8 ms·

I know a lot of people long for the days when the web was just text and a few JPGs. I personally am waiting for the web to become a rich, ubiquitous, standardis

by osrec 9y ago

I know a lot of people long for the days when the web was just text and a few JPGs. I personally am waiting for the web to become a rich, ubiquitous, standardised application delivery platform that works on any device. I think web assembly adds to the richness while being fairly standardised, so I welcome it!

_red 9y ago
These things are cyclical: * Early computers (1960-1980s): Dumb Terminal - Remote Server * Early PCs (1980s-1995): Local Processing - Remote Storage * WWW (1995-2010s): Dumb Terminal - Remote Server * JS/ASM/Etc (2010s - near future): Local Processing - Remote Storage Its fully possible that we will switch again to dumb terminal model. For instance, once the hassle of local code execution takes it toll, someone will have the bright idea of just putting the web browser itself in the cloud and just having a remote control connection to that browser....and the cycle will begin again.
- hood_syntax 9y ago
  Yeah, if we want latency added to literally every action... I understand that what you're saying is a possibility, but I sure hope it doesn't come to pass.
  - TheRealPomax 9y ago
    New technology starts with the above-well-off, using tech you currency consider "absurdly unattaible to the masses" (like cars in the 20s, or telephone in the 40s, or computers in the 60s, or 24/7 internet in the 90s): for instance, when you just get a basically free gigabit connection straight into the backbone (like in a new upscale Japanese apartment building) the very idea that latency could even be a problem just... disappears. In that context, just attaching an interactive window to a remote running process (as long as it can stream faster than whatever is your minimum acceptable framerate at your minimum acceptable resolution) is literally indistinguishable from running locally. So I frankly do hope that comes to pass (as long as I also get to keep being able to build a desktop computer for working offline).
    - adrianN 9y ago
      Latency and bandwidth are different though. Your GBit connection won't help you access servers on the other side of the Atlantic.
      - TheRealPomax 9y ago
        I have no idea why you would need to leave your country in a world where we're back to thin clients and remote processing. Pretty sure the most obvious place for that processing to take place is at what used to be ISPs and have in this hypothetical future become Interactive Service Providers rather than "internet" service providers, with low latency, high bandwidth hubs in or near your city (and more likely, multiple hubs per city).
  - woogley 9y ago
    The catalyst of such a shift could be a very good thing, e.g. exceptional internet speeds everywhere
  - baybal2 9y ago
    Now I expect that there will come usability experts from google/facebook/amazon and tell you that an average user does not event know what latency is. Native apps have won over web app ecosystem, plainly and simple. WASM will not change things even a bit to root causes of people deciding to use native apps over web apps.
    - greiskul 9y ago
      Google and amazon certainly think the average user cares about latency, even if they don't know what it is: https://blog.gigaspaces.com/amazon-found-every-100ms-of-latency-cost-them-1-in-sales/ https://blog.gigaspaces.com/amazon-found-every-100ms-of-late...
  - chongli 9y ago
    Those of us who get frustrated by latency in our tools were left behind long ago. Shiny user interfaces, cloud to-do lists, adblockers, bloated fad frameworks of the week, electron apps, blue apron for dogs... This is our reality now. I miss the internet I grew up with. The one before all the money arrived to ruin absolutely everything.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- opportune 9y ago
  That's basically what Chromebooks already are. I think it's the future too. The only problem is that it moves away from the "upgrade your device every X years" paradigm that makes consumer electronics manufacturers money. They'll have to switch to a subscription model and people may not like that (and personally I'm terrified of the alternative situation where a company would rather I give them my personal information than pay them $1000 every 4 years) One way to approach the latency problem is with more aggressive colocation. For example, an apartment complex could have its own AWS or Google servers for local computation or video streaming.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    > One way to approach the latency problem is with more aggressive colocation. For example, an apartment complex could have its own AWS or Google servers for local computation or video streaming. That would be great, if only we could make it not belong to Amazon or Google. Consider the same idea phrased like this: apartment complex have servers in their basement offering compute, and services you use work on those servers. The model of today is that companies own services, control where the compute happens, and ship your data to them, taking ownership over it in the process. The alternative model I dream of is your data under your control, your choice where the compute happens, and third-party code being shipped to that place.
    - alexchamberlain 9y ago
      Let's imagine we could solve the easy problem of writing the software that is fully distributed to each complex and interacts with the software in any other complex. How do we solve the operations problem of running the machines in the complex?
      - TeMPOraL 9y ago
        VMs, containers, and whatever stuff Amazon is doing with that Lambda thing all sound like a good start.
      - justincormack 9y ago
- tskaiser 9y ago
  Yet each of those steps solved a different problem. Early computers did not have the local processing power needed to run heavy jobs. Early PCs did not have the storage. WWW solved an entirely different problem, namely distribution and communication. JS et. al. solved the problem of responsiveness and interaction ie. latency. I don't really see those as exhibiting cyclical traits, at best I see it as a correlation ie. side effects of the true problems being solved.
  - pecg 9y ago
    > WWW solved an entirely different problem, namely distribution and communication. > JS et. al. solved the problem of responsiveness and interaction ie. latency. I don't think either of these statements is correct. There wasn't a problem of 'responsiveness' and 'interaction' on http to begin with, in fact what Sun and Netscape did with javascript was to overengineer the web because they saw it as a business opportunity to add client-side code. http was designed (badly) to exchange hypertext documents, not to perform transactions over the server, or render video-games, or play music and videos, and certainly not to transfer files, for the latter ftp was desgined (also badly).
    - tskaiser 9y ago
      While I accept that my description of JS et. al. might be contentious, I don't see that you have argued against my piece on the WWW in general. Regarding latency and responsiveness I agree that they are issues that depend largely on your use cases and your skill at implementing solutions. In this regard I can agree that some pages simply don't need JS. It is also being misused for ads and tracking to a degree that is problematic and can in itself cause issues.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    > JS et. al. solved the problem of responsiveness and interaction ie. latency. You mean "introduced", right? Back before the modern web, when we all expected software to run on our machines, there was no responsiveness and latency problems, because data didn't travel over the wire unless it absolutely had to.
pdkl95 9y ago
> richness That includes the problematic features like tracking. Running software from random sources is dangerous in ways we are only beginning to understand.
- wasted_intel 9y ago
  Let’s keep in mind that software running in a browser is sandboxed, using standardized APIs, and isn’t nearly as privileged as software running directly on your desktop.
loup-vaillant 9y ago
Problem is, adding to the bl… sorry, richness, doesn't remove the old cruft. How about having an application platform that would be just an application platform? No HTML, no CSS, no built in multimedia. Just a VM, a viewport, audio, and inputs (and local storage if the user allows it).
- flohofwoe 9y ago
  I'm all for building from scratch a lean minimal runtime platform as you describe (that's what operating systems should be), also it should be "easy", take a minimal Linux kernel and add some thin APIs on top. But good luck turning this into a project that gains any traction. Using the browser platform to bootstrap such a thing isn't such a bad idea in comparison... sooner than later we need to depreciate the ugly parts, like WebRTC, WebAudio and trim some fat here and there, but other platforms have their ugly parts as well (look at the mess that is Android).
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  Exactly. Leave https alone and use it for hypertext. Have another protocol (vmtps?) that is used for apps. Browsers could support both.
  - 0xfeba 9y ago
    Agreed. It seems we are just piling on one thing after another. Surely we can start fresh with a better eye toward the future. TLS + HTTP Methods/WebSockets + HTML + CSS + JavaScript + JS frameworks Plus all the server side stuff. It's all a mess.
- osrec 9y ago
  But that's also the beauty of it. Within the browser we can support the old and the new without too much trouble.
  - loup-vaillant 9y ago
    You need a browser in the first place. The standards are now so big that to write a modern, compliant browser, you need to be an international corporation. A market with only 4 competitors (Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, Apple), is not a market. It's an oligarchy.
simion314 9y ago
I think web needs some more standardized functionality (like popups/modals, better dropdowns styling, datagrids ) so you do not have to implement things yourself or research and find a solution made by a third party.
joquarky 9y ago
Good luck running an ad blocker when every site is run in wasm and rendered to canvas.
- AboutTheWhisles 9y ago
  You can still block domains that serve ads. Also rendering the whole page in a canvas implies forgoing the entire DOM, which leaves behind basics like links, forms, embedded videos, etc. It would also mean getting raw input and drawing+laying out everything yourself instead of letting the browser do it.
  - recursive 9y ago
    That's all true. But the domain serving the ads might be the same one serving the rest of the content. And if that server is motivated enough to show you that ad, they will do all of the things you mentioned. I've been worried for sometime that this will be the end-game of the ad-blocker wars.
    - AboutTheWhisles 9y ago
      Right, but all that could happen now. Webasm doesn't change anything in that regard.
      - recursive 9y ago
        I agree. I'm pretty excited about webasm, although I'm nervous about ad-blocking in general.
      - jhasse 9y ago
        It makes it easier though.
- zurn 9y ago
  Then ad blocking would move to image recognition and/or automatic binary reverse engineering.
andrepd 9y ago
> rich, ubiquitous, standardised application delivery platform Lots of fancy words for bloat. Oftentimes malicious bloat at that.

by osrec 9y ago

_red 9y ago

These things are cyclical: * Early computers (1960-1980s): Dumb Terminal - Remote Server * Early PCs (1980s-1995): Local Processing - Remote Storage * WWW (1995-2010s): Dumb Terminal - Remote Server * JS/ASM/Etc (2010s - near future): Local Processing - Remote Storage Its fully possible that we will switch again to dumb terminal model. For instance, once the hassle of local code execution takes it toll, someone will have the bright idea of just putting the web browser itself in the cloud and just having a remote control connection to that browser....and the cycle will begin again.

hood_syntax 9y ago
Yeah, if we want latency added to literally every action... I understand that what you're saying is a possibility, but I sure hope it doesn't come to pass.
- TheRealPomax 9y ago
  New technology starts with the above-well-off, using tech you currency consider "absurdly unattaible to the masses" (like cars in the 20s, or telephone in the 40s, or computers in the 60s, or 24/7 internet in the 90s): for instance, when you just get a basically free gigabit connection straight into the backbone (like in a new upscale Japanese apartment building) the very idea that latency could even be a problem just... disappears. In that context, just attaching an interactive window to a remote running process (as long as it can stream faster than whatever is your minimum acceptable framerate at your minimum acceptable resolution) is literally indistinguishable from running locally. So I frankly do hope that comes to pass (as long as I also get to keep being able to build a desktop computer for working offline).
  - adrianN 9y ago
    Latency and bandwidth are different though. Your GBit connection won't help you access servers on the other side of the Atlantic.
    - TheRealPomax 9y ago
      I have no idea why you would need to leave your country in a world where we're back to thin clients and remote processing. Pretty sure the most obvious place for that processing to take place is at what used to be ISPs and have in this hypothetical future become Interactive Service Providers rather than "internet" service providers, with low latency, high bandwidth hubs in or near your city (and more likely, multiple hubs per city).
- woogley 9y ago
  The catalyst of such a shift could be a very good thing, e.g. exceptional internet speeds everywhere
- baybal2 9y ago
  Now I expect that there will come usability experts from google/facebook/amazon and tell you that an average user does not event know what latency is. Native apps have won over web app ecosystem, plainly and simple. WASM will not change things even a bit to root causes of people deciding to use native apps over web apps.
  - greiskul 9y ago
    Google and amazon certainly think the average user cares about latency, even if they don't know what it is: https://blog.gigaspaces.com/amazon-found-every-100ms-of-latency-cost-them-1-in-sales/ https://blog.gigaspaces.com/amazon-found-every-100ms-of-late...
- chongli 9y ago
  Those of us who get frustrated by latency in our tools were left behind long ago. Shiny user interfaces, cloud to-do lists, adblockers, bloated fad frameworks of the week, electron apps, blue apron for dogs... This is our reality now. I miss the internet I grew up with. The one before all the money arrived to ruin absolutely everything.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
opportune 9y ago
That's basically what Chromebooks already are. I think it's the future too. The only problem is that it moves away from the "upgrade your device every X years" paradigm that makes consumer electronics manufacturers money. They'll have to switch to a subscription model and people may not like that (and personally I'm terrified of the alternative situation where a company would rather I give them my personal information than pay them $1000 every 4 years) One way to approach the latency problem is with more aggressive colocation. For example, an apartment complex could have its own AWS or Google servers for local computation or video streaming.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  > One way to approach the latency problem is with more aggressive colocation. For example, an apartment complex could have its own AWS or Google servers for local computation or video streaming. That would be great, if only we could make it not belong to Amazon or Google. Consider the same idea phrased like this: apartment complex have servers in their basement offering compute, and services you use work on those servers. The model of today is that companies own services, control where the compute happens, and ship your data to them, taking ownership over it in the process. The alternative model I dream of is your data under your control, your choice where the compute happens, and third-party code being shipped to that place.
  - alexchamberlain 9y ago
    Let's imagine we could solve the easy problem of writing the software that is fully distributed to each complex and interacts with the software in any other complex. How do we solve the operations problem of running the machines in the complex?
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      VMs, containers, and whatever stuff Amazon is doing with that Lambda thing all sound like a good start.
    - justincormack 9y ago
tskaiser 9y ago
Yet each of those steps solved a different problem. Early computers did not have the local processing power needed to run heavy jobs. Early PCs did not have the storage. WWW solved an entirely different problem, namely distribution and communication. JS et. al. solved the problem of responsiveness and interaction ie. latency. I don't really see those as exhibiting cyclical traits, at best I see it as a correlation ie. side effects of the true problems being solved.
- pecg 9y ago
  > WWW solved an entirely different problem, namely distribution and communication. > JS et. al. solved the problem of responsiveness and interaction ie. latency. I don't think either of these statements is correct. There wasn't a problem of 'responsiveness' and 'interaction' on http to begin with, in fact what Sun and Netscape did with javascript was to overengineer the web because they saw it as a business opportunity to add client-side code. http was designed (badly) to exchange hypertext documents, not to perform transactions over the server, or render video-games, or play music and videos, and certainly not to transfer files, for the latter ftp was desgined (also badly).
  - tskaiser 9y ago
    While I accept that my description of JS et. al. might be contentious, I don't see that you have argued against my piece on the WWW in general. Regarding latency and responsiveness I agree that they are issues that depend largely on your use cases and your skill at implementing solutions. In this regard I can agree that some pages simply don't need JS. It is also being misused for ads and tracking to a degree that is problematic and can in itself cause issues.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  > JS et. al. solved the problem of responsiveness and interaction ie. latency. You mean "introduced", right? Back before the modern web, when we all expected software to run on our machines, there was no responsiveness and latency problems, because data didn't travel over the wire unless it absolutely had to.

pdkl95 9y ago

> richness That includes the problematic features like tracking. Running software from random sources is dangerous in ways we are only beginning to understand.

wasted_intel 9y ago
Let’s keep in mind that software running in a browser is sandboxed, using standardized APIs, and isn’t nearly as privileged as software running directly on your desktop.

loup-vaillant 9y ago

Problem is, adding to the bl… sorry, richness, doesn't remove the old cruft. How about having an application platform that would be just an application platform? No HTML, no CSS, no built in multimedia. Just a VM, a viewport, audio, and inputs (and local storage if the user allows it).

flohofwoe 9y ago
I'm all for building from scratch a lean minimal runtime platform as you describe (that's what operating systems should be), also it should be "easy", take a minimal Linux kernel and add some thin APIs on top. But good luck turning this into a project that gains any traction. Using the browser platform to bootstrap such a thing isn't such a bad idea in comparison... sooner than later we need to depreciate the ugly parts, like WebRTC, WebAudio and trim some fat here and there, but other platforms have their ugly parts as well (look at the mess that is Android).
JustSomeNobody 9y ago
Exactly. Leave https alone and use it for hypertext. Have another protocol (vmtps?) that is used for apps. Browsers could support both.
- 0xfeba 9y ago
  Agreed. It seems we are just piling on one thing after another. Surely we can start fresh with a better eye toward the future. TLS + HTTP Methods/WebSockets + HTML + CSS + JavaScript + JS frameworks Plus all the server side stuff. It's all a mess.
osrec 9y ago
But that's also the beauty of it. Within the browser we can support the old and the new without too much trouble.
- loup-vaillant 9y ago
  You need a browser in the first place. The standards are now so big that to write a modern, compliant browser, you need to be an international corporation. A market with only 4 competitors (Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, Apple), is not a market. It's an oligarchy.

simion314 9y ago

I think web needs some more standardized functionality (like popups/modals, better dropdowns styling, datagrids ) so you do not have to implement things yourself or research and find a solution made by a third party.

joquarky 9y ago

Good luck running an ad blocker when every site is run in wasm and rendered to canvas.

AboutTheWhisles 9y ago
You can still block domains that serve ads. Also rendering the whole page in a canvas implies forgoing the entire DOM, which leaves behind basics like links, forms, embedded videos, etc. It would also mean getting raw input and drawing+laying out everything yourself instead of letting the browser do it.
- recursive 9y ago
  That's all true. But the domain serving the ads might be the same one serving the rest of the content. And if that server is motivated enough to show you that ad, they will do all of the things you mentioned. I've been worried for sometime that this will be the end-game of the ad-blocker wars.
  - AboutTheWhisles 9y ago
    Right, but all that could happen now. Webasm doesn't change anything in that regard.
    - recursive 9y ago
      I agree. I'm pretty excited about webasm, although I'm nervous about ad-blocking in general.
    - jhasse 9y ago
      It makes it easier though.
zurn 9y ago
Then ad blocking would move to image recognition and/or automatic binary reverse engineering.

andrepd 9y ago

> rich, ubiquitous, standardised application delivery platform Lots of fancy words for bloat. Oftentimes malicious bloat at that.