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I can highly recommend Brave Search to anyone who is looking for an alternative. I found it to be much better than DuckDuckGo. Feels like Kagi almost, but free.

How do you block users on HN? Are you using a different client?

Yes, a different client on iOS and a Chrome extension for my laptop. What I built for myself (and perhaps you if you want it simple) is here: https://overmod.org/

This kind of software is pretty cheap to write these days. The Chrome extension there is open-source and the backend is a generic CRUD app running on a SQLite that I backup periodically. You're welcome to use it, and you're welcome to use the CRUD backend without it. I had Claude write a separate iOS app but it was on an older model so not very good (sufficient for me but I doubt for anyone else). The 'protocol' between the backend and the frontend is trivial so you could probably rebuild the iOS app with just the extension as reference to Opus 4.6. I pay my $100 to Apple and then just use it as a 'tester' haha.

I made that directory public because I think this benefits from a single place people can go to subscribe to lists, but if you were to rewrite on true full decentralized ATProto/ActivityPub I'd probably switch over my lists to that and use it instead.



I am also going to now implement an existing project and invent a different name for it. Look out for Waterfox, a minimal web consumer.

From their post on Twitter in 2024 when they adopted Swift, with a comment on Rust.

My general thoughts on Rust:

- Excellent for short-lived programs that transform input A to output B

- Clunky for long-lived programs that maintain large complex object graphs

- Really impressive ecosystem

- Toxic community

https://xcancel.com/awesomekling/status/1822241531501162806


Mayhaps he had a Damascene conversion? Not that I ever understood the need to change from C++ in the first place though.

Considering David Tolnay's indefensible treatment of JeanHeyd Meneide, I'm inclined to agree with Kling on the toxicity of the Rust community. Evangelical fervor does not excuse douchebaggery.

Most likely some big sponsor requires them turn to AI slops.

Looks like they changed it:

> Warp raised a $50M Series B led by Sequoia Capital and grew to over 500,000 engineers on the platform.


> This is not becoming the main focus of the project. We will continue developing the engine in C++, and porting subsystems to Rust will be a sidetrack that runs for a long time.

I don't like this bit. Wouldn't it be better to decide on a memory-safe language, and then commit to it by writing all new code in Rust, or whatever. This looks like doing double the work.


It doesn't have to all-or-nothing. Firefox has been a mixed C++ and Rust codebase for years now. It isn't like the code is written twice. The C++ components are written in C++, and the Rust components are written in Rust.

I suspect that'll also be what happens here. And if the use of Rust is successful, then over time more components may switch over to Rust. But each component will only ever be in one language at a time.


You can't compare the choices made to evolve a >20 years old codebase with a brand new one. Firefox also as Rust support for XPCOM components, so you can use and write them in Rust without manual FFI (this comes with some baggage of course).

The Ladybird devs painted themselves in a corner when choosing C++ for a new web browser, with many anti-Rust folks claiming that "modern C++ was safe". Well...


> The Ladybird devs painted themselves in a corner when choosing C++ for a new web browser

That choice was never made. C++ was selrcted as the language of choice for SerenityOS. Since the goal of the OS was to make its founder happy, and C++ was his faviourite language at the time, that seems like an obvious choice. Later, as part of SerenityOS, there was a need for an HTML parser. It was written in C++ as was the rest of the operating system. Then that HTML parser evolved into a full web browser. As part of the SerenityOS project, that browser was written completely in C++. Then that web browser forked off into an independent project...

Ladybird was already a fully functioning browser (not finished of course but complete enough to surf many web pages) when it was forked from SerenityOS to create a stand-alone web browser. The choice at that point was "keep evolving the current C++ code base" or start-over. I doubt the second option was even considered.

They have been evaluating other languages since before the fork. Rust was evaluated and rejectd early-on. They even created their own language at one point. https://github.com/SerenityOS/jakt


> The Ladybird devs painted themselves in a corner when choosing C++ for a new web browser, with many anti-Rust folks claiming that "modern C++ was safe". Well...

Perhaps, but in fairness the project was started in 2018 when Rust was still new and unproven.

> You can't compare the choices made to evolve a >20 years old codebase with a brand new one.

I guess not, but I'm pretty optimistic about Ladybird's ability to adopt Rust if they want to. It's a much smaller codebase than Firefox (~650K LoC).

This initial PR is already ~25k LoC, so approximately 4% of the codebase. It took 1 person 2 weeks to complete. If you extrapolate from that, it would take 1 person-year to port the whole thing, which is not so bad considering that you could spread that work out over multiple years and multiple people.

And Firefox has shown that the intermediate state where you have a mix of languages is viable over the long term, even in a much larger and more complex codebase.


> Perhaps, but in fairness the project was started in 2018 when Rust was still new and unproven.

Rust was already proven in 2018, and I'm pretty sure they went with C++ for other reasons.


Firefox was special in that Mozilla created Rust to build Servo and then backported parts of Servo to Firefox and ultimately stopped building Servo.

Thankfully Servo has picked up speed again and if one wants a Rust based browser engine what better choice than the one the language was built to enable?

https://servo.org/


As a Servo contributor, I am aware of Servo :)

But I'm also cheering along Ladybird's progress. There's definitely room for more than one project in the space. And IMO the more browsers being built in Rust in the better.


> Wouldn't it be better to decide on a memory-safe language,

it is totally possible to use some strict subset of C++, which will be memory safe.


Only in theory. In practice it never happens like that. I mean, you think Google wouldn't use that for Chrome if they could?

google is giant and chaotic, and chrome likely is spagetti code mess. Its hard to tell if their approach is reasonable and fully implemented without digging deep.

I work on such project, where we use simplified C++, and it works fine, no memory corruptions in my experience.


Ladybird already does that

One could do that but then they'd lose all momentum and the project would never get finished.

Here's another approach using Rclone and an editor of your choice. Rclone has a built in crypt library that can encrypt your data and store it in a cloud provider. I use it along with Sublime Text to journal, and store my encrypted data on Dropbox.

More here: https://alabhya.me/rclone


Amazing - congrats on this work. Do I understand it correctly that the goal of the platform is help organise online protests? If so, I would love to understand how this approach is different from using something like change.org. I have read through the linked README and it looks sophisticated and technical - I'm just wondering if this is the best way to protest online.


Wow Wails looks interesting! Hadn't heard of it before.


They should switch to a native installer then. Quite confusing



Yeah I'm out here installing a billion node things to have codex hack on my python app. Def gonna look into a standalone rust binary.


They're leveraging the (relative) ubiquity of npm amongst developers.


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