Mozilla’s Servo Team Joining Mixed Reality

Post by wpietri » Sun, Mar 11, 2018, 12:00 AM UTC

ZenoArrow wrote: post #98

wpietri wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excitement is a feeling, which nobody has to justify. Hype is a behavior, and people can and should be held responsible for their behaviors. Especially so given that hyping something is "to promote or publicize (a product or idea) intensively, often exaggerating its importance or benefits". It's not a neutral act. And in the commercial context, the purpose of hype is generally, in one way or another, to put money in…

> "Excitement is a feeling, which nobody has to justify. Hype is a behavior, and people can and should be held responsible for their behaviors." Depends who's doing the hyping. If it's a potential consumer, then hype is derived from excitement, and the same rules that apply to the justification of excitement would apply to the justification for hype. On the other hand, if it's a company hyping their products, then th…

Post by ngokevin » Sun, Mar 11, 2018, 1:21 AM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #19

larsberg wrote: post #4

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Servo will continue to be a next-generation browser engine and a place where we'll be doing a lot of experimentation on new standards and implementation techniques. I'm sure the community will also continue to use it for all sorts of cool things! Joining up with the mixed reality team is more about how the Mozilla staff working on Servo will be focusing their time and some of the desire we have for things we want to…

>> Filling that list out is not a higher priority for the Mozilla staff over getting the stuff done we need to experiment with delivering the web on VR & AR devices. So building a fully functional browser is not higher priority than getting the half-baked browser working in a niche environment? I'm half joking here, and half serious. How is a browser supposed to look differently in VR? And why does it need to be awar…

Post by Eridrus » Sun, Mar 11, 2018, 4:16 AM UTC

ZenoArrow wrote: post #79

Eridrus wrote: post #43

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I wish everyone on the Servo project the best of luck, and hope this new project will be a success, but I can't help but agree with other commenters who see this as a move away from something that could have provided a huge fundamental advantage to Firefox/Mozilla to something less impactful. This feels like the end of the Servo project in all but name.

I have my doubts as well, but one way to look at this announcement in a charitable light is that VR and AR are technically demanding use cases which will require the Servo team to keep a strong focus on performance. In one way, it's a good testing ground for further refining the high level of performance that Servo has already achieved, especially if the work aims to make the user experience of shifting between 2D an…

Post by Sylos » Sun, Mar 11, 2018, 7:16 AM UTC

drakenot wrote: post #91

Sylos wrote: post #86

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I think, that does actually work out. The problem for humanity is not that browsers are written in C++, it's that browsers have lots of security vulnerabilities. Being written in C++ is not helpful with that, but it's not integral to the problem. It's not impossible to produce C++-code that doesn't have vulnerabilities, it just requires a lot of effort and often years of battle-testing to close all of them. But Firef…

So we continue to play wack-a-mole with the C++ codebase rather than develop in a language that makes whole classes of exploits impossible? Firefox is not safe. It’s been routinely exploited by law enforcement and hackers alike.

Post by ZenoArrow » Sun, Mar 11, 2018, 11:05 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #106

ZenoArrow wrote: post #104

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Do I think there's anything wrong with the current hype cycle for VR? No. The way I see it, If someone knows they're being sold to, then they can assess that sales pitch accordingly. What's more interesting to me is that you're implying that this hype (a.k.a. advertising) is having a negative impact on you, even if you don't intend to buy the product yourself. What's the worst case scenario here? That some investors…

If you honestly cannot imagine any negative effects of a hype cycle, especially when I just quoted the fact that hype involves "exaggerating its importance or benefits", then I really don't think I can help you.