5 ms·

I dunno, this feels depressing to me. The new PR campaigns being about lower-common-denominators is sad news. Alas there's basically just Firefox, Safari, and

I dunno, this feels depressing to me. The new PR campaigns being about lower-common-denominators is sad news. Alas there's basically just Firefox, Safari, and Chrome in the running. Firefox & Safari are both aligned around anti-features, around baselines, far more than driving things forwards or trying stuff (both with plenty of exceptions to that behavior though). I'd be so much more interested in safe & stable & supported if there were more players out there also trying to push forward & try new web specs. But there aren't. Promoting a "Baseline" or a "unified view" of "stable" features is like the least progressive, least hopeful, most limited vision there is, when only one company is actively really pushing forwards.

userbinator 3y ago
when only one company is actively really pushing forwards. To be clear, they're only doing that to further their monopoly, so the more everyone else refuses to be pulled along like dogs on a leash --- especially when creating sites --- the more actual browser diversity we can have, independent implementations that don't have to continue trying to trendchase an idiotic "living standard". Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9961613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9961613
- rektide 3y ago
  PPK (whom you cite) is an extreme conservative for the web, as are many many forces about. I don't think it's possible to have this conversation. People have a deep belief about what they want from the web, and a ton of people want it small & tiny & less than it is. People are desperate to believe Google has some huge weird agenda. The agenda seems pretty obvious: build a great hypermedium. Build the best protocol for information the world has. Because Google already is everywhere, already has the best search engine, already has a great first party relationship with users, as they start every journey into the web. Google' agenda isn't to block out or hurt other people, it's to be better & do better than all the native apps, to make the connected online experience simply better. And they're winning. They're doing it: they're making the connected hypermedia world the best option for computing, by having great capabilities, by making it easy for webdevs to do amazing things quickly, by having a good low-level capabilities that endless frameworks can arrange as they see fit, pursuant to the ideals of the Extensible Web Manifesto. https://github.com/extensibleweb/manifesto https://github.com/extensibleweb/manifesto They're not being mean or unfair at all. Chrome has the most fair, reasonable, upstream-first, pro-social way of developing software the world has ever seen. https://www.chromium.org/blink/launching-features/ https://www.chromium.org/blink/launching-features/ is higher responsibility, more responsive & shared-early, with more safeguards than almost everyone else on the planet, and they do it in public. Their works are specified, they seek review early, they get architecture & security group reviews. It's unprecedented in extreme how far Google goes to make sure web development is open. But people just cannot possibly imagine there's not some secret cause. Everything is met with hostility, weird personal attacks, & debasement. You basically never hear anyone who is critical but also reasonable or sympathetic or understanding: this is the tell. Almost all the negative feedback against Google & Chrome is to the wall outrage, is 100% on one side, lacking in nuance or balance. There's no recognition of good, no appreciation of the attempt at process. This is a cruel & savage thing the internet has ganged up to do, to be so lopsidedly angry and mean, with so little willingness to recognize optimism, growth, hope, trying, and effort, which have already been such an amazing boon to us.
  - userbinator 3y ago
    They're not being mean or unfair at all. Chrome has the most fair, reasonable, upstream-first, pro-social way of developing software the world has ever seen.[...]higher responsibility, more responsive & shared-early, with more safeguards than almost everyone else on the planet That may be the most buzzword-filled sentence (and comment) I've ever seen in a reply, and it means absolutely nothing. Google's weapon of monopoly is change. They have the manpower to churn the "standard" more than anyone else and modify their browser accordingly, while at the same time spreading propaganda about using features only their browser (now) has, regardless of whether they're actually necessary. This is a cruel & savage thing the internet has ganged up to do, to be so lopsidedly angry and mean, with so little willingness to recognize optimism, growth, hope, trying, and effort, which have already been such an amazing boon to us. Oh for fucks' sake... you're talking about an advertising-based megacorp that essentially controls the entire Internet. This isn't "don't be evil" anymore. They've long outgrown that.
    - rektide 3y ago
      The only people who have forced change, so far, are Apple, and then Mozilla, who both banned 3rd party cookies/implemented Intelligent Tracking Protection, without a spec or guidance ahead of time, & then had to walk back & create a bunch of allow lists half the protections to not break the internet. > That may be the most buzzword-filled sentence (and comment) I've ever seen in a reply, and it means absolutely nothing. This is flaming. It's just being aggressive. In case I'm not being clear & you really don't get it (which I doubt), let's go over my assertions. "Chrome has the most fair" - Chrome is by far the most proactive of browsers at getting signals from other vendors. As above with Intelligent Tracking Protection, Apple and Moz just do shit & break shit. Everyone has to tip-tow through talking to Apple about specs because they'll just tank anything that doesn't go their way. "reasonable" - The first step in launching features is to tell people, write an explainer at a public endpoint, start prototyping, launch origin trials, widen review/seek signals from other vendors. They go so far to be considerate about what's happening. The origin trials allow for end-user experimentation, with a buy in that makes it obvious to users there's not commitment to the feature actually shipping; a trial is a trial is a trial. "upstream-first" - The guidelines I shared for launching features is to literally start incubating with a public spec. Get a mentor, & start writing specs. Prioritize the public & the spec over the work in the browser. "pro-social" - As above, incredible commitment to involving other parties to try to build great specifications. No surprises. Everything announced far ahead of time, tested. Spec review & TAG & security review. Everything is extremely public. "way of developing software the world has ever seen" - There's nothing like this. No one does 1/3rd as much a Google does when trying to advance the web. It's incredible. "higher responsibility" - Spoken to by the above. "more responsive" - blink-dev and the spec repos are both incredibly high responsiveness, with enormous amount of back & forth & give & take with external parties of all kinds to see what makes sense to build. "& shared-early," - So much warm up for anything they do. Incubating with use case/scenarios/explainer. Creating a Chrome Status entry. Announcing to blink-dev. All before any actual work happens. Incredible visibility. "with more safeguards than almost everyone else on the planet" - I can't think of a single other company with anywhere near this level of maturity about iterating forwards. > Google's weapon of monopoly is change. They have the manpower to churn the "standard" more than anyone else and modify their browser accordingly, If this were a problem, wouldn't we see the old web be broken? Do we see that problem? The only instances I'm aware of the web breaking in the past decade or so is Apple shipping Intelligent Tracking Protection, which they had to largely roll back & create allowlists around to allow the web to keep working. Google is now spearheading the effort to make actual specifications to for how we can do similar, but with, you know, actual specs, & just just waving the magic wand & changing things unannounced overnight. > while at the same time spreading propaganda about using features only their browser (now) has, The amount of tech that other browsers have adopted from Google is also notably high too. Since Google's open source, heck yes it's great that so many others can re-use & leverage the WebRTC stack Google was core to developing. Heck yes it's great that Google went off & built incredible software WebGL implementations in ANGLE, which again everyone else also uses now. There just doesn't seem to be a real problem here. We don't have the IE vs Netscape web, where huge amounts of sites just don't work & use fundamentally different technologies. Things seem to mostly work. Most of these techs being built seem to make sense & be helpful & good. They're things we should have. What is the propoganda Google is spinning here? Where do they haze the competition? If anything I see it as exactly the opposite. Google isn't negatively campaigning. But we see Apple then a week latter Mozilla make a big stink about how proud they are not to be implementing Web MIDI, or Web USB, which can be such direct & competent ways for users to make user of their devices. https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-declined-to-implement-16-web-apis-in-safari-due-to-privacy-concerns/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-declined-to-implement-16... > Oh for fucks' sake...that essentially controls the entire Internet. This is the weirdest strangest version of control I've ever seen. I think most people who read blink-dev see an entirely different world. This doesn't seem based in reason, in judgement over the actions of Chrome teams. It seems based in bias, in personal Fear Uncertainty and Doubt. I do think there's real problems with Google as a company, and there are real problems. But this company's success is directly coupled to the web. If you look at blink-dev for real, it's incredibly easy to see the truth of what Google does for the web. They try to take care of it. They try to help. The hypermedium we have has indeed made them big and strong, but the only way for them to stay big & strong is to keep the web from going bad, to keep it a good medium. Which they have done an excellent job of. Which they have poured enormous good genuine unshady effort into doing, for years.
slushh 3y ago
>I'd be so much more interested in safe & stable & supported if there were more players out there also trying to push forward & try new web specs. Google is pushing forward to remove the number of players. The more features have to be implemented the less players are able to afford the number of developers that are needed to keep up. The silly thing is that Google is trying to turn the browser into an application platform. To a certain extend that's justified but with Java, they already have such a platform, but they chose to break the compatibility of the byte code. If they realign with the java byte code, there would be no need to push features in browsers. Developers could ship libraries for whatever they need on the Java platform.

userbinator 3y ago

when only one company is actively really pushing forwards. To be clear, they're only doing that to further their monopoly, so the more everyone else refuses to be pulled along like dogs on a leash --- especially when creating sites --- the more actual browser diversity we can have, independent implementations that don't have to continue trying to trendchase an idiotic "living standard". Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9961613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9961613

rektide 3y ago
PPK (whom you cite) is an extreme conservative for the web, as are many many forces about. I don't think it's possible to have this conversation. People have a deep belief about what they want from the web, and a ton of people want it small & tiny & less than it is. People are desperate to believe Google has some huge weird agenda. The agenda seems pretty obvious: build a great hypermedium. Build the best protocol for information the world has. Because Google already is everywhere, already has the best search engine, already has a great first party relationship with users, as they start every journey into the web. Google' agenda isn't to block out or hurt other people, it's to be better & do better than all the native apps, to make the connected online experience simply better. And they're winning. They're doing it: they're making the connected hypermedia world the best option for computing, by having great capabilities, by making it easy for webdevs to do amazing things quickly, by having a good low-level capabilities that endless frameworks can arrange as they see fit, pursuant to the ideals of the Extensible Web Manifesto. https://github.com/extensibleweb/manifesto https://github.com/extensibleweb/manifesto They're not being mean or unfair at all. Chrome has the most fair, reasonable, upstream-first, pro-social way of developing software the world has ever seen. https://www.chromium.org/blink/launching-features/ https://www.chromium.org/blink/launching-features/ is higher responsibility, more responsive & shared-early, with more safeguards than almost everyone else on the planet, and they do it in public. Their works are specified, they seek review early, they get architecture & security group reviews. It's unprecedented in extreme how far Google goes to make sure web development is open. But people just cannot possibly imagine there's not some secret cause. Everything is met with hostility, weird personal attacks, & debasement. You basically never hear anyone who is critical but also reasonable or sympathetic or understanding: this is the tell. Almost all the negative feedback against Google & Chrome is to the wall outrage, is 100% on one side, lacking in nuance or balance. There's no recognition of good, no appreciation of the attempt at process. This is a cruel & savage thing the internet has ganged up to do, to be so lopsidedly angry and mean, with so little willingness to recognize optimism, growth, hope, trying, and effort, which have already been such an amazing boon to us.
- userbinator 3y ago
  They're not being mean or unfair at all. Chrome has the most fair, reasonable, upstream-first, pro-social way of developing software the world has ever seen.[...]higher responsibility, more responsive & shared-early, with more safeguards than almost everyone else on the planet That may be the most buzzword-filled sentence (and comment) I've ever seen in a reply, and it means absolutely nothing. Google's weapon of monopoly is change. They have the manpower to churn the "standard" more than anyone else and modify their browser accordingly, while at the same time spreading propaganda about using features only their browser (now) has, regardless of whether they're actually necessary. This is a cruel & savage thing the internet has ganged up to do, to be so lopsidedly angry and mean, with so little willingness to recognize optimism, growth, hope, trying, and effort, which have already been such an amazing boon to us. Oh for fucks' sake... you're talking about an advertising-based megacorp that essentially controls the entire Internet. This isn't "don't be evil" anymore. They've long outgrown that.
  - rektide 3y ago
    The only people who have forced change, so far, are Apple, and then Mozilla, who both banned 3rd party cookies/implemented Intelligent Tracking Protection, without a spec or guidance ahead of time, & then had to walk back & create a bunch of allow lists half the protections to not break the internet. > That may be the most buzzword-filled sentence (and comment) I've ever seen in a reply, and it means absolutely nothing. This is flaming. It's just being aggressive. In case I'm not being clear & you really don't get it (which I doubt), let's go over my assertions. "Chrome has the most fair" - Chrome is by far the most proactive of browsers at getting signals from other vendors. As above with Intelligent Tracking Protection, Apple and Moz just do shit & break shit. Everyone has to tip-tow through talking to Apple about specs because they'll just tank anything that doesn't go their way. "reasonable" - The first step in launching features is to tell people, write an explainer at a public endpoint, start prototyping, launch origin trials, widen review/seek signals from other vendors. They go so far to be considerate about what's happening. The origin trials allow for end-user experimentation, with a buy in that makes it obvious to users there's not commitment to the feature actually shipping; a trial is a trial is a trial. "upstream-first" - The guidelines I shared for launching features is to literally start incubating with a public spec. Get a mentor, & start writing specs. Prioritize the public & the spec over the work in the browser. "pro-social" - As above, incredible commitment to involving other parties to try to build great specifications. No surprises. Everything announced far ahead of time, tested. Spec review & TAG & security review. Everything is extremely public. "way of developing software the world has ever seen" - There's nothing like this. No one does 1/3rd as much a Google does when trying to advance the web. It's incredible. "higher responsibility" - Spoken to by the above. "more responsive" - blink-dev and the spec repos are both incredibly high responsiveness, with enormous amount of back & forth & give & take with external parties of all kinds to see what makes sense to build. "& shared-early," - So much warm up for anything they do. Incubating with use case/scenarios/explainer. Creating a Chrome Status entry. Announcing to blink-dev. All before any actual work happens. Incredible visibility. "with more safeguards than almost everyone else on the planet" - I can't think of a single other company with anywhere near this level of maturity about iterating forwards. > Google's weapon of monopoly is change. They have the manpower to churn the "standard" more than anyone else and modify their browser accordingly, If this were a problem, wouldn't we see the old web be broken? Do we see that problem? The only instances I'm aware of the web breaking in the past decade or so is Apple shipping Intelligent Tracking Protection, which they had to largely roll back & create allowlists around to allow the web to keep working. Google is now spearheading the effort to make actual specifications to for how we can do similar, but with, you know, actual specs, & just just waving the magic wand & changing things unannounced overnight. > while at the same time spreading propaganda about using features only their browser (now) has, The amount of tech that other browsers have adopted from Google is also notably high too. Since Google's open source, heck yes it's great that so many others can re-use & leverage the WebRTC stack Google was core to developing. Heck yes it's great that Google went off & built incredible software WebGL implementations in ANGLE, which again everyone else also uses now. There just doesn't seem to be a real problem here. We don't have the IE vs Netscape web, where huge amounts of sites just don't work & use fundamentally different technologies. Things seem to mostly work. Most of these techs being built seem to make sense & be helpful & good. They're things we should have. What is the propoganda Google is spinning here? Where do they haze the competition? If anything I see it as exactly the opposite. Google isn't negatively campaigning. But we see Apple then a week latter Mozilla make a big stink about how proud they are not to be implementing Web MIDI, or Web USB, which can be such direct & competent ways for users to make user of their devices. https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-declined-to-implement-16-web-apis-in-safari-due-to-privacy-concerns/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-declined-to-implement-16... > Oh for fucks' sake...that essentially controls the entire Internet. This is the weirdest strangest version of control I've ever seen. I think most people who read blink-dev see an entirely different world. This doesn't seem based in reason, in judgement over the actions of Chrome teams. It seems based in bias, in personal Fear Uncertainty and Doubt. I do think there's real problems with Google as a company, and there are real problems. But this company's success is directly coupled to the web. If you look at blink-dev for real, it's incredibly easy to see the truth of what Google does for the web. They try to take care of it. They try to help. The hypermedium we have has indeed made them big and strong, but the only way for them to stay big & strong is to keep the web from going bad, to keep it a good medium. Which they have done an excellent job of. Which they have poured enormous good genuine unshady effort into doing, for years.

slushh 3y ago

>I'd be so much more interested in safe & stable & supported if there were more players out there also trying to push forward & try new web specs. Google is pushing forward to remove the number of players. The more features have to be implemented the less players are able to afford the number of developers that are needed to keep up. The silly thing is that Google is trying to turn the browser into an application platform. To a certain extend that's justified but with Java, they already have such a platform, but they chose to break the compatibility of the byte code. If they realign with the java byte code, there would be no need to push features in browsers. Developers could ship libraries for whatever they need on the Java platform.