Ladybird is a brand-new browser & web engine targeting a first Alpha release for early adopters in 2026. Here’s what’s new last month.

This month in Ladybird: December 2024

? Great progress on web-platform-tests
? WebGL
? Replacing home-made crypto with OpenSSL
?? WebCrypto API improvements
? Canvas2D filters

We also welcome two new sponsors: @mitchellh and @SimonBitwise ?

Link to full newsletter below!

— Ladybird (@ladybirdbrowser) January 1, 2025

Following a recent observation on interview questions like pull-ups.

I took it even further and rewritten it in C because in C there is no ready-to-use hashset and you need to make your own.

And with my 1 line hashing function hashset is still slower than (non-allocating unstable) quick sort because it doesn't allocate. pic.twitter.com/kR8AlxbcXc

— Dmitriy Kovalenko (@neogoose_btw) December 31, 2024

From NSHipster:

We’ve touched on .env files in past articles about xcconfig files and secret management on iOS. But this week on NSHipster we’re taking a deeper look, exploring how the lesser-known 1Password CLI (op) can solve some problems many of us face managing secrets day-to-day.

In case you’re not familiar with Twelve-Factor Apps:

Around 2011, Adam Wiggins published “The Twelve-Factor App”, a methodology for building modern web applications that has since become canon in our industry.

The third of those twelve factors, “Config”, prescribes storing configuration in environment variables:

“Apps sometimes store config as constants in the code. This is a violation of twelve-factor, which requires strict separation of config from code. Config varies substantially across deploys, code does not.”

This core insight — that configuration should be separate from code — led to the widespread adoption of .env files.

Fastfetch is a Neofetch-like tool for fetching system information and displaying it prettily. It is written mainly in C, with performance and customizability in mind.

brew install fastfetch

Why Fastfetch?

From the README:

1. Fastfetch is actively maintained.
2. Fastfetch is faster. As the name suggests.
3. Fastfetch has a greater number of features, though by default fastfetch only has a few modules enabled; use fastfetch -c all to find what you want.
4. Fastfetch is more configurable. You can find more information in the Wiki: https://github.com/fastfetch-cli/fastfetch/wiki/Configuration.
5. Fastfetch is more polished. For example, neofetch prints 555 MiB in the Memory module and 23 G in the Disk module, whereas fastfetch prints 555.00 MiB and 22.97 GiB respectively.
6. Fastfetch is more accurate. For example, neofetch never actually supports the Wayland protocol.

Discovered from looking at this Ghostty post on X:

Whenever there’s a new terminal emulator, I’d hesitantly try it out and then switch back to iTerm2

Ghostty is the exception. It’s so snappy, doesn’t get in my way, has sensible default settings, etc. It’s now my go-to choice ?

brew install –cask ghostty pic.twitter.com/ooDPHTUujb

— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) December 31, 2024

I built https://t.co/YtUfA7fIyM – verify you're human by playing DOOM and killing at least 3 enemies ? (in nightmare mode)

powered by webassembly × libsdl, ui built in @v0 pic.twitter.com/kv6TAbJglx

— Guillermo Rauch (@rauchg) December 31, 2024