Yet Another Rust Drama
Today’s issue: Cryptographically-Secure API Keys, Syntactic Musings on View Types, and a Surprising Enum Size Optimization in the Rust Compiler
Hello Rustaceans! 🦀
Welcome to another edition of the Rust Bytes Newsletter.
In this issue, we’ll discuss a recent Rust drama, challenge you to merge intervals, spotlight an amazing Rust project, and share some incredible links of the week.
Here’s issue 62 for you!
THE MAIN THING
Yet Another Rust Drama
Last week was full of frenzies, the tariff wars, and Git celebrating its 20th anniversary - talk of a teenager old enough to commit without merge-conflicts. Meanwhile the Rust Language team made an announcement that got the entire Rust community buzzing like over-caffeinated bees.
As you're reading this, Rustlang has officially packed its bags, waved goodbye to Twitter X (or whatever Elon’s calling it this week), and set up shop on Bluesky.
But how did we end up here?
From Bird App to Blue Skies
The announcement sparked emotions across the internet. Reddit comments and X replies gave us a glimpse into the modern web, insightful takes, unhinged rants, and everything in between.
Let’s break it down, with some scenarios that’ll make you laugh, cry, and maybe even rage-quit social media altogether.
Twitter used to be open, share a link, and anyone could peek. Now? Login or GTFO. For Rust, that’s a deal-breaker. Rustaceans can’t scope updates without an account. Picture someone hitting this blocker and thinking, “Screw it, C++ it is.”
Rust is big about community, not locked doors, so this move makes sense. Twitter’s “account-only” flex dented its open-source cred, and Rust’s exit is a loud “fix it or flop” warning.
Politics? Oh, Hell Yeah
Then there’s the political mess. Rust didn’t post a manifesto, but the internet’s drama machine was in full swing anyway. X replies were screaming “woke” or “free speech sellout,” while Reddit’s throwing “Nazi” zingers and downvote storms.
Is this ideological warfare, or is it just “Twitter’s a dumpster now”? Rust’s staying tight-lipped, but the crowd’s yelling over each other.
The move to Bluesky’s Protocol and Mastodon’s ActivityPub is understandable. Bluesky got that Twitter feel, but some sniff centralization. Mastodon’s is federated AF and proud.
The Rust community’s split, half cheer the move, half side-eye Bluesky’s promises. It’s a live test of what’s next for socials.
What do you think, fam? Are you Team X, Team Bluesky, or Team “Just Give Me the Docs”?
RUST CHALLENGE 🦀
Last week, we had you rotate a matrix 90 degrees.
Kudos to Serpent7776, and Abeeujah who shared their solutions to the challenge. You rock! 🤘
Let's move on to this week’s challenge.
Merge Intervals
Write a function merge_intervals that takes a vector of intervals (each interval is a tuple (i32, i32)) and returns a new vector with all overlapping intervals merged.
Intervals are considered overlapping if one’s start time is less than or equal to another’s end time. The output should be sorted by start time.
Please test your solution on Rust Playground. Once completed, share your solution and tag us either on X, BlueSky, Mastodon, or reply to this email.
PROJECT SPOTLIGHT 💡
Aya
Aya is an extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) crate built entirely in Rust, and designed to offer you with a seamless and efficient way to run user-supplied programs inside the Linux kernel.
Unlike earlier eBPF tools that lean on dependencies like libbpf or BCC, Aya is built from scratch using only the libc crate for syscalls, offering a lightweight, Rust-native solution.
Here is what makes Aya tick:
Pure Rust Implementation - By avoiding C dependencies and leaning on Rust’s memory safety, Aya reduces bugs and enhances security while keeping builds lightning-fast - release builds finish in seconds.
BTF Integration - Transparent BTF support means Aya programs adapt to kernel variations, paired with musl linking for true portability across Linux distributions.
Rich eBPF API - From cgroup packet filtering (e.g., BPF_PROG_TYPE_CGROUP_SKB) to function call relocations and global data maps, Aya covers a wide range of eBPF capabilities.
Async Power - Native async support with Tokio makes it ideal for modern, concurrent applications, improving its appeal for real-time systems like network monitoring or tracing.
Aya is your developer-friendly bridge to eBPF’s kernel-level power, solving deployment headaches and unlocking advanced functionality, all wrapped in Rust’s elegant safety net.
If you’re into building observability tools, securing systems, or optimizing networks, Aya’s blend of simplicity and strength makes it a standout project worth looking into.
And the icing on the cake, Aya is open-source on GitHub at https://github.com/aya-rs/aya.
AWESOME LINKS OF THE WEEK 🔗
The Rust team’s release of C ABI Changes for `wasm32-unknown-unknown` updates the target’s non-standard C ABI, in use since 2017, to align with the WASM tool-conventions standard.
Brannon Dorsey released mem-isolate, a crate that enables safe execution of potentially unsafe or memory-altering Rust code by running it in a forked child process on Unix-like systems (Linux, macOS, BSD), using POSIX fork() and pipes for inter-process communication.
Yoshua Wuyts’ Syntactic Musings on View Types, proposes unifying the syntax for Rust's View and Pattern Types for better readability and cohesion.
The Rust nerds at facet-rs open-sourced facet, a crate focused on providing compile-time (const) reflection, serialization, and deserialization capabilities for Rust types.
Sander Saares authored an article on “Structural changes for +48-89% throughput in a Rust web service”, where he examines a web service's architecture, and highlighting techniques to achieve significant performance gains.
James Fennell wrote about A surprising enum size optimization in the Rust compiler. It’s a total treat for optimization geeks who live for that sweet, sweet code shrinkage.
The Rustaceans at OneVariable blogged about Embedded Rust in Production 2025, a compilation of real-world examples where Rust is used in production embedded devices as of 2025, covering security processors, laptop/server firmware, automotive/avionics, robotics, industrial applications, space systems, and smart home appliances.
Sylvain Kerkour penned a guide on writing cryptographically-secure API keys, Rust style. 🦀
TantalusPath team published Replicating state changes across language barriers with Rust, UniFFI, and proc macros. detailing how they use Rust, UniFFI, and procedural macros to efficiently manage and synchronize state changes between Rust-based business logic and a SwiftUI interface for a mobile app.
Steve Klabnik wrote about "Thinking like a compiler: places and values in Rust." He discusses how the Rust compiler understands code, focusing on assignment operations. It's fun galore!
Special thanks to Robert Uva for pledging a subscription and supporting the newsletter. We truly appreciate your support.
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Been procrastinating on reading some books but this week I finished one of them. Talk of moving closer to my yearly book goals.
That's all for now, Rustaceans.
John & Elley.