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Comment by jinzo | Hacker News Reader

I mean, he is either trolling a bit or has a very simplistic view of buying niche equipment from Alibaba. It's far from click and collect (eg. pricing, export/import/transport) and that's even before you get up and running. Either way, from my experience (with a lot more simpler stuff), the thread does not represent the reality of procuring stuff from Alibaba.

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I read the Alibaba part as hyperbole. I don’t think he was talking about actually getting TEUs of this stuff through customs—just making a point on pricing.

one of my points is, that I do not trust that pricing. In my experience the pricing ranges on Alibaba were very wild and often used as an incentive for you to contact them. And after some back and forth you got a 'real' offer. Taobao (or aliexpress in the west) on the other hand, usually contained 'real' prices. Can't say for sure for that listing(s), but I would take everything on that links with a grain of salt.

> one of my points is, that I do not trust that pricing. In my experience the pricing ranges on Alibaba were very wild and often used as an incentive for you to contact them. And after some back and forth you got a 'real' offer.

In a similar vein:

> But I do note that if you run the structure through SciFinder, it comes out with a most unexpected icon that indicates a commercial supplier. That would be the Hangzhou Sage Chemical Company. They offer it in 100g, 500g, and 1 kilo amounts, which is interesting, because I don't think a kilo of dioxygen difluoride has ever existed.

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-wor...

Isn't the point to demonstrate that this process is possible with inexpensive, commodity, off-the-shelf parts. And if so then there is viability with solution.

I doubt he's talking about building a company that sources their machinery/parts/gadgets directly from places like Alibaba, Taobao, etc...

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