Hacker News: LinguaBrowse

New comment by LinguaBrowse in "Firefox for iOS now has a native adblocker"

LinguaBrowse — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 03:18:31 +0000

Safari does support extensions (implemented as Safari App Extensions that can wrap standard Web Extensions if desired).

There was a time where WKWebView didn’t support Web Extensions (i.e. Web Extensions could only be used with Safari). But since iOS 18.4, the WKWebExtension API has made it possible. I’ve been using it successfully to embed a Web Extension into my ebook reader app.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/webkit/wkwebextens...

New comment by LinguaBrowse in "S&P 500 rejects SpaceX, also blocking entry for OpenAI and Anthropic"

LinguaBrowse — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 06:57:41 +0000

I’ve moved my S&P 500 investments to the Equal Weight index to reduce my exposure to AI. Quite aside from SpaceX, I think the large-cap tech companies are making some uncomfortably large bets on AI and any major upset could cause a domino effect.

But as so many ETFs have a significant stake in large-cap US tech stocks (the top 10 holdings of the iShares MSCI World ETF is entirely comprised US Big Tech, making up 20% of the value of the ETF), I found S&P 500 Equal Weight to be pretty attractive.

As for SpaceX itself? I feel the numbers involved all sound a bit unbelievable to me. I fear that there will be a rug-pull sometime post-IPO, and retail investors (and taxpayers, if the US Government ends up taking a stake, as they have recently indicated they might do for OpenAI) will inevitably be left holding the bag.

New comment by LinguaBrowse in "Ask HN: Where do all the web devs talk?"

LinguaBrowse — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 12:40:58 +0000

They're closed for sign-ups, so no way to view their feed :(

But happy to follow those accounts.

New comment by LinguaBrowse in "Ask HN: Where do all the web devs talk?"

LinguaBrowse — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 12:34:07 +0000

I definitely feel this. We're a far cry from the early days of Facebook where you could just post your thoughts and feelings and real people you'd know and care about would come and interact with you. Now all I see is posts from grifters and politics bots, and it's desperately hard to get my own stuff seen, even as an established account.

I want a new platform.

New comment by LinguaBrowse in "Ask HN: Where do all the web devs talk?"

LinguaBrowse — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 12:28:21 +0000

The thing about Hacker News is that it's a real fight for life to get any engagement. Just showing the humble project you're working on doesn't cut it. You need to time your submission just right and impress like you're doing a product launch, otherwise you get no visibility and no comments. Social media shouldn't have to be so exhausting and competitive.

Ask HN: Where do all the web devs talk?

LinguaBrowse — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 03:37:36 +0000

I've been using Twitter / X for a good decade now, and while I've found it's a great place to connect with native app dev communities (I'm well connected with the React Native scene), I really struggle to connect with any web devs.

There are a few big names like Adam Wathan who are pretty active on Twitter of course, but considering how widespread web dev is, I see precious few up-and-coming web devs coding in public.

So, where are they? I have explored BlueSky a bit, but again it feels a bit like tumbleweeds (though maybe that's just my luck as a small account).

Are web devs more old-school, posting on bulletin boards and forums? Or is X still the answer, and I'm just getting aggressively packed into a different bubble?

… Or is it all realtime communication, like Slack and Discord, these days?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46866149

Points: 56

# Comments: 52

New comment by LinguaBrowse in "Birchdocs, my personal docs site"

LinguaBrowse — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 15:58:55 +0000

Oh, drat. Just about to go to bed now, but I’ll sort that out tomorrow. Thanks!

New comment by LinguaBrowse in "Birchdocs, my personal docs site"

LinguaBrowse — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 15:32:17 +0000

I've learned a lot over 10 years as a software engineer and thought it was about time I had a place to write up all this hard-earned knowledge. So I created a docs site, for myself!

I gradually realised that, as a "personal" docs site, it needn't be limited to just software notes. I could write whatever I like on this thing. Why not recipes? Sheet music? Or language study notes? The MDX format makes it easy to express anything I want, the source and output are available from any device, and it all gets indexed for search, so it's quite compelling versus basic solutions like Apple Notes.

So over the last month, I've been filling it out with articles to show the full potential of such a resource. I feel like we could all find a use for a personal docs site!

Birchdocs, my personal docs site

LinguaBrowse — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 15:32:17 +0000

Article URL: https://birchdocs.tokyo

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45645093

Points: 2

# Comments: 3

New comment by LinguaBrowse in "The many JavaScript runtimes of the last decade"

LinguaBrowse — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 13:20:47 +0000

I'm keeping my eye on Void0, yeah! If anyone can live up to such promises, it'll be them.

They'll have a tough job getting sticky ecosystems like React Native to adopt, but hope to see them make a compelling case for their stack.

New comment by LinguaBrowse in "The many JavaScript runtimes of the last decade"

LinguaBrowse — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 13:17:38 +0000

Thank you for the kind words! Glad to get this one out of the way so that I can do some less ambitious articles for a change. But hope to make them good in their own way, too!

New comment by LinguaBrowse in "The many JavaScript runtimes of the last decade"

LinguaBrowse — Sun, 27 Jul 2025 23:22:16 +0000

Eh, writing is hard!

New comment by LinguaBrowse in "The many JavaScript runtimes of the last decade"

LinguaBrowse — Sun, 27 Jul 2025 23:19:50 +0000

A very good thought! Deno and Bun have this formidable funding for sure, but Node.js is still innovating. Things like type-stripping and require(esm) come to mind. I think as long as big companies use it for Electron, Node.js will continue to get investment. Even if the investment were to dry up, experience teaches us that old tools die hard.

I would hope that interoperability goes up. The React Native community are closing in on support for Node-API, and with that maybe we can start sharing native code between desktop and mobile. The WinterCG effort is also going well.

As for canaries, I think sustainability is the main thing to look at. What is the surface area of this tool, how much expertise and effort does it take to maintain it, and who is invested in its survival? The more we can share common implementations like Intl and Temporal, the easier it is for smaller players to keep up. And of course, the more the big players try to diverge (looking at you, Chrome), the harder it gets.

New comment by LinguaBrowse in "The many JavaScript runtimes of the last decade"

LinguaBrowse — Sun, 27 Jul 2025 23:06:36 +0000

Could be to draw upon the existing JavaScript ecosystem, or could just be because JavaScript is the language the dev knows best! I feel really nerfed when I have to move from JavaScript to other languages, personally, even if I can get things done in C++ and other languages.

New comment by LinguaBrowse in "The many JavaScript runtimes of the last decade"

LinguaBrowse — Sun, 27 Jul 2025 23:04:10 +0000

Thank you! I'd tend to default to Expo if building a mobile app in JavaScript these days, but Capacitor, Tauri, and NativeScript are all good options too.

New comment by LinguaBrowse in "The many JavaScript runtimes of the last decade"

LinguaBrowse — Sun, 27 Jul 2025 23:01:22 +0000

Thank you very much, really appreciate it! There's a respectable article on engines (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_JavaScript_engines), but indeed, no article on runtimes. I did feel that they were under-discussed compared to engines, though, with most analysis focusing on browsers and Node-alikes, so wanted to add something to the literature.

New comment by LinguaBrowse in "The many JavaScript runtimes of the last decade"

LinguaBrowse — Sun, 27 Jul 2025 22:56:45 +0000

Very cool, though when I was qualifying the scope for "the last decade", I was doing it by creation date rather than usage date, so I think I get a pass on this one!

New comment by LinguaBrowse in "The many JavaScript runtimes of the last decade"

LinguaBrowse — Sun, 27 Jul 2025 22:55:46 +0000

I've heard nothing but high praise for GraalJS, yeah. I wonder whether it'd make any sense inside mobile apps – not due to any feature in mind, but simply out of interest because that's more the area I'm using JavaScript. The first-class interop with Java would be great for Android, though I wonder how cheap its interop with iOS (C-family languages) would be.

New comment by LinguaBrowse in "The many JavaScript runtimes of the last decade"

LinguaBrowse — Sun, 27 Jul 2025 22:54:06 +0000

> Did you consider things like JScript.NET? jsc.exe still comes with every Windows installation, and JScript still runs on IIS server (I have built a few things with it).

I've not heard of any of these, wow – very cool that it's still bundled with Windows. I suspect that most things related to JScript wouldn't fit the scope of "the last decade", though? I tended to focus on creation date when deciding what should be in scope.

> And what about things like Adobe Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere, and Illustrator which can run Javascript using either Extendscript in older versions or V8 in modern versions.

Hmm, these may well qualify, you're right. Maybe I can add them to the addendum. I'd want to do a bit of research to understand their timeline and genealogy before including them, though. Wrists beginning to hurt for today now, though!

I do recall now that Adobe PDFs can run JavaScript. That would've been worth a mention for sure.

New comment by LinguaBrowse in "The many JavaScript runtimes of the last decade"

LinguaBrowse — Sun, 27 Jul 2025 22:30:38 +0000

No idea! The only benchmarks I'm aware of for QuickJS are against other JavaScript engines (https://bellard.org/quickjs/bench.html).

That said, one thing I've heard a lot from NativeScript TSC members building on top of QuickJS is that QuickJS has staggeringly low overhead for calling C functions. In fact, I was shown benchmarks in which it calls native functions faster than JS functions (perhaps it's easier to optimise because JS functions have complications like closure capture to worry about). I imagine this has conceptual overlap with how V8's Fast API works.