I was enthusiastic about LadyBird until I learnt that the guy leading the project i s a white supremacist, via pivot-to-ai.
Now I hope either someone else takes it over, or that it crashes and burns.
Ladybird Browser adopts Rust, with help from AI
Submitted 2 weeks ago by Beep@lemmus.org to technology@lemmy.world
https://ladybird.org/posts/adopting-rust/
Comments
arcine@jlai.lu 2 weeks ago
0x0@infosec.pub 2 weeks ago
If any creator can separate work from personal and the product is good I really couldn’t care less with what they use their own time for.
I’m pretty sure you could find people with other unsavoury opinions in the devteams for both chrome and firefox, what then?
MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
No one can separate their creative idea from the rest of the brain. Any fool that thinks that’s possible is straight up stupid.
greyfrog@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I don’t think you should be able to make claims like this without hard proof.
Do you have any information about this?
Zangoose@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
How many times do I have to give him the benefit of the doubt though?
First it was the “using they in documentation is political ideology” Github issue, then he publicly defended DHH when people called him out for being a white supremacist, he implied tech companies are discriminating against white people with diversity policies, and he tweeted that he hopes young people will carry on Charlie Kirk’s legacy.
If one or two of these things happened in isolation, I could maybe understand giving him the benefit of the doubt as a non-American (for that last one) non-native English speaker. But all of these things taken together? I personally don’t think I can look past that.
kilgore_trout@feddit.it 2 weeks ago
Google’s monopoly is a bigger problem than one guy having confused ideas, to me.
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
One could just hard-fork Chromium…
statelesz@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
Came here to say this.
db2@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Sloppybird
tinsuke@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Andreas King’s ladybird? Don’t wanna touch that with a 10ft pole.
Fizz@lemmy.nz 2 weeks ago
Hyperborea.org is that owned by a racist or is the domain ment to be making fun of it?
XLE@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Based on the content of that article alone (especially near the bottom (, I don’t think it’s run by a racist at all
Telorand@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
Thanks for the reference!
0x0@infosec.pub 2 weeks ago
If any creator can separate work from personal and the product is good I really couldn’t care less with what they use their own time for.
I’m pretty sure you could find people with other unsavoury opinions in the devteams for both chrome and firefox, what then? Lynx?
cabbage@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Reygle@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Oh. Welp, if it’s going to be vibe coded I’m out.
mushroommunk@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Guess I got excited about this browser for nothing.
Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Birdpoop browser you say? Never heard of of it.
Matty_r@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
The worst part is they are doing themselves a disservice by not rewriting it by hand - have they really learnt enough Rust to know how to effectively rewrite the other parts of the engine as they say? Doubtful - they’ll probably just do everything through AI stuff going forward.
tocano@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
I was enthusiastic about this project. But I am afraid these recent tangents will only reduce momentum.
unpossum@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Good grief, the irrational ai kneejerk hate in this community is insane. This seems like a perfect use case - a code base with good test coverage and well defined output expectations, where a human has guided the translation and checked the results. The human in question has saved a lot of time. And still all the comments are “hurr durr slop amirite”. SMH fucking head.
eager_eagle@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
yeah, this part of the community is as insufferable as the overly enthusiastic vibe coders
XLE@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
And the people complaining about “insufferable” critics of AI, and assuming all criticism is “knee-jerk”, are themselves contributing to the cycle of negativity.
Fizz@lemmy.nz 2 weeks ago
Hes not even using the rust part either. Its still using c++
Trilogy3452@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I think it’s important to note that human review = quality always, it’s case by case and a lot of times the nuance and potential problems don’t appear until the code has been fiddled with manually in my experience.
Basically saying that it depends on how it was used, but my hunch is using AI for new languages for production use without an expert to help is a bad use case since the new comer has no idea what nuances exist. Unless that’s not the case here
fuzzywombat@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’ve suddenly lost all interest in this browser’s development. From what I’ve heard, LLMs are pretty bad at generating Rust code for some reason. If they used LLM to bulk convert C++ code to Rust, the quality of the code is questionable at best.
greyfrog@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Surely you read the article?
"The requirement from the start was byte-for-byte identical output from both pipelines. "
The bytecode from C++ is identical to the Rust output.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I don’t think it’s possible to write rust code that compiles to the exact same binary as c++. compilers make different optimizations, and make overall a different structure, especially across languages.
I think they meant the rust library produces the same output from the same input as the c++ library.
if llms indeed generate worse rust code than for other languages, that’s not that big of a problem because the compiler will catch a lot of mistakes. if it compiles, it will run, and no memory safety bugs unless unsafe is also used. the llm could pick the wrong functions for some uses, but that should be caught relatively easily with testing, which can be automated partly
Sharkticon@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Gross
chunes@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The things people criticize are so fucking brainless these days. AI this, slop that.
Not a single one of you made fun of “let’s rewrite it in Rust.” You can’t even elevate to the level of mildly funny parroting.
baggachipz@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
“Let’s stop halfway through our multi-year project to rewrite it in another language” is peak nerd shiny distraction. I say this as one who resists the urge every day. Way to delay your project by several more years, clown.
Zangoose@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
All things considered the way they’re approaching the migration is fine enough - they’re only moving specific portions at a time, they’re not stopping C++ development, and they’re making sure it doesn’t introduce regressions. Adopting a memory-safe language for something like a browser makes sense because it completely eliminates that class of vulnerabilities.
The problem is the way they’re approaching the code itself. From their wording, it sounds like they’re relying on AI heavily for both writing and reviewing the code. Rust has a steeper learning curve than most languages and is very different from C++. They even mention in the blog that their current Rust code looks like C++ code ported over. If they don’t take the time to actually learn Rust before adopting it, it’ll just lead to security logic issues that their AI couldn’t catch because C++ and Rust don’t always behave the same way. And that’s completely ignoring all of the other ethical/technical issues with AI
dsilverz@calckey.world 2 weeks ago
@Beep@lemmus.org @technology@lemmy.world
Ah, the smell of irony by the morning! Adopting a programming language often praised by its "safety", while the entire pretension of "safety" is alchemically transmuted into a sewage and deliberately flushed up (not down) by a clanker who drinks from the cesspool with the same determination and thirst that of a Chevy Opala gurgling down entire Olympic pools worth of gasoline.
Being serious now, the foreseeable future for Web browsing is definitely depressing: Chromium needs no introduction (used to be an interesting browser until Google's mask "don't be evil" fell and straightforwardly revealed their corporate face and farce), Firefox have been "welcoming the new AI overlords" for a while, text browsers (such as Lynx) are far from feasible for a CAPTCHA(and Anubis)-driven web... now, one of the latest and fewest glimmers of hope, an alternative Web browser engine, is becoming the very monster the fight against which was promised to be the launchpad purpose ("They who fights with monsters should be careful lest they thereby become a monster"). I wouldn't be surprised if Servo were to enshittify, too. Being able to choose among the sameness is such a wonderful thing, isn't it?
I mean, I'm not the average Lemmy user who got this (understandably) deep hatred against AI, I am able to hold a nuanced view and finding quite interesting uses (especially when it comes to linguistics) for the clankers (especially the "open-weighted" ones). However, this, to shoving AI everywhere and using AI to "code for you", it's a whole different story. A software should be programmed in the way programming (as posited by Ada Lovelace) was intended to, not "vibe coded" by a fancy auto-completer who can't (yet) deal with Turing completeness, especially when it comes to a whole miniature operational system that browsers became nowadays. When coding a whole OS, AI shouldn't even be touched by a two million light-years pole, let alone by a two-feet pole.paraphrand@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Why leave WebKit out?
INeedMana@piefed.zip 2 weeks ago
Chromium needs no introduction (used to be an interesting browser until Google’s mask “don’t be evil” fell and straightforwardly revealed their corporate face and farce), Firefox have been “welcoming the new AI overlords” for a while, text browsers (such as Lynx) are far from feasible for a CAPTCHA(and Anubis)-driven web…
To me the hope lies in Firefox forks
dsilverz@calckey.world 2 weeks ago
@INeedMana@piefed.zip @technology@lemmy.world
Yeah, me too. Unfortunately, the forks can only get so far in removing upstream AI garbage and other proprietary/corporate-oriented whistles-and-bells. If, say, some AI feature becomes so ingrained inside Firefox upstream, so deeply it ends up becoming some hard dependency for fundamental functioning of the browser (i.e. a feature that, if removed at the code-level, would render Firefox simply unable to function), no WaterFox, IronFox, Fennec or LibreWolf would be able to keep up with the latest versions: they'd either need to do a hard fork trying to independently maintain an entire codebase for a browser, or they'd need to use downgraded versions.
Not even to say about licensing shenanigans. We've seen many open-source projects suddenly changing their licensing to include legalese thin letters. We've seen open-source projects requiring developers to sign up some kind of NDA before being allowed to contribute with code. Seems like initially-open licenses aren't written on stone when it comes to big projects, and Firefox is a big project.
The universe of open-source software is being slowly hijacked by corporate interests. This is not different with Firefox, which (as I said in another reply to someone in this thread a few minutes ago) is Mozilla's main product (if not the main product, it's certainly among their main projects). The same Mozilla which has been pivoting to AI (e.g. acquisition of Anonym; subtle phrasing changes from "About Firefox" page which used to state how "Firefox will never sell your data", now this phrase is gone).
I use WaterFox on a daily basis. It's by far the best browser I've been using. I tried LibreWolf but it doesn't really likes my Portuguese ABNT2 keyboard (which has accents I use often), even after disabling ResistFingerprint, so I ended up sticking with WaterFox. On mobile, I use Fennec on a daily basis, and I'm worried about the end of "sideloading" on Android which will likely mess with its installation. But I'm aware of how both browsers rely on upstream code from Mozilla Firefox, whose enshittification is already an ongoing phenomenon. And that's really depressing when it comes to the future of browser landscape, because we're hoping for a true alternative. Servo is the last bastion of said hope (until it gets EEE'd by corporate interests, given how Linux Foundation itself is increasingly surrounded by corpos.
I'm more of a GNU/Stallman person who values autonomy and libreness as non-negotiable principles. I'm only using Android because I'm stuck with it due to certain societal impositions (banks and gov apps), otherwise I'd be long using a custom phone, which wouldn't even be Linux, but something way more "unorthodox" for a phone such as FreeBSD or Illumos/OpenIndianna, systems of which I already used on a PC environment and got quite fond of.
XLE@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Is it a good sign for Rust code when it’s described as having “a strong ‘translated from C++’ vibe”? Or when the developer says too much Rust might be something they “can’t merge”?
eager_eagle@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
out of context?
Please coordinate with us before starting any porting work so nobody wastes their time on something we can’t merge.
If you look at the code, you’ll notice it has a strong “translated from C++” vibe. That’s because it is translated from C++. The top priority for this first pass is compatibility with our C++ pipeline. The Rust code intentionally mimics things like the C++ register allocation patterns so that the two compilers produce identical bytecode.
that seems reasonable to me
XLE@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
But is it a good idea to just translate something from C++ like that? It seems technically feasible but there’s something “off” about the whole thing.
Like the developer originally talked about switching to Swift, then decided not to switch to Swift.
And previously, “Ladybird devs have been very vocal about being ‘anti-rust’ (I guess more anti-hype, where Rust was the hype).”
Apparently you can translate C++ directly to Rust, but anecdotal statements claim that while Rust supports C++ conventions, you wouldn’t typically build a Rust app using them.
It all just suggests rudderlessness from the developers right now.
favoredponcho@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
I’m still gonna try it. Downvote away. 🖕fuck the Lemmy hivemind
Nalivai@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Your deep insecurity is too on the nose
favoredponcho@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
You’re the one bringing up insecurity. Sounds like projection.
buddascrayon@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Hive mind would imply that people are simply following along and not making decisions on their own. I read the article and was thinking that the way they went about it was a fairly good use of AI to actually implement code.
Then I read the article posted by someone in this comment section about how the author and creator of ladybird is not only a homophobic asshole but an out and out racist. If you support him and use this then you are, by association, a homophobe and a racist.
So fuck you 🖕 as well.
veniasilente@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Every minute that passes, Gemini (not the Google one!) looks more viable, which is already a shame because as I described in lemm.ee before it went down, that itself feels like “Gopher but in the format of a brutalist buttplug”.
What we need is some sort of return to HTML + CSS 1.0, or a web engine that simply ditches JS, so that development can be tackled by Individuals again.
CameronDev@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
github.com/DioxusLabs/blitz - This kinda covers the “engine without JS” part, it’s a bit more limited, but also in alpha. It’s part of the dioxus project, they use it for rendering UI on desktop.
veniasilente@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Oh now that’s interesting. I’ve always wondered (not knowing much about how they’re made) if it would be possible to make a desktop compositor for Linux that simply uses HTML and CSS. One could even natively embed local pages in it.
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 2 weeks ago
Separation of server styles, server markup and client styles is definitely something Gemini lacks, not having server styles at all.
But it’s not as much a problem of browsers as it is of the environment in which information is shared and propagated. While we still connect to websites using a browser, those websites will behave however their owners wish, inflating web standards and requiring complex browsers.
I was dreaming of something like “hypertext Usenet”, and making descriptions of another system I was interested in trying to make, I am still not even close to that, and I’m not sure I’m still interested, because it appears NOSTR now has much of what I wanted in its standards.
Basically if you imagine a system for propagating posts addressable by ids and with markup inside, referring to styles and containing hyperlinks by ids to other posts, you can throw away the idea of a website, and still have the hypertext web. That markup can be anything, while the URLs in the links leading to images and such (and other pages) are using those ids or are at least Blossom-compliant.
I think NOSTR of new protocols is the one most likely to eventually attain such functionality. People here wouldn’t like it, I suppose, because of huge intersection with Bitcoin community and because most clients and client libraries are for the web. But there’s now a C client library, functional enough, and architecturally NOSTR is worlds above the thinking of designers of Lemmy, for example.
cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
common ladybird l
Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Someone could theoretically fork ladybird and strip out the AI, but it would be a lot of work.
SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
it’s not that they are adding AI to the browser. it’s that they are letting an AI develop the browser
woelkchen@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
they are letting an AI develop the browser
The port from C++ to Rust was assisted by an LLM. That’s different from “ChatGPT, write me a web browser”.
I cannot speak for the quality of that code, not advocating for it, I merely want to make that distinction.
gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Not that much, there’s a git log, just found when they started doing AI and fork from then on
TheOneCurly@feddit.online 2 weeks ago
Yeah seems about right for this project. I really wanted this to be a serious browser, but nothing about this dude is serious.
Also I know he backed this statement up with much better testing but these AI brainrot things people say kill me: “I ran multiple passes of adversarial review, asking different models to analyze the code for mistakes and bad patterns.”
XLE@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
“I coded this with hundreds of handcrafted AI prompts.”
“That sounds hazardous, but did you test it?”
“I had multiple AIs test it it!”
lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 2 weeks ago
Let us all hope Servo does not go down the same path.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
artisan AI prompts. we are supposed to be paying extra!
thenose@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You’re not the first I hear saying his bad news/not serious. Afaik I didn’t hear a thing about him until ladybird. What did I missed?
brianpeiris@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
hyperborea.org/reviews/…/ladybird-inclusivity/
mastodon.social/@alatiera/115272605624599561
zr0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
It is one thing to use coding agents to produce code. It is another to trust it on reviewing it.
This reminds me of the C compiler written by Claude Code, which was compiling everything, except
printf(“Hello from CCC!\n”);