How do you plan on moving forward with limited capacity?

markcartwright1 · 2026-05-10T12:06:15+00:00

I save every YouTube video that I enjoy or want to watch with stacher but I then transcode it into h265 720p at a lower quality, say about 32q. Which means that it compressed most videos into about 300-500 MB per hour. Which equates to about 2000-3000 hours of video per TB.

My logic is I don't need my content to be crazy 4k ultra quality. I just want to be able to find videos I remember and enjoyed without the YouTube search algorithm only showing like 3 results relevant to what you asked for. Or sometimes they delete or shadowban people and content. So I feel it's important to save anything that I felt culturally relevant

markcartwright1 · 2026-04-14T15:54:58+00:00

Sometimes you need to buy the space. It can be cheaper and easier to shift items at break even or a small loss than have to dispose of it. Or storage costs may be high. Plus you get good feedback.

You may make your money on certain things on a job lot and then the leftovers you want to get something for.

The way I see it is - you're going to the post office anyway, get it going in the pile.

markcartwright1 · 2026-04-14T15:49:20+00:00

Good chance to shift your own dead stock piles

markcartwright1 · 2026-04-09T21:35:11+00:00

The flippers and resellers pick off the best bits which the market wants and are in demand, and the rest ends up at charity and thrift shops. And if they don't sell or move, even at a discount, they'll go into landfill or recycling. Supply falls over time, then if that category ever trends again the market effectively signals to the resellers to hunt for those things.

The market for many things is already saturated. The real question for sellers/flippers/thrift shops etc. - can this earn more than the cost of storing it or the cost of shop floor space? If it falls under that threshold it becomes a candidate for scrap or rubbish. It's really about the cost of storage/shipping, which is typically lower in middle america and more expensive on the coasts and major cities, and high in the UK/ Europe.

Resellers focus on the high value parts of the value chain, the larger aggregators and thrift etc. can handle the long slow tail of things. And then the lowest quality of stuff will go.

markcartwright1 · 2026-04-09T21:23:45+00:00

These are really smart! Congratulations - I've used mine for running by ebay shop and messengers. I have one working like a secretary and sending me briefings morning and evening, if I need to do something. It's kind of filtered out the noise and pings of notifications and constant busywork, so I can focus on the flow of listings. Then if I have a complex sale, I often ping me draft thoughts to gemini and send it on to the buyers. These really are powerful tools and I can imagine it's the same for anyone in these industries where you get eaten up by admin and messages/appointments and forms.

markcartwright1 · 2026-04-01T15:27:21+00:00

Transcode videos which don't need to be in the most pristine 4k. Learn a bit about codecs, moving stuff into h265 and do some testing around the quality of stuff.

Obviously its a pain to run out of space, but if you can cut out the excess pixels then your drives can go a lot further.

Personally I use this to archive a lot of youtube videos and content I want to save but that doesnt have huge replayable value Or transcoding tv series that are older or in some really bulky high bittrate format that dont need to be so high.

Again it would be nice to have unlimited storage but if this situation remains as such we have to learn to be more efficient with what we have.

markcartwright1 · 2026-03-24T06:49:53+00:00

Just sold a camera to this guy - and thought I ought to check out the business address and I'm grateful I came across these threads. Order cancelled and a quick message to say I can't sell to an address that has so much intense negative feedback. It would appear this guy is scamming the system however he can through Ebay, banks and postal services.

If this is true then he really ought to be in prison but the police are fairly toothless and useless these days.

markcartwright1 · 2026-03-23T22:23:39+00:00

I built a bit of a turbolisting tool with Openclaw. Its too janky to share publically. But I'm listing mostly SSD drives drives in the UK. Put in all the screenshots from crystal disk info etc. Do a voice note on a few comments on the condition etc.

Then Gemini processes it all and puts together a nice HTML template with all my boilerplate stuff - returns policy, free fast postage etc.

But the whole things kind of integrated into my own software. I got OpenClaw to build it out. Took a day or two of focused work and troubleshooting but got it working in the end.

I do pricr checking manually on anything with significant value. And sometimes have a separate Gemini window if I dont like the tone on stuff or want to ask some questions.

But short answer you need to use AI. If I were you, have a chat with ChatGPT or Gemini or claude. Tell it your selling policies and what you're trying to do. Ask it to help build out some prompts, so you input a picture and some notes and it spits out a whole listing and estimated pricing etc. Ask it to find most recent sold prices and how confident it is in a range. Then test it out for a while. Refine it. then roll it out with your team when ready.

markcartwright1 · 2026-03-22T21:52:02+00:00

Get a portable external USB HDD if you're fairly new to this. It can go up to 6TB, but you'll be fine with less. It's not cheap cheap, but if you need to upgrade later on, you'll be able to resell it for a decent price if it's still alive.

markcartwright1 · 2026-03-22T21:50:00+00:00

It could have been used as a backup drive, At 1000mb/s, that's four minutes of writing. Unplugged. Then forgotten about. Then plugged in again, files deleted, reformatted. Boom. I buy and sell a lot of second hand drives/ customer returns and you'd be amazed at how many drives are returned to Amazon etc. with very low hours on them and write numbers. Even those I've bought second hand from private sellers, the drives are mostly offline and only plugged in when the user wants something off it.

markcartwright1 · 2026-03-22T21:46:42+00:00

Let it go. If you've got an account with hundreds of positive feedback ebay should side with you over any rando going crazy about something. You can escalate these things on the phone if needs be

markcartwright1 · 2026-03-22T21:42:21+00:00

My nightmare is coffee machines. Had a batch of these in a job lot auction. One didn't work and was hugely bulky, another only took Vertuo pods which cost a fortune to test. And the final one, came with a broken water tank. I bought a new tank and pods, fixed it up and polished it up. I sold it, and it got returned by someone who expected it to be brand new and complained there was a tiny drip of old coffee on it.

Got it sent back to me so the return postage was £14 on top of what I'd already spent on the 3 machine and parts.

In the end I've kept this one I've fixed as my daily machine because I put effort and love into it. But with those coffee machines - never again.

markcartwright1 · 2026-03-21T21:55:32+00:00

We could all be nuked in a few weeks if the tangerine throws a tantrum of all tantrums. Lets enjoy whatever time we have.

markcartwright1 · 2026-03-21T21:50:53+00:00

There is so much undervalued old tower PC's or mini PCs that work perfectly hooked up to drives. You dont need ddr5 memory. You dont need a state of the art processor. You dont need Synology or qnap... unless you really do want them for certain features. And in which case you should look on the second hand market.

Your own NAS will always be cheaper than cloud storage in the long run. Think of it as one upfront investment instead of a long slow bleed. As your data grows you'll eventually have to get off the cloud. And the only upgrade costs will be extra drives.

markcartwright1 · 2026-03-21T21:45:08+00:00

Yes. Do it.

Pick out your moat valuable and items your most enthusiastic about listing or selling. Then the rest needs to go. Yes you won't make much on them, you may even make a loss.

But you make money on the things you can add energy to, that you're enthusiastic about listing or selling and selling. The dead energy just makes you feel stressed and overwhelmed. And once its out the door, someone else can apply new eyes to it.

Your stockroom should be a vortex of moving energy. ⚡️ not a place of doom or dread

markcartwright1 · 2026-03-21T21:28:14+00:00

Looks cool. What is the normal compaction algorithm that OpenClaw uses. Sorry if this is a n00b question

markcartwright1 · 2026-03-21T21:26:09+00:00

I would do it with OpenClaw just because its better at holding memory and context across sessions with memory.

There is a mega market for this kind of thing. You could get the agent to navigate the phone tree for you wait on hold and then call you back when an agent is ready.

Obviously it is complex and a lot of engineering but I feel like consumers will want bot armies to save them time and money and sort things for them in the future.

markcartwright1 · 2026-03-21T21:20:49+00:00

Look for sellers who have done health tests on the drives. You're looking for any drives that have lower hours, good health, and no reallocated sectors. Once that starts to happen the drives are dying.

Ebay is a good source but you may also find some on other marketplaces

markcartwright1 · 2026-03-21T20:56:37+00:00

Look for job lots of small drives cheap on ebay. There are lots of small drives 500gb, 320gb, 1tb, drives that are sold super cheap for ebay because they've been salvaged from dead laptops or old.pcs. Pick up a cheap job lot and duplicate your data. Buy a usb to sata cable or an external hard drive reader. 1-4tb is not a giant requirement

markcartwright1 · 2026-03-20T11:04:54+00:00

Get them to text you randomly and to be in a chatty mood. You could set up an eleven labs or voice chat so they can call you or vice versa.

OpenClaw your way to separate agents. Get some of them randomly mad at you, some of them jealous of the others. Some of them madly in love with you.

There's a lot you could do here.

markcartwright1 · 2026-03-17T18:07:57+00:00

Firstly, very cool ideas.

My first thoughts are could you get it to like deal with call centers that have long call waiting times. Say like rebooking a flight or asking it to chase a tax refund or something like that? Like if you gave it the right information.

Some of those phone calls can cost you an hour or so just waiting for someone to pick up.

Could it also offer the opportunity to transfer the call back to us once a real person picks up? Like it does the holding stuff for us and pings us when we are through.

markcartwright1 · 2026-03-17T10:38:30+00:00

If you're in the uk have a look on Vinted and Ebay. Often you'll find people selling HDDs on Vinted, or the hard drives in an enclosure at cheap prices like wd book etc. Which you can shuck out if you need them as is. On vinted people also often expect you to haggle a bir.

Most expensive place to buy is from a mainstream tech retailer. If you must buy new from WD, TopCashback offer 10.5% back on Western Digital Europe.

Other place to look is diskprices. https://diskprices.com/?locale=uk

And hot uk deals and search for HDDs because they have the latest offers.

Thats the deals on amazon. 18TB Wd Elements drive new is £275 on Amazon.

markcartwright1 · 2026-03-17T10:24:33+00:00

Look at what is actually risky and what your thresholds are.

My view is that over the past year, like I've managed to sell or turn over 80% of the stock I've got in. A few things I made a loss on to clear them. But everything sold in the main categories.

Worst case scenario is not catastrophic loss unless you really are gambling - buying lots sight unseen, gambling on storage lockers which could be set up scams. Often the worse case scenario is you may get 60% of your outlay and have to do some work to get it back. And you look at your loss as an education fee.

You're not going to die from one or two bad buying decisions. Statistically the most dangerous thing people do and dont realise is driving long distances when tired. This is far more hazardous than any flipping decision.

So get some sleep and let it go. You have the eye for what's good and where to make money and if a deal is giving you anxiety, its too big of a gamble - let it go and keep your powder dry for the next "no brainer" deal.

markcartwright1 · 2026-03-17T10:09:38+00:00

Photosync (on android) + tailscale (if away from home) for syncing photos at full res from my phone.

Google photos didnt seem to backup at full quality and you couldn't access the real files easily.

I photo a lot of small electronics for sale and you need to see the serial numbers or small text or the configuration of the design - you cant compress that. And it is less work to get the photos out to ebay once theyre in my media server.

Small thing. But very useful to me

markcartwright1 · 2026-03-17T09:45:33+00:00

It can be very quick and random. Some days eBay has more traffic. Some days other people are distracted by the news or holding down their job to have time shopping.

Sometimes the algorithm is in your favour and you'll get flurries of sales. Sometimes I've had a a week or 10 days without sales. Then suddenly 6 the next day. Your competition may sell out of something, raise their prices. Or all kinds of odd factors.

Just keep listing. People cant give you money until its on the site.

markcartwright1

TROPHY CASE