Ch.at – A lightweight LLM chat service accessible through HTTP, SSH, DNS and API • Hacker News Board

Re: Ch.at – A lightweight LLM chat service accessible through HTTP, SSH, DNS and API

#21

Post by indigodaddy » Sun, Aug 10, 2025, 1:14 AM UTC

codazoda wrote: post #12

ivape wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if a 1B model could be close to free to host. That's an eventuality, but I wonder how long it'll take for that to be real.

I’m planning to deploy a 1B model, feed it all the documents I’ve ever written, host it on a $149 mini-PC in my bedroom, and enable you to chat with it. I’ve released similar projects before. I’ll drop a post about my plans in the coming days and I’ll build and document it about two weeks later if there’s enough interest. joeldare.com

Sounds cool!

Re: Ch.at – A lightweight LLM chat service accessible through HTTP, SSH, DNS and API

#22

Post by indigodaddy » Sun, Aug 10, 2025, 1:16 AM UTC

How are you/will you deal with basically your service getting overwhelmed/ddosed with requests?

Re: Ch.at – A lightweight LLM chat service accessible through HTTP, SSH, DNS and API

#23

Post by indigodaddy » Sun, Aug 10, 2025, 1:18 AM UTC

abxyz wrote: post #13

WhatsName wrote: post #2

I find the fact that in this day people can own two letter domains absolutely staggering, based on rarity, those should be worth millions I guess?

They paid about $50k for ch.at. I have a single letter country code domain (3 characters total, x.xx). There are still some single letter country code domains available to register, you could get one for under $1k USD if you want one. Here’s a reseller with a variety: https://1-single-letter-domains.com/ These guys run a bunch of services on x.xx domains: https://o.ee/services/ like c.im, r.nf, p.lu.

This was recently featured on HN, maybe could also help

https://www.ahadomainsearch.com/

Re: Ch.at – A lightweight LLM chat service accessible through HTTP, SSH, DNS and API

#24

Post by indigodaddy » Sun, Aug 10, 2025, 1:19 AM UTC

mattpavelle wrote: post #17

alhirzel wrote: post #16

What are the economics of this?

This (or something very similar) was on X last week. The use case was so funny: using an LLM on an airplane connected to WiFi when you had not paid for WiFi … because DNS queries are allowed before paying :)

Super clever idea/hack!

Re: Ch.at – A lightweight LLM chat service accessible through HTTP, SSH, DNS and API

#25

Post by indigodaddy » Sun, Aug 10, 2025, 1:26 AM UTC

puppymaster wrote: post #19

been using it on a plane for the past one month. it's a great way to do some light reading and learning about obscure topics. dig @ch.at "why is gua musang the king of durian" TXT +short

I'm a host guy.. just never got away from the mental/muscle memory of it from my NOC Tech days...

host -t TXT "what is your name?" ch.at

Re: Ch.at – A lightweight LLM chat service accessible through HTTP, SSH, DNS and API

#26

Post by indigodaddy » Sun, Aug 10, 2025, 1:29 AM UTC

These are the kinds of sites/tools that make me excited/optimistic about the AI/LLM future in general

Re: Ch.at – A lightweight LLM chat service accessible through HTTP, SSH, DNS and API

#27

Post by etaioinshrdlu » Sun, Aug 10, 2025, 1:37 AM UTC

abxyz wrote: post #13

WhatsName wrote: post #2

I find the fact that in this day people can own two letter domains absolutely staggering, based on rarity, those should be worth millions I guess?

They paid about $50k for ch.at. I have a single letter country code domain (3 characters total, x.xx). There are still some single letter country code domains available to register, you could get one for under $1k USD if you want one. Here’s a reseller with a variety: https://1-single-letter-domains.com/ These guys run a bunch of services on x.xx domains: https://o.ee/services/ like c.im, r.nf, p.lu.

Do we know each other :0 :)

Re: Ch.at – A lightweight LLM chat service accessible through HTTP, SSH, DNS and API

#28

Post by etaioinshrdlu » Sun, Aug 10, 2025, 1:38 AM UTC

zaik wrote: post #9

It seems like the only internet protocols they didn't implement were the ones designed for chat. How could they forget about IRC, XMPP and SIP?

These can definitely be added

Re: Ch.at – A lightweight LLM chat service accessible through HTTP, SSH, DNS and API

#29

Post by etaioinshrdlu » Sun, Aug 10, 2025, 1:44 AM UTC

Author here, was a bit surprised to see this here. I thought there needed to be a good zero-JS LLM site for computer people, and we thought it would be fun to add various other protocols. The short domain hack of "ch.at" was exciting because it felt like the natural domain for such a service.

It has not been expensive to operate so far. If it ever changes we can think about rate limiting it.

We used GPT4o because it seemed like a decent general default model. Considering adding an openrouter interface to a smorgasbord of additional LLMS.

One day, on a plane with WiFi before paying, I noticed that DNS queries were still allowed and thought it would be nice to chat with an LLM over it.

We are not logging anything but OpenAI must be...

Re: Ch.at – A lightweight LLM chat service accessible through HTTP, SSH, DNS and API

#30

Post by SahAssar » Sun, Aug 10, 2025, 2:13 AM UTC

WhatsName wrote: post #2

I find the fact that in this day people can own two letter domains absolutely staggering, based on rarity, those should be worth millions I guess?

I have a few, only bought on open market.

There are still quite a few XX.XX left, but mostly just under obscure cTLDs (unless you are willing to consider IDN/Unicode domains under .ws or similar)