[HN Gopher] HN Slop: AI startup ideas generated from Hacker News
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HN Slop: AI startup ideas generated from Hacker News
Author : coloneltcb
Score : 216 points
Date : 2025-07-01 15:31 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.josh.ing)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.josh.ing)
| chandureddyvari wrote:
| Getting rate limit error - This request would exceed the rate
| limit for your organization
|
| You should use something like openrouter or portkey or similar
| for managing fallbacks
| jshchnz wrote:
| wasn't expecting this to get so big so quick, fixing now
| jshchnz wrote:
| should be fixed, sorry about that! should alternate between a
| couple models now
|
| thank kier for claude code
| echelon wrote:
| > openrouter
|
| What pieces of openrouter are open source? I checked out their
| main github repo, and it hasn't had any contributions in
| months.
| esseph wrote:
| Every time I read OpenRouter I think FRR
| https://frrouting.org/
|
| Wish they would have used a different name.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| when I make snarky comments about AI Startup Ideas from Hacker
| News, dang spanks me. guess i need to make a webapp to do it for
| me instead :)
| riku_iki wrote:
| would be great if I could provide prompt/context, for example
| specifying domain and scope instead of getting random proposals.
| paulhodge wrote:
| Very fun and some of these ideas are.. actually not terrible.
| shannifin wrote:
| Ha! Fun stuff. While some ideas are actually intriguing, many if
| its suggestions seem to be overly vague jumbles of common phrases
| and technology. "AI-powered databases to leverage personalized
| accessibility for team management..." Lol. Still fun though.
| ryandrake wrote:
| No worse than a lot of actual companies. I would be totally
| unsurprised to see that description about a real startup.
| butz wrote:
| Lets not waste your $0.0005 and share this pretty decent idea
| with everyone: > Graphene Labs: A decentralized, open-source
| platform for creating and sharing interactive data visualizations
| and infrastructure diagrams that can be hosted locally and
| integrated with real-time data sources
| antonvs wrote:
| Yeah but the weird AI twist there is it wants to try to use
| Rust of all languages as a DSL target. "Step 1: Pick the
| slowest compiler we can find..."
| trevor-e wrote:
| >SciDigest: An AI-powered platform that transforms complex
| scientific research into engaging, digestible content for the
| general public, making scientific knowledge accessible and
| actionable.
|
| This would actually be great. So many researchers have a
| marketing problem with explaining and getting people excited for
| their work.
| thicknavyrain wrote:
| I'm a popular science writer with eight year's experience doing
| exactly this (SciShow, Crash Course, Veritasium and recent
| winner of the Wellcome Collection Non Fiction Awards) without
| AI. Done right, the right coverage of even a pre-print reached
| hundreds of thousands/millions of people. But I've experimented
| with every SOTA model since 2022 with the most detailed and
| specific prompting I can think of (including multiple examples
| of transcripts of work already in the public domain) to see if
| it can replicate good quality science communication.
|
| The content is usually reasonably strong but the tone is always
| off and it never quite understands what it is a reader/viewer
| needs to really get to grips with the topic if they don't
| already have a prior foundational understanding (though I
| notice this about a lot of other media outlets with
| professional science communicators too). It also has poor
| editorial thinking around what bits are most likely to be
| interesting and cohesive when considered as part of the whole
| piece.
|
| But I'm still reasonably convinced as AI improves it ought to
| be able to replace me with the right
| workflow/context/prompting. I think there will always be a
| demand for my (and many other writers') talents as they are so
| it doesn't really bother me, but it'd be great to extend the
| work to all the many scientific discoveries that don't get the
| same attention. If anyone is serious about developing something
| like this, I'd be interested in partnering with them as someone
| with domain expertise on science communication and familiar
| with prompt engineering (email in bio).
| notahacker wrote:
| Feels like there might be an accuracy issue as well. Although
| that might make it perfectly suited to replacing whoever
| writes university press releases...
| trevor-e wrote:
| That's super cool, I love the SciShow videos.
|
| I think you're right about the editorial thinking + what do
| people find interesting parts. But that doesn't have to be
| solved by directly by AI, it's easy enough to sidestep the
| problem and provide a nice interface for the human-in-the-
| loop part. I'd imagine that would save you a ton of time by
| having a nice starting point depending on how much you have
| to rewrite for tone.
| thicknavyrain wrote:
| That's true, it could just turn the writer's role into more
| of an editorial role. The main time-saving I have so far is
| being able to upload papers and get it to fact check for
| me. The editorial guidelines at SciShow are stricter than
| any academic journal I've published in: any non-trivial
| statement has to be supported by a direct, findable quote
| in (most-of-the-time) peer-reviewed scientific literature.
| I once had to find a citation for the idea that heat + fuel
| + oxygen generates a fire! (for this video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEcaE0e0CZg)
|
| LLMs make that much easier. As I collect primary sources
| during my drafting/writing phrase, I can type up any non-
| trivial claims I'm making in my script in a separate
| document, share that with the LLM and say "Quoting directly
| from the set of attached PDFs, identifying which document,
| and on which page the quote comes from, find content which
| directly supports each of these assertions" and it
| generally goes a great job. At any rate, I have to check
| each of those quotes for accuracy but the help in _finding_
| those quotes in order to pass a stringent fact checking
| procedure is a huge help if I didn't scribble down the
| supporting quotes during my research phase. This is also,
| by the way, stricter than the fact checking process for
| most non-fiction publishing.
| thekracken wrote:
| > _SciShow are stricter than any academic journal I 've
| published in_
|
| Now there's a testimonial. I look forward to browsing the
| source links with each video!
| antonvs wrote:
| One question is whether the audience is discerning enough to
| care about the issues you're raising. This seems like it
| could be a variation of why the umpteenth Marvel movie beats
| out indie masterpieces at the box office. The audience for
| high quality becomes increasingly niche as the market's
| relatively low bar for quality is satisfied.
| thekracken wrote:
| > _I 've experimented with every SOTA model since 2022_
|
| > _The content is usually reasonably strong but the tone is
| always off and it never quite understands what it is a reader
| /viewer needs_
|
| A SOTA model fine-tuned with your choice of transcripts could
| probably get you most of the way there. There might be a
| customized, open-weight model already on Huggingface that
| meets your needs.
| IsHeInFarside wrote:
| I am trying to do this, trying to generalize a workflow that at
| least has helped me grok a few papers.
| janpmz wrote:
| I've attempted this with pdftomp3.com where you can listen to
| PDFs. It has an "AI Explanation" mode where the content of the
| PDF gets explained. Its like a NotbookLM podcast, but I was
| earlier :)
|
| Currently I'm working on an app for that, because thats where I
| listen to the MP3s anyways.
| dax_ wrote:
| I'm 99% sure I already saw a product launch on HN for precisely
| this idea.
| falcor84 wrote:
| I've been using the NotebookLM "podcasts" for this. I upload an
| arxiv pdf and use the Interactive Mode to have them talk about
| it, while I can pause them to ask clarifying questions. It's
| been surprisingly efficient for me to get an initial grasp on
| things I'm not familiar with, at times prompting me to then go
| on exploring interesting rabbit holes.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| https://www.comunicarestiintifica.ro/en/category/scidigest/
| mittermayr wrote:
| This should be connected to https://comsensei.com to get an
| available domain for each one of the ideas. It's all coming
| together :)
| nusl wrote:
| You're promoting your own website based on AI-generated things
| on a Hacker News post aimed at generating AI slop.
| mouse_ wrote:
| good for him i hope he makes it
| fennecbutt wrote:
| Where do we draw the line at self promotion (advertising)
| then?
| mouse_ wrote:
| As long as it's not apparently being done by a bot, who
| cares?
|
| This is effectively an advertising website.
| haswell wrote:
| This is _not_ primarily an advertising site. See
| guidelines:
|
| > _Please don 't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok
| to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary
| use of the site should be for curiosity._
| nmilo wrote:
| > It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time
| haswell wrote:
| Yes. I was responding specifically to this claim:
|
| > _This is effectively an advertising website._
|
| Which remains untrue even if you're allowed to post your
| own stuff from time to time.
| mrd3v0 wrote:
| > not apparently being done by a bot
|
| LLMs will make this very hard to detect, very soon if not
| already.
| iJohnDoe wrote:
| Most of the time, the top post of a Show HN is someone
| else talking about their own project or something off-
| topic from the Show HN.
|
| Self-promotion on HN is constant.
| nine_k wrote:
| If anything, this was a very short and quite contextual
| piece of text-only advertising. If all online advertising
| were like that, I won't have to run an ad blocker.
| collingreen wrote:
| For me, undisclosed self promotion puts a very bad taste
| in my mouth, to the point of coming off as bad faith. I
| dislike pretending you're just mentioning a cool service
| since you're effectively trying to trick me with false
| social proof.
|
| If the post had said "I made xyz which could auto
| generate domains for these ideas using ai to fully close
| the slop gap" I wouldn't mind and might even appreciate
| the additional fun.
| vntok wrote:
| No need to do that. The provenance does not matter as
| long as the content is interesting, which is the case
| here.
|
| This is the original hacker's ethos: put something out
| there for others to use, and let the people make their
| own opinion about the thing itself, not the
| authoritativeness of its source.
| mittermayr wrote:
| I've received nothing but nice messages about the site after
| posting it and people seem to be getting a kick out of it. I
| feel like this (if barely so) meets the bar to give it a pass
| perhaps, especially considering that my voice is worth as
| much as yours and the next person, so without upvotes, it
| will disappear, just how it's meant to be. Hope that helps a
| bit.
| oceanhaiyang wrote:
| I like how I submit a request and it never loads.
| wanderingstan wrote:
| Feature request: option to select a year so you can get retro
| startup ideas from e.g. web 2 or crypto-mania eras!
| jeffwass wrote:
| LOL, the idea it just pitched me was inspired by the HN Slop
| submission itself!
| jshchnz wrote:
| I've been waiting for that to happen!!! Did you save the idea?
| deivid wrote:
| > CosmicPlay: A startup that leverages GPU emulation and
| graph theory to build a next-generation video game engine
| that can render celestial bodies with nuclear propulsion and
| solar sailing capabilities, while generating AI-powered
| gameplay ideas from Hacker News posts
| jshchnz wrote:
| lmao brilliant
| jshchnz wrote:
| i was not expecting people to like the startup ideas so much, but
| it's a pleasant surprise!
|
| i thought it'd be cool to let people vote on ideas that HN Slop
| came up with, so now you'll see an "i'd invest" button & that
| will let others vote on the idea on a leaderboard
|
| hope y'all like it, keep sending the feedback, I'm listening!
| redsparrow wrote:
| SwearySkyscraper: A startup that develops novel and personalized
| swear words to help people better cope with pain, and integrates
| these swear words into a liquid damping system to stabilize
| skyscrapers during earthquakes.
| capt_obvious_77 wrote:
| Those silly architects never thought of this.
| throwanem wrote:
| A building that requires human pain to stand? I guarantee you
| this is something at least a few architects have fantasized
| at length about. Like ours, it seems to be a profession that
| attracts outliers.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| It is the opposite of the usual process, where workers on the
| field turn the architect plans into swear words.
| kdrvr wrote:
| This is AI at its peak lol
| throwawayoldie wrote:
| Let's hope.
| keyle wrote:
| Amusing, and shockingly I wouldn't be surprised to read any of
| the ideas it has generated on HN tomorrow...
| antonvs wrote:
| I was going to say, is this really any different than Y
| Combinator Slop?
| fakedang wrote:
| YC could literally replace RFS with this and it wouldn't make
| a difference lol.
| ForgotMyUUID wrote:
| >Biomech Innovations: A wearable tech startup that uses genetic
| algorithms and AI to help zebrafish regenerate damaged organs,
| with a secrets management platform to securely store user data
| and a retro-futuristic assembly-level code editor for custom
| hardware designs.
|
| Instant fun! Honestly, whatever tech I look for, I use built-in
| search engine of Hacker News first before googling it.
| piotraleksander wrote:
| I'm surprised there is no leaderboard idea containing word 'vibe'
| amelius wrote:
| This reminds me of https://www.halfbakery.com/ which was much
| more fun, probably because the ideas came from actual humans.
| throwanem wrote:
| Technically, so do these.
| amelius wrote:
| Ok, "came directly from humans" then.
| tdiff wrote:
| Perhaps another reminder that ideas per se are not very valuable.
| amelius wrote:
| Ideas are valuable. Code can be written by AIs (and thus less
| valuable).
| tdiff wrote:
| Code itself is not very valuable as well. What has value is
| the combination of all those things and application of them
| to some real problem in a form of complete solution.
| amelius wrote:
| Of course they have value but the code and the application
| are just a logical consequence of the ideas, so that's
| where the real value lies.
| tdiff wrote:
| Its relatively easy to generate "startup ideas", but even
| with a perfectly reasonable idea at hand the hardest
| thing is to bring it into life, overcoming every possible
| obstacle.
| amelius wrote:
| Next step: an AI that generates patents.
| Hackbraten wrote:
| And another that triages them.
| BlindEyeHalo wrote:
| Claude API error: {"type":"error","error":{"type":"invalid_reques
| t_error","message":"Your credit balance is too low to access the
| Anthropic API. Please go to Plans & Billing to upgrade or
| purchase credits."}}
| throwanem wrote:
| SlopCharger: Broker free-tier accounts with fly-by-night AI
| providers cross-matched with the latest in prompt exploits to
| enable new billing efficiencies by running your HN AI shitpost
| on someone else's one-fiftieth of a dime! :sparkles:
| kevindamm wrote:
| EdgeSlop: now you can bring your own API key for a wider
| range of choices -- BYOAI!
| jerf wrote:
| Really should have been some caching involved. We didn't all
| need our own personal slop.
| jshchnz wrote:
| Jerf, everyone deserves their own personal slop
| ActionHank wrote:
| This is poetic, because AI will become inaccessible pricing-
| wise and all these AI slop shops are going to have a hard time
| keeping customers.
| vntok wrote:
| How do you see AI becoming inaccessible pricing-wise? If
| anything it seems models are measurably more performant and
| measurably more efficient every month? People regularly run
| huge models locally on consumer hardware, which used to be
| unfathomable months ago..
| jshchnz wrote:
| Sorry about that, was sleeping and this got on the front page
| again, just upped the credit balance to fix!
| BiraIgnacio wrote:
| This is awesome, thanks :D
| jpl56 wrote:
| Ideascope: An AI-powered platform that generates personalized,
| innovative startup ideas by analyzing real-time trends and data
| from Hacker News and other tech communities
|
| Yep, I think this may be possible :p
| davidjhall wrote:
| Very cute but wish there was a filter for the flavor of the week
| ... I feel 60% of them will have LLM because of this bias. Last
| month would've been "powered by rust."
| gloosx wrote:
| Uh-oh, sorry Josh for burning your anthropic credits, it was fun
| while it lasted!
| jshchnz wrote:
| it's all good, happy to support your ai slop needs
| ludicrousdispla wrote:
| Disruptive 'infra' startup offering connectivity between two or
| more 3rd party endpoints.
| Bjartr wrote:
| > DocuQuest: A platform that leverages LLMs to transform and
| simplify complex technical documentation into interactive, user-
| friendly learning experiences tailored for developers and
| engineers.
|
| So "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" from Diamond Age, but for
| devs. A neat idea!
|
| In general docs ecosystems tend to be heavy on only one of
| reference / explanation / tutorial. Would be cool to have a way
| to write one and get the others.
| mathiaspoint wrote:
| Publishing docs and example project and letting them get
| scraped into LLMs already accomplishes this pretty effectively.
| its_down_again wrote:
| Actually this sounds great. I got way more out of codecademy's
| in-browser, interactive challenges than I did in my middle &
| high-school classes programming classes. The "learn by doing"
| process really built my confidence. If you could "demo" your
| docs directly in the browser it's much easier to learn by
| doing. I think that'd drive up adoption and you might even
| crowdsource bug discovery.
| jmknoll wrote:
| Alright, but DocuQuest is actually a really good idea.
|
| "DocuQuest: A platform that leverages LLMs to transform and
| simplify complex technical documentation into interactive, user-
| friendly learning experiences tailored for developers and
| engineers."
| WA wrote:
| I recently found a vibe-coded app that generates courses on the
| fly from YouTube, including automatically generated quizzes. I
| forgot the URL, but the result was beyond awful. Questions were
| something like: "what was the title of the youtube video?" and
| other utterly stupid things.
|
| Not saying that it isn't possible, but stuff like this does
| need the human touch.
| unleaded wrote:
| I miss that small period of AI where it excelled at making random
| shit in this vein( see https://x.com/dril_gpt2 and
| https://www.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/top/?t=all [somewhat
| nsfw text]).
|
| I'm not really sure why modern AI can't really do stuff like that
| anymore--I would guess a combination of being whacked with a
| crowbar to submit to humans (RLHF, but I'm not sure if it affects
| base models?), alignment stuff, and just being too smart.
|
| Would love to see something like this with GPT-2 and how it
| compares
| lucaspauker wrote:
| Can someone make this? 6. SignalPlay: A platform that transforms
| real-time WiFi signals into immersive gaming experiences,
| allowing players to interact with virtual environments based on
| their physical movements in the room.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I love the comment that goes with the idea.
|
| Sloppy idea, cynical comment, what a perfect representation of
| Hacker News.
|
| Yes, I made a cynical comment, what did you expect? At least, it
| is mine, not AI generated :)
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(page generated 2025-07-02 23:01 UTC)