Hacker News: xiwenc

New comment by xiwenc in "Three Thoughts on Dark Code"

xiwenc — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 21:19:32 +0000

Software architecture will become more important. I noticed LLM’s tend to create more code than prefer re-use. This behavior increases “dark code” volume. It would be significantly less when more “proven libraries” exist with well defined and proven behavior.

New comment by xiwenc in "Upbound released a new opentofu crossplane provider version and a time bomb"

xiwenc — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 11:16:46 +0000

I'm new to the crossplane ecosystem. Today suddenly i noticed my opentofu provider pod is failing. Upon further investigation it turns out the version i'm using has been moved behind paid wall.

I'm surprised this type of dark practice is now accepted in the industry. I'm sad.

Upbound released a new opentofu crossplane provider version and a time bomb

xiwenc — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 11:16:46 +0000

Article URL: https://marketplace.upbound.io/providers/upbound/provider-opentofu/v0.2.7

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44983119

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

Show HN: API for free wildcard domain name

xiwenc — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 16:02:17 +0000

Article URL: https://wildcard.jolly-ops.com/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44942107

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by xiwenc in "Show HN: Get Wildcard Subdomain Instantly"

xiwenc — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 15:39:09 +0000

OP here. We, from Low-ops.com, needed a way for users to get started with their private instances with minimal friction. Since it is an application platform that comes preloaded with diverse set of services, a wildcard (public) subdomain is needed.

Tech wise it is a simple nextjs app that uses AWS Route53 as store and state.

I’m happy to answer any question you might have.

Show HN: Get Wildcard Subdomain Instantly

xiwenc — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 12:02:06 +0000

Article URL: https://wildcard.jolly-ops.com/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44592358

Points: 8

# Comments: 1

New comment by xiwenc in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)"

xiwenc — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 14:49:10 +0000

I'm working on Internal Developer Platform for private clouds. Kind of like private Heroku. It works standalone and installed fully automatic. With primary focus on Low Operations and Self-service where app developers can focus on delivering real business value instead of boilerplate tasks or waiting for other teams to plan and execute standard tasks.

We originally started supporting Low-code solution called Mendix. Now we support any type of web app that can be packaged as an OCI image.

You can read or try it at: https://low-ops.com

New comment by xiwenc in "Redis is open source again"

xiwenc — Thu, 01 May 2025 16:14:06 +0000

A bit more info from CEO: https://redis.io/blog/agplv3/

Sounds like SSPL did not yield the desired outcome.

Glad AGPL is an option now.

New comment by xiwenc in "Netlify deploys hundreds of thousands of Next.js sites – here's what challenging"

xiwenc — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 14:27:02 +0000

Unfortunately commercial companies tend to work behind closed doors/gardens. We are working on Low-Ops.com and would love to fully support NextJS. Self-hosting is the future :)

New comment by xiwenc in "Swimmable Cities"

xiwenc — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 10:33:52 +0000

Great initiative! As a relatively late swimmer (started learning in my thirties), more people should be able to swim.

I was expecting to see a map or list of places/cities to find out whether it’s safe to swim. But it seems that is not part of this initiative?

New comment by xiwenc in "How we migrated onto K8s in less than 12 months"

xiwenc — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 20:13:36 +0000

I’m baffled to see so many anti-k8s sentiments on HN. Is it because most commenters are developers used to services like heroku, fly.io, render.com etc. Or run their apps on VM’s?

New comment by xiwenc in "Hundred Rabbits is a small collective exploring the failability of modern tech"

xiwenc — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 05:44:50 +0000

Reading through the homepage one part stood out: they burn through quite some laptops. I wonder, perhaps it’s related to their environment? Salpeter is probably damaging the electronics. Consumer laptops were never designed to be out on sea for such extended time.

Now… what could they do about this issue? Assuming this is the root cause of the failures.

Ask HN: The P in pdf is a lie?

xiwenc — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 08:43:24 +0000

Yesterday I received a form from a third party in .docx format. They probably use MS Windows and MS word to create it.

I am on a mac. So I opened the file in Pages.app and export it to pdf. I then proceed to complete the form with Preview.app. After that i saved my pdf and emailed it back to third party.

Today third party replied: the pdf file is corrupted. Can you please send .docx file?

Did I do something very stupid or indeed Portable Document Format is a big lie?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41127243

Points: 4

# Comments: 4

New comment by xiwenc in "Google Distributed Cloud air-gapped appliance"

xiwenc — Sun, 21 Jul 2024 07:09:05 +0000

The sad reality is probably not.

I personally would prefer organizations to own their hardware as in the early age of internet. It was meant to be decentralized. However in the last 2 decades centralization has prevailed.

I think it is sad because look at the CrowdStrike incident earlier this week. Or outages in AWS, cloudflare etc. These are examples why decentralization would give people/organizations power and control.

This mentality of making it “someone else’s problem” with outsourcing is a fairy tale. In the end your business is at risk. Let alone the overhead and inefficiencies.

Perhaps another analogy: if one eats out every day and never learnt how to cook a meal themselves. When the situation presents itself there is no cook around. One would probably starve or resort to simple food sources like whole fruits.

New comment by xiwenc in "PySkyWiFi: Free stupid wi-fi on long-haul flights"

xiwenc — Tue, 09 Jul 2024 19:02:32 +0000

With “cheap” i meant it was still affordable. If it was 10x then it would not be affordable. Just like a bottle a water costs more at the airport, internet access costs more on a plane in the sky.

Perhaps i am a bit biased i would expense the bill to the company. A few hours of work definitely pays back the prepaid internet.

As mentioned, a decade or two ago, this was not possible or very limited to the elites. I certainly dont feel or behave like an elite. So it is “affordable” to me

New comment by xiwenc in "PySkyWiFi: Free stupid wi-fi on long-haul flights"

xiwenc — Tue, 09 Jul 2024 13:11:49 +0000

KLM, specially on long flights, has a free tier wifi where you can use major instant messaging without charge. If you want to surf the web, it’s pretty cheap. If i recall around 30-40 euro for a 9-10hours flight. Or pay less for an hour.

Was considering to “hack” my way out of the free tier. But paying was just too easy and it’s affordable.

Sorry for boring addition/story.

New comment by xiwenc in "The Cheapest NAS"

xiwenc — Wed, 03 Jul 2024 20:57:01 +0000

Same here. I have wireguard vpn for the few times i need it to tunnel my traffic through home or need to access larger files not sync’ed with syncthing.

My nas is a Synology. Vpn is also used so that i can continue sending timemachine backups back home when i’m traveling.

New comment by xiwenc in "A Git story: Not so fun this time"

xiwenc — Mon, 01 Jul 2024 21:51:31 +0000

It’s been awhile since i actually finished reading an article this long. Very well written!

I tried to find out who the author is or how come he/she knows so much. No luck. Anyone else knows or OP care to chip in?

New comment by xiwenc in "AeroSpace is an i3-like tiling window manager for macOS"

xiwenc — Fri, 07 Jun 2024 07:00:45 +0000

Got the same issue. I am still to find a WM that can deal with native OSX fullscreen mode.

Aerospace goes bongers when i have native full screen. It will get confused on what to focus. My case:

Workspace 1: terminal Workspace 2: slack app Open chrome in native full screen

Now try to switch to workspace 1.

Will give it more time without native fullscreen apps for a while. Hopefully it works better.

Show HN: Apple Shortcut to automate data point insertion to Health.app

xiwenc — Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:44:10 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/cinaq/apple-shortcuts/tree/main/EgymFitnessHub2Health

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40554591

Points: 1

# Comments: 0