[HN Gopher] A vending machine, on the internet
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A vending machine, on the internet
Author : EFFALO
Score : 181 points
Date : 2025-02-18 20:47 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (threekindwords.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (threekindwords.com)
| neodypsis wrote:
| so this "vending machine" is a postcard drop shipping website?
| pryelluw wrote:
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vending%20machine
|
| vending machine noun : a coin-operated machine for selling
| merchandise
|
| Coin is currency. This website sells merchandise. If they wanna
| call it a vending machine, then why not?
|
| Either way, silly hill to die on. The post does explore our
| understanding of a vending no machine and maybe how we may
| approach online versions.
| neodypsis wrote:
| Perhaps I disagree on the following:
|
| > There's no customer support, chatbot, or extensive
| documentation.
|
| I've seen many vending machines with customer support
| channels. If the machine takes the money but merchandise is
| not delivered, people will complain.
| autoexec wrote:
| Exactly! A website that takes people's money and doesn't
| deliver a product or provide customer service is basically
| just committing fraud. Some vending machines do get away
| with fraud for a time. The place hosting someone else's
| machine (like a shop or a restaurant) will often get
| complaints from people who run into problems and those
| shops will often refund customers without notifying the
| vendor every time.
|
| After enough complaints they might remove the machine from
| their property or compel the owner of the vending machine
| to maintain it, but the fact that some amount of fraud
| happens via vending machines isn't an ideal that we should
| try to replicate on the internet, especially not because
| it's easier for the people who make webpages.
|
| "I didn't know I was ripping people off because I decided
| it would be easier if I never checked and also decided not
| to give any of the people I stole from a channel to tell me
| about it." won't hold up very well.
|
| I also got some bad vibes from :
|
| > The stakes should be low. Whatever you're selling, it's
| gotta be cheap. And if things go awry? No one's going to
| launch a chargeback crusade
|
| "I hoped that because I was taking such a small amount of
| money that nobody would bother to do anything about it"
| isn't a good look either.
|
| The most pessimistic reading of this post is "why shouldn't
| I provide a service as shitty and fraudulent as lazy
| vending machine owners do only on a far more massive scale"
|
| That said, I really do agree that people can over
| complicate things and there's a lot to be gained by not
| allowing account creation, not asking for more data than
| you absolutely need, and not keeping data around any longer
| than absolutely necessary. Just please don't think you can
| get away with not providing any customer service or not
| keeping an eye on things to make sure customers are getting
| what they pay for.
| what wrote:
| This is probably all just marketing/seo for the service
| used to send the post cards. I've never seen a vending
| machine that tells you the price they pay for the product
| by linking out to their providers. $0.82 per card and
| charging $5 for 3.
| morkalork wrote:
| With a cute gimmick to hook customers and so cheap / low stakes
| that people will toss a few bucks into it for fun and not think
| too hard about it. It's like the chocolate bars and other items
| at the cashier of a supermarket, works entirely off of impulse
| purchases. The problem for OP is that they aren't physically in
| front of hundreds of potential customers wandering by. They're
| on the internet so they need to go viral like the bag of dicks
| guy or do stuff like blog about it and get posted places like
| hn.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| Rock on man. The contrarian attitude reminds me of the "I Sell
| Onions on the Internet" guy
|
| https://www.deepsouthventures.com/i-sell-onions-on-the-inter...
| isaacremuant wrote:
| Why is it contrarian? Entrepreneurial spirit is well
| appreciated in popular culture even if most people don't have
| the ability to lose 10k without worries. Risk aversion might
| separate most people from entrepreneurs but it's not really a
| contrarian attitude, right? Maybe I've been interpreting the
| word wrong forever.
|
| Would it be less contrarian if it was apples?
| eightturn wrote:
| ha, onionman here : ) I also wrote an essay similar to this
| vending machine analogy... simple minds think alike I guess
| https://www.deepsouthventures.com/building-things-that-do-ju...
| y-curious wrote:
| I love your website, and thank you for your writeups. I was
| sad to see that many of the domains in your "getting started"
| page are not up and running. www.kobebeef.com being dead hit
| me hard :'( I feel oddly inspired, and my wife will probably
| be sending you hate mail in the near future :p
| eightturn wrote:
| thank you Y.. I was just a spectator on the KobeBeef.com
| auction (never owned it)... it was simply a name that
| popped up once I began paying attention. But agree, a very
| neat one that was tempting. Not sure who owns it now.
| RestartKernel wrote:
| Thanks for the link, I loved reading it. When you spend all day
| building software with sometimes unclear and questionable
| purpose, the straightforward approach of "just" selling a
| produce when in season seems deeply appealing. Greener grass, I
| suppose.
| eightturn wrote:
| I find it very relaxing to leave the computer behind and hang
| out all day in the Vidalia fields. We even started our own
| YouTube channel to film each years crop (ha)
| https://www.youtube.com/@vidaliaonion
| moffkalast wrote:
| > They're classified as a sweet onion, and because of their
| mild flavor (they don't make your eyes tear up)
|
| The WHAT. Did I seriously go my entire life without knowing
| there's a better type of onion?!
| eightturn wrote:
| yes! most of my customers eat Vidalias like an Apple. But
| they still have a touch of zing, but the fumes have never hit
| me before. They're very versatile to cook with. Just ensure
| you're buying _authentic_ vidalias, cause nefarious sellers
| try to pawn regular yellow onions off as Vidalia (it 's
| illegal and there are fines for those who are caught doing
| it)
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Matt Webb's Machine Supply (2015-2018) comes to mind, albeit a
| bit higher brow. A vending machine selling books & notebooks,
| that also tweeted it's activity.
| https://www.actsnotfacts.com/made/machine-supply
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I'm reminded of Kagi's privacy pass model:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43040521
|
| Generally speaking, kagi is not an internet vending machine. You
| have an account, you get billed monthly or whatever. Very much a
| normal SaaS in that regard. But the privacy system they've come
| up with fits quite well with the internet vending machine idea.
| You put a token in, you get a search result out.
|
| I think it's got a lot of upside if you're trying to get paid to
| make software that isn't trying to manipulate its users. I hope
| to do something similar one day.
| stevoski wrote:
| OP is in for a nasty surprise when they discover that the
| customers who complain the loudest are those that pay the least,
| and that it is difficult to turn a profit on a low-priced service
| due to the cost of acquiring customers.
|
| Edit: And credit card fraud. A $5 price combined with a Stripe
| payment process is very attractive to people who want to test
| stolen credit card numbers.
| everly wrote:
| OP addresses this directly, if you bothered to read the whole
| thing:
|
| "The stakes should be low. Whatever you're selling, it's gotta
| be cheap. And if things go awry? No one's going to launch a
| chargeback crusade. Just like a reliable vending machine, if it
| jams, it'll return your coins."
| stevoski wrote:
| I read it all. No need for snark.
|
| Not sure which one of my points you are refuting with that
| quote.
| everly wrote:
| If you introduce a process susceptible to credit card fraud
| then you're not keeping it low stakes.
| karamanolev wrote:
| > test stolen credit card numbers
|
| The stakes don't matter if you're testing credit card
| number. Just that the service tells you if it works or
| not. And low amounts are good, since you're not wasting
| the card's limit.
| stevoski wrote:
| I see.
|
| I was commenting on the reality of his current site. He
| has a purchase form, where you purchase for $5, connected
| to Stripe.
|
| In more detail:
|
| A bad actor with a large quantity of stolen credit card
| info who finds this site (and eventually, someone always
| does) will use it to test whether each card works. Small-
| dollar-amount payment forms accessible without going
| through a sign-up-and-verify process attract these bad
| actors.
|
| The point I was trying to make is that this won't be the
| low-hassle, easy-to-run product that OP wants it to be.
|
| Which sucks. It really does. The bad actors ruin this
| stuff.
|
| (I write from the experience of running a pay-once B2C
| desktop app for 10 years and a B2B SaaS for 8 years.)
| sosodev wrote:
| When you say something like this what are you hoping to
| accomplish? Should nobody build products like this?
| aqueueaqueue wrote:
| Sell courses, ebooks etc. online and use one of the many easy to
| use payment systems for that kind of thing. That is vending
| machine like.
| savolai wrote:
| This vending machine seems jammed indeed on iphone. The select
| boxes are empty. All three cards show "whats" as the word.
| foreigner wrote:
| Same on Android. Cute idea tho.
| egeozcan wrote:
| Same on Firefox Desktop. The business didn't lose a customer
| though as I suppose it's US only anyway?
| rgbjoy wrote:
| _shrug_ oh well
| gcr wrote:
| It's because the browser tries to fetch `/words.json` but that
| isn't JSON, it's the homepage.
| bitwize wrote:
| I thought this was gonna be a story about that collegiate Coke
| machine from the 90s people could telnet into to see which rows
| were filled with what, the temperature, etc.
| synack wrote:
| Big Drink got me through many long nights. I miss it.
|
| http://www.faqs.org/faqs/csh-coke-machine-info/
|
| https://github.blog/news-insights/the-internet-coke-machine-...
|
| Looks like it got the Rust treatment a few years ago:
| https://github.com/ComputerScienceHouse/bubbler
| andai wrote:
| /dev/drink
| foreigner wrote:
| The problem is with our payments infrastructure there isn't a
| practical way to make a "machine" on the internet that accepts
| two quarters. OP's machine charges $5. The Stripe minimum charge
| is $0.50, and their fees on that charge would be almost $0.21.
| alexchamberlain wrote:
| How does that $0.21 compare to the cost of maintaining the coin
| machine on a vending machine and sending someone to collect the
| cash?
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| The difference between fixed and marginal costs applies here.
|
| The costs you mention are essentially fixed costs. The
| marginal cost of a sale is then zero (ignoring the cost of
| the item itself).
|
| With Stripe the marginal cost is 21c or 42%. You can increase
| sales ad infinitum and Stripe will still take 42%...
| Ferret7446 wrote:
| My understanding is that you can do it on layer 2 networks like
| Lightning, though it suffers from the same limitations shared
| by all decentralized systems (e.g., depends on gaining
| widespread adoption and weakness from internetwork blockades).
| y-curious wrote:
| Not to mention, even intelligent adults in Silicon Valley
| don't own cryptocurrency. Quite the opposite of a vending
| machine; Analogous to a vending machine in the US that only
| accepts Turkish Lira.
| notpushkin wrote:
| Aren't there payment processors that charge a flat percentage
| without the fixed part? Or you can use alternate payment
| methods (e.g. SEPA payments in Europe are practically free, and
| many eWallets / QR payments in Asia use flat percentage as well
| IIRC. Crypto is also a possibility _if_ you're in the right
| niche.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| The article is not about vending machines even if it seems so.
|
| It's about low friction (you don't have to sign up, sign it and
| the process of buying is very simple) and selling cheap stuff so
| the customer is tempted to buy without having safeguards (an
| account, customer support).
| andai wrote:
| The title gave me PTSD flashback to the snack machine at my
| library, which requires you to scan a QR code, interact with a
| React app, and do internet banking to access the snacks.
| mattl wrote:
| I'd just bring my own snacks at that point
| SunlitCat wrote:
| The title of the post reminded me of a certain, famous, coffee
| pot!
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_Room_coffee_pot
| smitelli wrote:
| Reminds me of the networked vending machines in Computer
| Science House at RIT [0].
|
| [0]: https://csh.rit.edu/about/projects.html
|
| Full disclosure: I was involved in a hardware overhaul on all
| those machines, about 15-20 years ago.
| thih9 wrote:
| That was an interesting read, thanks for sharing!
|
| How does the postcard logistics work? I.e. is there a platform
| that offers sub $5 drop shipping with three different templates
| and on demand print? Or is the author sending the postcards
| themselves?
|
| Vending machine suggests automation, so the former; but I looked
| at some drop shipping options and couldn't find anything like
| this.
| 3dsnano wrote:
| there's a post about it here
| https://threekindwords.com/blog/building-a-postcard-vending-...
| thih9 wrote:
| Thank you! I tried listing all blog articles earlier and it
| didn't work on mobile. I now see them on desktop but I
| checked only after I read your comment.
|
| The platform for printing postcards looks cool but I'm from
| the EU and it sadly doesn't work for EU addresses. I'll
| search again I guess, maybe there's something similar here
| too.
| ipsento606 wrote:
| > The machine was jammed. It wasn't a big deal. I shrugged and
| moved on to buy my groceries.
|
| I resonate with the sentiment, but this is very far from my
| experience selling cheap software products.
|
| I had multiple people reach out to me because a software upgrade
| they paid $2 for 8 years ago stopped working. And they were,
| like, pissed about it.
| bagpuss wrote:
| if someone relies on an upgrade for 8 years, $2 is not enough!
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| You should be able to pay for upgrades and not hve to ply
| russin roulette where there's any chance that updating
| removes features and puts them back behind an eternal
| subscriber paywall.
| wruza wrote:
| I guess the idea is to not provide contacts and to explicitly
| claim this position in the user agreement. How much pissed they
| are may really depend on how much of it is allowed. Some can
| kick the machine, but in this case it will be their pc.
| latexr wrote:
| > I guess the idea is to not provide contacts and to
| explicitly claim this position in the user agreement.
|
| Unfortunately, that is becoming increasingly harder.
|
| https://developer.apple.com/help/app-store-connect/manage-
| co...
|
| Before the inevitable victim blaming of "don't do business
| with that platform/jurisdiction/whatever", please remember to
| be empathetic and that not everyone has the same choices you
| do. I'm in no way defending this, just pointing out the state
| of affairs.
| batch12 wrote:
| That sucks, but with the stakes as low as $2, I'd happily give
| the money back and move on.
| ipsento606 wrote:
| trying to refund a transaction that occurred 8 years ago is
| actually pretty onerous and time consuming
| rcxdude wrote:
| Probably because while they paid $2 for it, it was worth far
| more than $2 to them.
| y-curious wrote:
| This is my parents and my in-laws. They will gladly tip a
| bartender $5 for pouring a beer but God forbid you suggest they
| spend $2 on a productivity app on the app store.
| nicbou wrote:
| You can choose not to engage. What are they going to do, fire
| you?
| SL61 wrote:
| I run a free website with a monthly active user count in the
| 100k range. When something breaks - even if it's a really niche
| feature or a compatibility issue with an outdated browser - I
| get an army of furious users contacting me however they can. I
| can't imagine what would happen to me if the site completely
| broke or went down for more than a few hours.
| hondo77 wrote:
| Charge for support emails. $1 (or whatever) to fill out a
| form and have a support email delivered to you. All other
| support emails (presumably to old addresses) will be ignored.
| bubblethink wrote:
| I get the point that this is trying to make but what a terrible
| analogy. Vending machines suck! There are few things in life more
| frustrating than a printer that is jammed or a vending machine
| that is stuck. I don't want a vending machine on the internet. I
| don't want to buy junk food from Costco marked up by 5x on the
| internet. I want the finest goods available to humanity at rock
| bottom prices.
| hampowder wrote:
| I'm trying to make an analogous product (native app) for learning
| vocabulary after Memrise shut it simple, flashcard app down.
|
| One thing about the vending machine model is that the transaction
| is done. You don't require any continued interaction from the
| vendor to enjoy what you bought.
|
| For that reason I made it: - a native app so it
| didn't require a server once downloaded - offline first,
| using WatermelonDb to sync with a server if available - all
| data bundled, so my server doesn't need to exist when downloading
|
| The intention is to make it at some point a one-time purchase.
| I'm trying to conceive it more like writing/distributing a book
| than a subscription app.
|
| The hardest elements have actually been complying with the
| various app store requirements. Google Play now requires
| developers to have 20 users test your app for 14 days. I've been
| stuck with 4x 14 day cycles for the Catalan version with no
| specific feedback as to how to satisfy their desire that it has
| been sufficiently tested.
|
| Interestingly with Google Play, if you want to make an up-front
| paid app, your testers must pay for the app too. If you make the
| app free, such that your testers can download it, you can't make
| it paid again afterwards. You can add in app purchases later,
| though.
|
| If anyone wants to check it out, it's available for Spanish and
| Catalan for now: https://learnthewords.app/
| janosett wrote:
| Seems the App Store link isn't working for me (in Spain). Would
| love to give it a try!
| hampowder wrote:
| Mm, please see previous comments on dealing with the
| respective app stores.
|
| In this case Apple have de-listed me from the various EU app
| stores while they verify my 'trader information' - the
| requirement to publish my name and home address on the app
| store, next to my app.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| In New York, vending and videogame machines tend to be ...
| _"connected,"_ ... but maybe not the way you think.
|
| I know someone that has made quite a bit of money, from vending
| machines, and he's ... um ... _"connected."_ I generally don't
| really deal with him too much. We run in different social
| circles.
|
| Wiseguys like cash-heavy businesses. Maybe if they become
| cashless systems, that could change. I encounter vending machines
| that accept Apple Pay, fairly frequently, in more upscale venues.
| yapyap wrote:
| I appreciate the article but if what the writer linked would not
| send one of the cards or even multiple I would chargeback, not on
| a crusade type thing but if you don't deliver the service you
| promised it's not a weird thing to do.
|
| Also I've seen some people go mad over a vending machine taking
| their money and not spitting anything out, over the principle of
| it.
|
| Just depends on the person and how they see vending machines.
| numtel wrote:
| This is the analogy used in the first description of a smart
| contract in 1997
|
| https://nakamotoinstitute.org/library/the-idea-of-smart-cont...
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I've been buying piano sheet music and I've seen the two
| extremes:
|
| 1. You look at a preview, buy it, get a PDF emailed to you. No
| account needed.
|
| 2. You look at a preview, you make an account, you buy, you get
| told your browser isn't supported. You get told a PDF costs
| extra. You get told you can only try to print it once so be
| careful. You get told you have 24 hours to complete this.
|
| As a developer the second one was incredibly offensive. As if
| business types who do not comprehend technology beyond smacking
| rocks together thought they actually could lock down and police
| consumption of the sheet music. I printed to PDF and then never
| came back.
| iandanforth wrote:
| Your machine has jammed, doesn't work in Firefox (macos). The
| words dropdown doesn't populate, nor does the style dropdown. I
| see a JSON.parse uncaught SyntaxError.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Hey man he's out drinking free beer with his buddies, not
| losing sleep when the machine jams.
|
| (Paraphrasing TFA for anyone confused)
| Jap2-0 wrote:
| It's not just Firefox, and it's because
| https://threekindwords.com/words.json is not json.
|
| But you didn't even lose two quarters. Shrug and move on.
| jmholla wrote:
| Looks like it's fixed now. It's valid JSON for me.
| rmetzler wrote:
| Hey is the blogpost reloading every second (on mobile safari)?
| soneca wrote:
| For me it is indeed
| starfezzy wrote:
| Yes (mobile Firefox)
| venky180 wrote:
| Yes, mobile (chrome)
| chiffre01 wrote:
| I looked up alien stickers, and you can get 300 of them for $52.
| Assuming you sell them at 50 cents each and sell out in one
| month, that's a $98 profit. However, that depends on the cost of
| placing/location the vending machine.
| amelius wrote:
| This is the entire idea behind the iPhone. It is a vending
| machine in your pocket, that _you_ paid for.
| wenbin wrote:
| i've built a few web apps. the closest to a "vending machine" is
| https://Transcript.New - dead simple, transactional, zero outages
| in 14 months, and almost no support emails (maybe 2 in the past
| year).
| otteromkram wrote:
| > ...if it needs to remember you, it should do so with tokens and
| one-time links, not user accounts or forgotten-password flows...
|
| Not for me, thanks. I've skipped submitting job apps because of
| the Oracle HRM platform and having to visit my email an enter a
| six-digit code EACH time I wanted to submit an app, which
| required re-uploading a resume and re-correcting any parsing
| errors.
|
| I will 100% skip your website if you rely upon cookies/OTP and
| don't let users create accounts (if they need one).
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