philcrocket

As others mentioned, unfortunately the last bill allowed for some large loopholes and emboldened underground growers (also due to more lax state laws) to grow and flood the market with sub-par or even poisonous product. It’d a billion dollar market that state actors and cartels alike are using to launder money (and ruin lives). Very informative video on this: https://youtu.be/3qC4c-zNxTg?si=oy4ab6kuo27fJqcx

Great summary of what's going on from Saager on Breaking Points. You can search for "Fauci CAUGHT Funding Lab Leak Research, Culprit AGAIN" on YT or direct link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBEEjeG6Xls

For those who only need a few boards, rpilocator has been a great resource. Adafruit typically releases a handful every week on Wednesday I believe. (Check out rpilocator's Twitter feed as they typically give folks a heads up before the Adafruit drop: @rpilocator) They do limit 1 per customer per month though..

Also backordered a 4GB version on Digikey and it came through only a week later. (Good timing on my part I guess!)

It took a few months to get to this point so patience is the name of the game for sure until the market cools off a bit.

https://bastillebsd.org is a great tool if you want to deploy tiny container-like Jails on FreeBSD. I've been using it in production for a while and it's been a great tool.

For people who don't believe this is a problem or that it's purely a conspiracy theory I recommend you read:

Stealth War: How China Took Over While America's Elite Slept

Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China

There's other great resources out there too. But watch out, the rabbit hole goes pretty deep on this one..

There are definitely less protections for the seller. Plus, guess what, eBay and PayPal keep the fees afterwards!

I’ve had my own similar situation recently. Very frustrating. The customer service rep disconnected on purpose. Useless waste of time.

Wow. Looks like he learned his lesson. On the other hand, we American consumers haven't.

I'll echo what most have said here already: the moment this crisis is over, we'll be overseas trying to find the cheapest possible price. We don't care about keeping the local guy in business. We care about our margins.

I'd hate to say it but what made us great, could very well be our downfall...

I've been involved in many (failed) startups. I'm actually going through the same situation you're going through right now. We have some pilots but the money isn't raining from the heavens yet.

I definitely agree with the suggestions here to take some time off. Sometimes, especially when you've been living and breathing this stuff for 9 months, you need some time away to rejuvenate. I did that a few years ago with a trip to Nicaragua when I felt like I couldn't ship the product I was working on. After a week of not thinking about it we went on to shipping the product and moving our production line to China. The startup still failed in the end (for other wonderful reasons) but that introspection time is 110% worth it.

One thing that resonated with me recently was to keep your network up. If you fail you fail but you'll have a group of people willing to help you out if and when it happens. If you continue and then thrive you'll still have a great support network when the stress hits hard.

A friend said it well on a recent episode of the $100 MBA Podcast. https://100mba.net/mba973/

Also, remember sometimes the failures are great insights into what is working and what isn't working. If you have had this many potential clients at this point nothing says that there aren't more out there that you can surprise, delight and serve.

Best of luck.

Ebay is a great place right now for this stuff. Pennies on the dollar vs what you can get from Digikey.