CosmicShadow (u/CosmicShadow)

CosmicShadow commented on Mail Carriers Pause US Deliveries as Tariff Shift Sows Confusion bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/voxadam

bushbaba · 4 days ago

90% number checks out as Canada is ~1/10th the population of the US.

CosmicShadow · 3 days ago

I also don't bother advertising to Canada anymore as it's just more valuable for me to sell to the US in USD. I've spent a lot of time working on getting shipping as cheap as possible to make it alluring for the US and it currently is cheaper for me to send to California from near Toronto then it is to send something in my own city, let alone anywhere else in Canada. It is getting better here with these new cheap providers like Intelcom, but it's still not worth it when dealing with 10x the people paying me in a currency that's 1.38x mine.

I also sell something that has a max value people would be willing to pay, so if that number is $6, then I'd rather get $6 USD than $6 CAD.

CosmicShadow commented on Mail Carriers Pause US Deliveries as Tariff Shift Sows Confusion bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/voxadam

Scoundreller · 4 days ago

If they're not individualized items, send US$800 worth everyday for the next week to an Amerifriend to warehouse there and re-ship domestic on-demand if you can.

That's basically what US companies were doing with Chinese stuff when those tariffs were announced but not in force yet (and maybe earlier if they got early wind about it).

Dunno what's going on with NAFTA/CUSMA/USMCA. Changes with the wind. Or maybe you'll qualify for duty-free under our supposed trade agreement if you pay some assessor mafia $9999 to confirm that your handmade good is Made in Canada.

CosmicShadow · 3 days ago

Unfortunately we make custom items. We'd have to move our actual operations to the US to really get ahead of the game, but I don't want the nightmare of having to hire someone and do business from within the US, especially if something goes wrong. Maybe if we were 5-10x the size I could afford it, but not at this moment.

CosmicShadow commented on Mail Carriers Pause US Deliveries as Tariff Shift Sows Confusion bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/voxadam

bdcravens · 4 days ago

> Once we can ship Delivery Duty Unpaid or DDU we will expect 4 out 5 customers to send angry emails asking what these "Hidden fees" are as we don't expect anyone to realize they actually need to pay tariffs and then we get stuck on the defensive side educating people what tariffs are and who caused them and who is supposed to pay them, which is not great for business, sanity or time :/

Can you get ahead of this by putting a message on your checkout page when the recipient is in the US? Won't stop all of the complaints of course.

CosmicShadow · 3 days ago

You, good sir, have made the mistake of thinking people can and will read!

We've put warnings for things on every single page, step of the checkout, and emails, and people still complain that things are a surprise, even after checking a box acknowledging the facts :(

The sad fact you learn after shipping 10k+ orders is that you can't prevent issues by preparing and telling people about them. It really sucks and defies all logic.

CosmicShadow commented on Mail Carriers Pause US Deliveries as Tariff Shift Sows Confusion bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/voxadam

CosmicShadow · 4 days ago

I sell a niche, handmade product for a living from Canada and 90% of my sales are to the US and this bullshit really fucking sucks. Even our shipping partners don't know what is going on and usually can only fill us in on or after a due date goes past because nobody on either side of the border has any idea what to do or what is actually supposed to happen.

Here's the stupidity: USPS doesn't know who is supposed to collect the tariffs...hmm it's the person in the US who bought the product, and you collect money from them, like UPS and FedEx do all the time. It's going to your own government, how do they not understand? I know it's unrealistic for mail carriers to be able to do that en-masse now, but I'm not sure why they think Canada Post should be collecting tariffs, they don't have employees that deliver mail...IN THE US! So we can't ship with Canada Post to the US now as they'll just send it back. Canada Post can also strike again at any moment, but that's another story.

So the current advice is for us to now ship our products as Delivery Duty Paid or DDP, which means I'm supposed to pay the tariff that the buyer should be paying all because USPS doesn't know how to collect the money to give to their government. I'm getting double boned.

Oh yeah, I also have to pay an extra $2 per shipment to a broker now in addition to the tariffs, which nobody really has any clarity what they will be yet and there doesn't seem to be a good source saying if the items I sell are CUSMA or not.

It's one hell of a mess for sure, and especially damaging when you sell low ticket items on volume. I'm going to have to jack my shipping, which will hurt as our shipping is already more expensive than what someone would normally pay from someone within the US.

Once we can ship Delivery Duty Unpaid or DDU we will expect 4 out 5 customers to send angry emails asking what these "Hidden fees" are as we don't expect anyone to realize they actually need to pay tariffs and then we get stuck on the defensive side educating people what tariffs are and who caused them and who is supposed to pay them, which is not great for business, sanity or time :/

CosmicShadow commented on Wan – Open-source alternative to VEO 3 github.com/Wan-Video/Wan2... · Posted by u/modinfo

scroogey · 9 days ago

What did you use to upscale them?

CosmicShadow · 9 days ago

One was with Topaz Video, the other was with SeedVR2.

CosmicShadow commented on Wan – Open-source alternative to VEO 3 github.com/Wan-Video/Wan2... · Posted by u/modinfo

CosmicShadow · 9 days ago

Wan2.1 was great, but Wan2.2 is really awesome! Here's some samples I made locally with my 5090:

- https://imgur.com/a/VeTn4Ej

- https://imgur.com/a/CujxVX3

Those were both Image to Video and then I upscaled them to 4k. I made the images using Flux Dev Krea.

Took about 3-4 minutes per video to generate and another 2-3 to upscale. Images took 20-40s to generate.

CosmicShadow commented on Claude's Max Plan anthropic.com/news/max-pl... · Posted by u/nanfinitum

CosmicShadow · 5 months ago

I already had to go through so many hoops to sign up for a teams account for 5 separate accounts for myself, I wonder if this will be any better or not. At least if one account starts getting dumb or somehow runs out of context, I can just switch, but if something goes wrong and your $200 account exponentially loses context, then you are stuck waiting. Anyone have any idea of the actual differences?

CosmicShadow commented on One mother's win over Meta will change social media for everyone thetimes.com/uk/technolog... · Posted by u/bookofjoe

barbazoo · 5 months ago

> One mother’s win over Meta will change social media for everyone

… in the UK

CosmicShadow · 5 months ago

I feel your frustration, only 100 times over as nearly every title on HN is missing the: ...in the US

CosmicShadow commented on With AI you need to think bigger rodyne.com/?p=1828... · Posted by u/boznz

CosmicShadow · 6 months ago

The exciting thing about AI is it let's you go back to any project or idea you've ever had and they are now possibly doable, even if they seemed impossible or too much work back then. Some of the key pieces missing have become trivial, and even if you don't know how to do something AI will help you figure it out or just let you come up with a solution that may seem dirty, but actually works, whereas before it was impossible without expert systems and grinding out so much code. It's opened so many doors. It's hard to remember ideas that you have written off before, there are so many blind spots that are now opportunities.

CosmicShadow commented on Kevin Rose, Alexis Ohanian Acquire Digg techcrunch.com/2025/03/05... · Posted by u/LorenDB

smallerize · 6 months ago

You've been getting emails from an advertising company. https://www.businessinsider.com/digg-sells-to-buysellads-an-...

CosmicShadow · 6 months ago

But the value is still there. I see ads in it that I never click (they are garbage and never change and made for Americans, which I am not), if I do click a link, I've got adblockers on, and every single site is pretty much an advertising company already. I still get the latest tidbits I want in a small package. Most of the time I don't even need to click anything, I just get context to the latest memes or the summary of news I don't need to actually click into.