3 ms·

So hear me out... plugins ;)

karamanolev 5y ago
If only we had tried making a browser plugin for multimedia applications with a separate runtime. We could call it something flashy, for example ... Flash. That totally went better than browser security. Another option would be feature-enabling plugins, for example a plugin that enables WebRTC developed by some random company. I still don't see how it won't be massively worse than browser security.
- ajklsdhfniuwehf 5y ago
  Flash was AWESOME in that it enabled all that everyone whining on here wanted in their browsers, not to mention the lowest barrier to entry on content creation not reached again on this day. But you had the option! Want your computer to the unsafe man-child playgroud? go ahead, install flash. Want something serious for work, don't touch it. But the advertisement industry had their way and apple and microsoft started to include flash by default. Do you think Google fought flash because they care about you? heh. Google helped kill flash because it gave an edge to microsoft since their ad network at the time was text only and microsoft et al were making bank on swf banners. anyway, you had the option! it was a plugin, not the browser. Instead of a better plugin, you killed the radio star, took over w3C so that feature for your ad network would be part of the standard. Now chrome is worse than flash. Features like Federated Learning of Cohorts will be shoved down your throat like or not and it won't even allow you to play web games or something FUN.
  - rektide 5y ago
    no view source! that broke the basic treatise of the internet. it wasn't a protocol, wasnt a medium: it was someone else highjacking your shit & doing what they wanted in a filthy untouchable applicationized sandbox you had no power over it. you the user has no power, no visibility, no say. application,. it a medium: out of your reach. very little of this submitted screed touches upon this area, but to me the anti-webassembly remarks feel very close fit to anti-flash remarks. js has gotten bad, but I continue to think eventually we'll see better actors (especially with an arisal of custom elements). webassembly makes me think the web will get anti-web anti-understandable, anti-user as a medium increasingly for the next 50 years probably, most of my remaining life. doing good & being a respectful medium will be just as possible as without webassembly, but there will be so much energy & focus on an industrialized non-user non-acessible non-user-agency dark world shadow-nightmare hell-web because of webhassembly, that will absolutely dominate & be enticing to so so so wide a range of the alpha geeks... while users lose & lose & lose. flash 2.0 is coming & it will be cheered & celebrated & far far worse for users than the flash we have finally killed.
    - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
      > no view source! that broke the basic treatise of the internet. I was pretty young, but I'm pretty sure I remember opening someone else's swf file in a decompiler in middle school. It was a little weird but I was able to make the changes I wanted. How editable is WASM code, really?
      - oneplane 5y ago
        How editable is raw JFIF data, really? You need to run it through some fancy graphics library before you can do anything with it. /s It's not as much how you can hack around it but more about open-by-default and open-by-design.
        Wowfunhappy 5y ago
        Well, that was my point about SWF files. You could edit them with the right tools. But like WASM, they are far less editable than the original source files. Unfortunately, there are very practical performance reasons to send information in a "compiled," less-editable format. Which is why even static sites nowadays typically use some type of build system.
        oneplane 5y ago
        Yeah, that's very true. I do wonder if with the 'somewhat standard' min.map files that can point out what the rendered versions relate to in the 'source' versions could somehow be enforced. That way you can still use the compact version first and if you do want to see what's happening you can just get the map and the source and explore.
      - rektide 5y ago
        Even if you do decompile the SWF & edit it, the flash can still interact with the page. In many cases you'd need to alter the page too, to inject your hacked swf. Wasm code is editable via the very very good dev tools systems we have today, mostly dictated via the Chrome DevTools protocol which even Mozilla largely harkens to & which is being semi-standardized through wicg[1]. Still fairly early days but support is not bad! But... it's a monumentally harder challenge imo than JS. There are source maps, so if the site is nice, you can see what the authored uncompiled code was, but there's no facility to author in that language & recompile your changes via the debugger. And I fear few sites will post the source maps to make webassembly comprehendible. Few sites have morals, ethics, or respect for the web as a medium: they see it as a platform for them alone to dictate to you the user what you get. This, to me, is the sad end Flash had forced upon us, that the web was so much better than. [1] https://github.com/WICG/devtools-protocol https://github.com/WICG/devtools-protocol
- dijit 5y ago
  Flash was a nightmare, but you know something that's good about flash? It wasn't enabled everywhere by default and the majority of sites didn't assume you had it, unless it was something that genuinely needed it (like, habbo hotel, or youtube back in the day) it often never got enabled, meaning people couldn't use it for tracking me, or eating up all my local resources. That's a freedom we've lost, disabling javascript just breaks everything. Though webgl continues to be a toggle, though enabled by default.
  - asddubs 5y ago
    it was pretty assumed you'd have it, it did have an install rate of over 90% at one point. I think it was just used less often for essential things since it wasn't as smooth to integrate with the rest of the page, and pages used to be less dynamic back then in general

If only we had tried making a browser plugin for multimedia applications with a separate runtime. We could call it something flashy, for example ... Flash. That totally went better than browser security. Another option would be feature-enabling plugins, for example a plugin that enables WebRTC developed by some random company. I still don't see how it won't be massively worse than browser security.

ajklsdhfniuwehf 5y ago
Flash was AWESOME in that it enabled all that everyone whining on here wanted in their browsers, not to mention the lowest barrier to entry on content creation not reached again on this day. But you had the option! Want your computer to the unsafe man-child playgroud? go ahead, install flash. Want something serious for work, don't touch it. But the advertisement industry had their way and apple and microsoft started to include flash by default. Do you think Google fought flash because they care about you? heh. Google helped kill flash because it gave an edge to microsoft since their ad network at the time was text only and microsoft et al were making bank on swf banners. anyway, you had the option! it was a plugin, not the browser. Instead of a better plugin, you killed the radio star, took over w3C so that feature for your ad network would be part of the standard. Now chrome is worse than flash. Features like Federated Learning of Cohorts will be shoved down your throat like or not and it won't even allow you to play web games or something FUN.
- rektide 5y ago
  no view source! that broke the basic treatise of the internet. it wasn't a protocol, wasnt a medium: it was someone else highjacking your shit & doing what they wanted in a filthy untouchable applicationized sandbox you had no power over it. you the user has no power, no visibility, no say. application,. it a medium: out of your reach. very little of this submitted screed touches upon this area, but to me the anti-webassembly remarks feel very close fit to anti-flash remarks. js has gotten bad, but I continue to think eventually we'll see better actors (especially with an arisal of custom elements). webassembly makes me think the web will get anti-web anti-understandable, anti-user as a medium increasingly for the next 50 years probably, most of my remaining life. doing good & being a respectful medium will be just as possible as without webassembly, but there will be so much energy & focus on an industrialized non-user non-acessible non-user-agency dark world shadow-nightmare hell-web because of webhassembly, that will absolutely dominate & be enticing to so so so wide a range of the alpha geeks... while users lose & lose & lose. flash 2.0 is coming & it will be cheered & celebrated & far far worse for users than the flash we have finally killed.
  - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
    > no view source! that broke the basic treatise of the internet. I was pretty young, but I'm pretty sure I remember opening someone else's swf file in a decompiler in middle school. It was a little weird but I was able to make the changes I wanted. How editable is WASM code, really?
    - oneplane 5y ago
      How editable is raw JFIF data, really? You need to run it through some fancy graphics library before you can do anything with it. /s It's not as much how you can hack around it but more about open-by-default and open-by-design.
      - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
        Well, that was my point about SWF files. You could edit them with the right tools. But like WASM, they are far less editable than the original source files. Unfortunately, there are very practical performance reasons to send information in a "compiled," less-editable format. Which is why even static sites nowadays typically use some type of build system.
        oneplane 5y ago
        Yeah, that's very true. I do wonder if with the 'somewhat standard' min.map files that can point out what the rendered versions relate to in the 'source' versions could somehow be enforced. That way you can still use the compact version first and if you do want to see what's happening you can just get the map and the source and explore.
    - rektide 5y ago
      Even if you do decompile the SWF & edit it, the flash can still interact with the page. In many cases you'd need to alter the page too, to inject your hacked swf. Wasm code is editable via the very very good dev tools systems we have today, mostly dictated via the Chrome DevTools protocol which even Mozilla largely harkens to & which is being semi-standardized through wicg[1]. Still fairly early days but support is not bad! But... it's a monumentally harder challenge imo than JS. There are source maps, so if the site is nice, you can see what the authored uncompiled code was, but there's no facility to author in that language & recompile your changes via the debugger. And I fear few sites will post the source maps to make webassembly comprehendible. Few sites have morals, ethics, or respect for the web as a medium: they see it as a platform for them alone to dictate to you the user what you get. This, to me, is the sad end Flash had forced upon us, that the web was so much better than. [1] https://github.com/WICG/devtools-protocol https://github.com/WICG/devtools-protocol
dijit 5y ago
Flash was a nightmare, but you know something that's good about flash? It wasn't enabled everywhere by default and the majority of sites didn't assume you had it, unless it was something that genuinely needed it (like, habbo hotel, or youtube back in the day) it often never got enabled, meaning people couldn't use it for tracking me, or eating up all my local resources. That's a freedom we've lost, disabling javascript just breaks everything. Though webgl continues to be a toggle, though enabled by default.
- asddubs 5y ago
  it was pretty assumed you'd have it, it did have an install rate of over 90% at one point. I think it was just used less often for essential things since it wasn't as smooth to integrate with the rest of the page, and pages used to be less dynamic back then in general