willswire

Wow very interesting. Makes me wonder if a DISA STIG for macOS is next…

Have you looked into some of the Docker Compose Bridge transformers? We’re using it to scaffold out k8s apps for UDS from compose files https://github.com/defenseunicorns-labs/compose-bridge-uds/

Been exploring Docker Compose Bridge for app devs building apps for UDS/Zarf https://github.com/defenseunicorns-labs/compose-bridge-uds/ . Pleasantly surprised at how well we can deterministically produce larger k8s apps configs from the compose spec. As many others have mentioned in the comments, it’s hard to beat compose for a tight dev loop of multiple dependencies in a micro-service architecture.

Not vibing today to observe the Sabbath (especially on Easter; He has Risen!) but my setup for on the go is normally just the Claude app on iOS with robust GitHub CI for testing and then just iterate.

Minimal, intentional guidance is the cornerstone of my CLAUDE.md’s design philosophy document.

https://github.com/willswire/dotfiles/blob/main/claude/.clau...

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46619539

Unsure but looks like maybe a bigger issue?

Tech Radar is picking up the outage but most of Verizon's social accounts are silent. https://www.techradar.com/news/live/verizon-outage-january-2...

On a recent flight home for Christmas, I tried to get some side-project work done on my MacBook… and immediately lost the battle with Seat 28C. I could barely open the laptop, let alone type comfortably.

The real constraint on planes these days is elbow room. That got me wondering: could a small, handheld keyboard and trackpad setup make in-flight work tolerable?

After failing to find anything compelling on Amazon, I realized something obvious: my iPhone already has a great keyboard and touch experience. So why not use it directly?

I looked for existing apps, but the top options felt dated and required both devices to be on the same Wi-Fi network—which isn’t always possible (or desirable when paying ridiculous prices for airplane Wi-Fi).

So over the last few days I’ve been tinkering with a project I call Magic Input. It turns your iPhone into a wireless keyboard and trackpad for your Mac.

How it works (high level):

• The iOS app discovers nearby Macs using MultipeerConnectivity

• Keyboard input and touch gestures are streamed directly to macOS

• The macOS app injects events at the system level (requires Accessibility permissions)

• No shared Wi-Fi network required; devices connect peer-to-peer

It’s very early, but already supports basic typing and cursor control—especially useful in cramped spaces like planes.

Here’s the TestFlight link for the brave. You’ll need to install the same app on both macOS and your iPhone:

https://testflight.apple.com/join/T1PgucDs

Happy to answer questions or dig into implementation details if anyone’s curious.

I’m considering open-sourcing this project, if there’s further interest! I’ve never done this before, but I wonder how well an open-source “pay to download in the App Store” project performs.

Haha nope - just the standard iOS system keyboard

Back when I was in the Air Force, I hated the UX for referencing Air Force publications on mobile. So I created an iOS app called AFI Explorer [0] which has continued to get hundreds of downloads every month for the past 5 years.

Since I’ve been shifting more towards platform engineering work in my career, the best reward abut this side hustle isn’t the financial benefit, but is the opportunity to stay grounded in software dev. I love seeing the changing APIs each year with the new iOS updates. And the seasonal approach to doing updates is always fun too.

[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/afi-explorer/id1564964107

Woke up this morning with my iPhone and Apple Watch suddenly in a different time zone. Anyone else experience this?

Zarf

Hey HN!

I’m using this dependency project for my side-hustle iOS app development. When the number of authorized users matches the number of users with a valid installation, DeviceCheck simplifies the process.

Ecclesiastes 1:2-5

    [2] Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
        vanity of vanities! All is vanity. 
    [3] What does man gain by all the toil
        at which he toils under the sun? 
    [4] A generation goes, and a generation comes,
        but the earth remains forever. 
    [5] The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
        and hastens to the place where it rises.

It’s for this reason I joined Defense Unicorns[1] last year - the team behind the airgap Kubernetes tool, Zarf[2] (which is OSS).

[1] https://defenseunicorns.com

[2] https://zarf.dev

Cool! Now you just need to run calculators written in COBOL on Kubernetes and the circle of insanity will be complete

https://github.com/defenseunicorns-labs/cobol-demo

These kind of complaints led me to try my hand at creating a new package manager for macOS[^1]. I really respect what the engineers at Chainguard have done with WolfiOS[^2] and tried to replicate the same - declarative package manifests which minimize the amount of dependencies. The project fizzled out after talking with some friends and realizing the futility when considering the global dominance of Homebrew.

[1] https://github.com/willswire/cosmic

[2] https://github.com/wolfi-dev

HN autocorrect that’s who! Haha

I’ll bring it over to MacPorts soon unless someone beats me to it

Glad you enjoy it! There are some inconsistencies/surprises for what emoji gets suggested my the model. I’m hoping to generate some better training data and refine the outputs in the next release.

I’ll have to look into this; it’s something I’d love to add support for if possible!

Hey HN! I've been playing around with Apple's CoreML framework for some personal projects, and wanted to see how it might work in a CLI context. This is really just something fun I did over the weekend for sh*ts and giggles. I hope you enjoy!

This is the way.

Search basically nullifies the need to organize/group messages in subfolders. I practice similar email hygiene as the author; everything goes through the mental flow chart:

Does this need to be worked? Keep in Inbox. Otherwise…

Does this need to be saved? Archive.

Else? Unsubscribe and/or Delete

Everybody cares actually. Obviously the author cares more about investing the time to write this blog post than to take a sledgehammer and some concrete and fix the bike ramp himself. Or he cares to avoid the potential interactions with law enforcement that would result from such ridiculousness.

The problem isn't with people not caring, it's that the deepest affections of the heart are selfish - incurvatus in se (curved inwards).

"Our nature, by the corruption of the first sin, [being] so deeply curved in on itself that it not only bends the best gifts of God towards itself and enjoys them (as is plain in the works-righteous and hypocrites), or rather even uses God himself in order to attain these gifts, but it also fails to realize that it so wickedly, curvedly, and viciously seeks all things, even God, for its own sake." - Martin Luther

Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

I'm currently working on an open-source project called checkd, which is a Cloudflare service worker designed to handle device authentication and state management using Apple's DeviceCheck API. The project includes an example iOS app and a worker implementation to demonstrate how the service can be integrated into a mobile app environment.

https://github.com/willswire/checkd

This project has been an exciting way to explore better securing my iOS apps. I'm looking forward to refining it further and would love to hear any feedback or suggestions from the community!

Hey HN! At WWDC this year, Apple formally announced Swift 6 and its support for embedded development. As an iOS developer in my spare time, I’ve grown to love Swift over the past few years, and am personally excited about the advent of this frontier.

I bought a Raspberry Pi Pico W for $9 off of Amazon last week, and have been toying around with the Pico SDK and incorporating it into my Swift project.

So far I’ve learned a lot about build toolchains (and how much they suck!) but still getting my feet wet with Swift’s interoperability for C.

I recently moved my projects from GitLab over to GitHub. I was surprised to find there wasn't a corresponding feature to GitLab's [creating an issue from email](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/issues/create_issues...), so I whipped up this easy solution using Cloudflare Workers and GitHub's Octokit.