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.
"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".
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.
That would be a fair reaction if the author had stopped as soon as Debian had explained to them why their behaviour was so risky. But they didn't - they went on to do the same thing to Arch.
At that point, it became hard to write it off as mere misguided enthusiasm and LWN were being entirely responsible to write it up in the way they did.
There's a pattern of behaviour on display which, though it's not entirely clear if it was intended to be malicious, does end up looking remarkably like a clumsy replay of the Jia Tan attack.
> Røsdal ignored the question about human code review and replied that he would appreciate feedback from someone else: ""Preferably from someone who actually works on real software development in 2026, someone with education in computer science, also considering that software development has changed with the introduction of AI llms"".
That thread is like a "Mongo is web scale" meme video version of the "«AI-era»". It's absolutely worth reading in whole, especially given the plot twists. ;)
Those security holes seem damning for a project that was assuring everyone it was ready for prime time. Flatly unacceptable for something that they're actively lobbying folks to get on board with.
Maybe less time running tokens to develop the engines and more time running security passes before running to tell the world.
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.
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!
If I understand this correctly, Andreas Røsdal wants people to adopt first before putting in work. Thats the wrong way around.
You make a great project -> people notice and like it -> you improve -> more people notice.. and circle continues.
Interesting how he said (when facing issues getting packaged for Debian and Arch) that the project was stopping AI as of Oct 2026[0].. but if you check the projects, as of writing this comment, one of them had a Claude co-authored commit dated 7 hours ago [1].
Edit: Just to clarify, I would love to see more browser engine diversity, especially open source, but the guy running the project saying one thing and doing the opposite kind of rubs me the wrong way.
I pray every night for a fast browser, because Chrome is getting slower and slower. And this fckd up sqlite implementation of history bookmarks etc is also a gargantuan fuckup. When you have multi year histories and gigantic amount of bookmarks, it is just ridiculously slow.
31 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 678 ms ] threadLadybird 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".
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.
The two things seem entirely unrelated
There is an attention cost of pushing unverified slop onto others, public shaming and bans is a valid way to prevent this behaviour.
At that point, it became hard to write it off as mere misguided enthusiasm and LWN were being entirely responsible to write it up in the way they did.
In fact, if you search HN you can see that it's been pushed repeatedly here as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=github.com/nordstjern...
There's a pattern of behaviour on display which, though it's not entirely clear if it was intended to be malicious, does end up looking remarkably like a clumsy replay of the Jia Tan attack.
Yes if by "developer" you mean "Claude prompt typer".
Yikes. What an asshole.
> I decided to run a little experiment. So I asked a frontier model developed by my employer ...
Pretty damning tbh
Maybe less time running tokens to develop the engines and more time running security passes before running to tell the world.
(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!
Edit: Just to clarify, I would love to see more browser engine diversity, especially open source, but the guy running the project saying one thing and doing the opposite kind of rubs me the wrong way.
[0]: https://github.com/nordstjernen-web/northstar-web-browser/co...
[1]: https://github.com/nordstjernen-web/northstar-web-browser/co...