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Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

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Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#151

Post by xxs »

astrange wrote: post #123
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #5

Language success is in large parts driven by what system adopts that language. Objective-C’s success was driven by iOS. C’s success was driven by Unix. C++’s early success was driven in large part by 90’s GUI frameworks ( MDC, OWL, Qt, etc. I think Wasm is shaping up to be huge in that you can safely run, high performance code across multiple operating systems/CPU’s. Of all the languages, I think Rust has the best WA…

> Objective-C’s success was driven by iOS. Well, Objective-C is from 1984 and its major success was being cloned to make a programming language called Java.

While Obj-C had a massive influence to java, I'd not call it clone - even Java 0.9 is a lot better language than Obj-C of 2010 (or so). The saving grace of Obj-C - it could include normal C just like that.

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#152

Post by pacificat0r »

johncolanduoni wrote: post #11
zlei wrote: post #8

Just curious: which specific wasm VM implementation are they using?

They mentioned joining the Bytecode Alliance, so probably wasmtime.

It's actually Web assembly micro runtime (still from bytecode alliance but it's a vm that also supports interpreted mode)

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#153

Post by pacificat0r »

gk1256 wrote: post #146
the_duke wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment seems to rooted in your dislike of Rust, rather than provide any technical arguments. The Rust tooling certainly was the best, no question. As the Mozilla WASM devs have moved on the WASM tooling has stagnated, sadly, and The C++ tooling has caught up. Languages like C# and Go are inherently worse for WASM because they require GC and have big runtimes they have to bring along.

I can dislike Rust too, but the facts are facts. Emscripten is the leader of WASM world and lot of its code is based on C++.

Emscriptem is targeted at browsers and for that rust does have the target wasm32-unknown-emscripten

However, when targeting wasm outside browsers wasm32-wasi is usually a better option.

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#154

Post by sharken »

chaosite wrote: post #148
formerly_proven wrote: post #135

> Prime Video > xyz [4K/UHD] 4K is not available when using a computer > HD is not available because you're not using Windows when using Windows > HD is not available because you don't have HDCP Graphics driver begs to differ. Prime SD is usually somewhere between 240p and 320p, HD looks like a decently encoded 720p file. Never seen it but I'm guessing 4K might actually approach the quality of a 2007 Blu-Ray.

Prime 4K's bit-rate is ~15Mb/s. A UHD Blu-Ray has a bit-rate that's more like 70Mb/s, and a 1080p Blu-ray has a bit-rate of ~28Mb/s. Of course, 4K is usually encoded with H.265 while 1080p is encoded with H.264, so the raw bit-rate numbers are not as useful for comparison - but still, that's almost twice the bit-rate for a quarter of the pixels, and H.265 isn't magic.

Prime 4K is nice, but if you have a decent sound system with Atmos, then Amazon Prime is not the place.

Apple TV has been the best platform so far for 4K and Atmos content, if you also want an option to purchase a title.

https://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/everything-on-amazon...

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#155

Post by klabb3 »

nofunsir wrote: post #82
mftb wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It all kind of undermines your original comment tho that they're trying to avoid native. It seems more likely that they're goal is to reach as many devices as they can and be able to do updates frequently. In the first paragraph of the linked article the guy says the trade-off is between "updatability and performance".

I am really sick of fast-churn and forced updates. Guys. Settle. Write a native app or three. It’ll be ok.

As someone who is writing a cross platform app, I'd love to, but I can't.

There are too many different stacks with their own languages (which means different library ecosystems), no good FFI/IPC options that work across stacks, massive test matrix for every little piece of the code etc. All of this, when the native differences that supposedly should make each platform unique are so few, and virtually all UI and application logic is identical. Our platform lords have basically not standardized a single thing.

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#156

Post by lpcvoid »

shroompasta wrote: post #140
lpcvoid wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, for one, would love if UIs looked like it's 1995 again. Imagine the crispness, everything is fast, responsive and written in sensible languages. A simpler, and better time.

While I agree in some cases, tech companies aren't marketing to those with that specific taste pallete

Yeah, it's unfortunate. No money in a small minority.

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#157

Post by f00zz »

pornel wrote: post #52

The egui framework they mention is pretty neat: https://emilk.github.io/egui/ It an entirely custom toolkit, so don't expect it to have a native look and feel, but it's a GPU-first design with multiple back-ends. It can be used in native OpenGL apps too. It's an immediate-mode UI, so it's very easy to build and update even complex windows. Great choice if you want to prototype a game.

Cool. Looks like a fancier version of Dear ImGui.

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#158

Post by pacificat0r »

IshKebab wrote: post #113
throw14082020 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we built an application that overlays debugger information on an application scene render using egui, a Rust GUI library This is the context. They use egui to display debugger information - performance does not matter for the debugger information.

It does if you're debugging performance issues.

You can easily tag imgui update/render times in profiling sessions. Then they are isolated from the rest of the work that's happening.

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#159

Post by sofixa »

ksec wrote: post #109
kmeisthax wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber is a bad example because they need to have support for literally every payment method on the planet. And all of that needs to be preloaded ahead of time just in case the user decides they're going to fly to Mumbai tomorrow. Their app absolutely needs to be bloated or it won't work at all. Likewise, Amazon needs to run on all sorts of different smart TV platforms, not just iOS and Android. All of those apps need…

>And all of that needs to be preloaded ahead of time just in case the user decides they're going to fly to Mumbai tomorrow. This is Interesting. So essentially Uber is a "Global" App by default?

Yes, that's why it works everywhere* with local specifics ( e.g. proposing tuk-tuks where available, or bike rentals where Uber have the service or a partner, etc.) directly without new downloads or anything.

* of course where Uber are on the local market, i doubt it works in North Korea

Re: Prime Video Uses WebAssembly

#160

Post by labawi »

franga2000 wrote: post #145
Beltalowda wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest downside of this is that everything is painted as "graphics", and you can no longer use the web inspector to modify the fonts, colours, etc. While few people (like myself) do this directly, lots of people use it indirectly through extensions like Adblock, Stylus, etc. For example, I find the fonts hard to read due to the colour choices; then I zoom in and it's better, but now this "Widget gallery" no long…

Yes, I really hope this doesn't become common. By not utilising the DOM, you're killing accessibility, autofill, customization (things like reader mode, automatic dark themes...)... These are things that regular people rely on every day (not just us techies writing userscript a and Stylus themes).

Concur. I block wasm and webgl, mostly for security and privacy, so don't use sites that require it. Unfortunately, as I also block trackers, most site operators won't even realize people like me visit their sites.
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