7 ms·

"This will load 3.5GB and use 8GB of your RAM". Interesting what browsers have become. The web ate the operating systems.

pjmlp 3y ago
That is why there is a company selling laptops where the OS is the browser, and another one doing the same for smart TVs.
- solardev 3y ago
  Wish Windows would take a cue from that other operating system and stop shipping with so much cruft. Can't remember the last time I used Windows for anything more than launching Chrome and Steam...
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    Actually Windows was one of the first to follow upon this idea with Active Desktop and packaged Web applications. I guess you would be better off with SteamOS then.
    - solardev 3y ago
      We still have that in the form of PWAs. I don't mean the web "runtime"/webview, but all the cruft that Windows ships with... the endless ads, multiple UI and config layers, Office trial, the stupid games, OneDrive, Skype/Teams, the endless notifications, Bing everywhere... it's an over-monetized in your face nightmare on every fresh boot. If not for DirectX and Windows-only games, I'd totally ditch it. Maybe when Proton gets there.
  - scioto 3y ago
    I only use Windows for games.
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
  There's however the important detail that this company has been doggedly working for achieving that end by first co-opting the browser of a competitor (Safari WebKit), then forking it, then taking over the web standards process, and putting in every API possible on the web, including access to USB devices and so on, so they can make an OS around it. Because if it's the web, Google sees it. And if everything is the web, then Google sees everything.
  - wood_spirit 3y ago
    And Apple had in turn had cop-opted KDE’s KHTML and KJS project to start WebKit. An illustrious linage. (I remember several awesome hobby OS projects ported KHTML to get a really good browser back in those days. It was a really solid and portable codebase and much tidier than Firefox.)
  - fauigerzigerk 3y ago
    Google doesn't see anything just because it uses web technology. For instance, the payroll system I use is a web app, but Google doesn't see my company's payroll data. What Google sees is a marketing blurb about the payroll system. Google sees everything that is public and everything that uses their ad network, including data from apps that don't use the web at all.
esperent 3y ago
I don't quite understand your criticism here. It's running stable diffusion on your computer via your browser. How would it do this without downloading it and then loading it into RAM? It'll be the same size download and use about the same RAM if you download it and run it directly without using a browser.
- bawolff 3y ago
  Its not a criticism that this is neccesary, its a criticism that it is possible to even do this in a browser.
  - esperent 3y ago
    But why is that a criticism? I tried running SD on my computer a few months ago. I spent several hours trying to install the dependencies and eventually gave up. I'm sure it wouldn't have been a big deal for someone familiar with python but for me it was a massive hassle and I eventually failed to make it run at all. For this one, as long as my browser supports WebGPU (which will be widely supported soon) and I have the system resources, it will run. Barely any technical knowledge needed, doesn't matter what OS or brand of GPU I have. Isn't that really cool? It reduces both technical and knowledge based barriers to entry. Why do people criticize this so strongly?
    - filoleg 3y ago
      After seeing the sort of argument you are replying to countless times on HN, I came to a simple conclusion. Some people, esp on HN, just have disdain for anyone who might not be willing to deal with the hubris of running a piece of software, because it invites "lower common denominator", and they don't want to "taint" their hobby by the presence of "normies" in what used to be their exclusive domain. In a similar vein, you can find plenty of comments on HN faulting the massive proliferation of smartphones among the general population throughout 2010s for "ruining" web, software ecosystems, application paradigms, etc. There are plenty of things one could potentially criticize smartphones for, and some of that criticism indeed has merit. But this specific point about "ruining" things feels almost like a different version of the same argument above - niche things becoming widely adopted by the masses and "ruining" their "cool kids club." Another similar example from an entirely unrelated domain - comic books and their explosion in popularity after Marvel movies repeatedly killing it in the box office. I don't even like Marvel movies, barely watched any of them, but the elitism around hating things becoming more popular is just silly.
ale42 3y ago
I guess data is compressed? Otherwise, this makes no sense (even if it might happen in practice).
- josefx 3y ago
  AI models can get quite memory intensive while running. I have seen a primitive image improvement AI eat up over 80 GB of RAM on high res images. The data of the model itself "only" used up 4 GB.
quickthrower2 3y ago
The web ate Java's original premise.
- colechristensen 3y ago
  Yup, java just didn't actually do it very well. Or java was too heavy for the computers at the time to get people to use "applets" for everyday things (i.e. go to a new website a do a thing on it) Flash et al also failed to catch for long. The web browser's success might have something to do with neverending feature creep as opposed to "this can do everything but as such it's broken and vulnerable".
  - quickthrower2 3y ago
    I think everyone instinctively knew that “once it is in the browser it cannot fail”, so it has been a schelling point for tech.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    Java's constant security nightmares and lack of integration into browsers was the bigger problem, IMHO.
    - antupis 3y ago
      Also you had to install runtime vs browser which is bundled every OS.
  - DrScientist 3y ago
    Applets implementations were terrible - the problem wasn't so much Java ( though early versions pre-jit were slow ) , but the interface between the browser and the applet. Memory leaks abounded in particular. Life cycle management was difficult as well. Note the interface had to be implemented in each and every browser separately - compounding the problem - for applets to be viable it had to work on all the major browsers well. Not blaming the people who worked on it - I suspect the origin design was put together in a rush, and the work under-resourced, and it required coordination of multiple parties.
massifist 3y ago
I don't know, something tells me a (actual) operating system will still be required (at some level). Though, they might eat the desktop environment or UIs (in general).
jimmySixDOF 3y ago
Yes, and I am coming round to the idea that WebGPU is useful like this for cases other than realtime interactive WebXR pages with streaming multiplayer live state and loaded up with draw calls etc. There is a simplicity to curating the experience through the browser like this and there isn't any easier way to get SD up and running so I hope these kinds of projects keep getting support. Thanks for building this OP!
Waterluvian 3y ago
As bandwidth increases and the web sandbox matures, it’s fascinating to watch the evolution towards apps you just use rather than download and install and maintain. This will bother some but for the masses it opens a lot of doors.
- Timon3 3y ago
  I love web apps because they mean I have to trust the developer a lot less than with native apps. Of course there are still things you'd have to monitor (e.g. network requests) to fully trust any web app. A good solution could be something like OpenBSD's pledge, to allow me to prove to the user nothing malicious is possible (e.g. by disabling fetch and any new requests, even from src attributes, altogether).
  - Waterluvian 3y ago
    As a sandbox, I especially like that there's a dropdown with a huge list of things a website/app can do. Many of them on by default, but I have total control over that. And of course the API for asking. "Hey this game wants to use your motion controls and USB gamepad." Okay sure.
    - Timon3 3y ago
      Yeah, the sandbox is nice, but it doesn't go far enough. Let's say I build a JSON viewer. Why should the page have any ability to make network requests? So what I'm asking for is an ability to pledge that I'm not going to make any network requests.
amelius 3y ago
As long as they cache it so I only have to load it once ...
_ea1k 3y ago
That's what Netscape wanted, back when they still existed. The vision survived, though the company didn't.
MrBra 3y ago
Or better: the web ate the OS resources. Or better: an app ate the OS resources. Which is exactly what resources are for, when eating is performed correctly :)

pjmlp 3y ago

That is why there is a company selling laptops where the OS is the browser, and another one doing the same for smart TVs.

solardev 3y ago
Wish Windows would take a cue from that other operating system and stop shipping with so much cruft. Can't remember the last time I used Windows for anything more than launching Chrome and Steam...
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Actually Windows was one of the first to follow upon this idea with Active Desktop and packaged Web applications. I guess you would be better off with SteamOS then.
  - solardev 3y ago
    We still have that in the form of PWAs. I don't mean the web "runtime"/webview, but all the cruft that Windows ships with... the endless ads, multiple UI and config layers, Office trial, the stupid games, OneDrive, Skype/Teams, the endless notifications, Bing everywhere... it's an over-monetized in your face nightmare on every fresh boot. If not for DirectX and Windows-only games, I'd totally ditch it. Maybe when Proton gets there.
- scioto 3y ago
  I only use Windows for games.
3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
There's however the important detail that this company has been doggedly working for achieving that end by first co-opting the browser of a competitor (Safari WebKit), then forking it, then taking over the web standards process, and putting in every API possible on the web, including access to USB devices and so on, so they can make an OS around it. Because if it's the web, Google sees it. And if everything is the web, then Google sees everything.
- wood_spirit 3y ago
  And Apple had in turn had cop-opted KDE’s KHTML and KJS project to start WebKit. An illustrious linage. (I remember several awesome hobby OS projects ported KHTML to get a really good browser back in those days. It was a really solid and portable codebase and much tidier than Firefox.)
- fauigerzigerk 3y ago
  Google doesn't see anything just because it uses web technology. For instance, the payroll system I use is a web app, but Google doesn't see my company's payroll data. What Google sees is a marketing blurb about the payroll system. Google sees everything that is public and everything that uses their ad network, including data from apps that don't use the web at all.

esperent 3y ago

I don't quite understand your criticism here. It's running stable diffusion on your computer via your browser. How would it do this without downloading it and then loading it into RAM? It'll be the same size download and use about the same RAM if you download it and run it directly without using a browser.

bawolff 3y ago
Its not a criticism that this is neccesary, its a criticism that it is possible to even do this in a browser.
- esperent 3y ago
  But why is that a criticism? I tried running SD on my computer a few months ago. I spent several hours trying to install the dependencies and eventually gave up. I'm sure it wouldn't have been a big deal for someone familiar with python but for me it was a massive hassle and I eventually failed to make it run at all. For this one, as long as my browser supports WebGPU (which will be widely supported soon) and I have the system resources, it will run. Barely any technical knowledge needed, doesn't matter what OS or brand of GPU I have. Isn't that really cool? It reduces both technical and knowledge based barriers to entry. Why do people criticize this so strongly?
  - filoleg 3y ago
    After seeing the sort of argument you are replying to countless times on HN, I came to a simple conclusion. Some people, esp on HN, just have disdain for anyone who might not be willing to deal with the hubris of running a piece of software, because it invites "lower common denominator", and they don't want to "taint" their hobby by the presence of "normies" in what used to be their exclusive domain. In a similar vein, you can find plenty of comments on HN faulting the massive proliferation of smartphones among the general population throughout 2010s for "ruining" web, software ecosystems, application paradigms, etc. There are plenty of things one could potentially criticize smartphones for, and some of that criticism indeed has merit. But this specific point about "ruining" things feels almost like a different version of the same argument above - niche things becoming widely adopted by the masses and "ruining" their "cool kids club." Another similar example from an entirely unrelated domain - comic books and their explosion in popularity after Marvel movies repeatedly killing it in the box office. I don't even like Marvel movies, barely watched any of them, but the elitism around hating things becoming more popular is just silly.

ale42 3y ago

I guess data is compressed? Otherwise, this makes no sense (even if it might happen in practice).

josefx 3y ago
AI models can get quite memory intensive while running. I have seen a primitive image improvement AI eat up over 80 GB of RAM on high res images. The data of the model itself "only" used up 4 GB.

quickthrower2 3y ago

The web ate Java's original premise.

colechristensen 3y ago
Yup, java just didn't actually do it very well. Or java was too heavy for the computers at the time to get people to use "applets" for everyday things (i.e. go to a new website a do a thing on it) Flash et al also failed to catch for long. The web browser's success might have something to do with neverending feature creep as opposed to "this can do everything but as such it's broken and vulnerable".
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  I think everyone instinctively knew that “once it is in the browser it cannot fail”, so it has been a schelling point for tech.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  Java's constant security nightmares and lack of integration into browsers was the bigger problem, IMHO.
  - antupis 3y ago
    Also you had to install runtime vs browser which is bundled every OS.
- DrScientist 3y ago
  Applets implementations were terrible - the problem wasn't so much Java ( though early versions pre-jit were slow ) , but the interface between the browser and the applet. Memory leaks abounded in particular. Life cycle management was difficult as well. Note the interface had to be implemented in each and every browser separately - compounding the problem - for applets to be viable it had to work on all the major browsers well. Not blaming the people who worked on it - I suspect the origin design was put together in a rush, and the work under-resourced, and it required coordination of multiple parties.

massifist 3y ago

I don't know, something tells me a (actual) operating system will still be required (at some level). Though, they might eat the desktop environment or UIs (in general).

jimmySixDOF 3y ago

Yes, and I am coming round to the idea that WebGPU is useful like this for cases other than realtime interactive WebXR pages with streaming multiplayer live state and loaded up with draw calls etc. There is a simplicity to curating the experience through the browser like this and there isn't any easier way to get SD up and running so I hope these kinds of projects keep getting support. Thanks for building this OP!

Waterluvian 3y ago

As bandwidth increases and the web sandbox matures, it’s fascinating to watch the evolution towards apps you just use rather than download and install and maintain. This will bother some but for the masses it opens a lot of doors.

Timon3 3y ago
I love web apps because they mean I have to trust the developer a lot less than with native apps. Of course there are still things you'd have to monitor (e.g. network requests) to fully trust any web app. A good solution could be something like OpenBSD's pledge, to allow me to prove to the user nothing malicious is possible (e.g. by disabling fetch and any new requests, even from src attributes, altogether).
- Waterluvian 3y ago
  As a sandbox, I especially like that there's a dropdown with a huge list of things a website/app can do. Many of them on by default, but I have total control over that. And of course the API for asking. "Hey this game wants to use your motion controls and USB gamepad." Okay sure.
  - Timon3 3y ago
    Yeah, the sandbox is nice, but it doesn't go far enough. Let's say I build a JSON viewer. Why should the page have any ability to make network requests? So what I'm asking for is an ability to pledge that I'm not going to make any network requests.

amelius 3y ago

As long as they cache it so I only have to load it once ...

_ea1k 3y ago

That's what Netscape wanted, back when they still existed. The vision survived, though the company didn't.

MrBra 3y ago

Or better: the web ate the OS resources. Or better: an app ate the OS resources. Which is exactly what resources are for, when eating is performed correctly :)