Minimalist web browsers written from scratch in C (Nordstjernen, Northstar) or Rust (Southstar).
Ha, nice homage to the Netscape "loading" GIF: the N in the corner. When Netscape was connecting to a website and loading the page (over your dozens of kilobits per second modem), there would be shooting stars behind the N (1). Because navigators relied on the night sky, I suppose.
(1) https://www.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/6oqzjv/the_netsc...
I've managed to pimp my Vivaldi installation to have the animated N as well: it allows custom user profile icons, and when you set it to an animated GIF, it animates as well. Add a custom CSS for the browser UI so that the profile icon is square and not circular: we're back in the 90's!
So, is the creator Norwegian, Danish or neither?
I went to figure that out. Norwegian
Claude is from the US
I have recently started to wonder whether we can really create a browser that can dethrone Google.
Ladybird tries that, but Ladybird has made several really questionable decisions and has various strange policies. Now I am biased here since I was banned for "trolling" (I dispute that claim completely), but the issues go deeper.
Take the following:
https://github.com/ladybirdbrowser/ladybird
Or rather:
https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/blob/master/CONT...
"We reserve the right to reject issues and other interactions that appear to be motivated by bad faith.
Additionally, anyone found participating in social media brigading of Ladybird will be permanently banned from the project."
Why does the Ladybird team engage in pro-actively banning people they disagree with? Does this not defeat the purpose of an open web if Ladybird goes about censoring people?
And that's not the only issue here. A while ago they removed the ability, more or less, by people to report issues (or rather, contribute to the project) when they are outsiders. Or the "swift is great, we use it", then suddenly "Rust is great, we use it". A lot of this awkwardness has to do with Kling; I think it would be better if a browser would act in an agnostic manner rather than as a "brigading leads to perma-bans". That's a very user-hostile policy. Is it no longer possible to build a browser? You can't go about "we will dethrone chrome" while you pursue "brigaders will be perma-banned".
> You can't go about "we will dethrone chrome" while you pursue "brigaders will be perma-banned".
The two things seem entirely unrelated
Why are you posting this here? This thread is not about you?
I mean, HN tells me it's trivial to one-shot any software of any complexity with AI, so I guess. And if it's open source, of course it was possible to fork it before AI came along. I never understood why HN took it as axiomatic that it was impossible to build a browser without millions of dollars of funding and an entire corporate staff, particularly when the entire core is OSS. People here are weirdly fatalistic about it.
It's obviously possible to build a browser, as it's possible to build any kind of software. We're here in a thread about a browser that someone other than Google built. Competing against Google has nothing to do with the viability of building a product to compete against Google.
Ugh, that's nasty. Pushing slop down the throats of Debian and Arch maintainers is _not good_.
...especially when combined with an attempt at social engineering that's so clumsy that it comes close to being outright bribery!
This quote from the mailing list is spectacular:
> If the Northstar browser is included in Debian Linux, I will do my utmost to make the browser successful and ensure it works well in Debian, and I will make sure that the Debian project and Debian contributors like you, and the four of you in particular, will be rewarded.
It looks like the author is a socially clueless person, who was touched by an AI and realized they could write a code. No experience of shipping the code or a feel for what is acceptable behavior.
If it is so, it is a good reason to not include their browser into major distros, but in any case their advice "try to maintain it for longer and get some reputation first" make my (hypothetical) psychological portrait redundant. I mean, if I'm right, they would probably lose interest and/or completely alienate distros in a year or so.
I personally think its pretty nasty how they treated this single developer, they could just reject him instead of writing a long hit piece on him.
How do you otherwise make an example of shit you dont want in your codebase?
There is an attention cost of pushing unverified slop onto others, public shaming and bans is a valid way to prevent this behaviour.
Does this actually prevent this behavior? Does writing a hit piece somehow magically disable ai slop in the debian inbox or do certain contributors just enjoy going on an ego trip?