion time and space, since the same MP4 fragments could be used with the two different manifest files, DASH and HLS. Mp4box is not quite there yet, sadly.

[1] [https://rybakov.com/blog/mpeg-dash/](https://rybakov.com/blog/mpeg-dash/)

<comment><USER13> I think they're almost there in two ways. 1) is [https://github.com/gpac/gpac/issues/790](https://github.com/gpac/gpac/issues/790). 2) is to extend FFmpeg to include the MP4Box muxer: [http://www.gpac- licensing.com/signals/](http://www.gpac-licensing.com/signals/)

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the links. Yes, the gpac dev version is close to have a working solution - [https://github.com/gpac/gpac/issues/772](https://github.com/gpac/gpac/issues/772)

Not quite sure what the signals project strives to be. Is it a framework for commercial applications built on top of gpac?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why exactly do people call good explanatory manuals "the hard way"? The hard way to learn something is using nothing but the official reference manual or the man pages. What I have found by the link is what I would rather call "for dummies" :-)

<comment><USER15> Consider GUI wrappers the "for dummies" version.

<comment><USER14> I actually find those I tried rather unfriendly. Every time I have to convert something I start by looking for a quick-and-easy GUI solution but end up using command line because it's more intuitive (!), more flexible and it actually works (GUI wrappers don't always do, it often happens that you click "start" or whatever and nothing happens or a nonsensical error pops up).

By the way it's always easier to teach a not particularly bright person to use a textual dialogue command line interface than a complex GUI: you just tell them (and let them write down) what do they have to type, what response they can expect and how are they to respond to it if it's this or that. I can remember how easy it was to teach my granny to use the UUPC e-mail system under DOS and how much harder it was to teach GUIs.

<comment><USER16> Handbrake is a pretty solid and easy to use GUI wrapper of ffmpeg.

<comment><USER17> It handles a few (of the most common) use cases but it is not a generic interface for all of ffmpeg's functionality.

And strictly speaking, it is built on top of Libav, although they are considering switching over after 1.2

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This looks pretty awesome..

I was hoping this was about the command-line tool, which is quite daunting to learn once you start getting into the filters and combining/merging multiple audio and video sources.

In a recent project I eventually had to write a script to do 2 passes of ffmpeg after spending a good day trying to figure my way through all the filter documentation to do a 5-step process in one pass..

This isn't a knock against ffmpeg, which is an amazing open source package, but it's complicated, so I'm sure this repo will be of great help to many.

<comment><USER19> The ffmpeg commandline tool is ultimately just a frontend to all the internals.

So understanding how everything works internally will translate directly to a better grasp on how to use ffmpeg at the commandline.

Even though this document is very new I now understand why fiddling with the PTS value in the filtergraph would slow down/speed up some video I was tinkering with a while back, for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've spent a large portion of the past month working with ffmpeg. We are using it to repair, concat, and mux an arbitrary number of overlapping audio and video streams recorded via WebRTC. While this sounds straight forward on the face of it, the interplay of filters and controls is impossible to predict without extensive experience.

To my knowledge ffmpeg is the only tool that could possibly do this. It took a whole lot of reading man pages, bug trackers, stack exchange and various online sources to stitch together the necessary info. This seems like a great resource to learn what the tool is really doing and skip scrambling for information so much.

<comment><USER21> FWITW I found a python library moviepy a lot easier to work with (although sometimes you still have to drop down to ffmpeg as it won't do everything ffmpeg can do).

Moviepy is basically an easy to use wrapper around ffmpeg and some other utilities like ImageMagick. Not as full featured, but one can get quite a long way with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sidenote: over the years I haven't seen a Linux utility crash so often as ffmpeg; not by a wide margin. So when calling this library, it is probably wise to assume that it may not return.

<comment><USER23> I use ffmpeg to transcode video, perhaps 10,000 times in the past year (part of an automated pipeline). It has failed about 50 times or so, almost every failure down to corrupted input and not a crash per se. It has deadlocked about 200 times, often enough that my tools monitor the log file I redirect output to and restart the job if too long passes without progress.

I'm amazed it's as stable as it is, given the complexity of video formats. Of course crashes are also potential security problems - I sometimes wonder how far you could get with a malicious video spread virally (in the social sense).

<comment><USER24> Probably good to document those use cases, collect sample clips and contribute back back to the project as test cases.

Help improve the project for everyone.

<comment><USER25> I've made efforts in the past, but often I can't legally redistribute the problematic data. If the problem is obvious enough, I try and clean-room recreate it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> About 10 years ago I wrote a video encoding app with libavcodec/libavformat. Beyond very simple examples with everything set to default, there was almost zero material on how to use it. There was maybe one trivial example of decoding a file where all the parameters are guessed automatically. But I needed to encode a live video stream from a webcam. I spent a couple of weeks reading the code and hacking away until I got it right. I wish there was stuff like that back then.

</comment><comment><USER27> When ffmpeg came along nearly 20 years ago, it seemed to be the absolute video toolbox I was looking for.

It was, but you needed what seemed to be 'dark arts' to use it. And that took a long long time.

I owe years of my career to working out how to use this.

</comment><comment><USER28> I would gladly donate to anyone that wants to statically bind this for use with Go. I really would love to see the power of FFmpeg open to more apps.

I've used FFmpeg libs dynamically linked, but it requires FFmpeg be installed on the system.

<comment><USER29> I would gladly donate to anyone that wants to statically bind this for use with c# with mono multiplatform support. I really would love to see the power of FFmpeg open to more apps. I've used FFmpeg libs dynamically linked, but it requires FFmpeg be installed on the system.

<comment><USER30> Indeed, this would be great.

This actually came up for me a couple days ago, and my ham-fisted solution was to _bundle_ ffmpeg.exe and ffplay.exe in the DLL and extract when running :)

It solved the problem but is so gross!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is great! my experience with libav is very frustrating. There was no document/tutorial. The most useful thing was the example programs. but if a problem is not covered by the examples, then I would be doomed.

The worst part is that when the api doesn't work, you receive meaningless error messages. You don't know what's wrong.

</comment><comment><USER32> I wrote a small wrapper library a decade ago that wraps the decoding capabilities of libavcodec/libavformat in way that makes it relatively easy to use from other programming languages (Pascal in this particular case)

[https://github.com/astoeckel/acinerella](https://github.com/astoeckel/acinerella)

Note that this was one of the first C programs I ever wrote and the API is suboptimal (relies on structs being passed around instead of providing access via getter/setter functions). I don't really recommend that people use it, yet looking at the code might help people to get started with ffmpeg.

Also note that the libavcodev/libavformat libraries have gone a long way in terms of ease of use. If you have a look at the first versions of my wrapper library, it required really weird hacks (registering a protocol) to get a VIO interface (i.e. have callbacks for read, write, seek).

All that being said, today I usually just spawn subprocesses for ffmpeg/ffprobe if I need to read multimedia-files, and I think that for most server-side applications this is the best method (it also allows to sandbox ffmpeg/ffprobe).

<comment><USER16> Based on the code in this tutorial, it seems like it would already be easy to use from other languages. What did you need to change?

<comment><USER32> By "being easy to use from other languages" I refer to the size of the header that needs to be translated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> About a year ago I wrote a zsh script to analyse files in my collection and format/selectively re-encode them based on a set of rules. Basically, I wanted .mp4 files that the Roku Plex app could play back without having to do any kind of re-encoding (stream/container or otherwise).

That started me on a 2-week mission of understanding the command-line. Good God is it a nightmare! All my script was doing was reading the existing file, deciding on the "correct" video and audio track, creating an AC-3 if only a DTS existed, and adding a two-channel AAC track. It would also re-encode the video track if the bitrate was too high or the profile was greater than the Roku could handle.

Here's the thing that I discovered, as much as I swore at the command-line interface, I couldn't come up with a more elegant solution that would still allow the application to be controlled entirely from the CLI. Ffmpeg is capable of _so much_ that figuring out a way to just "tell it what to do" from a CLI ends up with an interface that's ... that difficult to use. The program, very nearly, handles _everything_ [0] as it relates to media files and simplifying the application to improve the CLI would necessarily involve eliminating features. It's one of those cases where a light-weight DSL would provide a superior interface (and to a certain extent, the command-line of ffmpeg nearly qualifies as a DSL).

[0] The "very nearly" was necessary because of the _one_ feature I found that it didn't handle. It's not possible in the current version to convert subtitle tracks from DVDs to a format that is "legal" in an mp4 file because the DVD subtitles are images rather than text, whereas the only formats that are legal for the mp4 container are text. I found some utilities that can handle this, but didn't try any, opting instead to simply download them when I encountered a file with subtitles in this format.

<comment><USER34> Would you be willing to share this script?

<comment><USER33> I'm not entirely sure what state its in (and the code is _brutally hacked together_ \-- I spent far more time reading up on _how_ to mangle the ffmpeg CLI to get what I wanted than I did bothering to write anything resembling quality shell code)

I don't use it any longer, but I'll see if it's still sitting on my media server (but probably not until the weekend) - if you're on keybase, you can find me @mdip; I'll toss it in my public keybase filesystem folder (keybase.pub/mdip, I think) if I can locate it! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Always wondered why there were never any stellar guides for the underlying libraries of FFmpeg. Had to do a couple of projects with hardware encoding and decoding and the best example I found of how to use it was ripping apart mpv. At least it has samples of how to use the hardware encode features...

</comment><comment><USER36> My project ran into a limitation that required only the use of FFmpeg libav without the command line tool. This is exactly what I needed. I'm eager to read the rest.

</comment><comment><USER37> This is awesome -- I read the first few pages and I'm really looking forward to reading the rest. Very clearly explained; thanks for creating/sharing!

</comment><comment><USER38> I use FFmpeg since more than 10 years and I am amazed at how stable it is. Even when we say to our users drop anything in our apps we will do our best to handle it .. it's exceptional to have an issue with it. Because the API is always evolving the best advice is to read the headers, the best documentation is there and its accurate.

</comment><comment><USER39> Question related to FFMpeg: In the first few examples, there are input options defining the video and audio encoding -- why is this needed? Shouldn't a video container be self evident of things like that?

<comment><USER40> The video container of course tells you what codec the video is, but it can lie or be otherwise incorrect. FFMpeg will use what it says as the default, but you can override it if you'd like (or if you have multiple decoders for a given codec).

But yes, you're right. 99.9% of the time there's no need to specify input decoder library

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> i have used it on the commandline really gives you fine grained control. winff is a easy way and almost as good within the front end.nice article on it.

</comment><comment><USER42> Thank you!</comment>


Show HN: Swipe 2.0 – new version of Markdown presentation tool - <AUTHOR> https://www.swipe.to/

<comment><USER2> Sorry to just be offering high-level first-impression criticism, but I'm having a tough time following the main visual/slides on [https://www.swipe.to/](https://www.swipe.to/). I kept trying to read each slide, or to figure out what the ordering was supposed to be, or to figure out which slide was first, but they just keep changing really fast, and the transitions from one slide to the next is often jarring / completely changing the view.

Perhaps it might be easier to digest and understand if there was an indicator to show where the slides started/ended, and/or longer pauses between each slide? Or perhaps to have more obvious transitions between slides? Or maybe to slim down what's depicted in the main slide deck there to demonstrate a narrower slice of the product? (it seems like maybe you're trying to show a little bit of everything there)

The slide deck lower down on the page is easier to follow, for example, because I can follow what the user interactions are that are leading from each slide to the next.</comment>


Ask HN: How should I structure my pricing? - <AUTHOR> http://startuplift.com/cash-award-selection-and-payment/

<comment><AUTHOR> Need pricing suggestions. StartUpLift is a feedback-oriented service where we feature startups and help them solicit feedback from our community of users. The site was launched with the help/suggestions from HN users a few months ago. I am coming back to the HN community today to help me structure pricing correctly. What are your thoughts - is it too much, too little? What can I change in what I say on the pricing page? Currently there are three options - Free, $35 and $50. Free option simply gets a startup featured (no feedback guarantee). When you choose a paid option ($35 or $50), we invite our users (currently about 1,800) to submit their feedback. You will then be able to select and reward top three or 5 entrees respectively (out of many received). Competition helps maintain the quality of feedback. [Note: the URL in Title above is page 2 of the submission process, i.e. users are taken to this page after they submit details about their StartUp. Here is page 1 in case anyone is interested: <http://startuplift.com/submit-your-startup/>.

Thank you!

<comment><USER2> So, for $35 is it possible that there will be zero feedback?

<comment><AUTHOR> No.

When you pay, we email our user base which is always eager to participate (as long as there is an incentive involved). We have never had anyone who has paid not receive feedback. You can take a look at the following to see the paid amount and the number of feedback submissions received: <http://startuplift.com/category/cash-award/></comment></comment></comment>


Duchamps Urinal: How the liberal West is dismantling itself - <AUTHOR> https://unherd.com/2018/11/how-duchamps-urinal-embodies-the-liberal-west/ <comment><USER2> Dude, "Fountain" was rejected from a show 101 years ago. It's a little long for that to be a proximal cause of self-dismantling.

Also, you just never know. The ordinary, "common sense" things done in Afghanistan didn't really work, why not try a few offbeat things? It's not like the DoD is auditable anyway. Have a little fun! Live a little! Make jokes!</comment>


GitHub's Top Most Valuable Repositories Out of 96M - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/githubs-top-100-most-valuable-repositories-out-of-96-million-bb48caa9eb0b <comment><USER2> 1\. Google Kubernetes 2\. Apache Spark 3\. Microsoft Visual Studio Code</comment>


Ask HN: List of CS interview questions - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for a <i>large</i> compilation of CS programming interview questions and answers. Answers are preferred, but not required. Explicit questions are preferred, but resources such as this Reddit thread[0] are also welcome.<p>[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/20ahfq/heres_a_pretty_big_list_of_programming_interview/ <comment><USER2> [https://leetcode.com/problemset/all/](https://leetcode.com/problemset/all/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't have much knowledge on this, but in your (or someone else's) opinion, how does this compare to HackerRank[0]? Would you say these problems are easier, on-par, or more difficult than HackerRank problems[1]?

[0] [https://www.hackerrank.com](https://www.hackerrank.com)

[1] [https://www.hackerrank.com/domains/algorithms](https://www.hackerrank.com/domains/algorithms)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Leetcode is the right answer. The better question is how folks got to the point of nailing these questions without going to a top CS program or doing competitive programming.

I'm honestly beginning to think it's an inherent ability given how little folks from top schools struggle with interviews.

<comment><USER4> It's just practice. I went to a good school, but I've spent 100s of hours doing programming contest questions. The secret is, there aren't that many unique interview questions, and so once you get the pattern recognition down (binary search problems, hash table problems, dynamic programming problems, etc.) and practice your speed, interviews become easy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe this[0]? I'm unaffiliated but have found use in it.

0: [https://www.careercup.com/page](https://www.careercup.com/page)</comment>


Ask HN: What do you use for your hosted knowledge base? - <AUTHOR> I know that many of the helpdesk services (desk.com, zendesk, groove, helpscout, ...) have a Knowledge Base feature as an add-on. I'm curious if there are any good hosted knowledge base solutions where it isn't an afterthought.
I found supporthero.io and knowledgeowl.com but both seem to be very small companies (just 1 or 2 people) that may not be around for long. Then there's helpjuice.com which looks perfect but starts at $199/month.
I'm curious what folks on HN use. <comment><USER2> Hey gk1,

I'm one of the developers that works at Help Scout, in fact I work full time on our knowledge base offering called 'Docs'. I saw your comment earlier today so thought I'd take the chance to respond and get some feedback if you didn't mind! :)

You can check out some more information on what it offers here: [https://www.helpscout.net/knowledge- base/](https://www.helpscout.net/knowledge-base/)

What areas are we lacking in that you just can't live without? We're always open to a chat and want to keep improving the product and experience for our customers. I'm happy to talk on here or you can email in any questions to firstname.lastname@example.com where you can talk with people from all departments as we all man the support queue.

Also just because I love HN here is a promo code that'll allow you to try us out for 60 days free with no credit card needed! :) [https://secure.helpscout.net/members/register/11/?promo=hn-d...](https://secure.helpscout.net/members/register/11/?promo=hn- docs-convo)

</comment><comment><USER3> > I'm curious if there are any good hosted knowledge base solutions where it > isn't an afterthought

I started HelpSite.io exactly because of this. Knowledge bases with the big guys are always bundled with a million ([https://help.helpsite.io/articles/5-comparison-with-help- des...](https://help.helpsite.io/articles/5-comparison-with-help-desk- software-like-zendesk-desk-com-help-scout-groove-etc)) other things. I always just wanted a simple way to create a public facing help site / support center / KB.

Check it out:

[http://helpsite.io](http://helpsite.io)

A few nice things we support:

\- Really fast search

\- An intelligent contact form that auto-suggests articles

\- We even have a free plan which supports custom domains (via CNAME).

I'd love to hear any feedback!

We're not a huge team either, but we're profitable with no fixed runway or intention of shutting down.

Feel free to reach out at firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER4> I did some research late last year, and plan to pull the trigger in the next month or so. Communifire ([https://axerosolutions.com](https://axerosolutions.com)) was the option that seemed to best match my needs / plans. I'd also love to hear other experiences since I a) Haven't played with it yet, and b) Hadn't seen the platforms you mentioned so will check them out.

</comment><comment><USER5> [https://github.com/dropbox/hackpad](https://github.com/dropbox/hackpad)

</comment><comment><USER6> Confluence works pretty well for us.</comment>


Ask HN: Why salaries are not going up? - <AUTHOR> I work in the south of France, for the past year and a half I have been hearing that engineers and software developers are missing and companies have been unable to fill roles for months and months.<p>Yet, I don't see any significant raise in the salaries I'm being offered (2 years experience 40'000€ for 40 hour week), if the companies are so desperate to find developers why aren't they making their offers more attractive? Or am I missing something ? <comment><USER2> IMHO when companies announce that there is a worker shortage, what they are actually stating is that the negotiating power in the current job market may be shifting away from corporations

These corporations may have started having some issues retaining key employees and discovered that expertise and takent doesn't spring from nowhere, which affects productivity to their surprise as highly skilled employees aren't growing on trees and can't be replaced as soon as their employee leaves. So before they need to do something about working conditions (i.e. absurdly long hours and stressful environment) and wages they instead try to manipulate the job market by requesting a sudden influx of canonfodder to shift the negotiating power back into their hands.

</comment><comment><USER3> People don't like paying more for the same thing.

There can be cultural reasons which make this more sticky in some places like France perhaps. I came across a survey in Japan where companies also said they were having trouble hiring and only 1/11 companies said they would consider raising wages. America has the highest software developer salaries in the world because there is more of a cultural acceptance of the free market and realization that it can make good business sense to pay more.

I come from a place where salaries advance very slowly and unfortunately, in places like this, companies would rather pass on good candidates than pay more. It means their company grows slower. But they get to keep the illusion of control.

It comes down to the founder's dilemma [1] that permeates through the culture of a company - Does the owner want to be rich or king? If the company owner/managers are more interested in being king, they will generally not pay higher salaries unless the situation gets so dire than they begrudgingly are forced to. You want to try to work for companies where they want to be rich. Unfortunately, in a place where the general culture does not encourage this, these companies will be very tough to find.

[1] [https://hbr.org/2008/02/the-founders- dilemma](https://hbr.org/2008/02/the-founders-dilemma)

<comment><USER4> > People don't like paying more for the same thing.

I think this is right, and it applied to your milk. For example I would be shocked if the price of milk was doubled from AU$3 to AU$6 here, but at say 3 cartons a week the total cost of that would be about $40 a week. Whereas if I have to pay another $40 a week due to an interest rate rise I'd take it. It's a weird psychological thing (makes it hard to live in another country!)

> Does the owner want to be rich or king?

Another option is to work for a company (ideally contract work) that doesn't have a single owner or small cohort of owners. This would be a large corporation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I bet it's the same problem in France as in Sweden. Programmers are managed by managers. Therefore managers are ranked higher than programmers. Therefore managers make more money than programmers. But there is no shortage of managers. Therefore managers' salaries are not increasing. Therefore programmers salaries must not increase because they must not surpass managers' salaries.

<comment><USER6> I think that's exactly the reason why titles are all just b.s.

It should be more like, pay $200000 because he's good rather than because he is a senior engineer. Companies should get rid of the titling bull crap and just let it all be based on salary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've definitely noticed software development salaries for both "full stack web developers" and mobile developers peak in my local US metro. Companies seem to have stayed in the range of $105K - $130K [1] since around 2012 when we were coming out of the recession. Web development has become somewhat of a commodity and companies can outsource it or "rural source" it to cheaper parts of the country.

Moving into "team lead"/architect role seems to change the range to $125K - $155K. The only way to make more is by being a billable consultant. That ranges from $145K - $175K.

[1] These are the salary ranges for most cities outside of Silicon Valley/West Coast, DC, and New York where the salaries and cost of living are a lot lower.

[https://www.matrixres.com/resources/salary- survey/](https://www.matrixres.com/resources/salary-survey/)

</comment><comment><USER8> I've heard many companies say they can't hire a single developer, and then pass on good candidates.

It's easier to blame the market than admit "we are terrible at recruiting."

<comment><USER9> Yes, the prevailing attitude is that someone's GitHub, knowledge, experience, and portfolio might as well be entirely a lie if they can't solve a particular dynamic programming LeetCode toy problem du jour on-the-fly on a whiteboard.

It's also a potential killer advantage for startups to be able to recognize budding coder talent that doesn't check off all the boxes that say FAANG recruiters have. It's still very much an inefficient market, and people that can't code aren't necessarily the best at recognizing coder talent.

<comment><USER10> I've never seen a whiteboard interview in the UK, I imagine the op would probably confirm he's never seen one in France.

The whiteboard thing seems to be a US obsession.

<comment><USER11> How else would you do a tech interview?

<comment><USER10> I've had to code something that actually had to do with the job a few times. Like write a basic page that displays X from table Y. Fill in the missing JavaScript function that does Y. Write a SQL query for the report Z. Usually left alone to do it at a computer in the de facto editor for that language.

I've also had written tests with questions to do with the job, not trick questions, just straight, normal, day-to-day problems. Usually 10 or so that start easy and get harder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> n-gauge I wonder how much of this is due to cheap outsourcing, keeping the salaries lower for a non architect role?

(If you're in an architect type role I guess you have a higher salary)

<comment><AUTHOR> It could be outsourcing, but also could be consulting. I have an impression (and no way backed by data), that half jobs around here are not direct employee but people working for a consulting company, even tho they're 100% daily working for a client.

But even those consulting companies are having issues getting new developers but don't seem to be getting their salaries much higher.

<comment><USER12> ^ I have seen much of this in the Netherlands. A lot of "Full Time" Consultants.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have always wondered about the reason for this. But I guess its mostly because letting go a consultant is less expensive than firing an employee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> People like security, stability, and safety. They want a company to give them salary, benefits, a decent life. They don't want to worry about running a business, making next months paycheque, worrying about sales and so on. Companies know this as well. Why would they pay you if you have no incentive to do start your own business. It just means the people in your job market have given up and don't care about money.

If you want more money, ask for it. If they offer $40,000, then tell them you won't touch this job for under $140,000. If the rest of the developers did the same, they would start paying that, but they won't because everyone wants stability.

Then you get to the point where $500K is not enough as a salary, and companies know this also, so you are going to quit and start your own business. If they can keep you around for longer and longer before you quit, the lower they start you, the more time they can keep you, in essence growing their business.

Either start your own company, or ask for a lot more and be prepared not to receive the offer.

</comment><comment><USER14> Salaries are definitely going up in some locations (Silicon Valley for instance).

As a developer, you are better off working for a company where software is the product, not a cost center. Don't be perceived as interchangeable with other SSII engineers.

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't know about France, but in the U.S., those complaints just mean it's become difficult to get H1B workers, not that they feel the need to pay anybody any more.

The hope is that their complaints will be answered by a Republican congress allowing them more cheap, disposable labor, not a recognition that labor generally needs to be paid more.

</comment><comment><USER16> Salaries are a very sticky and lagging indicator for the labor market.

</comment><comment><USER17> Optics versus reality. Is the work still getting done? Then how, and _where?_

People (meaning also, people in business) can and do say any damned thing. What are they _doing?_</comment>


Ask HN: What is your rate? - <AUTHOR> When working freelance, what should you say when a recruiter/manager casually asks you what your rate is? <comment><USER2> Give them the high range rate in your country. After you can make them a price (the price always goes down, never up). People who put the price as the most important parameter are bad customers. Better avoid them.

</comment><comment><USER3> The way you answer it depends on the client.

One good answer is that it depends on the job requirements. For a stressful gig where you are the sole developer with huge responsibility and tight deadline, it would be worth more than, say, a more straightforward role where you are a cog in the machine.

Another approach is to them them you are flexible and would like to learn more about the position first. It's not wrong for both parties to know a ballpark to avoid wasting time so you could give a wide range of 25%, but it's nice to not say a number because you kind of want to avoid making yourself a number and would be better getting to know each other so they are more in the mindset of wanting you, which makes you worth more.

Since nooone else mentioned hard numbers, I will. I would say an average range for a good-great consultant is 200-300/hr, but the term is rarely more than 3 months with a client, and sometimes as small as 1 month. Positions through contracting companies where they have less responsibility, on-boarding is easier, and the term is closer to 6 mo - 1yr, the rate is more like 100-150, though.

</comment><comment><USER4> What's your budget?

<comment><USER5> This is the correct answer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I always answer above what my rate really is, so if they try and negotiate it down I'm not left out of pocket because they'd just bring it down to the rate I'm actually on. If I offered my actual rate right away they'd try to negotiate _that_ down and I would be out of pocket and my cat will starve.

</comment><comment><USER7> I would consult glassdoor, payscale or similar websites to find out the wages offered to full-time employees. Then, depending on the status quo (my experience, project fit etc), will quote a similar amount.

<comment><USER8> I would also add benefits on top of the salary

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> 15% more than what I'm making now.

</comment><comment><USER10> $12,000/week, minimum one week per engagement, no half weeks.

<comment><USER11> What do you do?</comment></comment>