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Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

blog.chromium.org

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Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#151

Post by Ajedi32 »

quickben wrote: post #126
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…

Add to that list: - unblockable advertising - stronger DRM - Bitcoin mining that regular user can't detect - etc.. It will be good and bad, but, more bad than good. We could choose not to run .exe .bat and the rest So far, webassbly doesn't look optional.

I'm not sure where you're getting any of this from.

First, I don't see why you think WASM-based ads will be any less blockable than JS already is.

Stronger DRM on the web [is already a thing][1], but that has nothing to do with WASM.

Bitcoin mining on the web is already possible with JS and so far that hasn't been an issue. If it does start becoming a widespread problem though, browsers will start taking steps to combat it, like they [already have][2] for pages that needlessly consume CPU in the background.

[1]: https://www.w3.org/TR/encrypted-media/

[2]: https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/03/background...

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#152

Post by dgacmu »

candiodari wrote: post #137
eeZi wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah, that's a funny thread. I've heard that Google is using Chromebooks for engineers with production access. Makes a lot of sense sense since Chrome OS is much easier to secure than a normal Linux distribution.

That sounds insane. Do you have any proof ? Google also has goobuntu, which I'm being is what's provided to engineers.

You can choose what kind of laptop you want. ChromeOS is one of the options, and security (+ trivial exchange-ability) is one of the selling points for using a Chromebook.

I tried it for a while, but I'm too used to the Mac to have made the switch more easily, so I moved back. But I know quite a few folks who use and love them. Opinions, as I'm sure you can guess, vary widely. It was surprisingly not-bad, even for a diehard mac user, and that was on a model from two years ago.

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#153

Post by thristian »

indolering wrote: post #141
withjive wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Project Mortar is different in the fact that it is PDFium and Adobe Flash being allowed via Pepper API — basically it's for sandboxing those current native plugins. This would not be a public web use case. PNaCl vs WebAssembly was all about letting everybody run sandboxed native code in the browser without any extensions or prompts. Native Client (the portable version known as PNaCl) was an open source project by goo…

Yeah, AFAIK PDFium doesn't use PNaCI and Flash will only be around as long as absolutely necessary. The only reason they aren't using PDF.js is because the PDf spec is ~12K pages long and they don't want to throw engineer resources at it anymore.

I'm sad to see PDF.js go. The PDF spec is ~12K pages long, and most of those pages describe things I don't want my PDF viewer to support, like embedded Flash, in much the same way I don't want my browser to support Flash.

PDF.js is at a very comfortable nexus of compatibility and efficiency, and I kind of wish I could use it for non-web-PDFs as well (but not so much that I want to put it in an Electron wrapper).

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#154

Post by dmix »

itp wrote: post #42
datguacdoh wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But OP is specifically calling out how this hurts Chrome OS, but it doesn't seem to affect that platform, from what I can tell.

One way it affects it is to reduce the overall market for Chrome apps, reducing the incentive to make an app in the first place.

The massive ChromeOS market as compared to the Chrome extension app store?

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#155

Post by clhodapp »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #29
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…

Your comment scared me, but TFA doesn't say that: > We will remove support for PNaCl in the first quarter of 2018 everywhere except inside Chrome Apps and Extensions. Where do you see that chrome apps are being discontinued? Otherwise this is FUD.

It may take a bit longer before it is disabled everywhere, but I feel like the writing is pretty much on the wall for NaCl at this point; If you develop or depend on apps that leverage it (in any context), this should probably be a warning sign to start thinking about how to sever that dependency (even if it's not urgent).

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#156

Post by Ajedi32 »

xoroshiro wrote: post #101

I'm not familiar with what goes in a browser, but for some reason, browsers seem to eat up a lot of resources. While I am happy that it looks like this will (more or less) be standardized across browsers, I still hope for the day where running a more minimal browser (text, image, maybe videos) will become viable. Of course, I'm pessimistic on this, seeing as so many sites are probably not functional without javascrip…

Well, there's AMP. Most people on HN seem to really hate that solution though.

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#157

Post by artursapek »

mintplant wrote: post #143
quickben wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add to that list: - unblockable advertising - stronger DRM - Bitcoin mining that regular user can't detect - etc.. It will be good and bad, but, more bad than good. We could choose not to run .exe .bat and the rest So far, webassbly doesn't look optional.

> - unblockable advertising I don't see how this necessarily follows from WASM.

Don't most ad blockers just rely on media queries on the DOM? I imagine there's a lot of ways to circumvent those techniques when you are rendering raw pixels with wasm.

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#158

Post by drdaeman »

mintplant wrote: post #143
quickben wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add to that list: - unblockable advertising - stronger DRM - Bitcoin mining that regular user can't detect - etc.. It will be good and bad, but, more bad than good. We could choose not to run .exe .bat and the rest So far, webassbly doesn't look optional.

> - unblockable advertising I don't see how this necessarily follows from WASM.

WASM is aiming to be fast enough to actually be capable of running a rendering engine. No more DOM for adblockers to look at, the pages may finally become canvases.

I just cannot see this not happening.

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#159

Post by hooluupog »

I_am_tiberius wrote: post #124
jsfitzsimmons wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't WASM need GC support before Go can be used? It'll need to be fully managed languages until then, I think. With that said I'm just parroting some other comments I've seen on this topic in other contexts, so I'm asking the question genuinely.

Incredibly interested in the answer to that question as well. Go will not have a future in regards to web development if they don't find a solution for the GC issue in wasm. I assume (and hope) that's a bigger topic compiler-team internally as well currently.

FYI,https://go.googlesource.com/gollvm/

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly

#160

Post by bad_user »

quickben wrote: post #126
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…

Add to that list: - unblockable advertising - stronger DRM - Bitcoin mining that regular user can't detect - etc.. It will be good and bad, but, more bad than good. We could choose not to run .exe .bat and the rest So far, webassbly doesn't look optional.

> unblockable advertising

What do you mean?

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