Show HN: InstaMotor – Taking the pain out of selling your car - <AUTHOR> http://www.instamotor.com/#/ <comment><USER2> This post got nailed–hard–by the voting ring detector, but I'm restoring it because we want to see original work on HN.

A "voting ring" is when people get friends to upvote their stuff. This is against the rules. We want stories to be on HN because they're good, not because they were promoted.

It's sadly common for a great Show HN post to get demoted because its creators, eager to get it on the front page, tried to game it. I've noticed a pattern, too: usually their gaming technique is pathetic. Perhaps that's because they're creators, not promoters. Unfortunately, it has the side-effect of making it certain that the ring detector will nail their otherwise good post, while we carry on the real cat-and-mouse game with people pushing crap.

I've got what I believe will be a sweet solution to this problem, but it awaits time for implementation.

Please everybody, don't ring-vote your posts; just take your chances with HN's randomness. If a post is solid and hasn't gotten any attention yet, a couple of reposts is ok. Be careful not to abuse that, though, since we penalize accounts for reposting too much.

I'm going to demote this comment as off-topic so it won't get in the way of the real discussion. Send any moderation questions to email@example.com.

<comment><USER3> How does a voting ring look different than this scenario:

I email my friends (that read HN) about finally going "public." Because they are my friends and they've heard about my ideas and work for a while now, they up vote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One point - take a look at the copy on your pricing slider. 'You Earn' makes it sound like that's all I'm going to get out of this deal. It took me a second to realize it was the difference between the dealership and instamotor.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Chad,

Thanks for the note. Yeah you're right. We'll make the update to clarify that. We had it as "saved" before, but that didn't seem to make sense. Still trying to find the right wording, but we'll update it today or over the weekend most likely. Thank you!

<comment><USER5> How about showing all three?

Dealership pays you: $5,000 InstaMotor pays you: $5,500 \</comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--- You get paid an extra: $500

<comment><USER6> ^ This is how it should read.

I had the same issue. Couldn't figure out the 'you earn' part for a solid 30 seconds or so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great idea - good luck guys! Related note for the HN community, while we're on the subject:

Unless you have time & money to burn, you really should never never never trade your car into the dealership. It's the worst price you're going to get along the used car supply chain. And even if you think you're getting a good price, it's because you're probably pairing it with buying a car (and paying too much for the car you're buying).

The worst-case used car dealer supply chain works like this (going backwards):

* You buy a used car for $20,000.

* The used car dealer bought it from a wholesaler for $19,000

* The wholesaler bought it from a wholesale auction for $18,000

* The dealership who sold it at auction paid $16,000 as a trade-in.

(*I saw worst case because not all of these steps happen each time)

Note the chain begins with trade-in -- because dealerships know that people who are trading in are pressed for time and want a no-hassle deal. But in doing that, they're giving up $thousands to each step along the chain.

So when selling a car - going direct (or using a service like InstaMotor) is always going to net you more $$ than trade-in.

And now ya know :)

<comment><USER8> I just listened to the This American Life episode "129 cars" about a month in a car dealership - SUPER fascinating look at the industry, with a lot of insider information:

[http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/513/1...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/513/129-cars)

<comment><USER7> Totally. That episode is one of my favorite TALs ever (second to 'Summer Camp', which despite having been done in the 90s is still totally relevant).

In fact, I used a lot of the knowledge from '129 cars' to help with a recent purchase of a Jeep (not from that dealership, sadly). I'm going to write up a blog post about the experience - I learned a lot and it should be helpful to others.

<comment><USER9> Would love to read the blog post. Any chance I could get an email when its up?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hi Guys,

Nicholas here. I started Carlypso.com last summer when Chris (my co-founder) and I had helped a number of our classmates sell their used cars after graduation.

About 9 months ago, I had the pleasure of dealing with Instamotor founder Sy when he bought his Audi A4 with our help. His feedback over email was really encouraging:

"About your idea:

1\. I was looking a bit at ways to remotely unlock a car over a network connection. It seems to me that the technology story around that is a bit weak, but not completely infeasible. First, there's automatic ([http://www.automatic.com/](http://www.automatic.com/)) though i don't know if they'll ever ship a product, but in theory it's really what you guys want. Second, there is a myriad of small stuff like this [http://www.text2car.com/](http://www.text2car.com/)

2\. I really liked the concept of being able to take the car for a drive, free of any awkward conversation with the owner. It's really pleasant actually, and it gave me the time to think about the purchase and inspect the car. The user psychology is really nailed on that one. That's the way I want to buy every used car from now on."

Long story short, Sy and Val liked our service so much that they decided to just copy it. I'm all for competition and welcome Val and Sy into the used car market. It is sorely in need of a better solution, one which will make buyers and sellers happier and eliminate the inefficiencies and scamming of the dealer model.

I'm not a big fan of plagiarism but different people are different I guess.

If you'd like to stop by our offices, meet our team and see how we're doing, just PM me and we'll hook it up. Chris might even let you drive his 500 hp formula car, which he's been building over the last couple of years! :)

Cheers,

Nicky and the Carlypso team firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER11> I don't think you'll win support with such passive-aggressiveness. ;)

Imitation is part of business. If you create something that's valuable and profitable, it's only a matter of time before someone copies you.

Here's a good and relevant read for you: [http://blog.asmartbear.com/unfair- advantages.html](http://blog.asmartbear.com/unfair-advantages.html)

> "... The real question is: What are you going to do when another smart, > scrappy startup copies it, and gets $10m in funding, and is thrice featured > on TechCrunch?"

Sound familiar?

<comment><USER12> I read the post as being direct and confrontational (as opposed to passive- aggressive).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm in the process of buying a used car and wrote a note to my business partner about how I wish a service like this existed.

There's often a ton of communication between me and sellers to determine things like:

\- mileage

\- automatic / manual transmission

\- whether car has been in any serious accidents

\- whether there's any major upcoming maintenance

\- whether the driver smoked

\- whether the title is Clean

Then I need to get the VIN and run a CarProof (Canadian equiv. of CarFax).

Then, assuming it checks out, schedule a test drive.

Then, assuming the drive is good, get a mechanic's inspection done.

Then, pay and sign papers.

It's a royal pain, compounded by the fact that CL and Autotrader individual sellers seem to be a generally sketchy or uncommunicative lot: no email replies, missed appointments, lying about the title, etc. are all common.

Car buying won't be done like it currently is in 10 years from now; glad to see you're doing something to improve the experience.

<comment><USER14> You know,

I'm looking on craiglist in the Bay Area. It is pretty frustrating, I'll admit.

All those things you describe would be nice but any service like that would inherently restrict you to those seller savvy enough to put all that stuff down. Most people don't seem like and so you'd be only scanning a small subset of available cars. Is having them presented in an orderly fashion worth having few listings - of course not. Yeah, the sellers and buyers are a real mixed lot. But an organized website can't conjure a whole new pool of buyers and sellers into existence.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi Guys, Val here from InstaMotor. We're trying to be to car dealerships what airbnb is to the hotel industry.

We'd love to get some additional feedback on the service. Any feedback provided is super beneficial. We're specifically looking for some feedback on:

1\. When you get to the site, within the first 30 seconds, do you understand what we do. Why or why not?

2\. If you do understand what we do, would you ever use a service like this? How much would you be willing to pay for this service?

3\. What's the biggest benefit to the service that you see?

4\. Any general feedback on the site the content, the service as a whole would be great.

Thanks for the help guys, We always appreciate it!

<comment><USER15> This is a very clean and straightforward website - no BS to wade through, no popups asking for my email, just straightforward here's-how-you-do-it. If I had seen this a couple months ago I would have definitely saved a couple thousand bucks.

One thing that's really inspiring about this is that it has the potential to completely change the concept of used car sales. Just like how realtors take you around to go see houses that are for sale, a car salesman can become a person who takes you around to test drive cars for sale.

I might be wrong about your target market, but it seems like it is currently a market of wealthy individuals with high-valued cars to sell but no time to sell them. However, the quickest sales are the ones for lower valued cars - way back when I only had four figures in the bank, my only requirement for my used car was that it not make weird noises.

One lucrative direction you could go with this in the future is adding financing options, so someone could lease a used car from you and you could pass a percentage of the monthly car payments on to the car owner. Or, you could buy the car from the owner and lease it out to potential owners. I have no idea what the legal requirements are to be able to do this, but if it works you'd have a pretty stable source of recurring income.

Overall it's a great idea, I wish you the best of luck with this!

<comment><AUTHOR> primitivesuave - you have excellent insights, any experience in the car sales world? These are a lot of the same items that we've been exploring. I'd love to chat with you offline if you're available. Feel free to email me at email@example.com if you're available or call text me at 510.761.5692

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "We charge <5% of your vehicles sales price" "Simple 5% commission."

As an engineer, that really bothers me.

<comment><USER17> Hi Darren -- I agree with you. I will go ahead and fix it. We are still on the fence as to what is the right amount to charge for our service, but less than 5% is the goal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Most dealer trade offers are so low because they don't even keep your car on the lot, they sell it at auction...at wholesale prices.

That is a lot different than individual sales...which is how this service sells your car. So yeah, you get a better price for your car, but the service still eats a good chunk of the sale price difference between dealer-trade and individual sale.

And "all the paperwork" amounts to downloading a bill of sale form and title transfer online with the DMV. It's not rocket science, nor time consuming. Certainly not worth hundreds of dollars.

<comment><USER19> People making 100-200k/year would love this service. People below that income range would want to sell privately themselves to make the most money. People above would just dump it at the dealer's and not care.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the notes guys. A few things that might not be as obvious:

1\. Cars with Loans on them. This actually is a hassle, especially in states where the loan holder owns the title. You literally can't just sign the title over to them. In most cases, the buyer has to pay for the car, the seller uses that payment to pay off the loan and then they get the title to transfer over. There has to be a ton of trust there. Even with a bill of sale, everyone is afraid of getting screwed. 2\. The straight craigslist process is not quite that easy, respond to emails, some of them from people not even really interested in the car. You have to go back and forth scheduling viewing and test drives. Roughly 40% of the time, you have to drive out to meet someone. If they no-show? Or low ball you? Or don't want it? Time is wasted at all of these steps. 3\. Some people hate negotiating, and don't know what a fair price is. We help. 4\. In Cali at least, you need Reg 262 for vehicle transfers. It's a form you can only get directly from the DMV (can't print it online). I went to the SF DMV the other day to pick some up, the line was over 2 hours, just to get a form. Needless to say, I put it off for another day.

I agree, for some people it makes the most sense to just sell it themselves. But it's not always a straight shot.

<comment><USER20> Great points, especially on the loans. I'd like to add that you don't need REG 262 except in special circumstances, such as if the seller doesn't have the current title, or with loans (maybe that was part of the context though) [1]. But avoiding that trip to the DMV is a great blessing

When I sold my vehicle in CA, both the buyer and I filled out the transfer of liability online [2] - no appointments needed. The title ("pink slip") contains the bill of sale with the odometer reading that you would otherwise put on REG 262. The buyer and seller both sign the title which also has the paper version of the transfer of liability should you be inclined to mail it. The buyer generally will have to go to the DMV to pay use tax and turn in the old title.

[1] [https://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/reg_hdbk/ch5/ch5_5.htm](https://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/reg_hdbk/ch5/ch5_5.htm) [2] [http://www.dmv.ca.gov/online/nrl/welcome.htm](http://www.dmv.ca.gov/online/nrl/welcome.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I thought this was an awesome idea and tried to post it in my facebook feed to show my friends. Unfortunately [http://www.instamotor.com/](http://www.instamotor.com/) ends up with the excerpt "Landing Page Template for Bootstrap" and [http://www.instamotor.com/#/](http://www.instamotor.com/#/) has no picture. I've found, or it least it seems to me, when there's no picture none of my friends click the link.

Apparently you need to add these tags? [https://developers.facebook.com/docs/web/tutorials/scrumptio...](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/web/tutorials/scrumptious/open- graph-object/)

<comment><USER17> Thanks for the heads up! I'm on it and will be pushing an update to in a few minutes. Mind if I ping you then?

edit: I updated the header but still no update on Facebook. I'm assuming it must be cached. I will try to create a Facebook page to see if that clears it.

<comment><USER21> Going to this page and testing seemed to fix the caching

[https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/](https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/)

Still no image though. I think the link is the wrong URL? It's currently [http://www.instamotor.com/instamotor_illustration.png](http://www.instamotor.com/instamotor_illustration.png)

<comment><USER17> Oups! I'm really short on sleep and I accidentally copy-pasted the wrong URL earlier.

Thank you for all your help!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Great service! A lot of people don't have experience or simply don't want to deal with the Craigslist experience. Putting another option between a private party sale and the dealer is great.

Questions that immediately come to mind - how do you handle negotiations, and how do buyers pay? How do you pay the seller afterward? (cash, verifying a cashier's check - other comments point out the common scams etc.) (Or is Instamotor just a transaction facilitator)? Where is the vehicle listed? Do you handle smog checks as well (for California)? <\- Those are the most common things I go through the used vehicle process.

Also, how do you filter out non-serious buyers, especially for performance vehicles? A lot of sellers ask for some sort of proof of payment or cash ready before a test drive. It seems like you're mainly handling high-end cars where the 5% commission will pay off too, how does the model change for say a $5K vehicle?

Finally as a buy I would want to do my own inspection unless the inspection is at a mechanic I already trust - there is way too much conflict of interest having the selling side do an inspection.

Some ways to get it more buyer-friendly would be to offer a CARFAX as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> All of these are excellent questions. I'll tackle them 1 by 1 (the is to say, we're still working through some of these items, this is just our current methods).

1\. How do we handle negotiations: We talk to you, the seller and work to find a fair market price for the car. We have dealership level tools available for this. We come to an agreement on the minimum price you'd take. From there, we negotiate with the potential buyer and can take an offer up to the minimum we agreed upon. Anything lower we'd need explicit permission from you.

2\. The Buyer makes a cashiers check out directly to the the seller. We deliver it to them.

3\. The vehicles are listed everywhere we can, including some of the traditional places like Cars.com and autotrader. For certain cars, we also do very specialized listings (e.g. for Porsches we list or Porsche enthusiast forums, etc...).

4\. We handle it all, including smog checks.

5\. We get paid at the time of the transaction usually directly with proceeds from the sale.

6\. With performance vehicles we are very very diligent about this, currently doing it manually. We represent a few very high value Porsches. We research all of the buyers (again manually, but we'll work on that) to see if they're legitimate and also work to get commitments from them. If we see an 18YO kid that wants to test drive a Porsche, we won't necessarily disallow it, but we'll make sure that he has the financial resources and intent to purchase the vehicle. It's not perfect, we're still working on this, but I can tell you all of our owners have been very very happy with the people test driving so far.

\--Edit-- We currently offer CarFax. One thing we have to improve is enumerating the depth of service that we provide.

<comment><USER22> Be careful, forged cashiers checks are a common scam.

As seller to protect yourself you need to e.g. meet the buyer at his bank and get cash or a certified check that the bank prepares at that time. Or use some kind of insured escrow service.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks AMS6110, We actually verify all cashiers checks immediately when received. It's usually pretty easy to google the bank the check is from and call them to verify the authenticity of the check.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Having to enter a phone number to create an account resulted in a closed browser tab. Might want to consider this factor, can guarantee theres plenty more where I come from.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the note Matt. I think you're right and it's something we've debated before. In the end we decided to leave it in there. The first thing we do when you get started with us is call you to schedule the photo shoot for your car. We come to your place to do this at your convenience, but we need the phone number. We'll re-evaluate this over the weekend. Thanks for the feedback, we really appreciate it!

<comment><USER24> Almost all our meetings are set up over email, IM or text. And the vast majority of communication is online too. So requiring a phone is a sign that the old way of doing things is not gone, and it will make it harder to get traction, especially from the HN crowd and people with poorer English.

<comment><USER25> > So requiring a phone is a sign that the old way of doing things is not gone

It isn't gone. You are in the minority.

But that being said, maybe there is an argument that the OP needs to cater to the new things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> You should really move the "Now Serving The Bay Area" message above the fold. I would have signed-up and used you right away (want to sell my Honda Element).

<comment><USER27> I usually assume these type of startups aren't targeted at us out-of-towners. Also the background pic of the Golden Gate Bridge also helps...

<comment><USER28> It's not the first startup splash page to have the GGB on it. I don't even notice anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "How much is your car worth?" on the main page: I have no idea. Isn't that the point of your service, to tell me how much I can get for my car?

</comment><comment><USER30> Congrats to InstaMotor on the launch; this looks like the kind of experience I would want when selling a car. Best of luck to the team!

While we're on the subject of cars and improving the car buying/selling process, I just wanted to say that Edmunds.com has opened up its car data to the world in a sane, RESTful API. Check it out at [http://developer.edmunds.com](http://developer.edmunds.com) and let me know if you have any questions: mbock @ edmunds . com.

We also just finished Hackomotive, a $35k hackathon focused on startups improving the car shopping experience. You can see the winners here: [http://www.hackomotive.com/](http://www.hackomotive.com/). We'd obviusly love to see InstaMotor apply for next year!

</comment><comment><USER31> Could you please add a form for "Notify me when InstaMotor is available in my area"? Just with email and city. I almost signed up before I saw it was only available for the Bay area.

<comment><USER32> Hi deegles,

Thanks for the feedback. We have added this to our todo list. We are still in the process of finalizing the flow of the site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm your target user right now. I'm desperately trying to sell my car without using Craigslist - I have a loan still, and I'm afraid of risk and scams. Feel free to ping me for a user study if you need.

I've tried another service but due to a small dent in the car I couldn't sell it - the car's actually in the shop right now getting that fixed, because using a service to sell is so much better than the alternatives. My current plan is to go back to them when it's repaired.

<comment><USER34> Why did a small dent make the car unsaleable? It seems odd because usually doing work on something before selling it will net you a loss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I like it and would like to use it here in D.C. please.

I would suggest making the sell price in the big red letters instead of the "youll earn" part. That whole section is a little confusing and I thought it was telling me I would only get 2k for my 20k car. I only really care about how much I would be getting for my car, the comparison to the dealership is important but secondary, and oh by the way I will have already probably looked that up on kbb.com.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Andrew. We're trying to expand as quickly as possible, but we have to tackle the Bay Area Market first.

Thanks for the feedback, it looks like a lot of people are confused by that. We'll make changes and update it tonight.

Thanks again guys, really appreciate it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Thoughts:

Wish it was more prominent that this is Bay Area only for now. I doubted that it would be in my area, since it sounded like something that required local personnel and nobody seems to do startups in Houston, but you have to scroll to the bottom to see it stated.

Some of the text looks terrible on my Windows 7 - Chrome environment. Especially everything in How It Works.

The website is all about the sell side, and you say the buy side is ebay, craigslist, autotrader, etc. Why not post the cars in a store on your site too? Last time I checked those sites, they had a terrible UI.

In fact, that idea expands the business from a seller's assistant kind of thing to more of an online-focused CarMax. I think that could be really useful to everyone. I'm thinking kind of a cross between AutoTrader and CarMax. On the buyer's side, it could be like the existing online sites, except that the photos and details are collected by your people, so they're consistent and high-quality. Maybe you take the car for a few hours, have a mechanic check it out, wash it, and take high-quality high-res photos in a controlled environment. The buyers can know and trust that you've done all this, and that they're getting a good representation of what they're thinking of buying.

The sellers get pretty much what you're already doing, all of the legwork done for them, a better price, and hopefully buyers who know what they're getting, and are vetted as serious buyers before a test-drive is set up.

I suppose the main difference between you and Carmax, then, is that you are all online, thus have a much better online presence, and don't need to maintain a car lot. Does that translate into enough of a cost savings to offer a better deal to the customers than the current incumbents, though?

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent points ufmace. The short answer is yes, I believe so. I worked in a car dealership before. The capital costs are massive, between physical locations, inventory, personnel, etc... It's truly astounding.

Part 2 is adding that selling side, and we will do it, but we're not there yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> From the looks of the responses here, looks like you guys should get up a "Notify me when you come to my area" up on your site.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is a great service. Although eBay Motors and Craigslist exist for this opportunity, they are very impersonal and create just as many issues as they try to solve. Here's some feedback on the website and service. Hope it helps!

1\. Redundant content: I felt like you repeated the same value proposition in nearly every section of your website. However, each section had one small tidbit that wasn't addressed anywhere else (e.g. only available in bay area).

2\. Excessive calls to action: Although it's great that you have placed many calls to action (various buttons, sliders, etc.), it really confuses the user. Having one consistent message and/or placement might improve conversion. Just a hypothesis and one you should definitely A/B test.

3\. Poor navigation: The "home" button in the footer navigates the user to an awkward anchor tag on the home page. The About page has a large image that makes it seem like a homepage rather than getting in to the actual content of the page. The Contact page is an overlay modal and may not even be worth creating as a separate page. Perhaps placing it in the footer is sufficient.

4\. Commas: In your slider showing the different amounts you can save, you should be sure to a comma as a thousands separator or a decimal point + "k" or "thousand". This will increase impact and hopefully conversion as well.

5\. Reposition: Seeing this on "Show HN" and seeing lots of copy/images in the beginning made your site seem like it was a just placeholders. It wasn't until I scrolled to the bottom did I see there were testimonials and cars that were actually sold. This content should be placed further up since it demonstrates some form of validation/social traction. It would be great to have a ticker or some other indicator of cars sold at some point when it gets bigger.

Best of luck and feel free to reach out for any clarifications.

<comment><AUTHOR> Orky,

Awesome feedback. We'll eat this up and spit something improved this weekend. We really appreciate it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Your "Get started today" form is failing for me.

Instead I am getting this error: Sorry, we're not able to save your info at this time. And the div with that error is added each time I submit the form so you can get them to start stacking on each other.

<div class="alert ng-isolate-scope alert-danger" ng-class=""alert-" + (type || "warning")" ng-repeat="alert in alerts" type="alert.type" close="closeAlert($index)"> <button ng-show="closeable" type="button" class="close" ng-click="close()">×</button> <div ng-transclude=""><span class="ng-scope ng-binding">Sorry, we're not able to save your info at this time.</span></div> </div>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Ryan, we just caught this too. We're restarting those servers. A little too much traffic for our lead system. We're working to get it back up asap.

<comment><AUTHOR> Should be back up!

<comment><USER40> I'm still seeing this on the car-description part.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry it's been up and down all day. We didn't think we'd see quite this amount of positive response from the community. We really appreciate it and the feedback has been amazing. We'll make a lot of the changes suggested. If anyone wants to submit by can't please email me "firstname.lastname@example.com" and I'll reach out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I've bought and sold a lot of cars the past few years. I have never once considered a dealer trade in offer. I've had relatively easy and good luck with selling my car online through Craigslist and Autotrader which I imagine is what they will probably do to unload the cars.

I like the idea of the service but I'm wondering what the difference is between dealer trade in pricing and market pricing. Even if I have to sacrifice a couple grand to not have to do the whole process, I'm ok with that but I'd rather know pricing from that point of view.

I'm also curious how you plan on doing the legal paperwork as I've done a lot of this too and it's not easy getting setup to handle all the paperwork especially if it's between two parties.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great questions Josh,

Dealer trade-in pricing generally uses a standard called "black book". They base the pricing on the type of car the the condition of the vehilce. The discount of retail to black book varies, but can be huge (4k+). When dealers buy a car off trade-in, they have to price in the fact that they have a lot of overhead to get the car sold. Dealers also price risk into the car value, if it's not a desirable car, they will sell it at auction. They have to make sure they stay under the auction value.

Individual buyers don't have that. That spread is pretty large and we can take advantage of that.

The paperwork is actually pretty straight forward if you have a notary public available (we do). We can pull up all the paperwork necessary and _generally_ get it done at each persons convenience. The biggest issue is actually trust between the parties and us. That's what we have to work on.

<comment><USER42> I think Josh is trying to point out that comparing your price to a dealer trade-in price is a bit of a joke since trade-in price is always a 'low ball' based on market value.

I actually came in the thread to post the same thing because I saw that on your web site and chuckled.

It would also help to list prices you guys sold cars at, not just 'X' over 'trade-in' price.

The way numbers are presented and compared makes you look a bit sketchy to somebody who knows a thing or two about vehicles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I was curious on how the test drive scheduling worked. It says "schedule flexible test-drives with remote key access." It sounded a bit unclear to me, and I'm not sure how that works.

I think the idea is excellent and would use it when I decide to sell my car.

<comment><USER38> Had similar confusion. "remote key access" and "keep using your car" don't seem compatible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> It's a totally different business model to this but [http://www.webuyanycar.com/](http://www.webuyanycar.com/) is a pretty big deal here in the UK. You get a valuation, take your car to them, they buy it. To my surprise it worked pretty well too and I got almost as much for my car as I'd have realistically got waiting for months on a classifieds site or whatever. I imagine the way the British used car market works has a big impact on the idea actually working though.

<comment><USER45> [http://www.carmax.com/](http://www.carmax.com/) does that in the US, they have a business model of no haggling and give some gaurantees on the cars they sell.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, CarMax is sort of the model that we looked at. They are the only player in town that had the scale necessary to apply modern business management principals to their business. But they're margins are paper thin. Too much overhead.

<comment><USER46> Dumb fact: CarMax was developed by the old Circuit City.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm actually very impressed by it. They found a market that is highly fragmented and tried to consolidate. The interesting thing is that they it took them forever to make a profit (and tons of funding). It's great to see, but in my (biased) opinion, they didn't go far enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> My biggest question is about the test-drive. How do those work?

What stops someone from taking a 1 hour test-drive? (and wasting you gas on their errands)

If someone gets in an accident during a test-drive who is liable? Do all insurance plans cover this?

What does remote-key access mean? "We verify all buyers and schedule flexible test-drives with remote key access."

How quickly do you plan on expanding to other states?

Your site has a 1px left margin which is making a horizontal scrollbar which is annoying me.

@media screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 0) html { margin-left: 1px; }

<comment><USER48> >> _Your site has a 1px left margin which is making a horizontal scrollbar which is annoying me. @media screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 0) html { margin-left: 1px; }_

Lol, Only on HN :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> InstaMotor does put a valiant effort in changing the mundane process that filled with disagreements from the seller side. The end product will solve minor inconvenience but doesn't look kindly from the OEM's point of view. They will see this as a threat to the dealers and sustaining a flow of walk-ins to market their new models. Its generating a buzz here thats all a post like this can ask for: opinionated tech individuals that look forward to innovating various industries.

</comment><comment><USER50> Just curious, I actually have a car valued at around $20,000 that I want to sell. I posted it on craigslist, and realized that I don't have time to deal with all the crap.

Some dealer called me and left a message saying that they would sell my car for me for $200. Are they lying? Are there other hidden fees? Why should I pay InstaMotor $1000 instead of $200 to this other guy?

One advantage, I see is that I get to keep and drive my car. Except my car is parked in a lot, and I only have 1 keyfob to get it out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the note everett; I'm not sure about this dealer and their process. But we've looked at a couple local consignment lots and didn't find a deal that made sense. For example, a local lot here in Berkeley charges you ~450 per month to hold on to your vehicle. They do very few of the value adds that we do. We do: CarFax, PreSale Mechanic's Inspection (via YourMechanic), Listing the vehicle so it gets serious exposure (our estimates is that we hit roughly 90%+ of all car buyers), we don't need to take your key, even if you only have 1 we can do test drives without you being there, you always have complete access to the car, etc... Think about it this way, even at $200 per month, the dealer has an incentive to keep you car on his lot as long as possible. With our commission only model, we have an incentive to get your car sold. True store - one of our recent customers had her car listed at said consignment lot for 2 months with no action. She payed ~$900 for nothing, on top of paying her car payment and insurance. 2 months at well over $1k. She came to us and we had it sold in 3 days (3 days is not typical, but we have incentive to get the cars sold quickly). It's a matter of having the incentives lined up correctly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I hate selling cars. It's troublesome and time consuming, so you I'd gladly pay for the service. The pricing turns me off though. Selling a 50K car, the commission would turn out to 2.5K. That's net. So with 50% income tax rate, I'd have to earn 5K to pay the commission.

That's much too steep for me. If there was a cap of say 1K, I'd be a customer in a heartbeat. But 5K gross is certainly worth the inconvenience of selling it myself.

<comment><USER52> 50% income tax rate? Wow... have to wonder how much one makes to have to pay that amount of tax! Anyway, the real question is whether you can sell for more than 47.5K after biting the inconvenience and spending time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> In addition, could you make a service where I can go into a new car dealership and buy a car in five minutes with financing. I just bought two brand new cars in the last six months and had to wait around for hours and leave dealerships after calling them up before I even left my house and telling them I want to buy x car at x price at x time of the day and they agree, but when I get there it's a nightmare.

<comment><USER17> hey Peter, sy here from Instamotor. I think Trucar is kind of supposed to do that. Not sure if we'll ever jump into that particular segment.

<comment><USER53> Nah, I went in on an advertised special defined price on one and even had a TrueCar listing in hand another time. They made up a bunch of mumbo-jumbo that the cars they had aren't exactly like what they advertise. After I said ok to a price, I still had to wait around for hours with wife and two young children to finalize all the paperwork and get the car prepped. Wanted to stab myself in the eye from frustrationand swore I'd never buy new again. It appears there is still a wide space between the negotiated price and driving away.

I think TrueCar is mostly for newer cars, but is it possible they apply the same method to used cars in the future and try to take money off your increased price? Do you think

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I like the idea but wanted to point out something that confused me. Car value: $100000 Average Dealership Trade-In Offer: $80,000 — $85,000 With Instamotor: $95,000 You Earn: $10,000

The way it says "you earn" I can't help but think that that is the total amount you will get. I would prefer it to say "you earn $95,000. $10,000 more than you would have with a dealership". Or something similar.

<comment><USER17> we got a lot of comment on how confusing this section is. We'll do another pass at it soon. Thanks for feedback!

ps: was everything ok and clear enough?

<comment><USER54> Yes. Other than that it seemed pretty great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> 1\. Take pic of your white van. 2\. Post pic with description and mileage on craigslist. 3\. Don't mention what happened in the back of the van in '99\. 3\. Get a couple emails. 4\. Sell it to the highest bidder.

Who's too stupid to not figure this out and needs a service?

Okay, so they pay you more than the dealership. That's a selling point. But I could find someone on Craigslist and sell it to them for more.

<comment> jim-greer Then you're not the target audience for this. The last time I sold a car via Craigslist it probably consumed 8 hours at least. Multiple test drives, etc. Nowadays I'd let the dealer screw me rather than take that time. This seems like a great intermediate path if it's well run.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> This might just work! How much would it cost you to offer a free car-wash coupon that's redeemable at local full-service car washes?

I would write blog posts on interesting success stories with different types of cars and seller stories -- often cars are hard to sell for various reasons.

Offering to take a professional picture is your ultimate in.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea! We've started soliciting quotes from out beta customers and have a ton of awesome data on car sales that we can use for blog posts. More coming soon!

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> As soon as you come to Seattle, I will sell my GTi with you (srsly)!

Ofc, you'll be awesome, so then the Seattle Government will issue legislation banning your awesome idea because Used Car Dealerships won't be able to compete, and they'll use their Good Ol' Boy network to shut it down.

<comment><USER32> We're happy to hear that we can't wait! As far as legislation goes, we expect some pushback but we are ready to fight it head on. Thanks for the comment, we really appreciate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Definitely a cool idea. Where's the buying side, though? Do you guys just list on craigslist?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not just Craigslist, but we go through a lot of traditional channels (autotrader, cars.com). Selling a car is a marketing game, especially if you want to maximize your outcome. For certain types of cars, we also list them on specific forums (e.g. Porsches would get listed on Porsche enthusiast websites etc...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Seems like a really cool service!

Do you guys have a geographic limit that you are restricting service to?

<comment><USER60> At the bottom of the page, it says they are limited to the Bay Area for now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> How long have you been running this service? I recall about 3 months ago, a post on HN where someone posted a bunch of idea's they had but didn't have time to execute. This was one of them. Did instamotor flow from that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi giarc,

Actually Sy and I (2 of the 3 co-founders) met on HN after a similar post (like 6 months ago?). It wasn't the one you're talking about, but had a similar theme.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Excellent idea - we are all looking at it right now in our office. 1 person said he would definitely use this right now for his used car he is selling. Really well done, very well explained & designed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome Boris, happy to hear it! I hope we can engage with your co-worker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> If you can get this working on cars, I would love to see what you can do with residential real estate. 42Floors might beat you there, but they seem pretty focused on commercial.

</comment><comment><USER64> Do you plan to have a listing page for the cars with a email service which intimates me when a car I am interested in (e.g., brand, price range etc) is now available through you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that's on our product road map.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Kill CarMax. Decentralize it.

The sheer number of resources one dealership consumes boggles my mind: all the people, the mechanics, the land, the land, the land, oh, and the other acres of land.

<comment><AUTHOR> I used to work in a car dealership group. The inefficiencies are terrifying. That's what led to this.

<comment><USER65> Best of luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Haha, my car isn't worth enough for you to sell it. :|

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, We can still help. email me directly at firstname.lastname@example.com.

<comment><USER67> What is the minimum value vehicle you can sell?

<comment><USER66> I was just going by the slider, which goes down to $5k.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> How does this compare to CarMax? They typically offer more than a dealer would as well on cars that are in good condition and less than 10 years old.

</comment><comment><USER69> What a great idea. I once scrapped a car for a couple hundred bucks instead of selling it because I didn't want the hassle of selling it.

</comment><comment><USER70> Oh hi, I fixed your pricing page [http://i.imgur.com/N90HwsK.png](http://i.imgur.com/N90HwsK.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> haha I love this. Thanks Cian. This is awesome. Thanks for the effort. I actually really like the approach you took. Can we take this and run with it?

<comment><USER70> Sure, go nuts - I'll even give you the HTML if you like :P Seriously though, fantastic business, and an industry in dire need of disruption - but even as somebody who has gone through the tribulations of selling a car privately recently, it's still too expensive.. Still - hoping you prove me wrong on that!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> > Transferring vehicle ownership is confusing; that's why we take care of it.

Care to explain. I've found it extremely straight forward.

</comment><comment><USER72> Love the idea. This tackles a real pain point for many sellers. Good website. I like!

What are the challenges of expanding to different locations?

<comment><AUTHOR> Markets are pretty different across the US. Car buying/selling is local process. People tend to be willing to go roughly 50 miles to see a car if they're really serious about purchasing it. There are also differences in paperwork and requirements for selling a car, and how the market is made up. For example, from my experience, people in the midwest tend to finance their vehicles much more frequently than people on the west coast. It's not a huge deal, but does add additional wrinkles in the process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Let me know if you guys ever come to Canada.

<comment><USER17> I spent a lot of time in Vancouver, BC; Canada is a wonderful place and I can't wait until we expand there. We'll try to tackle the San Francisco Bay Area first :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> Super nice website & really cool product. Congrats

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> I really like the slider with what you earn! Good job

</comment><comment><USER76> Why wouldn't you need a dealer license for this?

</comment><comment><USER77> Is minimum car price $5000?

</comment><comment><USER78> where do we go to see what cars you currently have for sale?

<comment><USER61> I don't think they actually list them on their site, they list on various already established sites (autotrader, cars.com etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> 5% is a lot. I would expect this to be more around 2%.

<comment><USER80> It doesn't make sense for this to be a percentage since the work involved in selling a 30k car is the same as selling a 5k car.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Josh, it's actually not quite as easy to sell more expensive cars. As you move up the price chain, the market of people that can afford the car gets lower and lower. Think of it this way, 90% of the population can afford a $5k, but only 10% of the population can afford a $30k car. (numbers not accurate or scientific, just as an example).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> whatr pain and agony?</comment>


Introducing Google Drive - <AUTHOR> http://drive.google.com/

<comment><USER2> I get a 404 not found error when I try to access it. Does it work for anyone else?

<comment><USER3> Same for me

<comment><USER4> However, check out <http://drive.google.com/robots.txt> ;-)

All 404s, apart from /support/, so far - but stuff is on the way it would seem.

<comment><USER2> So by "Introducing Google Drive" what is really meant here is "there is a DNS entry for drive.google.com" ?

Fucking waste of time.

It could have at least been titled "subdomain and 404 page hint at soon-to-be- launched Google Drive" and not some bait title like this.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, worst thing is it's not the first article showing this off...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple Confirms 'Meltdown' and 'Spectre' Vulnerabilities Impact Macs and iOS - <AUTHOR> https://www.macrumors.com/2018/01/04/apple-meltdown-spectre-vulnerability-fixes/ <comment><USER2> Could someone give me an ELI5 on Meltdown/Spectre..? I understand that they're vulnerabilities, but what is the risk and why is the worse bug in history?

<comment><USER3> They are both types of side-channel info leak attacks against CPUs.

——

The abstract from the Meltdown paper [1]:

The security of computer systems fundamentally relies on memory isolation, e.g., kernel address ranges are marked as non accessible and are protected from user access. In this paper, we present Meltdown. Meltdown exploits side effects of out of-order execution on modern processors to read arbitrary kernel-memory locations including personal data and passwords. Out-of-order execution is an indispensable performance feature and present in a wide range of modern processors. The attack is independent of the operating system, and it does not rely on any software vulnerabilities. Meltdown breaks all security assumptions given by address space isolation as well as paravirtualized environments and, thus, every security mechanism building upon this foundation. On affected systems, Meltdown enables an adversary to read memory of other processes or virtual machines in the cloud without any permissions or privileges, affecting millions of customers and virtually every user of a personal computer. We show that the KAISER defense mechanism for KASLR [8] has the important (but inadvertent) side effect of impeding Meltdown. We stress that KAISER must be deployed immediately to prevent large-scale exploitation of this severe information leakage.

——

The abstract from the Spectre paper [2]:

Modern processors use branch prediction and speculative execution to maximize performance. For example, if the destination of a branch depends on a memory value that is in the process of being read, CPUs will try guess the destination and attempt to execute ahead. When the memory value finally arrives, the CPU either discards or commits the speculative computation. Speculative logic is unfaithful in how it executes, can access to the victim's memory and registers, and can perform operations with measurable side effects.

Spectre attacks involve inducing a victim to speculatively perform operations that would not occur during correct program execution and which leak the victim's confidential information via a side channel to the adversary. This paper describes practical attacks that combine methodology from side channel attacks, fault attacks, and return-oriented programming that can read arbitrary memory from the victim's process. More broadly, the paper shows that speculative execution implementations violate the security assumptions underpinning numerous software security mechanisms, including operating system process separation, static analysis, containerization, just-in-time (JIT) compilation, and countermeasures to cache timing/side-channel attacks. These attacks represent a serious threat to actual systems, since vulnerable speculative execution capabilities are found in microprocessors from Intel, AMD, and ARM that are used in billions of devices.

While makeshift processor-specific countermeasures are possible in some cases, sound solutions will require fixes to processor designs as well as updates to instruction set architectures (ISAs) to give hardware architects and software developers a common understanding as to what computation state CPU implementations are (and are not) permitted to leak.

——

For more technical details, checkout Google's Project Zero blog [3].

[1]: [https://meltdownattack.com/meltdown.pdf](https://meltdownattack.com/meltdown.pdf)

[2]: [https://spectreattack.com/spectre.pdf](https://spectreattack.com/spectre.pdf)

[3]: [https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2018/01/reading- privi...](https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2018/01/reading-privileged- memory-with-side.html)

<comment><USER4> _They are both types of side-channel info leak attacks against CPUs._

You must know some hella smart five year olds. (Which is why I wish that meme would die already, because the correct answer to the question is, "no".)

But I'm not here just to make smart ass remarks, I think it ties into my experience reading the comments on a NYT story on the subject. 48 comments, and I think only one didn't demonstrate a severe lack of understanding.

<smug>That's why I don't use cloud stuff! Told ya so!</smug> Yeah, well, looks to me like you go to the wrong web page and you're pwnd.

<outrage>They just want to sell you new hardware!</outrage> Yup, twenty years all major chip makers have been sitting on this bug in the hopes they can sell you a new chip in 2018. Cyrix is getting the last laugh now!

And so on. But you've probably got about 300 chars to explain it before your average non-technical reader glazes over. And you don't get to use words like "side-channel". Good luck! Buffer overflows were easy to explain in comparison: "when ya try to put ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag, bad things happen. Developers aren't checking the size of their bag before they start shoveling." But this one? Hell, we've got Hacker News readers asking for a simplified explanation. And not to pick on you, _jrullman_ , because that's a helpful summary, but _that 's_ the simplified explanation? And the reality is, yes, that's probably as simple an explanation as you're going to get.</comment></comment></comment>


Launching Edsu: Changing the Economics of Online Open Source - <AUTHOR> https://edclave.com/blog/posts/launching-edsu/ <comment><AUTHOR> [https://i.imgur.com/bMi0S.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/bMi0S.jpg)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Author here - I'm happy to answer any questions :)</comment>


Tax Policy Gave Us White Claw - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/09/how-tax-policy-gave-us-white-claw.html <comment><USER2> I mean, there's more to it than that. A friend of mine is a prominent head brewer in the Denver area, and a couple weekends ago we cranked the numbers and figured out that the cans for hard seltzer are more expensive than the contents (aka the actual drink) from a BoM perspective. A labeled can is something like 14 cents, and the contents were something 10 cents. For a can of beer, the contents are closer to 50 cents.

The margins are just stupid good. Apparently Upslope brewing here already makes more profit on their seltzer than all of their beer.

<comment><USER3> Any chance you're calculating BoM costs on the assumption a distilled/pure alcohol is used as an ingredient?

As this articles highlights, these recent "hard seltzers" actually use a brewing process, apparently for tax purposes.

<comment><USER4> There are commercial scale providers of bulk alcohol that is taxably considered beer. It's not quite as cheap as neutral grain spirits, but ours definitely a lot cheaper then brewing it.

<comment><USER3> But, does it meet the "doesn't taste like beer" requirements mentioned in the article?

From the article, it doesn't sound like White Claw, et al, are skipping their own brewing and buying from those "commercial scale providers".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Because White Claw is brewed like beer, it's taxed like beer, which is > important because beer is taxed in the U.S. at a much lower rate than > spirits. If you made a product similar to White Claw by mixing vodka with > seltzer and putting it in a can, a six-pack would be subject to almost $2 in > additional taxes when sold in New York City.

Important takeaway from the article. This also answers my own question as to why drinks like Mike's Hard, Smirnoff Ice, etc are malt beverages. Hopefully the sugar base instead of a grain base catches on for new drinks.

<comment><USER6> Does it being a sugar base make the alcohol closer to a rum?

<comment><USER7> Being made from sugar, it more completely ferments. Beer has residual short- chain carbohydrates that leave calories and provide body.

It wouldn't be much like rum unless it were brewed with dark sugar.

<comment><USER8> > leave calories

Ethanol itself is most of the calories in any alcoholic drink.

<comment><USER2> For people curious on the breakdown:

A 12 oz can of 5% abv is .6 fluid ounces of ethanol. That's 14 grams, or 98 calories.

A Budweiser has 145 calories, White Claw has 100, Old Chub Scottish ale has 264.

Basically I see the benefit over most craft beer, but over macros it's not that big of a difference.

<comment><USER9> That is a calorie if the alcohol is burned in a flame. An alcohol calorie isnt a carb calorie.

[https://drinks.seriouseats.com/2013/10/cocktail-science- do-a...](https://drinks.seriouseats.com/2013/10/cocktail-science-do-alcohol- calories-count-digesting-spirits.html)

[https://www.quora.com/Do-calories-in-alcohol-really-exist- If...](https://www.quora.com/Do-calories-in-alcohol-really-exist-If-you-drink- only-vodka-no-food-will-you-get-fat)

I cant find an exact answer, but combining the ideas that: the metabolic pathways for ethanol take precedence over the metabolism of other food components, leading to fat conversion and storage of higher-kcal foods than would be expected if the energy for metabolism was not diverted to the alcohol; the extra energy needed to metabolize alcohol should become a net drain on energy reserves; and alcohol is almost never fully metabolized, but rather excreted as acetic acid - I think it is safe to assume that an ethanol calorie actually provides the body very little energy AND if youre not eating while you are drinking there isnt a way for the body to store the energy as fat for later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> munk-a > A problem with malternatives has been the need to find ways to mask the > beer-like flavor that results from brewing. To that end, these drinks have > added sugar and strong citrus flavors, which a lot of consumers like.

Nice! Our tax laws encourage companies to make less palatable goods that then require more added sugar to compensate thus upping everyone's carbohydrate intake without it actually tasting as good as those carbs would be in a cake or some such. How wonderful! /s

<comment><USER10> Endlessly frustrates me how much of the food economy is focused on producing cheap carbohydrates. This is perverse regulatory pressure.

<comment> core-questions Cheap carbohydrates keep us fed and happy. What if I told you that not everyone needs to look like a fitness model to live a reasonably content existence?

<comment><USER11> _Do they keep us happy?_ Or would depression rates be better if we had fewer cheap carbs and more quality calories?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not just taxes, but being "beer" allows it to be sold in grocery stores and corner stores where a drink made from distilled spirits(even if watered down to the 5% alcohol) would have to be sold in a liquor stores in many states.

<comment><USER13> Is there a reason no one says, "hm, that don't make a lick of sense, let's change that?"

<comment><USER14> The laws are old, and likely date to a time since before it was possible to make such genre-bending alcohol drinks.

If you were making laws from scratch now, it would likely make sense to define categories strictly by ABV, not by brewing/distillation method.

<comment><USER15> I was thinking along the same lines; but there's a potential problem in that this provides an incentive to mislabel a beverage's ABV to get a lower tax rate.

That's probably solvable-ish by fining companies found to have an ABV off by more than 1% or so, but that's a lot more work to monitor, especially with the number of different products on the market.

<comment><USER14> You can't (well, shouldn't) mislabel your beverage's ABV. It's trivial to test and thus determine that you're lying, and the result would be a hugely costly recall of all product.

The accuracy requirements are very strict on this. It's already not a problem; intentionally lying about ABV on the label would be a foolish thing to do that would get you in lots of trouble.

<comment><USER16> Similar statements can be made about insider trading or constitutional violations.

<comment><USER14> Not really. Those are much harder to detect and prove, and remedies have to go through the courts.

If improperly ABV-labeled alcohol is detected, it will be immediately recalled from all shelves nationwide, no court involvement necessary.

<comment><USER15> Labeled as 5% but actually containing 40%, sure. Labeled as 35% but containing 40%? No, because those are functionally identical for most consumers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Amusingly tax policy also allegedly gave us brandy. When you're taxed by volume (such as by the cask or barrel of wine) you may wish to dodge some taxes by distilling your wine product into brandy ("burned wine") to concentrate the volume, with the aim of re-constituting it with water for consumption, later.

Then of course you find out the reconstitution tastes nothing like the original wine, and you also may discover that leaving it in the wooden casks makes a pleasant drink on its own...

<comment><USER17> This is also a reason not to drink cask-strength whiskey straight: to wit, you're not meant to; you buy cask-strength so you're paying for less water, since you can provide that yourself.

<comment><USER18> Unless you enjoy the strong flavor. I don't drink alcohol but I do drink espresso: ristretto, no adulterants (except the occasional mandarin peel -- I'm not above a little variety). I dislike americanos almost as much as I hate long pulls. The intensity is a significant component of my enjoyment (same with blue cheese, hot sauce, etc.) and if I drank, I'm positive that I'd find cask strength to be the best strength.

<comment><USER17> An expert argument against drinking cask straight, one I'm not qualified to evaluate but can repeat here, is that high-proof alcohol actually impedes your ability to perceive the characteristics of the spirit itself. If you just like the taste of very strong alcohol, dilute some Everclear down; don't waste money on cask whiskey (for the most part, the only whiskeys sold at cask strength are expensive, premium expressions).

I sometimes drink Four Roses cask-strength straight, because I'm lazy, but also cask-strength Four Roses is not all that high-proof. But I wouldn't drink Thomas Handy straight; it would be a waste.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> >As a gay man in New York with a well-stocked bar, I am used to my friends coming to my apartment and asking for vodka sodas.

meh. As a gay man in a midwestern rust belt town with a used fridge that makes exorcist noises, I am used to my friends assuming I drink vodka soda. I got a six pack of "white claws" from a female friend and couldnt choke down more than a few sips.

If youre going to drink a vodka soda, for god sake avoid this landfill fodder and pour one yourself. vodka comes everything from cotton candy to bacon, so theres really no excuse.

TL;DR: White Claw is the Keurig of mixed drinks.

<comment><USER20> I don't understand why this comment should have been downvoted. I disagree because I like White Claw, but downvoting someone due to drink preferences seems rather hostile.

<comment><USER21> Because the comment itself is hostile! There's no reason to be so snooty to anyone that likes it. The horror of a _Keurig_!!!

<comment><USER22> Midwestern humor isn't for everyone. It has a bit of a sour aftertaste.

Non-Midwesterners may mistake it for hostility, in the same way that non-New Yorkers might mistake an offhanded cultural observation--or anything the New Yorker says, really--for being a rude, arrogant prick.

(Edit: Not _you_. The author of the article is the New Yorker.)

(Edit 2: If you are a Midwesterner, then you're not a non-Midwesterner, by definition.)

(Edit 3: Let's not even go into how someone with a used Exorcist fridge is _snooty_ for dumping on Keurigs. That's some Midwestern humor right there.)

<comment><USER21> > (Edit 2: If you are a Midwesterner, then you're not a non-Midwesterner, by > definition.)

Yeah, I know.

I'm the one that called it hostile.

You said that it wasn't hostile, it's humor that non-midwesteners mistake for hostility.

You said that _in reply to my post_.

By any reasonable interpretation, that post is calling me a non-midwesterner.

So I'm letting you know that that's wrong, and I'm not somehow unqualified to call the post hostile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Japan is reversed - beer is taxed much more than spirits, so gas stations carry $2 highball tall boys. Plus, public drinking is legal..

<comment><USER24> Japan was the only place I've been where one could buy a 4 liter jug of whiskey. At a convenience store.

<comment><USER25> You can buy hard liquor at convenience stores in WA state

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Finland has a huge culture for drinking Lonkero or Long Drink - very similar to this and for the same reason.

Fermented beverages there are taxed like beer so these long drinks are made as such.

These are on tap in all the bars. It seems to have less of a stigma there than drinking malt beverages in the states.

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

<comment> Tuna-Fish In Finland, the difference between fermented and distilled products was not taxes, but that until very recently it was illegal for anyone but Alko (the local alcohol monopoly) to sell anything that was distilled.

The law was changed like a year ago and now only the alcohol content matters, anything with less than 5.5% vol can be sold in stores. Fermented beverages used to enjoy strong sales, but it seems like tastes are rapidly shifting towards distilled ones. IMO they generally taste better.

<comment><USER27> Sounds similar to Norway _, where only there is a max alcohol % (5%, IIRC) can be sold in supermarkets, and anything stronger is only available through the state monopoly, Vinmonopolet.

In Western countries outwith the Nordics, this may sound awful, but I've come to appreciate it. Vinmonopolet stores sell a curated stock of high quality alcohol drinks, and their staff are invariably both passionate and highly knowledgeable. In short, the ethos is "quality over quantity" \- and I like it.

_ For some context, I live in the UK, but work for the Norwegian division of a megacorp, and have travelled to Norway frequently for decades.

<comment><USER28> in the us, we also have 'good liquor stores' and 'regular ones', the market is lucrative enough to support such things without a mandated government monopoly. same should go for UK as well I presume..

<comment><USER27> I would have thought so too. And yet, most of the "decent" alcohol stores (e.g. Oddbins) died a death several years ago.

Depending on where you live, you might find niche shops if you look hard enough, but they are _far_ from ubiquitous. It seems the market has decided, and they want the cheapest swill they can buy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> In addition to the taxes mentioned in the article, It's also important to note that in many states in the US distilled beverages are only permitted to be sold in certain licensed stores. (Oregon for example has liquor stores, and you can't buy distilled things at a regular grocery store)

</comment><comment><USER30> This is also why the European version of Four Loko contained vodka, while the American version used malt liquor.

<comment><USER31> I was confused by another commenter's post saying Smirnoff's ice and Mike's hard were made with malt liquor, both are made with vodka here. But, booze can only be sold in licensed stores here so there's not much incentive to make them different and I imagine mixing vodka with carbonated sugar water is cheaper than using malt liquor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> In Japan, the tax for beer is insanely high. "Free beer" doesn't happen in Japan because beer is expensive. It makes most major beer companies R&D beer- taste products which is by definition of the tax law, not a beer. On the other hand, the canned vodka soda so cheap.

</comment><comment><USER33> "It doesn't contain vodka or any other distilled spirits. Instead it is made through fermentation, like beer, but starting from a base of sugar instead of cereal grains like barley."

This is a roundabout way of saying it's undistilled vodka. All spirits are fermented before distillation (or else what is there to distill?), and some vodkas already start with pure sugar instead of grains, potatoes, or fruit.

<comment><USER34> > This is a roundabout way of saying it's undistilled vodka.

Not really. Since you can make vodka from the same cereal grains that beer is made from, you could also describe beer as undistilled vodka, but that wouldn't make a ton of sense. Its major similarity to vodka is its neutral taste, not its base ingredients.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> * waves magic wand *

* poof! - Constitutional amendments are passed in every state requiring sales tax to apply to all items at an equal rate. Politicians suddenly have less power to punish or privilege individual sectors and industries, and so there is less reason to lobby and corrupt them. Sin taxes go away, so constituents are nudged and nannied and pandered to less. Much labor to track and charge differential taxes is disappeared. *

* wakes up *

Damn.

<comment><USER14> Why should sales tax be the same for all items? Why should we, e.g., pay the same tax on groceries as on cigarettes?

<comment><USER36> I'm not answering for hirundo as I suspect our views are different.

But generally speaking it has been recognized that broad based sales taxes across all products is more stable when it comes to various economic downturns and etc. Same goes for just say property taxes that cover X, but not Y property.

Some sin taxes that get tagged to be used for "good things" often have bad results if usage drops and the "good things" that we previously wanted to fun suddenly have no (or a dramatic drop) in funding.

I'm not saying anyone shouldn't / can't do such things but there are reasons to avoid tax policies where things are taxes dramatically differently. How much "dramatically" is obviously up for endless debate.

That doesn't mean "tax should be the same for all items" but keeping close to that concept is not a bad idea.

<comment><USER37> That's more of an argument for not using sin taxes to fund anything other than public health measures to combat the effects of consuming the thing that's being taxed.

<comment><USER36> It is but it demonstrates why you want a more even tax base just to help ride out any changes in economics or usage.

Also even direct sin taxes tied to things might be hard. If we all stop smoking, there still be cancer related to smoking...

Gas tax to fund roads, and increased fuel efficiency is another example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Barro means that it gave us White Claw in the sense that we don't instead have canned vodka tonics (in effect: alcoholic seltzer), because vodka is distilled, and White Claw's cane-sugar-brewed alcohol is a tax workaround.

We have the product category itself --- alcoholic seltzer --- on its own merits, according to Barro. There's no escaping it.

</comment><comment><USER38> Slightly related: I tried to buy an expensive used camera from one of my favorite online retailers from New York and discovered that used electronics were now being taxed. They lost a big sale yesterday.

<comment><USER39> Nah, you're already a part of their spreadsheet, they don't need everyone as a customer, the profits still roll in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I've been mixing a shot of whiskey, bitters, and club soda with a splash to a few glugs of ginger ale/beer, still playing with the mix. Would be nice to start seeing better ready-to-drink options.

<comment><USER41> For real. I was in UK for a week, the mixed drinks over there are amazing. Had something called wkd, which is apparently regarded as a pretty trashy drink, but it tasted like fizzy gatorade, couldn't even tell it had alcohol in it.

<comment><USER42> _couldn 't even tell it had alcohol in it_

So.... what's the point? Why not just drink Gatorade with seltzer, and save yourself some money?

<comment><USER43> Is this an honest question? I can't believe that it is...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> What is bom? Also where is the bargain basement competitor? That's gotta be coming right? Seems like this is super easy and cheap to make.

</comment><comment><USER45> There are some interesting tidbits (tax laws between beer vs distilled spirits), the reason everyone I know drinks it is it's a low carb alcoholic beverage. You can bring it ready made to a party, which is easier than mixing a drink of seltzer and vodka at your friends house.

<comment><USER42> _which is easier than mixing a drink of seltzer and vodka at your friends house_

When I was a very young child (six or seven), it was my job at my parent's parties to mix the gin and tonics. If mixing seltzer and vodka at a party is too hard, it's time to stop drinking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> see also, bumwine:

[http://www.bumwine.com/](http://www.bumwine.com/)

</comment><comment><USER47> My opinion is taxes are theft in the vast majority of cases.

</comment><comment><USER48> Personally I've just started drinking (very occasionally) low calorie beer. My favorite is Corona Premier. 90 calories + 2.6g carbs (4% ABV) vs 100 calories + 2g for a White Claw (5% ABV).

Less alcohol, more refreshing, tastes pretty much like regular Corona, and something about drinking Mexican beer always reminds me of sitting on a beach.

<comment><USER49> >something about drinking Mexican beer always reminds me of sitting on a beach

That "something" is affective conditioning from years of exposure to advertising, and exposure to the world that the advertising created.

<comment><USER50> unless you've actually drank lots of Mexican beer on a beach. San Diego native here.</comment></comment></comment>


Iraq's bonds are now rated "nearly on par" with California's - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2010/03/21/gambling_on_iraqs_slow_rise_from_ruin/?page=full

<comment><USER2> Title is link bait. They don't even mention CA until the end. Also kind of a cheap shot comparison since it's really apples and oranges..

Sure, if it stabilizes Iraq would obviously see a lot of economic growth over the next decade but that's kind of a no-brainer. The country is in ruins so any economic growth would be exponential for it..

</comment><comment><USER3> It'll be interesting to see what happens if the oil money flows to the people in Iraq. Strategically, it would be a very wise move on the part of the US, as it would assist in shoring up relations with the region. If for their entire lives they've been told that the United States is the Great Satan, then the US invades, lets them kill Saddam, and makes everyone that's left rich in the process, it may reverse some of that.

So far this year, Iraq is safer for US servicemen than where I am today, Baltimore. ([http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/crime/blog/2010/01/man_...](http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/crime/blog/2010/01/man_pleads_guilty_in_murder_of.html)) The unpopular decisions made by the Bush administration seem to be paying off.

<comment><USER4> If you make your sample small enough you will always be able to say that. A one month period is not long enough to make sweeping statements like that.

To suggest that Iraq is safer for US servicemen than Baltimore you'd have to look at a period long enough to include your 'anomaly', which by the way was written in January. And you'd have to qualify the slayings as combat, which they clearly were not, if you'd include non-combat deaths from Iraq it would look quite different.

<http://militarytimes.com/valor/> shows that if you take that up to now (that's only a bit under two months later) that it no longer is true even if you were to qualify those deaths as combat.

<comment><USER5> Since the start of the war in Iraq, deaths (in action) of US servicemen have been lower than the preceding decade. Training is actually more dangerous than war these days!

It's a little bit worse if you include suicides.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> No worries; both will be bailed out by Bernanke's printing press. Not to mention Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Michigan, Florida .....

<comment><USER7> The Iraqi war price tag is very likely going to exceed $1T so arguably they already got their payout. Unlike the private sector bailouts, which are being paid back and in fact turning a profit in some cases, tax payers probably won't be seeing much in return from the money spent in Iraq.

<comment><USER8> Why should the American tax payer expect a dime from the Iraqis? They're lucky if they can let this pass without reparations.

In war, victims of illegal foreign invasions are not required to reimburse the aggressor.

<comment><USER9> Well, that makes sense, but it's not always how things play out. Especially if you're not in a position to order others to play fair: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_Rebellion#War_reparations></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Tools of the Trade, 2019 Edition - <AUTHOR> Inspiration:<p>Hacker News Tools of the Trade - https://github.com/cjbarber/ToolsOfTheTrade <comment><USER2> For side project it's: Netlify, mailchimp, google analytics, google search console, vs code, git, semrush, bitbucket, sometimes grammarly, jsfiddle, Hugo, zoho mail. For artwork pen, paper and brother scanner and paint.net.

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't let me copypaste unnecessarily :0

</comment><comment><USER4> Rust and Julia as programming languages.

Spacemacs as editor.

Gitlab and netlify for hosting static websites.

<comment><USER5> Spacemacs is superb once you get it setup right. Best of every world!</comment></comment>


Ethics of Subliminal Messaging: Carnegie Mellon's Gates Center - <AUTHOR>

I'm curious to know, what are your views on the ethics of using subliminal messaging on students?
The reason I ask is that I'm currently a CS student at Carnegie Mellon University. As many of you may know, the Gates Center was built due to generous funding from Bill Gates. However, as I walked through the halls of the new building for the hundredth time, I realized something quite intriguing.
In certain areas of the building YOU CAN HEAR VOICES! No these are not ghosts. After some investigation, I found extremely small hidden speakers designed to project sound towards one location. However, they spoke so softly that the average person would not realize that there was even any noise.
However, at closer inspection, these speakers appear to say three phrases repeatedly (at least that I could make out): "Microsoft Server", "Dell", "Computer Science."
Seeing as how Bill Gates himself funded the building, and Dell provided the computers inside the building, this hardly seems like a coincidence that subliminal marketing is occurring within the Gates building itself.
Now I pose the question: does anyone else find a problem with the fact that students at Carnegie Mellon are subconsciously being enticed to buy from sponsors of their university? <comment><USER2> Has anyone reported this to the school? I would be willing to bet your school's paper would LOVE to do an expose on this. He donated the funds to the school and while that may give him some authority in the program that shouldn't give him the rights to attempt to subliminally message students. Academic halls exist for freedom of information and that information shouldn't be pay to play. Talk to a department chair who works in that building and see what the deal really is.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm pretty sure the school knows about it. After all, I'm not the only undergraduate around who's noticed these things and some professors have commented on them too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow, that's pretty stunning to me. Seems very strange. Are you sure this has been happening all the time or is it an experiment some class is running this semester?

<comment><AUTHOR> As far as I can tell, its going to be permanent. The setup would require that a speaker system be ripped out of a wall for it to be taken down (a little drastic for a class experiment).</comment></comment>