6 ms·

Quien – A better WHOIS lookup tool

100 points by bretthopper 5mo ago

johng 5mo ago
Looks well done, nice looking TUI. Does not specify if it's vibe coded or not, which I think should be normal practice now ;(
- unsnap_biceps 5mo ago
  it ships with a SKILL.md file, so if they're trying to enable AI to use it, it's a good bet that they used AI to build it.
- Zetaphor 5mo ago
  If the tool meets your needs, does that matter? Were you planning to make a meaningful contribution to the source? My assumption is that the vast majority of the people making these comments would have never even bothered to read the code, nevermind contribute to it. To put it another way, if you're enjoying eating sausages then what difference does it make how they're assembled?
  - multjoy 5mo ago
    If I'm eating a sausage, I like to be certain that no asbestos was used in its production.
    - janderland 5mo ago
      This is a ridiculous analogy. Test the app. Read its source code. Developers could always write toxic instruction in your tools. AI may write inefficient or messy code, but it’s far from nefarious. “Asbestos” code is written intentionally by humans, not unintentionally AI.
      - tgv 5mo ago
        That's a good way to guarantee nobody will use it. Who is going to test the app in a sandbox with godknowswhat kind of tooling needed to find malicious behavior and read the code? For a tool that's convenient once per decade?
        Zetaphor 5mo ago
        Nobody, and that's my point. 99% of people going to install the tool and never bother with the source. This was true before AI and is still true now.
        kube-system 5mo ago
        At no point ever in history could you guarantee that third party code downloaded from the internet was not malicious without some sort of security review. Software security assessments exist for this very purpose. You may personally lack the rigor to do this at home but those who have rigorous security processes absolutely do implement security reviews. There is a whole industry of professionals who do this work.
- davidodio 5mo ago
  why would it be normal? the code is there for you to look at and use or not. It is open-source, licensed as open source and is very clear about that. Why would you feel that the author(s) should need to specify anything else at all to satisfy your curiosity?
  - ssl-3 5mo ago
    There's a Kroger grocery store near my house. It's very convenient -- I'm near it almost every day I'm alive. They have all kinds of things there, including factory-made bread and factory-made eggs. There's also a tiny little Amish bakery that I know of. They make all kinds of things there, but the most interesting to me are the loaves of plain white bread that they bake every day (except Sunday) in their wood-fired oven. It is not near to me and is also off the beaten path a good bit, but I try to make a point to go there when I'm in the area. I usually just get a loaf of that plain white bread along with a dozen eggs from the chickens that they have roaming around outside eating bugs. I wouldn't call any aspect of it artisanal or anything like that, but it's definitely not made by machines. And for reasons I can't really rationalize or explain, I enjoy having things from the Amish bakery in my kitchen more than I do the superficially similar things that I get from Kroger. And yet: I usually eat the factory stuff from Kroger. On a strictly functional basis it's about the same to me. --- Anyway: Software. Did a bot write it? Did a person? Was it a combined effort? Does it even matter? I can accept that folks might prefer to have software in their library that is written by people. My acceptance of this does not require them to rationalize their preference, or for me to agree with it or even understand it. It's fine when someone cares about that kind of thing. And it's fine if they don't care, too. We're allowed to like what we like. It's good to have options, and it's OK to prefer one way over another.
    - charcircuit 5mo ago
      Kroger has bakeries within their stores where they bake bread they sell.
      - ssl-3 5mo ago
        They do. But the things from that bakery are made as the product of a soulless megacorp. The process may occur in-store, but it is prescribed from on-high, not invented or tweaked locally. And bread from the Kroger bakery costs more to buy than bread from this Amish bakery does. So for those reasons, and some others that I could probably never properly articulate, having bread from the Kroger bakery in my kitchen does not enhance my joy. It instead diminishes it. Personal preferences can be weird. In this instance, I prefer to actively avoid things from the Kroger bakery.
- JimDabell 5mo ago
  Not every conversation has to be a conversation about AI.
notepad0x90 5mo ago
Nice to see first-class RDAP support. Feature Request: BGP route lookup using looking glasses of your choice, and Peeringdb lookup for the ASN. https://www.peeringdb.com/apidocs/ https://www.peeringdb.com/apidocs/
- retlehs 5mo ago
  Thanks for the request! Shipped both in https://github.com/retlehs/quien/pull/4 https://github.com/retlehs/quien/pull/4
  - indigodaddy 5mo ago
    Another feature request. Why not have a nice webui interface to this? Obviously could just vibecode something on top of what you did but putting it out there that that would be cool
    - retlehs 5mo ago
      The goal was a fast terminal tool, and I'm not ruling it out, but considering how hard it would be to compete in the SERPs with other whois sites, I don't think I'd spend the time on it right now
      - indigodaddy 5mo ago
        Why would you care about competing with other whois sites? I don't think it's going to be a money making venture in any case, and you could easily host it for free on fly.io
        retlehs 5mo ago
        This was really just a personal tool I built because I got tired of parsing default whois output. Don’t have the bandwidth for a web UI right now, maybe down the road. It’s not about making money. It’s more that there’s no real way for people to discover it by competing for visibility on whois-related searches against established sites.
gigatexal 5mo ago
Everyone asking was this vibe coded should calm down. Instead we should just have automated ways to audit the code to see if it’s secure, see if it’s going to steal our keys, etc. If it provides value who cares? I mean we could read the code to see if it does anything nefarious. Or have a bought do a check or checks. But asking every time there’s a show HN is it vibe coded is such gatekeeping elitest nonsense it makes me angry.
- mathfailure 5mo ago
  I do. I care. And there are dozens of us. Lots of infected programs provide value. It has nothing to do with being or not being infected. If a project was vibecoded in a weekend - there are less chances that it will still be maintained in a, say, year or two.
  - mvdwoord 5mo ago
    But if it is open source you could maintain it? It could be "done" for a given state of affairs (protocol/API versions etc)?
    - imcritic 5mo ago
      Such action has non-zero cost/effort. Do I really want to pay it? I am not sure.
    - Leomuck 5mo ago
      Of course you could, but if it was indeed vibe-coded in a weekend, why wouldn't you want to start from scratch to make sure everything is up to your standards (especially security)? I'm definitely not going to jump in on a vibe-coded project. I'd much rather start from scratch if I found the use-case to be relevant. Not to say vibe-coded projects can't be alright. If the engineer behind it knows their stuff, it's fine to me. But we don't know that. So to get a general idea, I think it's fair to ask how this was done.
  - synotna 5mo ago
    Don't give programs unnecessary access - problem solved
faangguyindia 5mo ago
Thanks for this, it's very useful to me :)
absqueued 5mo ago
This is super cool, I had made one similar but with web/GUI. [1] https://pluswhois.com https://pluswhois.com
m0d0nne11 5mo ago
Installation instructions for Ubuntu / Debian are curl -fsSL https://apt.quien.dev/install.sh https://apt.quien.dev/install.sh | sudo sh Seriously? Yikes!

100 points by bretthopper 5mo ago

johng 5mo ago

Looks well done, nice looking TUI. Does not specify if it's vibe coded or not, which I think should be normal practice now ;(

unsnap_biceps 5mo ago
it ships with a SKILL.md file, so if they're trying to enable AI to use it, it's a good bet that they used AI to build it.
Zetaphor 5mo ago
If the tool meets your needs, does that matter? Were you planning to make a meaningful contribution to the source? My assumption is that the vast majority of the people making these comments would have never even bothered to read the code, nevermind contribute to it. To put it another way, if you're enjoying eating sausages then what difference does it make how they're assembled?
- multjoy 5mo ago
  If I'm eating a sausage, I like to be certain that no asbestos was used in its production.
  - janderland 5mo ago
    This is a ridiculous analogy. Test the app. Read its source code. Developers could always write toxic instruction in your tools. AI may write inefficient or messy code, but it’s far from nefarious. “Asbestos” code is written intentionally by humans, not unintentionally AI.
    - tgv 5mo ago
      That's a good way to guarantee nobody will use it. Who is going to test the app in a sandbox with godknowswhat kind of tooling needed to find malicious behavior and read the code? For a tool that's convenient once per decade?
      - Zetaphor 5mo ago
        Nobody, and that's my point. 99% of people going to install the tool and never bother with the source. This was true before AI and is still true now.
      - kube-system 5mo ago
        At no point ever in history could you guarantee that third party code downloaded from the internet was not malicious without some sort of security review. Software security assessments exist for this very purpose. You may personally lack the rigor to do this at home but those who have rigorous security processes absolutely do implement security reviews. There is a whole industry of professionals who do this work.
davidodio 5mo ago
why would it be normal? the code is there for you to look at and use or not. It is open-source, licensed as open source and is very clear about that. Why would you feel that the author(s) should need to specify anything else at all to satisfy your curiosity?
- ssl-3 5mo ago
  There's a Kroger grocery store near my house. It's very convenient -- I'm near it almost every day I'm alive. They have all kinds of things there, including factory-made bread and factory-made eggs. There's also a tiny little Amish bakery that I know of. They make all kinds of things there, but the most interesting to me are the loaves of plain white bread that they bake every day (except Sunday) in their wood-fired oven. It is not near to me and is also off the beaten path a good bit, but I try to make a point to go there when I'm in the area. I usually just get a loaf of that plain white bread along with a dozen eggs from the chickens that they have roaming around outside eating bugs. I wouldn't call any aspect of it artisanal or anything like that, but it's definitely not made by machines. And for reasons I can't really rationalize or explain, I enjoy having things from the Amish bakery in my kitchen more than I do the superficially similar things that I get from Kroger. And yet: I usually eat the factory stuff from Kroger. On a strictly functional basis it's about the same to me. --- Anyway: Software. Did a bot write it? Did a person? Was it a combined effort? Does it even matter? I can accept that folks might prefer to have software in their library that is written by people. My acceptance of this does not require them to rationalize their preference, or for me to agree with it or even understand it. It's fine when someone cares about that kind of thing. And it's fine if they don't care, too. We're allowed to like what we like. It's good to have options, and it's OK to prefer one way over another.
  - charcircuit 5mo ago
    Kroger has bakeries within their stores where they bake bread they sell.
    - ssl-3 5mo ago
      They do. But the things from that bakery are made as the product of a soulless megacorp. The process may occur in-store, but it is prescribed from on-high, not invented or tweaked locally. And bread from the Kroger bakery costs more to buy than bread from this Amish bakery does. So for those reasons, and some others that I could probably never properly articulate, having bread from the Kroger bakery in my kitchen does not enhance my joy. It instead diminishes it. Personal preferences can be weird. In this instance, I prefer to actively avoid things from the Kroger bakery.
JimDabell 5mo ago
Not every conversation has to be a conversation about AI.

notepad0x90 5mo ago

Nice to see first-class RDAP support. Feature Request: BGP route lookup using looking glasses of your choice, and Peeringdb lookup for the ASN. https://www.peeringdb.com/apidocs/ https://www.peeringdb.com/apidocs/

retlehs 5mo ago
Thanks for the request! Shipped both in https://github.com/retlehs/quien/pull/4 https://github.com/retlehs/quien/pull/4
- indigodaddy 5mo ago
  Another feature request. Why not have a nice webui interface to this? Obviously could just vibecode something on top of what you did but putting it out there that that would be cool
  - retlehs 5mo ago
    The goal was a fast terminal tool, and I'm not ruling it out, but considering how hard it would be to compete in the SERPs with other whois sites, I don't think I'd spend the time on it right now
    - indigodaddy 5mo ago
      Why would you care about competing with other whois sites? I don't think it's going to be a money making venture in any case, and you could easily host it for free on fly.io
      - retlehs 5mo ago
        This was really just a personal tool I built because I got tired of parsing default whois output. Don’t have the bandwidth for a web UI right now, maybe down the road. It’s not about making money. It’s more that there’s no real way for people to discover it by competing for visibility on whois-related searches against established sites.

gigatexal 5mo ago

Everyone asking was this vibe coded should calm down. Instead we should just have automated ways to audit the code to see if it’s secure, see if it’s going to steal our keys, etc. If it provides value who cares? I mean we could read the code to see if it does anything nefarious. Or have a bought do a check or checks. But asking every time there’s a show HN is it vibe coded is such gatekeeping elitest nonsense it makes me angry.

mathfailure 5mo ago
I do. I care. And there are dozens of us. Lots of infected programs provide value. It has nothing to do with being or not being infected. If a project was vibecoded in a weekend - there are less chances that it will still be maintained in a, say, year or two.
- mvdwoord 5mo ago
  But if it is open source you could maintain it? It could be "done" for a given state of affairs (protocol/API versions etc)?
  - imcritic 5mo ago
    Such action has non-zero cost/effort. Do I really want to pay it? I am not sure.
  - Leomuck 5mo ago
    Of course you could, but if it was indeed vibe-coded in a weekend, why wouldn't you want to start from scratch to make sure everything is up to your standards (especially security)? I'm definitely not going to jump in on a vibe-coded project. I'd much rather start from scratch if I found the use-case to be relevant. Not to say vibe-coded projects can't be alright. If the engineer behind it knows their stuff, it's fine to me. But we don't know that. So to get a general idea, I think it's fair to ask how this was done.
- synotna 5mo ago
  Don't give programs unnecessary access - problem solved

faangguyindia 5mo ago

Thanks for this, it's very useful to me :)

absqueued 5mo ago

This is super cool, I had made one similar but with web/GUI. [1] https://pluswhois.com https://pluswhois.com

m0d0nne11 5mo ago

Installation instructions for Ubuntu / Debian are curl -fsSL https://apt.quien.dev/install.sh https://apt.quien.dev/install.sh | sudo sh Seriously? Yikes!