I checked one of [your samples](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/disso...), with [this response](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?

Who wants to pay them $4.20 to ask them "Is it legal to copy and paste content from sites like Reddit and Stackoverflow without attribution?"?

Thanks for taking the time to go through the questions. I posted that question myself, since it came to me from a third degree contact in the US on my legal website as you will see here: http://www.helplicit.com/askQuestion/:Company-dissolving

Since our legal services broadly cover EU/India at the moment (Uk is WIP) and I'm an engineer, I wanted to help the person out thus went hunting for an answer which was on the house. Whilst scraping this site together, I pulled together some of the answers that we provided to reflect the spectrum of answers as well as our willingness to help, even at the cost of man hunting for answers myself which are on the house. Hope it helps.

If it were my intention to scrape, I would have just picked the most upvoted answers on SO, instead I picked one with 2 upvotes since it was one I provided.

Attribution has now been added.

I don't see any attribution. Also your terms and conditions / privacy page is in French and talks about the wrong site

Sorry for that, the pages have been corrected. We've redirected the 'recent questions' to our legal website where we've been answering questions for a few weeks now:

http://helplicit.com/questionDashboard

If the person who's asking the question is unable to google it himself or ask on reddit/so, what's wrong about paying other people to do it for him?

Precisely, one of our motivations stems from this thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20859332

Not something I can answer in 42 minutes unfortunately. Have an amazing day.

Dude, that's way out of line. Lets keep the personal attacks out of HN.

So is gaming the HN voting system.

Thanks for taking the time to go through the questions. I posted that question myself, since it came to me from a third degree contact in the US on my legal website as you will see here:

http://www.helplicit.com/askQuestion/:Company-dissolving

Since our legal services broadly cover EU/India at the moment (Uk is WIP) and I'm an engineer, I wanted to help the person out thus went hunting for an answer which was on the house. Whilst scraping this site together, I pulled together some of the answers that we provided to reflect the spectrum of answers as well as our willingness to help, even at the cost of man hunting for answers myself which are on the house. Hope it helps.

I think your entire setup is extremely risky, and should be reconsidered.

Not sure why you would say that, given that we've been answering legal questions for weeks now under the YC SUS program and have been surfing 5 star ratings on our Facebook page:

http://helplicit.com/

The reason we're going beyond is because we've been getting questions from other domains as well, and are just following what our existing customers are asking us for.

> > 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?

Maybe a little O/T but if you have a company supposedly valued at 8M and you need to pay $4 for 'legal help' from a Wix sham site, then you probably deserve to lose it all!

As previously mentioned, the question was originally posted on a legal website that we've been running for a few weeks now:

http://www.helplicit.com/askQuestion/:Company-dissolving

And the third sample is taken directly from StackOverflow...

Weird! It's given as [third in their "Recent questions"](https://ankuj3.wixsite.com/website-5/q-tech), but StackOverflow appears to list both that [question and answer](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48373718/) as being from 2018.

The SO source in question is one that I have answered, and not copied from any random source off the internet.

That 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-t... .

You are missing the attribution part from https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/.

And you intend to be taken seriously as a site that will answer legal questions?

Point noted. I will change the question for one that we answered on our website, there are numerous examples:

http://helplicit.com/

Again the idea was and is to demonstrate diversity. Appreciate you pointing that out though.

So what is your plan for the 99.99999% of domains where you aren't knowledgeable?

I have a piece of paper that tells me I'm an expert in some domains, and there are more than enough straightforward questions in my field I can't answer in 42 minutes, and certainly not for $4.20, even if I was just paid minimum wage.

Not sure I quite got the piece of paper reference, but as the site suggests "If it can be done in 42, it will be done in 42"

Re your question about domains: sure we cannot cover everything at the moment. Other domains would work into our business model which will unfold over time. For the moment we'll stick to where we can bring most value :)

Well, what I was getting at is that even though I'm an "expert" I couldn't provide what you claim to be able to do.

And my field of expertise is a tiny subset of "IT". The other two fields you take questions on are "Legal" and "Finance".

Do you really think you can any non-trivial answer in those extremely broad fields?

Appreciate the point you make, but we're not claiming this to be the one stop shop for everything. Anything that we cannot do in 42 will either be politely refused or handed to someone who can. There are other platforms to hire talent for more elaborate jobs, we're not claiming to be one. Short contextual queries is where we'd be best suited to help :)

Why don’t you look it up?

Small 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".

Thanks for that tip! I couldn't get the redirect with masking to work in time, but cleaning it up as we speak :)

In time for what?

Well 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.

Move fast and break thing! Good stuff, things don’t need to be perfect.

Thanks! Appreciate the encouragement :)

Give an unsolved maths question. ;)

Then the answer is: current math cannot solve this question.

Answer can be lots of things, it's easy to avoid actually answering the question.

Hey 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 :)

You said "Any" question :(

Updated to "If it can be done in 42, it will be done in 42." on the website :)

So if it cannot be done in 42 minutes, it will not be done, right?

Since 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.

What is your agency's policy for answering Newcomb's problem?

I 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?

I 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.

I'm sorry, I completely missed that you were relating it to the agency's problem.

I thought you were just giving any paradox as an example of a difficult problem, and could have given any.

I don't quite follow the analogy with this agency's policies, could you make it a bit more clear? What are the "boxes" in this case?

Not at all. It's correct that this problem is formally recognized as a false paradox. It is a thought experiment infamous for its illustrative misuse in relation to other areas. "What are the 'boxes' in this case?" - The unfortunate choice of fiat is one such area, and it is correct for practical purposes to discard the subject right here because answers will modify the service, or fail a test. So fail a test, it's not a problem. Ignore the unstated false equivalences between test criteria and aim to break the criterion that matters least. Different situations call for different choices, but standard consensus is to admit to 2-boxing. Different hybrid strategies are improved by personal values. By 1-boxing I don't value my time, I value the information. While I'm coming up to speed I might get a chance to use it. That could take a while though, I have a decent memory but I'm not a fast proofreader.

Interesting take on this whole scheme of things, thanks for taking the time. I'd add that we're qualifying the question before accepting payment i.e. if its out of scope, we politely decline.

On a side note, aren't we already doing the same when we go to white collar practitioners like doctors and lawyers for advice? I mean you pay the service irrespective of whether we like the advice or not. With FortyQ, we're giving you a way out of that with refunds.

Glad to hear that. The Freemium solution is certainly a simple one, but I didn't feel it was appropos. Personally I'd have to start writing a day ahead to have a chance at formalizing my question before the time limit. Expert advice does benefit from codified standards but it's hopefully dissimilar in that the question I brought features a double bind; It doesn't have a 'winning' answer. There are tons of regular answers, so an expert would just tell you not to fall for it. Education against them is one of the few ways I acknowledge of their constructive use, and I'd guess logicallee still won't be satisfied with my breakdown. I do what I can.

I see your point regarding a double bind, and it is something we see a lot in blogs I guess with conflicting viewpoints? Its true that there is a significant effort involved in formulating the question properly, but it also ensures getting a chiseled answer. Something we noted as well with paid questions: the amount of detail provided improves dramatically.

One thing that I have noticed working legal questions in the past weeks is that people more lost than they were when given all possible viewpoints and given the possibility to choose. More often than not they are looking for someone to tell them what to do. Makes sense though if you think about it.

Not sure I entirely got the 'Education against them.. ' point, could you elaborate?

Against the use of double binds. To me they are an indicator of hostile intent, although as demonstrated here and in the practice of law, adversarial interactions can be constructive. This abstraction is incredibly beautiful, but typical examples are not necessarily nice.

Do double binds automatically come in though, when you allow people of disparate backgrounds and experiences a platform to express opinion?

Could be constructive though as far as law is concerned.

What typical examples would you refer to?

They could, though I think much of that can be mitigated with effort. I believe the textbook example is domestic abuse, but I worry that the scope also coincides with fallout from poisoned well attacks and tribalistic recruitment efforts.

Thanks 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 :)

So what qualifies the folks answering the questions to answer them?

PhD in Googleology.

Fair 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.

Not the best example though - student loans are used for getting a pedigree and personal contacts.

Probably, in which case i'd end it at "information is free and knowledge isn't" :)

Who remembers Google Answers here? I made a few dollars on that back in the day....

http://answers.google.com/answers/

Thanks for sharing this, I didn't know about it! What was the selection process, and your experience? Very curious to know!

The selection process was awful. It was like a college final with the feeling of a stage audition.

The experience wasn't bad, but people were a bit more polite on the internet back then and usually paid up even when they weren't 100% satisfied with the answer.

Ah thanks for sharing your experience. Could I hit you up in a PM for some more details if it doesn't bother you?

In case you are open to the idea, my is [email protected]

Thanks in advance and hope to hear from you!

In case you're interested in becoming an expert 'answerer' for 40Q, I'd be happy to discuss possibilities!

We're happy sending you LinkedIn profiles of the people who are behind the answers. Transparency is our mantra.

Hi 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 :)

Google Answers [1] reloaded?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Answers

Yes 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.

It has the same logo as airbnb and skiplagged

It's to demonstrate the idea that we'd like to answer with a few notches of g as boost :)

Can God create a lift she herself cannot stone?

Totally, man, totally. You don't have buttermilk in the fridge, do you?

You forgot to charge 4.20 for your answer.

Why 420? Pot related?...

Probably another reference to "42" but 42 cents would be too cheap.

We'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 :)

$6/hr. is less than minimum wage. Are you outsourcing to slaves?

Afraid its too soon to answer that one, we're just testing a hypothesis atm :)

Yeah just make it up on volume.

That indeed is one way to go!

Why 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.

> 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)?

> 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

$4.20. Because sometimes Europeans start companies in the US.

And when they charge USD they should learn to correctly format USD-denominated amounts...

You have a point but is there any currency notation in which 4,20 can be equal to 420 - thus omitting the "," ? When for example I see 4.20, as a European I assume "." is the decimal separator and not a mistake thus the number 420

If I have never seen a European decimal comma I would certainly be very confused -- most people aren't familiar with foreign currency notations and a hundred separator assuming that's a thing (most people aren't equipped to answer the question of whether it's a thing, me included) would be as foreign as a decimal comma if not less when you're familiar with comma as a thousand separator.

(I was confused for a second anyway but tipped off by the outrageousness of $420.)

Edit: Since this is Hacker News, let's talk about programming languages. 4_20 is the same as 420 in Python (3.7+) but not 4.20; 4'20 is the same as 420 in C++ (14+) but not 4.20.

If you haven't encountered the other system, you might expect it to be consistent everywhere. Or otherwise you might expect most people to understand either version. I don't think it's a big deal.

Sounds like you were never really in doubt of the answer...

Not that it matters much, but decimal comma is somewhat more widespread than "some non-English speaking European countries": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator#/media/File:...

You could ask them...

Hi guys, the culprit founder here. Indeed 4,20 => 4.20 Apologies for the snafu, been corrected now :)

and pay $4.20 :D

Or $420. Risky.

Just kidding, it's USD 4.20.

In Britain it's normal to separate pounds from pence with a comma, at least in handwriting. In handwriting people also use a dash. A dot just isn't visible enough. If you do use a dot then it should be a proper decimal point (£1·50), not a full stop. Typewriters are the work of the devil.

EDIT: It looks like I'm wrong about the comma used to separate pounds from pence: that's not normal in Britain. (What about '='? I think I've seen that in handwriting, but I can't say for sure in which country.)

Never seen a comma used in Britain, during my almost sixty years as a native. It's usually £1.50 (and yes, a central dot not a period unless typed), occasionally £1-50 which is most commonly seen on shop and handwritten market signs.

Pre decimal was almost always a '-' when there are pounds, a / (more like a super long apostrophe) when under 240p. So £5-2-6 for £5, 2 shillings and sixpence, 7/6 for seven and sixpence. Less common was £5 6s 2d, or slashes £2/19/2 3⁄4d, but there were a lot of conventions for written Lsd, with nary a comma among 'em. :)

Edit: to your edit, = was common (seems much less so now) for whole pounds, and in the pre-decimal era too, e.g. £1/==, or simply £1==. Also pre decimal whole shillings: 5/=, sometimes 5/-. In the days we still wrote cheques when it was for whole pounds it was common to fill the remainder of the figures box with two lines, essentially =====, after the £250 or whatever numerals.

> In Britain it's normal to separate pounds from pence with a comma

I've never seen that.

Ummm, £1.50 is how almost everyone would type it or write it. Commas as decimal separators is most commonly used in mainland Europe I think.

Constructive 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.)

For what its worth, the site didn't put me off. Viewing on mobile.

Hi 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 :)

> I was too impatient to test it out lol

And you want me to give you money? C’mon.

he's asking for 4.20$ so it's ok to be a bit lazy :D .. 4.10 or 4.30 and i'd expect him to know CSS and to be able to tell me what ISA quantum computers use :O

Fair point, though I'd like to add that Paypal has a rigorous process for vetting businesses, which means that if I were a fraudster I wouldn't be able to share payment links in the first place.

Doesn't acquit me of putting up a bare bones site up in the first place though :)

I 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.

I 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.