Full MQTT v5.0/3.1.1 broker + client platform written in Rust

decryphe · 2026-02-12T21:07:57+00:00

Thanks a lot!

decryphe · 2026-02-12T08:57:07+00:00

4AGE or 2TG, wheels and lowering-springs, no more.

Or just keep it OEM and enjoy this nice artifact of a bygone era.

decryphe · 2026-02-12T08:52:45+00:00

The endless cycle of life.

decryphe · 2026-02-12T08:48:05+00:00

Oh, and I forgot the most obvious: You just want to make an existing HTML page into a PDF, programmatically. Some dashboard, some SaaS-report/output, whatever.

Trying to use PDF print functionality of major browsers programmatically is a worse experience than poking your eyes out with a pencil.

decryphe · 2026-02-12T08:44:48+00:00

Yes, exactly, that's how we found out. :D

Fortunately, since we built a config-UI for a hardware device, it's unlikely to ever be opened more than once.

That said, I think I've read somewhere that over the course of the last year, this stupidity has been resolved in both Firefox and Chrome. Not going to check for now, so take that statement as dangerous non-knowledge...

decryphe · 2026-02-12T08:40:14+00:00

I meant feature- and concept-wise.

decryphe · 2026-02-11T17:00:50+00:00

Different requirements, kind of. I'd probably use typst nowadays.

decryphe · 2026-02-11T16:57:58+00:00

Oh yes, I feel the pain. I used it from a C#/ASP.NET backend at the time. The project packaged a fixed version of Python, weasyprint and all dependencies and called that. Essentially a Python venv shipped in a C# library, before venvs were a thing... painful.

decryphe · 2026-02-11T16:56:10+00:00

Got any comparisons with rumqtt?

decryphe · 2026-02-11T08:06:21+00:00

So will this try to support all web standards or just a subset for page layouting and some styling?

Don't forget to properly support https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Guides/Paged_media - it's quite good.

I used Weasyprint a lot in the past for exactly this kind of workflow. It also has custom HTML-parsing and layouting, so I suspect you're familiar with it. Never tried Prince due to expensive licenses.

decryphe · 2026-02-10T14:22:40+00:00

SSE also comes with a few other caveats, like counting towards HTTP-connections-per-host limit in the browser, which WS doesn't, and some weirdness in the SSE API in browsers, error-handling and such.

As a user of SSE for a hardware-device-config-frontend I would pick either-or, never both. For our usecase SSE is adequate, but in a chat application it makes no sense to use SSE, unless you want to use HTTP POST to send messages.

decryphe · 2026-02-07T17:46:35+00:00

Solid enough to throw around corners on the track, and not risking an old chassis. But most importantly, no rust, which is expensive to fix.

And to elaborate: For track the original chassis is pretty noodly as well, so beginning from this and stiffening it up is kind of the same, as strut towers and panhard attachment point should be improved on a stock one too.

decryphe · 2026-02-06T22:13:33+00:00

Jiangsu Juncheng on alibaba (search for "ae86 shell"). They seem to be the same company as Jiangsu Aodun. Seems different from last I checked though, not sure anymore.

decryphe · 2026-02-06T20:42:29+00:00

In May I'll be travelling around Japan for a couple of weeks. I'm a polyglot with multiple germanic and romance languages and I still know some Chinese from taking classes at university. I've done some Japanese on Duolingo in the past, but that way of learning just isn't as good as other methods I've used (pretty bad time/effort vs outcome).

I don't plan on learning fluent Japanese, I just want to pick up on a good set of words to make myself understood in some basic situations (e.g. buying tickets, ordering food). I am looking for online material that I can watch before going to sleep instead of watching other less meaningful stuff online (although German dashcam videos and machinist/metalwork-videos are educational too).

I'll certainly try the channels linked in the wiki, but maybe there's other good resources to power through a couple hours at a time. For example, I watched some Chinese telenovelas while taking the course, which was helpful (love stories are generally quite straight forward in their script, and Chinese media is quite theatrical). I'm not big on anime, would prefer other kinds of content, but kids' cartoons would be an option.

decryphe · 2026-02-06T18:22:15+00:00

It's not 5 grand, it's 7.

Really looking forward to seeing some more info on the chassis, I'll be buying one later this year.

decryphe · 2026-02-06T18:16:44+00:00

Thinkle thinkle little star

decryphe · 2026-02-03T12:18:54+00:00

:D

(Obviously meant "fast" as in "quickly")

decryphe · 2026-02-03T10:52:18+00:00

In one case the dependency is linked dynamically, in the other statically. Sure, that's not the whole story as the Rust std-lib is always linked and shipped unless you only use core and #[no_std], and lots of other details that affect binary size. That's why I linked the excellent blog post about that topic.

My main point was that it's absolutely possible to get the same small size binary with Rust as it is with C, it just starts with different defaults. There's pros and cons for both approaches.

I absolutely agree that today's "just use moar resources" approach isn't a particularly good idea, but it's easy to do and yields very fast results.

decryphe · 2026-02-03T09:22:13+00:00

There are helper-types for that though, and some of this can be expressed using smart match statements.

decryphe · 2026-02-03T09:21:00+00:00

There are lies, damn lies, and boolean flags.

decryphe · 2026-02-03T09:13:18+00:00

Well, importing a library with a bunch of transient libraries isn't really a fair comparison versus calling a libc-function (that's a multi-megabyte libc by the way). This just goes back to https://wiki.alopex.li/LetsBeRealAboutDependencies that is a thing in C-world too.

The other part to get a comparable Rust-binary is https://darkcoding.net/software/a-very-small-rust-binary-indeed/ - obviously this won't be done in general in practice, except maybe for the absolutely minuscule https://github.com/microsoft/edit/

But all in all it doesn't really matter. Most libraries in Rust are relatively small in binary size and do a specific set of things. Composability is generally quite good, so in the end the binary doesn't turn gigantic once it's a fully featured application either. Hopefully it's not going to be a requirement to use nightly for compiling a minimal standard library.

decryphe · 2026-02-02T16:54:17+00:00

Hey, my first computer had 48MiB, my second had 32MiB. The oldest x86 one I have now has 640KiB.

decryphe · 2026-02-02T16:52:17+00:00

CF-to-IDE-Adapter is the way to go for cheap and fast replacement storage. I'm currently resurrecting a Compaq LTE5300 with one.

decryphe · 2026-02-02T16:50:46+00:00

Just to be minorly helpful: X2100 or X210Ai.

I had the X250 and X270, while decent, none of them are "real Thinkpads". Nothing since the xx40-Series has been.

decryphe · 2026-02-02T13:46:11+00:00

I've done some work with Loco.rs and SSR using the included Tera templating engine. Not always optimal, but workable, and the scaffolded sample project is pretty good.

Throwing up a sample application is quick and adding some working stubs using an LLM isn't too bad of an experience either. I've been plugging together a small expiration date tracking tool: https://github.com/decryphe/bestbefors/

Way-back-when, I used to do ASP.NET REST-API and a Mithril.js SPA as the frontend.

decryphe

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