> something about the idea of indiscriminately running binaries invisibly downloaded over the WWW rubs me the wrong way I think that's because the word "binary

> something about the idea of indiscriminately running binaries invisibly downloaded over the WWW rubs me the wrong way I think that's because the word "binary" has connotations that aren't strictly technically justified. There's no difference between running WASM and running JS (which is usually obfuscated anyway). Both are JITted into machine code, and it's important the JIT is implemented securely. (JIT compilers have been sources of exploits.) The only difference is complexity of the source language, where simpler languages are easier to secure. And WASM is orders of magnitude simpler than JS.