{"slug": "socat", "name": "socat", "category": "terminal", "category_name": "Terminal and shell", "description": "", "recommenders": 1, "commenters": 4, "warners": 0, "score": 1.817, "rising": 1.0, "first": "2026-07-11", "latest": "2026-09-22", "why": "the other one is socat an utility I used before but LLM's can do magic with it.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 3, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0], "listed": false, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "the other one is socat an utility I used before but LLM's can do magic with it.", "icon": false, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["socat"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 790766769, "item_id": 49422923, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49422923", "by": "kodoman", "date": "2026-08-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the other one is socat an utility I used before but LLM's can do magic with it.", "excerpt": "Yes every time I tried to understand ffmpeg I got a little of it for a little bit and then lost it by 2 days or so. Just getting LLM's to do their thing for ffmpeg is great. the other one is socat an utility I used before but LLM's can do magic with it.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [{"by": "1vuio0pswjnm7", "context": "uses small command line clients instead of browsers", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49403239", "date": "2026-08-22"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["proxy inside sandbox", "sending requests to local proxy", "testing tls interception", "bridging unix socket to localhost"], "compared": [{"slug": "haproxy", "name": "HAProxy", "co": 1, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49801329", "title": "Show HN: Drop \u2013 A rootless Linux sandbox with gVisor support", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49421554", "title": "Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49395628", "title": "There's no reason for software to be slow anymore", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49322107", "title": "Tell HN: Cloudflare silently injects its analytics when you switch nameservers", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48877371", "title": "What xAI's Grok Build CLI Actually Sends to xAI", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-08": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-09": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 796928337, "item_id": 49808021, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49808021", "by": "sieve", "date": "2026-09-22", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I used `socat` to run a HTTP/S proxy inside", "excerpt": "I guess people are slowly realizing that giving LLMs r/w access to your entire machine is an utterly insane idea. I did a quick look-around last month and decided to start using bwrap. But manually configuring it on a per-project basis is irritating. So I rolled out something for my own use (+ a couple of friends) based on bwrap. What I do: - start with `bwrap --clearenv --unshare-all --die-with-parent --tmpfs / ...`", "context": "", "use_case": "proxy inside sandbox", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Drop \u2013 A rootless Linux sandbox with gVisor support"}, {"id": 790766769, "item_id": 49422923, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49422923", "by": "kodoman", "date": "2026-08-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the other one is socat an utility I used before but LLM's can do magic with it.", "excerpt": "Yes every time I tried to understand ffmpeg I got a little of it for a little bit and then lost it by 2 days or so. Just getting LLM's to do their thing for ffmpeg is great. the other one is socat an utility I used before but LLM's can do magic with it.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance"}, {"id": 790451824, "item_id": 49403239, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49403239", "by": "1vuio0pswjnm7", "date": "2026-08-22", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "echo \"@1;expert-mode on;httpclient GET $x\"|socat stdio unix:/path/socket", "excerpt": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIME \"In the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) for the World Wide Web, servers insert a MIME header field at the beginning of any Web transmission. Clients use the content type header to select an appropriate viewer application for the type of data indicated.\" A fan of \"let's enable the program to do everything\" philosophy I am not. This idea is embodied in the so-called \"modern\" web br", "context": "uses small command line clients instead of browsers", "use_case": "sending requests to local proxy", "switched_from": "", "story": "There's no reason for software to be slow anymore"}, {"id": 789230577, "item_id": 49326911, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49326911", "by": "1vuio0pswjnm7", "date": "2026-08-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I initially tested the idea using socat", "excerpt": "Many years ago I started to describe how it works in an HN comment and some reply complained about the idea of terminating TLS, i.e., decrypting, and then re-encrypting. Obviously this sacrifices something, e.g, speed, in order to gain _control_ But this is what Cloudflare does and no one seems to mind Large companies also do this to protect their LANs I'm not running a CDN, only a small home LAN. I'm only procesing ", "context": "runs small home LAN", "use_case": "testing TLS interception", "switched_from": "", "story": "Tell HN: Cloudflare silently injects its analytics when you switch nameservers"}, {"id": 782060641, "item_id": 48878790, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48878790", "by": "phaseleza", "date": "2026-07-11", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "bridge it to localhost with socat", "excerpt": "I use bubblewrap to unshare all namespaces (net, pid, ipc, user) and ro-bind necessary system paths like /etc, /lib, create a tmpfs home, mount the project folder under it (writable), then mount tmpfs over sensitive directories inside the project to hide them. For the network part, a daemon outside the sandbox serves a filtering HTTP proxy on a Unix socket. I mount the Unix socket into the sandbox and bridge it to lo", "context": "", "use_case": "bridging Unix socket to localhost", "switched_from": "", "story": "What xAI's Grok Build CLI Actually Sends to xAI"}]}