The graveyard of good ideas
Solutions that were tried, and what stopped them.
Patents that were rejected or abandoned, products that shut down, projects that went quiet. Borrow the idea, avoid the dead end.
796 solutions
- startupShut down2023
Tell Cloudflare: You're Breaking Tor/VPN/Shared IPs Again
Right now if anyone tries to load a Cloudflared website over Tor or any "bad" IP, they get a captcha which breaks something like 90% of the time. It seems to only be "under attack mode" websites, by the fact that only a fraction of Cloudflared websites are doing this. We click the checkbox and it just shows a spinning wheel forever. If this is meant to be a block then show an actual block page instead of dodging the issue and wasting everyone's time (I'm sure you already know about the problem). It also breaks when our IP changes now, which is a regression from the other 8 years you blocked Tor for (so please fix that too, don't just fix one thing and leave a new bug). I searched "list of sites behind cloudflare" and got hunter.io which exhibits this behavior. The catpcha page now contains a mix of embarrassingly wrong statements and nonsense
Why it failed: Right now if anyone tries to load a Cloudflared website over Tor or any "bad" IP, they get a captcha which breaks something like 90% of the time. It seems to only be "under attack mode" websites, by the fact that only a fraction of Cloudflared websites are doi
uconnectlol
- startupShut down2023
Google just shut down our $1M business
We have just received an email from Google that we still violate their Google policies and they will not reinstate our account. This is not a post to get sympathy but rather a story why it was closed and how HN played a role in this. I’ve been browsing HN for a decade now and somewhere I read on HN that people lose their online account and everything associated with their account. This has stuck with me and at one point I thought to create a second Google ads account to make sure our main Google ads account was able to keep running if the other account somehow received a violation. Just a pure spread-your-risks decision. After we decided to move into Germany with our eco-friendly brand, I used the second Google ads account to create German ads on a new Shopify hosted .de domain. The ads would target by geo location, consumers in Germany, so that there would be no overlap with our main ma
Why it failed: We have just received an email from Google that we still violate their Google policies and they will not reinstate our account. This is not a post to get sympathy but rather a story why it was closed and how HN played a role in this. I’ve been browsing HN for a decade now and som
jasonwen
- startupShut down2023
Show HN: Rivet – open-source AI Agent dev env with real-world applications
We just launched Rivet, the open-source visual AI programming environment! We built Rivet, because we were building complex AI Agent applications at Ironclad. It unlocked our abilities here, and we're excited to make available to the entire community. Backstory: A few months ago, inspired by things like LangChain and LlamaIndex, we started building an AI agent that could work with legal contracts. Unfortunately, we couldn't just use retrieval augmented generation (RAG), because a lot of contracts are basically identical (many chunks with near-identical embeddings), except for a few key details. So, we turned to things like ReAct and AutoGPT for inspiration. At first, things went great. We were adding agent capabilities, doing chain-of-thought prompting. But then we hit a wall. The agent became too complex. We had debugger breakpoints on almost every line of code, but we still h
Why it failed: We just launched Rivet, the open-source visual AI programming environment! We built Rivet, because we were building complex AI Agent applications at Ironclad. It unlocked our abilities here, and we're excited to make available to the entire community. Backstory: A few months
gogwilt
- startupShut down2023
Tell HN: From bartending to managing cloud infrastructure
Someone on HN once recommended I share this story, and I've been seeing a lot of "how do I get into tech in my 30s" and "can I switch careers" posts, so I figured I'd post. ---- I'm 37. I spent my twenties bouncing all over the place; did a stint in the Army Reserves while shooting for liutenant bars that didn't work out (failed out of college and I was in ROTC). Did construction, real estate, grew weed in Denver for a year (legally), ended up bartending for roughly a decade. It was great in my early 20s. Not so hot to watch my age group get raises and salary increases. I have my GED and never finished college - left with a record-setting 1.2 GPA (I have severe ADD and I wasn't properly medicated, there were other problems too). Seemed like there was this universe of 'good jobs' that were simply not in the cards. So there I am, in my
Why it failed: Someone on HN once recommended I share this story, and I've been seeing a lot of "how do I get into tech in my 30s" and "can I switch careers" posts, so I figured I'd post. ---- I'm 37. I spent my twenties bouncing all over the place; did a stin
pksebben
- startupShut down2023
Tell HN: 3G sunsetting is remotely killing every Subaru Outback battery
Subaru partnered with a service called STARLINK which shares your location in the event of collisions, among other things. STARLINK intermittently tries to phone home by hitting 3G towers. Now that 3G is shutting down, the digital communications module (DCM) gets stuck in an infinite loop of 1. Phone home, expending battery charge 2. Fail, because 3G doesn't work anymore 3. Go back to step 1 This effectively remotely drains the battery of every Subaru Outback built between 2015 and 2020. Even if you drive your car every day, its battery will die and you won't be able to start it. Other models are probably affected, too. There was a class action lawsuit. But this is a pretty egregious engineering oversight, given they were still producing defective cars in 2020, hardly two years before 3G flipped off. Will a brand ever produce a reliable, mechanical car? Why should 3G towers hav
Why it failed: Subaru partnered with a service called STARLINK which shares your location in the event of collisions, among other things. STARLINK intermittently tries to phone home by hitting 3G towers. Now that 3G is shutting down, the digital communications module (DCM) gets stuck in an infi
siftrics
- startupShut down2023
Tell HN: Coinbase discontinues services to accounts, blocks access
Today I received an email from Coinbase regarding them discontinuing all services to some accounts: Hello, This is regarding your account linked to xxxxx. We are reaching out to inform you that we will be discontinuing all services to your above-mentioned account, as we will be disabling access for the accounts that no longer meet our updated standards for these services. Please note that you will be able to access Coinbase.com or the Coinbase app until 25th September 2023 and should withdraw any funds held in your account by such date. Your funds remain secure with us, and you are able to send funds to other crypto wallets or services (subject to standard network and transaction fees), including Coinbase Wallet. Coinbase Wallet is our self-custody wallet, giving you complete control of your crypto. Coinbase Wallet supports hundreds of thousands of tokens and decentralized apps, so you c
Why it failed: Today I received an email from Coinbase regarding them discontinuing all services to some accounts: Hello, This is regarding your account linked to xxxxx. We are reaching out to inform you that we will be discontinuing all services to your above-mentioned account, as we will be d
estebarb
- startupShut down2023
Google Shutting Down TensorBoard.dev
TensorBoard.dev is shutting down. To retain your data, export your TensorBoard.dev experiments by Dec 31st, 2023. Dear TensorBoard.dev User, You are receiving this email because you have uploaded at least one experiment to TensorBoard.dev, our free hosted service for sharing TensorBoard experiments. You can view a list of your TensorBoard.dev experiments at tensorboard.dev/experiments/. What do I need to know? TensorBoard.dev will be shutting down. The website will become inaccessible starting on Dec 1st, 2023, and all uploaded data will be permanently removed after Dec 31st, 2023. You can continue to use TensorBoard via our open source project, which is unaffected by this shutdown, with the exception of the removal of the tensorboard dev subcommand in our command line tool. What do I need to do? Action Required: Export your TensorBoard.dev experiment data, if you need to retai
Why it failed: TensorBoard.dev is shutting down. To retain your data, export your TensorBoard.dev experiments by Dec 31st, 2023. Dear TensorBoard.dev User, You are receiving this email because you have uploaded at least one experiment to TensorBoard.dev, our free hosted service for sharing Tens
reaperman
- startupShut down2023
Launch HN: June (YC W21) – Product Analytics for B2B SaaS Companies
Two and a half years ago my co-founder and I left our jobs on the product team at Intercom to try and build a startup. We went through YC and launched an analytics tool on top of Segment that allowed you to generate some pre-made reports for common product metrics ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26155327 ). We raised a seed round, then spent a year building templates of reports for startups. After a year of building our product we tried to monetise and failed. Our free users weren’t willing to pay us money for individual reports. Among the users we had, there were a handful of later stage B2B companies with few customers but a lot of revenue (one had 50 customers and $1m in annual revenue). These companies looked at their analytics in a different way. They cared a lot more about specific individual users than consumer apps do, and they spent a lot of time using our
Why it failed: Two and a half years ago my co-founder and I left our jobs on the product team at Intercom to try and build a startup. We went through YC and launched an analytics tool on top of Segment that allowed you to generate some pre-made reports for common product metrics ( https:/&
0xferruccio
- startupShut down2023
Ask HN: Did anyone else lose their marbles?
Typical story I imagine-- ambitious, smart, promising career, was a technical co-founder at a small startup, and things seemed fine. Then I found myself wandering in the woods all day, crying for no reason and looking for non-existent fossils, which I found. I eventually saw petrified sea creatures everywhere and stopped going to work, or answering my phone, paying bills, etc. Things ended predictably, in horrible slow motion. Now I have a two year hole in my life, and I’ll never forgive myself for what I put my family through. But nobody else will ever know that. I’m functional and back in the industry, but it’s not the sort of thing people discuss at the water cooler. So I’d like to ask if anyone else had a secret breakdown? I’m curious if my story is an outlier, or if this is one of those things that “just happens” to some people.
Why it failed: Typical story I imagine-- ambitious, smart, promising career, was a technical co-founder at a small startup, and things seemed fine. Then I found myself wandering in the woods all day, crying for no reason and looking for non-existent fossils, which I found. I eventually saw petr
throoowwawaayy
- startupShut down2023
Ask HN: Recommendations for a New Domain Registrar?
With the announcement of Google Domains shutting down and being sold off to Squarespace, I find myself losing the one registrar I had any trust in. In retrospect it was REALLY dumb of me to trust that a Google product that wasn't Ads/Youtube/Search to not shut down, but here I am. I dunno much about Squarespace -- haven't used them at all, since I prefer making my own websites/apps -- so I'm leery about using a registrar that's so focused on products and addons and other stuff. I'm looking for recommendations for a registrar that: - Has a reasonably modern interface - Has easy to use DNS settings etc - Has modern features (WHOIS protection etc), preferably built-in without needing to pay out the ass - Doesn't have scummy practices (*cough* GODADDY *cough* GANDI *cough*) Thanks ahead of time!
Why it failed: With the announcement of Google Domains shutting down and being sold off to Squarespace, I find myself losing the one registrar I had any trust in. In retrospect it was REALLY dumb of me to trust that a Google product that wasn't Ads/Youtube/Search to not shut down
buggy6257
- startupShut down2023
Ask HN: Should we plan for a life after HN?
While reading about the death of Omegle, I came across this comment and it sent a chill down my spine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38201035 ("Omegles come and go, but "[how is it] hacker news?" is here forever.") Although the comment was not necessarily about the longevity of HN itself, it made me realise that HN, like any other online forum, has a finite lifespan. At some point it will end (although that seems like a distant possibility right now). Should we plan for this? I.e. building some sort of mirror platform with the same profiles, same data and as much of the algorithm as possible, with the agreement that we meet there should HN unexpectedly meets its demise. I understand that a huge part of why HN works is dang. I'm unsure how we mirror him though.
Why it failed: While reading about the death of Omegle, I came across this comment and it sent a chill down my spine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38201035 ("Omegles come and go, but "[how is it] hacker news?" is here forever.") Although the comment wa
hliyan
- startupShut down2023
Ask HN: Manhattan Project for Climate?
We are close enough to reaching consensus that humanity faces severe risks from climate change, such that we need to do something about it. It also seems pretty clear that the only desirable solution is to use technology to reduce the current level of carbon in the atmosphere while at the same time increasing consumption of energy from current levels, vs. shrinking the population or asking individual people to change their behavior. Five mass scale solutions include: - Incorporating nuclear fission into the power grid at mass scale - Inventing and incorporating nuclear fusion into the power grid at mass scale - Inventing direct carbon capture technologies and using them to replace hydrocarbon extraction at mass scale - Continually improving battery technologies to improve efficiency and reduce materials - Continuing the roll out of renewables like solar and wind, where it makes sense The
Why it failed: We are close enough to reaching consensus that humanity faces severe risks from climate change, such that we need to do something about it. It also seems pretty clear that the only desirable solution is to use technology to reduce the current level of carbon in the atmosphere whi
bhag2066
- startupShut down2023
Show HN: Lantern – a PostgreSQL vector database for building AI applications
We are excited to share Lantern! Lantern is a PostgreSQL vector database extension for building AI applications. Install and use our extension here: https://github.com/lanterndata/lantern We have the most complete feature set of all the PostgreSQL vector database extensions. Our database is built on top of usearch — a state of the art implementation of HNSW, the most scalable and performant algorithm for handling vector search. There’s three key metrics we track. CREATE INDEX time, SELECT throughput, and SELECT latency. We match or outperform pgvector and pg_embedding (Neon) on all of these metrics. ** Here’s what we support today ** - Creating an AI application end to end without leaving your database (example: https://github.com/ezra-varady/lanterndb-semantic-image-sear... ) - Embedding generation for popular use cases (CLIP model, Hugging Face m
Why it failed: We are excited to share Lantern! Lantern is a PostgreSQL vector database extension for building AI applications. Install and use our extension here: https://github.com/lanterndata/lantern We have the most complete feature set of all the PostgreSQL vector datab
ngalstyan4
- startupShut down2023
Ask HN: I'm trapped in a golden prison, any advice?
This is going to sound very braggy, I hope I won't get shut down for this. I feel like I'm trapped in a golden prison, unhappy but comfortable. I'm a self taught programmer, 32 yo, with an engineering background and masters. Co-founded 2 companies, failed, worked in california and singapore, now based in Europe. I think I'm an ok dev, quite good with people. I've mostly been working as a freelancer all my life, started billing 33€/day in 2012 for a few days at a time, now around 924€/day, 220 days/year. Always worked at fast paced / high stakes startups except for my current job. Worked 60 to 70 hours a week, ~50 weeks per year for many years until 2020. In 2021 I was completely burned out after 7.5 years of grinding. Took a cozy freelance job as a fullstack senior engineer in a ~100ppl company, coming into the office 2days/week. I'm
Why it failed: This is going to sound very braggy, I hope I won't get shut down for this. I feel like I'm trapped in a golden prison, unhappy but comfortable. I'm a self taught programmer, 32 yo, with an engineering background and masters. Co-founded 2 companies, failed, worked i
stuckdevthrowaw
- startupShut down2023
Ask HN: How do I make it out alive out of this?
This is happening in Germany. My friend, living in London, sold information about my crypto investment to some high profile gang. Since then, for the last 5 months, I had been followed, and observed 24/7, sometimes intimidated. All my electronic equipment got hacked, computers, mobile phones, I previously asked about it here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37506194 I believe their plan is to kidnap me silently without any witness and police involvement, extort me, and then kill me. Just disappear me. I also believe I avoided 2 attempts already. When I hired private security, they lasted for 3 days before they got bribed and changed sides. I don't care about the money anymore at this point, I would just happily give it all out away just to get my old life back, I just want to make it out alive at this point. But like Dr. Strange, I am calculating scenarios, a
Why it failed: This is happening in Germany. My friend, living in London, sold information about my crypto investment to some high profile gang. Since then, for the last 5 months, I had been followed, and observed 24/7, sometimes intimidated. All my electronic equipment got hacked, compute
HTMIOA
- startupShut down2023
Show HN: PlaceKit – Geocoding API and address autocomplete
We’re thrilled to announce PlaceKit, a worldwide geocoding API and toolkit! It’s the successor of Algolia Places, a discontinued product. Nico (my co-founder) and I worked at Algolia for 3 and 6 years respectively before launching PlaceKit. Unlike big competitors Google Places and Mapbox, it’s a single REST API, with a unique and transparent per-request pricing. PlaceKit combines OpenStreetMap, local datasets and the Algolia engine into a unique sub 50ms worldwide address search. We’ve made our JS libraries from scratch to make them lightweight, customizable, and compatible with any stack. We provide integration examples, and an annotated OpenAPI reference for other languages/use-cases. Give it a go at https://placekit.io ! We offer a free plan with 10k requests per month, including all features. Any feedback on your PlaceKit journey would be very valuable. Which use-cases
Why it failed: We’re thrilled to announce PlaceKit, a worldwide geocoding API and toolkit! It’s the successor of Algolia Places, a discontinued product. Nico (my co-founder) and I worked at Algolia for 3 and 6 years respectively before launching PlaceKit. Unlike big competitors Google Places an
raphi
- startupShut down2022
Launch HN: Koko (YC W22 Nonprofit) – Online Suicide Prevention Kit
Hi! My name is Rob and I’m working with my cofounder Kareem on Koko ( https://www.kokocares.org ). We’re a nonprofit that provides free digital mental health services to millions of people struggling online — particularly adolescents. Today, we are launching our Online Suicide Prevention Kit ( https://www.kokocares.org/suicide-prevention-toolkit ). The goal is to help social networks and online communities better support at-risk individuals on their platforms. Many social platforms have built-in lists of keywords that detect mental health-related search terms (e.g., “self-harm” or “depression”). There is already an established practice to suppress content or surface disclaimers for such searches. Search “suicide” on most platforms and you’ll at least get shown a 1-800 number. But there are a few problems with this. The keyword lists always have glaring omissions.
Why it failed: Hi! My name is Rob and I’m working with my cofounder Kareem on Koko ( https://www.kokocares.org ). We’re a nonprofit that provides free digital mental health services to millions of people struggling online — particularly adolescents. Today, we are launching our Online
robertrmorris
- startupShut down2022
Show HN: No-code alternative to Retool, Appsmith, Internal, etc.
Hi, founders! We’ve actually launched quite some time ago, but (semi)pivoted a few times along the way. Jet Admin is an app builder for creating internal tools, admin panels, dashboards, external portals, and so on without coding. You can connect to any backend, assemble a UI through the visual builder, and set up data binding, transformations, conditionals, etc. through the point-and-click interface. If you need to, you can create custom HTTP, SQL queries, make data transformations with JS, and embed custom UI components. We believe that product, data, operations teams should be able to build the very tools they use. And with HN being mostly the coder community, it’d be particularly interesting to hear your feedback/thoughts!
Why it failed: Hi, founders! We’ve actually launched quite some time ago, but (semi)pivoted a few times along the way. Jet Admin is an app builder for creating internal tools, admin panels, dashboards, external portals, and so on without coding. You can connect to any backend, assemble a UI thr
antonsv
- startupShut down2022
Launch HN: Shimmer (YC S21) – ADHD coaching for adults
Hi, I’m Chris, one of the co-founders of Shimmer ( https://shimmer.care ). We offer one-to-one ADHD Coaching for adults. It was born out of my own roller coaster of a journey navigating my ADHD diagnosis. Getting diagnosed with ADHD as an adult is complicated—equally heartbreaking and liberating. You literally need to rewrite your whole life narrative in light of this new realization. The process currently is super confusing and expensive (medications, therapy, coaching, tools, apps, etc.) and I just wished someone would guide me through it. Someone to personalize things for me, ask me good questions, and encourage me when I was feeling down. My experience was the basis for what Shimmer is today. We’re creating an ADHD coaching service that is actually affordable (5-10X cheaper than traditional ADHD coaching, in fact!), personalized to your life (because what works for me may n
Why it failed: Hi, I’m Chris, one of the co-founders of Shimmer ( https://shimmer.care ). We offer one-to-one ADHD Coaching for adults. It was born out of my own roller coaster of a journey navigating my ADHD diagnosis. Getting diagnosed with ADHD as an adult is complicated—equally he
christalwang
- startupShut down2022
Show HN: PGPP (Pretty Good Phone Privacy) – a new type of mobile privacy service
Hi, we're Barath and Paul. We co-founded INVISV to build Pretty Good Phone Privacy (PGPP) [ https://invisv.com/pgpp ], an app and service that provides mobile identifier privacy (IMSI) and Internet privacy (IP) so that neither we nor other providers learn your network identity. We've been thinking about how phones are tracking devices in disguise (at a few layers) and what we can do about it. But the problem is that mobile networks are hard to change, and existing companies are reluctant to change things. A couple years ago we had the idea that we could decouple your identity from your SIM (IMSI), so the mobile operator wouldn't know who you are but still provides you service. We did research, figured it out, and published it last year at Usenix Security. Then we took it to every mobile operator we could to see if they'd do it, but mostly got shrugs, co
Why it failed: Hi, we're Barath and Paul. We co-founded INVISV to build Pretty Good Phone Privacy (PGPP) [ https://invisv.com/pgpp ], an app and service that provides mobile identifier privacy (IMSI) and Internet privacy (IP) so that neither we nor other providers learn your
barathr
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: I scanned an old paper book. How to turn it into an eBook?
Hi, I have scanned a couple of books written by an ancestor. He was not famous, and I doubt too many people are interested but I wanted to give the books a new digital life. I think the enormous back catalog of things that have been published but then disappeared is sad. Anyways I have a few hundred pdf files. They have an image of the page and the OCR text. The text will have to be edited by hand I think. Its not in English. I was wondering if anyone knew of scripts or applications that can take that as an input, do some decent formatting and typesetting and spit out a couple of different formats of eBooks at the other end. There are photos and illustrations on some pages. I am hoping to keep them. The images are ok but given the curvature of the page, and other factors the images are not I feel ready to be used. I could try to cut and paste it all into Word There is also an extensive c
Why it failed: Hi, I have scanned a couple of books written by an ancestor. He was not famous, and I doubt too many people are interested but I wanted to give the books a new digital life. I think the enormous back catalog of things that have been published but then disappeared is sad. Anyways
ThinkBeat
- startupShut down2022
Launch HN: Unthread (YC S22) – Customer support, entirely within Slack
Howdy HN! Tom and Jake here from Unthread ( https://unthread.io ). We make it easy for businesses to manage customer experience (CX) end-to-end inside of Slack. We automatically create tickets for new conversations, handle assignments & escalations, triage with other teams, etc — all without leaving Slack. Here’s a quick Loom showing how it works: https://www.loom.com/share/8158371d29c84550863adbd6719bb112 Unthread was born out of a failed B2B SaaS startup that we were running for about 2 years. We found clients preferred sending bug reports and feature requests through Slack instead of email or the Intercom widget embedded in our app. This was great for us - Slack is a tool we were already using every day, it’s quick and easy to respond, and it’s less formal than composing an email. The problem is that chat != ticketing, and we struggled to keep track o
Why it failed: Howdy HN! Tom and Jake here from Unthread ( https://unthread.io ). We make it easy for businesses to manage customer experience (CX) end-to-end inside of Slack. We automatically create tickets for new conversations, handle assignments & escalations, triage with othe
bachonk
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: Are Microsoft development stack and Azure a dead-end career path?
I had a recent, lengthy, conversation with a recruiter. He said two things: 1) Microsoft dev stack is really a dead-end, any new startups or even large corporations starting new initiatives are more and more are moving away from any kind of MSF tech or Azure cloud development, and 2) no developer really wants to work with MSF tech. I have lived in the Microsoft world my entire career, although MSF is increasingly open source/polyglot. Also, I spent a couple of years doing node.js, react, salesforce dev and integrations, Heroku, etc. I found it a breath for fresh air in some ways but lacking in others. And I have to say that I do 'like' working with C# and Azure and the rest, but I am at the point in my career, and with the market the way it is, that I could still possibly make a move and not take a major hit salary-wise, but I probably not for too longer. For context I am
Why it failed: I had a recent, lengthy, conversation with a recruiter. He said two things: 1) Microsoft dev stack is really a dead-end, any new startups or even large corporations starting new initiatives are more and more are moving away from any kind of MSF tech or Azure cloud development, an
a_brawling_boo
- startupShut down2022
Tell HN: Never Trust 'Lifetime' Licenses
I guess a lot of people here already know this, and in general I don't expect a lifetime license to be actually 'lifetime', but I saw the worst example I've seen so far today. Just over a year ago I bought an emojipicker for mac (getmumu.com) that claimed to have a 'lifetime license'. It's a neat little tool and I've used it daily. Now I got a new mac and I tried to transfer it over, only to find out that it's rebranded from "Mumu" to "Mumu X" and 5x'd in price. After hunting through the website I found the tiny "get old version" in the footer. I entered my license key and was told it was already used. I wrote to the support email and was told that "Mumu" was discontinued and "Mumu X" was a new app that I'd have to buy it again. > And note that “lifetime” means it would work on the
Why it failed: I guess a lot of people here already know this, and in general I don't expect a lifetime license to be actually 'lifetime', but I saw the worst example I've seen so far today. Just over a year ago I bought an emojipicker for mac (getmumu.com) that claimed to h
sixhobbits