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Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

blog.chromium.org

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Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#211

Post by eeZi »

jlarocco wrote: post #118
rhizome wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your pique is noted, but as more anecdata I use Chrome Apps for Soundcloud and Mixcloud, where it's nice to have a Chrome window that won't collect tabs and have a recognizable icon. I have dozens of tabs open in each of several Chrome windows and it can be a pain to find the one I want. Insert complaint about not being able to switch to a tab from Chrome Task Manager.

I was specifically disputing the claims that Chrome Apps are "one of the best things that happened to Linux desktops in a long time" and that they're noticeably more secure. Taking Soundcloud as an example, Clementine (and probably most media players) can stream it just fine. Having a Chrome App is nice, but it isn't providing anything that isn't already available. I'd even say the Chrome App is a step backwards, bec…

Streaming means parsing a bunch of untrusted data. What if ffmpeg/gstreamer/Clementine has a security issue? It happened before.

With a Chrome App, it sits in a (really strong) sandbox and would need to escape the sandbox first.

With a native app, it's game over.

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#212

Post by sangnoir »

roca wrote: post #190
dragonwriter wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no blunder: Google had a goal, threw out something, stimulated competition over the precise implementation, and now there is a universally (among browser vendors) accepted solution moving the web in the direction Google wanted. That's a strategic victory for Google.

Google wasted huge resources on an approach which it was obvious from the beginning would never lead to a Web standard. Mozilla people, including me, told Google people even before PNaCl appeared that introducing the whole new non-standard Pepper API was unacceptable.

> Google wasted huge resources on an approach which it was obvious from the beginning would never lead to a Web standard

Google has been doing this for a long time, I doubt it's unintentional. If there is functionality that they want which is not standardized, they go ahead and implement it. When a workable standard is ready or detailed enough, they switch over to it. The earliest instance of this that I can recall was Google Gears, which was deprecated by LocalStorage. There probably are earlier examples.

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#213

Post by roca »

sangnoir wrote: post #212
roca wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google wasted huge resources on an approach which it was obvious from the beginning would never lead to a Web standard. Mozilla people, including me, told Google people even before PNaCl appeared that introducing the whole new non-standard Pepper API was unacceptable.

> Google wasted huge resources on an approach which it was obvious from the beginning would never lead to a Web standard Google has been doing this for a long time, I doubt it's unintentional. If there is functionality that they want which is not standardized, they go ahead and implement it. When a workable standard is ready or detailed enough, they switch over to it. The earliest instance of this that I can recall w…

Sure but the asm.js/Wasm approach was always an option. They didn't have to go down the path they did.

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#214

Post by josteink »

camus2 wrote: post #52

Why bother investing time and resources in Google techs when they keep on discontinuing them? they don't care about enterprise software, if they did, they wouldn't act like that. AMP? lol, think again before implementing this, it will not be worth the effort since Chrome will eventually drop that too. A good reminder not to invest in any Google specific technology. > We recognize that technology migrations can be cha…

> Why bother investing time and resources in Google techs when they keep on discontinuing them?

I really think this is a good question, despite the form of your post (hence the downvotes).

To anyone who decided "lets use NaCl or PNaCl", I have a genuine question: Are you honestly surprised to see this tech too go obsoleted?

> We recognize that technology migrations can be challenging. ... You recognize you wasted a lot of people's time.

They are taking this from Apple's book: Don't leave any compatible stuff behind. Leave the maintenance-cost to others.

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#215

Post by ThomasGeek »

afarrell wrote: post #207
snakeanus wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was one of the best things that happened to Linux desktops in a long time and removing it hurts users and makes them less secure. I will disagree, you can install most of these from the official repository of your distribution, without the use of electron. They are also very secure if you run them as an unprivileged user.

Yes, but the existence of ssh on chrome makes it much much easier to teach a windows user how to try out the linux command line. PuTTY is annoying as hell to help a new person get working and they might not have enough space for vagrant+virtualbox.

On windows, you no longer need either with bash for windows you can have a near complete linux experience while running inside windows natively.

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#216

Post by a3_nm »

sangnoir wrote: post #212
roca wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google wasted huge resources on an approach which it was obvious from the beginning would never lead to a Web standard. Mozilla people, including me, told Google people even before PNaCl appeared that introducing the whole new non-standard Pepper API was unacceptable.

> Google wasted huge resources on an approach which it was obvious from the beginning would never lead to a Web standard Google has been doing this for a long time, I doubt it's unintentional. If there is functionality that they want which is not standardized, they go ahead and implement it. When a workable standard is ready or detailed enough, they switch over to it. The earliest instance of this that I can recall w…

> If there is functionality that they want which is not standardized, they go ahead and implement it.

... in a non-standardizable way.

Why not try to help create a standard instead? What's the benefit of starting with a dirty approach and deprecating it later?

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#217

Post by afarrell »

ThomasGeek wrote: post #215
afarrell wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the existence of ssh on chrome makes it much much easier to teach a windows user how to try out the linux command line. PuTTY is annoying as hell to help a new person get working and they might not have enough space for vagrant+virtualbox.

On windows, you no longer need either with bash for windows you can have a near complete linux experience while running inside windows natively.

If you can assure me that is the case, fantastic! Do you know of a way to test the UX of ssh from bash for windows for less than $5 ?

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#218

Post by lawthemi »

It's sad. PNACL is more efficient. Go to lichess.org/analysis, make a few moves, turn on the engine analysis. With firefox and WASM, my machine compute 300 knode/s. With chrome and PNACL, my machine compute 2000 knode/s. That's a big step backward.

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#219

Post by lloydjatkinson »

eeZi wrote: post #21

This one I'm fine with since WebAssembly is a worthy replacement, but I'm still annoyed at Google discontinuing Chrome Apps. Some examples of specialized apps I use all the time that would require a native app otherwise: - Signal Desktop - TeamViewer - Postman - SSH client - Cleanflight drone configuration tool It was one of the best things that happened to Linux desktops in a long time and removing it hurts users an…

> require a native app otherwise

Oh, the tragedy /s

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#220

Post by flukus »

ehnto wrote: post #166
pcwalton wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - unblockable advertising Ad blockers primarily look at domains, so blocking will continue to be possible at the request level. They aren't interpreting or parsing JS to begin with. > - stronger DRM If sites were going to ship Web Assembly-based DRM, they would already be shipping Web Assembly along with the Emterpreter. Remember that wasm has a polyfill already. I haven't seen that happening, so I see no reason to…

I doubt a regular user would notice 100% CPU usage and even less certain that they would know what to do about it or what was causing it. Most OSes operate chrome just fine when another process is asking for 100% as well.

Regular users do notice things like that, they just can't articulate it. "I think my computers getting old" and "I think I have a virus" are common ways of trying to explain things like this.
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