On Wednesday, 1 March 2017 at 08:56:37 UTC, Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) wrote:
> On 03/01/2017 03:47 AM, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
>> On Wednesday, 1 March 2017 at 08:01:41 UTC, Saurabh Das wrote:
>>> I'm not so up-to-date about the mechanics of WebAssembly, but it would
>>> be pretty exciting to run D code in the browser.
>>>
>>> Is this now possible or have I completely misunderstood what
>>> WebAssembly allows for?
>>
>> It should be possible, at least if you give up on the garbage collector.
>>
>
> Huh? Isn't webasm GC'ed? Ir is it like a D-vs-wasm CG incompatibility?

Nope, no GC. It is a "minimum viable product", so also no threading or SIMD. This is a good strategy, make sure that all implementations are fully compliant and collect experience before adding more features into the mix.

http://webassembly.org/docs/gc/

I believe both Rust  and C++ compilers will target WebAssembly. In the beginning I suspect the best approach is to the core application in a set of WebAssembly modules and tie it together with the UI in JavaScript/TypeScript/JSX/Angular2 etc

On Wednesday, 1 March 2017 at 09:00:42 UTC, Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) wrote:
> If we could invent a technical way to screw over, underminine, and completely replace corporate interests, it would be the single greatest achievement in computing (not to mention economic theory), EVER.

I bet Intel would have undermined WebAssembly if they were given a chance. Now other CPU vendors (e.g. mobile) can strengthen their position by making WebAssembly applications a target for testing.

So, maybe the conclusion is: don't let corporations create technology standards in their main domain, because then they try to create monopolies and start misbehaving. Browsers is  a side-line tech, so... this might have a chance..?

On 03/01/2017 05:15 AM, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
>
> So, maybe the conclusion is: don't let corporations create technology
> standards in their main domain, because then they try to create
> monopolies and start misbehaving. Browsers is  a side-line tech, so...
> this might have a chance..?
>

Well, it's Google's main domain, and they've kinda already settled into a pattern of making decisions more on self-serving grounds than for the good of the product/users. "Don't be evil" doesn't exactly set a very high bar.

On Wednesday, 1 March 2017 at 18:28:00 UTC, Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) wrote:
> Well, it's Google's main domain, and they've kinda already settled into a pattern of making decisions more on self-serving grounds than for the good of the product/users. "Don't be evil" doesn't exactly set a very high bar.

I don't know, I have more trouble with Safari and Edge than Chrome and Firefox.

Google's main domain is advertising, same with Facebook. Software is just a way to keep competition away and collecting information about users.

The Internet is getting very 1984ish, but this goes way beyond Google, which I find to be better than average. Have you noticed how you receive advertising all over the Internet for the same product you looked at a few days before in a webshop and how Facebook and Linked In lists suggestions based on people you have only had peripheral interaction with? Extremely annoying. It makes me rank those companies as shady.

At some point there will be a resistance movement, forking one of the main browsers and building in collaborative blacklisting etc. Unfortunately, non-tech people are quite oblivious to what is going on. Maybe the new collaborative website annotation standards will turn into something. Firefox could take a lead there.

On 03/02/2017 04:18 AM, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
> On Wednesday, 1 March 2017 at 18:28:00 UTC, Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa)
> wrote:
>> Well, it's Google's main domain, and they've kinda already settled
>> into a pattern of making decisions more on self-serving grounds than
>> for the good of the product/users. "Don't be evil" doesn't exactly set
>> a very high bar.
>
> I don't know, I have more trouble with Safari and Edge than Chrome and
> Firefox.

Well, web devs cater to Chrome and FF, and tend to ignore Safari/Edge. And I wasn't really just talking about browsers with that.

> The Internet is getting very 1984ish, but this goes way beyond Google,
> which I find to be better than average. Have you noticed how you receive
> advertising all over the Internet for the same product you looked at a
> few days before in a webshop and how Facebook and Linked In lists
> suggestions based on people you have only had peripheral interaction
> with? Extremely annoying. It makes me rank those companies as shady.

Maybe it's ADD-related or something, but my brain literally isn't capable of reading a page of text if there's something animating on the page (usually ads). Even the blinking cursor in a code editor can break my focus. So I've had to install Adblock Edge and NoScript[1] just to be *able* to use the web at all (basic, honest-to-goodness accessibility).

So, no, I honestly haven't noticed that phenomenon (although I have heard about it once before).

[1] Back when I was using Windows more, that Adblock Edge/NoScript combo also had the additional benefit of keeping my machine much safer from drive-by malware, even when other people around me were far more careful about good antivirus, never turned off auto-updates, and were still having their machines taken over by ransomware - which never touched any of my machines.

> At some point there will be a resistance movement, forking one of the
> main browsers and building in collaborative blacklisting etc.

I hope, but I'm skeptical. Big business is definitely headed very 1984, but that's happening less because of Orwellian control, and more because of mass apathy and widespread short-sighted self-interest (more Huxley than Orwell, from what I gather).

I also see certain issues with collaborative rankings - they can only be as intelligent as the average user, which often doesn't seem to be very much. And then there's other difficulties like this: https://xkcd.com/937/

On Thursday, 2 March 2017 at 19:52:58 UTC, Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) wrote:
>> At some point there will be a resistance movement, forking one of the
>> main browsers and building in collaborative blacklisting etc.
>
> I hope, but I'm skeptical. Big business is definitely headed very 1984, but that's happening less because of Orwellian control, and more because of mass apathy and widespread short-sighted self-interest (more Huxley than Orwell, from what I gather).

The general public has become more ignorant. I guess to a large extent because of information overflow and the downfall of real journalism (e.g. the old payment model is failing which means media is converging on click-bait-ad-sales). A news story has to run for several weeks now for anyone to take notice, otherwise it will just drown in all the irrelevant noise (celebrity news and what not).

> I also see certain issues with collaborative rankings - they can only be as intelligent as the average user, which often doesn't seem to be very much. And then there's other difficulties like this: https://xkcd.com/937/

I think it would be more like organizations like Amnesty International and consumer rights organizations having the ability to annotate websites and webpages with vetted information about the content.

On Fri, Mar 03, 2017 at 08:06:00AM +0000, Ola Fosheim Grøstad via Digitalmars-d wrote: [...]
> The general public has become more ignorant. I guess to a large extent because of information overflow and the downfall of real journalism (e.g.  the old payment model is failing which means media is converging on click-bait-ad-sales). A news story has to run for several weeks now for anyone to take notice, otherwise it will just drown in all the irrelevant noise (celebrity news and what not).
[...]

Ahahaha... "celebrity news"... an oxymoron, if there ever was one.


T

-- 
Programming is not just an act of telling a computer what to do: it is also an act of telling other programmers what you wished the computer to do. Both are important, and the latter deserves care. -- Andrew Morton

This looks like a nice tool for those wanting to learn more about WebAssembly:

https://mbebenita.github.io/WasmExplorer/