Update on Heml.is | Hacker News Reader

Update on Heml.is

blog.brokep.com

54 pointsdgavrilov35 comments

So this pisses me off more than a little. I've had multiple ideas that would be good for crowdfunding projects but never executed on them because I never mapped out enough of what I would do with said money. It felt wrong to ask for money without a solid plan of how to move forward. Just saying "this sucks give me money to fix it, and oh yeah, I have no plan but money + no plan = success right?" felt wrong (and I think it IS wrong). Also losing 30K is not small amount of money and the fact it got a single sentence is really weird.

People like this ruin crowdfunding for everyone else, they played on emotions to raise a significant amount of money (whether or not that amount was enough to complete the project at hand does not matter) and have nothing to show for it. Sure "We have apps but they are bad so we don't want to release them" is "something" but by not OS'ing them or releasing them as-is they have effectively nothing that they delivered on.

If they realised they were in over their head at the start then they should have sat down and planned it out instead of throwing money at the problem till it is all gone. They should have turned around and refunded at least a partial amount of each pledge (sans fees/processing) once they realized this was beyond what they could do.

This "Give me money" and then "Yeah... about that money, it's all gone..." is akin to theft in my mind. If I pay into a crowdfunding campaign I am buying into the idea you sold me. If you didn't think through your idea all the way then that's your fault. It's little better than ponzi scheme with the difference being intent to defraud customers in my opinion...

Lastly I've seen some comments about how crowdfunding is not a certain thing and some things fail. I don't disagree but if a project goes silent then that's theft in my eyes, not just failing. If a refund is not possible then at a very least donate what is left to the EFF (publically) or similar because to keep that money is just dead wrong in my book.

  People like this ruin crowdfunding for everyone else [..]

People like this will cause crowdfunding to mature. It would be good if we got to the point where you will only get funded if you first demonstrate you have a reasonable chance of succeeding. There's currently a lot of money going to doomed projects, initiated by people with only an idea. That money would be better spent on similar projects by people with a concrete plan and relevant skills and experience in addition to ideas.

It's not that people are malicious: they are just unprepared. Which is why many startups fail: people have no idea what they are getting themselves into. At least burning through your own money teaches a harsh lesson. Burning through free money hurts a lot less.

> Which is why many startups fail: people have no idea what they are getting themselves into. At least burning through your own money teaches a harsh lesson. Burning through free money hurts a lot less.

Couldn't agree more. I agree crowdfunding should require a little more upfront from the project managers (or rather we as a community should refuse to fund projects that don't) which will no doubt turn some people away from seeking crowdfunded money but that's probably for the best.

The problem is that you can't reasonably estimate what it costs/takes to achieve some very-lofty goal.

The goals are simply too pie-in-the-sky. Set some very simple goal like getting an app with xmpp working first. Then do another campaign to add some security features. And so on.

Couldn't you have a kickstarter where you only get part of a lump sum in the beginning for investments, and then minimum-wage for each employee each month? Keep the start-up lean and hungry and perhaps intrinsically motivated. I guess there's many problems and ideas that couldn't be funded this way but for those that can maybe they'd stand a higher chance of succeeding.

Even better was if you had a startup mentor that approved expenses.

I presume that the kind of people needed to do most of these things won't work for minimum wage. And, make no mistake, Kickstarter is mostly about hiring people to do the things promised using the money, not about the people pitching the idea doing it themselves.

Snowden, kickstarter, bitcoins within the first few paragraphs. I see where this is going...

scrolls to the bottom

Yeah, thought so. It's amazing how you can raise more than $100k with this bullshit without having even basic qualifications to accomplish your plans. It's amazing how people fall for this kind of crap again and again. See also: Ritot watch, Arist coffeemaker and so on.

It is almost as if not every single project is a success.

It's almost as if you have project masterminded by "idea guys" without any regard for its technical, or even physical feasibility, designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator to attract people with little experience in investing, it is likely to end up being either a scam or a total failure.

Which frankly is the same thing that many Silicon Valley startups do, except the investors have far more experience, yet still put money in.

Frankly investing is a risk, and if you aren't willing to take that risk then you shouldn't do it. Not every Silicon Valley startup is a success, not every Kickstarter is a success.

It's just how the game works.

It's almost as if Kickstarter's business model optimizes for "idea guys." If a particular set of economic incentives creates a particular kind of parasite, the problem is the ecology of the niche, not the parasite. You can't make con-artists cease to exist; you have to change the game so it's not one con-artists want to play.

Ow:( This may be the saddest thing I read in a long time. I'm a very active person online (more than 10 hours/day) and have many friends in many countries that I communicate with on daily basis. Aside from Email, due to privacy concerns, I avoided any messaging platform (whether on FB, TW, Whatsapp, Viber, Skype, and any other platform) since 2003. I was eagerly waiting for the moment to introduce Hemlis to all my friends who have been complaining about my presence in online messaging platforms for more than a decade! Some of the issues you raised for the closure are very valid while I believe this project was more than just a secure messaging app. Its about an extremely respectable group of people (with spectacular track record on creating a better, open and free internet for everybody on this planet) start to work another project for the same better internet for all idea. I'm absolutely sure you all have thought about these points for a long time and all I want to say is even though I'm extremely disappointed, I will be the first one to support you on any other project that you guys are a part of (I really hope there is one soon) and I'm sure you did your best to prevent this from happening. Good luck to all of you:) Amir

Why are you not using Signal / Textsecure or any other of these new apps which have privacy in mind. IIRC they even said Hemlis won't be open source according to their FAQ so I don't think these 3 guys would've pulled this off any better than Telegram even with their dubious encryption.

I can use these apps but in order to be able to recommend it to my friends as an app that can replace Whatsapp or Viber, it should have a comparable UI/UX. I too was concerned about their source availability approach. What will you suggest that meets these criteria?

I'd suggest WhisperSystem's Signal [0], it's currently available on iOS and Android [1] and open source [2].

[0] https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/03/02/signal-iphones...

[1] https://whispersystems.org/blog/signal/

[2] https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-iOS

Seems they changed their mind about open source, according to the comments section[1] "We’ll release the usable parts of the code as free software with the most free license we can. It belongs to the community (and the community paid for it)."

[1] http://blog.brokep.com/2015/04/22/update-on-heml-is/#comment...

I actually forgot I contributed to this.

Pretty disappointing, but it sounds like a totally reasonable series of events so I don't have hard feelings.

Signal / Textsecure are great apps, so I'd look to that if you're looking for security.

"Just think – verification by SMS for all of the potential users would be millions of dollars even at a few cents per SMS."

What? They received $147,210 from 10074 backers, even if every SMS sent costs you $0.04 (pricing from twilio for my country) you can send 50 millon before it's costing you "millions of dollars".

Do you really think that 10k backers is going to translate into whatsapp-scale from launch?

Maybe try blaming it on server prices next, because the thousands of servers you will surely need are going to cost you millions too.

"I personally had other issues as I got kidnapped by the swedish government and locked up for my work with another project – The Pirate Bay. In the middle of the kidnapping, my father died."

Ouch... sincere condolences.

P.S.: I contributed and i understand your reasons to let it go. Fine with me. At least you tried, which is someting most of "us" don't even do.

Bitcoin wallet stolen. Isn't this gambling with the money of the people that funded?

I wonder how the heck it happened... How can we expect someone to build a secure messaging system if they can't even secure their bitcoins?

i feel like a secure messaging app should be OS in the first place though ?! textsecture / smssecure has been walking a slow and steady pace forward for years now, to me it seems like a project with vision/smart people that is worth putting resources into in wake of this one dying, if the product is something you are interested and believe in.

There's no excuse not to open source an app if it's privacy oriented. It's not enough to open source the part that does the crypto either, because how do you know it isn't accidentally logging plaintext data to a file somewhere before the crypto happens?

There are other ways to do lock-in besides closed-source clients. If it has "private" or "crypto" anywhere in the title, it needs to be open source.

I hope they at least open whatever source code exists.

They will according to the comments section http://blog.brokep.com/2015/04/22/update-on-heml-is/#comment...

For those asking/wishing for open source, according to the comments section[1] they will.

"We’ll release the usable parts of the code as free software with the most free license we can. It belongs to the community (and the community paid for it)."

[1] http://blog.brokep.com/2015/04/22/update-on-heml-is/#comment...

[Sorry for the multiple comment replies, I realized a top-comment might be better]

They could at least open source the code that has been made as part of the project.

They will according to the comment section[1]

"We’ll release the usable parts of the code as free software with the most free license we can. It belongs to the community (and the community paid for it)."

[1] http://blog.brokep.com/2015/04/22/update-on-heml-is/#comment...

I have a similar project I'm working on, and have thought about going after crowdfunding, but decided not to. It came down to a) not having any mentionable competitors in the space and b) not wanting to be one of those people who takes other people's money and ends up wasting it. So I am still working on it, as a side project, a few years later. Sometimes I wish I could devote myself full-time, but providing an open-source privacy app for the fun of it and for its own utility without thinking about paying the bills has made the project a lot more inspiring for me. I don't have to think about the bottom line, just "what would be useful to build next?"

This is what people did before crowdfunding. Maybe we all don't need $100K just to start and publish something useful.

> I got kidnapped by the swedish government and locked up for my work with another project – The Pirate Bay.

That's called "being arrested for breaking the law."

So, whats to say that they didn't take the 100 000 USD and gave to themselves the first day and barely haven't cared about Hemlis since then?

Nothing, but that's the risk of crowdfunding. At least in this case it was someone quite well known in the community with some sort of track record (flattr). Projects fail, and to be honest, it was always a possibility here with his legal problems.

It seems like it would be better if crowdfunding sites didn't give you the entire lump-sum up front but instead gave it to you incrementally as you completed pre-defined milestones.

So if you have 8 milestones you get 1/8 of the money up-front and then each time you achieve a milestone. If you take twice as long to achieve that first milestone and run out of your initial payment.... welp then you have to go back to the community and ask to renegotiate the arrangement.

Sounds like a solid plan. The backers could be given the option to vote if a certain milestone is met or not.

This is a very sad news, I was checking their website on a regular basis for updates...oh well at least they are honest instead of delivering an incomplete product with missing features. Hopefully someone else will take over or create something new with the same vision.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com