Project ideas from Hacker News discussions.

Choosing a Public DNS Resolver

Original Article

Hacker News Discussion

📝 Discussion Summary (Click to expand)

Key Themes from the discussion

#	Theme	Supporting Quote
1	Running a local Unbound/DOH server with caching	“I use Unbound locally as a DoH server… I enable query logging to a tmpfs RAM disk and then every month I update a list of domains that I have queries more than {n} times.” – Bender
2	Caution about third‑party resolvers (e.g., Quad9)	“Be cautious with Quad9; their main address (9.9.9.9) has a ‘malware’ blacklist that has misfired several times already: twice for a private torrent tracker, once for gist.github.com…” – mzajc
3	Self‑hosted DNS for privacy and control	“I would just set up my own public DoH server… It only takes a few minutes and gives me my own query logs for debugging weird issues.” – Bender

All quotations are reproduced verbatim and enclosed in double‑quotes with the author name attached.

🚀 Project Ideas

Generating project ideas…

DNSGuard: Community‑Verified Blacklist Auditor

Summary

Detects and alerts on false‑positive domain blocks in public DNS resolvers.
Provides community‑curated verification and automatic mitigation scripts.

Details

Key	Value
Target Audience	Security‑focused developers, privacy advocates, small ISPs
Core Feature	Real‑time blacklist integrity monitoring with automated false‑positive detection
Tech Stack	Python backend, PostgreSQL, FastAPI frontend, Docker
Difficulty	Medium
Monetization	Revenue-ready: Subscription ($5/mo per team)

Notes

HN commenters lament Quad9’s “misfired” blacklists; this tool gives them a safety net.
Could be integrated into existing resolver configs to automatically whitelist affected domains.

DNSBench: Live DNS Latency Benchmark Dashboard

Summary

Aggregates P90 DNS response times across public resolvers for random domain queries.
Visualizes performance gaps and suggests optimal resolver selection.

Details

Key	Value
Target Audience	Network engineers, dev‑ops, privacy‑conscious users
Core Feature	Real‑time benchmark API + web UI showing latency leaderboards
Tech Stack	Go microservice, Redis cache, React + Chart.js UI, Kubernetes
Difficulty	High
Monetization	Revenue-ready: Pay‑per‑query API ($0.001 per 1k queries)

Notes

Users like the idea of “seeing response times at P90” as mentioned in the thread.
Provides practical utility for choosing the fastest resolver per region.

CacheMate: One‑Click DNS Pre‑Cache Builder for Unbound

Summary

Automates generation and maintenance of a personalized DNS cache list based on usage frequency.
Integrates with Unbound’s prefetch and serve‑expired features to reduce lookup latency.

Details

Key	Value
Target Audience	Hobbyists, power users, small‑scale server admins
Core Feature	GUI/web UI to upload domain whitelist, schedule cron, auto‑update via Cloudflare Top‑20K
Tech Stack	Node.js backend, SQLite, React front‑end, systemd timer
Difficulty	Low
Monetization	Hobby

Notes

Mirrors Bender’s cron‑based approach but adds a friendly UI; HN users discussed hourly pre‑caching and caching “noise” for privacy.
Solves the “how does this look?” question by offering a ready‑made template.