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.
2,500 solutions
- 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
- patentRejected2025
Show HN: Timep – a next-gen profiler and flamegraph-generator for bash code
timep is a TIME Profiler for bash code that will give you an accurate per-command execution time breakdown of any bash script or function. Unlike other profilers, timep also recovers and hierarchally records metadata on subshell and function nesting, allowing it to recreate the full call-stack tree for the bash code being profiled. If you call timep with the `--flame` flag, it will automatically generate a flamegraph .svg image where each block represents the wall-clock time spent on a particular command (top level) or its parent subshells/functions (all the other levels). Using timep is simple - just source the timep.bash file then add timep before whatever you want to profile. You do not need to change in the code being profiled - timep handles everything for you. Example usage: . ./timep.bash timep someFunc timep -flame someScript <inputFile timep will generate 2 profiles
Why it failed: timep is a TIME Profiler for bash code that will give you an accurate per-command execution time breakdown of any bash script or function. Unlike other profilers, timep also recovers and hierarchally records metadata on subshell and function nesting, allowing it to recreate the f
jkool702
- 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
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: Klarity – Open-source tool to analyze uncertainty/entropy in LLM output
We've open-sourced Klarity - a tool for analyzing uncertainty and decision-making in LLM token generation. It provides structured insights into how models choose tokens and where they show uncertainty. What Klarity does: - Real-time analysis of model uncertainty during generation - Dual analysis combining log probabilities and semantic understanding - Structured JSON output with actionable insights - Fully self-hostable with customizable analysis models The tool works by analyzing each step of text generation and returns a structured JSON: - uncertainty_points: array of {step, entropy, options[], type} - high_confidence: array of {step, probability, token, context} - risk_areas: array of {type, steps[], motivation} - suggestions: array of {issue, improvement} Currently supports hugging face transformers (more frameworks coming), we tested extensively with Qwen2.5 (0.5B-7B) models, b
Why it failed: We've open-sourced Klarity - a tool for analyzing uncertainty and decision-making in LLM token generation. It provides structured insights into how models choose tokens and where they show uncertainty. What Klarity does: - Real-time analysis of model uncertainty during gener
mrciffa
- startupShut down2025
Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot
See also https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/building-whats-next/ .
Why it failed: See also https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/building-whats-next/ .
phantomathkg
- startupShut down2025
Show HN: Molab, a cloud-hosted Marimo notebook workspace
We launched marimo [1], an open-source reactive Python notebook, last year on HackerNews. Today, the most popular recent feature request in Google Colab’s issue tracker asks for marimo support in Colab [2]. Rather than try to convince Google to replace their notebook with marimo, we decided to just build our own cloud-hosted notebook service instead. We're calling this molab (mo for marimo), and we're launching it today. You can try it at https://molab.marimo.io Some features: - Persistent storage - Link sharing (notebooks are public but undiscoverable, like secret GitHub Gists) - Download notebooks to your machine, reuse them as Python scripts or apps - Upload local notebooks to the cloud from our CLI (coming soon) - Real-time collaboration (coming soon) - Configure computational resources to obtain more CPU or GPU (coming soon) marimo is a modern notebook for modern
Why it failed: We launched marimo [1], an open-source reactive Python notebook, last year on HackerNews. Today, the most popular recent feature request in Google Colab’s issue tracker asks for marimo support in Colab [2]. Rather than try to convince Google to replace their notebook with marimo,
akshayka
- startupShut down2025
Ask HN: Do you believe aliens are visiting Earth?
So there's nuance here. Let's define "Aliens" as "non human sentiences". Personally, I think ET hypothesis is valid. Maybe you feel UT (ultra-terrestrial) hypothesis makes more sesne. Or "ED" ( extra-dimensional, as opposed to "from another planet/galaxy"). Facts: there's abundance of testimony that would secure conviction in court regarding abductions, encounters (of variosu "kinds"), and "multi-sensor data". Truth is, it goes back centuries, before we could concievably have "RE'd" (reverse-engineered) anything similar. So there has to be something external to our current human civilization (not so surprising, how can you explain how megalithic 100-ton bricks structures were build by "primitives"). Yes, this is "provocative" (perhaps) for some on HN. That's the point.
Why it failed: So there's nuance here. Let's define "Aliens" as "non human sentiences". Personally, I think ET hypothesis is valid. Maybe you feel UT (ultra-terrestrial) hypothesis makes more sesne. Or "ED" ( extra-dimensional, as opposed to "from an
keepamovin
- startupShut down2025
DrawAFish.com Postmortem
Related: Show HN: Draw a fish and watch it swim with the others - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44719222 - July 2025 (233 comments)
Why it failed: Related: Show HN: Draw a fish and watch it swim with the others - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44719222 - July 2025 (233 comments)
hallak
- startupShut down2025
Cloudflare outage on November 18, 2025 post mortem
Related: Cloudflare Global Network experiencing issues - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45963780 - Nov 2025 (1580 comments)
Why it failed: Related: Cloudflare Global Network experiencing issues - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45963780 - Nov 2025 (1580 comments)
eastdakota
- startupShut down2025
Evaluating GPT5's reasoning ability using the Only Connect game show
We evaluated OpenAI GPT5 lateral reasoning abilities against other models using an approach based on the notoriously difficult and highly-challenging british game show Only Connect, which challenges contestants' pattern-matching and trivia skills. Insights: - GPT-5 does extremely well, but only marginally better than o3. - Model verbosity has little impact on accuracy and cleverness, except, interestingly, for the sequences round - "minimal" verbosity however causes accuracy to drop sharply. We'll be publishing additional results in the coming days from our extended tests. We're looking at different types of evals (how do the models fare with a single item in a sequence vs. 2, 3, 4). We would also like to look at how the models behave in a team of 3, replicating the format of the game show. We were unable to find evidence that the Only Connect games are in the tr
Why it failed: We evaluated OpenAI GPT5 lateral reasoning abilities against other models using an approach based on the notoriously difficult and highly-challenging british game show Only Connect, which challenges contestants' pattern-matching and trivia skills. Insights: - GPT-5 does extr
scrollaway
- 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 down2025
The Death of Utilitarian Programming
Utilitarian coding is defined as follows: The code you write should be *directly* useful or serve the interest of at least one actual human being. It might appear somewhat abstract or vague, so examples might help. For example, I don't consider frameworks as utilitarian code. What you create are like the "frames" of a picture box, someone else (the user) will take it and draw the actual picture. Though you did help with part of the process, it's indirect at best. You're part of the supply chain here, not part of the team. A clever and witty bash script running on a unix server somewhere is also not utilitarian coding, no human ever directly benefited from it. Libraries can be somewhat utilitarian, at least more than frameworks. At least they provide some reusable functionality to the user out of the box like logging, scanning a barcode, fetching data from a URL,
Why it failed: Utilitarian coding is defined as follows: The code you write should be *directly* useful or serve the interest of at least one actual human being. It might appear somewhat abstract or vague, so examples might help. For example, I don't consider frameworks as utilitarian code
pyeri
- startupShut down2025
Ask HN: Anyone else roll eyes at startups that went from "X" to "AI-powered X"?
This feels like the original idea wasn't good enough to work on its own and so jamming AI into the idea might get some VC capital to sustain a failed idea. Or am I thinking of this wrong?
Why it failed: This feels like the original idea wasn't good enough to work on its own and so jamming AI into the idea might get some VC capital to sustain a failed idea. Or am I thinking of this wrong?
ronbenton
- startupShut down2025
Notion's Lies Sunsetting Skiff Mail
With the announcement of "Notion Mail", here's a reminder that after Notion acquired Skiff Mail in early 2024, their entire product line was sunset and, despite promising[1][2] email forwarding and support would remain functional until 2025 for trapped users that couldn't immediately access their accounts, both turned out to be complete lies. Their support through support@skiff.org was shut off[3] not long after the fake promise, responding only with automated acknowledgements to even refund requests. Forwarding was also effectively shut off around the same time thanks to Notion's willful negligence maintaining Skiff's certificates[4], pulling the rug out from under users needing mails forwarded from inaccessible Skiff email accounts. To add insult to injury, Notion's support through team@makenotion.com for months responded with incoherent, AI-generated
Why it failed: With the announcement of "Notion Mail", here's a reminder that after Notion acquired Skiff Mail in early 2024, their entire product line was sunset and, despite promising[1][2] email forwarding and support would remain functional until 2025 for trapped users that c
notioned
- startupShut down2025
Ask HN: What Pocket alternatives did you move to?
Since mozilla announced the sunsetting of pocket, I started looking for alternatives, including building a light version for my personal use. But nothing came out of my research. What options are there and how are you transitioning?
Why it failed: Since mozilla announced the sunsetting of pocket, I started looking for alternatives, including building a light version for my personal use. But nothing came out of my research. What options are there and how are you transitioning?
ahmedfromtunis
- 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: 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
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: 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
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
Ask HN: What's a security risk you think people should be more aware of?
Here's mine: QR codes. They're a terrible idea, especially when there's no URL attached. They remove someone's ability to verify that yes, this is the correct site, and are easy to bypass - a scammer can literally just put a different QR code over the intended one, and ta-da! Done.
Why it failed: Here's mine: QR codes. They're a terrible idea, especially when there's no URL attached. They remove someone's ability to verify that yes, this is the correct site, and are easy to bypass - a scammer can literally just put a different QR code over the intended
Yawrehto