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Comment by haswell | Hacker News Reader

With the recent findings [0] that some of the “free file converter” websites in the wild were actually injecting malware into the results as the first stage of various attacks, I’ve wanted to stand something like this up on a server for my family.

This looks like exactly what I’ve been looking for.

- [0] https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/denver/news/fbi...

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I'll hijack this to plug Stirling PDF[0], I have it running on a Raspberry Pi with docker compose and from time to time it's incredible helpfull to edit PDFs without sending them to a third party.

- [0] https://github.com/Stirling-Tools/Stirling-PDF

Wow, this is scary, I was about to ask which some of these websites are, but I found this link that lists some of them. https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2025/03/18/fbi-free-file-con...

Wow, the FBI has some great tips to protect yourself from scams including:

> Take a breath, slow down and think.

Honestly, I'm not sure why you need a web interface on top of ffmpeg. It just seems to be an easy avenue for malware.

My 70+ non technical parents are not going to have much success with ffmpeg.

While I have 68 fewer parents, minimum, than you, I also have technical issues with ffmpeg and I pitched a transcoding setup to a F50 company - so I've used it.

So you have plus > x > parents?

What technical issues?

Phone

Nerds don't. Normal people do. Normal people also won't download and self-host some open source software just to convert one file...

Nerd here. I somewhat regularly need to use ffmpeh to convert between formats and re encode (we get 16 tracks of 16 bit wav audio out of a mixer, and I re encode them to send them to someone else who does a rough mix, about once a month).

I still use ChatGPT for the command lines regularly like - “ want to combine these two tracks into a single stereo track with A on left, and B on right” which is super helpful for putting stuff in an SPD.

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