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fredwuon Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)

https://feedbun.com - a browser extension that decodes food labels and recipes on any website for healthy eating, with science-backed research summaries and recommendations.

Been working on Feedbun for a little while, Elixir/Phoenix stack, with bespoke LLM fleets for production workflows. Recently just started using React Native (Expo) for the companion mobile app so I can use it when I shop IRL.

Also started working on a 2D strategy game using Godot engine, still super early days. Been fun to experiment with different LLMs capabilities on game development.

fredwuon Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)

Have been working on three micro-saas, all built in Elixir/Phoenix:

https://feedbun.com - a browser extension that decodes food labels and recipes on any website for healthy eating, with science-backed research summaries and recommendations.

https://rizz.farm - a lead gen tool for Reddit that focuses on helping instead of selling, to build long-lasting organic traffic.

https://persumi.com - a blogging platform that turns articles into audio, and to showcase your different interests or "personas".

Took a long break earlier this year to recharge, but now I'm back at it again, mostly working on Feedbun, about to launch it as an early alpha. :)

fredwuon Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)

Have been working on three micro-saas, all built in Elixir/Phoenix:

https://feedbun.com - a browser extension that decodes food labels and recipes on any website for healthy eating, with science-backed research summaries and recommendations.

https://rizz.farm - a lead gen tool for Reddit that focuses on helping instead of selling, to build long-lasting organic traffic.

https://persumi.com - a blogging platform that turns articles into audio, and to showcase your different interests or "personas".

Took a long break earlier this year to recharge, but now I'm back at it again, mostly working on Feedbun, about to launch it as an early alpha. :)

fredwuon Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026)

Have been working on three micro-saas, all built in Elixir/Phoenix:

https://feedbun.com - a browser extension that decodes food labels and recipes on any website for healthy eating, with science-backed research summaries and recommendations.

https://rizz.farm - a lead gen tool for Reddit that focuses on helping instead of selling, to build long-lasting organic traffic.

https://persumi.com - a blogging platform that turns articles into audio, and to showcase your different interests or "personas".

Took a long break earlier this year to recharge, but now I'm back at it again, mostly working on Feedbun, about to launch it as an early alpha. :)

fredwuon Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?

I hangout on a few Slack groups (Elixir, Ruby, etc), got quite a few projects this way as the founders were looking for experienced consultants.

It also helps if you could show either/both:

* a portfolio / clients you've worked with

* open source / "street-cred"

When I was looking for projects I always attach my Github profile (https://github.com/fredwu) to show my open source contributions, and also the SaaS products I've built myself (https://wuit.com/), and if clients are looking for C-level / strategic-level help, I also attach my LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/wufred/), these help build up your reputation and stand out amongst many freelancers also looking for projects.

I just had a very quick glance at your site - there seems to be a lot of text, mostly focused on what you can offer. But what's missing is... who are you? What have you done?

fredwuon Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)

Have been working on three micro-saas, all built in Elixir/Phoenix:

https://feedbun.com - a browser extension that decodes food labels and recipes on any website for healthy eating, with science-backed research summaries and recommendations.

https://rizz.farm - a lead gen tool for Reddit that focuses on helping instead of selling, to build long-lasting organic traffic.

https://persumi.com - a blogging platform that turns articles into audio, and to showcase your different interests or "personas".

fredwuon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (April 2026)

- Location: Melbourne, Australia

- Remote: Yes, preferred

- Willing to relocate: No

- Technologies: Elixir, Ruby, JavaScript, LLMs

- CV: https://persumi.com/u/fredwu/cv

- Email: ifredwu at gmail dot com

My name’s Fred Wu, I’m an experienced Elixir and Ruby developer who has worked on multiple commercial projects as well as having contributed to many dozens of open source projects including Rails.

I’ve been using Elixir for ~10 years, ruby for ~15 years (used to actively contribute to Rails itself), lead and built multiple commercial B2B & B2C SaaS projects. I’ve always been very hands on, and have worked with multiple tech stacks in the past, including JS/React, PHP, Golang and Clojure.

- My blog and talks: https://fredwu.me/

- My Github profile: https://github.com/fredwu

- My LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wufred/

Have been working on three micro-saas, all built in Elixir/Phoenix:

https://feedbun.com - a browser extension that decodes food labels and recipes on any website for healthy eating, with science-backed research summaries and recommendations.

https://rizz.farm - a lead gen tool for Reddit that focuses on helping instead of selling, to build long-lasting organic traffic.

https://persumi.com - a blogging platform that turns articles into audio, and to showcase your different interests or "personas".

More info about hiring me: https://persumi.com/u/fredwu/hire-fred

fredwuon Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (March 2026)

Have been working on three micro-saas, all built in Elixir/Phoenix:

https://feedbun.com - a browser extension that decodes food labels and recipes on any website for healthy eating, with science-backed research summaries and recommendations.

https://rizz.farm - a lead gen tool for Reddit that focuses on helping instead of selling, to build long-lasting organic traffic.

https://persumi.com - a blogging platform that turns articles into audio, and to showcase your different interests or "personas".

fredwuon Ask HN: What are you working on? (February 2026)

Have been working on three micro-saas, all built in Elixir/Phoenix:

https://feedbun.com - a browser extension that decodes food labels and recipes on any website for healthy eating, with science-backed research summaries and recommendations.

https://rizz.farm - a lead gen tool for Reddit that focuses on helping instead of selling, to build long-lasting organic traffic.

https://persumi.com - a blogging platform that turns articles into audio, and to showcase your different interests or "personas".

fredwuon Ask HN: What are you working on? (January 2026)

Have been working on three micro-saas, all built in Elixir/Phoenix:

https://feedbun.com - a browser extension that decodes food labels and recipes on any website for healthy eating, with science-backed research summaries and recommendations.

https://rizz.farm - a lead gen tool for Reddit that focuses on helping instead of selling, to build long-lasting organic traffic.

https://persumi.com - a blogging platform that turns articles into audio, and to showcase your different interests or "personas".

fredwuon Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)

Have been working on three micro-saas, all built in Elixir/Phoenix:

https://feedbun.com - a browser extension that decodes food labels and recipes on any website for healthy eating, with science-backed research summaries and recommendations.

https://rizz.farm - a lead gen tool for Reddit that focuses on helping instead of selling, to build long-lasting organic traffic.

https://persumi.com - a blogging platform that turns articles into audio, and to showcase your different interests or "personas".

fredwuon Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (Nov 2025)

Have been working on three micro-saas, all built in Elixir/Phoenix:

https://feedbun.com - a browser extension that decodes food labels and recipes on any website for healthy eating, with science-backed research summaries and recommendations.

https://rizz.farm - a lead gen tool for Reddit that focuses on helping instead of selling, to build long-lasting organic traffic.

https://persumi.com - a blogging platform that turns articles into audio, and to showcase your different interests or "personas".

fredwuon Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2025)

I've been working on three micro-saas, all built in Elixir/Phoenix:

https://feedbun.com - a browser extension that decodes food labels and recipes on any website for healthy eating, with science-backed research summaries and recommendations.

https://rizz.farm - a lead gen tool for Reddit that focuses on helping instead of selling, to build long-lasting organic traffic.

https://persumi.com - a blogging platform that turns articles into audio, and to showcase your different interests or "personas".

fredwuon Show HN: I built an LLM chat app because we shouldn't need 10 AI subscriptions

> Couldn't find one, so I built one.

> What do you think?

You were lost between all the AI stuff... but have you not tried to simply use Google to find a bunch of similar services?

fredwuon Xiaomi MiMo Reasoning Model

Not sure why it would be "funny" as this is literally why they named the company Xiaomi.

Source (Chinese): https://finance.sina.cn/tech/2020-11-26/detail-iiznctke33979...

fredwuon Nikon reveals a lens that captures wide and telephoto images simultaneously

Cropping isn't the same as capturing at a different focal length.

fredwuon Elixir Gotchas

Are these even gotchas if they are all very well documented in the official documentation already? I was expecting to see some unusual or undocumented behaviours...

fredwuon Study Finds 268% Higher Failure Rates for Agile Software Projects

So Slashdot quotes The Register https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/05/agile_failure_rates/ which in turn quotes Engprax https://www.engprax.com/post/268-higher-failure-rates-for-ag... which in turn is promoting its book "Impact Engineering" which the "study" is conducted for.

Take it with a huge grain of salt.

fredwuon Ask HN: How are you using GenAI/LLMs?

I've been an early user of Github Copilot - I'm so used to it by now that if I didn't have it I'd feel the productivity drop for sure.

Otherwise I've been doing lots of experiments on using LLMs for my SaaS products (a blog platform, and a Reddit lead gen platform), my client projects and my day job (health care related products).

I've tried all the leading LLMs, so far my personal favourite is Claude Haiku due to its low latency and low cost. Using the reflection pattern, you can push the LLM pretty far. I've also just started looking into the multi-agent agentic workflow now... Paired with Elixir and OTP, it can get quite powerful. :)

fredwuon Show HN: Next-token prediction in JavaScript

Calling this an LLM and claiming:

> With enough training data and a good chat interface, this can be used instead of well-known decoder-only models like GPT, Mistral, etc.

Seems to be very misleading...

fredwuon We've been here before: AI promised humanlike machines – in 1958

Was reading to see what insights the author has, then all of a sudden the article just ended... Not sure if I got the point of the article.

fredwuon Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

I'm "half-half" so to speak.

I work as a CTO in my day job (as an employee).

Also I'm self-employed (via a company structure) to build https://persumi.com - a blogging platform, and https://rizz.farm - a lead gen platform, as well as to work on client work.

https://persumi.com/u/fredwu/hire-fred :)

fredwuon Ask HN: What are your Favorite Things?

* Github Copilot for assisting me writing code more efficiently.

* 34" ultra-wide screen for productivity.

* Firefox with a bunch of addons, including tab containers, for browsing the web with sanity.

* Youtube for following my favourite channels to de-stress and/or be informed.

* Pocketcast (on Android) for all my podcasts.

* Quest 2 and treadmill for keeping me fit.

fredwuon Ask HN: What are your founder's resolutions for 2024?

After having worked at many startups for two decades, most recently as CTO, I had finally started building my own SaaS (https://persumi.com, a blogging/audio platform and https://rizz.farm, a lead generation platform) in 2023. So for 2024 I'd love to start monetising them and turning them into real businesses. Fingers crossed.

fredwuon Build a startup or side project faster with these SaaS templates

I think it depends.

I used Petal Pro (https://petal.build/) to build Persumi (https://persumi.com) in three months and Rizz.farm (https://rizz.farm) in six weeks, both in my spare time. It would not have been possible if it wasn't for the boilerplate taking care of things like authentication and user management.

With a bit of digging around, things are pretty straightforward.

fredwuon Ask HN: What apps have you created for your own use?

I built https://persumi.com to uplift my own blogs, and to turn text into audio (you can subscribe in your podcast app).

Then, once I realised there's no good tools to promote it, I built https://rizz.farm so I can promote Persumi.

fredwuon Ruby 3.3.0-Rc1 Released

- "Major performance improvements over 3.2"

- "Significantly improved memory usage over 3.2"

Seems pretty good to me.

fredwuon Why I created Banner Blog

I don't think blog platforms "suck", but I do think there are QoL enhancements that can be made to them the experience better for both the writers and the readers.

I built https://persumi.com for exactly this reason - to replace my own blog with a bit of QoL flare. Things like AI summaries, the optional social aspects (like/follow, etc), and TTS to turn text articles into audio / podcasts, etc, etc.

fredwuon Australian Telco Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin resigns after network outage

Someone following the news closer please fact-check me, but AFAIK, the chain of events:

- The Optus network (the second largest telco network in Australia) went down

- Optus executives initially couldn't coordinate anything because they were... all on Optus

- The network outage lasted ~14 hours

- The network outage effected triple-zero, the country's emergency number, because Optus was rebooting towers and causing phones to still connect to them so they can't fallback to another carrier to dial 000

- After the network is finally back up, Optus blamed "a 3rd party" that caused the outage

- The "3rd party" was then turned out to be Singtel - Optus' parent company

- Singtel issued a statement to basically say Optus was wrong

- Optus then issued another statement saying the outage was caused by them using default configuration files on some of their Cisco routers

- The Australian senate summoned the Optus CEO for a hearing

- Here we are, the CEO resigned

EDIT:

To add more context, just over a year ago (in Sept 2022), Optus, under the same CEO's leadership, had a massive data breach: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Optus_data_breach

fredwuon Ask HN: Tell us about your project that's not done yet but you want feedback on

https://persumi.com/

I spent 3-4 months working on it whilst having a day job. It's a writing/reading/listening platform, kinda like a mix of Medium/Substack/Wordpress/Twitter/Reddit...

I wrote about the tech stack and how I built it here: https://persumi.com/c/persumi/u/fredwu/p/how-i-built-a-mostl...

Still got a long way to go, especially to tweak the user onboarding side of things to explain much better on the concepts.

Would love some feedback!