Top all-time · #5511
Alin Panaitiu
Personal blog · alinpanaitiu.com/blog · on HN as alin23programminghardwaredesign
Alin Panaitiu writes Copper • A blog about conductive layers, a personal blog at alinpanaitiu.com about programming, hardware and design. Since 2021, 14 different Hacker News readers have linked it 61 times, most often “The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-03-04, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog as the home of the author of Lunar, a display-control app, and as a record of personal projects that have done well on HN. The comments cite it as background rather than praising the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
This website is supposed to be part portfolio, part rambling space. A place where I'll try show my skills and projects, and also brag about them as much as possible. Because it's my website right? I'm allowed to do that!
Most-linked posts?
- The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs4 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2021-07-30
- Reverse engineering the MacBook clamshell mode (2023)4 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2023-01-20
- Why aren't the most useful Mac apps on the App Store?4 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2021-12-04
- The complex simplicity of my static websites3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-08-11
- How good is Claude, really?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-03-05
- A window switcher on the Mac App Store? Is it even possible?2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-08-03
- Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-04-30
- Developing a food-safe finish for my wooden spoons2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-12-09
- /2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-07-04
- Making my own sharpening blocks2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-10-12
What Hacker News says?
When I first saw this product announced, I immediately wanted to replace my manual solution with it. I’ve been putting it off because other work had to be done, but now that I read this, I think I’ll stick with my current workflow for now. What I’ve been doing is first resize an image to multiple specific sizes using Vips ( https://www.libvips.org/API/current/using-cli.html ) for size in 8120 5260 3840 2560 1920 120…
Comment linking /
on “Issues with Cloudflare Images”Submitted Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software as a story · 730 points
HN discussionFor the Command Tab issue, I created rcmd to fix it: https://lowtechguys.com/rcmd It became really annoying to press tab 5 times just to get to the app I need. If you’re interested in technical writings, I recently wrote about my journey to creating rcmd here: https://alinpanaitiu.com/blog/window-switcher-app-store/ The dock stops being a problem once you set it to automatically hide and find ways to use the mouse l…
Comment linking /blog/window-switcher-app-store/
on “Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade”Submitted The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs as a story · 364 points
HN discussionddcutil is the standard utility on Linux for that. It is just command line but it’s highly compatible and very easy to use: https://www.ddcutil.com/ I even use it for the network-based DDC in Lunar through a Raspberry Pi when wire-DDC from the Mac is not available: https://alinpanaitiu.com/blog/journey-to-ddc-on-m1-macs/#the...
Comment linking /blog/journey-to-ddc-on-m1-macs/
on “HDMI Firewall”Submitted Developing a food-safe finish for my wooden spoons as a story · 225 points
HN discussionHDMI offers so many protocols I didn’t know of. Before finding a way to use DDC on Apple Silicon [1] for Lunar ( https://lunar.fyi ), I contemplated creating a universal DDC/CI device that can change brightness, contrast, volume, input and colors of a monitor, by either receiving commands through HTTP, or acting as an Adaptive Brightness standalone device. In my mind, it would have been an HDMI dongle with an ESP32…
Comment linking /blog/journey-to-ddc-on-m1-macs/
on “HDMI Firewall”Submitted Trying to get past the 500 nits limit of the MacBook Pro (and failing) as a story · 157 points
HN discussionI usually open source free apps, that I don't think I'll ever be able to sell because "who else could have the same problem as me?" If it turns out that people have a need and want to pay for Pro features, I try my best to keep the source available for the free part of the app, and only encrypt the code that constitutes the paid features. That happened with Lunar, and it seems to start happening with Clop as well. I…
Comment linking /blog/journey-to-ddc-on-m1-macs/
on “Ask HN: Alternative ways to make money with coding and system skills?”Submitted Why aren't the most useful Mac apps on the App Store? as a story · 73 points
HN discussionI have a few writings here: https://alinpanaitiu.com/blog/ And here: https://notes.alinpanaitiu.com/ The most desktop app technical + marketing related article would be: https://alinpanaitiu.com/blog/apps-outside-app-store/ I worked as a web dev for 5 years first, and those skills transferred well into the marketing and API part of the apps. For example my Lunar app even has a CLI that is implemented as client-serve…
Comment linking /blog/apps-outside-app-store/
on “Ask HN: Alternative ways to make money with coding and system skills?”Submitted Why aren't the most useful Mac apps on the App Store? as a story · 9 points
HN discussionThanks for the kind words! I’d say I had a year of full time work (on and off in 3 years of time) until I had Lunar 3 which was the most stable until Apple Silicon arrived: https://github.com/alin23/lunar/tree/lunar3 I had accumulated about $5k in donations over those years which allowed me to quit my job, do 6 months of full time work in 3 months of time, and launch Lunar 4 with support for Apple Silicon: https://a…
Comment linking /blog/journey-to-ddc-on-m1-macs/
on “Ask HN: Alternative ways to make money with coding and system skills?”Submitted A window switcher on the Mac App Store? Is it even possible? as a story · 6 points
HN discussionI love the App Store product and what it offers, what I don’t like is the bureaucracy that grew around it. Because Lunar uses lots of private and reverse engineered APIs, it isn’t allowed on the App Store, so I had to replicate a lot of the distribution myself: - payments and refunds - license activation - anti cracking measures - automatic (and rolling) updates - making a website for the app - SEO (the App Store is…
Comment linking /blog/window-switcher-app-store/
on “Ask HN: Alternative ways to make money with coding and system skills?”Submitted Making my own sharpening blocks as a story · 5 points
HN discussionLast year when I was working as a contractor for a US company, I mentioned to my team leader that I’m sick of tech and I really want to close my laptop for the last time ever, go outside and start making wood flutes or something. Instead of telling me that it will be better, he says that sometimes he contemplates buying a bar and just serving people and listening to their stories. On that day I realized that not tec…
Comment linking /blog/
on “Anyone else feel the constant urge to leave the field and become a plumber?”Submitted Why aren't the most useful Mac apps on the App Store? as a story · 5 points
HN discussionDamn, I use Sourcegraph so much for my reverse engineering efforts on macOS. They index all those private framework symbols that people extract on every macOS release, and allow searching for headers and even how they are called by other developers that were ahead of me. A big part of https://lunar.fyi exists thanks to Sourcegraph search. Even now I'm using it to find a way to enable the second monitor on M3 MacBook…
Comment linking /blog/turn-off-macbook-display-clamshell/
on “Sourcegraph went dark”Submitted The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs as a story · 4 points
HN discussionRight, but that's part of the point. Apple should just have this inside macOS. From MonitorControl's GitHub README, emphasis mine: > Most modern LCD displays from all major manufacturers supported implemented DDC/CI protocol via USB-C, DisplayPort, HDMI, DVI or VGA to allow for hardware backlight and volume control. And a blog entry by the author of Lunar, an app mentioned elsewhere for this problem: https://alinpan…
Comment linking /blog/journey-to-ddc-on-m1-macs/
on “Show HN: Multi-monitor KVM using just a USB switch”Submitted Developing a food-safe finish for my wooden spoons and cups as a story · 3 points
HN discussionAlternatively, they have had multiple past submissions on personal projects that have done well on HN, often (but not always) interact, and have English as a second or third language. https://alinpanaitiu.com/
Comment linking /
on “Any window from your Mac, on your iPhone and iPad”Submitted In search of the simplest all-in-one blade sharpener as a story · 3 points
HN discussionWe think alike :) I’ve used the same strategy to turn Lunar ( https://lunar.fyi ) into a $5k/month business and to have the luxury of not having to sit through an interview or work for someone else in the near future. I like both coding, design and reverse engineering so I do those with passion. But I leave taxes to Paddle and promotion to happy users. I write rarely on my blog [1] and only if I feel I have gathered…
Comment linking /blog
on “Things I don’t want to do to grow my side project”Submitted Reverse engineering the MacBook clamshell mode (2023) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIn case others are looking for a cheaper alternative to Formspree, I've been using https://formspark.io/ for all my websites [1] [2] [3] I paid $25 a few years ago (can't even remember when) and I still have 47k out of the 50k submission credits I bought. But I love to see a self-hostable alternative available, especially one that's as easy to use as running a `docker-compose` command. Sometimes you just need that c…
Comment linking /contact
on “Self-Hostable Form Back End – OSS Alternative to Formspree”Submitted A window switcher on the Mac App Store? Is it even possible? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionUnfortunately that doesn’t work. The pixels of the SDR content will still be capped at 500 nits as you can see in the article: https://alinpanaitiu.com/blog/over-500nits-failed/#sdr-cap-i...
Comment linking /blog/over-500nits-failed/
on “Trying to get past the 500 nits limit of the MacBook Pro (and failing)”Submitted How good is Claude, really? as a story · 2 points
HN discussion