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I mean, Applets are just really old, security itself wasn’t considered all that “important” at the time. There is no real difference on a purely runtime level b
by kaba0 4y ago
I mean, Applets are just really old, security itself wasn’t considered all that “important” at the time. There is no real difference on a purely runtime level between wasm and the JVM to make one safer than the other. And regarding release strategy, that’s just politics.
- usrusr 4y agoWasm could start out as a "function runner" box with no outside interface at all besides arguments and return value, with everything UI, storage or networking conveniently out of scope. Applet, in its day, had to be so much more than just the bytecode VM...
- kaba0 4y agoThat were applets (used for a very different web than today). The JVM format/vm itself can also work as a simple “function runner”, hell, without adding actual functionality you pretty much get this automatically from any runtime. Most brainfuck interpreters are trivially safe from deleting your hard drive, they simply don’t have fs access.
- stcroixx 4y agoSecurity was considered just as important as it is today, in fact probably more because the default attitude towards the internet was not to trust anything. At this time the only relevant browser was IE, which was hostile to everything not MS and they would kneecap anything they could.
- kaba0 4y agoCome on, there was basically no concern for privacy for a very long time. The whole IT were built upon “no bad actors” assumption. It turned out to be a deeply flawed assumption and we try to fix it, but desktop OSs are still insanely unsafe.
- zozbot234 4y agoThere was enough concern for privacy that browsers were set up to warn for each and every cookie by default, and prompt the user before running any JavaScript on the page.