User: Hi! I'd like a wake up call. Hotel front desk: The entire modern web infrastructure you rely on is held together by a handful of volunteer run opensource projects, and if one lead maintainer decides to delete their repository today, the global economy would stall by noon.

TIL, an open source internet search engine called MarginaliaSearch exists. It mainly for text-oriented websites, specifically indexing the 'small, old, and weird' web. You can even run it on your own server if you have 32GiB of RAM and plenty of fast SSD space for the index. This is perfect for those seeking an alt search engine, but more importantly, it teaches you how to build a search system and manage its dataset. It’s a fantastic CS learning experience to satisfy your itch.

Zen Browser is a free, open source browser based on Firefox, designed for a calmer internet experience by removing Firefox's "bad bits." It has zero telemetry. It comes with more "hardened" privacy settings out of the box, whereas Firefox requires you to dive into the settings to achieve the same level of protection and zero Ads etc. this is what Firefox should have been. Anyway, I shared information. Now it is up to you 😉

Zen Browser

Beautifully designed, privacy-focused, and packed with features.