YHK - yet another hacker news clone

FreeDNS

112 points esher 1 hour ago 25 comments

esher 1 hour ago | parent

I am a free tier sucker. I use it for testing DNS setups with our hosting platform. But I love it. Maybe some exposure helps to bring some paying customers.

hattmall 1 hour ago | parent

This is one of the most solid and longest lasting services online. Have been using it for almost two decades I think and nothing's changed.

zulux 1 hour ago | parent

This is awesome. I'll use them as a backup DNS service; the paid version is significantly cheaper than spinning up a new domain server with the cheapest provider I know.

Not to downplay my own skills, but their OpenBSD infrastructure is a good idea. They'll be up when my DNS servers are down.

CUViper 1 hour ago | parent

Isn't it FreeBSD?

thatonehack 58 minutes ago | parent

Yes.

baq 1 hour ago | parent

Happy freeloader for something like 15 years, can recommend

tracker1 18 minutes ago | parent

I have a couple domains (notably BBS.io) with them for people to use as ddns sub domains. Pretty happy overall.

jck86 48 minutes ago | parent

mooo!

amelius 45 minutes ago | parent

I am interested, but I have some questions that don't seem to be addressed in the about us page:

How well is continuation guaranteed?

What if someone buys them? Or the maintainer stops for whatever reason?

gertop 18 minutes ago | parent

afraid.org has been there offering free DNS hosting since the year 2000, 26 years

Whilst it would be nice to know their contingency and continuity plans, I feel like their history is a better indicator of the future than just a bunch of feel-good words that you'd likely find a way to interpret pesssimisticly anyway.

IgorPartola 43 minutes ago | parent

This looks so much like https://dns.he.net/ that it seems to me it can’t be a coincidence. Is this a case of copying a well known design or is there more to it?

jstanley 39 minutes ago | parent

Doesn't look that similar to me, they both just look a bit old.

srik 39 minutes ago | parent

I wouldn't think much of it. It was a popular design trend for a while there; some just never updated. I don't blame them, it's fairly decent on readability and minimalism.

rvz 40 minutes ago | parent

Site has been hugged to death.

Free services are never free. It is only free because someone else is paying.

I don’t use this but “hoping” that someone else will donate is not sustainable for them and unrealistic in the long term.

Maybe they should start charging.

assimpleaspossi 34 minutes ago | parent

Well, they've been around for 14 years. And they do charge for some services.

ibejoeb 19 minutes ago | parent

Looks like they've been around for 25 years.

assimpleaspossi 36 minutes ago | parent

Can someone explain how and why and when this would be used?

electrotype 32 minutes ago | parent

I use one of their "dynamic domain" as a stable address to point to my home computer : example.mooo.com instead of using the IP. They provide an endpoint for a cron to update this IP each X time.

mistrial9 31 minutes ago | parent

similarly, someone please explain why a free citizen would voluntarily use a Google DNS service that builds profiles and extensive activity records on its users

TheSkyHasEyes 28 minutes ago | parent

Is this meant to be snarky? I don't get it. To them, it is a sincere question.

kemotep 24 minutes ago | parent

So to get this straight this is just hosted DNS? Like Route53? They aren’t a registrar or anything?

So you could pay for hosted DNS and then use them as the name server and other DNS records for multiple domains that you have?

rlonstein 18 minutes ago | parent

One of the 5,000+ premium members. I've been using them as a secondary and for dynamic dns since... I have no idea for how long but much further back than 2015 when I started using a password manager that keeps history, probably circa 2005.

tylerius 17 minutes ago | parent

Their backup DNS service is great, so you can run your own DNS with just one server.

https://nic.eu.org/ is also very cool for getting a domain name if paying for one is a challenge.