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Show HN: FortyQ – Answering any question in forty-two minutes
- philip142au 7y agoGive an unsolved maths question. ;)
- dmortin 7y agoThen the answer is: current math cannot solve this question. Answer can be lots of things, it's easy to avoid actually answering the question.
- judlaw 7y agoHey thanks for the comment. If it can be done in 42 we will do it in 42, so NP is probably a hard one at this stage :) The ultimate question is out of our humane reach unfo, but we'll try to cover the rest :)
- tenant 7y agoYou said "Any" question :(
- judlaw 7y agoUpdated to "If it can be done in 42, it will be done in 42." on the website :)
- chippy 7y agoSo if it cannot be done in 42 minutes, it will not be done, right?
- judlaw 7y agoSince we qualify a question before proceeding, we'd politely decline if we can't do it in 42 minutes. Our hypothesis is that anything that takes longer qualifies as a consultation, and there are better platforms for people to find such white collar service providers.
- fixf 7y agoWhat is your agency's policy for answering Newcomb's problem?
- judlaw 7y agoThanks for your question, if you look at some of the examples on the site, our staple questions are contextual ones e.g. something the user is facing at the moment. That could be a legal, IT, finance problem or others that we can help with instantly, but I hope you get the idea. For everything else, there is Wolfram Alpha :)
- logicallee 7y agoI just read about Newcomb's problem due to your comment. Maybe I'm being stupid but I don't think there's any paradox. Let's change it so that the first box contains only a tiiiiiny little speck of gold and nothing else, and you'll see. For this demonstration, you get to play repeatedly. Let's make you too smart for your own good. You start off with the strategy I think is stupid and wrong. So: each time you play, you select both boxes on the (stupid, wrong) theory that selecting both strictly dominates selecting just one. Of course, each time, there's nothing in the second box because your choice has been predicted. After playing several hundred times and amassing a tiny little mound of gold flakes you think about whether you even know any shops where you can convert it, and you didn't even bring a zip lock bag with you, what are you going to do, go home with golddust in your pockets? You think about the hours of time that you've spent. Finally you wisen up and say fuck it, this time time I'll just select the one box. Since your choice has been predicted, you finally get the million dollars, and you realize you were pretty dumb for wasting several hours on a few specks of gold. You keep playing, selecting just the one box, and keep getting a million dollars each time. After you have more cash than you can drive home, you thank God for all your cash and go home. This proves that the choice is simple and there is no paradox or contradiction. With my approach, do you see any paradox?
- fixf 7y agoI share a similar view, that testing whether the examiner is lying is itself worthwhile. But while the analysis has several interpretations this question may pose the agency a small problem. They are answering a paid user and therefore have technically already opened box number 2. They cannot therefore lay claim to box 1, only dodge the question, lie, or accept their fate.
- layoutIfNeeded 7y agoGoogle Answers [1] reloaded? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Answers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Answers
- judlaw 7y agoYes and no. 'Yes' as in there are answers, and 'No' as in referring to the questions we've answered in the past, we are directed towards contextual questions. E.g. I've a bug in my code right now and it needs to get into production right away. Hope that helps.
- lol768 7y agoSo what qualifies the folks answering the questions to answer them?
- notretarded 7y agoPhD in Googleology.
- judlaw 7y agoFair point, though I'd add that information is free and knowledge isn't. If it were the case, student loans would be coming down instead of spiraling to record highs.
- joezydeco 7y agoWho remembers Google Answers here? I made a few dollars on that back in the day.... http://answers.google.com/answers/ http://answers.google.com/answers/
- oefrha 7y ago> We answer any question in 42 minutes flat, for $ 4,20. The most confusing pricing I’ve ever seen. Is it $420 (outrageous and thousand separator placed wrong)? Or is it $4.20 with the comma as decimal separator as seen in some non-English-speaking European countries (but why would you use that convention with USD)?
- mosselman 7y agoYou could ask them...
- bunya017 7y agoand pay $4.20 :D
- jonathanstrange 7y agoOr $420. Risky. Just kidding, it's USD 4.20.
- judlaw 7y agoHi guys, the culprit founder here. Indeed 4,20 => 4.20 Apologies for the snafu, been corrected now :)
- denzil_correa 7y ago> Or is it $4.20 with the comma as decimal separator as seen in some non-English-speaking European counties Most likely this considering it is a French website. https://ankuj3.wixsite.com/website-5/cgu https://ankuj3.wixsite.com/website-5/cgu
- personjerry 7y ago$4.20. Because sometimes Europeans start companies in the US.
- oefrha 7y agoAnd when they charge USD they should learn to correctly format USD-denominated amounts...
- jen729w 7y agoConstructive feedback: I’m not giving any money, no way no chance, to a website that can’t line up its elements or put a bit of padding in its CSS†. This might be a great idea (I’m not sure), but basic layout is table stakes before I even think about what you’re selling. It’s an attention to detail thing. If you can’t see the obvious problems with your own home page, what hope do I have that I’ll actually get $4.20 worth of value from you? († Speaking of which, I closed my 20 year old eBay account today.)
- camhart 7y agoFor what its worth, the site didn't put me off. Viewing on mobile.
- maccard 7y agoI think it's unwise to judge a site based on a simple layout issue (It looks fine to me on Safari). Do you refuse to use PayPal because they have mixed themes, some of which are straight out of the early 2000's? It sounds like you wouldn't ever be a customer (and that's fine), but you're looking for reasons to _not_ use the site.
- jen729w 7y agoI also closed my PayPal account today. Honestly. They’ve had 20 years and billions of dollars to make their site, their whole experience, great. They failed to do that. I’ve had enough. Same with eBay. Enough is enough.
- judlaw 7y agoHi thanks for the feedback, sincerely appreciate it! Have to agree that it is pretty bare bones at the moment, and been haphazardly done in a few hours as I was too impatient to test it out lol. It will be chiseled in the days to come. I'd add that we wouldn't disappoint on the product, which is the quality of the answer baked in 42 minutes. And of course we're happy refunding in case we do :)
- jen729w 7y ago
- camhart 7y agoWhy 420? Pot related?...
- droidist2 7y agoProbably another reference to "42" but 42 cents would be too cheap.
- judlaw 7y agoWe're looking to charge 10 cents per minute of work done, and are setting ourselves standards to take less than the amount of time it takes to answer the ultimate question :)
- throwawayhhakdl 7y agoWhy would you do this? You’re getting $6 / hour. To become usefully profitable you would need to answer questions much much faster. It sounds like you’re really just betting that you can middle man search engines by being better at searching for users who suck at it. Reading between the lines, your plan is to look at questions, google the answer, and if you don’t see it immediately, say that it’s not answerable. There’s no way even 1% of these questions can be answered off the top of your head or the collective heads of your workforce... and you don’t have time to do diligent research.
- techntoke 7y ago$6/hr. is less than minimum wage. Are you outsourcing to slaves?
- judlaw 7y agoAfraid its too soon to answer that one, we're just testing a hypothesis atm :)
- quickthrower2 7y agoYeah just make it up on volume.
- avip 7y agoCan God create a lift she herself cannot stone?
- jonathanstrange 7y agoTotally, man, totally. You don't have buttermilk in the fridge, do you?
- dkersten 7y agoYou forgot to charge 4.20 for your answer.
- notretarded 7y agoIt has the same logo as airbnb and skiplagged
- judlaw 7y agoIt's to demonstrate the idea that we'd like to answer with a few notches of g as boost :)
- keyP 7y agoSmall tip, the url isn't masked and shows it's a WIX site. This doesn't mean it's inherently bad but it seems less professional for a site that accepts payment so you may want to mask the domain to show "fortyq.com".
- judlaw 7y agoThanks for that tip! I couldn't get the redirect with masking to work in time, but cleaning it up as we speak :)
- brokensegue 7y agoIn time for what?
- judlaw 7y agoWell we had a launch deadline in mind and DNS updating would have taken an additional 48 hours, so we went ahead and launched it anyway.
- quickthrower2 7y agoMove fast and break thing! Good stuff, things don’t need to be perfect.
- judlaw 7y agoThanks! Appreciate the encouragement :)
- _Nat_ 7y agoI checked one of [your samples](https://ankuj3.wixsite.com/website-5/q-founder-us https://ankuj3.wixsite.com/website-5/q-founder-us), > Q. We are 2 co-founders and directors of a company. There is a valuation of 8M and we finished the seed round. However we cannot agree on how to move forward. We are considering dissolving the company. My co-founder has told me that if I decide to dissolve , he will agree , then re-incorporate without me. Is this legal? If yes, How do I prevent this from happening? , and it looks like this question was just posted to reddit [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/ecaxx2/dissolving_a_company_as_cofounders/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/ecaxx2/disso...), with [this response](https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/ecaxx2/dissolving_a_company_as_cofounders/fba67vy/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/ecaxx2/disso...) then given back as the answer. So is the idea to ask questions for people on other Q&A sites like reddit or StackExchange?
- planb 7y agoAnd the third sample is taken directly from StackOverflow...
- judlaw 7y agoThe SO source in question is one that I have answered, and not copied from any random source off the internet.
- davidjgraph 7y agoThat doesn't give you the right to copy and paste the question without following the licensing at SO, https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/24611/is-it-legal-to-copy-stack-overflow-questions-and-answers/24618 https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/24611/is-it-legal-t... . You are missing the attribution part from https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. And you intend to be taken seriously as a site that will answer legal questions?
- judlaw 7y ago
- judlaw 7y agoHi guys, thanks for all the comments and questions. The past day has been supercharged by more demand than we can handle. We're thus looking to collaborate with ninjas in various domains who can help answering questions. Please reach out to us via the website if it is of interest to you, and we'd be happy to chat. The vision? Join us in building the world's biggest curated knowledge base, 42 minutes at a time :)