azakai

52 ms·

811.
by azakai 11y ago
The real decision isn't made based on a guess like "it would sound complex". It is made by doing a user study - a test of actual users. That data guides the decision, and the data here showed users benefited more, on average,
812.
by azakai 11y ago
I'm afraid not, because for the average user, who understands very little about software, asking them "do you want [complex new feature]?" is almost always going to get a "no". And even if it isn't an actually
813.
by azakai 11y ago
I don't see how it's shady. It's quite similar to other browser integrations. For example, Chrome integrates with Google services like Google Translate. All modern browsers do some amount of by-default enabled extra services.
814.
by azakai 11y ago
Almost all users of any popular browser are not tech savvy like you and I and other people here on Hacker News. They would not enable an opt-in feature because it would sound complex and confusing to them. The Firefox design team did studie
815.
by azakai 11y ago
It's opt-out because if it were opt-in, far fewer people would benefit from it. The Firefox design team conducted user research experiments, and found that a significant amount of people like the feature (far more than dislike it). Mos
816.
by azakai 11y ago
Well, that's legally where we are right now. But we are living in times where IP laws are facing technological problems. For example, no one can copyright a joke and expect to make a fortune off of it, because anyone can hear a joke an
817.
by azakai 11y ago
You can also open links like this in a private browsing window (works for me in firefox, probably would work in others too). The economist website appears to decide you deserve a paywall based on cookies or other tracking.
818.
by azakai 11y ago
> "If you look on Google Trends for Xamarin, it's the No. 1 mobile platform now in terms of mindshare." First of all, Google Trends isn't necessarily the best way to determine that. But second, it doesn't seem to
819.
by azakai 11y ago
A few more bits of info from Laura Thompson's presentation, that was mentioned: shipping features can be done even faster if they are done in a modular way, as addons. Firefox supports restartless addons, which means the browser could
820.
by azakai 11y ago
> You can convert irreducible control flow to reducible control flow, but it can explode the size of the graph in pathological cases. True, but only in node-splitting approaches. If you use a label threading variable (as emscripten'
821.
by azakai 11y ago
I don't disagree with any of that. I do disagree with the things you said earlier: It is just not true that the web matters less, nor that Google is the only one pushing it. The web still matters a whole lot. And many parties aside f
822.
by azakai 11y ago
I think you are wrong that the web matters less, and also wrong that only Google is pushing it. First, you forgot IndexedDB, another example from the article, which disproves your point. Other examples include fullscreen and WebAssembly. We
823.
by azakai 11y ago
"X wants Z, but doesn't want to pay Y for Z" implies several things. Perhaps you didn't intend them. But almost every reader will make those assumptions. In particular, it sounds like Y is offering Z at a standard rate,
824.
by azakai 11y ago
You said > So what we're really talking about is that Unity wants the improvements that have been made to Mono, but doesn't want to pay for them. which paints Unity as the bad guy, when for all we know, it might not be. Perhaps
825.
by azakai 11y ago
It means: Xamarin offered a commercial license to Unity for $X under Y terms. We don't know what X and Y are, since this was not a public negotiation. X and Y could be reasonable, or they could be totally unacceptable. They could be of
826.
by azakai 11y ago
.NET's cross-platform support is still a work in progress. In particular, it doesn't have a web port, which is crucial for Unity. il2cpp is an AOT compiler to C++, which makes it trivially portable to practically everywhere, inclu
827.
by azakai 11y ago
That seems like a very unfair description of the situation. Do you know the specific licensing terms that Xamarin offered to Unity? Probably none of us here do. Given that, why would you assume Unity was the unreasonable party, and not Xama
828.
by azakai 11y ago
I believe http://www.quakejs.com/ has multiplayer.
829.
by azakai 11y ago
We use a mix of C++, JS and Python outside of LLVM. No plans to change that, but it could, depends on which tools contributors prefer. vdohaeris, btw ;)
830.
by azakai 11y ago
Almost. But it isn't quite so simple that any compiler using LLVM could benefit. For example, if a language uses a feature like GC, but that isn't supported by a target, then that can't work. Also, the frontend needs to emit
831.
by azakai 11y ago
All of those advantages are true, except for performance. We actually don't know which approach will be faster to compile, nor which approach will emit faster code. There are reasons to guess either way. The new backend being begun her
832.
by azakai 11y ago
Heritability has a very precise definition in this context: > Heritability is the proportion of observed differences on a trait among individuals of a population that are due to genetic differences. https://en.wikipedia.org&#x
833.
by azakai 11y ago
The problem is that it cannot perfectly recognize "OK Google". There are going to be false positives, things that sound like "OK Google" to the plugin, but are not "OK Google". And it will send those recordings
834.
by azakai 11y ago
1. Both the JVM and CLR have different focuses in terms of startup speed, which matters more on the web than anywhere else (this is one reason Java failed on the web). JavaScript and WebAssembly are designed to start up quickly. 2. If you h
835.
by azakai 11y ago
Of course, several of the people working on WebAssembly are actually from the PNaCl team. And others, like the Emscripten people, have lots of LLVM experience as well. WebAssembly is being designed while taking into account previous approac
836.
by azakai 11y ago
WebAssembly will be more readable than asm.js, so it is an improvement over the current state of things, https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/master/FAQ.md#wil... I do agree though that asm.js is l
837.
by azakai 11y ago
Efficient GC requires tight integration with LLVM, and I assume that means also tight integration with the Rust compiler. I don't think that can be done as a library or even a plugin.
838.
by azakai 11y ago
There is already an mruby port to the web using emscripten. When emscripten targets wasm, that port will get that for free.
839.
by azakai 11y ago
GC support doesn't prevent having Rust-style compile-time memory management. In fact, Rust itself may add a GC at some point.
840.
by azakai 11y ago
The API story for wasm on the web is the set of existing web APIs. That provides the same security model and capabilities as the web has right now. Currently wasm can't access web APIs except by calling out to JS, which would then call

More ›