2024.08.29

đź“° News & Discussions

Recapping the first Local‑First conference in 15 minutes

Andrey Sitnik (@sitnikcode) recaps the main idea of every talk from Local‑First Conf, which took place in Berlin on May 30th 2024.

Local-First (LoFi) Meetup #18 (video)

The LoFi #18 meetup took place on Tuesday August 27th, with talks by @prashant_mit (on Creole Network), @getifyX (on Local Vault), and @matthew_linkous (on Triplit).

Show HN: InstantDB – A Modern Firebase

Show HN post by InstantDB announcing open-sourcing their product, "a client-side database that makes it easy to build real-time and collaborative apps like Notion and Figma."

Small Data SF 2024 Conference - September 23-24 in San Francisco

"We are organizing a unique conference to promote local-first development and small data in person in San Francisco!" - @mehd_io

Software Possession for Personal Use

Discusses the frustrations with modern software, particularly how the shift from desktop to cloud-based platforms has led to losses in privacy, control, and user autonomy, and advocates for local-first software, self-hosting, and decentralized systems. See also HN discussion.

How Apple built iCloud to store billions of databases

"Apple uses Cassandra and FoundationDB for CloudKit, their cloud backend service. We take a look into how exactly each is used within their cloud and the problems they've solved."

5000x faster CRDTs: An Adventure in Optimization

From 2021, re-posted to Hacker News and generating new discussion.

"There are two ways to look at it: Short-lived apps and long-lived apps."

@PatrickJS__ argues that SSR makes more sense for short-lived apps whereas SPAs "having local state" makes more sense for "long-lived apps" such as dashboards.

webAI announced that its AI platform is available for Apple silicon products

"Excited to share a significant milestone for webAI that underscores the incredible potential of Apple Silicon, allowing us to deliver a secure, local-first AI solution that businesses can fully control." - Stephen Westerfield

What are the worst UX issues you see on the web today?

"My number one is slow waiting times. After using offline-first applications like Linear, I think I have become totally intolerant to applications that make me wait for every UI action made."

🛠️ Tools & Resources

When does local-first make sense? (video)

Video by Simon Grimm (@schlimmson) on when local-first makes sense, including several real-world examples.

DWeb Deep Dive: Authoring Decentralized App Protocols (video)

"Join Daniel Buchner ... to learn about authoring protocols for decentralized web nodes (DWNs)."

NextGraph: Build local-first and decentralized apps

"Based on CRDTs, NextGraph brings about the convergence between P2P and Semantic Web, towards a secure and privacy-preserving cloud"

Logux - framework for real-time web apps

"Framework for real-time web apps with optimistic UI, collaboration, edit conflicts resolution with CRDT and live updates"

RxDB Fulltext Search Beta

"Excited to announce the new RxDB Fulltext Search Plugin powered by FlexSearch" - @rxdbjs

ElectricSQL electric-next vs PowerSync

Post by @cahofmeyr of @powersync_ comparing ElectricSQL's new 'electric-next' to PowerSync — sync engines designed to work with existing Postgres databases.

✨ Apps

Tender: The inbox for your finances

"I’ve been building a personal finance app that runs fully in the browser (using the automerge crdt and sqlite) for over a year now" - stpn on HN.

InfoFlow: Efficient Knowledge Management

"Local first, privacy focused read-it-later and personal knowledge management (PKMS) tool." By @WildCat_io.

Thymer: The editor for tasks and planning

"Thymer uses CRDTs for everything. It's an IDE for tasks and planning. It's a multiplayer app, end-to-end encrypted and offline first, optionally self-hosted, and an entire workspace is a single graph. So CRDTs were the logical choice." - jdvh on HN.

BeFit: Track your fitness journey

By @nossesteveUses PowerSync and Supabase.

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