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Description
How I Used Rust to Become Extremely Offline by Luke Westby
I've been on a mission to escape the internet. I have wasted uncountable hours doomscrolling, idly browsing, and posting opinions that no one cares about. I hit a breaking point, and I had to quit. I had to log off.
So, I deleted all of my accounts and I blocked all of the websites that distracted me. I thought I had finally succeeded, but it seems content always finds a way to be consumed. My preferred search engine shows little snippets of news, recent posts, and titles of videos related to the topic of the query. The temptation to search for "The News" and get distracted by the headlines was often too strong, and unfortunately my site blocker only works on URLs and not elements of a page.
In order to cut out this final source of distraction and finally become Extremely Offline, I had to do it myself. I built a browser extension that removes those areas of the page, and I used Rust to make sure I will never turn it off. Let me show you how.
A
All
right
so
I'm
luke
and
I'm
a
relative
newcomer
to
the
russ
community.
I've
been
using
rest
for
about
a
year,
I'm
coming
to
you
from
the
elm
community,
where
you
know,
there's
a
lot
of
conceptual
overlap
between
the
type
systems
and
what
have
you
but
there's
also
a
lot
of
stuff,
that's
really
different,
and
so
I'm
really
enjoying
learning
and
using
rust.
A
A
A
I
had
reached
a
point
with
my
internet
usage
habits,
where
I
was
no
longer
just
distracted
by
browsing.
I
was
spending
too
much
time
and
investing
too
much
emotionally
in
what
I
encountered
online
and
it
transitioned
from
just
merely
a
distraction
to
a
serious
and
potent
source
of
anxiety,
and
my
internet
habits
were
not
just
affecting
me
at
this
point.
They
were
also
impacting
the
people
that
I
love
and
my
responsibility
to
them,
and
so,
with
very
patient
help
from
friends
and
family.
A
I
confronted
the
situation
and
decided
the
best
thing
for
me
to
do
would
be
to
to
log
off
and
leave
it
all
behind,
to
the
extent
that
I
possibly
could
so
step.
One
of
this
journey
was
the
classic
deleting
social
media
accounts,
and
I
don't
actually
have
a
lot
to
say
about
that.
I'm
glad
that
I
did
it
and
that
I
had
the
option
to
do
it.
A
I
don't
really
miss
it,
but
it
it
turned
out
to
just
be
kind
of
a
surface
level
fix
it
wasn't
really
the
posting
and
the
follower
accounts
that
was
getting
to
me.
It
was
a
much
more
pernicious
underlying
habit
that
you
can
pick
up
while
you
use
social
media,
and
that
is
doom
scrolling
right.
It
means
scrolling
through
doom.
It's
the
thing
where
you
kind
of
endlessly
swipe
through
your
timeline
and
kind
of
inundate.
Your
brain
with
you
know
the
day's
evidence
of
humanity's
real
capacity
for
cruelty,
and
it
feels
awful
to
do.
A
But
for
some
reason
it's
also
really
addictive
and
breaking
this
habit
has
taken
a
lot
of
time
and
a
lot
of
energy
and
a
lot
of
creativity
and
I'll.
Tell
you
how
I
how
I
went
about
it.
So
I
had
deleted
my
social
media
accounts,
but
all
of
the
timelines
that
I
scrolled
through
are
still
public,
so
I
had
to
in
order
to
to
cut
that
off,
I
had
to
take
kind
of
a
drastic
step
and
I
got
a
site
blocker
right.
A
A
I
went
and
I
blocked
all
of
the
news
outlets
that
were
producing
these
doom-filled
headlines
in
the
first
place,
and
so
now,
as
of
this
year,
I
built
up
a
fairly
comprehensive
ban
list
in
cold
turkey
that
blocks
all
of
the
new
sites
that
I've
come
across,
that
I
would
really
care
to
browse
and
it's
good
progress
and
I'm
really
proud
of
the
the
point
that
I
was
able
to
reach
with
that
approach.
But
it
left
one
problem
still
on
the
table
and
that's
the
the
search
engine.
A
Okay,
so
I'm
a
programmer
and
I
have
to
use
a
search
engine
for
work.
I
have
to
use
a
search
engine
to
do
anything
useful,
and
so
I
I'll
come
over
here-
and
you
know
I'll
search
for
some
info
on
the
problem
that
I'm
working
on
and
look
for
some
docs
and
I'll
get
some
results,
but
I'm
always
tempted
to
come
back
to
the
search
bar
and
maybe
search
for
some
doom
laden
topic
and
search
engines.
Now
they
recognize
when
you've
typed
in
something
news.
Relevant
and
they'll.
A
So
what
do
we
do?
What
do
I
do
here?
Well,
I'm
a
programmer
and
recently
I'm
a
web
programmer.
So
I
know
how
to
build
a
browser
extension
that
can
take
care
of
this
and
actually
doesn't
take
much
right.
So
we've
got
a
few
lines
of
javascript
here
and
we'll
take
the
document
and
search
for
the
distracting
content
on
the
page
using
a
css
selector
and
then
for
each
element.
A
But
if
it's
that
easy
to
go
up
there
and
search
for
a
distracting
topic,
it's
just
as
easy
to
quickly
go
over
to
the
corner
and
remove
the
extension.
If
the
temptation
is
strong
enough
right,
so
it
doesn't
really
work.
If
you
can
just
turn
it
off,
some
argue
that
the
same
is
true
of
type
systems.
I
don't
want
to
get
involved
in
that
in
that
discussion
too
much
okay.
So
we
need
what
we
need
to
do
is
implement
the
the
same.
Anti-Circumvention
features
that
cold
turkey
has
and
we're
gonna.
A
A
This
program
is
trying
to
decide
to
do
one
of
two
things
you
know
close
the
browser
or
leave
it
open,
and
the
first
step
we
need
to
take
is
to
make
sure
that
we
have
a
pin
for
the
browser
process
id
if
we
can't
find
one.
That
means
the
browser
isn't
running,
so
we
can
just
exit
without
worrying
about
it.
We
don't
care
if
we
do
find
one
we're
going
to
hold
on
to
it,
because
we'll
need
it.
A
A
Then
we
send
a
message
that
just
says
ping
we're
going
to
wait
for
a
response
and
if
we
get
that
response
back
and
the
response
is
pong
we're
all
good
we're
going
to
tell
the
channel.
We
don't
want
to
close
the
browser
and
if
anything
else
comes
back,
you
know
malformed
input
or
unrecognized
input.
We're
just
going
to
tell
the
tell
the
the
program
to
go
ahead
and
close
the
browser
and
so
at
the
same
time
as
we're
doing
that.
A
We're
also
going
to
start
another
thread
and
we're
going
to
immediately
suspend
it
for
20
seconds
and
in
that
20
seconds.
If
that
20
seconds
elapses
without
a
response
from
the
native
messaging
hosts
we're
going
to
push
an
outcome
onto
the
channel
to
close
the
browser,
because
it's
timed
out
and
we
don't
think
it's
ever
going
to
respond,
and
so
now
the
last
thing
that
we
have
to
do
is
wait
for
something
to
appear
on
the
channel
and
once
something
does.
A
A
A
Pretty
pretty
simple,
it's
just
a
proxy
and
then
finally
we're
going
to
close
the
circuit
here
right.
So
the
javascript
side
also
needs
to
communicate
with
the
with
the
native
messaging
host
and
to
do
that,
we've
just
got
to
throw
in
a
couple
more
lines
of
javascript,
so
we're
going
to
use
the
browsers
api
to
connect
to
the
to
the
host
we're
going
to
wait
for
requests
when
a
request
comes
in.
We
first
need
to
ask
if
the
extension
is
enabled
in
private
browsing
at
this
point.
A
So
if
we
get
a
an
acceptable
response
there,
if
everything
looks
good,
we're
going
to
send
pong
back
down
to
the
native
messaging
host,
the
native
messaging
host
is
going
to
send
it
back
to
the
damon
which
will
exit
uneventfully
and,
if
anything
should
go
wrong
in
there.
If
it
should
take
too
long
or
if
the
response
is
incorrect
or
you
know
any
other
kind
of
failure,
failure
happens.
A
The
the
daemon
is
going
to
assume
that
it
happened,
because
I
tried
to
circumvent
the
system
and
it's
going
to
close
the
browser
and
annoy
me
into
not
doing
that,
and
I'm
really
pleased
to
say
that
this.
This
does
work
both
technically
and
you
know
psychologically
or.
However,
you
want
to
put
that
it.
It
has
the
intended
effect.
A
So
if
I
come
over
here
and
the
temptation
is
just
so
overwhelming-
I
go
and
I
just
I
remove
the
extension
I
can't
take
it.
Damon's
gonna
execute
and
the
browser
will
close
and
you
know
in
reality
the
damon
is
is
running
once
every
10
seconds.
I
don't
have
to
do
it
manually,
but
yes,
it
works,
and
I
would
say
at
this
point
that
I
I
feel
like
I've
achieved
the
goal
of
at
least
becoming
like
pretty
offline,
if
not
extremely
so
so
yeah,
I'm
thrilled
with
this.
A
It
was
a
great
opportunity
to
learn
rust
and
I
just
want
to
wrap
up
here
first
by
shouting
out
some
of
the
crates
that
I
used
so
there's
ps,
util
for
getting
the
pid
inner
process
for
for
ipc
libc
for
closing
the
browser
and
then
sturdy
and
byte
order
for
communicating
with
the
extension
from
the
messaging
host,
and
then
I
want
to
plug
that.
I
work
at
struction
site
we're
building
project
tracking
tools
for
the
construction
industry
and
we
use
a
lot
of
rust
and
we're
only
going
to
be
using
more
right.
A
We've
got
a
server,
we've
got
processing
jobs
and
now
we've
even
got
a
front
end
code
that
we've
built
with
rust
and
compiled
to
web
assembly
and
we've
also
used
elm
for
our
user
interfaces.
So
if
any
of
that
sounds
interesting,
you
can
head
to
stretchingsite.com
careers
and
check
out
the
positions.
We've
got
open
and
feel
free
to
reach
out
to
me
as
well,
and
then.
Lastly,
here
are
some
places
that
you
can
reach
me.