Cloudflare Patent Troll Victory Sees All Patents Dedicated to the PublicPermalink

Emily Terrell and Patrick Nemeroff writing on the Cloudflare blog:

In the end, Sable agreed to pay Cloudflare $225,000, grant Cloudflare a royalty-free license to its entire patent portfolio, and to dedicate its patents to the public, ensuring that Sable can never again assert them against another company.

You love to see it. Cloudflare single-handedly controlling large swaths of internet traffic leaves me a little concerned, but I’m glad they’re using their size to fight back against patent trolling.

Meta Details Some of the Technology Behind ThreadsPermalink

Jesse Chen on the Engineering at Meta blog:

Instagram uses Python (Django) for its backend. By using the same backend for Threads, we could leverage a lot of the existing tech stack for Threads and reuse most of our existing data models, business logic, security features, and server infrastructure. This also meant users could sign in to the app with their existing Instagram account, making it super simple to onboard and set up your Threads app.

The Threads mobile apps themselves were built primarily with Swift on iOS, and Jetpack Compose on Android.

Always interesting to get a peek behind the curtain of large proprietary systems. I had no idea Instagram and Threads were built with Python.

New Startup VoidZero Receives $4.6M Funding for JavaScript ToolingPermalink

Evan You:

I have founded VoidZero Inc., a company dedicated to building an open-source, high-performance, and unified development toolchain for the JavaScript ecosystem. We have raised $4.6 million in seed funding, led by Accel.

Picking up where the Rome Tools project failed, VoidZero hopes to build a suite of high-performance tools atop a common foundation: the Oxc toolset implemented in Rust.

The goals are admirable and as the creator of Vue.js and Vite Evan You has a track record of making tools that gain adoption, but there’s no mention of how they plan to make US$4.6M plus return for investors.

iOS Safari Show StoppersPermalink

Roderick E.J.H. Gadellaa:

iOS Safari is more than an inconvenience for developers, it’s the fundamental reason interoperability has been stymied in mobile ecosystems; frequent showstopping bugs, a large patch gap, and lack of competing engines ensures the web is not a credible competitor to native. Here are the receipts to prove it.

Incredibly detailed and well researched collection of bugs in Safari on iOS over the years. The bugs would be fine if it were possible to use a browser with anything other than the version of WebKit Apple ships on the OS, but unless you’re in the EU that isn’t possible.

Halloy IRC ClientPermalink

Casper Storm on Mastodon:

Halloy is my spare-time project I’ve been working on for a little over a year. Halloy is an open-source IRC client written in #rustlang , using the Iced GUI library. I love the IRC, and I’m happy to be able to give something back to the community I’ve been connected to for over 20 years!

Really nice take on a cross-platform IRC client. It’s got a subdued and text-centric UI, but because it’s built with a GUI framework it’s got a few niceties that aren’t possible with a TUI in the terminal.