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I still use Flash

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Re: I still use Flash

#301

Post by ChuckMcM »

jcelerier wrote: post #280
ChuckMcM wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is something that many many people assume (vectors are "easy" on GPUs) and then are amazed (like I was!) that they aren't even in the function set. My thought was that if you were "accelerating" desktops you'd really want vectors right? But no.

> they aren't even in the function set. they are, but on nvidia only... https://developer.nvidia.com/gpu-accelerated-path-rendering

The saddest web page for graphics: https://patents.justia.com/patents-by-us-classification/345/...

Re: I still use Flash

#302

Post by NovaVeles »

I still believe that Flash conceptually was a brilliant idea done terribly. It was slow, buggy, under developed functionality and a security nightmare.

But the idea of having a single file that could bundle, code, audio, graphics that was dead easy to build and could run independent of specific browsers and operating systems.

That is something magical. It is harder to build that kind of content today and near impossible to implement it on that scale today than it was 20 years ago.

Theoretically you could run a Flash file on a Linux system via Konqueror browser and it would be identical to that on Internet Explorer on Windows 98. This is something we have lost.

It is a shame that Adobe/Macromedia treated it like absolute trash. A free/open solution that had the same good properties would have been brilliant but it never happened. Instead we have the whole HTML5+ stack. I mean it is cool and has done some amazing things for the web, but it is also a massive pain to manage. One browser update and boom, something has broken - time to get digging on what happened! Now it works on Chrome but not Firefox!? Oh dear.

I don't miss Flash itself, I mean to be charitable, it was a mediocre product at best. But that vision implemented in a sensible fashion could have been wonderful. Could have allowed for the decentralized web to continue on a bit longer than it has.

Re: I still use Flash

#303

Post by enumjorge »

rogual wrote: post #2

Hey HN, I haven't done a lot of technical postmortem blogpost-style writing so I'd welcome any feedback or tips on how to improve. Is it too long, too short, too technical, not technical enough? Boring? Interesting? Is it enlightening or does it just come off like content marketing? I literally have no idea how good I am at this.

I’ll add to the chorus and say that this was a wonderful post and the type of content I hope to find when I come to HN.

I enjoyed how you explained certain technical concepts succinctly and using simple language. For example, as someone who never used Flash, you explained the 1000 ft view of how Flash works. When I’m looking at a new tool or framework, I try to star by understanding the mental model behind it. Yet, a simple explanation of it is often difficult to find.

I was also struck by how much technical work was involved here—you made it sound easy. How long did this project take you?

Re: I still use Flash

#304

Post by holoduke »

NovaVeles wrote: post #302

I still believe that Flash conceptually was a brilliant idea done terribly. It was slow, buggy, under developed functionality and a security nightmare. But the idea of having a single file that could bundle, code, audio, graphics that was dead easy to build and could run independent of specific browsers and operating systems. That is something magical. It is harder to build that kind of content today and near impossi…

I think was flash did well was its neat component based framework. It was easy to understand, easy to modify and build your own set of controls on top of it. The runtime engine sucked. It was too slow and therefor power demanding. But the framework itself was much better than todays android , react and others.

Re: I still use Flash

#305

Post by Strom »

not2b wrote: post #256

From the article: "GPUs don't really like drawing vector graphics. They like big batches of textured triangles. So, I needed to rasterize these vectors." The author certainly wasn't the first person to have this problem. What is available for fast display of vector graphics animations with GPU acceleration? Anything better or higher level than just doing huge numbers of calls to OpenGL/Vulcan/Metal/etc.?

It's an area of active research. One very promising project is vello [1] which is essentially a software renderer on the GPU (requires GPU compute support). Preliminary results are looking good. Better than anything else out there good.

--

[1] https://github.com/linebender/vello

Re: I still use Flash

#306

Post by DonHopkins »

NovaVeles wrote: post #302

I still believe that Flash conceptually was a brilliant idea done terribly. It was slow, buggy, under developed functionality and a security nightmare. But the idea of having a single file that could bundle, code, audio, graphics that was dead easy to build and could run independent of specific browsers and operating systems. That is something magical. It is harder to build that kind of content today and near impossi…

As opposed to TCL, which was a terrible idea done brilliantly!

Re: I still use Flash

#307

Post by ryandrake »

imperfect_blue wrote: post #229
falcolas wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personal opinion: I think scarcity is mostly a solved problem, in that most of us are working on projects that only exist to make someone else more money, not to fulfill any actual needs of those 8 billion humans. There are exceptions of course. But most of us could stop working tomorrow, and aside from the lack of income, the scarcity of resources available to us would not change. The real problems that causes hunge…

I cannot understand why you would think so, even in a first world nation. Who would grow your food? Who would make the tools and fertilizer that enable the farmers to grow your food? The robotics and software that enables those tools and fertilizer to be produce? Who would organize, transport, package, preserve and process the produce so that you can access it? Apply the same questions to healthcare, education, trans…

Even if we somehow "solved scarcity" and robots could automatically produce all the goods and services everyone needs for free, if we don't get past the primitive "value must be provided through work" mentality, there would be no benefit.

Stuck with this "work virtue" mindset, society would find a way to make it so half the people were paid to dig holes and the other half paid to fill them in, just so we could go on with this fixation on the need to work for a living.

Re: I still use Flash

#308

Post by DonHopkins »

detritus wrote: post #271
kmeisthax wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I think I need to elaborate on "GPUs don't like vectors". What the OP meant was "GPUs have literally no support for rendering anything other than pixels on triangles and getting them to efficiently draw Bezier curves and fills is an active area of research". You'd need specific hardware support for rasterizing them, and as far as I'm aware no such hardware exists. When Adobe hacked on "HTML5 support" to Animate,…

> "GPUs have literally no support for rendering anything other than pixels on triangles and getting them to efficiently draw Bezier curves and fills is an active area of research" Well fuck me, I had no idea. I figured that 'simple 2D vectors' would be beyond piss-easy for modern GPUs. I'd never considered that it wasn't the actual math space that was accelerated, rather the fast memory mapping of everything on presu…

Rendering vectors on the GPU is possible, just quite tricky.

But signed distance fields work well and easily on GPUs.

Here's a recent article and discussion about it:

Vector graphics on GPU (gasiulis.name)

235 points by mpweiher 4 months ago | hide | past | favorite | 95 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32384016

https://gasiulis.name/vector-graphics-on-gpu/

Re: I still use Flash

#309

Post by MrJohz »

falcolas wrote: post #286
quickthrower2 wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If most of us “humans” not “hn subset” stopped working we’d be in deep trouble. Who will maintain buildings, infrastructure, essential services, government etc. I think we could work towards long term fewer hours and more people who don’t need to work though.

My thinking is this - less than half of the population in the US holds a traditional job. 150M or so. And a vast majority of those are not jobs related to "essential" work. They're largely part of the retail and administrative workforce. And so, if a majority of less than half of the US population is working unnecessary jobs (i.e. only valuable to our economy)... how much of what we do is really valuable to us as a s…

There's a big leap there though from "non-traditional" to "not necessary". A colleague of mine is working on a project involving ensuring that farmers can track their feed and illness statistics correctly to improve their yields. It's not a traditional job, but it's absolutely necessary to ensure that (for example) the dairy industry can provide enough milk. (And moreover, to reduce the number of people who need to be working on calculating those statistics by hand.)

Likewise, you're also assuming that jobs that meet needs are more essential than jobs that meet wants, but the point of post-scarcity is that not only our needs are met, but our wants are as well. Picard can make himself a cup of earl grey whenever he wants, as opposed to sustaining himself with the recommended nutri-pack. One of my most fulfilling jobs was working for a t-shirt printing company - in theory, nothing we did was at all essential, but it was clearly very important to a lot of people's lives. Some of the most fascinating orders were memorial t-shirts being printed for people's funerals. Not essential at all, but I would argue very valuable to us as a species.

Re: I still use Flash

#310

Post by Ken_At_EM »

NovaVeles wrote: post #302

I still believe that Flash conceptually was a brilliant idea done terribly. It was slow, buggy, under developed functionality and a security nightmare. But the idea of having a single file that could bundle, code, audio, graphics that was dead easy to build and could run independent of specific browsers and operating systems. That is something magical. It is harder to build that kind of content today and near impossi…

Flash really was that easy for so many people. Why isn’t there a true replacement?
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