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.
2,200 solutions
- startupShut down2025
Ask HN: Scheduling stateful nodes when MMAP makes memory accounting a lie
We’re hitting a classic distributed systems wall and I’m looking for war stories or "least worst" practices. The Context: We maintain a distributed stateful engine (think search/analytics). The architecture is standard: a Control Plane (Coordinator) assigns data segments to Worker Nodes. The workload involves heavy use of mmap and lazy loading for large datasets. The Incident: We had a cascading failure where the Coordinator got stuck in a loop, DDOS-ing a specific node. The Signal: Coordinator sees Node A has significantly fewer rows (logical count) than the cluster average. It flags Node A as "underutilized." The Action: Coordinator attempts to rebalance/load new segments onto Node A. The Reality: Node A is actually sitting at 197GB RAM usage (near OOM). The data on it happens to be extremely wide (fat rows, huge blobs), so its logical row count is low, bu
Why it failed: We’re hitting a classic distributed systems wall and I’m looking for war stories or "least worst" practices. The Context: We maintain a distributed stateful engine (think search/analytics). The architecture is standard: a Control Plane (Coordinator) assigns data se
leo_e
- startupShut down2025
Show HN: Woomarks, transfer your Pocket links to this app or self-host it
Pocket is shutting down and I really, really liked it. So I built woomarks, an app that let's you save links with a similar UI. It's very minimal, but it's doing everything I liked from Pocket and you can bulk import your links and use the app or self-host. - Public app that you can test: https://woomarks.com/ - My self-hosted version, where you can see my saves: https://roberto.fyi/bookmarks/ - Repository if you want to self-host: https://github.com/earlyriser/woomarks Export links from Pocket here: https://getpocket.com/export the last day will be on October 20025. Features: - Add/Delete links - Search - Tags - Bookmarklet (useful for a 2-click-save) - Data reads from: csv file in server (these links are public) local storage in browser (these links are visible just for the user) - Local storage s
Why it failed: Pocket is shutting down and I really, really liked it. So I built woomarks, an app that let's you save links with a similar UI. It's very minimal, but it's doing everything I liked from Pocket and you can bulk import your links and use the app or self-host. - Publi
earlyriser
- startupShut down2025
Mozilla Firefox Is Dying
We are undoubtedly witnessing a rapid decline of Mozilla and its products: the question we should be asking ourselves is: how long before the total collapse? And furthermore: are those Linux users (like me) who are still relying on Firefox for doing their development job ready to abandon it? Let me list at least three facts to support my thesis: 1) Over the past year, there have been various controversies announcing a radical change in the core values of the Mozilla Foundation 2) After its rewrite (Project Fenix), the Firefox Mobile browser has never regained the completeness it had before, despite the passage of years 3) One of the web extensions developed by Mozilla (and marked as “official”) was recently removed from the store because it violated Mozilla's own add-on policies: this suggests serious internal disputes. I wonder what is your opinion [1] https://www.osnews.
Why it failed: We are undoubtedly witnessing a rapid decline of Mozilla and its products: the question we should be asking ourselves is: how long before the total collapse? And furthermore: are those Linux users (like me) who are still relying on Firefox for doing their development job ready to
leonixyz
- startupShut down2025
Show HN: FlyCode – Recover Stripe payments by automatically using backup cards
We built FlyCode after seeing subscription businesses lose ~35% of recurring revenue each year to failed payments — even when customers had other valid cards on file. *The problem:* When a customer's primary card fails, Stripe retries a few times then cancels the subscription. If that customer has a backup card, it isn’t tried. At least 20% of active customers have more than one card on file, which means a lot of preventable churn. *Our solution:* FlyCode automatically identifies if a customer has other valid cards on file and retries them when a subscription payment fails. You can configure when these retries happen during the dunning period (beginning, middle, end) and define validity rules (e.g. “card was used in last 180 days”). It’s a Stripe app — no code changes needed. We've seen 18%-20% higher recovery rates from our core retry engine, plus another 5–10% from using back
Why it failed: We built FlyCode after seeing subscription businesses lose ~35% of recurring revenue each year to failed payments — even when customers had other valid cards on file. *The problem:* When a customer's primary card fails, Stripe retries a few times then cancels the subscriptio
JakeVacovec
- startupShut down2024
Ask HN: Did you encounter any leap year bugs today?
After a frantic scramble this morning, our billing team has finished patching a bug which erroneously was charging our monthly subscribers for an extra day. All test suites are passing now, and SRE has scheduled a postmortem after the QA confirms the fix in 2028.
Why it failed: After a frantic scramble this morning, our billing team has finished patching a bug which erroneously was charging our monthly subscribers for an extra day. All test suites are passing now, and SRE has scheduled a postmortem after the QA confirms the fix in 2028.
sjr1
- startupShut down2024
Tell HN: Ever think of applying to YC? Do it this weekend for S24
(Usually I put an "Apply to YC" thing in the HN footer [1] but I forgot this time, so here is my pitch to make up for it.) If you've ever thought about applying to YC, here's a tip: just do it. It doesn't take long and could change your life, like it did for me and many others. In particular, if you have either of these two bogus thoughts, ignore them pronto and just go to https://apply.ycombinator.com and apply: (1) "probably not good enough / won't get in" - you'd be surprised at how many people feel that way, whether because of impostor syndrome, lack of credentials, whatever—and often they turn out to be among the best founders. So this a terrible reason not to apply! The nice thing is, it's YC's job to evaluate that, not yours. They're looking for aptitude which doesn't look like what most people (probab
Why it failed: (Usually I put an "Apply to YC" thing in the HN footer [1] but I forgot this time, so here is my pitch to make up for it.) If you've ever thought about applying to YC, here's a tip: just do it. It doesn't take long and could change your life, like it did
dang
- startupShut down2024
Ask HN: Has anyone here ever tried throwing everything away?
By throwing everything away I mean to shut off a bunch of doors/paths in your life - leave your job, move into a new home, do a bunch of radical changes. This is a personal question hence the small tag. I don't want to post this on reddit or another forum, because too many responses would end up memes or be plain commonly said advice devoid of sincerity. Maybe here they won't be, idk. For anyone here who has struggled for years to improve their life but hasn't been able to do it. Or hasn't been able to accept that he has. Have you tried to just say fuck it ? Did it work out if you did? For years every 2-3 months I'd wreck myself emotionally and contemplate starting over and that desire would always get subdued by common sense that nothing would really change or that I'd throw away the good I've built for myself. And plenty of other good reasons tha
Why it failed: By throwing everything away I mean to shut off a bunch of doors/paths in your life - leave your job, move into a new home, do a bunch of radical changes. This is a personal question hence the small tag. I don't want to post this on reddit or another forum, because too m
arter
- startupShut down2024
Show HN: Donobu – Mac App for Web Automation and Testing
Been working on a desktop app for Mac that lets you create web flows and rerun them ( https://www.donobu.com/ ). You can optionally use AI (BYOK: bring your own keys) to create flows for you and to do other interesting things, like making vision-based semantic assertions. Also, your data lives on your own filesystem, and we do not see any of it (further still, there is no phoning home at all). A nice benefit of this being a desktop app rather than a SAAS product, is that if you happen to be developing/iterating on a webpage locally, this has no problem hooking into it. What this intends to be a good fit for: - Testing web pages, especially locally. - Exploring random webpages with a stated objective. - Automating tedious flows. Rerunning a flow won't get caught up on using a single selector (many websites randomize element IDs, for instance), there is smart failo
Why it failed: Been working on a desktop app for Mac that lets you create web flows and rerun them ( https://www.donobu.com/ ). You can optionally use AI (BYOK: bring your own keys) to create flows for you and to do other interesting things, like making vision-based semantic asse
wewtyflakes
- startupShut down2024
Show HN: Open-sourcing my failed startup Buzee – A file search application
Buzee is a file search application that helps you find your files effortlessly. As a modern-day knowledge worker, I have several thousand documents, presentations and other files on my computer. I built Buzee in my free time to help me weave my way through this maze. I have been using it pretty much everyday since the day I built it - and I love it! I thought I could turn Buzee into a startup. I reached out to offices and helped set it up for them. But it didn't pan out. I am now letting go of this project because I have other priorities in life. Please feel free to do with this project as you wish. I am happy to help you get started with the codebase. Do share what you build. I would love to see it! Cheers
Why it failed: Buzee is a file search application that helps you find your files effortlessly. As a modern-day knowledge worker, I have several thousand documents, presentations and other files on my computer. I built Buzee in my free time to help me weave my way through this maze. I have been
thatgurjot
- startupShut down2024
Launch HN: Deepsilicon (YC S24) – Software and hardware for ternary transformers
Hey Hacker News! We’re Abhi and Alex from deepsilicon ( https://deepsilicon.com ). We are building software and hardware for training and inferencing ternary transformer models. Here's a video of the software: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqBn-I5D6pk . Transformer-based models are getting bigger every generation, making the inference hardware requirements more and more expensive. Running large transformer models on device is even more challenging. Usually, they require trillions of FLOPs to run at decent speeds and use too much energy and space. Our solution is to train ternary transformer models. There are two advantages to using ternary values. The first is that the weights can now be stored in two bits (or even less) from 16 bits. This represents an almost 8x compression ratio for every weight matrix in the transformer model (slightly less because of t
Why it failed: Hey Hacker News! We’re Abhi and Alex from deepsilicon ( https://deepsilicon.com ). We are building software and hardware for training and inferencing ternary transformer models. Here's a video of the software: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqBn-I5D
areddyyt
- startupShut down2024
Lfgss shutting down 16th March 2025 (day before Online Safety Act is enforced)
figured this might be interesting... I run just over 300 forums, for a monthly audience of 275k active users. most of this is on Linode instances and Hetzner instances, a couple of the larger fora go via Cloudflare, but the rest just hits the server. and it's all being shut down. the UK Online Safety Act creates a massive liability, and whilst at first glance the risk seems low the reality is that moderating people usually provokes ire from those people, if we had to moderate them because they were a threat to the community then they are usually the kind of people who get angry. in 28 years of running forums, as a result of moderation I've had people try to get the domain revoked, fake copyright notices, death threats, stalkers (IRL and online)... as a forum moderator you are known, and you are a target, and the Online Safety Act creates a weapon that can be used against you. t
Why it failed: figured this might be interesting... I run just over 300 forums, for a monthly audience of 275k active users. most of this is on Linode instances and Hetzner instances, a couple of the larger fora go via Cloudflare, but the rest just hits the server. and it's all being shut
buro9
- startupShut down2024
Show HN: Gentrace – connect to your LLM app code and run/eval it from a UI
Hey HN - Doug from Gentrace here. We originally launched via Show HN in August of 2023 as evaluation and observability for generative AI: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37238648 Since then, everyone from the model providers to LLM ops companies built a prompt playground. We had one too, until we realized this was totally the wrong approach: - It's not connected to your application code - They don't support all models - You have to rebuild evals for just this one prompt (can't use your end-to-end evals) In other words, it was a ton of work and time to use these to actually make your app better. So, we built a new experience and are relaunching around this idea: Gentrace is a collaborative LLM app testing and experimentation platform that brings together engineers, PMs, subject matter experts, and more to run and test your actual end-to-end app. To do th
Why it failed: Hey HN - Doug from Gentrace here. We originally launched via Show HN in August of 2023 as evaluation and observability for generative AI: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37238648 Since then, everyone from the model providers to LLM ops companies built a prompt
dsaffy
- startupShut down2024
Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane
Hey Hacker News! I’m Nikita, founder of Airhart Aeronautics ( https://www.airhartaero.com/ ). We are building an airplane for people who don’t fly airplanes. The goal is to make flying as easy as driving a car—while maintaining a high bar for safety. Here’s a video that shows a bit of our hardware and quite a bit of our software: https://youtu.be/PGJUGUceu8A In the US, trips that are 50-300 miles are almost all done by car because that distance is too short for commercial airlines and too far for public transportation. Thanks to the Wright Brothers we've had aerial transport for over 100 years. The US has over 19,000 airports, and large commercial airplane technology has developed to the point that the planes practically fly themselves. If we already have the infrastructure and the technology, why isn't everyone flying planes? The problem is that s
Why it failed: Hey Hacker News! I’m Nikita, founder of Airhart Aeronautics ( https://www.airhartaero.com/ ). We are building an airplane for people who don’t fly airplanes. The goal is to make flying as easy as driving a car—while maintaining a high bar for safety. Here’s a video
n_ermosh
- startupShut down2024
Ask HN: Stripe Atlas messed up my 83B election what do I do? [fixed]
Formed my new startup with Stripe Atlas which had worked well in the past. I used their auto 83b feature to mail in our 83b elections, the UI updated and said everything was good. I received an email update > Great news! Your 83(b) election was filed on time. I go to get a copy of my EIN letter and notice that the atlas UI has updated to: > Your IRS 83(b) election deadline has passed. > We’ve noticed it’s taking longer than normal for USPS to deliver your 83(b) election. Not to worry, you’ve successfully filed on time (it’s based on the postmark date, not delivery date). The Proof of Timely Election letter and USPS tracking site both say the letter is "In Transit To Next Facility, Arriving Late". This letter was sent over a month ago. What are my options now? * Contact the IRS to see if it was delivered * Continue with my equity in a non-tax advantaged status * Dissolv
Why it failed: Formed my new startup with Stripe Atlas which had worked well in the past. I used their auto 83b feature to mail in our 83b elections, the UI updated and said everything was good. I received an email update > Great news! Your 83(b) election was filed on time. I go to get a cop
_h9vu
- startupShut down2024
Show HN: I'm a doctor and built a responsive breathing app for anxiety and sleep
Hey HN! I’m an NHS doctor and the founder of Pia ( https://www.piahealth.co ) which developed Lungy ( https://www.lungy.app ). Lungy is an iOS app that responds to breathing in real-time and was designed to make breathing exercises more engaging and beneficial to do. It’s been just over a year since Lungy launched (here’s the original ShowHN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34534615 ) and it's had a huge update and complete redesign. We rebuilt the whole app, and added a real-time 3D soft body solver which gives some really cool interactions like blobs / objects that inflate as you breathe. We also made a version for Vision Pro, called 'Lungy Spaces'. My background is as a junior surgical trainee and I started building Lungy in 2020 during the first COVID lockdown in London. During COVID, there were huge numbers of patients comi
Why it failed: Hey HN! I’m an NHS doctor and the founder of Pia ( https://www.piahealth.co ) which developed Lungy ( https://www.lungy.app ). Lungy is an iOS app that responds to breathing in real-time and was designed to make breathing exercises more engaging and beneficial
lukko
- startupShut down2024
Launch HN: Sorcerer (YC S24) – Weather balloons that collect more data
Hey HN! We’re Max, Alex, and Austin, the team behind Sorcerer ( https://sorcerer.earth ). Sorcerer builds weather balloons that last for over six months, collecting 1000x more data per dollar and reaching previously inaccessible regions. In 1981, weather disasters caused $3.5 billion in damages in the United States. In 2023, that number was $94.9 billion ( https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/time-series ). The National Weather Service spends billions annually on its network of weather balloons, satellites, and aircraft sensors – generating hundreds of terabytes of data every day. This data, called observation data, is fed into massive supercomputers running advanced physics to produce global weather forecasts. Despite this cost, there are still places in the US where we don't know what the temperature will be two days from now: https:/&#
Why it failed: Hey HN! We’re Max, Alex, and Austin, the team behind Sorcerer ( https://sorcerer.earth ). Sorcerer builds weather balloons that last for over six months, collecting 1000x more data per dollar and reaching previously inaccessible regions. In 1981, weather disasters cause
tndl
- startupShut down2024
Show HN: Control webviews programmatically with the Pipeable iOS SDK
For the past few months we have been working on the PipeableSDK and today we are excited to show it to you all! What is Pipeable? Pipeable is an open-source iOS and (soon) Android SDK that allows developers to programmatically control webviews in mobile apps. Webviews are essentially in-app browsers that display web content directly within the app. If you are familiar with Puppeteer or Playwright, Pipeable serves a similar purpose but for these embedded browsers, offering granular control over web interactions. What can you use Pipeable for? You can use Pipeable to automate web interactions in your mobile app. This can be anything from scraping data from a website, to automating a user’s interaction with a website, to creating a mobile app that acts as an agent on behalf of a user. You can check out https://github.com/PipeableHQ/pipeable-ios-samples for some concrete
Why it failed: For the past few months we have been working on the PipeableSDK and today we are excited to show it to you all! What is Pipeable? Pipeable is an open-source iOS and (soon) Android SDK that allows developers to programmatically control webviews in mobile apps. Webviews are essenti
deyan
- startupShut down2024
Ask HN: How do I find a job, in this market with ADHD
Hello HN, A little background about me. I am a software developer, based in US, currently. Due to a lot of personal issues in my life, and upon reflecting about myself about things I faced since my childhood. I visited a psychiatrist recently and was diagnosed with ADHD. I consider myself a good coder, I'm very creative with my approach to the problems. I pick new things very easily and my skillset is also very diverse. My employers in past have always been happy to have me on team. And always consider me an asset. But one thing I really suck at is interviews. My mouth just can't keep up with my mind and I end up blurting nonsense. I mess up the easiest questions. My skillset doesn't translate to the interview format at all. I fiddle, I get lost. Worst part is, I started my career as a freelancer, then I got an offer from a start-up after being impressed with my work. Then
Why it failed: Hello HN, A little background about me. I am a software developer, based in US, currently. Due to a lot of personal issues in my life, and upon reflecting about myself about things I faced since my childhood. I visited a psychiatrist recently and was diagnosed with ADHD. I consid
sillycorn
- startupShut down2024
Show HN: ServerlessAI – Build, scale, and monetize AI apps without back end
Hello HN, I’ve always loved building frontend-only apps—those you can prototype over a weekend, host for free on GitHub Pages, and scale to millions of users. Unfortunately, AI-enabled apps complicate things, as exposing your OpenAI key to the world is obviously a no-go. This also means mobile developers often have to run their own servers. That’s why I built ServerlessAI, an API gateway that lets you securely call multiple AI providers directly from client side using OpenAI-compatible APIs. You can authenticate users through any identity provider, like Google or Apple, and set per-user request or spending quotas. You can also define an allowlist for endpoints and models. To monetize, you can apply different quotas for various user tiers. To start, I recommend checking out our tutorials, where we walk you through building a complete, deployment-ready AI app in 5 minutes. We’ve got tutori
Why it failed: Hello HN, I’ve always loved building frontend-only apps—those you can prototype over a weekend, host for free on GitHub Pages, and scale to millions of users. Unfortunately, AI-enabled apps complicate things, as exposing your OpenAI key to the world is obviously a no-go. This als
HeavenFox
- startupShut down2024
Show HN: Peerdb Streams – Simple, native Postgres change data capture
Hello HN, I am Sai Srirampur, one of the Co-founders of PeerDB. ( https://github.com/PeerDB-io/peerdb ). We spent the past 7 months building a solid experience to replicate data from Postgres to data warehouses. Now we're expanding to queues. PeerDB Streams provides a simple and native way to replicate changes as they happen in Postgres to Queues (Kafka, Redpanda, Google PubSub, etc). We use Postgres logical decoding to enable Change Data Capture (CDC). Blog post here: https://blog.peerdb.io/peerdb-streams-simple-native-postgres... . 10-min quickstart here: https://docs.peerdb.io/quickstart/streams-quickstart . We chose queues as many users found that existing tools are complex. Debezium is the most used tool for this use-case. It has large production usage. However, a common pain point among our users is that it has a significa
Why it failed: Hello HN, I am Sai Srirampur, one of the Co-founders of PeerDB. ( https://github.com/PeerDB-io/peerdb ). We spent the past 7 months building a solid experience to replicate data from Postgres to data warehouses. Now we're expanding to queues. PeerDB Strea
saisrirampur
- startupShut down2024
Launch HN: Patchwork (YC S24) – Automatically add structured logs to your code
Hey HN! We are Sam, Alex and Ben from Patchwork Technologies ( https://getpatchwork.io ). Patchwork automatically adds actionable structured logs to your code. Big picture: we are building a next generation logging and observability platform which gives engineers the rich debugging context they need. There’s a demo video ( https://youtu.be/ObIepiXfVx0 ), as well as a demo^ instance with some results for you to explore at https://hackernews.getpatchwork.io (no sign-in required!) The demo shows the analysis and improvement (against a style guide) of existing logs. It’s set up for two OSS repositories, https://github.com/elastic/cloud-on-k8s and our awesome friends at Glasskube ( https://github.com/glasskube/glasskube ). We welcome suggestions of other OSS Go repositories that you would like to see added! Why we are
Why it failed: Hey HN! We are Sam, Alex and Ben from Patchwork Technologies ( https://getpatchwork.io ). Patchwork automatically adds actionable structured logs to your code. Big picture: we are building a next generation logging and observability platform which gives engineers the ri
benjaminfh
- startupShut down2024
Show HN: An open-source, local-first Webflow for your own app
Hey HN, I’m Kiet, and I’m one of the co-founders of Onlook – an open-sourced desktop app that lets you visually edit your locally running React app, then write your changes back to code in real time. I posted the repo a few months ago [1] when it was just 2 weeks old. Since then, we’ve made some big changes/improvements. I wanted to share some of the updates we’ve made and add more technical details. Here are the three big ones: • Inserting new elements - Draw elements in the live page like a design tool and write them back to code. • Component detection - Detect when an element is a re-used component and find its usages. • DOM tree representation - A layers panel similar to the Chrome devtool or Figma. Technical details [2]: Visual editing - Onlook is technically a browser that points to your localhost running the app. It can manipulate the DOM like a Chrome Devtool, and all these
Why it failed: Hey HN, I’m Kiet, and I’m one of the co-founders of Onlook – an open-sourced desktop app that lets you visually edit your locally running React app, then write your changes back to code in real time. I posted the repo a few months ago [1] when it was just 2 weeks old. Since then,
hoakiet98
- startupShut down2024
Show HN: Pg_mooncake – Delta/Iceberg columnstore tables in Postgres
Hello HN, one of the founders of Mooncake Labs here. Today, we are launching pg_mooncake, an extension that brings columnstore tables with DuckDB execution to Postgres. Expect analytical performance akin to DuckDB on Parquet (clickbench results to come soon). You can run transactional updates, deletes, inserts on these tables, and they're written as Delta Lake tables (and soon Iceberg) to your object store (S3, etc.). pg_mooncake is live on Neon today. Let us know what you think. It'll be coming to Supabase shortly, and other Postgres providers in the future. Why another postgres analytics extension? We actually leverage pg_duckdb and DuckDB as our execution engine — this is how we were able to ship the extension in just 60 days. We wrote about this with the DuckDB team: https://motherduck.com/blog/pg-mooncake-columnstore/ pg_mooncake shines in two scen
Why it failed: Hello HN, one of the founders of Mooncake Labs here. Today, we are launching pg_mooncake, an extension that brings columnstore tables with DuckDB execution to Postgres. Expect analytical performance akin to DuckDB on Parquet (clickbench results to come soon). You can run transact
sunzhousz
- startupShut down2024
Show HN: Unstract(AGPL) – Launch LLM-powered APIs to structure unstructured docs
Hello HN! One of the most common uses of LLMs is to go beyond what traditional RPA or IDP can do when it comes to structuring unstructured documents. However, there are a lot of challenges in getting this done right from extraction of text data from PDFs, scanned images or other formats, prompt engineering, evaluation and integration with existing systems. This very specific use case is where Unstract can help teams move really fast, leveraging LLMs. By doing the heavy-lifting in this fast-changing ecosystem it lets engineers concentrate on implementing core business workflow automations. Here's what's special about Unstract: AGPL-licensed: Unstract is available under the AGPL, which is friendly for personal or commercial use. Getting started is simply a matter of running a script, which should take care of everything leveraging Docker Compose. We've also made is very easy
Why it failed: Hello HN! One of the most common uses of LLMs is to go beyond what traditional RPA or IDP can do when it comes to structuring unstructured documents. However, there are a lot of challenges in getting this done right from extraction of text data from PDFs, scanned images or other
shuss