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 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
Show HN: Webstudio Beta Prelaunch – open-source alternative to Webflow
Webstudio is getting ready for the Beta Click "Notify me" here to get notified when launch goes live on Product Hunt https://producthunt.com/products/webstudio Deep dive into Webstudio: https://youtube.com/watch?v=SbE5dx1vV9U Try it yourself: https://webstudio.is Follow for updates: https://twitter.com/webstudiois It's still early, but we already got some nice things done: 1. Design Tokens instead of classes. Instead of classes you build with design tokens. No specificity issues, better composability. Local by default, no need to name anything if you don't need to reuse them. 2. Designed to be dynamic. Install or write components that run on the edge, server-side and client-side, which talk to remote 3rd party services or databases. This is the core of the architecture, but it's not yet available. 3. It&
Why it failed: Webstudio is getting ready for the Beta Click "Notify me" here to get notified when launch goes live on Product Hunt https://producthunt.com/products/webstudio Deep dive into Webstudio: https://youtube.com/watch?v=SbE5dx1vV9U Try it yo
oleg009
- 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
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
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 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
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
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
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: 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
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
Ask HN: Alternative to Firebase FCM
This is the message I received from Firebase on FCM deprecation: "We’re writing to let you know that starting June 20, 2024 the legacy Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) APIs will be discontinued. What do you need to know? On June 20, 2024, we’re reducing the number of Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) legacy register APIs and legacy send APIs that provide similar functionality. This step will allow us to provide you with a more consistent experience and align with Google security standards to improve security, reliability and performance. Because of these API decommissions, some already-deprecated SDKs and features will stop working after June 20, 2024. Please consult the tables below to find which Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) APIs and corresponding services/SDKs/features will be discontinued and replaced with new alternatives. This one is more relevant to me in the email Disc
Why it failed: This is the message I received from Firebase on FCM deprecation: "We’re writing to let you know that starting June 20, 2024 the legacy Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) APIs will be discontinued. What do you need to know? On June 20, 2024, we’re reducing the number of Firebase
diazc
- 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 down2022
Show HN: I built a platform for projects to find maintainers
A few days ago, someone I follow asked the community for help maintaining his side-project, 512kb.club. This got me thinking. There are loads of maintainers out there feeling burnt out, but they can't abandon their project since people are depending on the project to be maintained. In an effort to combat this, I built a website that lists projects looking for new maintainers. It's still quite empty and has some rough edges. Any feedback is very welcome!
Why it failed: A few days ago, someone I follow asked the community for help maintaining his side-project, 512kb.club. This got me thinking. There are loads of maintainers out there feeling burnt out, but they can't abandon their project since people are depending on the project to be main
garritfra
- startupShut down2022
Tell HN: How to Respond to a Domain Takeover
After having my domain hijacked today I'd like to share an incident postmortem just in case you find yourself in the same situation (swearing at your terminal output at 10am on Friday morning when your website is down). 9:58am I can no longer deploy to production 10:15am Finished troubleshooting all services, no problems identified 10:16am nslookup resolves to some random IP address instead of my prod server (WTF!!!!!!) 10:20am Log into registrar and find out they replaced my custom DNS servers with their own and added records to serve a "Parked free courtesy of GoDaddy" page with ads and a button that says "Get This Domain" 10:30am Changed my domain on the registrar website back to my custom DNS servers 10:32am Changed my password on the registrar website 10:38am Got told by GoDaddy support they didn't have anything to do with this and it was my fault it ha
Why it failed: After having my domain hijacked today I'd like to share an incident postmortem just in case you find yourself in the same situation (swearing at your terminal output at 10am on Friday morning when your website is down). 9:58am I can no longer deploy to production 10:15am Fin
netsectoday
- startupShut down2022
Show HN: A tool to seed your dev database with real data
A bunch of developers and myself have created RepliByte - an open-source tool to seed a development database from a production database. Features: - Support data backup and restore for PostgreSQL, MySQL and MongoDB - Replace sensitive data with fake data - Works on large database (> 10GB) (read Design) - Database Subsetting: Scale down a production database to a more reasonable size - Start a local database with the prod data in a single command - On-the-fly data (de)compression (Zlib) - On-the-fly data de/encryption (AES-256) - Fully stateless (no server, no daemon) and lightweight binary - Use custom transformers My motivation: As a developer, creating a fake dataset for running tests is tedious. Plus, it does not reflect the real-world data and painful to keep updated. If you prefer to run your app tests with production data. Then RepliByte is for you as well. Available for Ma
Why it failed: A bunch of developers and myself have created RepliByte - an open-source tool to seed a development database from a production database. Features: - Support data backup and restore for PostgreSQL, MySQL and MongoDB - Replace sensitive data with fake data - Works on large database
ev0xmusic
- startupShut down2022
What to do with all of these Amazon Cloud Cams?
Amazon is shutting down their Cloud Cam service on December 2, 2022. I have 10 of these devices that I had already been phasing out with a different solution. I was planning on selling my Cloud Cams but now I can't do that in good faith, given that they will be useless in less than 6 months. It's such a shame though. There must be millions of these perfectly good cameras that will soon become e-waste. Is there anything useful that can be done with them? Is there any hope that somebody might release a hacked firmware some day to make them useful again?
Why it failed: Amazon is shutting down their Cloud Cam service on December 2, 2022. I have 10 of these devices that I had already been phasing out with a different solution. I was planning on selling my Cloud Cams but now I can't do that in good faith, given that they will be useless in le
fletchowns
- startupShut down2022
Bitcoin's miners face vanishing incentives; 19M+ of its 21M max supply are mined
[As it stands the post is flagged, 45 minutes in -- very likely by a fan or investor in the cryptocurrency who is unable to stomach a conversation about an obvious challenge facing the project. I will try to appeal the flag.] Bitcoin aims to give people self sovereignty and financial freedom (who otherwise couldn't attain it). That's a noble goal, but the project has always had a fundamental problem: Bitcoin only survives if enough miners continue to participate, who spend on electricity to keep the network's total hash rate high (enough to fend off a determined foe, including one focusing state-level resources in a short period of time to pull off a 51% attack). Miners do this in exchange for new bitcoin. Though miners' profitability has recently been challenged by the latest downturn, the market can adjust and is not in immediate jeopardy of collapse. But it will be
Why it failed: [As it stands the post is flagged, 45 minutes in -- very likely by a fan or investor in the cryptocurrency who is unable to stomach a conversation about an obvious challenge facing the project. I will try to appeal the flag.] Bitcoin aims to give people self sovereignty and finan
projectsforlife
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: What Web Standards does Safari/WebKit not implement
A reoccurring argument I see in the Safari/Webkit v.s Other Browsers/Engines debate is that Safari does not adhere to standards. Usually these come down to a feature either: a) still in beta b) pushed by chrome so not a real standard c) is implemented but half-baked, doesn’t work, or stripped down for privacy concerns. I think it would be helpful if, instead of arguing wether Safari’s gatekeeping is saving or stalling the web, we list out the things we can’t do that are actual standards and why. Please be sure not to list anything coming to WebKit in iOS16 as it would lead to redundancy.
Why it failed: A reoccurring argument I see in the Safari/Webkit v.s Other Browsers/Engines debate is that Safari does not adhere to standards. Usually these come down to a feature either: a) still in beta b) pushed by chrome so not a real standard c) is implemented but half-baked, do
Jcowell
- startupShut down2022
My Criteria for Picking Startup Ideas
After having failed with more than seven startups and finally achieved some success with my latest one Proxies API, here are a bunch of criteria I follow when picking a startup idea to bootstrap from the website 1. I am a bootstrapper, so I am interested in making recurring revenue and build an asset. So it has to be a SAAS idea. No consumer internet. 2. It has to have a competition. Again, I want to make money, not be a pioneer. 3. It need not be a multi-million dollar potential startup. I prefer it if it’s possible never exceeds a million dollars at its peak. It is because I don’t want to offer a platform, but a small subset of features that people find useful and the big guys find too small a market niche to address. 4. I prefer it if it does not need any design skills. With Proxies API, it is all about technology and how it works. I am in my element when I can run with just code and
Why it failed: After having failed with more than seven startups and finally achieved some success with my latest one Proxies API, here are a bunch of criteria I follow when picking a startup idea to bootstrap from the website 1. I am a bootstrapper, so I am interested in making recurring reven
prasenjit_pro
- startupShut down2022
MS Teams Linux client is being retired. To be replaced by a progressive web app
(Updated) Important upcoming changes to Microsoft Teams desktop client on Linux Updated August 30, 2022: We are updating this message to indicate we will be retiring the Microsoft Teams desktop client on Linux in 90 days (early December). Please take action as appropriate for your organization. We hear from you that you want the full richness of Microsoft Teams features on Linux such as background effects, reactions, gallery view, etc. We found the best way to act on this is to offer a Teams progressive web app (PWA) on Linux as a new feature of our current web client, which we’ll make available to our Linux customers in the coming months. PWA enables us to ship the latest Teams features faster to our Linux customers and helps us bridge the gaps that existed between the Teams desktop client on Linux and Windows. The PWA experience will be available on both Edge and Chrome browsers on Lin
Why it failed: (Updated) Important upcoming changes to Microsoft Teams desktop client on Linux Updated August 30, 2022: We are updating this message to indicate we will be retiring the Microsoft Teams desktop client on Linux in 90 days (early December). Please take action as appropriate for you
NGRhodes
- startupShut down2022
Ask HN: Is the world going to shit?
About a year ago I stumbled upon the degrowth concept and subsequently picked up the book "Degrowth: Less is More" by Jason Hickel. For those unfamiliar with the term: "an infinite expansion of the economy is fundamentally contradictory to finite planetary boundaries".[1] There's been some of HN posts mentioning degrowth in the past but they were heavily criticized[2][3]. I get some degrowthist literature might seem too apocalyptic, but they make some good points: - Criticism of "decoupling": there's no way of our GDP keeps growing indefinitely while reducing our ecological footprint. In fact, despite all the advancements made in renewables during the past decades global CO2 emissions are at an all-time high. - Very few people know how to build/grow anything end to end. Consumerism appears to be the only way to live in the West right now (with
Why it failed: About a year ago I stumbled upon the degrowth concept and subsequently picked up the book "Degrowth: Less is More" by Jason Hickel. For those unfamiliar with the term: "an infinite expansion of the economy is fundamentally contradictory to finite planetary boundari
re6tor