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Comment by traceroute66 | Hacker News Reader

> I built a 256 GB CFexpress card for under $100, and you can too.

Probably because you valued your time at zero.

At a minimum probably 30 minutes to buy the components - although realistically with the shortages at the moment might take longer because you'll have to look around for places with stuff in stock.

Then let's say 20-30 minutes to get the components in place (I'm including packaging removal time here).

Plus a bit more for testing, labelling etc.

Sure it's not the most labour-intensive thing in the world, but the time soon adds up.

And that's assuming everything works first time and you don't have to spend time troubleshooting or returning broken components.

What hourly rate does your salary work out to ? ;-)

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The difference between the parts and shipping (±$90) and a comparable CE card (±317) is $227. Assuming three hours of work including research you'd need to earn about $75 per hour to break even. Assuming a 40 hour work week, 4 weeks of holiday time and no other benefits, that amounts to a yearly wage of $144000, placing you firmly in the top 1% of the world, and the top 10% of the USA (according to https://www.compareyourincome.org/)

After taxes, my current salary comes down to about €12,28 per hour (≅$13.27). Not a great rate, but higher than 36% of the rest of my country assuming a full time working week. That means I can work at least 17 full hours on such a project and end up making a profit. The 30-60 minutes of work that this project takes saves me over $200.

Most of the world doesn't work for the ridiculous rates FAANG pays. Good for you that you're too rich to even bother about spending $200 extra for a memory card. However, your skewed expectations don't detriment the value of this article in any way.

Heck, even if one can afford paying that extra, not buying overpriced nonsense is a good principle.

Even if I'd made enough I'd make it a point to use workarounds like these to avoid the scams or inefficiencies of the overpriced CFE cards, just to make a point.

How many people earning 12.28 are also the target market for extremely high end camera equipment and also need the speed of a CE card?

You realise people can have hobbies right? People can save up for an expensive camera for their photography hobby.

Do you think only Silicon Valley programmers have cameras like these? I can assure you that professional photographers don't make that much more money, not nearly enough to justify the expense anyway.

They may share a camera (say, in a digital photo agency) but would love more storage cards.

CFexpress cards are considerably more expensive than other similar forms of storage like SD cards — a comparable 256GB CFexpress card currently goes for $259.99 [0]. From a pure cost perspective, it could very well be worth it. As a hobby photographer I would consider doing this for the fun of it anyway.

[0] https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1551702-REG/sandisk_s...

You miss the point.

The author links to (approx) $90 in parts.

Your average HN reader is probably in a decently paid job, let's say it works out to $80-$100 per hour (at least !).

So we're now talking about $190 all-in, i.e. parts AND labour.

So we're now talking about a $60 price difference ($250 off-the-shelf vs $190 DIY).

For the $60 difference you get:

      - A card that is camera manufacturer validated and so does not risk breaking your camera or invalidating its warranty
      - A card that has already been tested and labeled in the factory, so you don't need to do that
      - A card with a warranty

I'd say that $60 is a bargain.

People should not be valuing their time at zero when engaging in DIY projects.

HN boasts an international audience and many of us earn a lot less than $100/hour. Plus you know it is called “hacker” news, not “bought it at the store” news.

Candidate for alt HN tagline :)

Sigh.

No, you're missing the point. For one, DIY projects are great for learning. Secondly, unless you already have a way to earn money with that time, time spent on stuff like this is "worth" $0. You'd actually have more money in your pocket after DIY'ing it and spending a couple hours than you would clicking "buy" on Amazon.com and spending a couple minutes or so.

And, if you want to get really nitpicky, I'm pretty sure all those parts the author bought were also tested and warrantied by their respective manufacturers. And, show me a camera warranty that would be broken by using an adapter that's made for the card type the camera takes, anyway.

SMH.

Don't forget that some people enjoy such things. Not every thing has to be reduced to a cost / benefit analysis.

Absolutely. I value my time spent working on hobby projects and end up paying money per hour I spend on it -- as far as I'm concerned it's worth every cent!

100 USD/hour translates to something like 325k yearly. Is "average" HN reader "at least" in a senior position in FAANG?

Your calculation assumes an overly high number of hours worked (and paid, as opposed to "exempt" if it's a salaried position) per year.

You'd need to average 65 hours of work every week to get $325,000 in a year at $100 per hour. That's not healthy.

50 weeks per year at 40 hours each is normal, so rule of thumb: hourly rate * 2000 hours per year = yearly earnings.

Many photographers don't earn what the "average" HNer does (if there is an average). My comment didn't really address the HN crowd.

The warranty aspect is a great point though, if a commercial photographer did this and lost their client's work because e.g. the pins broke off, I fear their clients' response.

The answer here comes down to what the individual is able to justify to themselves, be it via a cost-benefit analysis or merely "I'm a solo/hobbyist photographer, I could build this tomorrow evening during downtime and save some money, let's do it." :-)

I have a very decently paid job here in Germany. After taxes, health care and all the other deductibles I take home somewhat around 30 - 35 Euros per hour. As overtime is included in my job (I work hard not to do too much, but still) having fun building something like that on a weekend would also be an economical bargain.

I still am totally in line with my sister comments in valuing the fun building something and understanding a few things a bit better in the process quite higher than the economic aspect. This would only be the icing on the cake.

I think you're overestimating the time required to do this. It looks like 30 minutes to me, all-inclusive.

The cheapest no-name 256gb cards are $130 on Amazon, so that works out to $60/hr assuming the DIY version is no better than no-name. Big brands cost twice that, so if the DIY version is equivalent quality to those, $320/hr.

> It looks like 30 minutes to me, all-inclusive.

Really ? Are you honestly and truthfully including all steps :

     - Online shopping (*INCLUDING* time spent looking around for alternative components/stock)
     - Opening up packaging
     - Getting tools together
     - Putting it together
     - Testing and labelling
     - Clearing up afterwards

Sure I'll grant you that IF all your ducks line up absolutely perfectly, you might be able to scrape by 30-45 minutes. I suspect the reality will need a bit of extra time margin though.

Your comments add nothing to the discussion and only serve to spam up the comments section. Just why?

That's too harsh. traceroute66 is (presumably) offering a genuinely held opinion, and it's valuable to know that this opinion exists even if one disagrees with it. I actually thought about his point of view quite a lot today while talking a snowy walk in the woods with my dog. It's foreign to me, but I wouldn't be surprised if his approach has served him well for making progress in his career. At the least, he sounds better paid than I am.

The question I had was how far he'd suggest taking this approach. Should one avoid learning to cook because it's (currently) cheaper to pay someone for food? How does one justify hobbies? What about volunteer work? I'm sort of on the opposite end. I struggle to justify paying for anything that I can do myself. It may be that I've never felt I was in a situation where I could easily choose to make more money without suffering debilitating moral conflict.

Thank you @nkurz for taking the time to consider the alternative perspective.

I've kind of "read the room" here and its clear my perspective is not welcome (or at least "not understood" if I'm being generous on interpretation).

So I'll refrain from commenting more except on one point you raised:

> Should one avoid learning to cook because it's (currently) cheaper to pay someone for food?

Actually DIY cooking is generally cheaper than paying for it, assuming we are talking about healthy, balanced meals and not just counting anything as "food".

There are numerous things you can buy that can keep you sustained in various forms for anything up to a week whilst not incurring any additional expenditure (or at least minimal). For example you could buy a chicken, you could roast that chicken and enjoy a meal, you could then cut up the carcass and make a good few litres of stock, from that stock you could then make (at least) soup, a risotto and if you bought a decent sized chicken there is of course the possibility of some sort of cold salad out of the left-over meat. So that's (at least) four meals out of one chicken.

The labour element with cooking - at least on simple meals - does not (generally) amount to much. For example, with the chicken example above, the actual time preparing/cooking is minimal, for the bulk of the elapsed time you can walk away and do something more productive whilst the chicken does its thing in the oven or in the stock pot.

Meanwhile in a restaurant you'll pay through the nose for the same food (it's an old rule of thumb that restaurants work on 300% margin), you'll have to pay 10% service charge, and you'll (probably) get less food that is (probably) less healthy.

Take-aways are equally expensive because they are priced for convenience, and again the same (potential) questions about quantity and health.

Where I would draw a line is DIY farming. Whilst I admit that I am not familiar with the economics, I suspect for most people it would work out cheaper to buy your raw ingredients than to grow/farm them yourself.

> What hourly rate does your salary work out to ?

If I work at a fixed salary, my effective hourly rate isn't relevant here. I can't spend the time I saved to earn more money. My only choices are spend less on DIY or spend more on ready-made.

The right discussion here is opportunity cost: what did I have to give up to use my time or money this way? That depends more on my bottom-line discretionary funds and free time than on my top-line salary.

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