Awesome project. Dune was the book which made me write my own dictionary app as well - https://www.vedaist.com/!

If you're looking for an alternative dictionary on mobile, check out Vedaist (https://www.vedaist.com/). The dictionary entries are based on Wiktionary (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Main_Page) and I'd expect more modern meanings compared to the Webster's 1913. The UI is a subjective choice though.

The mac default dictionary is great for offline use and passive learning. With vedaist features are geared towards active learning with gamification.

Disclosure; I'm the creator of the Vedaist project.

Does Vedaist for mobile support fully offline usage? I really really dislike being spied on every time I use a dictionary that's hooked up to some API. I bought Dictionary-dot-com Pro a few years ago because it was the only such app I could find for iOS, but then they removed the offline functionality I paid for in a 2.0 release anyway :/

On android, you have Livio which is offline, tracker free and free of charge as well.

That's pretty disappointing that MacOS has an unmatched dictionnary app but iOS is forgotten while there is decent options on Android.

Not a standalone app, but on iOS you can highlight any word and select "Look up..." to get a definition. I use it frequently while reading the New York Times.

I believe it works offline, too, since the device I use for the Times is almost never hooked up to the internet.

Nope, sorry. Vedaist has online features like sync and the word catalog of almost a million words would be too large for fully offline usage. But I've also implemented product analytics which you (and many others) dislike.

I'd recommend wiktionary.org. Although it is an online dictionary it's part of the Wikipedia family and hence are better compared to other companies with regards to privacy.

A million words shouldn't take tons of storage, right? How big is your database?

I spend around 500 megabytes on offline maps for OsmAnd and don't really worry about it. I would have naively guessed a million word definitions wouldn't be larger than that.

Why do you say it's too large for fully offline usage?

Wiktionary dumps are around 1gb for a million words and definitions (https://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiktionary/) uncompressed. However this is just raw text.

We have images as well like https://www.vedaist.com/en/w/clarsach.html. Audio pronunciations in wiktionary are sound files. Binary resources take a lot more space.

For mobile apps, if the size increases a lot then the first download experience is not great. After a certain size the app is not usable for low end smartphones.

Hence I'm not sure about fully offline for a rich/modern dictionary mobile app. Downloading partial information offline like a temporary cache is possible though.

Ah, that makes sense.

Thank you for enlightening me!

Ereaders have offline dictionaries. My Ereader has one based on Webster 1913. It works fine but it is of course missing words in modern books. But now you can get Wiktionary on many Ereaders which is just great.

I use the chambers dictionary in iOS for offline access

$10 well spent. Thanks for the recommendation!

Context matters.

I think kotlin definitely works for android developers but other cases need more thinking. If you're building webapps in smallish teams then maybe those work too.

Some reasons against Kotlin are-

* If you are working in a mid to large team then having all developers learn a new language is a massive cost. Learning Java is also still a requirement if you're developing in Kotlin since many open source libraries are in Java. So teams need to be aware of 2 similar but different tech stacks.

* If you are developing platform libraries then you would look at higher adoption by using Java 11 LTS as the baseline. You could add an optional kotlin library for a better experience.

* Others have pointed out how Kotlin will be an evolutionary dead end as Java catches up on features.

Completely agree on aspect of kotlin being an evolutionary dead end.

For anyone interested in looking at C#, look at https://rahulrevo.substack.com/p/language-ecosystems-net and how they have evolved differently.

You're right on the benefits of a combined strategy right from the government to personal responsibility by citizens. Indians complied with most of these in the early phases of the pandemic but got complacent later on. I wrote about some of this in my visit late March - https://rahulrevo.substack.com/p/indias-covid-conundrum. India is also very complex because of the diversity and scale.

After this second wave is done, people will be more compliant again towards covid-safe behavior at least for a short term. Ultimately a large section of the population will need to be vaccinated to meaningfully end the pandemic.

I was traveling to India during March (Mumbai area) and immediately concerned about the lack of masks and possibility of super spreader events like kumbh - https://rahulrevo.substack.com/p/indias-covid-conundrum. Unfortunately the worst case scenario has happened and it will now take time for the lockdowns to take into effect and the cases to reduce.

For those in India, please support healthcare workers. This is something I wrote about in another post - https://rahulrevo.substack.com/p/healthcare-services-in-indi...

Hey HN,

Bardun is an iOS app that merges a contacts app and notes app functionality to better manage relationships.

From a feature perspective notes can link to contacts. Notes are freeform and can be searched. You can add contacts data like emails, addresses, events, phone numbers. We support importing of contacts from phone, google contacts or calendar events.

We are focussed on privacy. Data is stored on your device only and not on our servers. Read more at https://www.bardunapp.com/blog/privacy-apps.html

I primarily use it to store information about contacts - personal and professional; and capture impactful events in my life.

I would love to get any feedback from the community!

Monica looks great. I had the same pain point and built Bardun (https://www.bardunapp.com/) as a iOS app instead of a website. Bardun brings together freeform notes and contacts to capture relationship information.

For privacy, the app stores information locally on-device only. Sync of contacts via phone, Google mail or calendar is possible. Contact information is streamed to the device rather than stored on a server.