This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Does anyone here have any advice on repairing a book spine? I have a hard back that an excited puppy chewed off the outer part of the spine. Now that said puppy is well out of her "chewing on random stuff" stage I'm trying to figure out how to repair/reinforce the binding since it's otherwise a brand new book. I'm a crafty person so I'm trying to embrace the accident and treat it as a book with a bit more character.

Most of the glue is intact, so my current thought is to add additional glue (book binding glue I'd assume?) and then use a tape or fabric to reinforce the spine.

I'm not expecting a repair that looks like new. I'm looking for something functional and durable that will keep the book from falling apart with use. If there's a good tape for this application that would probably be sufficient. Just soliciting some additional feedback in case someone has done something similar before I take a stab at the project.

Here's some pictures of the book and of course puppy tax: https://postimg.cc/gallery/wyskQn1

I've copied the full tweet below (it's from August, I missed this news somehow):

We've been evaluating a number of C++ successor languages for @ladybirdbrowser , and the one best suited to our needs appears to be @SwiftLang 🪶

Over the last few months, I've asked a bunch of folks to pick some little part of our project and try rewriting it in the different languages we were evaluating. The feedback was very clear: everyone preferred Swift!

Why do we like Swift?

First off, Swift has both memory & data race safety (as of v6). It's also a modern language with solid ergonomics.

Something that matters to us a lot is OO. Web specs & browser internals tend to be highly object-oriented, and life is easier when you can model specs closely in your code. Swift has first-class OO support, in many ways even nicer than C++.

The Swift team is also investing heavily in C++ interop, which means there's a real path to incremental adoption, not just gigantic rewrites.

Strong ties to Apple?

Swift has historically been strongly tied to Apple and their platforms, but in the last year, there's been a push for "swiftlang" to become more independent. (It's now in a separate GitHub org, no longer in "apple", for example).

Support for non-Apple platforms is also improving, as is the support for other, LSP-based development environments.

What happens next?

We aren't able to start using it just yet, as the current release of Swift ships with a version of Clang that's too old to grok our existing C++ codebase. But when Swift 6 comes out of beta this fall, we will begin using it!

No language is perfect, and there are a lot of things here that we don't know yet. I'm not aware of anyone doing browser engine stuff in Swift before, so we'll probably end up with feedback for the Swift team as well.

I'm super excited about this! We must steer Ladybird towards memory safety, and the first step is selecting a successor language that we can begin adopting very soon. 🤓🐞

Nitter link:

https://nitter.poast.org/awesomekling/status/1822236888188498031

Original post:

https://x.com/awesomekling/status/1822236888188498031

Some of Kling's replies in that thread are also pretty interesting:

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

In the end it came down to Swift vs Rust, and Swift is strictly better in OO support and C++ interop.

The September monthly report for Ladybird released the day after I posted this. It provides basically the same information:

This Month in Ladybird September 2024

The section about Swift:

Successor language search progress

Over the past year, our core contributors have been exploring potential safe languages to complement or succeed C++. We evaluated several options, including Rust, Swift, Fil-C, and others. While some languages offered compelling features, many fell short in either C++ interoperability or providing the level of memory safety we needed.

After extensive testing and discussion, Swift emerged as the top choice among our core developers, thanks to the new Swift 6 interoperability features and its growing cross-platform support. As a result, we’ve decided to adopt Swift as our C++ successor language.

That said, this will be an incremental shift. The existing C++ codebase is deeply embedded in the project, and a complete rewrite would be impractical. Instead, we’ll be gradually introducing new components in Swift, carefully integrating them with our existing C++ code over time. Look forward to a dedicated blog post on the topic soon.

I'm in the market for an OEM part that usually comes with the "premium" trim of my vehicle. Rather than pay the $2000+ listed on the official parts website, eBay gave me several junkyard/recycler types that list the part for $200-$400. Each of these listing make promises about 60-day returns, warranty, etc.

However, I attempted a buy-it-now (with a CC, not through PayPal), and the sale was cancelled within an hour claiming that the part didn't pass their QA. I made the purchase at 9pm, and I wouldn't expect that quick of a turn. I did send a note thanking the account for not sending something that didn't meet their standards.

Then, it happened again almost exactly the same way, save for a 3pm purchase time and a 45-minute refund turnaround. This is raising a bunch of red flags for me. Am I just having bad luck, being paranoid, or is someone trying to maybe steal credit card info?

I'm thinking that calling local junkyards and just asking if they have the year/model of vehicle I'm looking for and potentially the part. Will take any advice, though.

I might have to have two running laptops for work.

Desk space is at a premium. Right now I have my work laptop stacked on top of my personal PC on my desk ( tower, on its side, on a stand ).

Would a rack like this one, with a lap top on each shelf be enough to keep the magnets on the lids of each laptop from interfering with each other? What about protecting each laptop from the heat of the other laptop?

I already have a mechanical KVM. I will just need to buy one that accommodates more than 2 computers.

Please, let me know if I have overlooked any considerations.

Thank you.

One thing I really enjoy is being able to share my screen with family and friends to watch movies together or share gameplay. On Windows, you can do this trivially with Discord. On Mac, you can do this on Discord if you install some software they recommend. On Linux, I believe it's impossible with Discord unless you use a third party front end, which I'd rather not do. Zoom has screenshare with sound, but I don't know what the Linux support is like, and it's capped at 40 minutes unless you pay.

Are there other messaging services that have voice call and audio screenshare support on Linux, no unofficial front end necessary, that's also available on Windows and Mac? It's ok if it requires some setup. Ideally it would be a group chat as opposed to streamed publicly on a site like Twitch.

What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!