2024.09.26
📰 News & Discussions
LoFi/19 Community Meetup
The LoFi/19 community meetup took place on Tuesday September 24th, with talks by @nikgraf ("End-to-end encryption in local-first apps"), @agarcia_me ("Local-first vector search with sqlite-vec"), and @steveruizok ("tldraw, a canvas for you").
Forget ChatGPT: why researchers now run small AIs on their laptops
"Beyond the ability to fine-tune open models for focused applications, Kal’tsit says, another advantage of local models is privacy. Sending personally identifiable data to a commercial service could run foul of data-protection regulations." See also HN discussion.
Cool frontend arts of local-first: storage, sync, conflicts
From @evilmartians: '[F]or frontend engineers, when it comes to the big 3 “local-first” tasks: storage, synchronization, and conflict resolution, actually implementing them with grace is almost like a fine art (or even a lost art, in some cases). Let’s go digging.'
Automerge 3.x Work-in-Progress Share-Out
"Engineering preview of the work that is going into Automerge 3.0. Big memory use improvements, load & save performance, scaled-out sync, and biggest of all: an integrated E2EE and auth system."
PostCSS, Logux & The Future of CSS - Andrey Sitnik
@IdoEvergreen interviews Andrey Sitnik. "[W]e got to chat about Andrey’s exciting work on the Logux project — a flexible JS framework to make a local-first sync engine."
Local-First @ Netlify Compose San Francisco (upcoming panel discussion)
"Local First architectures are emerging as one of the most exciting pathways towards performant and robust applications for end users, and could very well be the next large paradigm shift for rich client apps. In this panel, some of the leading innovators and researchers at the forefront of the local first movements, get together on stage to explore the future of the web." Scheduled for Thursday, October 3rd at 5:15pm Pacific.
🛠️ Tools & Resources
Local-first Realtime Apps with Expo React Native (video)
"Build local-first realtime apps with @expo, Legend-State, and @supabase 🚀" - a video tutorial by @thorwebdev. See also accompaying post on Supabase blog.
Local-First Web Development with Replicache: Building smooth user experiences
"If you want to implement replicache in your existing application, I recommend adopting it incrementally."
Llama 3.2: Revolutionizing edge AI and vision with open, customizable models
"Today, we’re releasing Llama 3.2, which includes small and medium-sized vision LLMs (11B and 90B), and lightweight, text-only models (1B and 3B) that fit onto edge and mobile devices, including pre-trained and instruction-tuned versions." See also HN discussion.
Collaborative Text Editing with Eg-walker: Better, Faster, Smaller
New paper from Martin Kleppmann & Joseph Gentle: "Operational Transformation (OT) algorithms are slow to merge files that have diverged substantially due to offline editing; CRDTs are slow to load and consume a lot of memory. We introduce Eg-walker, a collaboration algorithm for text that avoids these weaknesses."
Topology: 'distributed system protocol for the Open Metaverse'
"The Open Metaverse requires a distributed system protocol that is credibly neutral, fault tolerant, and horizontally scalable. It must support billions of participants interacting in real-time while preserving user autonomy and privacy."
✨ Apps
PySheets: The Spreadsheet UI for Python
"PySheets is local-first. All data is stored in the browser using IndexedDB. All your Python logic runs in the browser as well. PySheets is written in Python and runs inside the browser using PyScript."
Fika: a cozy corner for stories, discovery, and shared ideas
"I've learned a couple of things about local-first software while building http://fika.bar" "it's a replicache + solidjs app." - @masylum
Srcbook - An interactive programming environment for JavaScript and TypeScript
"Srcbook is a local-first, open-source TypeScript notebook powered by Node.js, designed for prototyping, exploring libraries, and rapid iteration." - @GDSteve6
Brisqi: Your Tasks. Your Kanban. Private and Offline. Always.
"Brisqi was built to ensure user's data stays private with end-to-end encryption when syncing to cloud."
RemNote: Make flashcards in your notes.
"Fast, local-first graph DB. Real-time reliable syncing" - @remnote
Artifacts: an image + link organizer app for macOS and iOS
"A completely native, local first way to save all that stuff you find across the web."
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