W3C recommends WebAssembly • Hacker News Board

Re: W3C recommends WebAssembly

#301

Post by stjohnswarts » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 5:02 AM UTC

bm98 wrote: post #242

pmontra wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reasons of the downfall of Flash were those tiny Flash sites in the middle of a full screen page when we suddenly moved from small screens to 1366x768 or better. Many sites didn't have the resources to upgrade and started looking like something 100 years old.

I always thought the primary driver of the demise of Flash was that Apple simply decided not to support it in iOS Safari. Is that not right?

That's not correct. Flash usage was trending down fairly rapidly even before that as javascript, css, html5, canvas, and DOM became more feature filled.

Re: W3C recommends WebAssembly

#302

Post by danShumway » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 6:15 AM UTC

crimsonalucard wrote: post #296

danShumway wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You need CSS or that entire page won't look right at all. It won't look right because it literally blanks out the page if Javascript and CSS aren't enabled. That's not a limitation of the web, that's a conscious design choice by the author. Without CSS, what this would look like is pure data -- a list of animals with a picture and their relevant depth printed next to them. It would be perfectly functional. This is…

>Without CSS, what this would look like is pure data -- a list of animals with a picture and their relevant depth printed next to them. It would be perfectly functional. This is your render target: "what is the information that I wish to convey?" No. The author wishes to convey a multimedia experience. This is evident, the page is unique because of this. The author does not care to convey just textual information. Yo…

I feel like your comments on accessibility kind of speak for themselves, and I don't want to rehash the same technical arguments over again. You're not advocating for a bold, artistic world when you talk about engineering things to pointlessly exclude people. You're just advocating for a smaller world with fewer people in it.

I do want to mention very quickly that on the subject of books and movies, literally every Hollywood movie you can buy ships with subtitles for the deaf, and since ~2015 US law has required that new theaters also include equipment that provides audio descriptions for blind viewers[0]. And I don't know anyone who would seriously claim that the Godfather is lessened as an artistic expression just because deaf people can turn on subtitles.

[0]: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2016-12-02/html/2016-...

Re: W3C recommends WebAssembly

#303

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 6:34 AM UTC

simias wrote: post #107

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #69

Whatever you think about javascript, I love the historic separation between content and interactivity. I dislike that so many static pages won't load without JS and that we're moving further in that direction. I hope the evolution towards "browser as OS" doesn't hurt the content vs interactivity separation. Could we ever lose the HTML centered model? That could mean we lose hackability and the ability to write extens…

If you look at the history of the web it's clear that the tendency has always been towards "shinier things". This "historic separation" was the result of technical limitations, see how popular Flash used to be for instance. HTML and CSS standards were always at least 10 years too late. If you wanted something that looked modern you've always had to use browser-specific extensions, plugins or, at best, "beta" features…

I agree that the web is heading in a direction where it'll be easier to build cool websites. I think a possibly unintentional side effect of HTML as a base was that everything was hackable. It's like everything was open source and DRM free, whether you like it or not. I think this was probably a driver of the web becoming what it did. Imagine building pagerank when you can't scrape text or hyperlinks.

Re: W3C recommends WebAssembly

#304

Post by marcthe12 » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 6:56 AM UTC

Shish2k wrote: post #151

BlueTemplar wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is why if blocking the "web"site JavaScript breaks the "web"site itself, then it never was a web site to start with! (Trackers using these kinds of tactics was only a matter of time between trackers and blockers...)

How I wish the problem were only breaking the "web" - these days, blocking tracking scripts on my router ends up breaking my desktop applications ... (Example of the day, Parsec; example from yesterday, NVidia's driver-update software :( )

Just wow. I won't be surprised if doing something like that will break the os.

Re: W3C recommends WebAssembly

#305

Post by lightgreen » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 7:08 AM UTC

oaiey wrote: post #224

mahidhar wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, I must agree with you that there are definitely some very troubling implications to how WebAssembly might be used to build more effective walled gardens on the web. I can easily imagine a "platform" WASM module which acts as a runtime for other WASM modules built by "app" developers. This Platform module can be easily cached by FAANG or other big commercial interests, similar to AMP by Google (maybe ev…

This platform wasm will come. And it does not You do not need to be evil, especially in the beginning. Java or .NET Runtime and Libraries are a bit heavy for a small web page. And from there it is just the next step to run a base platform like Android user space or a simple runtime like blazor. In the end wasm is a runtime. There were physical Java Processors and I am pretty sure there will be webassembly processors.

There were not physical Java processors, because it’s too hard to emulate jvm in hardware. But there were processors with instructions optimized for interpreting jvm bytecode. These would be pretty useless nowadays (for either jvm or wasm) because baseline compiler which translates vm bytecode to native bytecode is easy and more efficient than direct vm support in hardware.

Re: W3C recommends WebAssembly

#306

Post by marcthe12 » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 7:27 AM UTC

int_19h wrote: post #275

goto11 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was also attempted for Java bytecode but didn't really pan out. I think the benefit just wasn't there compared to JIT compiling for a regular processor. The processes would have to translate the wasm into some form of register-based operations anyway, and a JIT compiler might be able to do this more efficiently since it can see a bigger picture than the processor.

JVM bytecode is very high-level though (it deals with objects, and has opcodes for method calls etc). Wasm is in this interesting spot where it's relatively low-level, but high-level enough to allow proper sandboxing. It strikes me that the arrangements to accommodate that, like call indirection via tables, could be optimized on CPU level. Not necessarily in a sense of a CPU that directly runs wasm, but rather a CPU…

I wonder it's small enough to have the interpreter in kernel space

Re: W3C recommends WebAssembly

#307

Post by crimsonalucard » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 8:16 AM UTC

danShumway wrote: post #302

crimsonalucard wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Without CSS, what this would look like is pure data -- a list of animals with a picture and their relevant depth printed next to them. It would be perfectly functional. This is your render target: "what is the information that I wish to convey?" No. The author wishes to convey a multimedia experience. This is evident, the page is unique because of this. The author does not care to convey just textual information. Yo…

I feel like your comments on accessibility kind of speak for themselves, and I don't want to rehash the same technical arguments over again. You're not advocating for a bold, artistic world when you talk about engineering things to pointlessly exclude people. You're just advocating for a smaller world with fewer people in it. I do want to mention very quickly that on the subject of books and movies, literally every H…

>You're not advocating for a bold, artistic world when you talk about engineering things to pointlessly exclude people.

This world already exists. You're delusional if it doesn't. I use the word cruel, but you must know that cruel = reality. That's all I'm saying. 99% of the world is not designed for deaf people or blind people. There are arbitrary restrictions on certain things but this is reality and it's not going to change because engineering everything to account for these people come with an engineering cost.

It is not "pointlessly excluding," it's just not worth the engineering cost. But you know this. Any person is aware of this and the reality of the world. There is zero need to call it "pointlessly excluding" that's just a manipulative way of advocating your agenda.

>And I don't know anyone who would seriously claim that the Godfather is lessened as an artistic expression just because deaf people can turn on subtitles.

I don't know either. Did you or I make this claim? Perhaps nobody made this claim and your pulling this example out of nowhere to serve your agenda. You know video games don't account for blind people. This is purely out of cruelty of course, no way does it have anything to do with engineering cost. Obviously you don't know a thing about the cost of engineering mechanisms to get these games to work for blind people so that's why you didn't mention it. Of course it wasn't at all a deliberate choice not to mention the engineering cost to serve your own agenda.

Re: W3C recommends WebAssembly

#308

Post by IvanK_net » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 12:23 PM UTC

EvanAnderson wrote: post #185

IvanK_net wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes no sense to me. You are saying, that instead a 5 kB webpage, you would load 50 MB code, which emulates a browser, just to show you the same webpage? Every webpage pays for the traffic in some way, and everybody tries to save web traffic as much as possible (optimizing images, videos, minifying JS, CSS ...). It makes no sense to expect, that websites would turn the opposite way just for fun. I would be very g…

Yes. I am saying that some website operators would like to load an entire browser into your client just so they can control the presentation (make sure you're not able to block their ads, control their scripts, etc). I'm not talking about the sandboxed browser being able to "clear your hard drive", etc. I'm talking about users having no real agency when it comes to controlling the presentation of websites. (Sure, it'…

I don't think it is necessary to make websites extremely complex, to prevent you from blocking ads.

I think blocking ads is a game you can never win. If you are able to block ads on some websites today, it is just because the site owners allow you to do so (they could easily prevent you from doing so). Ads technologies can evolve to a point when you as a human can not distinguish between ads and the rest of the content.

Re: W3C recommends WebAssembly

#309

Post by BlueTemplar » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 12:59 PM UTC

Pete_D wrote: post #246

BlueTemplar wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What prevents access to the Internet from a non-website ? Why use the HyperTEXT Transfer Protocol for things completely unrelated to text - it's not like other, more appropriate protocols are not available, or cannot be designed ! (Or that URLs are limited to HTTP...)

Partly firewalls and proxies. If you've not read it already you might be interested in https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3205.txt ("On the use of HTTP as a Substrate"). I wish we still built protocols too.

Indeed. IMHO the right move would be to put pressure on bad actors that only allow HTTP over port 80 and still claim to be "ISPs"... (And with IPv6 having been finalized, NATs are now obsolete.)

And, as they say : > It would be useful to establish guidelines for "firewall-friendly" protocols, to make it easier for existing firewalls to be compatible with new protocols.

I believe that the Internet is fundamentally about protocols, and that platforms are to be banned if we care about it : https://knightcolumbia.org/content/protocols-not-platforms-a...

Re: W3C recommends WebAssembly

#310

Post by BlueTemplar » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 1:02 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #290

BlueTemplar wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What prevents access to the Internet from a non-website ? Why use the HyperTEXT Transfer Protocol for things completely unrelated to text - it's not like other, more appropriate protocols are not available, or cannot be designed ! (Or that URLs are limited to HTTP...)

At this point, HTTP has enough tooling around it to do enough significant application-layer things that the opportunity cost of rolling new protocols is extremely high. It's not just text transfer... HTTP also goes hand-in-glove with HTTPS, which is a technology few people want to build an alternative for (and fewer people should be trusted to do correctly).

Trying to force everything over HTTP is a bad practice that is slowly killing the Internet.